September Minireviews – Part 3

Sometimes I don’t feel like writing a full review for whatever reason, either because life is busy and I don’t have time, or because a book didn’t stir me enough.  Sometimes, it’s because a book was so good that I just don’t have anything to say beyond that I loved it!  Frequently, I’m just wayyy behind on reviews and am trying to catch up.  For whatever reason, these are books that only have a few paragraphs of thoughts from me.

Yes, I know it’s almost the end of October!! But here are the last three books I read in September…

Beach Read by Emily Henry – 4*

//published 2020//

This was a traveling book club read, and for some reason I wasn’t particularly expecting to enjoy it. I think I’ve been burned a few times lately about books that look like romcoms but then turn out to be really serious novels, and I’d heard somewhere that this was along those lines. But while I wouldn’t exactly classify it as a romcom, Beach Read ended up being a lot of fun. Frequently, authors like to make the female lead be super annoying and, frankly, bitchy, but that wasn’t the case here. I ended up really liking January and Gus both, and I liked them together.

My biggest annoyance with this story is that I’m just kind of over the tired trope of “girl finds out her perfect dad was actually a cheating jerk and now she has to Get Away From It All”… maybe because I have a perfect dad who isn’t a cheating jerk, and know several others as well. Whatever. Anyway, the point is that when January’s dad died suddenly, she finds out that he had had an affair. He left her a house in his hometown (where he also had the affair) and that’s where she’s staying for the summer. He also left her a letter, which she refuses to read. And THAT is what annoyed me the most. She spends all this time being super mad at her dad when she has literally no idea what actually happened. She complains internally all the time about how she’ll “never get to hear his side of the story” since he’s dead EVEN THOUGH HE FREAKING WROTE HER A LETTER THAT SHE WON’T READ. Guess what, January – you could probably hear your dad’s side of the story if you READ THE LETTER.

So yeah, I enjoyed the romance part and the writer’s block part, but wasn’t a huge fan of the dad plot mostly because of January not reading the letter but spending the whole time complaining about how she wished she could talk with her dad one more time. ::eyeroll:: Next paragraph is a SPOILER for what was going on with her dad:

SPOILER – In the end, despite the fact that January assumed that her dad had been cheating on her mom forever up until his death, that just wasn’t true. He did have an affair when her mom was super sick, but in the end he went back to January’s mom, confessed what had happened, and they moved forward with their marriage and he didn’t cheat again. Yes, that was a horrible thing for him to do, but I also felt like her parents were adults who could decide what to do about their marriage, so January being low-key mad at her mom for forgiving January’s dad really annoyed me. I don’t think her dad was justified in his cheating (at all) but also didn’t feel like what he did meant that he wasn’t at all the man she “thought she knew” yadda yadda. -END SPOILER

So yes, overall I did like this one. There was a lot of snark and entertaining moments between January and Gus and I really liked them together. I could have done with less self-induced dad angst, but it was still a fun read.

Virtual Unicorn Experience by Dana Simpson – 4*

//published 2020//

I read all of these books earlier this year, so I was excited to snag this one from the library when it came out. It’s nothing particularly different from the earlier books, but they are still just fun, happy comics that I always enjoy.

The Two Princesses of Bamarre by Gail Carson Levine – 4*

//published 2001//

Levine is a hit-or-miss author with me, and while I had vague memories of reading this book several years ago, I couldn’t really remember what it was about or even if I liked it. Recently I ended up with a copy of the prequel (ish), The Lost Kingdom of Bamarre, so that inspired me to check this one out of the library.

While not a ground-breaking book, it was an overall enjoyable story. Addie and Meryl are the princesses from the title, and their kingdom is small but happy, other than a disease called The Grey Death, for which there is no cure. Years ago, a prophecy was made about when and how the cure would be found, but it has yet to be fulfilled. Of the two princesses, Meryl is the brave and outgoing one, eager for adventures and excitement. Addie is shy and quiet and prefers indoor activities. But when Meryl sickens with The Grey Death, Addie has to set out on a quest to find the cure.

Large parts of this book were pretty predictable (or maybe my subconscious remembered how it was going to turn out??) but it was still a solid MG read. Sadly, the prequel wasn’t as good – I didn’t even end up finishing it! (More on that when I talk about September’s DNFs in my next post.) But I did enjoy reading this one.

S. // by J.J. Abrams & Doug Dorst

So in a way I have no idea where to start with the review for this book. It’s so complicated and my feelings for it were really mixed. It was a somewhat daunting book to read and is also a daunting book to review. But in the end I think it was worth it, even if it did fall flat for me in some ways.

S. is a book within a book, a story within a story. There are so many layers to this book that it verges on impossible to read. The book itself comes in a slipcover, which gives the actual information about the book (title, author, publisher, etc.) because the hardcover book within that slipcover is designed to look, feel, and read like a stolen library book that has been read and reread by two individuals – Eric – a disgraced grad student – and Jennifer, a senior in college. We know that the book has been read by them because they have left notes, annotations, and arguments within the margins of it, all sorts of handwritten discussions in various colors of pens. Throughout the pages are also multiple inserts – postcards, letters, copies of important information, maps, etc.

//published 2013//

The book itself is titled The Ship of Theseus and was written by a man known as V.M. Straka, and was translated by an individual who is almost as mysterious – F.X. Caldeira. Published in 1949, the book genuinely feels like a tome from that era. It’s clothbound, and the way that it was printed, the type of paper used, the font within the book – it all feels incredibly authentic. There is even a sticker on the spine with the library call number.

The book’s introduction, written by the translator, informs us of some of the controversy and mystery surrounding Straka, who was a revolutionary using his books to spread ideas and information, hated by many governments and businessmen for his wild ideas. No one knows who Straka really was, although there are several theories. Caldeira tells of some of them, although he seems to view most of them as somewhat ridiculous.

The story itself is a fictional tale about a man who wakes up on a beach with no memory of who he is or how he got there. Throughout the story, he wanders from place to place, frequently being forced (and later choosing) to travel on a boat with a disturbing crew, a boat that does not seem particularly tethered in time or space. This man is drawn into a revolution of sorts, and also is desperate to find a woman whom he saw on the first night of amnesia, a woman who he sometimes sees in the places he visits. The entire plot is very vague and dreamy with a lot of moving parts and is somewhat difficult to describe.

In the margins, different notes are written in different colors, so it becomes apparently which ones were written first. I.e., there are Eric’s original thoughts from before Jen read the book, written in pencil, then Jen’s first notes in blue pen with Eric’s responses in black. Later additions are written in yellow, green, red, etc. so you can usually tell when notes were written. Hypothetically, if you were a much stronger person than me, you could probably read the text of the book, and then go through and read just Eric’s pencil notes, then the blue/black, then the next set, and so on, and have a much more linear concept of how Eric and Jen’s story is unfolding. But, if you’re like me, you want to read all the words on every page, meaning that you are reading Straka’s story, Caldeira’s footnotes, Eric’s thoughts, watching Eric and Jen get to know each other, and learning about the mystery and even danger they find themselves in later – all at once. It’s confusing, but not impossible.

Eric is determined to discover who Straka really was, and believes that the key can be found in Ship of Theseus, Straka’s final work. Eric originally discovered Straka in high school, and became obsessed with his work. In grad school, he decided his thesis would be on Straka’s true identity, but ran into trouble when his advisor stole his work, accused Eric of stealing his work, and got Eric expelled.

As the story unfolds, Eric and Jen continue to piece together clues from the text and from Caldeira’s footnotes – and later from other sources – to determine who Straka was, racing against time, Eric’s old advisor, and other experts around the world who want to know the same thing. In the meantime, are menacing events just coincidence? Or is it possible that a secret society known as “S” during Straka’s time continues to live on?

Okay, so, if you’re still reading – there is a LOT to like about this book. The experience of reading it is honestly amazing, and I’m still boggled by the amount of work put into this thing. The postcards are real postcards. Copies are made on thin paper that feels like copy paper. Old photographs feel like old photographs. A map Eric draws of the campus is drawn on a legit napkin from the cafe where he and Jen hang out. A page from the campus newspaper is on newspaper paper. The detail here is amazing and emersive.

HOWEVER this story does become confusing, and not just because I was reading all the threads at once. There are way, way, WAY too many names. Nine specific individuals are listed in the foreword as possible Strakas, each with a different background/reasons for possibly being Straka. From there forward, these individuals are referenced frequently in the footnotes and extra material, and it’s quite difficult to keep them all straight, especially since they all knew one another (at least obliquely) so they become things like, What if Straka was actually Durand pretending to be Feuerbach when Feuerbach met with MacInnes in 1918?? Etc. It’s super confusing, and if I reread this, I would take more time to (ironically) make my own notes about each potential Straka.

My other negative for this one was that I didn’t really agree with Eric or Jen’s life philosophies. They both had “horrible” parents (i.e. parents who are worried that their children are making poor life choices…) and in the end their conclusion was basically “screw them” instead of any attempt to understand who their parents were or why their parents were doing what they were doing. Eric’s parents are also “Christians” so all of their actions are automatically labeled hypocritical, selfish, unscientific (Eric says multiple times that his break with his parents began when he began to “realize science existed” … excuse me while my eyes roll out of my head), etc. This really got on my nerves, especially the repetitive “my parents just believe in fairy tales and a sky daddy but I believe in REAL SCIENCE” over and over and OVER with honestly zero explanations (what science, exactly, do your parents not believe??) – sorry, not necessary. You are free to disagree with your parents and their religious beliefs, but mocking them repeatedly and acting so superior is not an endearing character trait. Jen’s thoughts about her parents were very similar – “They’re so selfish because they want me to have a career.” Yes, parents wanting their children to have a secure financial life is definitely a sign of how much they hate you?? In some ways, I guess Eric and Jen come across as authentic stupid college students who need a decade or so of real life to realize that maybe their parents weren’t as dumb as they always thought.

All in all, if you enjoy convoluted stories with complicated layers, and can get past Eric and Jen frequently whining about their parents, this was a fun and immersive story to read. I can definitely see myself revisiting it and taking more time to read the footnotes in the order they were “written” to see how the story unfolds from that perspective. While this book was the perfect story I wanted it to be, it was still a great deal of fun and overall I recommend it.

September Minireviews – Part 2

Sometimes I don’t feel like writing a full review for whatever reason, either because life is busy and I don’t have time, or because a book didn’t stir me enough.  Sometimes, it’s because a book was so good that I just don’t have anything to say beyond that I loved it!  Frequently, I’m just wayyy behind on reviews and am trying to catch up.  For whatever reason, these are books that only have a few paragraphs of thoughts from me.

Still working on September reads – life continues to be crazy at the orchard. Apples everywhere!!!

Hunted by Megan Spooner – 3.5*

//published 2017//

This was a book that it seemed like I should have liked more than I did. A somewhat Beauty & the Beast retelling set in a Russia-ish country with lots of snow and atmosphere and a likable main character. But somehow I just didn’t find this book magic. I think part of it is because of this weird thing in the epilogue where the author is basically like, “Oh, they didn’t actually get married, they just like living together and why would they get married?” It was presented very strangely, and especially considering the time period/culture in which this story is set it came across as a very jarring and odd way to end the story.

My sister read this one as well, and when we were discussing it, she hit the nail on the head – throughout the story, the main character is looking for some sort of truth/purpose… and she never actually really finds it. As a Christian, I think that truth and purpose can be known, but Spooner’s conclusion seemed to basically be that the best we can hope for is to be somewhat happy (and apparently maybe find someone to live with that we mostly like). The entire background philosophy of this book just didn’t really jive with my personal philosophy, so I didn’t get along with this story the way I wanted to.

I’m making it sound pretty negative, but I actually did enjoy this book while I was reading it, and there’s a lot of good story here. If you enjoy fairy tale retellings, you’ll probably like this one, but for me it definitely didn’t fall into the “instant classic” category.

Secret Water by Arthur Ransome – 5*

//published 1939//

I love these books so hard, even if they are making me feel discontent with my own childhood, which I used to think was perfect. But was it really perfect?? MY parents never dropped me off on an island with my siblings and a pile of supplies and a sailboat, leaving us to explore our surroundings for a week! I mean, seriously. Did they even love me??

The Mysterious Mr. Quin by Agatha Christie – 4*

//published 1930//

I thought I had read all of Christie’s mysteries, but this one didn’t seem even remotely familiar to me. A collection of short stories, the main character is really an elderly man named Mr. Satterthwaite. In each story, Mr. Quin appears (usually mysteriously) and helps Mr. Satterthwaite think through a situation and solve a mystery, sometimes a cold case. While these weren’t my favorite Christie stories by any means, they were still enjoyable and engaging to read. The reader is left with the impression that Mr. Quin may be some type of supernatural being, but I honestly appreciated the fact that Christie never addressed it or tried to explain him. Mr. Quin just was. While I wouldn’t start with this one if you’ve never read Christie, if you already enjoy her stories you’ll probably find these engaging as well.

Thorn by Intisar Khanani – 4*

//published 2020//

This book was a retelling of The Goose Girl, and was overall well done. The main character (who becomes known as Thorn) was a bit too passive for my taste – things tended to happen to her throughout the story. Also, if you’ve read the original fairytale you know the fate of Falada, yet I felt like I really got to know Falada in this story, so I kept hoping that fate wouldn’t occur… but it did. I was SO sad.

While this wasn’t one I see myself reading again and again, I enjoyed it as a one-off read and definitely recommend it, especially if you’re into fairytale variations like I am.

Summon the Keeper by Tanya Huff – 2.5*

//published 1998//

This was one of my traveling book club books for September, and I somewhat struggled to get through it. The set-up is interesting: Claire is a being known as a Keeper – technically human (ish) but with, well, cosmic powers that enable them to keep the dark side from breaking through into our realm. (It’s been a few weeks since I finished this one, so that may not be exactly correct, but close enough.) Keepers are “summoned” simply by the draw of the need, so Claire finds herself in a small B&B in southern Ontario and ends up stuck there, guarding a literal portal to hell and trying to figure out how to close it again.

There were aspects of this book – like the talking cat – that I really enjoyed, but for a book that includes a portal to hell, it was puh-retty slow moving. Claire spends most of her time thinking about how amazing she is because she’s a Keeper, trying not to flirt with the guy who works as the B&B because he’s too young for her (he’s like 20 and she’s almost 30… again, something like that… and it really did feel uncomfortable, not because of the woman being older, but just because that’s a genuinely large age-gap at those ages, and Claire’s interest in this guy was almost purely physical, so it was all about her thinking how hot he was followed by “oh he’s too young for me” which really just emphasized how uncomfortable the entire thing was), and trying not to flirt with the other guy because he’s actually a ghost (except apparently Keepers literally can give ghosts a physical form for just a short period of time… just so they can have sex with them??? This also just came across as bizarre and uncomfortable rather than funny like it seemed like the author was trying to do). So not only was I stuck reading about a love triangle, I was stuck reading about a love triangle where all the people in it were extremely cringey and weird. Plus, I just never did end up liking Claire, who was really stuck on herself.

Way too many things were left unexplained or just didn’t make sense (sometimes Claire can just manipulate the physical world to do whatever she wants, but then things will happen and she’ll act like she can’t fix them or change them, and I just never could understand what the rules were, or even if there were rules), and the “romantic” interactions between Claire and the two guys were just ugh. While this wasn’t the worst book I’ve ever read, it most certainly did not inspire me to continue with the series.

Time Out for Happiness // by Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr.

A while ago I reread Cheaper by the Dozen and its sequel, Belles on Their Toes. I loved both of those books growing up and have read them several times, although not in quite a while. When I was looking up something or other about the Gilbreths in the process of writing the review for those books, I found out that Frank Jr., who coauthored the above books with his sister (Ernestine Gilbreth Carey), also wrote what was more of a “straight” biography of his parents, Time Out for Happiness. I couldn’t find a reasonably-priced copy secondhand, so I had to settle for checking it out of the library, although I’m still keeping an eye out for a copy of my own.

//published 1970//

While the other two books are more of a collection of vignettes of their life growing up, Time Out for Happiness takes more time to look at the background and work of Frank Gilbreth, Sr., and his wife, Lillian. There was a lot of genuinely interesting information here about the work and studies of the Gilbreths, and I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It isn’t as funny or lighthearted as the earlier two books, but that wasn’t what I was expecting.

My reservations about this book – for one, Frank Jr. spends what felt like way too much time on his family heritage (did we really need to hear about his great-great-grandparents in order to understand how his parents ended up as the people they were?) in the earlier part of the book, which meant that there wasn’t as much time at the end of the book for the work that Lillian did after Frank Sr.’s death. While Lillian’s work is somewhat covered, it felt like the book was unbalanced.

There is also a decent chunk of book devoted to a feud between the Gilbreths and another engineer, whose name I can’t remember. It’s obvious that at the time of Frank Jr.’s writing this was a really important situation – it honestly felt like, in some ways, the point of his book was to refute some of the claims made by the other group. But since I didn’t really know the background of this situation, it wasn’t particularly interesting to me other than the general motion study information that came along with it.

However, the entire book is written with such obvious, warm affection that I was willing to forgive its small irritants. Frank Jr. has such a respect for his parents and their work. Throughout he emphasized how a huge part of what made the Gilbreths do the research that they did was from respect for the worker, and a desire to make the life of the everyday worker easier, better, and more fulfilling. (This was also a big part of the feud with the other group, which believed that the time being “saved” should belong to company, i.e. be used to make the worker work harder/longer.) After Frank Sr.’s death, Lillian continued to pioneer motion study. With many door closed to her because of her sex, she was more than willing to focus her efforts where they were appreciated – assessing the way equipment and machinery could be used within a house to improve the lives of housewives, and also researching ways to enable individuals with disabilities (especially amputees from World War I) to still earn a living.

If you liked Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on Their Toes, but wished you could learn a little more about the “real life” behind the stories, this book is definitely worth a read. Lillian also wrote a few books of her own, so I am hoping to get to those eventually as well, to continue learning about this fascinating couple and their work.

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat // by Samin Nosrat

//published 2017// Bonus – My Pantry!! //

Every once in a while I read a nonfiction book that is just fantastic (like the book I read about color last year).  Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat actually reminded me a lot of Living With Color, despite the fact that they really weren’t anything alike.  Both books took a topic that I live with every day and really delved into it in a way that clarified things I had already felt instinctively, and helped me to see concepts and connections of which I had been vaguely aware but hadn’t really understood.

In her book, Nosrat talks about how she sort of fell into cooking when she was actually planning to be a writer.  And so when she apprenticed herself to a very fancy restaurant, she found herself looking at things somewhat differently than her fellow workers who had grown up with and/or studied this passion for several years.  They seemed to be able to cook on instinct, without recipes, tossing together seemingly dissimilar foods and coming up with something not just delicious but mind-blowingly so.  One day she realized that this ability actually seemed to stand on four basic building blocks – salt, fat, acid, and heat – all working together in harmony.  When she mentioned it to one of the other cooks, she was met with basically amounted to “well duh” …except it wasn’t a “well duh” for someone just learning to cook.  Throughout the years of learning more and more about cooking, Nosrat continued to file her lessons into these four categories, thinking to herself that someday she would write a book… and then she did!

If, like me, you find cooking to be a tedious chore and the results to be incredibly mundane, you may enjoy this one.  While Nosrat does include some honestly ridiculous recipes, and also seems to think that everyone lives around the corner from a delightful farmers’ market where one can purchase fresh, in-season veggies and meat that was on the hoof yesterday, most of her book is still somehow applicable to my life (and I haven’t been to a farmers’ market in years!).  For me, it was the concepts more than the specific recipes, many of which are incredibly simple – I especially was fascinated by the chapter on salt, and how salting things can completely change the flavor.  I’ve been salting meat a few hours before cooking it, and it genuinely has made a huge difference in the way it tastes!  Ditto with salting pasta water.  Both of those things fall under that category of “things people tell you to do but don’t really explain why” – which means I’ve been doing it wrong.  I usually do salt meat… right before I cook it, which almost (but not quite) defeats the purpose.  I also would put a dash of salt in the pasta water, for unknown reasons (someone may have told me to do this once??) – which isn’t enough to do anything to the actual pasta.

Throughout, the book is charmingly illustrated and also includes various charts and graphs – I loved the one that looked at seasonings from around the world, for instance.  There were also smaller ones, like one that showed different ratios of water-to-rice, depending on what kind of rice you’re planning to cook.

This was one of those engaging nonfiction titles that is both intriguing to read straight through, and also excellent for reference when you need it.  While I’m still not an amazing cook, I do find myself thinking more about the balance of my meals, sometimes in small ways.  For instance, a few months ago I was making something (honestly can’t remember what) that called for buttermilk, and I just put in milk – well, part of the reason that that doesn’t work is that buttermilk is acidic, so now my recipe was missing not the dairy aspect, but the acidic aspect, causing the recipe to be off-balance.

I’m never going to be a skilled chef, but thanks to Nosrat I do feel like I’ve added a few more concepts to my bag of possibilities.  While the recipes in this book aren’t terribly practical, the ideas behind them explain why some recipes work and others don’t, and why my meals frequently come across as bland – something that I can now work on fixing.

PS – Apparently Nosrat also has a cooking show of some kind.  I’ve heard it’s amazing, but haven’t watched it myself!