What She Knew

What She Knew by Gilly Macmillan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a fine thriller about a kidnapped boy and the race to find him. Plenty of surprises and red herrings while still inching closer to a somewhat plausible ending. I liked that the title itself plays into the psyche of the reader and changes meaning as the story progresses. It’s not the most tightly plotted, thrilling, or shocking suspense novel I’ve read but it’ll do for a summer read.

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Howards End

Howards End by E.M. Forster
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A classic so a slow simmering start. But l loved the sibling relationships. So many interesting thoughts about place, progress, class, marriage, gender equality, art. I ended up loving it.

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WE are not concerned with the very poor. They are unthinkable and only to be approached by the statistician or the poet. This story deals with gentlefolk, or with those who are obliged to pretend that they are gentlefolk.

But in his day the angel of Democracy had arisen, enshadowing the classes with leathern wings, and proclaiming, "All men are equal—all men, that is to say, who possess umbrellas," and so he was obliged to assert gentility, lest he slip into the abyss where nothing counts, and the statements of Democracy are inaudible

any emotion, any interest once vividly aroused, can wholly die.

those who prepare for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy.

The poor cannot always reach those whom they want to love, and they can hardly ever escape from those whom they love no longer.

When physical passion is involved, there is a definite name for such behaviour—flirting—and if carried far enough it is punishable by law. But no law—not public opinion even—punishes those who coquette with friendship, though the dull ache that they inflict, the sense of misdirected effort and exhaustion, may be as intolerable.

The air was white, and when they alighted it tasted like cold pennies. 

All his affection and half his attention—it was what he granted her throughout their happy married life.

yet at the time it bored me more than I can say. And besides—you can believe me or not as you choose—I was very hungry. That dinner at Wimbledon—I meant it to last me all night like other dinners. I never thought that walking would make such a difference. Why, when you're walking you want, as it were, a breakfast and luncheon and tea during the night as well, and I'd nothing but a packet of Woodbines. Lord, I did feel bad! Looking back, it wasn't what you may call enjoyment. It was more a case of sticking to it. I did stick. I—I was determined. Oh, hang it all! what's the good—I mean, the good of living in a room for ever? There one goes on day after day, same old game, same up and down to town, until you forget there is any other game. You ought to see once in a way what's going on outside, if it's only nothing particular after all."

Was that "something" walking in the dark among the suburban hills?

Is it worth while attempting the past when there is this continual flux even in the hearts of men?

historians of the future will note how the middle classes accreted possessions without taking root in the earth, and may find in this the secret of their imaginative poverty.

Her only ally was the power of Home.

Now she understood why some women prefer influence to rights.

But we have to die, we have to leave life presently. Injustice and greed would be the real thing if we lived for ever. As it is, we must hold to other things, because Death is coming. I love Death—not morbidly, but because He explains. He shows me the emptiness of Money. Death and Money are the eternal foes. Not Death and Life. Never mind what lies behind Death, Mr. Bast, but be sure that the poet and the musician and the tramp will be happier in it than the man who has never learnt to say, 'I am I.'"

He prepares the way for cosmopolitanism, and though his ambitions may be fulfilled, the earth that he inherits will be grey.

Differences, eternal differences, planted by God in a single family, so that there may always be colour; sorrow perhaps, but colour in the daily grey.

Theft by Finding

Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002 by David Sedaris
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

DNF. While using a diary to flesh out a biography, or mining your own for story or essay ideas is perfectly legit, the idea of publishing your own for public consumption seems a little full of yourself. This is my first Sedaris book and obviously not the best intro. While I admire his ability to find a snarky observation in daily life, I found him very unlikeable. He’s in his late 20s blowing any good money he makes on drugs and alcohol. He observes people being abused, humiliated, or hopeless and seems to only use their pain for his amusement...no empathy or desire to make things better, just wry observation. I thought maybe it would chronicle his change and rise to the “great” essayist he is revered to be, but halfway through I was only more and more ambivalent and wondered why I was wasting my time with his uninspiring minutiae, so I quit.

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The Narrow Road to the Deep North

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

4.5*. This was a beautifully written book about Love and War and Life and Death. It did seem as though it were two books. The first, a love story between Dorrigo Evans, an Australian soldier, and his uncles wife, and the other about his time as a POW under the Japanese building the Burma railroad. In the camp, Dorrigo is a surgeon, and the action shifts from him to Darky, a fellow prisoner, and the guards and Japanese officers at the camp. Flanagan often focuses on the opposition that lies within the same moment...how the jungle can be both beautiful and hell, how someone can be terrified and brave in the same moment. So maybe the two stories are meant to show the best and worst in life, but it was difficult for me to tie the two stories together. Still, both stories are expertly told, with poetic grace and at times horrific realism. I felt the rain and mud slosh around me as I read. Another interesting theme was how what we choose to remember and tell ourselves about our past affects our future.

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Why at the beginning of things is there always light?

 A happy man has no past, while an unhappy man has nothing else.

It is not that you know nothing about war, young man, Dorrigo Evans had said. It is that you have learnt one thing. And war is many things.

 As if rather than him leading them by example they were leading him through adulation

 He took a book from a shelf, and as he brought it up to his chest it passed from shadow into one of the sun shafts. He held the book there, looking at that book, that light, that dust. It was as though there were two worlds. This world, and a hidden world that it took the momentary shafts of late-afternoon light to reveal as the real world—of flying particles wildly spinning, shimmering, randomly bouncing into each other and heading off into entirely new directions. Standing there in that late-afternoon light, it was impossible to believe any step would not be for the better. He never thought to where or what, he never thought why, he never wondered what might happen if, instead of progressing, he collided like one of the dust motes in the sunlight.

 As though what she really sought from him was this obliteration, an oblivion, and their passion could only lead to her erasure from the world. For if the living let go of the dead, their own life ceases to matter.

It’s only our faith in illusions that makes life possible, Squizzy, he had explained, in as close to an explanation of himself as he ever offered. It’s believing in reality that does us in every time.

 Perhaps that was what hell was, Dorrigo concluded, an eternal repetition of the same failure.

Deep Down Dark

Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free by Héctor Tobar
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Inspirational, interesting, entertaining, thought-provoking. An excellent retelling of the 33 miners stuck in a Chilean mine. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

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There are many superstitions about women and mines that are expressions of the male-dominated culture’s ambivalence about both women and underground labor. One legend has it that the mountain itself is a woman, and in a sense “you’re violating her every time you step inside her,” which explains why the mountain often tries to kill the men who’ve carved passageways from her stone body.

The quasi-scientific explanation is that the mountain’s deposits of magnetite are attracting and repelling grains of sand that vibrate in the wind.

Are you going to tell me that if we threw you down here for weeks and left you all alone, completely alone, and then we came to rescue you, we’d find you as fine and dandy as you are now? Did you pull that off all by yourself? No, compadre. You made it this far because behind you there were thirty-two others.”

 taken thirty-three days of drilling to reach the thirty-three men.

Ten Women

Ten Women by Marcela Serrano
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

4.5 *. As a rule, I don’t enjoy books that are composed of characters, each chapter a different character with a different story that barely intersects with the other characters but a hotel, or a class, or something connects them all together...the “main” character being the owner of said hotel, class, etc. I always feel as though I’m invited to a novel and get inter-connected short stories instead. Not that I’m opposed to that, I just like to get what I’m sold. Ok that rant aside, that format actually works here. 10 women in therapy with Natasha come and share their stories with each other. Each story is unique to the character, yet universal observations and feelings are shared. I felt I learned a lot about the Chilean culture and history, yet again the situations were also relateable. More than any other book I felt like it spoke what it was like to be female, our strength, our compassion, our vulnerability, and our sacrifice. The beginning and the end made it feel more of a scmaltzy chick lit (the therapist previewing and summing up things) but the stories themselves were powerful. The translation was ok although awkward at times and I wished I knew enough Spanish to read it in its written language.

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The Circle

The Circle by Dave Eggers
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is equal parts genius and frustration.

Genius- the services described in here that seem like a good ideas, like health plotting, tiny cameras, but Eggers adds just enough extra to make it uncomfortable (being tricked into swallowing a tracker, putting cameras where no one would know, etc.)
— he captures the social pressures to be on social media (“it’s not mandatory, but why wouldn’t you want to share”.)
—helps us think about the fine line between transparency and no privacy...is full disclosure what
we want/ need?
—does a good job of how showing how addicting online affirmations (and how debilitating online jeers) can be

Frustration— Eggers is arguably a genius (staggeringly so), but his novel was all over the place.
Bits and pieces of Mae’s life are incorporated only to fall off. Like kayaking. Did she really never go kayaking again? Her family falls off the map when they turn off the cameras...did she really not try to find them?
Also Mae goes from being humiliated by having a potential boyfriend over-sharing and then becoming a walking camera with full transparency...that leap doesn’t feel authentic to the reader. Neither do several of her other choices once she goes transparent...(finding Mercer, going back to Francis, etc.). There just isn’t enough to help the reader understand how Mae goes from casual user to full circle groupie.
The love interests make no sense and detract from the plot. Even the reveal at the end falls flat. The fact that Mae is so giddy about them at first seems juvenile and doesn’t help us like her (if we’re supposed to.)

Bottom line: read this book if you want a heads up into how a company could potentially supplant government. But don’t expect a well-thought out plot or characters.

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