Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Second reading: I have officially decided I could read Tolstoy every year. I liked Anna even better the second time around. Tolstoy has the gift to write so completely and utterly realistically. Even the more mundane passages--elections, drawing room conversations, etc. were more relatable this time around. The great joy of life, the utter despair of life, all breathtakingly wrought by Tolstoy.

I loved this book. Maybe I just needed some meat after all the post-apocolyptic YA fiction I seem to be to be reading lately. I thought it would be laborious to get through, and although some of the Russian issues, especially with Levin, took a little patience, the whole of the book was spectacular! Loved it, loved it, loved it.

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The Light Pirate

 

The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

the most gentle book about the apocalypse by global warming. Brooks-Dalton does a great job letting the events unfold, giving time and space for character development, and for the reader to fully buy into what is happening. Great writing, too.

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The Sweetness of Water

The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This may be a marriage of Steinbeck and Larry McMurtry (in a good way) and I enjoyed it immensely. I loved the setting off after the Civil War, while people get adjusted to a new reality--the planation owners grappling with what to do next, the freedmen not any more certain where to go and what to do. Then there is George Walker, independent of the question, a singular man who just does what he wants. Some inevitable plot points, but plenty of pleasant and unexpected ones as well. When I think of a good book, this one will spring to mind.

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The cakes sizzled-bubbles opening and closing again like a fish struggling for air above the water's surface.

Their mother would say that Landry had once been full, and then halved, until he was inevitably left in so many bits she could not piece together the boy she'd once called her own.

"...the way they were crying and carrying on I wasn't sure if it was in praise of their freedom or at the plight of what their freedom entails."

The unknown led only to more clearings, more sunlight on the other end, and so it dawned on him that there was less to fear than he'd imagined, which was maybe a truth he'd long wished to believe--that all danger carried the faint trace of comfort, all wrongs the hint of what may be right.

These Precious Days

 

These Precious Days: Essays by Ann Patchett
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The year of the pandemic put the world on hold. And I've noticed that more than one artist diverged into quite a lot of introspection and albums and books were released that had a marked divergence from their earlier stuff. Granted, I haven't read Patchett's other book of essays--which in this book are really more memoir than anything else. But I felt like these snippets of her life were more for her than for us (though that's true of most memoirs). Although there were some entertaining stories, and it was interesting to glean her writing process, her gifts really lie in her novels. I felt like there was a lot of humble-bragging and there needed to be tighter editing--the whole thing felt like a vanity project to me. But if you are as great a novelist as she is, I guess maybe you do get to brag a bit?

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Anna K: A Love Story by Jenny Lee
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

things I liked about this:
-tells the story of Anna Karenina with a modern YA twist. It was fun to see how events in a 19th century Russian story could be reframed in modern America.
-like a good K-drama, the uber wealthy are uber stylish and Lee does a great job creating the ridiculous deliciousness of having so much money.
things I didn't like
-the first part does a great job of reimagining many elements of the novel, but then seems rushed, almost summing up events instead of showing them
-themes and emotional complexity of the original novel are absent. Tolstoy does such a great job of observing how one event can change perception or mood, or how someone's ideas and feelings are contagious. There is a constant push and pull between conscience and desires, between trying to do what's correct in society and between trying to understand their own feelings and morals, between ecstasy and regret. None of Lee's characters seem to be that complicated or self-relflective.
-speaking of which, I know I hold YA books up to some kind of self-mandated standard, but I was shocked that there weren't more repercussions from the rampant use of drugs and basically orgy-like sex in the characters.



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The Girl with the Lounging Voice

The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

At first this seemed like a *typical* story of a third-world girl, growing up in a culture that does not value education for women, where girls and women are often the victims of violence, and poverty is pervasive. Yet this book transcends that story-line, while also illustrating those very truths. Adduni narrates her tale in her own voice, which is a little pidgin and a bit hard to navigate at first. She is naive yet wise, persecuted yet resiliently optimistic. Her one desire is to be educated--not for riches, for she learns first-hand that problems trouble everyone, rich or poor--but so that she can have a pounding voice, or be a person of influence and power on behalf of those who are silenced or ignored. You can't help but charmed with Adduni's hope, compassion, and curiosity.

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Crying in H-Mart

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Once again, I am loathe to review the personal experiences of someone. Especially about the death of a parent. Zauner uses food to communicate her ties with her mother, and her mother's country, Korea, where she also spent a great deal of time. Zauner is also an artist, a songwriter and singer, and maybe a little impulsive. I would have liked her to expand on how her experiences caring for her mother inspired her songs, but all in all it's an interesting point of view and it makes you hungry for some janjangamyon.

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