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Friday Fun! (May: Cooking, Fitness, Writing, Spring Cleaning, and Reading Of Course!)
Spring means I get to read outside in the sun for my lunch break!
Hello my lovely readers!
As previously promised, Friday Fun has now become a monthly check-in on the last Friday on the month to touch base with you guys and help you get to know (or stay in the know on) the blogger behind the reviews (and the novels/novellas/short stories of course).
May was a busy month for me. I attended a conference for medical librarians, which invaded this blog a bit, as I summarized what I learned for both myself and for other librarians. Thanks to that conference, I worked 12 days in a row, so I took off a few days the week after to give myself a nice long weekend. On that long weekend, I did some spring cleaning and got started on sorting through and getting rid of stuff. I usually do this in the spring, but I’m doing it with more vigor this year as my boyfriend and I are planning on moving in together when my lease is up. I’m of course incredibly happy to be moving in with my partner but also nervous! To that end, if any of you want to check out my ebay store, there’s mostly lp’s/records, clothes, and of course, books! This is also why I’ve been reading so many books for my Bottom of the TBR Pile Challenge. Most of my print books are for that challenge, and I’m trying to clear off my shelves.
My vacation also consisted of a lot of cooking. Cooking is one of my favorite hobbies, and I hadn’t had much of a chance to make more complex recipes since I was so busy and exhausted. I made: 4 hour lasagna (I call it that since it takes me…4 hours to make), twice-baked rutabagas, and pumpkin monkey bread muffins. You can see all of the recipes over on my Pinterest Pinned It And Did It board.
This month also brought back the real motorcycle riding season. My boyfriend got me an awesome vegan jacket (for safety) and a helmet (obviously, for safety), and we’ve been going on some nice evening rides together. I’m looking forward to some longer ones out into western Mass later in the season. I also got to dig my bicycle out of winter retirement and go on my first ride of the season. I’m pleased to say my legs stayed in much better shape over this winter season than previous ones, although my seat bones weren’t so happy with the first ride. Ow.
In related work-out news, my gym’s 60 day challenge completed last week. I had signed up for the body composition challenge, which was about body fat percent rather than body weight. Over the course of the two months my body fat percent went down by 1.2%, and I gained 2 pounds of muscle! I was totally shocked by those results, as I mostly just kept on doing my regular fitness routine, where I focus in on being healthy and acquiring more personal bests in weights/cardio/etc… I mostly wanted to see what impact my routine really has on my body, and it clearly is helping me build muscle. I’m very excited about that.
I’m also pleased to report that writing is progressing on the sequel to Ecstatic Evil
In reading news, this month I read 7 books, which is the most I’ve read so far this year in a month. I’m not even going to try to guess as to what made it go up, but I’m glad that it did! I read a wide variety including scifi, urban fantasy, historical fiction, thriller/mystery, and horror, and I read across all reading platforms (ebook, print, and audio). I have yet to write up reviews for 4 of these books, so rest assured, more reviews are coming! For June I intend to continue my focus on predominantly choosing books that appeal to me most in that moment, although I would like to knock out at least one from my Bottom of the TBR Pile Challenge that is unappealing. Additionally, I got an arc for the next book in Madeline Ashby’s artificial intelligence series that is releasing next month, as well as the final book in Jackie Morse Kessler’s series that is also releasing in June, and I’d like to read/review both of those around their release dates.
How were your Mays? What was your favorite read of the month?
Book Review: Superior Women by Alice Adams (Bottom of TBR Pile Challenge)
Summary:
When Californian Megan Greene runs has a steamy affair in the summer of 1943 with a Harvard student visiting the west coast for the summer, she decides to follow him back to the east coast and attend Radcliffe. There she meets four other women, three of whom it might be more accurate to call frenemies than friends. Their lives and destinies repeatedly intertwine throughout the tumultuous changes of mid-20th century America.
Review:
I kept my eye out for this book when it was named as a read-a-like to my 2011 5 star read The Group
The book covers 1940s to 1980s America, yet as the decades move on, less and less is said. The 1940s are expressed clearly with exquisite detail, and I was excited to see what would happen with the 1950s and the 1960s. But the 1950s slowed down, the 1960s were barely touched upon, the 1970s were jumped over almost entirely, and the 1980s were the final chapter of the book. The pacing was all off. I wanted to know these women in as much detail in the latter decades as in the first. Instead of feeling like I knew them more and more intimately, they increasingly became strangers to me.
One thing that I think really works against the book is it is neither an ensemble nor a one character piece. Most of the book is told about Megan, but not all of it. We get snippets of the other characters, meaning perspectives that Megan is not privy to, but not enough to ever truly know them. Since most of the book is about Megan, these bits away from her feel sort of like the story is robbing us of more time with the main character we are interested in. Similarly, reading the blurb and the title, I thought this was going to be an ensemble book, which is not what we get either. I wanted to know much more about two of the characters in particular, Peg, who comes out as a lesbian at some point in the 1960s, and Cathy, who has an affair with a priest. These two stories are wonderfully intriguing, particularly Peg’s since her love of her life is met on a mission to register black voters in the American south, and her love interest is a Latina woman. There is so much meat to that storyline, and yet it is barely touched upon while we instead listen to Megan hem and haw about her job, and Lavinia try to figure out how best to cheat on her husband. The balance of telling this ensemble piece was just entirely off.
Similarly, while big issues and events of mid-20th century America were briefly touched upon, the book never really presented a truly personal look at any of them. For instance, Megan has a friend who is bashed in a drive-by gay bashing but we never get to see Megan emotionally deal with this stark reality. She hears about it, calls him, and moves on. Similarly, as previously mentioned, Peg comes out as a lesbian, and we see a snippet of her depression caused by living the lie of being straight, but we never get to understand the emotions or impetus behind her bravely coming out and living in a visible, inter-racial lesbian relationship in the south. It is disappointing because we get a taste of really encountering these historical issues, but we never actually get to.
In spite of all these problems, I still enjoyed reading the book well enough. The plot, while frustrating, does progress forward in an interesting fashion. The characters, although frequently two-dimensional, are bright and vivid. I came away with the perspective I always have with historical fiction about women’s history. That I am grateful I was born in a different time, because we women have much more opportunities available to us now. So I appreciated my visit to that time period but it was a bit disappointing.
Overall, if you are a huge fan of historical fiction about women’s issues, this is an interesting book to add to your repertoire. It is a good comparison to others that did it differently or better, and it is still fun to visit those time periods. If this type of literature is not generally your cup of tea, though, I would suggest you instead read stronger competitors in that genre, such as The Group
3.5 out of 5 stars
Book Review: Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut
Summary:
In the future when humans have evolved to have much smaller brains and the ability to swim like penguins, a long-lasting ghost from the prior stage of human evolution tells us the tale of how it all went down. How overpopulation of the old-fashioned, big-brained humans, a very bad economy, and a series of unfortunate (fortunate?) events led to an odd group of humans being marooned in the Galapagos, surviving the worldwide fallout, and evolving into the smaller-brained, fish-eating, natural swimmers we have today.
Review:
I picked this up during a kindle sale for incredibly cheap purely for the author. I’d read three other Vonnegut works previously: Cat’s Cradle
There is an incredibly unique writing style to this particular scifi book. So much so that my boyfriend and I wound up researching to find out if, perhaps, Vonnegut wrote this toward the end of his life when he was perchance senile. (It was not, although it was published in the 80s, unlike my three prior Vonnegut reads, which were published in the 60s). Then we wondered if maybe Vonnegut had Asperger’s, although we didn’t bother checking up on that. Why these wonderings? Well, Galapagos
Beyond the whole odd scenario, there’s the fact that if a character will be dead by the end of the chapter, an asterisk appears next to their name. And the names appear a lot. Vonnegut is incredibly fond of naming everyone and everything by their full name every time they appear. He also loves lists. (This is the part that had us wondering about Asperger’s). At first this is grating on the nerves, but with time it comes to feel like the vibe of the world you’re visiting when you open the book.
Similar to the lists and constant naming, there are philosophical asides. Some of these are worked smoothly into the story thanks to a handheld computer device (similar to a smartphone) that pulls up relevant quotes to read to the survivors. Other times, though, they are truly random asides that go so far off the path of the story you’re left wandering around in a cave in the woods instead of on the nice paved road. But then everything comes right back around to the story, and you can’t really be upset about spending some time listening to an old ghost ramble. For example:
What made marriage so difficult back then was yet again that instigator of so many other sorts of heartbreak: the oversize brain. That cumbersome computer could hold so many contradictory opinions on so many different subjects all at once, and switch from one opinion or subject to another one so quickly, that a discussion between a husband and wife under stress could end up like a fight between blindfolded people wearing roller skates. (page 67)
Off-topic? Yes. Quirky? Absolutely. Interesting and fun nonetheless? Totally.
The plot, in spite of being deeply meandering, does develop and actually tell a story. We learn how overpopulation caused disaster and then how a few humans managed to survive on the Galapagos Islands and evolve into the futuristic penguin-like folk. Along the way we have some fun side-trips like an Argentinian military man appearing on a talk show and trying to explain that Argentina really does have submarines, it’s just that once they go underwater they never show up again.
Although I did ultimately appreciate the absurdity and the quirkiness, I must admit that I think it was perhaps a bit overdone. At the very beginning of the book when the list-making and other elements like that were much more prevalent, I was more annoyed and might have stopped reading the book if it wasn’t for the fact that my boyfriend and I wanted to finish the first book we started reading together. It took until about 60% of the way in for the list-making to ease off a bit and the style of the book to really start to work for me. I could easily see a reader being totally lost by some of the more annoying elements of the book, and I wonder what the effect would be if the order was reversed. If the quirks built throughout the book instead of starting that way. Or even if they were just dialed back a bit. I think just that tiny bit of editing would have made me love the book.
Overall, this is a fun piece of absurdist scifi that examines evolution from an over-the-top hypothetical situation. Potential readers should be aware that this book is even more absurdist than Slaughterhouse-Five
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Amazon
Book Review: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (Bottom of TBR Pile Challenge)
Summary:
On the planet Winter, everyone is born intersex, morphing into one sex or the other during their mating cycle. The Ekumen of Known Worlds has sent a representative, Genly Ai, to make first contact. The Known Worlds have discovered that they are all related with the same ancestors who colonized the planets years ago. Genly Ai is at first horrified by the intersex nature of the Gethenians but slowly begins to adapt as he works the political situation on the planet to reach a state of belief in what this one man from his one ship is saying. A state of belief that is necessary to bring this planet into the Ekumen.
Review:
I picked this up when I saw it on sale at a local brick and mortar bookstore for two reasons. I’d never read an Ursula K. Le Guin book, which felt like sacrilege as a young feminist scifi author myself, so she was already on my radar. But why this book? Honestly, I liked the cover. It’s such a pretty cover! So many scifi/fantasy books seem to be set on a hot planet, but this is set on an icy one, and I really liked that. So when I picked it up, I had no idea that it’s considered to be a gender theory scifi. It’s presented as a book about a planet totally lacking in gender. You’ll notice that in my own summary that is not how I present it. Why not? Frankly, a gender-free society is not what I found in this book, which was a big disappointment.
The Gethenians really are not a gender free society, and Le Guin also doesn’t present them that way. It is definitely an intersex society, but it’s intersex people who predominantly present as male/masculine. Now, in case you’ve never had it explained, gender is a construct and sex is your body parts. So you could have an intersex gendered female society or an intersex gender neutral society or an intersex gender male society. The last one is what we have in this book. At first it seems that this might just be Genly Ai’s misperception (the off-world ethnologist). He mentions that he can’t help seeing the Gethenians as male, although sometimes he sees more “feminine features” in them. Perhaps. But when the narration changes from Genly’s viewpoint to a Gethenian one, we get the exact same presentation of everyone as a gendered he. There is no gender neutral pronoun used. There is no perception by the Gethenians of being free of gender. Indeed, instead of seeing themselves as gender-neutral or gender-queer, they see themselves as male until their mating cycle when some of them turn into women for a bit. (They also stay female long enough to be pregnant). Genly points out after a couple of years on this planet that he’s forgotten what it’s like to be around women. Not what it’s like to be around gender constructs. What it’s like to be around women. This is, thus, not a gender neutral society. It’s a society of male-identifying intersex persons who are free of sex-drive most of the time, and who sometimes grow vaginas/breasts for the purpose of reproduction but for nothing else. It is definitely interesting to see an exploration of this type of society, but it’s decidedly not an exploration of a gender-neutral society or really much gender theory at all. It is much more an exploration of the sex drive and a world without female-identifying persons. Now I’m not saying this isn’t a valid exploration or that it’s not well-done. I am saying that the presentation and marketing of this book gets it all wrong, which makes me wonder did Le Guin think she was exploring a gender neutral society and accidentally make an intersex male gendered one instead? Or did the publishers completely misunderstand everything about gender and sexuality and mismarket her book as something it is not? I have no idea, but the potential reader should know that they are not getting an exploration of gender and queerness from a famous scifi/fantasy author when they pick up this book.
Moving beyond the queer theory and mismarketing of it, how is the rest of the book? Well, the imagining of the world is stunning and clearly presented. The idea that planets were all settled by common ancestors and then forgotten about only to be rediscovered later (very Stargate SG1) is subtly introduced into the plot without an info-dump. The world of Winter contains multiple cultures and peoples (something often left out in scifi). The planet even has its own way to mark the passing of time and has evolved to handle the coldness of the planet without Le Guin just copying an Earth culture from a cold area, like the Inuit. No, this is all a unique way of approaching the demands of the climate. It’s also interesting to note that different skin colors are present on Winter, showing that a mixed-race group originally colonized the planet, although their bone structure and height has changed with time and evolution. The world building is so complex that I’m having difficulty explaining just how awesomely complex it is to you, so that should say something I suppose.
The plot is very political. Genly is here on Winter to get the planet as a whole to unify enough to become part of the Ekumen. Thus there is typical political intrigue across a couple of nations and various amounts of striving for power. There’s nothing incredibly unique about this element of the book but it is clearly done and is not completely predictable.
There is an interesting character development where Genly has a friendship that could take a turn for the romantic. How that line is walked could be endlessly analyzed. I will just say to keep it spoiler free that I appreciated what Le Guin did with the relationship, and it was a unique one to see in literature.
Overall, this is a richly imagined scifi world where the setting is much more the focus of the book than the more typical political intrigue/first contact plot. Do not be misled by the marketing to think that this is a book exploring a world free of gender. Rather it is a male-gendered intersex world. Thus, it is a book that will appeal to scifi lovers who prefer world-building over plot but don’t go into it expecting a scifi exploration of gender theory.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Harvard Books
Book Review: Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris (Series, #10) (Bottom of TBR Pile Challenge)
Summary:
With the Fae war at an end, Sookie tries to return to some semblance of normal, working on both physical and emotional rehab. Although she has feelings for Eric, she is uncomfortable with his insistence that she is his wife, even if she technically is by vampire law. Plus, his maker and his new vampire-brother show up, putting a strain on the relationship. Meanwhile, the ramifications of the shifters coming out are beginning to be felt, and Sookie’s fae cousin, Claude, moves in with her, missing the presence of other fairies.
Review:
I just need to take a moment to point out two things. 1) The last time I read/reviewed a Sookie Stackhouse book was in October of 2010. This is why I started the Bottom of TBR Pile Challenge for myself. Books (even series books!) were getting lost in the pile! 2) Every time I look at that cover I think for a brief moment that Eric is bald. Something is just off in that painting. Now, on to the book.
Even though I read it almost three years ago (seriously, holy shit), I still clearly remember really enjoying the ninth book of the series. It was action-packed with lots of development of both plot and character. It reinvigorated the series for me so much so that even this much later, I was excited to pick up the next book. I should have known it would fizzle some after the action of the last book. It’s not easy to keep that much tension and action going, and it’s not like there weren’t any lulls earlier in the series. What I can mostly say about this book is that nothing much happens. Seriously. It’s longer than some of the books but less happens. I suppose technically things do happen. Eric’s maker shows up with a new vampire-brother for Eric, the hemophiliac Romanov brother, who is just not quite right in the head. This leads to some interesting development of Eric’s background, but not a ton. And it just isn’t all that intriguing. Similarly, even though logically it should be very interesting that Claude shows up at Sookie’s and the weres sniff out two fairies around, but it just isn’t. They sound interesting on the surface, but when you’re reading the book it mostly feels like you’re hanging out at Sookie’s house eating a cookie and wondering if the calories are worth it to listen to her yammer on.
I think the crux of the problem might be that neither Sookie nor Harris is comfortable with Sookie being with Eric, in spite of the reader liking Sookie being with Eric. If it’s not within the character for her to be with Eric, then a break-up needs to happen, regardless of what the readers like seeing. It’s important to keep characters acting within character. Interestingly, Sookie has started to notice that she is aging and thinking about what it will be like to slowly grow old and die. She seems to be seriously considering her vampire options. But we all know Sookie doesn’t want to be a vampire. Sookie wants children. If she gives that up to be a vampire, it will make the series take an incredibly dark turn. The next book will be an important one. It’s basically a shit or get off the pot moment for character development, and in spite of the ho hum nature of this entry in the series, I am interested to see if things pick up in the next book in this regard. They tend not to slump for long in Sookie Stackhouse-land.
There’s not too terribly much else to say about the book. Weaknesses that are there earlier in the series are still there. Sookie isn’t very smart and is kind of annoying. The sex scenes continue to be cringe-inducing. But the world is complex and fun to visit, even when not much is happening there. Sookie does need to start taking some agency soon though, or being stuck with her first person narration may become a bit too much to handle. Readers of the series will be disappointed by this dull entry, although it won’t come as a surprise since lulls happen earlier in the series. Enough happens to keep some interest up to keep going with it though.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: PaperBackSwap
Previous Books in Series:
Dead Until Dark
Living Dead in Dallas
Club Dead
Dead To The World
Dead as a Doornail
Definitely Dead
All Together Dead
From Dead to Worse
Dead And Gone
Book Review: Mulliner Nights by P.G. Wodehouse (Series, #3) (Bottom of the TBR Pile Challenge)
Summary:
Mr. Mulliner has a wide variety of eclectic relatives, and he’s more than happy to tell snippets of their life stories over a pint at the local pub. From a freewheeling artist brought into line by a judgmental cat to a timid fellow who accidentally subscribes to a correspondence course on how to get a backbone to a private detective with such a disturbing smile that criminals readily confess their hijinks keep the patrons of Angler’s Rest in stitches.
Review:
This made it onto my tbr pile thanks to a visit to Harvard Books’ used books and remainders cellar. This was in the remainders pile, and three things drew me to it. 1) It was under $5, 2) The cover has a cat drunk on whiskey on it, 3) I had just read Love Among the Chickens
Don’t worry about this being the third in a series. The only connection among the short stories is the main characters are all a Mulliner (or married to one). It was completely unnecessary to have read the first two books in the series to get into this collection, although I intend now to read all of the Mulliner books. I really appreciated how Wodehouse sets up a structure to hold his short story collection together in one unit. Although they are all self-contained tales, their being together in one collection actually makes sense. They have more in common than just the author. They are literally a family of stories. This helped it hold my interest in a way that many short story collections can’t.
This collection consists of 9 short stories, most of which have some sort of love element. One person wants to be with (or marry) another and must overcome some sort of obstacle (usually caused by British upper-class culture) in order to be with them. Hilarity ensues. My favorite of these was “The Story of Webster,” the cover’s drunk cat. In this a freewheeling artist has his religious uncle drop his cat off with him while he goes on assignment to Africa. The judgmental, sullen cat soon starts to reign in the young artist, much to his and his girlfriend’s chagrin. Everything about this, from the early 20th century fashion and dialogue to the witty commentary on cats and culture works perfectly, particularly for this cat-lover. The story that I thought worked least-well, and unfortunately wraps up the book, is “Gala Night.” A pastor Mulliner accidentally helps a young couple who enjoys dancing to acquire the young woman’s parents’ approval of their union. I didn’t like the religious Mulliner. He just wasn’t funny to me. Similarly the catalyst of a mysterious mood enhancing drink just lacked the creativity found in the other stories. Fortunately, most of the stories fell much closer to the hilarity of the whiskey drinking cat. However, a couple did fall a bit flat for me, which is why while I greatly enjoyed the book, I wouldn’t say I was totally in love with it.
Overall, this is a wonderfully witty collection of short stories held together by an elderly Mulliner who enjoys telling (possibly tall) tales about his family over a pint in the local pub. If you enjoy a dry wit and slapstick humor to top off a cute love story, this collection is for you.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Harvard Books
Previous Books in Series:
Meet Mr. Mulliner
Mr. Mulliner Speaking
This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Opinions of a Wolf 