Cassandra in Reverse

 

Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I almost stopped reading this halfway through because the character felt done to death and at the same time felt completely convoluted. She's a woman who struggles with social cues, is rigid about rules, is orphaned and traumatized, and is hunted by an aggressive woman for reasons unknown. Also she just discovered she can time travel. First of all, if she is so socially unacceptable how does she have a boyfriend, a room mate that won't stop hitting on her, or a job in PR in the first place? In fact, for a while it seemed as though she had no hidden talents or kind quirks (just apparently being hot). In the middle, things started to right themselves and by the end, I almost kinda liked it. Saving features: time travel, always time travel--love the messiness of all the time-lines and how some things were inevitable. Also, all the mythology. Also, it's a sister book dressed up like a romance book.

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Psalm for the Wild-Built

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a gentle book about a monk who tries their hand at being a tea monk, traveling to communities and offering tea and consolation. Then they feel like they need something more and so travels into the wilderness to find a long-lost sanctuary and along the way meets up with a robot. Which is significant only because robots and humans have gone their separate ways for centuries. Now together they explore what it means to have purpose, how to comfort and communicate with each other, how we pass on our legacies (and if that should matter). It is a book of ideas although the story moves along at a consistent, if unhurried pace with no major conflicts or suspense. It's just the perfect companion to a nice cup of tea and some meditation on the meaning of life.

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traveling the quiet highways between Panga's villages was no longer a matter of mental mapping but of sensory input.

A forest floor, the Woodland villagers knew, is a living thing.  Vast civilizations lay within the mosaic of dirt: hymenopteran labyrinths, rodentia panic rooms, life-giving airways sculpted by the traffic of worms, hopeful spiders' hunting cabins, crash pads for nomadic beetles, trees shyly locking toes with one another.

Its only legacy was to persist where it did not belong.

The Complete Fiction of HP Lovecraft

The Complete Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft by H.P. Lovecraft
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ok. I didn't read the WHOLE thing. But I read the major works and at least a couple of dozen more to get a pretty good idea of Lovecraft's M. O. A lot of these stories were found in serials and I can see them as that period's "must-see TV" alternative with recaps and cliff hanging endings and lots of adjectives in between. I can see why he was an influencer--he builds the mystery of the story, almost tells you what it is, but doesn't reveal til the very horrifying end. Of course modern readers may correctly guess the reveal by the time it finally comes, but the build-up is still first rate. His characters aren't innately evil like some of Poe's. Rather they are seekers who become too ambitious, too curious, too obsessed with finding answers--scientific, psychologic, or spiritual. And then things get out of hand--they find answers they shouldn't, come in contact with powers and people that are beyond control, and the whole thing usually gets out hand--usually to the seeker's demise. It's often the same plot line but the mystery is usually amazingly creative. Also, I was never a fan of rats before, but in Lovecraft's hands they become something truly terrifying...

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Foreign Bodies

Foreign Bodies: Poems by Kimiko Hahn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed several of these poems as meditations of what "foreign bodies" are. Some of them revolved around things people have swallowed, the life of one of the first female paleontologists, what it means to be an immigrant. I recommend you turn to the end of the book to read the method of her poetry and also some background to some of the subjects of the poems first so that you can appreciate the poems better.

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Horse

Horse by Geraldine Brooks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I don't suppose I would normally seek out a book about a horse, even if that horse were touted as being one of the greats of all time. But Geraldine Brooks does a great job of weaving very disparate characters that revolve around the horse in different eras, from its trainer to painters to museum archivists. She also explores the question of race relations throughout history in America. Brooks took a niche interest and mined it to tell a thought-provoking and intriguing story.

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Wild Swans

 

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is informative, insightful, entertaining, eye-opening. So many lives seem to be crowded in this triple-generational memoir. The grandmother is sold as a concubine, the mother is a prominent leader in the Communist movement, and the daughter tries her hardest to discern what is right and wrong, how to survive and love, and how to find beauty when she can. I am amazed at this little family and despite all the turbulence around them still manage to create deep loving feelings for each other and a loyalty that supersedes their comfort or their survival. The truth of Communism in China and the Land. Reform, Cultural Revolution, and all the power reversals and rise of the Cult of Personality of Mao was interesting in and of itself, but add to that the fates and fortunes of this family and I literately could not put it down.

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Shiner

Shiner by Amy Jo Burns
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Religion, Appalachia, and her mother's friendship form the world in which Wren grows up. There are plenty of mysteries and secrets and they all get unraveled in the end (saving a little mystery wouldn't have been a bad thing). It's an atmospheric novel and it sucks you into its world. Apart from one "secret" whose motivations feel forced and ungenuine, I truly enjoyed this tale of loyalty and love despite a lot of its oppressive and dark themes.

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The lawn was a graveyard of boyhood.