Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

I read Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup in an attempt to fill one of the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge's prompt. To be more precise, I listened to the audiobook read by Louis Gossett, Jr. and it seemed to make a lot of sense to read it in the gloom of November. 

Northup was born free in New York. He was married with three children when he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the southern United States. This memoir is the tale of his imprisonment for the next twelve years of his life. The story has been corroborated by documents Northrup cites, testimony from people who saw Northup on plantations he claimed to be enslaved at, and seems to be as true as possible.

It was certainly eye opening to read this book, but I have to admit to being a tiny bit disappointed. I feel like this kind of whitewashed the reality of slavery a bit with a lot of violence happening off page. I also feel like Northup is keeping the readers at a distance, but there were times I really wanted to know what he was thinking. When he left the plantation and other slaves who he had lived and worked with for years, how did he feel, knowing they'd continue on with their own plights? How did he feel when he saw his wife and children again? 

(I am hesitant to type this paragraph, but I'm going to be honest. I was talking about this book with my husband and I mumbled "he didn't make slavery seem that bad." I can see how these types of slave narratives were used by pro-slavery people who would make claims that slaves liked being slaves. Northrup never stopped fighting for his freedom and there were descriptions of abuse and belittlement, so I don't think someone reading this book would think he liked being a slave - far from it - but, to be honest, the whole experience didn't sound that bad. Clearly I'm the problem here.)

I'm glad I listened to this, but I did sort of want more from a slave narrative. Maybe that's just putting my own modern sensibilities on a book from the distant past and that's not fair. I don't know. It's certainly worth reading. 3.5/5 stars

Lines of note:

It was but a short time I closed my eyes that night. Thought was busy in my brain. Could it be possible that I was thousands of miles from home⁠—that I had been driven through the streets like a dumb beast⁠—that I had been chained and beaten without mercy⁠—that I was even then herded with a drove of slaves, a slave myself? Were the events of the last few weeks realities indeed?⁠—or was I passing only through the dismal phases of a long, protracted dream? It was no illusion. My cup of sorrow was full to overflowing. (Chapter 5)

Really, it was difficult to determine which I had most reason to fear⁠—dogs, alligators or men! Chapter 10)

In the course of the forenoon, while sauntering about the gin-house, a tall, good-looking man came to me, and inquired if I was Tibeats’ boy, that youthful appellation being applied indiscriminately to slaves even though they may have passed the number of three score years and ten. (Chapter 11)

Hat mentions (why hats?):

He wore a black frock coat and black hat, and said he resided either at Rochester or at Syracuse. The latter was a young man of fair complexion and light eyes, and, I should judge, had not passed the age of twenty-five. He was tall and slender, dressed in a snuff-colored coat, with glossy hat, and vest of elegant pattern. (Chapter 2)

It consisted in throwing balls, dancing on the rope, frying pancakes in a hat, causing invisible pigs to squeal, and other like feats of ventriloquism and legerdemain. (Chapter 2)

without coat or hat (Chapter 2) x2

They were all cleanly dressed⁠—the men with hats, the women with handkerchiefs tied about their heads. (Chapter 4)

The men had hat, coat, shirt, pants and shoes...(Chapter 6)

Taking off my hat...(Chapter 8)

I was without coat or hat, standing bareheaded, exposed to its burning blaze.  (Chapter 9)

I took off my hat...(Chapter 11)

he would forget where he left his hat, or his hoe, or his basket (Chapter 13)

uncle Abram had found his hat (Chapter 13)

new shoes and coats and hats (Chapter 14)

a rimless or a crownless hat (Chapter 15)

hat in hand (Chapter 18)

twitching off his hat (Chapter 21)

taking off my hat (Chapter 21)

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Have you read this book or any other slave narrative? 

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez came on my radar because of the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge and then Stephany reviewed it and said it was okay. 

Julia is the youngest daughter in a Mexican family living in Chicago. Her parents came over from Mexico under pretty bad circumstances and just as the book is beginning, her older sister dies in a tragic accident. Julia is struggling. She can't wait to move out, away from her stifling family and their expectations that she behave more like Olga, her "perfect" dead sister. She learns that maybe Olga wasn't so perfect, though, and soon Julia is questioning everything in her life.

Look, I'm just the audience for YA anymore. I just kept wanting to shake Julia, tell her that she needed to get her head out of her ass and stop being an insufferable brat, and remind her that having two loving parents is infinitely better than the alternative. Julia does have a lot on her plate and her sister dying is really terrible, but Julia is also an entitled jerk. And she's mean. And maybe she's just a teenager being a teenager, but I did not enjoy the time I spent with her. 

I know I'm old because I honestly wanted the book to be told from her parents' points of view. 

I regret finishing this one. 2/5 stars

Lines of note:

I know I should clean, but whenever I look at the mess, I think, what’s the point? Nothing feels like it has a point anymore. (location 195)

I mean, doesn't everyone think this when they clean? It's a viscious cycle - the cleaning is never done and as soon as you stop, you have to do it all over again.

...skinny, little guy who looked like an aardvark...(location 323)

I like to note animal/human metaphors. To be honest, I don't know what an aardvark looks like, so this meant nothing to me at the time.  Okay, I looked it up. Aardvark below. It's pretty cute, but I can see how this is a mean thing to say about someone. 

Kelly Abram - https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/175359469

I seriously don’t know what she saw in him, because not only was he ugly, he had the personality of a boiled potato. (location 323)
More meanness from our main character.

Everyone is desperately trying to hang on to the sunshine, enjoying the unexpected warmth before winter takes a cold gray crap on the city and makes us all miserable again. (location 552)
I feel this in my very soul. It was lovely for the last two days and today I left the house without a coat and now it's cold and rainy and I regret not having a coat with me. 

If I end up being an office lady who wears slacks and changes into white sneakers to walk home from the train, I’ll just jump off a skyscraper. (location 589)
Were we all this mean and judgmental as teens? (I may feel attacked because I have to switch out shoes to walk the dog.)

There are hundreds of spam emails from many different companies. I guess the spam bots don’t know when someone has died. It seems so disrespectful to advertise to the dead. 50% OFF STOREWIDE!! BUY ONE GET ONE FREE SHOE SALE!!! VITAMINS FOR THE PERFECT BIKINI BODY. (location 2705)
This is an interesting observation. One time Bestest Friend told me that she had put me in charge of her Facebook account in case of her death. Apparently that's a thing you can do. I remember laughing, but it's not really funny, is it? I suppose our electronic estates will need to be settled when we die, just as our physical assets will. (I've written about my angst about the state of my blog when I die. How will my readers find out? Will I just stop updating and no one will ever know what happened?)

“Julia, sometimes in life you don’t get to do what you want to do. Sometimes you have to deal with what’s given to you, shut up, and keep working. That’s it.” (location 3613)

This is from Julia's father. It's no wonder I wanted to read a book centered on him.

Things I looked up:
Cepillín, that scary Mexican clown who looks like a rapist but everyone loves for some reason. (location 125)

Ricardo González Gutiérrez was a Mexican clown as well as a singer, TV host, and actor. He died in 2021. 

Cepillín in 2018

The House of Bernarda Alba (location 355) - A play written by the Spanish dramatist Federico García, completed in 1936, two months before García was assassinated during the Civil War

chambelan (location 1606) - A male member of the court of honor at a quinceañera 

Hat mentions (why hats?): 

...usually walk around the apartment wrapped in a blanket and wearing a hat, looking like a fool. (location 2106)

He’s not even wearing a hat or scarf, so his face is bright red. (location 2129)

His face is flushed from the cold, and he looks cute in his big, puffy jacket and purple stocking hat. (location 2142)

Their husbands, tío Raul and tío Leonel, stand next to them, both wearing cowboy hats. (location 2818)

After Los Tigres score their first goal, a dark guy in a cowboy hat comes toward us with bottles of Coke and plastic bags of pork skins slathered in red salsa.  (location 3046)

“Buenos días,” he says, and tips his hat. (location 3119)

Today Esteban is wearing jeans, a faded Beatles T-shirt, and a straw cowboy hat. (location 3168)

Esteban takes off his cowboy hat and looks toward the mountains. (location 3220)

“Is he wearing a hat?” (location 3401)

10 Things That Never Happened (Material World #1) by Alexis Hall

Alexis Hall is the reigning royal of queer romance. I read Boyfriend Material in 2020 and loved it, but there wasn't any other Hall in my library collection. I recently rechecked and there are quite a few Hall books now available via ebook, so I downloaded 10 Things That I Never Wanted and dove in.

Samwise (he goes by Sam) has a terrible boss, Jonathan. But after a workplace accident leaves Jonathan believing Sam has amnesia, Sam is suddenly living at Jonathan's huge house. Jonathan is a jerk. Sam's always calling him out on it. What do you think is going to happen here?

Interesting characters: Sam is great. Jonathan is a jerk. If you like your love interest to be a jerk, maybe you'll like Jonathan. I still don't understand WHY Jonathan is a jerk. He has a great family, has had a pretty successful career, and seems conventionally attractive. Sure, his family didn't have a ton of money when he was growing up, but whose did? Maybe because I didn't understand his motivations, I just couldn't get on board with him.

Believable conflict: Sure, nice people typically don't immediately fall in love with jerks, right?

Emotional tension: The amnesia storyline was cheesy and Hall was really counting on that to make us wonder what was going to happen when Jonathan finally learned the truth. I mean, if that's your deal, sure.

Happily ever after: Eh. I mean, sure. Sam seems like he's in a good place. But now he's dating a jerk. 

Sam is so great. He's a wonderful character. But I don't think I can recommend this book. 3/5 stars

Lines of note:

Because there’s something about fast food chicken places that mean you have to have a corn on the cob, just like you have to have candy canes at Christmas. (location 566)

Are there a lot of fast food chicken places that serve corn on the cob? Is this a UK-specific thing about fast food chicken places? Or is it common in the US, too?  KFC just has whole kernel corn, right? Not on the cob? Tell me, gurus of fast food chicken!!

I’m sure there is, somewhere in the world, a man who drives a BMW and is not a bellend but I’ve not met him. (location 857)

I like that BMW drivers are detested around the world.

When I first brought him [Sam's cat, Gollum] home, he was so traumatised he lived behind the washing machine for three days. (location 1281)

When I was young, our first cat was Penny the Cat, a mean tuxedoed lady who had been so abused before she lived with us that she spent weeks (months?) hiding behind the toilet - the only bathroom in the house - and hissing at me when I had to use it. I was not a fan of Penny the Cat. (Do you want to see a photo of Penny?  Go to this post on Elisabeth's site where I guest posted.)

There’s woodpeckers here, apparently, and Dartford warblers. Not that I’d know a Dartford warbler if I fell over one while it was warbling its distinctive warble of I’m from Dartford. (location 1352)

Dartford warblers are small birds with tails longer than other warblers. Also, very cute.

I don’t want make too many assumptions, because everyone’s family is different, but if I’d suggested to my mam and dad that we get new Christmas decorations, they’d have taken it about as well as if I’d suggested we eat Santa Claus. (location 2451)

Eat Santa Claus!! I snorted.

Tonight, though, he’s actually talking about a group of people with a shared goal, of which I am a part. Even if the goal in question is to fit a twenty-foot Christmas tree into a ten-foot room like we’re on Taskmaster. (location 2884)

A Taskmaster sighting in the wild!! If you still haven't watched Taskmaster, what are you waiting for?! Start here. 

“How many eggs?” asks Uncle Johnny. 
“Two,” I say. From the look of him it’s the lowest answer he’ll accept. 
“Do him three,” Wendy insists. “He’s a growing boy.”
“I’m not sure I am,” I tell her. (location 4757)

The scenes with Jonathan's family are delightful.  

Thing I looked up:

melomakarona (location 3459) - Greek honey cookies traditionally served around Christmastime

Hat mentions (why hats?):

I pull a bit ahead later on with a purple glass fig that has much more of a genital vibe than I’d personally want on a family holiday, and he counters with a tiny fluffy guinea pig in a Santa hat that I actually think looks quite sweet. (location 3266)

And he pulls out the little guinea pig in the Santa hat. (location 4516)

The then just sort of hangs there between us like a guinea pig in a Santa hat. (location 5561)

Stealing by Margaret Verble

Hey, everyone. I'm getting better at my recordkeeping. I know that Lisa recommended this book to me! I listened to Stealing by Margaret Verble as an audiobook. It was narrated by DeLanna Studi. 

In this book, we are reading Kit Crockett's diary entries as she recounts how she lived with her father after her mother died, developed a friendship with a neighbor woman named Bella, and eventually was sent to a residential boarding school after a terrible incident happens. At her foster home and at the residential boarding school, Kit is horribly abused, physically, emotionally, and sexually. 

One of the first reviews on Goodreads says that the descriptions of sexual violence were more than the reader could take and while I don't disbelieve that reader, I also feel like this was nothing compared to Hamnet. Regardless, do take care if you are a sensitive reader. 

I thought this was really good. The novel does an exceptional job of exposing the hypocrisy of taking a child from a loving family and putting her in a position to be unconscionably abused. It shows the heartbreaking reality of residential boarding schools and doesn't shy away from putting the blame of their consequences directly on those responsible (white people, some of whom may well have been well-meaning, but many of whom were most definitely not). 

I thought the ending was puzzling, to be honest. If you don't mind an ambiguous ending with lots of unanswered questions, I'm sure you'll find this to be a fabulous read. If that's the sort thing you might knock off a star in your review because it's annoying, well, just be forewarned. 4/5 stars

Line of note:

...I wasn't used to being around a lot of laughter and it made me feel good. There's just so much grief a person can take. (timestamp 1:11:04)

When my late MIL was dying, I can remember some drives home when my husband and I were nearly hysterical. It was just another way of releasing the tension. 

Hat mentions:

She also had on a hat with a little net on it. (timestamp 52:38)

10.10 Judgment - Dear Ijeawele by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the tenth day of the month is "Judgment." I have personally decided that I will pass judgment on a book on the tenth day of each month.

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Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie should be a mandatory read for everyone. It's short! 63 tiny pages! It's powerful! I wanted to underline every sentence! It's important!

Adichie's friend Ijeawele asks Adichie for advice on how to raise a feminist on the occasion of Ijeawele's daughter's birth. Adichie complies, uncomfortably at first, but by the end of the book she's giving direct advice about what's important.  

The back of the book cover

I didn't agree with everything Adichie wrote, but I do think it's important for all of us to think about how we talk to and around children. I think we should think about what our values are and how we pass those on. I think we should listen to people who have led lives differently from our own. I think this is a powerful manifesto and I'm going to start giving it to everyone I know who has a baby, tucked into their welcome baby present right along with a rattle and burp cloths.

5/5 stars

Lines of note:

Share child care equally. "Equally" of course depends on you both, and you will have to work it out, paying equal attention to each person's needs. It does not have to mean a literal fifty-fifty or a day-by-day score-keeping, but you'll know when the child-care work is equally shared. You'll know by your lack of resentment. Because when there is true equality, resentment does not exist. (page 12)

I think this is true of all types of work in a relationship from child-care to housework to paid work. 

Of course I am angry. I am angry about racism. I am angry about sexism. But I recently came to the realization that I am angrier about sexism than I am about racism.

Because in my anger about sexism, I often feel lonely. Because I love, and live among, many people who easily acknowledge race injustice but not gender injustice. (page 22-23)

Ah, yes. Denial is real and has painful consequences. 

...what you say to your child matters. It teaches her what she should value. (page 26)

So much pressure on parents and people who are around children, but they are listening to everything and every word matters.

Hat mentions:

None

Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley

Last year, I read Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley and I loved it. So when one of my friends told me that Boulley had a new book out called Warrior Girl Unearthed, I was so excited. Let's dive in.

Perry Firekeeper-Birch was eager for a summer with nothing to do, but she got into a car accident and has to spend the summer working to pay for the repairs. At first Perry is bored with her work, but soon she learns that there are remains of her ancestors and their funerary objects stored in museum archives and they should legally be returned to her people. 

Look, I didn't love this book as much as I did Firekeeper's Daughter. This one feels like YA, it feels like morality is just dripping off the page, and it has a main character who never really faces consequences* for her actions. However, the topic is important and I found the setting to be really wonderful. 

3.5/5 stars

*I mean, yes, she does and I don't mean to belittle the trauma she suffers in the last part of the book, but even that she manages to weasel her way out of when, in real life, she would not. That's great. This is fiction. It just felt off and like that would not happen in non-YA fiction.

***************

Line of note:
"Mean mad or disappointed mad or annoyed mad or --"
"Holaay. How many types of mad do you know?" I ask. (page 122)

This made me laugh and reminded me of the scene when Hermione said Ron had the emotional range of a teaspoon.

Appearances of the word hat:

All that's missing is his top hat and cane. (page 49)

"I'm a white hat," he clarifies. "I put my infiltration skills to work for the greater good."

"Are black hats the bad hackers?" I click my seat belt. "Don't you think those terms are racist? White, good; black, bad?" (page 92)

Each team will draw a room assignment from a hat and start at the same time. (page 120)

Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley

Firekeeper's Daughter is Angeline Boulley's debut novel. It's also the 2022 Printz Award winner and it did not disappoint. 

Daunis is a biracial teenager whose birth was a scandal. She doesn't fit in with her white family and since her father's name isn't listed on her birth certificate, she's not enrolled with her indigenous tribe. Daunis does her best, though, muddling through and trying to keep her family together after a series of tragedies. But then she witnesses a murder and soon she's involved in an investigation that could change the entire course of her community.

The Good: I just really liked how Boulley interweaved different aspects of tribal living into day to day life, from the prayers Daunis says before she runs to the pinch of herbs she sacrifices to the river when she's crossing the ferry. I liked how Daunis is clearly a non-native speaker of the language, but she peppers her words with words taken from her indigenous roots. I also liked the Michigan references, because I grew up there and it was fun to hear about Ann Arbor as the "big city" and how people mispronounce Sault Ste. Marie. 

The Great: The writing was riveting. I was really propelled by the writing in this book. Boulley is a bureaucrat (former Director of the Office of Indian Education) and I was a little surprised at how lyrical the prose was here. 

Also, I just loved that Daunis was so competent.  She was smart and used it to her advantage. However, she was also just a regular teenager, making stupid decisions teenagers make and then having to face dire consequences for those decisions. I also really thought Boulley was very brave to tackle so many difficult topics for indigenous peoples - drug and alcohol abuse, tribal enrollment, violence against women, and intergenerational trauma -  but I also felt like it was naturally synthesized into the plot and not just hammered home to make it some sort of morality tale.

The Glorious: I gather that the ending is polarizing. I loved it. I don't want to spoil anything, but the author went in an unexpected direction and I thought it was gorgeously done.

This is easy to read in one way because it's sort of crime thriller, propulsive, turn the page, you have to get to the next chapter kind of book. But it does tackle a lot of challenging issues and, in that way, might be a little harder to read than your average YA thriller.  Regardless, I highly recommend this and if you get a chance to read it, you won't regret it.

5/5 stars

Lines of note:

Part of me wants to be in bed with my cat, Herri, whose purrs are the opposite of an alarm clock.  (page 6)

This is me every moment of every day.  I'd almost always rather be on the couch with my cat.

"My girl, some boats are for the river and some are for the ocean."
I think Granny June is right. I just don't know which one I am. (page 14)

I really liked how Boulley wrote this so that you really feel how torn Daunis is between worlds.

When someone dies, everything about them becomes past tense. Except for the grief. Grief stays in the present. (page 24)

And so it is.

"Even inaction is a powerful choice." (page 394)

This line resonates hard right now with the cavalcade of terrible SCOTUS decisions coming down and watching democracy crumble right personal liberty at a time.

Curiosity killed the cat. Doubt tore her to pieces. (page 396)

Preach.

When the Reckoning Comes by LaTanya McQueen

When the Reckoning Comes is LaTanya McQueen's debut novel.  Mira, Jesse, and Celine were best friends in a segregated town. They were all poor, but Celine's advantage was that she was white and Mira's advantage was that she was smart. After an incident left Jesse outcast in town, Mira went away to college and never returned until Celine invited her to her wedding. The wedding is to be held at a renovated plantation and the mood is somber and tense from the very beginning.

This is really a novel examining the haunting history that surrounds most of land in the United States (and elsewhere, really).  Sure, there's a gripping thriller happening, but just when you've settled into the creepiness of the tale, McQueen includes a flashback to what the lives were like of the slaves on the plantation where the contemporary action is taking place. Those flashbacks jolt you back into an awareness that not all is right.  

McQueen did such an excellent job of setting the mood. It was crazy that I felt dread from the first scene when Mira is just grading papers at her desk.  And that tension never let up. 

But the characters of Celine and Jesse were just not well-developed enough for me to give an enthusiastic endorsement of the novel. It's short, just over 200 pages, and I actually think that McQueen could have added more pages to build on the story and character aspects of the novel and it would have been an excellent book. As is, it's an exciting debut and I'm excited for what she does next. 3.5/5 stars

Lines of note:

What she'd tried to forget had always been there, this piece of her past, this history. Mira had tried, had spent a decade trying, but a person can't run away from who they are. Soon enough, what's been buried will rear itself again. (page 74)

I think this is so interesting. Our pasts shape us in ways that just can't be undone.

"Yet because of them you're having your wedding here. At a plantation, Celine"

"It hasn't been a plantation for over a hundred years, and it's not like my family owned slaves."

"What about its history? The suffering that built it. That's never forgotten. Isn't it always there?" (page 103)

This is the heart of it, isn't it? A good reminder that places like this should not be a place for celebratory occasions. 

"The building is still there but like a lot of things in town, there's only the ghost of what it was." (page 134)

When I drive through my hometown, the buildings just seem so sad and depleted. The population dwindles with each census and what was once a booming lumber town is now just a place people speed through to get somewhere else. 

Accidentally Engaged by Farah Heron

Accidentally Engaged by Farah Heron is a reality show cooking competition romantic comedy.  Let's see how it shook out for me. 

Reena is in a rough state. She's been laid off for the third time, she has had a series of boyfriends and no relationships that last, but the last straw is when she learns that her parents are trying to arrange a marriage for her with the son of her father's business partner. It doesn't hurt that Nadim is attractive and has helped her out with an entry in a cooking competition, but she really doesn't want to just fall in line with what her parents want. She loves cooking and baking and wants to win this competition, but she and Nadim are going to have to pretend to be a couple to continue on.

Interesting characters: Hm. I am torn. On one hand, Reena and Nadim seem like absolutely normal twentysomethings going about their lives, dealing with work and family stress, and that's fine. But I sort of think that the Muslim representation here is problematic. We have pre-marital sex, drinking alcohol, gambling, and still we're expected to believe these are families in high standing in the Muslim community? Maybe that's right. But if I were a Muslim who was pretty stringent and I was looking for a romance novel that showed me that representation, this book would not do. 

Maybe it's fine that this book shares more about the culture of food and expectations of parents in MENA communities. But I think there are readers out there who were sorely disappointed and I get it. I am still on the lookout for a decent romance novel about practicing Muslims.  

Believable conflict: JUST TALK TO EACH OTHER FOR FUCK'S SAKE. I just...I can't handle it. It's not even miscommunication - it's just complete avoidance of huge topics, including family and WHAT YOU DID BEFORE YOU MOVED TO THIS COUNTRY. 

(Sidenote: I loved Toronto as a setting and wish Heron had done more with it.)

Emotional tension: I mean, they basically fell into bed right away, so there wasn't a lot of lead up. Since they refused to actually have a meaningful conversation, I thought the tension was inflated, but not for a good reason. 

Happily ever after: I was a tiny bit surprised by the end, to be honest. That's really hard to do in a romance novel, so good on Heron for that.  

There's a lot to like about this book. There's a character who has an interesting hobby (cooking/baking) and that actually comes through. The writing is easy, breezy and just what I want in a romance novel. Unfortunately for me, the bad outweighs the good in this one and I can't really recommend it. 

2.5/5 stars

Lines of notes:

Reena had endured much in her thirty-one years on the planet. As a short, middle-born, socially awkward visible minority, she'd had birthdays forgotten, been bullied at school, been dumped on the subway, and even once had an ex-boyfriend post a picture of her sated, after-sex face on social media - with a self-congratulating caption. (page 84)

This is not great writing. Just writing this out in a list form without showing any of these things just didn't work for me.

But if Reena was good at anything, it was ignoring the voices in her head that told her the path she was on was covered with snakes that would bite her in the ass one day. (page 239)

But then this writing shows up and it's so wonderful and precise.  Heron is a contradiction.

Things I looked up:

Boulangerie (page 3) - Bakery.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot #1) by Becky Chambers

If you are an astute reader of this here web log, you know that I ADORE the Wayfarers series from Becky Chambers. Go ahead and click that link and read my gushing reviews of those books. I actually asked for set of the physical books for my birthday last year and I rarely get hard copies of books these days. So, I'm pretty much going to read anything Becky Chambers writes and I'm going to do it gleefully. I have been on the waitlist for A Psalm for the Wild-Built for approximately (checks Libby app) about six months ago and just waited and waited.

Generations ago, Panga's robots developed self-awareness and wandered into the wilderness with no contact from humans. Humans continued to live their lives without robots. We start by meeting Sibling Dex, a monk who is dissatisfied with their life in the city. They want to hear crickets and see blue sky. So they embark to become a tea monk, flitting from village to village on their bicycle driven cart, providing comfort, advice, and peace to others. But they remains dissatisfied until one day they veer off their normal path and run into Splendid Speckled Mosscap, a robot who has been tasked with making the first contact with humans in living memory.  

What ensues is...

a very boring book. 

I'm sorry, Becky Chambers. I will definitely read the second book in this duology, but this was such a snooze. It just felt like a freshman philosophy lecture about the purpose of humanity and what existence is really about and I was not here for it. 

I liked the worldbuilding. I liked Dex and Mosscap. I loved what Dex saw when he was cycling around. I liked hearing about how the robots lived and governed themselves. I liked so much of this, but I constantly found myself falling asleep and having to flip back pages to reread what I had missed. I really love how Chambers makes science fiction that deals with serious topics so optimistic. I'm still fangirling, I promise. 

So.  Huh. I feel like I should apologize to Becky Chambers. I'm sorry, it's me, not you. Maybe I'll revisit this book at a different place in my life and love it. But for now, here's your perfectly average rating.

3/5 stars

Lines of note:

Nobody in the world knows where I am right now, they thought, and the notion of that filled them with bubbling excitement. (location 555)

It's been so long since I've had that feeling. It sounds very nice. (Man, to be a young 20something again. It was lonely at times, but also very free.)

"Whereas I ... I like everything. Everything is interesting. I know about a lot of things, but only a little in each regard." Mosscap's posture changed at this. They hunched a bit, lowered their gaze. "It's not a very studious way to be." (location 938)

This is how I feel in life. I am an expert on nothing, but I know a little about a lot and it's sort of embarrassing. Everyone else has an expertise, and other than Taskmaster and the care and feeding of Hannah the Dog, I really am a dilettante. It is embarrassing, particularly when your social circle is mostly academics who are just so passionate about what they do. 

It is difficult for anyone born and raised in human infrastructure to truly internalize the fact that your view of the world is backward. Even if you fully know that you live in a natural world that existed before you and will continue long after, even if you know that the wilderness is the default state of things, and that nature is not something that only happens in carefully curated enclaves between towns, something that pops up in empty spaces if you ignore them for a while, even if you spend your whole life believing yourself to be deeply in touch with the ebb and flow, the cycle, the ecosystem as it actually is, you will still have trouble picture an untouched world. You will still struggle to understand that human constructs are carved out and overlaid, that these are the places that are the in-between, not the other way around. (location 1343)

I can't remember where I heard/read this little anecdote, but there's a story about how when the Lewis and Clark expedition made its way across what is now the United States, they were shocked. It was as if someone had cleared a path for them. There would be thigh high prairie grasses and thickets of forest, but somehow, there was always a way for them to get through it. Of course there were, since indigenous people of North America had cleared it. 

I sometimes try to picture in my head what the Wisconsin prairie looked like before settlers came. What did the native grassland look like? How many birds flocked in the sky? Were there huge flocks of deer everywhere? What was the insect situation like? It's literally impossible for me to imagine because I am a human who was born and raised with human infrastructure as the very basic core of my life. 

Blank Spaces by Cass Lennox

Blank Spaces by Cass Lennox is the first novel in the four novel Toronto Connections series. Lennox is an author who writes glorious queer romance novels and can be depended on for a solid happily ever after.

In this book, we're introduced to Vaughn, a art gallery clerk who paints on the side and can only afford his deluxe apartment and his low wage job because he comes from family money. He has friends, a loving family, but he struggles with intimate relationships and so he's decided to just avoid that part of life. There's a theft at the art gallery where Vaughn works and that's when he meets Jonah, a playboy insurance investigator. Jonah is Vaughn's opposite in that he's an orphan who grew up in foster care, doesn't have a ton of money, and is confident in his sexuality. And yet there's an attraction...

Interesting characters:

Vaughn represents someone that I haven't really read any other types of books about. He's asexual and uncomfortable with some sexual contact (not all - he likes to kiss and cuddle in some circumstances). Again, just because I haven't personally read another book with a character like this doesn't mean those books aren't out there, but I thought it was brave of Lennox to both show asexual representation and do so in a romance novel. Now, there absolutely are chaste romance novels out there, but Lennox does not write closed door books, so it was absolutely interesting to see Lennox write scenes with these restrictions. And once Vaughn and Jonah have an honest conversation about Vaughn's asexuality, the scenes in which they talk about consent and boundaries are important to have in the book and were great models for other people to use.

Jonah was not as interesting a character to me. He was quite comfortable in his sexuality, but seemed to be using sex as an outlet to deal with his emotional distress over his complicated family history. I just wanted him to deal with his shit, rather than take it out on Vaughn all the time, but that probably says more about me than it says about him. I think it was just that I'd never read anyone like Vaughn before, but I've definitely seen characters similar to Jonah before. 

So, yes, there were interesting characters and it was an interesting pair of characters to center a romantic story around.

Believable conflict:

I think this was the part of the book that was simply fascinating to me. How was Lennox going to give a HEA to two people with such polar opposite sex drives?  This is a great conflict to center a romance novel around. This is not the "fault" of either character - they're just different people with different sexual desires - and yet they still have feelings for one another.  Very clever plotting on the part of Lennox, I think.

Emotional tension:

So, there's the tension between the two main leads because of their mismatched sex drives, but there's also an interesting tension because Jonah is investigating the art gallery where Vaughn works in a mini-mystery subplot. Vaughn could potentially be a suspect for the thefts from the gallery because he keeps discovering the thefts.  There's a lot here. I didn't necessary think that the mystery subplot was that interesting, but it did lead to some interesting scenes between the two of them.

Happily ever after:

I think this is the most controversial part of the book. I don't know how many asexual people would feel about the ending. Some of the Goodreads reviews seem to think it makes Vaughn seem like a pushover and the balance of power in the relationship is unequal*. Others seem to think it's the representation that matters and the ending didn't really matter to them. I don't know. There are three other books in the series and it would be interesting to see how much these two grow as a couple throughout the series because the ending wasn't entirely satisfying to me.  But, then, I'm not asexual, so putting my expectations of what "happy" looks like onto other people isn't really fair, is it?  I guess what I'm trying to say here is that it wouldn't be happily ever after for me, but I'm not them. It's similar, to my way of thinking, to how frustrating I find endings centered around pregnancies and babies, which wouldn't be something I'd celebrate, but I'm not them.  

There is so much to learn about other human beings, isn't there?

*As a matter of fact, the very scene I wrote about earlier about how it's the right way to ask for consent and boundaries, someone in the Goodreads comments wrote that it was immediately then that Jonah started asking Vaughn to push his boundaries.  There's just so much contradiction in how people interpret the same content.  

Lines of note:

Vaughn was like a lobster - dressed up and on a roll. He was giddiness and joy, words spilling out of him like he couldn't hold them in. This guy really loves this stuff. Wow. Jonah almost felt bad he didn't get what the hell Vaughn was saying. (page 71)

I really love when you get to see people talking/performing about things they are really interested in, even if I don't understand what the hell they're going on about.

It was confusing to feel horny and intellectually inadequate. (page 72)

Ha ha. This is my whole life. Being married to a phenomenally smart person can be humbling.

He did realize he'd just insulted Vaughn's career choice, right? And that he was so absolutely wrong it was laughable? Art was basic. Art was fundamental. Art predated writing. (page 74)

Art is so important. It's frustrating when people don't understand how very essential art is to the human condition.

Things I looked up:

Did art predate writing? (page 74) - Yes, for sure. Some linguists hypothesize that cave art led human language. 

Benefits Supervisor Sleeping is a 1995 oil on canvas painting by Lucian Freud depicting an obese, naked woman lying on a couch. The painting once held the world record for the highest price paid for a painting by a living artist when it was sold for $33.5 million in May 2008. (the painting was mentioned on page 164)

Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, Lucian Freud, 1995.

Good book. I'm not sold on the ending, but I'll definitely read more of this author. 4/5 stars

Well-Read Black Girl edited by Glory Edim

I write a lot. I write for my job - endless lectures, syllabuses, assignments in which the directions have to be crystal clear, emails to students, co-workers, and administrators, I write in a daily journal every night, and I write in this blog space that makes it seem like it's 2007 all over again. I write primarily for communication at my job. I write primarily as a record of my own life in my journal. I write here mostly to keep track of the books I read and how proud I am of my dog. 

But I'm not a writer. I don't feel like part of me is missing when I accidentally forget to write in my journal at night. I don't go around thinking original thoughts that I just have to have written down.  Words don't eke out of my fingertips onto the page, as if a magical fairy has entered my body.

No, I'm a reader.  I read the way other people watch television. I don't just sit down on the couch and randomly flip on the television. I sit down on the couch and reach for my book (and, if I can, the cat - it's so much cozier to read when you have a cat on your legs, isn't it?).  I think about "my" books all the time. I talk about them all the time.

When I first looked at Well-Read Black Girl, I assumed that this would be like eating my vegetables. I'd read about how this collection of black female authors struggled as children and I'd get my dose of white guilt and that would be that. But I was so wrong. Because these aren't the stories of systematic oppression and racism, these are stories about readers.  Sure, some of these women suffered serious injustices and they write about those injustices, but they write about them in the service of telling you how they played a role in the development of their identities as readers.  So even though I was a white girl growing up in a rural area in the northern United States, I felt seen in this book. Their stories weren't my story, of course, but their stories were stories of characters who resonated (one of them cited Francie in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and I squealed so loudly my husband and the dog came to check on me), of places that spoke to them, and of being able to, if only for those hours while reading the pages, visit places more adventurous, safer, or more magical than the world in which you lived.

I read these books and learned so much about the importance of Toni Morrison and James Baldwin within black culture. I learned how much harder it is to be a black nerd than a white nerd (the scant list of sci-fi/fantasy books by black women authors was sad). I learned that we are all united in the hunt for that one book that leaves that lasting impression. 

The book also has a list of all the books mentioned in the book. I'm going to use that list as a rough sort of Introduction into Black Literature for myself over the coming books. So don't be surprised if all of a sudden I'm reading Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison and starting to spout off about how I just don't have time to read all these amazing books!