This is a case of, it‘s not you, it‘s me. Erdrich‘s writing is excellent; the characters are well drawn and sympathetic, though flawed; she writes as well about the 19th century as the early 21st; but even so, I still found this a slog. Somehow there is too much and too little going on at the same time.

This novel uses Michelangelo‘s actual letters and drawings to imaginatively fill in the gaps and tell a story of his early 16th century trip to Istanbul. It‘s a good story, well told, but I don‘t really have much more to add than that.

I picked this up because it was so often compared to Station Eleven. I wouldn‘t say that it is quite that good, but it was still an entertaining read. For a book about people falling asleep, it is surprisingly well paced and plotted. It's also elevated by the ambiguity that Walker leaves the reader with.

If a series of Facebook rants somehow became a novel, it would be this one. At first, all of characters ranting was funny, even a bit cathartic, but once I realized that that‘s pretty much all there is here, it grew extremely tiresome and repetitive. It finally reached a point at the end where I was emotionally involved, but it‘s too little too late. If this book had been 250 pages long I might have liked it. 450 pages of it though, no thank you.

I subscribed to a local produce CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and got my first share yesterday. Check out all these gorgeous veggies! I‘ll be relying a lot on the tagged book, organized by vegetable, to cook up these beauties. I was pleased to discover that he even has recipes for that kohlrabi! I‘d love any other vegetable-centered cookbook suggestions y‘all have.

So this is a novel about a crumbling marriage, a road trip, cruelty to Native Americans, cruelty to migrant families (especially children), and the place of art and history amid all of this. That all sounds like way too much, but somehow it worked for me. Luiselli is guilty at times of trying too hard to make the mundane seem profound, but she pulls it off often enough to create some gorgeous prose, that I‘m willing to forgive the missteps.

Ask me anything, I‘m a genius now! Well, at least it feels that way after reading this book. Of course some of it went over my head (I‘m still not clear how to make insulin), but less than I expected, owing to Mukhergee‘s incredible ability to make very complicated processes comprehensible to a lay person.

Who is ready for a little Summer ToB?! I like the changes they have made this year, and let‘s face it, a camp where you stay inside and read is my kind of camp! Check out all the details and vote for your favorites here... https://themorningnews.org/article/announcing-camp-tob-2019

This suffered a bit at first from all the hype. However, as it went on, I began to appreciate the power and atmosphere that Moss was achieving with very few words. The condensed narrative lends itself to the oppressed and claustrophobic atmosphere even as the characters are in wide open space. The themes here are nothing new, but even though the ground is well covered, Moss does enough to make it worth revisiting.

Great idea @vivastory It is hard to choose, but here are a couple of favorites. I read The Summer Book as a Litsy Buddy Read a couple of years ago and fell in love with Sophia and her Grandmother.

And Agnes DeMille is an all time favorite for this dance lover. I‘ve been wanting to reread this one, so you may see it as a nominee when it is my turn. #NYRBBookClub

A novel that is rooted within Igbo ontology but reads as a metaphor for competing emotions, instincts, and beliefs within a self that can be hard to balance. These have been given spiritual manifestation in Ada‘s body, and she is forced to find a balance between all the competing trauma, religious beliefs, and questions of gender identity, in order to find anything like peace. It didn‘t always land for me, but is a remarkable novel all the same.

Well, that was weird...but I liked it...I think. It was sad, but also funny and insightful...and God, this thing is really impossible to review. I guess all I can say is that I liked it, and will never be able to explain why. I‘m sorry, that is probably not at all helpful.

I will not pretend that a lot of this didn‘t go over my head, but I loved it all the same. I love the way Smith leaves so much ambiguity, that you never get tired of turning it over and over in your mind afterward.

“Where to be saved you only must save face
And whatever you say, you say nothing.”
Seamus Heaney

Oh now this was great! Keefe uses the mystery surrounding the murder of a young widowed mother of ten (yes, ten) to tell a much larger story of the actions of the IRA during the Troubles. It is richly detailed, but the details don‘t slow down the narrative all. This is probably the most page turning non-fiction that I have ever read.

Rainy day #bookmail! Cassandra has arrived and, as usual for NYRB, looks lovely. From the back cover description, it sounds like she may deserve this agression from the T-Rex 😂

#NYRBBookClub

Patricia Highsmith is an author who is often recommended to me, but this is my first time reading her. Her writing beautifully captures the danger of Therese and Carol‘s situation, even when they don‘t fully understand or deny it, with such a deft touch that you might not realize she‘s doing it on purpose. You feel her intention, without seeing her hand in it at all, just brilliant.

Wow.

I am tempted to leave my review at the one word, but I guess I'll say a little more here. Ali Smith illuminates the seeming intractability of our dark and confusing times better than anyone else I've read, and yet, she manages, without naivete, to provide a light in the dark. It's her very clear-eyed understanding of what we are facing, that makes her hopefulness believable.

And yes, shameless boasting about my signed edition 😊

So late to the #ShirlitesUnite party, but I‘m glad I finally finished! I'm not the biggest fan of Jane Eyre, so I went in with a bit of trepidation here. It started a bit slowly, and with a very Jane-ish character at the center, but once smart ass, progressive, Shirley comes to town, everything picks up. Shirley is described at one point as the kind of woman you fall in love with a year after meeting her. My kind of girl all the way then.

I was so very jealous seeing all the posts from the #readingretreat at Gladstone‘s last week, that I decided to book my very own reading retreat in the Serenbe community just south of Atlanta. I even get to bring my dog! Bliss.

I am so enjoying revisiting this wonderful series on audio. The full cast performance is excellent!

Alright, I‘m going in! I like to take on these doorstop books in tiny bites, so it will probably take me a few months to finish.

I enjoyed reading the history of the Los Angeles library and the investigation into the 1986 fire, but when she broadens into a more general discussion of the place of libraries in our communities, it felt like a well trod path. That is obviously an important point, but Orlean doesn‘t bring anything new to that discussion.

Silly Sandy is meant to be posing with the book, but she decided to demonstrate downward dog instead 😂

Subversive and hilarious, I adored this one. Sometimes the best way to express fear and anxiety really is with sharp humor.

I came into this hearing all the comparisons to the Fyre Festival fiasco but the take down here is far less fun than the Fyre Festival story because what Holmes was up to was infinitely worse than selling tickets to a fake concert. A scam is one thing, but this one risked the health of hundreds of patients and would have done even more damage if not for the courage of whistle-blowers. It is fascinating, infuriating, and well worth the read.

This book made me feel the way that I did reading The Secret Garden when I was nine years old. That was the first time I understood that reading was magical and essential. I can give a book no higher praise.

I recognize the brilliance and beauty of the writing here as a meditation on time and history and memory, but as a whole, this didn‘t really work for me. Instead of sinister and foreboding, I found it to be withholding. Instead of richly detailed, I found it discursive and repetitive. Also, so so much male gaze.

Interesting take on the controversy around genetically modified crops by an anti-GM activist who changed his mind when he learned more about the science behind them. Poor messaging at the outset unfortunately allowed a false narrative about the safety of these products to take over. However, the larger debate now is about who controls these products, who has access to them, and how that affects global food supplies. Fascinating stuff.

I loved this reimagining of the Iliad from Briseis‘s perspective. But that‘s just it, I loved it when we were getting Briseis‘s perspective. Too often Barker shifts away from her, to an omniscient third person narration of events that she isn‘t present for, which pulled me away from the intimacy of her story.

Saunders uses his dark and surreal style here to cut right to the heart of American materialism and feelings of inadequacy. He is endlessly creative, but in this collection, that creativity feels sharp and impactful instead of gimmicky.

This is my first Denis Johnson and I‘m guessing this may not be the best place to start. There is some undeniably gorgeous writing here, but I had a hard time caring about any of it. Somehow it felt as though there was a wall between these characters and me.

Fantasy is not my thing at all, so the fact that I enjoyed this, is a great credit to Marlon James. After loving his previous novel, I was very excited about this one. While I am surprised that this is what he chose as a follow up, I love that, even after so much success and acclaim, he has pushed himself to do something totally different. I didn‘t get swept away into the 5-star experience that many others did, but it was a good ride nonetheless.

The adjectives that kept coming to mind while I was reading this one are fresh and fun. Of course, Roupenian doesn‘t hit them all out of the park, but her voice and style are vibrant even in the couple of stories that don‘t quite land. My favorite is the delightfully eerie “Sardines,” but there were several other standouts too. I‘m here for whatever she does next.

For the first half of this book, I was in love and ready to marry it, but at about the halfway point when there is a shift of perspective from mother to son, I decided we were better as just good friends. At times the fitting of the narrative into the structure that Dewitt has created can feel forced. It's as if the structure gets in the way of the narrative. The gorgeous writing never falters though.

A good story and a nice, light read, but I‘m afraid I didn‘t find it to be much more than that. Everything about it seemed only skin deep. From the plot to the characterization there was so much more to develop and explore that it feels like a missed opportunity. #TOB2019

Well, I flew all the way to Seattle to see Michelle Obama with my best friend and was thwarted by the snow. When the Tacoma appearance was postponed, we bought tickets to see her in Portland the next day, only for that one to be postponed too! These lapel pins were the closest we could get to the lady herself this weekend.

Lunch with Shirley at my messy desk. Well, not actually with Shirley, as she hasn‘t shown up yet. I can‘t wait to start calling people “conceited noodle!”

#ShirlitesUnite

What an opening! What have I gotten myself into?! 😂😂😂

#shirlitesunite

A collection of essays about Esme Weijun Wang‘s experience living with, among other illnesses, schizoaffective disorder. It‘s rare to read about schizophrenia from someone who lives with it, rather than someone who treats or studies these conditions. Her take on the way that patients with schizophrenia are often left out of decisions about their own treatment, is certainly debatable, but is an invaluable perspective.

Another meh book from #TOB2019. A young mother tries to flee the stress of her life after her husband is deported under complicated circumstances and a crisis at work, to her grandparents' home in rural Alta Vista. Kiesling does well to create a feeling of isolation, loneliness, and frustration throughout, but I am left wondering what the point of all of it is as it all feels aimless.

Janice Galloway's writing is brilliant and so viscerally puts you in the mind of someone sinking into a deep depression that it is uncomfortable. It has turned out for me to be one of those novels where I can't actually decide if I liked it. I appreciate it, and I'm glad I read it, but I'm also very very glad to be out of Joy Stone's head. It is doubtlessly a truly affecting book, but I can't recommend it as a nice way to spend a weekend.

Whoa. This was intense and astonishing. I‘ll avoid plot details, because, frankly, they may put people off, but this dark and twisting story is so vivid and rich in detail, it feels as if the book itself is alive. For such a long book, it never dragged and I was never counting how many pages were left, rather I was pulled more and more deeply into the story.

I hate to say it, but this was a miss for me. I wanted to give Atkinson a pass here because of how beautifully and poignantly she writes about grief in this novel, but I can't forgive her for boring me. This is all very slow-paced and, for the most part, feels like the stakes are pretty low. I've also not seen Atkinson write a main character who is as clueless as Juliet often is before. I really tried to love this, but I can't.

This story is about a large Mexican-American family who is losing their patriarch, sooner than most of them realize. The family is large, sprawling, and cacophonous as is the narrative structure where they exist. While that choice served the characters and the feel of the novel well, it left me, as a reader, feeling on the outside. Despite this, there are moments of true warmth, love, and laughter that make it well worth reading. #TOB2019

Now, this was brilliant. Five different story arcs over the course of five centuries in Newport, Rhode Island. The stories blend historical fact and fiction, all the while referencing and echoing each other, intersecting, then veering away from each other, just like, well...a maze.

I know most people loved this one, but it just had too many problems for me. For all the excellently drawn characters, like Charles and Maude, the main character felt very underdeveloped. His whole personality seems defined by his sexuality, which isn‘t enough. I also couldn‘t overlook the incredible reliance on coincidence and the way the plot points were telegraphed well before they happened, making it all feel predictable. #UnpopularOpinion

Fascinating history of the race to stop a major Cholera outbreak in 1854 London, made all the more difficult by the prevailing, completely inaccurate, miasmatic theory of contagion. A triumph of scientific research and deep local knowledge, the cause was found and contained even though no one yet knew of the microbe that causes the disease. The narrative is a bit repetitive, but all in all a solid read.

A fun Christmas cozy mystery. I don‘t typically go for a cozy mystery, but for a relaxing Christmas wind down, this totally hit the spot.

Solid three stars. There is nothing really special here, but I enjoyed spending time with these characters. #TOB2019

I switched from the ebook to the audio for this one and am so glad that I did. I finished listening on my way to visit family today and was sad when it was over. It was so very nice to spend time with Michelle again. I‘ll get to see her on her book tour next month and am beside myself with excitement!

I finally got a few minutes to myself to open my #jolabokaflodswap package from @rsheldr ! Thank you so much, it is perfect! Now I‘m ready to crawl into bed with my new book and chocolate frog before the madness starts all over again tomorrow morning. Merry Christmas everyone!

And a huge thank you to @MaleficentBookDragon for organizing such a fun swap!!