The Year of the Runaways

The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A very rich portrayal of Indians coming to England in search of employment and a better life. Three boys and one girl experience the hardships of immigration and try to balance their beliefs and traditions with their new surroundings. Some come in legally and others are not and one is already a citizen and works to help the others. We see how hard it is to get employment when they don't know the language very well and people are unwilling to help them out. Others are happy to help but can't do much besides have good intentions. Surprisingly, some of the greatest discrimination comes from among the Indian people themselves according to their caste. Each of the characters is fully drawn and the inclusion of a fair amount of vocabulary that is unique to India actually immersed me more fully instead of being distracting. It was interesting and eye-opening and I was drawn into their hardships and dreams fully. It ends rather abruptly, but there is an epilogue. The only problem is that the author didn't connect the way they ended up to that year. How did they get from there to here? Rather than resolving anything it left me with more questions.

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A Visit From the Goon Squad

 

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Another novel of connected stories that hit perfectly. Each chapter had its own voice that was unique and even some of the structure and development of the stories changed (loved the power point). Moving through time and space with the characters created a whole universe. Egan does a good job of reminding the reader who reoccurring characters are, too, so you're not lost. It was a fun, satisfying read.

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The Color Purple

The Color Purple by Alice Walker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When a book is a classic, I always feel a little unenlightened when I think they are just ok. The ladies in this novel go through some really hard things (mostly because of their fathers and husbands and lovers) and in the end assert what they need and want and everything turns out ok. Even the men become somewhat more in touch with themselves. I did enjoy the letters from Nettie who became a missionary in Africa and experienced a different point of view of race, family and God. While it was nice to see the progression of these women becoming fully themselves, I just didn't connect with them.

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Tell the Machine Goodnight

 

Tell the Machine Goodnight by Katie Williams
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What if a machine could tell you what you needed to do to be happy? Would you consult it? Would you do anything it said, even if you had to cut off a finger? Each chapter is a character's point of view and wraps up in its own story but the larger story also progresses. But it is ultimately a musing on what makes us happy and what we would do be happy. There are some characters that actually make themselves miserable for fame and money. Some mistake the suggestions given by the machine for the machine itself. Some find that it only takes one person to believe in you to change your trajectory. The stories are unique but carry something universal and meaningful in each. I loved the universe of characters created by Williams and loved this quirky, hopeful story.

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What they don't understand is that my condition is a symptom of me.

Because I know that when people comfort you, they're really just comforting themselves.

Cruelest are the punishments we visit upon ourselves.

There is no organ for the word love.  It is one of the first words and has meant only itself.

Apple is another word that has always meant itself.  In fact, it used to apply to any fruit, vegetable, or even nut.  All fruits were apples.  The potato was the apple of the earth (and still is in French: pommel de Terre).  Dates were finger apples.  The banana was, in Middle English, the apple of paradise.

Tongues of flame, this is something we say, as if the fire can speak, as if it taunts us, as if it scents the air like a snake.

It's What I Do

It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War by Lynsey Addario
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

For some reason I read memoirs even though I usually conclude the memoir is written for the author to process something or for their family. But this one knocked it out of the park. It was straightforward, engaging, entertaining, and insightful. I loved learning about her life as a photojournalist in war-torn areas and she balanced it well with relationships and how they worked and didn't with her work. She doesn't hold back on the good, bad or ugly and I felt like I was having a deep conversation with an interesting, thoughtful friend. Pervading it all is the sacrifice that women make to do the same jobs as men, and their constant need to show that they are just as tough, physically and emotionally. Addario succeeds by showing when she is tough, but also sharing when she was vulnerable. And I think her experiences show that it is her strength along with her vulnerabilities that made her such a good photojournalist. There are several pictures included too which added immensely to the story.

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I didn't want to be the cowardly photographer or the terrified girl who prevented the men from doing their work.

I believed that if my intentions were for a good cause, nothing bad would happen to me.

You had to say yes.

I worked every waking hour so that I could be at the right place at the right time.

I didn't want my gender to determine whether or not I could cover breaking news, so I continued photographing, ignoring the sweeping of hands on my butt, the occasional grab.

I found my male colleagues, lounging, all of them smitten with their afternoon's work, checking the backs of their digital cameras for their prizewinning photographs, completely oblivious to what I had gone through to compose even one frame.

I preempted their suspicion that we, the chicks, might hold them up in the field by being overly prepared, physically and mentally.  I trained religiously for assignments, I made sure I had all the gadgets I'd need in my kit to be as self-sufficient as possible, and I tried not to show fear.

Crossing to Safety

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The story of an author and his wife just starting out in their marriage and forming a friendship with another young couple. It is a story of their marriages, especially their friends, whom they see as lopsided with the wife being controlling, the husband not validated enough. Our protagonists' marriage on the other hand is portrayed as loving and supportive, though it is only seen through the husband's eyes (and I sort of wonder if his wife's support and "gamely" enduring all the hardships wouldn't have been seen differently through her eyes). There is sickness, arguments, birthing stories, promotions, demotions, publishings, kids, etc. But it is a pretty ordinary story. The protagonist tells his friends he can't write a story about themselves because a happy story is a boring story. And I have to agree. It is a nice story but nice didn't really captivate me this time.

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What Is Yours is Not Yours

 

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is a book of short stories, but the characters repeat throughout, so you have to keep track of who is who. Which is difficult because some of them are real people, and some of them are conscious puppets and the whole thing is rather confusing, trying to keep which parallel world is which. I gave it two stars because I really did like "presence"--a haunting and beautiful story of regret and love. But I lost my grip on the rest of it--there are some pieces that were good, but it was just too much to keep track of for me in the end.

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Get in Trouble

Get in Trouble by Kelly Link
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Kelly Link is very imaginative. And it was entertaining to read some of the things she thinks up. However, there is something I don't understand about the art of the short story some authors use, which is to keep the reader wondering what really happened. Link employs that a lot. Like "The Summer People" reads like a novel that has the middle taken out, so you wonder how the ending came about. Other stories read like a puzzle jumping through space and time, and some are just cryptic. Despite wishing some of the stories were more clear, other stories were enchanting and I appreciated the art that went in to all of them. If I wanted to know more, it was just that the stories were that good.

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I'm the human equivalent of one of those baby birds that falls out of a nest and then some nice person picks the baby bird up and puts it back.  Except that now the baby bird smells all wrong.  I think I smell wrong.

Her chest feels very tight, as if she's suddenly full of poison.  You have to keep it all inside.  Like throwing yourself on a. bomb to save everybody else.   Except youre the bomb.

"I thought they were more like a memory," Gwenda said.  "Not really there at all. Just an echo recorded somehow and played back, what they did, what happened to them."

Shame

Shame: The Exposed Self by Michael Lewis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this as a companion to Brené Brown's I Thought It Was Just Me since it popped up on Bookbub for less than $2. It was surprisingly helpful. It was much more academic and covered aspects of shame research as well as experiments the author performed. By being clear with the history of shame research and theorizing about the cause and effect of shame, I was much better able to see how to overcome shame (or as Brown puts it, to have shame resilience). It is quite in-depth and I now know everything I ever wanted to know about shame but did a great job of explaining it.

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I Thought It Was Just Me

I Thought It Was Just Me: Women Reclaiming Power and Courage in a Culture of Shame by Brené Brown
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was my first Brene Brown book and I am assured that others are better. I think she dies a good job of defining what shame is and how it harms us but I don't feel like she was clear enough on what to do to combat it. The whole book was circular and used too many drawn out "episodes" of shame especially in her life, which just seemed like she was trying to shame the people that shamed her. Best take away from the book: be nicer to people.

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The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What can you say about a novel that has such far-reaching influence? It starts out in almost melodramatic drama, then morphs into a rather boring catalogue of excess, then into gothic horror. It definitely gives some thinking points--what would we do for eternal beauty and youth? Is beauty and youth that important? Are our misdeeds recorded in our countenance? What would we do if we could get away with it? And of course, Lord Henry's quips are timeless. Definitely worth the read.

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Taft

 

Taft by Ann Patchett
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This story fell a little flat for me. It is a story of a black man who owns a bar. Perhaps that was part of the problem--I was nervous the whole time that Patchett would misstep in her portrayal of another race, another gender. I can't be entirely sure she doesn't (being neither myself) and maybe it's unfair to not allow an author to become whomever they want. Aside from that, the main character wants things and thinks about things, but he rarely does anything of his own volition--just sort of lets things happen to him, or tries to stay out of the way. Things turn out ok in the end, but if there's a character arch, it's tiny. Not one of my favorite Patchett novels but still some great passages.

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