Read Harder Challenge - 2015

Hello, great world!

I am an avid reader who spent 2014 denying that part of myself that comes alive from reading!  I read a few books here and there (because I'm sure I would have died otherwise), but really let the undertakings of everyday life overwhelm something that, to me, is as important to my health as eating right and exercise: reading.

Since it's important to me to prioritize reading in the coming year, I've set about partaking in the 2015 Read Harder Challenge from Book Riot, one of my favorite readers' websites.  I figured that I would share that journey with you as the year progresses as a way to keep me honest and to remind myself of how far I've come.

Below is the challenge itself, which I'll update with names of books as I read them. Subsequent posts will discuss the books that I have finished. Feel free to make suggestions that fit into these categories!  If anything, they'll fit under the "recommended" section!

Indie Press - A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing

Image courtesy of Washington Post

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimar McBride almost lost me at the get-go.  This book has caused a lot of buzz in the reading community, though, so I forced myself to push through.  Whether I was happy that I did or not I am still unsure about... but there's no denying that this is a book that lingers with you.

A girl grows up in an unstable household, with a controlling single mother and an uncontrollable brother with special needs.  Their relationship remains extremely complicated through a series of life events, as well as the introduction of various characters.  It's not giving too much away to say that the main character makes some objectively poor choices, almost compulsively, and the way that she deals with them speaks to the depths of the trauma she has lived through.

Told from the point of view of a girl growing up in Ireland, it begins with barely any recognizable speech.  In fact, throughout the whole book, the Irish dialect mixed with the idiosyncrasies of the main character rule the page, in such a way that by the end when I was reading it semi-fluently, I still wasn't sure if the writing got clearer as the main character grew up or if I was just getting used to the style of writing. Certainly, the half-formed thing that this girl is also carries through in her manner of thinking and thereby how her thoughts are being expressed on the page.

This is the most Irish thing I have read in a good long while, It has influences of James Joyce stamped all over it.  Once I learned to let go and simply try to feel the narrative rather than actively read, it was a better go-around for me.  This was an intense experience and I'm not sure I'll be putting myself through it again, but it is the first book in a long time that has stuck out to me so much.

Takes Place in Asia - A Thousand Splendid Suns

From Amazon - Believed to be fair use.

A Thousand Splendid Suns,from Khaled Hosseini (best known for Kite Runner), had all of the things you loved in Kite Runner and yet another story to take with you wherever you go.

This book tells the lives, almost-lives, and not-lives of two women as they attempt to survive, persevere, and thrive in Afghanistan during much of its tumultuous recent history.  Each must make impossible decisions and sacrifices in the pursuit of justice, their dreams, and love.  As their stories come together, these choices become harder.

Hosseini has certainly found his bread and butter in reflecting the complexity of the human experience.  Once again he tells a story of friendship, and the exploration thereof was as important to this text as it was to Kite Runner.  I keep comparing these two books, and that's not a bad thing!  What Kite Runner was to the exploration of a male experience, A Thousand Splendid Suns is to the female.  Both are easily universalized, and I enjoyed them immensely in part because of this. It was also an easy read, language-wise.  In fact, in some moments the forced grandness feels a bit contrived, but not so much that I was put off my reading. Additionally, many have said that the similarity to Kite Runner is a bad thing - to them, it feels a little "Dan Brown" in the way it sticks to a formula.  But I like the way Hosseini writes, and I look forward to picking up And the Mountains Echoed as a continuation of the positive experience I've had with his work.

YA + Poetry - Brown Girl Dreaming

From NationalBook.org -
Believed to be common use.

I am a teacher, and have taught K-8 (except, for some reason, I've never taught 6th graders!).  Most of my kids are brown, and so when Brown Girl Dreaming came onto the scene, I knew I had to read it and hopefully pass it along to my kids.

This one's written in free verse and telling (singing, really) the author's childhood, from Ohio to South Carolina (minus a father), to Brooklyn (plus a new brother), and her life with and without those she loves.  It's a story of finding your voice and whatever will be your gift to the world, and a snapshot of a world changing for the better.  Not every memory is beautiful but each is beautifully told.

Published in 2014 - Station Eleven

Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven's very creation is a testament to the fact that, as the book notes, "survival is insufficient."  Twenty years have passed since the Georgia Flu swept through the world faster than anyone could have imagined.  It has been twenty years since civilization has collapsed.  This book follows the pasts and (if they dare to dream them) futures of a loosely connected group of characters.  Their connecting thread is an actor dead just one day before the world began its descent into chaos.

Romance - A Rogue By Any Other Name

Goodreads.  Believed to constitute fair use.

Sarah MacLean's A Rogue by Any Other Name was a fun romance to read for my 2015 Read Harder Challenge! I like MacLean's historical romances because they often stand the gender conventions of the time on their head.  It's not the most historically accurate, but it's a delight to read, which is precisely what I am looking for.

This story revolves around Penelope and the disgraces Marquess of Bourne.  When the Marquess loses his fortune and family's legacy in a hubris-fueled moment of gambling, it is clear that he will stop at nothing to get back his family home.

Author From Africa - Americanah

Wikipedia. Believed to be fair use.

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was all I heard about during the lead-in to summer, so I knew I had to read it during my time off from work.  Ifemelu grows up in Nigeria, but does a lot of growing up when she moves to the United States, as well.  She goes there to study when dictatorship and unrest in her home country make it impossible for her to get the education that she deserves.

Guilty pleasure - Outlander

Qualifies as Fair Use

Claire is enjoying a lovely, quiet vacation with her husband, Frank, in Scotland.  This is certainly well-deserved, after their prolonged separation through WWII, during which Claire served as an Army nurse.  Their vacation (or at least Claire's?) is abruptly ended when she traverses 200 years backwards in time as the result of some magic hanging about the standing stones near where they were staying.  When Claire regains consciousness, it is in the exact same place she left, but the century has changed.

She is held captive briefly by the British (a predecessor of her husband Frank in fact!), and then captured by the Scottish clansmen that inhabited the area.

Through more and more complicated politics, intrigue, and plot twists, Claire must ultimately decide whether she will try to return to Frank, or leave her "past" behind her once more to build a life with her new husband Jaimie, a Scottish clansmen.

This book was recommended to me, and that surprised me!  There are an awful lot of explicit sex scenes in this book.  I'm all for a historical fiction romance, and even a straight romance novel now and again, but I was blindsided by this book.  It has an epic sweep (and an epic length!) and I wasn't expecting it to fall into some very common romance novel patterns. I feel like I ultimately learned more about the recommender than anything else!

The central plot device is always fascinating to me, so I dove in with both feet to wade through this novel.  If we were to travel time, what would be the consequences?  Is it possible to change the course of history?  Are there others out there doing the same?  How do I get home?  Do I want to get home?  What is home? The length of the book works to the advantage of these questions, because there was a good amount of time for Claire (and the reader) to ponder these things as the book went along. I felt, given the book's obvious romantic bent, this part of the book helps to add interest to what could have been a straight historical fiction romance novel. And, intentionally or not, I've been reading a lot of time traveling books lately!

There were, however, a lot of unanswered questions (not nearly so philosophical) that compel me to read the sequel.  The great thing about reading something published in 1991 is that I don't have to sit around waiting for sequels to come to me! They'll be there, waiting for me to finish my currently unmanageable library book pile. George RR Martin, you could learn a thing or two from that model...

I enjoyed Claire as a "strong female character" (I hate that term!!!), and actually enjoyed that, really, Claire's strength of will and opinion was anachronistic in both of the times that she occupies.  The writing was, at times, clever for a romance novel as well, which is what I am a sucker for in romances.  The dialogue between Claire and Jaimie is way better than the sex scenes in my opinion.

I just might try to watch the Starz show in its second season based off the book!  Wish me luck.  I'll recommend this one to anyone who's looking for a meatier romance novel. Leave a note in the comments if you'd like to hear what I think about the show compared to the book!

Audiobook - Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

"MissPeregrineCover"
 Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia.

Regaled through his childhood by his grandfather's fairy tales about time spent growing up in the U.K. during WWII, Jacob of course understands that they cannot possibly be real ... right?  But when a panicked phone call leads Jacob to his grandfather's Florida retirement home just in time to witness his grandfather's death, Jacob must now sort through his own life and that of his grandfather to determine what "real" even means.  It's true that Abe's troubled WWII-era upbringing caused him a certain level of emotional close-mouthedness, but when Jacob goes the the small island where Abe grew up to seek closure, he discovers that he - and his grandfather's past - may be in more trouble than he imagined.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs was my very first audiobook ever in my life!  I borrowed it from my library's eBook partner and it downloaded to an app right on my phone.  It was wonderful to be able to do things like clean, wash dishes, drive, and walk to the library while still "reading."  I am still holding out because I heard World War Z's audiobook is amazing, but this was such a great first experience with the medium!

The book itself was a lot of fun.  It took on hints of the macabre in a refreshing way, and I went in excited about the parts of the plot that I knew.  I think this book will be good for YA fantasy lovers as well as Dr. Who fans.

I will start out by saying that it did include one of my pet peeves, which is a book that ends in an obvious emotional cliffhanger in order to get you to read the sequel.  A first book should be able to stand alone!  Unless it is part of The Lord of the Rings, which was supposed to be one book anyway.

That being said, I am a real sucker for anything that has WWII tie-ins.  German/East European magical realism that sprung from WWII is my jam, as are nonfiction books about WWII (just checked out The Monuments Men), so I got into the aspects of the book affected by its placement, at least part of the time, in September of 1940.

The book's writing was not as strong as I would have wanted it to be.  It was written in the voice of a 16-year-old kid, so I suppose you could make the argument that it's well-written for this kind of narrator.  Some of the slang and reactionary moments were a little hokey for me, though, as a result of this minor shortcoming.

I would recommend reading this one despite the caveats made above, and I bet it would be faster if you're not listening to it - a good weekend or getaway read.  I will be picking up the second in the series for sure! (Drat, Riggs, you win this one!)

Takes place in Asia - The Lowland

(I am looking at the cover now - I read it as an ebook - and realizing that I could have read this for the "Pulizer Prize in the last decade" book also!)

I am so excited to write about this book.  I listed it as taking place in Asia, but really it takes place a lot in India and a lot in Rhode Island.  The juxtaposition is one of the many beautiful things about this book.  Let me explain.

This book starts as a book about two brothers growing up inseparable during a rough period in Indian history in Calcutta (60s and 70s).  One brother gets into revolutionary politics, and the other goes to America to study.  As their lives separate, then come together in the most tragic of ways, the story includes more and more characters that we meet, become familiar with, and fall in love with even as we wrestle with their flaws.  The narrative is woven together by the divergence and convergence of paths, and this is achingly lovely and sad.  The tone of the entire book is that of melancholy. I can think of no better backdrop than Rhode Island when you want your tone to be melancholy - though some of the books happiest and/or most triumphant moments happen there.

The writing in this book reawakened me to the art of the writer in a way that I haven't felt for a really long time.  A small example:

Time flowed for Bela in the opposite direction. The day after yesterday, she sometimes said. Pronounced slightly differently, Bela’s name, the name of a flower, was itself the word for a span of time, a portion of the day. Shakal bela meant morning; bikel bela, afternoon. Ratrir bela was night. Bela’s yesterday was a receptacle for anything her mind stored. Any experience or impression that had come before. Her memory was brief, its contents limited. Lacking chronology, randomly rearranged.

This beautiful, musing flow of writing matched so perfectly with themes that showed themselves over and over - the sun as a symbol; rain, the lowlands, the idea of flooding; the topics of loneliness and legacy and memory.

I highly recommend this read, and I'm looking forward to Interpreter of Maladies when I'm done with my current ambitious stack of library books!

Just because - Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (And Other Concerns)

Mindy Kaling is someone I admire, but with whose work I don't spend a ton of time interacting.  She's got a lot of the right ideas about women/gender politics, she's willing to own the fact that she is a person of color in a world where there are certainly not enough, but refuses to let herself become the person that people can ask "What do minorities think about this issue?" I need to watch the American version of The Office, and I absolutely need to start watching The Mindy Project.  That being said, I decided to read her memoir, Is Everyone Hanging out Without Me? (And Other Concerns).  I got hold-happy at the library when this book stumbled into my life, without even thinking about whether it fits into the 2015 Read Harder Book Challenge - if you were confused, it doesn't.  That's why I filed it under "just because," and rather than not read something because it doesn't fit into one of my categories, I'll continue to file them as "just because."

I breezed through this book very quickly. The writing style was very "autobiography conversational" and humorous, in a comedian-knowing-this-book-needs-to-be-funny-and-trying-a-little-too-hard kind of way.  I know that some people can be irritated by the feeling that a book is trying to hard, but in a memoir, I personally find it endearing rather than aggravating.

As far as content goes, I did enjoy her self-deprecating honesty.  I loved hearing how her career got started, and focusing on someone in the spotlight and successful who also happens to be introverted or socially awkward.  I think the message was great for teenaged girls and twenty-somethings (like myself) - at least for the most part. It was focused on a woman who is comfortable with herself and sharing some of her less flattering moments or moments of self-doubt that successful women seem to have a hard time talking about.  For me, it was a little happy ending/find a man driven at times, but A) this is true for many of the women reading the book, and B) this is her life so who am I to try and revise her inner thoughts?

If this book were longer or tough to get through, I would hesitate to recommend it.  However, I flitted through in just a couple days and recommend it as such.  Would be great for a plane or beach, or just a weekend where you don't want to tackle the epic novel you've been pulling through.

Author Under the Age of 25 - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Wow.  Such an interesting novel, from such an interesting time in history.  I thought I really didn't like this book, and kind of forced myself through it.  But I've been thinking about The Heart is a Lonely Hunter all week, since I read the last page.  It's stayed on my mind for a few distinct reasons.

One, it definitely framed my thinking that this is by an author under the age of 25.  The writing style, the development of such a wide array of characters, the themes she explores (loneliness, spirituality, otherness) all shock me coming from someone who was 23 at the time of publication.  Read any biography of her, however, and you can glean that the troubled characters in her novels, this included, had something of herself in them.

Then, I've been thinking a lot about the characters.  Character development is a real highlight in this book.  I noticed it a bit while reading, and then I went on Goodreads to rate and shelve the book quickly when I glanced at the first review.  And the reviewer said "Mick Kelley, the main character..." and that simply blew my mind - as the main character is John Singer, and Mick Kelley is simply one of the revolving characters that inexplicably (?) opens up their life to him during the course of the novel.  I realized then that the power in this book andin John Singer himself lies in that fact - that depending on the person reading this book there is a depth to each character that can really sing to you.

While the prose can be a little dreary and a bit Southern Gothic, I pushed through and my reward was lots of deep thinking to accompany into whatever novel I end up with next!

A collection of short stories - Unnatural Creatures

I will read anything with Neil Gaiman's name on it.  Really, I'd buy anything with Neil Gaiman's name on it.  When they come out with Neil Gaiman-branded pens, please let me know.  So, knowing he's just released a series of short stories, I'd start there.

When I went to find these short stories, I also happened to find this set that he had not written but edited.  I love when authors I admire do things like this, because it helps me get inside their heads just a bit more.  I like understanding them through their taste.

Unnatural Creatures is a series of short stories based around the theme of, well, creatures that are unnatural.  The way that this is interpreted is very broad, from the classic werewolf and unicorn set to some very odd safety pins and coat hangers.  I loved two very specific things about this book of short stories.  First, it's clear Gaiman is interested in the sort of wry and peppy British-type humor and writing that I so enjoy, because there is so much evidence of it in this book.  Second, even the more "text book" unnatural creatures included twists in their stories that made them interesting and new. I am glad that I read this.

I lied: there's a third thing I really liked, which was the ending. The last story is a clever beautiful little tale about a woman attempting to meet Death, and I just thought that was a lovely note to end on.

A graphic novel - The Complete Persepolis

Persepolis is the memoir of Marjane Satrapi, who grew up in revolutionary Iran and attempts to reconcile her upbringing with the changes constantly facing her country.

I read The Complete Persepolis in a day, which is one of the advantages of the graphic novel - there are less words, so even paying attention to the pictures, it takes less time to get through. I really enjoyed and appreciated Satrapi's blunt honesty when reading her story.  The things that she experienced as a child, then moving alone to Austria and grappling with growing up alone in another country, and then moving back to experience the strangeness of her own county were all made more impactful by the simple way that they were described. The artwork was an extension of that experience because it was as stark and straightforward as the storytelling.  I admired Satrapi despite (because of?) her admitted faults as well as the love and respect she has for those around her.

I'm very glad I read this novel!

A novel written by or about a member of the LGBTQ community - The Miseducation of Cameron Post

This novel by Emily M. Danforth from 2012 could probably be also filed under the YA category. Emily M. Danforth herself came out in college, and the novel is about (shockingly) Cameron Post, who is identified in the story as a lesbian.

This is certainly an American coming-of-age type story, starting with a very young Cam Post growing up in Miles City, Montana.  Miles City is where the author herself hails from, a fact I found out after reading the novel.  Cam Post realizes very early on that she is attracted to other girls, and the story follows her life through the death of her parents, middle- and highschool, and being send to a "gay reform" camp by her evangelical Aunt Ruth.

This story is very straightforward and the writing is fine.  I think that "fine" or "okay" are the most accurate reflection of what I thought of this book.  The pacing was quite slow in my opinion, but almost always when I'm faced with a YA novel that doesn't have fantasy/sci-fi elements my opinion end up being that pacing is slow. I enjoyed looking into an account of the struggles a pre-teen and then teen faces when coming out in a different setting than the one in which I grew up - I was blessed (#blessed, if you will) to grow up in a very supportive, atheist environment where there was never any question that homosexuality/bisexuality/whatever was the cool thing to call being LGBTQQA at that moment in history was not a matter of choice nor something for which we should ever treat someone differently in my household.

A solid read. I would still like to read some of the others on my "LGBTQ" list and am definitely open to suggestions to get some books to compare this one to!

A sci-fi novel - Authority

The novel Authority by Jeff Vandermeer is part of a trilogy published in 2014.  The first novel, Annhilation, follows a crew of scientists into Area X, a part of the modern world that has been contaminated (?) by something or someone (?) that needs further study.  The mission quickly unravels and goes awry in disturbing ways, and ends with a total dissolution of the unit that initially forayed into the menacing wilderness.

In Authority, we step out of Area X and into the Souther Reach, the government agency responsible for keep tabs on and sending missions into Area X.  The newly established director, who goes by Control, has many different threads to keep track of as he attempts to "solve" the mystery that is Area X.  His strange family history weaves itself into the strange intrigues of the department itself and Control finds himself with anything but his namesake as the novel progresses - or deteriorates, as it were.

I really enjoyed this read, which like its predecessor was rather slim for a novel.  I also enjoy that, for a book so new, the entire trilogy is out for the reading so I can hop right on to the last book in the trilogy, Acceptance.