book review: hidden figures

Yes, I know I’m years behind on reading this, but there’s only so many hours in the day — and there are a LOT of pages out there. Hidden Figures was absolute perfection. What an uplifting and exciting true sweeping account of black women in the sciences. Wow.

People told me this book was about Katherine Goble Johnson and the other black female mathematicians who helped win the Space Race. They’re not wrong, but they’re also not really right. It’s so very much more than that.

This nonfiction piece read like fiction. It was just so exciting. Dozens of characters can be a little difficult to keep track of, but you quickly realize who the main names are and the rest can become a beautiful buzz of “everything else that was also happening.”

I, being the Trekkie I am, knew all about Dr. King’s contribution to the final frontier, but the way that Shetterly basically uses it as the final story to ice the cake… [air kiss] sheer perfection.

Side note, I watched the movie right after. Mistake. I knew it, and I did it anyway. I hate to be the person who says the book was better (even though it always is), but in this case, the book was so so so much infinitely better. And it wasn’t even a bad movie. The book was just that good.

book review: the midnight library

This book was a slightly depressing series of “would you rather” choices. You discover, along with Nora as she travels the many possibilities of her life, that there’s not always a right and a wrong decision to be made.

This story reminded me of the movies Sliding Doors or The Butterfly Effect, in that the reader (viewer) keeps having ideas of what will lead to the HEA, but it’s still not right.

The concept was executed in a bit of a confusing way for me, kind of a bureaucratic after-life as you see in The Good Place or Loki. Lots of confusing rules and some waiting around in lines.

I enjoyed seeing a single character in so many roles. They all seemed to make sense based on the setup, so I enjoyed that the author didn’t just throw the character into random settings.

The ending was more mundane than I expected. I think if I had read this before I absolutely loved Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, I may have enjoyed this more. But this felt like a much sleepier and far less romantic version of that.

book review: lillian boxfish takes a walk

Lillian Boxfish takes a walk was my New Year’s Day read. (I started it on NYE before our annual costume murder mystery party, 20s themed this year.)

I’ve worked in marketing and focused on writing for most of my 18-year career, so Lillian’s story was especially engaging to me. She was the “highest paid woman in advertising.” Although the sexism of the time with its differentiated pay rates was very briefly covered, most of the story focused on decades of Lillian’s life and the breakdown of her marriage.

The book was a mostly positive look-back over a life spanning war in the 1940s and into the orange-lipsticked 1980s. Getting to know Lillian in various decades and in various parts of her life maturity was fun, but since the entire book takes place in a few quick hours, you keep up like you’re walking as fast as dear aged Lillian.

A bit of a depressing twist at the end, to be sure, left me sad and (just slightly) surprised, but overall the book intended to present a life well lived. It was a creatively mapped journey through NYC with some memorable characters. A highlight for me was a mugging (or near-mugging, depending on your perspective) involving a fur coat.

Lots of rhymes that were cheeky and full of life are included; from the booknotes, I learned they are from a famous advertising woman of that era that inspired the book although the character is entirely fictional.

book review: the book woman of troublesome creek

This book was a roller coaster and not one I loved.

CONTAINS SPOILERS

There were parts of this novel that were sweet, but also some really unpleasant parts (including a sexual assault and a near-sexual assault). Also a disturbing cult and children starving to death in an area that seemed filled with animals and foraging opportunities and not experiencing a drought. I feel like I must have missed why no one was eating?

I thought the topic of Cussy as a blue person was going to be really interesting. However, the story was sick and sad, and the romance itself was a little too contrived for me.

I really questioned the relationships in this story, particularly the main character Cussy’s ongoing relationship with her father after he essentially sex trafficked her. So I don’t know. Plus at the end, you find out that the man she’s in life-long love with has been secretly asking for her hand in marriage and her dad’s been refusing for, literally, zero reason (especially considering the psycho he deliberately married her off to). So I’m gonna go ahead and officially hate her dad, despite the fact that we are clearly supposed to love him and pity him because he’s sick. Nope, bye, dad character.

The handsome-hero-who-loves-the-protag-despite-her-rejection-from-society trope wasn’t what I wanted from this book. I think I didn’t know it was a romance and was expecting more of a story of female empowerment than wedding bells. And for a romance, the HEA was super wimpy because their life is terrible. Ter-ri-ble. So — with historical fiction — I feel like either you gotta go romance and give me an HEA or you gotta go female empowerment and let the dude die so she’s the noble solo hero/cowboy. Otherwise, just write someone’s actual story and tell us the true facts. Since this wasn’t based on anyone’s actual life, all the personal story twists just struck me as inauthentic — of course the doctor is an abusive psycho, of course the preacher is an abusive psycho, too, of course the new husband (who is also the preacher’s brother) is ALSO an abusive psycho, of course the librarian is DEFINITELY a verbally abusive psycho…

Not my favorite. Obviously I’m in the minority because this book has won like a hundred awards. So you’ll probably like it and I’m wrong. :)

book review: a gentleman in moscow

I read A Gentleman in Moscow on family vacation, and my sister finally said, “I guess I’m going to have to read that book since I saw you crying reading it a few minutes ago and now you’re laughing out loud.” Quite an endorsement to have a book provide such a wide range of intense emotions.

I am late to the Amor Towles train, I know, but sometimes there are just too many good books to read them all. Glad this one finally surfaced in my pile! This was one of my top ten of the year for sure.

The book unfolds in a little bit of an achronological way, but in a sneaky way that makes you think, “wait, did I know that already?” It definitely feels like someone is telling you the story and only giving you the details you need at the time you need them.

And indeed, in a few places, such as a few notably long footnotes, the book does specifically tell you that some details are or are not important. I have a lot of respect for that, honestly.

The Count is charming in a Frasier-Crane sort of way: you love him so much, you don’t mind that he’s condescending and arrogant and judgmental every once in a quiet while. You also see how much kindness is inside him across so many situations, both painful ones and good-humored ones.

I loved the introduction of Anna with her dogs rampaging the lobby so much I read it out loud to my kids. They thought it was fantastic! Such a vividly visual scene.

I also realize I have a lot more to learn about Russian history. I had to keep stopping to check and see that I knew what was actually happening so I could follow all the political intrigue appropriately.

Nina’s character was bothering me until I realized that Nina is not actually the child at the center of the novel; rather, she is the setup for the novel’s central relationship.

The Metropol makes for such a massive, sweeping setting because of the years of the story even though it’s just the one location. What creativity! And what a satisfying ending.

book review: piranesi

Piranesi was such an odd book. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as I am all here for weird books… But it was so different than most things I’ve read. I keep starting sentences about this book and not having ways to finish them.

Things I liked:

• A lot of references to Narnia

• Beautiful setting

• Intrigue

• Untrustworthy narrator - think Call me Ishmael

Things I didn’t like:

• Took too long to get started

Things I’m not sure how I felt about them:

• Everything else

Haha.

Seriously, though, I’m not sure if I liked the inconclusive ending. I’m not sure if I liked the style. I’m not sure if I liked the incoherence of the fact delivery. I’m not sure if I liked the sudden appearance of new characters. I’m not sure! And I think that leads me to believe this was something like eating foodie food.

I don’t need to have that again—I’ll just have cheese on my pizza— but I am glad I ate the butternut squash this time.

Piransei for me was the kind of book you chew slowly, and look off a little to the right and then slowly say, “It’s… interesting.”

Very memorable descriptions of flooding water. Beautifully composed, visual scene.