Edge Case was a wonderful surprise. Its topic—or should I say "topics"; there's a lot going on here—were pretty heavy, but there was a lot of humor, aEdge Case was a wonderful surprise. Its topic—or should I say "topics"; there's a lot going on here—were pretty heavy, but there was a lot of humor, and the story really moved. I didn't want to put it down! Very happy to have discovered YZ Chin. I got this ARC on Netgalley; thank you to the publisher....more
Book Four of my October poetry project! This is a book of erasure poems, a form I'm not too familar with, but I genuinely appreciated how Baer took soBook Four of my October poetry project! This is a book of erasure poems, a form I'm not too familar with, but I genuinely appreciated how Baer took some horribly toxic messages and turned them into something positive. 3.5, rounded up. Thank you you to HarperPerennial for the advance copy....more
My feelings about so-called "guilty pleasures" are, I think, uncomplicated. Most of the time, the reason people feel guilty for liking the things thatMy feelings about so-called "guilty pleasures" are, I think, uncomplicated. Most of the time, the reason people feel guilty for liking the things that they like is because it's not considered cool to like those things. I don't have any time for that kind of guilt, and I think there's nothing more boring than worrying about what's considered cool and what isn't. But there's another kind of guilty pleasure: When you watch or read something that you know is actually bad for you, or bad for society as a whole. TV shows that perpetuate tired stereotypes, for example, or tabloid magazines that result in the actors and musicians we claim to admire being stalked by paparazzi 24/7. I can get as sucked in by these things as anyone, but I know I'll feel crappy afterward, so I tend to avoid them. Pretty simple distinction.
Arielle Zibrak feels differently. A good example may be one she cites: those columns in women's/teen girl's magazines where readers can write in to talk about their most humiliating experiences, often having to do with period mishaps and/or embarrassing themselves in front of their "crush." (Zibrak sees these columns as emblematic of the 1990s, but they've been around much longer than that.) I've always tended to think these columns were mildly harmful—basically teaching young women and girls that they're supposed to feel humiliated about normal human mishaps. Zibrak sees it differently. In her view, we're already well aware of all of these ways we can be humiliated in an unforgiving culture, and reading about other women/girls living through things we fear can be cathartic. Helpful, in other words, instead of harmful.
For me, this is a new way of looking at guilty pleasures, and between that and Zibrak's lively, smart writing, I was looking forward to a good reading experience. The first chapter, about romance novels (specifically those with dominant males), fit well with Zibrak's thesis: Given all the conflicting messages U.S. culture tends to give women about our sexuality, it—again—can be cathartic to see some of these conflicts play out within the confines of a story and come to some sort of resolution. With romance novels, Zibrak points out, the guilt can actually be part of the pleasure. This made perfect sense to me.
After that, unfortunately, things started to go downhill. The next chapter was about the guilty pleasure of "rich white people fictions"—i.e., movies where the (white) characters are clearly obscenely wealthy but it's just kind of treated as normal. The analysis of race and class issues in these films was interesting, but Zibrak's ultimate conclusions about why we enjoy these films as "guilty pleasures" were unconvincing. Ditto the next (and final chapter), about wedding movies, where Zibrak focuses a lot of her analysis on Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, which, uh, isn't a wedding movie.
I had other concerns. Zibrak has a strange focus on mostly older material. Why does the romance novel chapter focus on sentimental literature from the 19th century and romance novels from the 1970s instead of, say, Fifty Shades of Grey? Why does the section on rich white people fictions focus on Father of the Bride, of all things? I think this entire study would have been so much more relevant if it had centered on "guilty pleasures" of this particular moment. As it was, I had a strong feeling that most of this book was made up of recycled grad-school papers Zibrak had written years earlier.
My larger concern, though, was with the way Zibrak categorizes the guilty pleasures she discusses—romance novels, movies about rich whites, wedding movies and shows—as "femme." I no longer understand what "femme" even means these days (feel free to clue me in in the comments, but be nice—I did google it and didn't find anything useful), but deciding certain guilty pleasures are "femme" was too essentialist for my tastes. So if it's "femme" to like romance novels, what's it called if I, a cis female, prefer classics instead? Is that "butch"? Masculine? Or what? I find that whole thing exhausting. When can we just get rid of all that stuff and just be who we are? Soon, I hope!
Near the end of this short book, Zibrak refers to the way we process guilty pleasures as "deep-love/surface-hate." For some guilty pleasures, I wonder if the way we truly feel is precisely the opposite: "deep-hate/surface-love." This is the conflict I would have liked to see this book explore. I suppose I can't fault the book for not being exactly what I wanted, but what I got instead was a disappointment either way.
I received this advance review copy via NetGalley. Thank you to the publisher....more
All reading has to offer is a particular, irreplaceable internal experience. Readers should keep faith that that experience is enough. We should fightAll reading has to offer is a particular, irreplaceable internal experience. Readers should keep faith that that experience is enough. We should fight for it, especially if that fight is against our own sense of obligation to the world.
I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out how to review Books Promiscuously Read, a book divided into five distinct parts. The first, shortest part, "Propositions," broken into short, varied sections, deals with the desire to read, how it often conflicts with grown-up life, and how we should nevertheless view it as honorable and necessary.
the opposite of play in a child isn't work. // The opposite of play in a child is reality.
The second part, "Play," pivots to more conventional literary criticism, discussing the effect of constant reading on Don Quixote's sense of reality, before moving on to the relationship between reader and writer in Elizabeth Bishop's poetry, the use of language in Don DeLillo's Underworld, Christopher Bollas's writings on psychoanalysis, Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, and more. It's dense, heady stuff, but its main point, about the way a reading requires the reader to enter a liminal space of interplay with the mind of the writer, was one that rang true and really appealed to me.
The greater the claims a social system makes on an individual, the graver the transgression of reading will be. Where a threat to the system exists, volunteers will appear spontaneously to monitor and minimize it.
As White points out, Don Quixote was able to engage in all kinds of reading-inspired shenanigans without real consequences because he was a man. In Part III of this book, "Transgressions," White explores, among other things, the effect of reading on those less privileged: How knowledge brings unspeakable pain for Frankenstein's monster, for example, and how literacy brings similar pain but also liberation for writers like Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown. Dorothea in Middlemarch, White points out, "is as book-crazed, in her way, as Don Quixote," but because of her sex this is seen as transgressive in a way it isn't for him, and her steps out of bounds will thus be viewed more harshly. Less abstract than Part II, this chapter was probably my favorite, fully absorbing and fascinating even though (I admit it) I haven't yet read Middlemarch.
There are times when our reading is so good it causes us to look up from the page—when our reading is so good it makes us stop reading.
I've been there! In Part IV, "Insight," White further explores what the reader can get from reading: the insights that can accrue, but only as we allow the necessary time to take in the words, to remove the barriers to insight we tend to place in our own way, to return again and again to the place of receptivity reading provides. More poetry—Elizabeth Bishop, Wallace Stevens, among others—illustrates her point, and this was the moment when the book fully came together for me, when I felt that sense of interplay between White's mind and my own, and when her writing became the most loose and enjoyable.
What matters is staying attuned to an ordinary, unflashy, mutely persistent miracle: that all the books to be read, and all the selves to be because we have read them, are still there, still waiting, still undiminished in their power.
In Part V, "Conclusions," White returns to the style of Part I, making a variety of points in a series of short sections. What most hit home for me: The portrait of the girl twelve-year-old girl reading and rereading everything in sight, fully absorbed, not yet aware that this passion will not be welcomed in many quarters, that because she is female, her interests will be seen as in need of "revamping." In the face of this, White advises that "if we are lucky, and resilient, and vigilant about respecting our instincts for what feeds us best, grown men and women can practice reading like girls. It goes like this: pick up a book and forget who you are."
So that's it! I think you can tell from the quotes above whether you might enjoy this book. As for me, I rarely read literary criticism of this sort, but the close readings White provides here were exhilarating and inspiring. In exploring the transcendence of reading, White actually tries to provide that experience for her reader, and in my estimation she succeeded.
I received this ARC via NetGalley. Thank you to the publisher....more
Beginning a review by talking about what the publisher's description says feels pointless in a way, yet I know we've all been led astray by misleadingBeginning a review by talking about what the publisher's description says feels pointless in a way, yet I know we've all been led astray by misleading publisher blurbs, so perhaps it's in this book's best interest if I do. According to the publisher, Astrid Sees All is a book for fans of Sweetbitter, Fleabag, and Patti Smith's memoirs. According to me, Astrid Sees All is NOT for fans of any of those things, unless you are ALSO a fan of books that are nothing like any of those things.
Astrid Sees All is a novel about a young woman who lands in 1980s Manhattan after graduation and becomes a fortune teller at a nightclub. It's the first "adult" novel by a YA novelist, and you can tell: Despite the "adult" goings-on (sex, drugs, Studio 54-type situations), there's nothing complex here. It's a fairly simple story, written simply.
But that doesn't mean it doesn't have its good qualities! Specifically, it's a fun, fast read, the 1980s nostalgia is amusing, and the characters are pretty vivid even if they're not that complex. Kind of like a good YA novel! I wish the publisher had been a little more realistic in what they compared this book to (Patti Smith? She's an icon, for god's sake!), because unrealistic expectations can really torpedo a book like this.
So don't listen to the publisher, listen to me: If you want to experience Fleabag, watch Fleabag. If, on the other hand, you want a light and enjoyable novel of seedy 1980s Manhattan, you could do worse than Astrid Sees All. 3.5 stars, rounded down.
I won this ARC in a Shelf Awareness giveaway. Thank you to the publisher....more
Adrienne Rich was, and remains, a popular poet: She won the Yale Younger Poets prize in her very early twenties, catapulting her into immediate fame iAdrienne Rich was, and remains, a popular poet: She won the Yale Younger Poets prize in her very early twenties, catapulting her into immediate fame in literary circles; in the 1960s and 70s her strong association with the women's movement greatly broadened her audience; and eventually her longevity and substantial body of excellent work garnered her poetry's highest honors and places on many a university syllabus. So it makes sense that this, the first full-length biography of Rich, would be written for a general (poetry-loving) audience rather than a scholarly one. Adrienne Rich had the blessing and curse of a long and interesting life, and Holladay mostly lets that life speak for itself in clear, direct, and blessedly nonfussy prose. There's none of the exhaustive explication of Rich's poetry that you'd find in a more academic biography, but Holladay does make an effort to link Rich's work (both poetry and prose) to what was happening in her life at the time—and those are exactly the sorts of connections fans of Rich's poetry might most look for and appreciate in a book like this.
I have a few reservations: First and foremost, Holladay too often falls back on words like "cold," "frosty," and "chilly" to describe Rich; at one point she describes Rich's anger as a "fit of pique." To be frank, language like this is generally used to describe women and serves to invalidate whatever they were feeling and going through at the moment; it's simplistic and inherently sexist. I expected better from a biographer of a feminist poet. What's more, there seems to be an inordinate focus on arguments Rich had with her friends. Rich lived for more than eight decades and it makes sense that not every friendship survived that entire time—to imply there's something iffy about Rich's character because she didn't hang on to every friend she'd ever made until death is unfair, particularly when Rich isn't here to tell her side of the story.
Still, despite this, I enjoyed The Power of Adrienne Rich. Like many literary biographies, it's on the long side, but my interest in it never flagged. Rich's long and varied life would, in and of itself, be fascinating to most of her admirers, and the fact that Holladay managed to preserve that fascination in this biography is more than enough reason to recommend it.
I received this ARC via NetGalley. Thank you to the publisher....more
This book reads like YA, which I wasn't expecting. It's not for me. I received this ARC via NetGalley; thank you to the publisher.This book reads like YA, which I wasn't expecting. It's not for me. I received this ARC via NetGalley; thank you to the publisher....more
The rules were clear, and the expectations sky-high: Women should be virgins, but not prudes. Women should go to college, pursue a certain type of carThe rules were clear, and the expectations sky-high: Women should be virgins, but not prudes. Women should go to college, pursue a certain type of career, and then give it up to get married. And above all, living with these contradictions should not make them confused, angry, or worse, depressed. They should not take a bottle of pills and try to forget.
When I woke up on New Year's Day 2021, checked my email, and learned I had won an ARC of The Barbizon in a Goodreads giveaway, I literally clapped my hands with glee. For years I'd been fascinated by Mademoiselle magazine's college guest editor program, which had welcomed such soon-to-be-luminaries as Sylvia Plath and Joan Didion and put them all up at the Barbizon for the summer. I figured any history of the hotel would also be a history of the Mademoiselle program, and I was right.
Built in 1927, the Barbizon was a single-room-occupancy long-term hotel for women, abundant with amenities and restricting men to the lobby. Many women who came to New York City to make their fortunes found it a comforting nest from which to launch their lives. Any history of the Barbizon, then, is a history of single women and, more significantly, a history of working women. The book takes us from the relatively progressive flapper era through the Great Depression, when many states made it illegal for married women to work, and on to the war era when women filled positions men vacated for the battlefield. This, of course, was followed by the 1950s, when women were encouraged to find their fulfillment solely as mothers and wives, eventually inspiring a book (The Feminine Mystique) about how well that worked out.
Through it all, the Barbizon was there, housing models, actresses, and secretaries: the Katharine Gibbs secretarial school reserved several floors for its students, and Bren recounts the history of the school and the women who enrolled there. She then moves on to the Mademoiselle program, which understandably takes up a large portion of the book. If you're a fan of Sylvia Plath or Joan Didion, these sections may well be catnip for you, as they were for me. There's something fascinating about very young writers at the very start of their careers, and Bren did an impressive amount of research, hunting down their fellow guest editors and providing lots of firsthand perspectives. Plath in particular casts a very long shadow, and the portrait of her here is more rounded, in fewer pages, than the one in Pain, Parties, Work, which covers the same time period.
As Bren herself acknowledges, the Barbizon housed a certain type of woman: reasonably well-off, and almost always white. There are so many stories that can be told about women and work in twentieth-century America, and The Barbizon is only one of them. Still, it's a first: as Bren relates, other writers have attempted to write histories of the Barbizon and given up in frustration. Bren herself nearly gave up, but persevered, pulling and prying material from many different sources. The end result is meant for a general audience; if you're expecting deep historical analysis, you may be disappointed. But I wasn't. The Barbizon is right in my wheelhouse, and I found it illuminating and hard to put down. It's 5 stars from me....more
Much as I wish it weren't the case, I need to start this review this way: I spent part of my 2020 lockdown catching up on about six months' worth of NMuch as I wish it weren't the case, I need to start this review this way: I spent part of my 2020 lockdown catching up on about six months' worth of New Yorker short stories, and one of my favorites was "Three Women of Chuck's Donuts." After I finished it, I came onto Goodreads and added Anthony Veasna So's upcoming collection, Afterparties, to my shelf. Then I forgot about it until early December 2020, when I suddenly started thinking about the story again and looked online for more information about this book and its author. It was then I learned that Anthony Veasna So had died suddenly only a few days earlier, at the age of 28.
The thing is, this collection is great! It's laugh-out-loud funny, but every story is aiming for something bigger, every story has some aspect of the human condition it's exploring. A lot of it is related to being Cambodian American, having immigrant parents who had lived under the Khmer Rouge, living in a tight-knit community that's everything to you but trying to figure out how to live in it as young queer person, or how to leave it to pursue other dreams. The stories stand alone but also interconnect, so eventually you realize the character taking center stage in one was a minor player in a previous story, and vice versa. In this way, an entire fictional world is created. I enjoyed it so much, but every time I stopped to register the enjoyment I also registered anew that this was it. We're not going to be able to have other books by So; we're not going to be able to see him grow into an even better writer. This is it. It's impossible to separate my pleasure in this book from my knowledge that it's the only one we're going to get. As with all rare things, its rarity is part of what makes it precious.
Afterparties isn't perfect. As with every story collection, there are a couple that probably could have been left out. And there's some graphic sex and a bit of scatological stuff, so if that bothers you, caveat emptor. The book has a bright, sometimes rambling style that appealed to me, but may not be for everyone. Even so, Anthony Veasna So is basically the very definition of a young writer to watch. Except, except...
I'm somewhere between 4 and 5 stars and am rounding up because to do otherwise seems ridiculous, and I recommend everyone give this one a try. I received this ARC via NetGalley; thank you to the publisher....more
Can’t Even is most successful as an overview of the state of work in the United States in (pre-COVID) 2020: the way so many are forced to turn to gig Can’t Even is most successful as an overview of the state of work in the United States in (pre-COVID) 2020: the way so many are forced to turn to gig work due to a dearth of decent-paying full-time jobs with benefits, the many drawbacks of said gig work, the suckiness of working at start-ups, the ever-shrinking middle class, wage stagnation, the lack of government or corporate support for working parents, the overwork and burnout, the outsourcing, the insecurity so many of us are feeling in this never-ending time of layoffs and restructuring. Petersen goes back to 1970 and explores all the forces that conspired to make things so terrible, weaving together lots of threads. Some of this is probably already familiar to many readers, but if this is a topic you’re not up on, Can’t Even would serve as a great overview.
Petersen is less successful in identifying how millennials are uniquely affected by all this. In fact, for most of the book she makes clear that all generations have it rough these days. When she tries to focus on millennials in particular, things get hazier:
*On Buzzfeed, Petersen called for millennials to share their experiences with burnout; these testimonials are threaded throughout the book, but what they mainly show is that millennials (like all generations, really) are not that easy to sum up; there’s a lot of variation in their experiences. For example, the oldest millennials are apparently much less likely to have been raised by “helicopter parents” than the youngest. This variation is to be expected, but it makes many of the conclusions Petersen tries to draw about millennials somewhat unconvincing.
*She blames some of millennials’ unhappiness on the fact that most of the “cool jobs” (at startups or websites) are too much work for too little money, but oddly this blame is mostly directed at millennials for wanting “cool jobs” in the first place, rather than at the workplaces for being so crappy—and she seems not to realize that the vast majority of millennials don’t work in these places to begin with. She also seems to think millennials want to work for nonprofits only so they will look like do-gooders, not because they actually want to do good. For both of these problems, Petersen offers the solution that millennials train for jobs like electrician or plumber, so they have steady work that they can "forget about at the end of the workday." Those are definitely valuable jobs and I would never discourage anyone from doing them, but I kept wanting to ask Petersen if she was planning to give up her “cool,” burnout-inducing job at Buzzfeed to become a plumber. Are you, Anne Helen Petersen? No seriously: are you?
*Petersen seems to think her generation was tricked into getting PhDs when the job market for tenure-track professorships is (somehow unbeknownst to them!) beyond dismal. Really? Because that job market was beyond dismal 25 years ago, back when I was considering grad school, and it wasn’t even a new thing then.
*This probably goes without saying, but she focuses almost exclusively on middle- and upper-middle-class millennials. It’s a bit hard for me to sympathize with the supposed intense pressure these people feel to go to Harvard. And oddly, although she mentions millennials’ crushing student-loan debt several times, she never once brings up the insane increases in college tuition of the past couple of decades and the reasons behind those increases—which you would think would be a great way to bolster the points she’s making.
*One of her major arguments is that millennials have it worse than older generations because, in addition to dealing with the same crappy work/economic conditions as the rest of us, they feel overwhelming pressure to make their lives seem great on Instagram. She really seems to think Instagram has some kind of magical power over millennials that they absolutely cannot resist. Just delete it from your phones, people. You’ll be fine.
The fact is, every generation thinks they have it worse than all previous generations, and in some ways they are wrong and in some ways they’re right. If you’re looking for a book that presents convincing evidence for why things are worse for millennials, my personal opinion is that you won’t find it here. But if you want to understand why things suck for just about everyone, Can’t Even is a good primer.
I received this ARC via a Shelf Awareness GLOW giveaway. Thank you to the publisher....more
There’s no doubt that Good Morning, Monster was an interesting read: The author, a therapist, presents here five case studies of particularly troubledThere’s no doubt that Good Morning, Monster was an interesting read: The author, a therapist, presents here five case studies of particularly troubled patients and how she helped them, and her writing is engaging. Ultimately, though, the whole thing made me uneasy. The patients featured in these case studies had intense, extreme issues, some involving shocking levels of child abuse and neglect. Therapists might find reading about these cases instructive, but as a general reader I was uncomfortable with the rubbernecking quality of the premise. Plus, Gildiner herself behaved questionably in at least one of these cases. To be fair, she eventually recognized this and describes how she came to her senses, but not until I’d spent most of the chapter feeling infuriated with her. Not a great reading experience! Again, I can see how this book might be helpful for therapists, but I definitely don’t recommend it for the rest of us.
I won this advance copy in a Goodreads giveaway. Thank you to the publisher....more
True crime is not usually my thing, so I was apprehensive when the ARC of We Keep the Dead Close turned up in my mailbox. It looked interesting, but wTrue crime is not usually my thing, so I was apprehensive when the ARC of We Keep the Dead Close turned up in my mailbox. It looked interesting, but would it be lurid and sensationalistic? Fortunately, the answer is a resounding "Nope!" This was like a 400-page New Yorker article, mind-bogglingly well researched and engrossing, with a painstaking amount of scene-setting that pulled me in and made the milieu of 1960s Harvard come alive, for better and for worse.
The ick factor I typically feel for true crime writing, I realized, comes when there's a level of focus on the killer that's almost idealizing, as if murders are just a by-product of their fascinating personalities. We Keep the Dead Close avoids that particular pitfall by concentrating as much on the victim and the time and place as on the potential killer(s). And given that there's more than one suspect, all of them literally suspected by multiple people in the Harvard/archaeology community, delving into their psyches felt necessary to the process of figuring out who did it.
Because that's the other thing about this book: When Cooper started writing it, the murder was unsolved, so although the death isn't trivialized in any way, the book had a page-turning quality for me, born of the desperate need for justice to be served. Because of this, I recommend NOT googling this murder before you start reading. Let yourself find out as the author does, with the full weight of her research behind you. And speaking of the author: Cooper was obsessed with this murder for years, and she does spend some time addressing her own issues that led to this obsession. This feels necessary to the larger story, but at the same time Cooper understands that no one is really here to listen to her talk about herself, and she does an impressive job of balancing it with all the other angles she covers. Really, she juggles so many different elements in this book that it's amazing it works as well as it does.
It's true that all the research did make the book feel a bit long at times, so if I'd written this review immediately after finishing, I might have rounded my 4.5 stars down to 4. But nearly a week later, I remain thoroughly impressed with everything this haunting book accomplished, so I'm rounding up. Recommended!
I won this ARC in a Shelf Awareness giveaway; thank you to the publisher. My opinions, as always, are my own....more
Navigate Your Stars is one of those books that comes out around graduation time; it is itself a commencement speech the author delivered in 2018 at TuNavigate Your Stars is one of those books that comes out around graduation time; it is itself a commencement speech the author delivered in 2018 at Tulane. A lot of these sorts of speeches are expanded upon for the book version, but this one doesn't seem to be—it is a very small amount of text, spread out over a pretty small amount of pages. The message is also a fairly basic one: We all find ourselves in varied circumstances in life and constantly have to make choices; we should try to follow our curiosity, work hard, and persist. It's very prettily illustrated by Philadelphia artist Gina Triplett. Honestly, Jesmyn Ward seems awesome and I want to read some of her full-length books, but this one isn't really worth buying for yourself. I do think it would make a good gift for a graduate, especially if you enclose a check with it, but I always think a book is the best gift so consider the source.
I won this ARC in a Shelf Awareness GLOW (galley love of the week) giveaway. Thank you to the publisher....more
Grown Ups is one of those books that's a little hard to explain. If I tell you it's a novel about a thirtysomething blogger who's obsessed with socialGrown Ups is one of those books that's a little hard to explain. If I tell you it's a novel about a thirtysomething blogger who's obsessed with social media and how she appears on it, will you roll your eyes and assume it's not for you? Will you dismiss it as chick lit? [Side note: Why do people describe books as "chick lit" when they seem to mean that the book is stupid, or shallow, or too fluffy? Why not just say that instead of applying a gendered term disparagingly? Anyway.] The fact is that there are all kinds of people in the world and, in the right hands, most of them would be an interesting subject for a novel. This immersive tale of Jenny McLaine, the aforementioned blogger, unfolds gradually with a fair amount of smart humor, a vivid setting [must go to London one of these days], and those moments of insight that you appreciate all the more because you weren't quite expecting them. I felt like I knew all of the characters, even the ones who were really just texts at the other end of the smartphone. And as for Jenny herself, she could be annoying sometimes, but ugh, I rooted for her so much. I don't think I've read anything quite like this, and I didn't just enjoy it, I was impressed by it. Need to read more Unsworth ASAP.
I won this book in a Shelf Awareness giveaway. Thank you to the publisher. As always, my opinions are my own....more
And Then We Grew Up has an interesting premise. Rachel Friedman was a gifted violist as a child and spent a few summers at the famous Interlochen artsAnd Then We Grew Up has an interesting premise. Rachel Friedman was a gifted violist as a child and spent a few summers at the famous Interlochen arts camp in Michigan, where she was surrounded by other similarly gifted creative kids. In college, Friedman continued to pursue the viola until she inexplicably developed insurmountable anxiety around playing and quit. As an adult, she's pursued another creative field (writing) with the sort of mixed results (and financial insecurity) a lot of writers have, and she started to wonder (1) how to have a creative life amid so much pressure and precariousness and (2) how her classmates at Interlochen had managed it. She tracked down several of them, and the book is structured around various classmates, their creative struggles, and how those struggles embody larger issues with being creative in today's world.
If I'm being honest, some aspects of this book were hard to relate to. These Interlochen students were encouraged in their creativity in a way many of us aren't, and the pressure they felt to keep being creative as adults, and to make a career of it, is the opposite of what a lot of us feel, which is the pressure to leave behind or back-burner our creativity in favor of more practical endeavors. In addition, this book was one of those pop-psychology books that I kind of can't stand, where a non-expert piggybacks on actual experts' research in a way that seems facile at best and I-got-a-book-contract-and-need-to-pad-this-thing-out at worst. This often made reading this book feel like homework.
Nevertheless, it frequently was interesting to hear how the various Interlochen students approached creativity and incorporated it (or not) into their adult lives. There actually was a lot to think about regarding what creativity can and should mean to us as we get older and the realities of day-to-day life intrude on the dreams our younger selves once harbored. But again, it was more of an intellectual exercise than anything creatively inspired or inspiring. In fact, I only remember feeling inspired by this book once, when I read the following passage:
Behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we—I mean all human beings—are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art. Hamlet or a Beethoven quartet is the truth about this vast mass that we call the world. But there is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven; certainly and emphatically there is no God; we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself.
This is actually Rachel Friedman quoting Virginia Woolf in Moments of Being, and it made me wish I'd been reading that book instead of this one.
I received an ARC of this book; thank you to the publisher....more
Stepping Stones is the completely adorable story of Jen, a girl who, after her parents' divorce, is obliged to move with her mother and her mother's bStepping Stones is the completely adorable story of Jen, a girl who, after her parents' divorce, is obliged to move with her mother and her mother's boyfriend from NYC to an upstate farm. Two stepsisters, who come to stay on weekends, are part of this new living arrangement. If you've read Knisley's earlier book Relish, the images of the farm and the farmer's market will feel familiar to you, and the book also contains some really cute pencil artwork ostensibly done by Jen (who is a thinly veiled portrayal of Lucy Knisley herself at that age). As a middle-grade read, Stepping Stones effectively and movingly portrays the hardships and rewards of "step" relationships, and I thought the whole thing was delightful. I didn't want to stop reading! I'm looking forward to passing this book along to my 10-year-old niece—I'm sure she's going to love it even more than I did.
I won this ARC via a Shelf Awareness giveaway; thank you to the publisher. My opinions, as always, are my own....more
The Third Rainbow Girl is well written and definitely kept me reading, but ultimately I'm just not comfortable with the type of true-crime book where The Third Rainbow Girl is well written and definitely kept me reading, but ultimately I'm just not comfortable with the type of true-crime book where the author takes a brutal murder (two, in this case) and makes it about herself. Eisenberg also sets herself the task of representing Appalachia more accurately than the media tends to, but she only lived there for about a year herself, and I just don't think that's long enough to truly know or be able to explain an entire region. It may be that this book just tried to do too much and didn't really do justice to any of it. I did find The Third Rainbow Girl pretty absorbing, but now that I'm done I feel uncomfortable about the whole thing.
I won this ARC via a Shelf Awareness giveaway. Thank you to the publisher....more
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