Reviews and Comments

After reading her memoir of writing this novel earlier this year, I was excited to finally read [a:Reyna Grande|136841|Reyna Grande|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1350961123p2/136841.jpg]'s labor of love: a story of a Mexican girl who immigrates to America to find the father who left and never returned. While the story is at times sad and dark, the ultimate message is one of hope and perseverance. It was a quick read that I would definitely recommend.

This was a lovely story about family, love, and the consequences we face when we choose to reject our born identities. Would recommend.

When a friend of the author--a pediatrician at Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Michigan--mentioned that lead levels in Flint's water may be elevated after a recent switch in the city's water source, a horrifying thought arose: what if the author's young patients were drinking tainted water? She immediately assembled a team to gather and analyze patient data to determine whether lead levels had increased, and, reaching the dreaded conclusion, campaigned to make the results known. While the circumstances were awful, Hanna-Attisha's determination to do right by her vulnerable patients and to bring to light a disaster that was being systematically covered up by city officials was inspiring. Definitely would recommend.

The premise of this book is probably familiar to everyone at this point: a teenage girl (Vanessa) is groomed for and manipulated into a sexual relationship with her English teacher (Strane) at her boarding school in Maine. Even though the tumult of their relationship causes her constant torment--she becomes ostracized and expelled from her school, estranged from her parents, and beset with a pathological need for Strane's ongoing validation, even as he physically repulses her--she staunchly defends their relationship, his alleged worship of her, and her level of control over the situation. Rather than resting on the salacious details of the affair, though there are plenty, Russell focuses the novel on the profound effects Strane's abuse has on Vanessa's psyche, even well into her thirties, resulting in a thorough treatment of a complex scenario. Would recommend, though I imagine this could be a painful and/or difficult read for some. 4.5

Janina is a middle-aged recluse who consults the stars to see the future, spends her time translating William Blake into Polish, and suffers from intermittent ailments that affect her physically and psychologically. When her neighbor is found dead in his home, it seems to trigger a series of subsequent deaths that Janina insists--to the consternation of the local police who field her odd protestations--are at the hands (hooves?) of local animals exacting revenge on those who hunt them in the area. While she is a deeply troubled and flawed character, experiencing the world through Janina's unusual thought patterns, obsessions, and observations makes this a darkly enjoyable read.

After a botched treatment for a UTI leaves [a:Sarah Ramey|16210153|Sarah Ramey|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] in intense, chronic pain, the medical system's inability to diagnose, treat, or help her leads her to a downward spiral of treatments, side effects, and debilitating illness. In this chronicle of her decade-long search for relief, Ramey paints a disastrous portrait of the modern, symptom-focused American medical system. Her story is fascinating, but I would not recommend this memoir unequivocally, at least without a tighter edit: Ramey's writing is unconventional and sometimes overly precious; the book is way too long, often whirling into repetitive tangents; and the author's largely irrelevant feminist theories, presented to inspire other women in similar predicaments, only detract from the important systemic failures Ramey aims to expose.

[a:Ijeoma Oluo|14408819|Ijeoma Oluo|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/f_50x66-6a03a5c12233c941481992b82eea8d23.png] doesn't pull any punches as she describes common pitfalls in confronting racism, and she exposes difficult truths that some may find painful but are necessary to address if systemic change is to be possible. Presented with actionable lists of behaviors to check and constructive ways to approach uncomfortable topics, this book is both practical and useful, and one I would highly recommend.

After Vivian, a rebellious girl from a well-to-do family, is kicked out of Vassar, she's sent to live with her theater-owning aunt in Manhattan. Vivian quickly becomes engrossed in the theater scene and gets a crash course in sex, drugs, and show tunes. What makes this book so engaging is the environment that [a:Elizabeth Gilbert|11679|Elizabeth Gilbert|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1440718929p2/11679.jpg] creates--it has been a long time since I've felt so fully immersed and able to so vividly picture each scene in a story. Some may be frustrated by the pacing--in creating such a rich, detailed environment, the sense of plot movement suffers at times--or the premise that what we're reading is a letter that clocks in at nearly 400 pages long. But by surrendering to the setting and allowing myself to get transported in the process, I found this to be an extremely fun escape.

In this memoir of his experiences and struggles with racism, [a:Ibram X. Kendi|14161726|Ibram X. Kendi|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1607960083p2/14161726.jpg] intersperses personal anecdotes with careful analysis to support his binary definition of racism: unless a thought, action, or policy actively opposes a hierarchy of race (and other attributes with which it intersects), it is racist. Kendi's framework is useful for rationally examining one's own racist (and sexist, colorist, ablist, homophobic, etc.) tendencies--an important exercise for anyone, but especially those who think they're beyond discriminatory thought patterns that are more ingrained than most of us would like to admit.

I had issues with the book's pacing and repetition at some points, and I didn't connect with any of the individual characters as much as I'd have liked, but this book's true magic lies in its messages of being true to oneself, fighting for what you want most in life, and grieving the inevitable losses in life by loving more, not less--important lessons that I need to be better about integrating into my own life. Would recommend.

In this engaging and approachable read, [a:Carol Anderson|184936|Carol Anderson|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1535725690p2/184936.jpg] presents a timeline of the systematic and concerted efforts to oppress Black people in America, extending well past the end of the Civil War into current times. This book is a perspective-shifting read that I think should feature more prominently on recommended reading lists for racial awareness.

I consider Margaret Atwood to be one of my favorite authors, but her books are very hit and miss with me. This one was a miss. I enjoyed Atwood's writing, but the entire plot was muddied and inscrutable, and ultimately this book was a complete bore.

While this book's level of sexual explicitness would not be scandalous by today's standards, the frank discussion of sexuality, especially from a woman's perspective, resulted in a lot of pearl-clutching and book-burning/banning in its day. Perhaps just as scandalous were the book's critique of the noble class and its discussion of worker's rights and socialist/Bolshevist ideals. With its political and social analysis, it was a surprisingly enjoyable book to which I was able to draw parallels relevant to the modern world.