Books to read if you love The West Wing | Reading

Courtesy of Warner Bros. and Getty.

Since it’s an election year and everything is terrible, I’ve been marathoning The West Wing, where even if the good guys don’t win, the bad guys aren’t cartoon villains so it’s kind of okay. There are so many books referenced on the show (as President Bartlet is an absolute nerd), and I’m sure its nerdy audience is full of readers. So today, we’re going to talk about books to read if you love TWW.

For the nitty gritty of how stuff gets done, read Sisters in Law. This joint biography of Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg covers their legal careers as well as the ways that found each other as allies on the court despite their philosophical differences.

For a look at the intersection of disability, politics, and secrecy, read Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter.  This book is about JFK’s older sister, but it’s also about the harmful ableist narratives in our culture and the lengths ambitious people will go to.

For those who love Toby Ziegler dealing with the free trade protestors, read Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist. Told from multiple points of view, this book tells the story of one day during the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999. Protestors, police, and delegates narrate the story as protests and violence unfold.

Finally, for tensions between idealism and reality, Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, which tells the story of the founding fathers from a slightly different angle.

Backlist Summer Reading | Reading

This time of year, the book lists are moving away from summer reading and toward back-to-school. I always want to scream BUT WE HAVE ALL OF AUGUST. Well, that’s what blogs are for.

Here are three backlist summer reading picks, for holding onto those last dog days of summer.

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

Yes, I have Ferrante Fever. If you aren’t familiar, this is the first of four books following two Italian women from their childhood in Naples to their old age. Ferrante’s writing is spare, with the women’s friendship at the center of these novels. Seriously, just read them.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty

This is half-memoir of how Doughty started working in the funeral industry, half-treatise on death and dying. There is so much about the funeral industry that I never knew (like if you donate your body to science, different parts of your body will trickle into various crematories. A foot here, arm there) that Doughty talks about with dry humor and deep knowledge. Read it and then bug all your friends with your “didya knows” about death.

Almost Famous Women by Megan Mayhew Bergman

Mayhew Bergman speculates on the lives of women on the periphery of fame in this fantastic short story collection. Women like Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sister, Lord Byron’s daughter, conjoined twins who briefly saw fame. The stories show these women, and their famous counterparts, as complex, fascinating women.

 

#24in48 Recap | Reading

Peak summer — porch margaritas and books.

This past weekend was the 24 in 48 readathon. For those unfamiliar, the goal is to spend 24 of the 48 hours in the weekend reading. There are giveaways throughout the day and tons of people sharing their reading on Litsy, Instagram, Twitter, and the like. (I shared on Litsy, where you can find me @erinkwed).

In all honesty, I was not quite as ambitious as 24 hours. My goal was 12 hours of reading, which I came a little short on. Saturday I read for six hours, and Sunday I read for five.

Friday night/Saturday morning

I started with The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. An epistolary novel, it focuses on correspondence just after World War II with a newspaper columnist in London starting to write her next book and a book group from Guernsey. I actually had no idea that the Guernsey Islands were occupied during the war. The book is cozy, tragic, and heartwarming all at the same time.

Heading over to my parents to meet my Dad for lunch, I listened to a half hour of Angels and Demons each way. I’m enjoying the thriller and historical aspects of this novel, eye rolling at some of the dialogue and characterization. Overall a fun listen.

Saturday afternoon/evening

In the afternoon, I read Saga, Vol 6. I had been saving it for this weekend and was so glad I did. (**SPOILERS**) It was so satisfying to finally see some good things happening to this family. Honestly, the last volume was getting to be kind of hard to read, so this one was refreshing — back to action, humor, and pathos.

I followed it up with a palate cleanser of The Givenness of Things by Marilynne Robinson. I read Gilead in high school and didn’t see what the fuss was, but reading this essay collection with fresh eyes makes me want to revisit it. She is so smart, throws such shade, and just has a quiet quality to her writing that lulls you into complacency before hitting you in the face with her brilliance.

Sunday

Between Church, grocery shopping, and general lying around, I didn’t get as much reading in on Sunday. I did read all of Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist. It had been compared to Let the Great World Spin, which is one of my favorite books. I think that description was apt. This was a hard read, though, because the depiction of police brutality felt raw in a way I don’t think it would have a few years ago.

I also read bits and pieces of The Sympathizer all weekend. I’m kind of struggling with this book — it is a really good, fascinating book, but it isn’t engrossing. I almost have to remind myself to pick it up. I think it will be worth it when I finally finish, though.

All in all, this weekend was more than I’ve read in months. Definitely check out the readathon next time it runs. The next readathon will be January 21-22, mark your calendars!

 

Watch this, read that | Man in the High Castle

This Christmas, my boyfriend got Amazon Prime (*not sponsored). We love to watch TV together, so Prime opened up a whole new world of shows. Our first pick has been Man in the High Castle. 

It’s based on the Philip K. Dick novel by the same name, which features an alternate history of post-war America where we didn’t win World War II. The eastern part of the country is ruled by the Nazis, while the west side is ruled by the Japanese Empire. The story focuses on a woman who finds a tape showing V-Day in Times Square and a man who is transporting rebel cargo cross-country. There is intrigue and creepy period-details (like a Leave it to Beaver-style family breakfast…where the oldest son is a Nazi youth). It weaves the alternative history details into the story in a way that is deeply unsettling and compelling.

If you enjoyed watching Man in the High Castle, the obvious starting point is the book. I have to confess, I didn’t realize it was based on a book so I haven’t read it yet, but it is the source material for the show.

Next, I would read another alternative history, The Plot Against America. It follows a young Jewish boy in the US when FDR loses re-election the Charles Lindbergh, an anti-Semite and Nazi sympathizer. It has a similar sideways feeling, where there are familiar elements of mid-century America, but horrible differences.

If you’re done with alternative histories, how about an alternative storytelling? Maus is a graphic memoir by Art Spiegelman recounting his adult relationship with his father with flashbacks to his father’s time in Nazi Germany. The twist is that Art and his father are mice and the Nazi’s are cats. It’s an interesting spin on the sub-genre of Holocaust stories and with great art to boot.

Finally, for a nonfiction book. This one isn’t an alternative history or a retelling, but does depict a different past than the one we are often taught in US history. In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larsen tells the story of the US ambassador to Berlin and his family in the 1930s. While Americans are often depicted as almost unaware of the war until Pearl Harbor, these Americans are living in Berlin while Hitler begins his anti-Jewish policies. It shows an uglier side of Americans — one where we value nonconfrontation, disbelief, and appeasement over saving oppressed people. It has a similarly unsettling feeling to an alternative history and provides a counter to the conventional wisdom of American heroics.

Quarterly Goal Check-in | Reading

This is the last quarterly goal check-in of 2015! I can’t believe it. I set my goals here, and checked in on this year’s reading goals two other times, first here and then here. Onto the goals!

This year, my goal was to read 50 books. I am currently at 47. I think that I really underestimated my reading goal this year for a couple reasons. 1. I’ve been reading way more comic trades, which I can read at a much faster pace. 2. I graduated from college and didn’t realize that my reading time was about to explode. These are good things to know moving into 2016.

Other goals:

• Read at least 20% people of color and LGBT people:  I am currently at 19%. This goal kind of fell by the wayside during the summer when I devoured a mystery series, seven books all by the same white women. Currently, both books I’m reading are by people of color so I’m definitely making a concerted effort to re-diversify my reading.
• Read more classics: This depends how you define classic. I read Maus this quarter, which some consider a classic of the graphic memoir genre. I am currently reading The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which based on how people talk will be a classic.
• Read lengthier texts: Devil in the White City was somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 pages, as was Station Eleven.
• Read Harder Challenge:
  • A book written by someone when they were under 25- Purple Hibiscus
  • A book that someone recommended — Devil in the White City
  • A book written by someone when they were over 65 – Cat Among the Pigeons

I actually did much better on my goals this quarter than I thought. I kind of abandoned my goals for the summer and binged mysteries and comics without regard for reading diversely or the Read Harder Challenge or any of my other goals, but I actually ended up reading a lot more in line with my goals than I thought.

Going into the last three months of 2015, my top priority is continuing to read diversely, while also working to finish the Read Harder challenge.

Summer Audiobook Wrap-Up

This summer has been the summer of the audiobook for me. My experience with audiobooks until now has been largely confined to a set of cassettes from when they were called “books on tape.” I began with Disney readalong stories and eventually graduated to Harry Potter. When I moved out last summer, I found the box for my Harry Potter tapes, very battered but with all 12 tapes intact.

Today, obviously, audiobooks are much more sophisticated and are having a bit of a moment. I’ve jumped on the bandwagon with Scribd (more on that later/not sponsored). I listen when I walk to work, while I was moving, and when I’m just puttering around the house.

The first book I listened to this summer really spoiled me and left me with a crazy book hangover. Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter, narrated by Edoardo Ballerini was just captivating. There’s really no other word for how obsessed I was with this audiobook. Beautiful Ruins is a fantastic book in its own right. It switches between past and present, focusing on the  doomed-movie Cleopatra, a washed-up movie producer and his assistant, an aspiring writer, and a starving musician. The characterization is fantastic, the settings are amazing, and it’s the kind of multi-narrative that totally works. The audio version just took it to the next level. Ballerini does all the voices without ever veering into camp, his Italian pronunciation was gorgeous. By the end I had laughed and cried and never wanted to finish.

After a bit of a book hangover, I tried to recapture the beauty with another “beachy” read, The Vacationers by Emma Straub narrated by Kristen Sieh. It is also a multi-narrative novel, following a family whose parents may or may not be divorcing as they go to Mallorca, with the mother’s best friend and his husband in tow. There is family drama, happy tears, and complicated relationships. It was unfair to this book that it followed Beautiful Ruins, because it was a perfectly enjoyable book that just couldn’t keep up with my love for Beautiful Ruins. Luckily, the narrator was fantastic, which elevated this potentially-disappointing-read to a good palate cleanser.

Finally, I listened to this summer’s big blockbuster, The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. This was really great to listen to because each narrator actually had a different voice actor. It was so easy to keep track of the different threads with the different voices. I’m not sure this one totally measured up to the hype, since I guessed the “twist” about halfway through, but it was tense and fast-paced.

The only DNF I have had so far with audiobooks was Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng. I’m really upset I didn’t like this one — I’ve heard fantastic things from reviewers I trust, I love her twitter feed, and she has her MFA from my alma mater. However, the narrator spoke really slowly which drove me crazy, and I just had a hard time getting into the book. I typically love character-driven stories, but something about this one never quite clicked for me.

Up next for me, are Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer and The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert. More on Scribd soon, since I’ve been using it a ton!

What have you been listening to this summer?

Almost Famous Women by Megan Mayhew Bergman | Review

Since the paperback recently came out, it seemed appropriate to finally get to my review of Almost Famous Women by Megan Mayhew Bergman. This is a short story collection focusing on the lives of the 13 eponymous women. There is a wide breadth of time and age, with the youngest woman being the toddler Allegra Byron (that  Byron) to painter Romaine Brooks.

I bought this book thinking I would read it slowly, one story at a time. Instead, I read the whole thing in one afternoon. The stories are riveting and haunting, and will leave you scouring Wikipedia to learn more.

Mayhew Bergman varies her form a lot throughout the book. There are a wide variety of narrators, in the first- versus third-person sense but also in relation to the subject. Allegra’s story is told through the eyes of her nurse whose own child died of Typhus, while other stories are told through the eyes of thieves and lovers.

This was one of my favorite books of the summer, if not of the year. I highly recommend reading on the patio with a glass of rosé before the summer ends.

Vacation Reads | Reading

I recently had the ridiculous luxury of an entire week of paid vacation on the beach and of course I took a stack of books. I’m still not used to the idea of PTO, so the idea of taking an entire week off and still getting paid just seems like the height of luxury.

But I digress.

I didn’t get quite as much finished as my pace in the first two days would suggest, but I’m still pretty happy with my reading for the week.

Books brought:

• Devil in the White City
• The Meursault Investigation
• The Silkworm
• The People’s Republic of Amnesia

Books read:

• Devil in the White City
• The Silkworm
• The Meursault Investigation (halfway)

I read both Devil in the White City and The Silkworm by Tuesday afternoon, and both are quite lengthy books. I really, really loved both of them. Devil in the White City tells two (true) stories: one of the design of the Chicago World’s Fair and one of a serial killer operating at the same time. It was fascinating and fast paced and read like a novel even though the book is a nonfiction. Highly recommend. I also really enjoyed The Silkworm, though not quite as much as its predecessor, The Cuckoo’s Calling.

I was rather surprised when my reading came to a grinding halt during the very short Meursault Investigation, after the lengthier books I read earlier in the week.

While I am loving Meursault, a retelling of The Stranger from the perspective of The Arab’s brother, it is a deceptively short book with unassuming simple language. The book deals with so many different layered issues (including but not limited to, colonialism, religion, family, time, absurdism, and war) that I would read for a half hour and find I had only read ten pages. So, while a fantastic book and meditation on one of my favorite books, not the best beach read.

As a result, I didn’t get to The People’s Republic of Amnesia yet but it’s definitely high on my TBR pile since it’s a library book.

What did you read on the beach/picnic blanket/in a hammock this summer?

Ruth Galloway | Series Review

I absolutely love the mystery/thriller genre and every summer I can’t get enough of them.  This summer’s addiction has been Elly Griffith’s Ruth Galloway series. Since this is a series review, I will try to keep spoilers to a minimum but there are some spoilers.

Ruth is an archeology professor in Norfolk, England who is asked to consult on a murder investigation by Detective Chief Inspector Nelson. The rest of the series sees her continuing to consult with the local police force, as well as her shenanigans with the cast of characters around her.

This is a really fun series. It is suspenseful with so many twists and turns — very classic mystery. What sets this series apart for me are the characters. Ruth is ambitious, she is fat and doesn’t really care, and she [SPOILERS] becomes a mother who continues to be ambitious and driven.

The cast of characters in this book is great. There’s her friend the Druid, the bumbling policeman Clough and the very capable detective Judy Johnson, her flakey friend Shauna and other assorted background characters. The characters are well-developed as the series goes on, with their own baggage and ambitions.

Ruth Galloway’s stories also have an amazing atmospheric setting. Ruth lives out on the Saltmarsh, a potentially sacred pagan place, but a definitely atmospheric one. It would be easy for that kind of setting to be really cheesy, but Griffiths uses it sparingly and to great effect.

There are currently seven Ruth Galloway novels, with a couple of companions too. I highly recommend if you enjoy good characters, fast plots, and staying up late.

The Island of Dr. Moreau and The Madman’s Daughter | A classic and a retelling

Two of the items on the Book Riot Reading Challenge are to read a classic and a retelling of a classic. After hearing about The Madman’s Daughter from BooksandQuills, I decided to read it and its classic equivalent, The Island of Doctor Moreau.

I really enjoy sci-fi/horror novels from the 19th century. Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I am here for this. The Island of Doctor Moreau follows in a similar vein. A man is afloat on a dinghy and is rescued by a man named Montgomery  who is going back to this mysterious island. When they get back to the island, Prendrick realizes it is the island of Dr. Moreau, a scientist who was driven out of England after experimenting with vivisection.

The book explores many of the same themes as Frankenstein — humans playing God, ethics, and what lines science should not cross. Objectively, this book is a fascinating study of these subjects particularly considering the amount of scientific study still conducting on animals who are unable to consent. From a subjective standpoint, this book was a little too grotesque and a little repetitive for me.

The Madman’s Daughter is sort of a retelling of the classic, but from the point of view of Dr. Moreau’s daughter Juliet. She has been living in London under the shadow of the scandal her father caused. She decides to find him, and finds Montgomery in a London inn. He agrees to take her to the Island with him. When she gets to the Island, she is horrified to find out that the scandal was true, and her father is rather cruel.

The Madman’s Daughter has a really great gothic atmosphere. Without even being told, you can see the fog in London as she’s running through the night and the dark corners of the Island. There’s also a feminism in this retelling, where Juliet picked up medical knowledge from having a doctor father and working in the hospital, but repeatedly being told she is good only for marriage and needlepoint. There’s also a really badass moment with a would-be rapist that shows what happened to women who were lower-class and spurned the advances of men.

This book was a bit of a let down, though, because of how much time and focus is spent on a poorly-written love triangle. The rest of the book is well written and plotted, so it almost feels like an editor made the author add the love triangle after the fact.

It was really interesting to read these back-to-back, since one was written during the original gothic era and one is in the gothic-style, but written in modern day. The way that Juliet rebelled against the strictures of Victorian womanhood is much more explicit than it would have been, had it been written a hundred years ago, and added an extra element into the moral questions of the original text.

There are two more books in the Madman’s Daughter trilogy. I haven’t decided whether I will finish the trilogy, but reading these companion novels was definitely an interesting literary exercise.