Marlena

 

Marlena by Julie Buntin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a story of two best friends. I can't say the plot is something I would search out: poverty, drugs, parental neglect--but the writing is so stellar. Buntin is able to get under the skin of Cat so completely--all of the things she thinks and knows and feels--blending the past with the present--describing the past as present and then adding the benefit of hindsight when it's needed. Just in awe of how completely Buntin was able to transport me to when I was in high school, hanging out with my best friends and trying to figure out life. Which is why it is so beautiful--I may not have got high or even cut school, but perhaps we've all had those relationships where we were in awe of our friend, worried for them, and then somehow had to leave them behind.

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East Wind, Rain

 

East Wind, Rain by Caroline Paul
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Great historical novel about a Japanese bomber from Pearl Harbor landing on Nihau, a private island off Hawaii, and the aftermath. I found the whole episode to be completely astounding--an island owned by one family, hardly anyone there even aware of a world war, the terrain and weather of a Hawaiian island that is not tropical (sadly, never visited Hawaii yet), and all of the resulting events that followed. (Yes, I wikipedia-ed it afterwards and all of the facts are true). Great read.

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had never felt before the lack he'd felt as he rummaged in the cockpit pushing and pulling at strange buttons

he also knew it represented a whole world he did not know and, worse, should not comprehend.

On Nihau, being under-educated meant that the people remained incurious about the world, and so protected from it...

They were fighting beauty and love because otherwise they would be weakened by it.

Human Acts

Human Acts by Han Kang
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I admit this is a hard read. There is death and torture and the horribleness of humanity on display. So why read it? Because it rings true--it is a novelization of a historical event and it becomes a humanization of the facts and statistics. It helps us to understand, to bear witness to, to grieve for these characters who stand in for real people. Kang lays bear all of the horribleness and its aftermath but somehow by giving it a human depth, she creates empathy and hope, too.

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the Korean context, such issues can also be connected to animist beliefs and the idea of somatic integrity--that violence done to the body is a violation of the spirit/ soul that animates it.  

if we can only keep our eyes open, if we can all hold our gazes steady, until the bitter end.

Modern Lovers

Modern Lovers by Emma Straub
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Straub is a good writer. She captures mood and creates good characters. Conversations seem realistic and descriptions are vivid and illustrative. But unfortunately, this book felt like it went nowhere. What I thought might be a driving plot point--the movie about a real college band--was only a side note. While some secrets did come out, there didn't seem to be any traction. None of the characters made any pivotal changes and I don't think I learned anything from it.

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The Four Winds

 

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I learned a lot about the Dust Bowl--that it lasted so long, took in such a great area, was inadvertently caused by farming practices, that you could milk mud out of a cow, that there was such a thing as dust pneumonia--and the subsequent migration to California for work, clear air, and food which led to a "refugee" crisis. However, the characters were seemed to be caricatures of the time, and I felt a lot of the sad events were manipulated and over-sentimental. Also, the actions of her daughter at the end didn't sit well with me. Overall, I just thought this book was over-hyped, but I will look for more literature about this era.


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The Cruelest Month

 

The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another great mystery in Three Pines. Although the ending is a little melodramatic, and Gamache interrupts one reveal to conclude another mystery and then returns as though nothing has happened, it still comes to a satisfying conclusion. The reason this series is better than most, imo, is that Penny also investigates the human condition--what is jealousy? can a person love too much? what is the deepest betrayal? This book also reveals the reason Nichols is in this series, which has dogged me from the first.

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How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes.

Speaking Bones

Speaking Bones by Ken Liu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What a great ending to the Dandelion Dynasty. Liu has created a world so full and complex that it seems impossible that it doesn't exist. Does some of the detailed descriptions of numerous engineering feats get a little contrived and complicated? Yes, but Tolkien's details of fairy life were a little long too. And the results of these contraptions become something beyond imagination, using nature and a little fantasy and using natural laws for human's purpose. In a world without oil or guns, it seems at once more organic and fantastical than our reality. Besides all of the innovations, I loved the explorations of communication--song, word, writings, dance, plays, food--within the cultures, between them, and through time. I loved too, the balance of faith and man's own ability to create through art or science. He explores hard questions about what love is, unity, the greater good, and what leadership looks like. ( I only wish a tiny bit more of Fara and Sovo, after they reunite, but really this epic is already thousands of pages long). Hands down one of the best world-building epics of all time.

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Only when she had lost herself in the stories of the scrublands, when she had abandoned herself to the mores and customs of her adopted people, when she had opened her heart to the austere beauty of another creation myth--only then would she truly find herself.

the palace was not only less; it was in fact no more

it is the act of naming, not the name itself, that is the sign.