books i read in march

the rosie effect by graeme simsion -

a sequel to the rosie project, this book had me frequently chuckling. don tillman is now married and must adjust his regimented lifestyle to include his wife, rosie. but when rosie reveals she is pregnant poor don tillman's world turns upside down!

a cute, light-hearted book that i think anyone can relate to, especially if you've had one plan in mind and life dealt you a different one. full disclosure: i did find myself skimming quite a bit.

the girl on the train by paula hawkins -

a thriller - but not a scary one - about a woman who takes the train into london each morning and back home each evening. the story unfolds to slowly reveal more about the main character, rachel watson, and why she habitually rides the train.

a good page-turner with a redemptive ending.

all the light we cannot see by anthony doerr -

the story of two teens, a french girl and a german boy, who live through world war two. the girl, who is blind, is forced from her home in paris to take shelter in the seaside town of saint-malo, france. the boy is forced to join hitler's regime, moving up through the ranks because of his intelligence and skill. the two survive the war, meet, and discover a long-held connection between them.

this was a very beautiful, heart-wrenching, heroic, worthwhile read. i found the book interesting from a historical perspective too.

if i built a house by chris van dusen -

one of my favorite children's author/illustrators, chris van dusen had me (and the boys!) captivated once again with his most recent story book. although i believe it was published in 2012, this was the first time i'd found it at the library so promptly checked it out. the boys and i read this every night for two weeks.

the life-changing magic of tidying up by marie condo - 

a book about decluttering and organizing your house and, thus, creating the life you want for yourself, based on japanese principles. i read this yesterday in less than one hour. while i don't agree with everything she suggests (taking the shampoo, conditioner, body wash, etc out of the shower, drying off the bottles, then putting them away in the cupboard EACH time you shower seems ridiculous to me), i did find some nuggets of truth.

a super fast read that does provide inspiration to get your home in order.

books i read in february

the sea of tranquility by katja millay - 

i loved this book so much! while the prose wasn't as amazing as astonish me (my fave book in january), the plot was. 

the opening paragragh: "i hate my left hand. i hate to look at it. i hate it when it stutters and trembles and reminds me that my identity is gone. but i look at it anyway, because it also reminds me that i'm going to find the boy who took everything from me. i'm going to kill the boy who killed me, and when i kill him, i'm going to do it with my left hand."

this is the story of a young girl who suffered terrible tragedy and is desperately struggling to recover from it. she meets a young boy who, for much different reasons, is also lost and alone. they are drawn to each other and become the best of friends, offering each other solace and security. as their relationship grows their individual stories are revealed, hers more slowly than his, and they must deal with the circumstances of those discoveries. 

one thing i find frustrating, not just with this book but with many novels about teenage love - the characters are just 17 years old yet they live the lifestyle of an adult and have aged wisdom about it all. i'll concede that in real life young people who endure calamity or loss could surely grow up more quickly or act more mature than their peers but i find fictional stories to take this concept a bit too far. with this particular book, even though i sometimes found myself thinking these are supposed to be teenagers?, ultimately i just didn't care. i fell in love with the characters and became completely invested in their story. 

and, heck, mature teenage love stories have been around since romeo and juliet...so i guess i should just get over myself. 

pastrix: the cranky beautiful faith of a sinner and saint by nadia bolz-weber - 

this memoir by female pastor and founder of the house for all sinners and saints, a lutheran church in downtown denver had me hooked. pastor nadia, a former comedian, addict and christianity cynic felt a calling to lead "her people", those who don't fit into the typical starched and pressed mold of suburban mega-churches. this book is nadia's personal story of faith - how she came to it, how she stumbled into church leadership and how she constantly finds jesus in the people and places from which christians often turn away. 

nadia recounts the moment she knew she was supposed to be a pastor. as the most religious among her friends she was asked to lead a funeral service for a comedian who took his own life. she stood on stage at comedy works in denver and looked out at those gathered in mourning. she wrote, "in that underground room filled with the smell of stale beer and bad jokes, i looked around and saw more pain and questions and loss than anyone, including myself, knew what to do with. and i saw god" (page 9).

i dog-earred so many pages; marking specific passages that touched my heart. here are a few:

from page 198, "the greatest spiritual practice isn't yoga or praying the hours or living in intentional poverty, although these are beautiful in their own way. the greatest spiritual practice is just showing up. showing up, to me, means being present to what is real, what is actually happening."

from page 172, this made me laugh out loud because this is so exactly me, "pretending to feel a way other than how i actually feel is not a gift god gave me. i can pull it off for short periods of time when needed, but the effort is exhausting." 

from page 135, talking about the grace of god, "god's ability to love us is always greater than our ability to make ourselves worthy of [love]."

from page 86, "god is not distant at the cross and god is not distant in the grief of the newly motherless at the hospital; but instead, god is there in the messy mascara-streaked middle of it, feeling as shitty as the rest of us. there simply in no knowable answer to the question of why there is suffering. but there is meaning. and for me that meaning ended up being related to jesus - emmanuel - which means "god with us". we want to go to god for answers but sometimes what we get is god's presence."

i was inspired by this book. like, the kind of inspired that made me want to buy hundreds of copies and gift it to everyone i know. while some of my friends and family might be offended by nadia's writing (she is as far from conservative christianity as one can get), i honestly believe if all christians believed the way nadia believes, this world would be a better place. basically, her belief is that we can come to god just as we are. no need to wear a mask at church or change our personality in order to fit in. god loves us all. each and every one. and we can all love god. the end.

the paying guests by sarah waters

a story set in 1920's london. a tale of a once precocious daughter who was left to care for her mother and their large house after losing her two brothers in the first world war and her father not long after. accustomed to middle class luxuries, after his death it was revealed her father had made poor financial choices, placing miss frances wray and her mother in rather dreary circumstances. they had to let go of their household servants, learn how to do (and keep up with) the daily chores themselves, and take in tenants in order to make ends meet. mr. and mrs. barber, the young couple who move in upstairs, are lively and mysterious. frances is both drawn to them and wary.

the inside book flap calls the paying guests "a love story, a tension-filled crime story, and a beautifully atmospheric portrait of a fascinating time and place".

i agree. 

books i read in january

the secret place by tana french - 

the secret place is a crime novel about four teenagers, the closest of friends, who attend st. kilda’s, an elite all-girls boarding school in dublin, ireland. a young man from the neighboring all-boys school was found dead on st. kilda's lawn nearly one year ago and the mystery of his murder has yet to be solved. one of the friends finds an anonymous note claiming to know details about the murder. she takes the card to a detective with whom she is familiar and that gets the ball on a going-nowhere investigation rolling again. 

i enjoyed reading to find out who knew what, who did what…all in all, a good murder mystery. there was a meta-physical aspect (think turning a light blub off with your mind) to the four girls’ relationship that i didn’t really understand. i think the book would have been just fine without it. as one who has been to and loved ireland, one of my favorite things about this book was reading the typically irish dialogue.

astonish me by maggie shipstead - 

this was my favorite of the bunch. it's one of the best books i've read in a long time. the writing was just so beautiful! here's a passage about something as ordinary as fetching and reading the mail (from page 90): 

“Elaine has the mailbox key and so is the one to collect the mail and so notices the new letters coming for Joan. They are exotic interlopers among ordinary white envelopes from Jacob and terse postcards from Joans’s mother: thick paper, odd sizes, European stamps, the address written with foreign flourishes by different hands. Elaine leaves the letters on the kitchen table. Joan takes them without comment and retreats behind the Indian cotton curtain that shields her bed. there is the sound of tearing, the rattle of paper, and then silence."

had i been telling the story i'm sure to have written something like "elaine was the roommate with the chore of checking the mail. she began to notice some strange letters arriving for joan and wondered what they were all about."

see the difference?

hahahahaha! 

anyway...

astonish me is a story about ballet, told through the life of joan. she is a professional ballerina but not a principal dancer; joan will forever be stuck in the core. when she finds herself pregnant she chooses to leave behind her first love, the ballet, and settle down into normal family life. as her son grows it becomes clear he is a gifted dancer and joan is brought back to the ballet, meshing together the two very different worlds she holds so dear.

i loved the plot, i loved the ending, i loved the writing. i just loved it all.

arranged by catherine mckenzie - 

this was a quick, easy, chick lit book. the story was typical - girl continually chooses the wrong boy, girl signs up for a dating service in hopes of meeting the right boy, girl discovers the dating service is really an arranged marriage service (what? crazy!) and decides to go for it anyway. girl finally meets the right boy. but, as the cover states, will it be happily ever after?

orange is the new black by piper kerman - 

a memoir by a WASPy new yorker who made the poor choice to knowingly assist a cartel by carrying drug money through airport customs. ten years and a whole new life later she faces the consequence of that act - 15 months in federal prison. this is the story of her time served. 

i was definitely interested to read about her experiences behind bars. what i found most intriguing were the friendships she cultivated there and her feelings that she was a better person for having met and done time with women who society typically tosses aside. also, i found it cool that the author now volunteers and lobbies to improve the broken prison system.

the book is very mild and tame compared to the netflix show of the same name, for which i was thankful. if you are curious about what it's like to be in prison (i think most of us are) this is a good read. 

the andy cohen diaries by andy cohen - 

i'm currently reading this; about one quarter of the way through. so far i'm just kinda meh about it and considering not finishing. usually i like celebrity gossip behind-the-scenes things (andy cohen is an executive producer for the bravo network which airs the real housewives series; has many celebrity friends) so i'm surprised this hasn't peaked my interest.

we are not ourselves by matthew thomas - a book review

this fictitious epic spans sixty years, telling the life story of eileen tumulty.

in 1951 we find nine-year eileen, the daughter of irish immigrants now living in queens. the book walks us through eileen's childhood marred by her mother's alcoholism, the young adult years marked by her fierce ambition and determination to escape her station and finally an adulthood filled with a constant unsettledness, marriage, difficulty getting pregnant and, most profoundly, the harsh realities of her husband's early on-set alzheimer's disease.

this is not a happy book but it is an honest depiction of one woman's life. there are definitely joyful moments but the hard times seem to outnumber the good. i found the trials thrust upon eileen to be depressing but the dignity with which she walked through them was inspiring. there's a quote in the book, "it was time now to be smart - smart and strong. she wondered whether she'd ever have a chance to be foolish and weak" (page 513). this is eileen's essence; she always had to tend to the needs of others.

on the other hand there were times when eileen was foolish. there is a sentence on page 417 that describes eileen's college-age son, connell. it says, "the problem was, he didn't know how to be anybody but himself, and he wasn't sure what that self was yet, so he studied other people for traits to grab and fashion a personality out of." i found this sentence to be exactly true for myself at the same age. isn't that what most of us do to some extent in our twenties?

that sentence also defines eileen, except she was almost unforgivingly slow in discovering who she was so that even in her adult years she was still on a quest to be someone other than herself. the way she went about that was to have more - a bigger house, a nicer neighborhood, a better car, a mink coat. her inability to be content irritated me. she possessed such great qualities - a loyalty to her frail husband, a tireless work ethic, she was good friend - but deep down inside she never felt good enough. i had sympathy for her; she's had to deal with a lot in her life.

i guess that's a good recommendation for this book, right?

the author created a character and wrote her story beautifully so as to illicit a range of my emotions (sympathies, sadness, anger) even though i didn't always like her as a person. i'd say that's what good writing is supposed to do and matthew thomas has done it well.

without revealing too much, there is a poignant scene at the end of the book where, at age 59 (if i've done my math correctly) eileen finally "gets it". this realization unfolds in such a lovely way. i found myself, for her sake, wishing it had happened sooner. in this one scene, with just one sentence, eileen redeems herself in my eyes and i was able to walk away from her story feeling hopeful.

but better late than never.