This Week in Reading: Week 2

One of the highlights this week was I got a São Paulo public library card! I plan to write about that in a different post, but I'm happy that my reading possibilities have expanded :) Like always, I'm in the middle of like five books (official count... unofficial is closer to 10) and finished three.

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
This is the third book in The Rat series (a nickname of one of the characters is The Rat), but it is only vaguely connected with the other two (Hear the Wind Sing, and Pinball). I mean, if you have read those two you will recognize some characters and places, but all three of the books stand alone. A Wild Sheep Chase is the best of the three so far, but there is a fourth and final book in the series (Dance Dance Dance).

In this book, a typical Murakami dude (single, likes sex but has trouble maintaining relationships with women, drinks a lot, has an unremarkable life, no close friendships, likes playing vinyl records) is told by a mysterious stranger that he has to find a specific special sheep, OR ELSE. So it’s almost like a detective novel, revolving around a sheep, a suicide, and a whole bunch of weird &$#% near the end.

I liked it, but my favorite Murakamis are still 1Q84 and Kafka on the Shore. I feel like I read about five Murakami books a year but never get any closer to accomplishing my goal of reading all of his works… Maybe 2017 will be the year.

Mafalda #1 by Quino
Mafalda is a much-beloved Argentine comic strip that ran from 1964 to ‘73. It was translated and published in many South American countries, including Brazil, and its themes of poverty and inequality, brain drain, inflation, corruption, political freedom, female empowerment, and world peace resonate even today. Mafalda is a young girl (like 5 years old), she has a mom and a dad (who remind me a lot of the mom and dad from Calvin and Hobbes), and she has a gang of friends comprised of a super-capitalist, a girl whose sole aim in life is to get married and have kids (frequent conversations revolve around trying to convince her to dream bigger), and an all-around normal boy. Mafalda herself is blunt, observant, and introspective, like Charlie Brown but with less pessimism. I’m reading in Portuguese and I'm proud of myself that I understood most of the punch lines and Silas only had to explain a couple. Humor is the last thing to be understood in a language. It’s cute and uplifting, and it reminds me to be content with life’s simple pleasures.

You Have Me to Love by Jaap Robben
I read this one for work (I’m doing an internship with a foreign rights agency!) — originally published in Dutch. A boy on an island has a dad who dies at sea, and then his mom goes crazy, and the boy is just trying to navigate puberty while being stuck on a tiny island with a crazy mom. He starts caring for a baby seagull by locking it up and forcing it to depend completely on the boy for food, which is a reflection of the oppressive care that his own mother gives him. I guess the message of the book is that people need to socialize with others in order to not go crazy.

Plot points happen quite abruptly (you find out the mom goes crazy from one page to the next), and I would have originally thought that it’s the author’s style, or maybe something got lost in translation. But I’ve read three Dutch books in the past month and I now would say that it’s a cultural preference or an aesthetic that is pretty different from what I am used to reading. It’s not bad, but it’s just different. These three books all had me like:

I’m glad that I’m getting the opportunity to read so many different types of stories. Until next week!

This Week in Reading: Week 1

I challenged myself to read 100 books in 2017. Last year when I challenged myself to read 52, I didn’t think that I would actually read that many. I want to read 52 books every year, but I don’t really care too much if I complete that amount or not—the page count varies so much in the types of books that I like to read that reading a full 52 books doesn’t matter much to me. Consequently, I had never done it before. But in 2016, I surpassed my goal by some 40 books! And I read a wider range of things than ever. I was purposefully seeking out books by foreign and minority authors (in addition to reading whatever caught my fancy at the moment).

All this to say, I’m going to continue reading a lot of books this year, and I think I can read at least 100.

The Rose & the Dagger by Renee Ahdieh
This is the second and final book (the first is The Wrath & the Dawn) in a romantic, dramatic, adventurous and beautiful take on One Thousand and One Nights. This book started out slow, but picked up the pace to tie up all the loose ends. It’s kinda fun reading a duology instead of a trilogy! Actually, there are quite a few “alternate” chapters and storylines available as ebooks, but as much as I enjoyed reading this book, I was satisfied when it ended. It didn’t hit me as one of those “Aaahh I never want this universe to end!” books where you feel sad and a bit down for a week after you finish the book. I’ve read a few retellings of One Thousand and One Nights in the past couple years, but have never read the original. I guess with the live-action Aladdin coming out soon, it’s going to be popular to read, so I should get on that.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
I’ve started watching Gilmore Girls and though I had never seen an episode before last month, I always knew that Rory and I had a lot in common. I’ve taken a glance through Rory's reading list, and we have similar tastes… meaning we read everything. What surprised me was how many of the books on her list that I have already read, and that made me want to read all the rest. I really love checking things off the list. So that’s why I read The Perks of Being a Wallflower. That, and I’ve heard of this book my whole life but had no idea what it was about.

If you like reading about precocious teenage boys (they’re so adorable), you’ll probably like this epistolary/diaristic book. The first part of the book comes across as advice for teenage readers that barely hides the fact that the adult author is trying to make the book a guide for any possible problem that a teenager could confront. But if you stick with it, the story develops and the preaching becomes more subtle. The characters face all kinds of heavy situations: drugs and alcohol as coping/self-medicating, abortion, rape, physical and sexual abuse, discovering sexuality in all kinds of ways, etc. If you’re a teen, it would be good to have an adult read it at the same time so you two could talk about it.

Though one of my favorite parts of the book is kind of preachy: Sam and Charlie have a heart-to-heart about what they think and the expectations they have regarding each other. It’s a really sweet and honest moment, but Sam confronts Charlie on what friendship really is—friendship is not going along and “being there” for everything your friend is doing. It’s confronting and telling your friends No if they are doing something that is not healthy. A good lesson for all of us.

My Favorite Books from 2016

I started this year with a pledge to read all of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. I didn’t even finish Swann’s Way. One day I’ll get to it. There are certain books that I need a physical copy to hold while I read: books by Toni Morrison, for example.

In 2016, I read more than I ever have in my life. Eighty-six books and counting! Part of this is because I made an effort to practice reading faster—chunking, not sounding out syllables, listening to audiobooks at a faster speed—but also I really got my personal system down for reading in nearly every spare moment. I have an audiobook, a non-fiction, a literary fiction, a book in Portuguese, and a “fun” fiction going all at the same time. So no matter what my mood or where I am physically at (I pretty much only read e-books), I have something to fit the bill. I gave up reading a lot of books, and this helped me not get swamped with procrastination and avoidance of reading because I wasn’t really into what I was working on.

Most of the books I read were fine, mediocre, nothing to write home about. But here are the ones that were really memorable for me.

   

Nurture Shock by Bronson & Merryman
Non-fiction gathering fistfuls of psychological studies that show what kids do naturally, and how to help them be better. Did you know that humans are born racist and you have to actively teach them to not be, starting at like age 1?

11/22/63 by Stephen King
I’m gonna call this Stephen King’s best book ever. It’s not scary at all; it’s an action-romance and it will give you warm fuzzies.

Earthseed series by Olivia Butler
I wasn’t overwhelmed by the greatness of this dystopian speculative fiction, but man, Butler predicting Trump’s campaign slogan and other stuff more than two decades ago is eerie.

The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan
I know people have a bone to pick about how Tan propagates racist stereotypical thinking, and how white people love her books so much because she writes characters about “good immigrants” aka Asians who do exactly what we expect them to do. But honestly, she is a really, really great storyteller and an amazing author. This was the first book I’d read by her and I was just fascinated. 

 

Horses Make the Landscape Look More Beautiful by Alice Walker
I’ve been on a quest to read and enjoy more poetry, but usually I just don’t have the patience for it. I loved the poems in this collection because they are powerful, approachable, and important: they talk about specific injustices in society.

The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater
YA urban fantasy set in small-town Virginia with awesome storycrafting and great character work. It’s not often that I fall in love with every one of the characters, even the bad guys.

The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning
I only read a handful of Christian books this year, and none of them came close to this classic about giving yourself and others grace and forgiveness. It is particularly important in today’s tense climate where it’s easy to step on other people’s toes and judge other people for not being as morally superior as yourself. I’m going to reread this one for sure.

Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
Shows a great parent-teen relationship that is so sadly absent in many YAs. p.s. Simon is in film production, so read it now and be cool early ;)

   

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
Small wonder the entire world is talking about this series set in Napoli in the 1950s. Rich, complex, beautiful pictures of daily life, but what stood out was the explanations of the psychological decisions behind why characters do certain actions. I have never read a book with such a good understanding and conveyance of human motivations.

Maus by Art Spiegelman
This is the true story of an Auschwitz survivor (the author’s father), and I felt like I got an understanding of why people do selfish things, or why they act uncharacteristically in times of duress. It helped me to be more merciful.

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Set in Nigeria in the 1960s, this book looks at the creation and destruction of the nation of Biafra through the eyes of its characters: two upper-class sisters, a British guy, a scholar, and a servant. It’s an all-around solidly graceful book, but I really liked the changes that happen to the attitude of the British guy as he moves from his colonialist identity to trying to embrace and carve a space for himself in Biafra. I can identify.

Little Altars Everywhere by Rebecca Wells (prequel to the Ya-Ya Sisterhood)
The slow reveal of this Louisiana family’s dark secrets blew me away.

The New Jim Crow: Intro || #SJBookClub

So! The current pick for the Social Justice Book Club (#SJBookClub) is The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. Our club is a little more structured this time, with multiple posts planned for the month. For more info about the club and our schedule for this book, visit our host Kerry McHugh’s blog Entomology of a Bookworm.


1. Where do you plan on discussing this book the most? Feel free to share links to your blog, social media channels, snap handles, etc.
I’m planning to be here on my blog and tweeting (@alisa) with our group hashtag #SJBookClub. I use Tweetdeck (it’s free), and I have a column set up there just for the club so I can see what everyone is talking about.

There are three posts planned for this book (intro, midway, and wrap-up) and I want to post for all three, even if I am a little behind. I’m still waiting on a library hold.

2. Why did you decide to join in on the reading and/or discussion of this book?
I’ve been with the club since the start, and it’s pretty hard to get rid of me if I don’t want to be gotten rid of. I used to serve in a social justice position at a nonprofit before I moved overseas, and I expect that talking about and participating in social justice activism will always be a part of my life.

Both of our prior reads were also related to injustice in the US industrial prison complex (my thoughts on Just Mercy and The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts), and I’m actually glad that we are getting a thorough look at a singular topic.

3. In the very first line of the introduction to the book, Michelle Alexander writes, "This book is not for everyone." What do you make of that as an entree into The New Jim Crow?
I read a quarter of this book over a year ago and put it on pause. But from what I remember, Alexander uses strong, direct sentences and hard data to shake the reader into alertness about what is going on in America: institutionalized racism.

I had a conversation with a friend of mine recently about how as white women who are actively, daily trying to educate ourselves about being aware of the language we use and the comments or even body gestures we make to break the cycle of racism in our lives, we still make mistakes, we still get things wrong, we still don’t even realize that something is racist/offensive/condescending, and we feel guilty about that.

That guilt and a resulting desire to overcompensate is called white fragility and it’s a real thing.

I think that’s what the author means when she says that her book is not for everyone. Feelings are going to get hurt and some people aren’t mature enough to handle those hurt feelings so they react with their hackles raised, silence, hostility, guilt, fear, argumentation.

4. What, if anything, are you most looking forward to about this book?
I want to know about specific legislation that went into place after the civil rights acts as a way to compensate or get back to preserving legalized racism. For example, today we think of gerrymandering as a way that Republicans legally ‘steal’ votes from Democrats. But before that, gerrymandering was a way to steal votes from African Americans.


I’m looking forward to chatting more and I'm crossing my fingers that my hold comes in soon enough for me to join in for the mid-month check-in! It's not too late to join us!

Review || Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

After millions of people told me to read Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, I have finally read it and can now join the masses in insisting that you should read it, too!

The wait list at my library for an ebook of Simon is many months too long. But while vacationing and checking out the new-to-me Vista Grande library in my hometown of Casa Grande, Arizona, I spied Simon there, clean and new and untouched, waiting for me to read it. Which I did in less than 24 hours. I fangirled to the poor circulation desk librarian about how these days all I read are ebooks and I really miss reading on paper and how the stack of books I grabbed have an endless wait list and are OMG popular. He seemed a bit surprised and not in on the world of YA fandom.

When I was younger in Casa Grande, I volunteered at the library, and my ‘boss’ was the children’s and youth librarian (who I now realize was a liberal gal who took a job in a small, conservative agricultural community). I really am grateful for the things she taught me and the experiences I had because of her. I think that if I got my master’s, it would be in library science with the goal of doing youth programming. Anyways, it’s symbolic to me that I was reading this book while being back in my home town, with my younger sister reading over my shoulder.

Simon is a teenage boy who is busy dealing with the drama of typical high school days and navigating just how exactly he should come out.

Not only is the plot well designed, but because author Becky Albertalli is a practicing child psychologist, the characters feel incredibly realistic and authentic. It didn’t read at all like an adult trying to use teenage jargon—it came across as a teenager using teenisms (which may make the book have a shorter shelf-life than normal, but it’s perfect for the moment).

Again, the author is a genius. She deliberately links emotions and physical actions to show that what someone is doing on the outside is a result of something going on on the inside, and those inside things are totally, completely normal. For example, at one point in the story, Simon is upset and having a conversation at the same time. After a moment, he realizes that he is yelling and he feels embarrassed about having a hard time controlling his voice level. It’s these types of details that separate believable YA from adults-writing-to-kids YA.

Simon’s fears and concerns are just so relatable. He talks about wanting to keep even small things as a secret from his family (really small: he started drinking coffee), because they turn everything into a big deal. I still do that! And in a completely non-preachy scene near the end of the book, Simon’s mom explains that as a parent, every new development is an amazing and exciting change, no matter how small. Like new moms posting with way too much TMI on Facebook, moms of teenagers are just as excited.

I wish I had read this book when I was younger, for the sake of realizing how normal my family and feelings really are. While I was reading it, I imagined myself as a youth librarian, recommending this book to someone and it changing their world so that they would remember it years later, even if they never talked to anyone else about it.