ktrain3900's reviews
263 reviews

Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe

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challenging emotional informative inspiring reflective sad tense slow-paced

5.0

I'm not sure how to write a review for this book. I am stunned and speechless. As a white woman this book made me frequently uncomfortable. If you are like me, read it anyway. I loved the format, the heavy weaving in of quotations and of art, both public and personal. It impels engagement, inspiration, journeys down rabbit holes and into the un- and under-known. I'm left wonderfully drained, disrupted, with a blurred vision I will only be able to clear to a degree, and in degrees. As I should be. The ordinary is extraordinary, and the extraordinary can be ordinary, and and and.... 
The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich

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funny lighthearted reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

What's done well in this book is how seamlessly big issues like climate change, GMOs, fracking, are woven with the every day lives of middle- and working-class Americans, the struggle to support families, to grow up and grow old. However, I didn't feel like I always connected with the characters in the same way I had in other of Erdrich's books and I can't quite say why. And every time I try to explain how some of the plot points felt off or not quite believable to me, particularly with the wedding, and that it happened more than how it happened, I swing to a sort of "didn't we all have to read Romeo & Juliet, with it's nutty teenage obsession story, so how is it that different here?" Overall, I liked it but I guess at this point I expect more to more than just like an Erdrich book.
Playlist for the Apocalypse by Rita Dove

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emotional funny informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

Rita Dove is a masterful poet, capable of taking on varied forms and subjects both serious and silly with intelligence and nuance. The juxtaposition of a finely done concrete poem like "Mirror" next to the fun found poem "Found Sonnet: The Wig" neatly shows off her skill. She is equally at home in 16th century Venice and across American history as she is in the contemporary moment and the mundanity of everyday life. Perhaps no poem captures the latter so much as "Ode on a Shopping List Found in Last Season's Shorts", its casual start building up to a well-earned gut punch elevates it to the level of (and perhaps even above) one of my favorite similarly deceptive poems, Deborah Digges's "Seersucker Suit". Dove is approachable and exquisite, a treasure for novices and old pros alike. 
The Maid and the Queen: The Secret History of Joan of Arc by Nancy Goldstone

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adventurous emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

3.5

An entirely satisfactory book about Joan of Arc, who every little girl who grew up Catholic like me thinks they know, and Yolande of Aragon, who I must admit I hadn't heard of before reading this book. It's simple enough to say that without Yolande, there would be no Joan, or rather that we wouldn't know of Joan and she may never have been able to attempt her rather incredible exploits. But it's also that women were, and always have been, doing far more than history has shared with us, until the current crop of women scholars like Goldstone plucked their lives out of obscurity, much as Yolande plucked Joan (there were many potential Joans). I learned much about Yolande, and learned more than I'd previously known about Joan, and had my heart broken, and got to have a little chuckle here and there at the expense of some of the men in this tale, and walked away with a satisfied sigh. No real oomph here, perhaps, but much to think about.
Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

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dark funny lighthearted tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

This is is the most fun you will ever have with a bunch of characters you would never in a million years want to meet as living, breathing people. It's a joyride of atrocious behavior, snarky wit, and self-centered posturing, all wrapped up with a great big bow of suspended disbelief. No, I don't buy the conceit that an 8th grader, no matter how precocious, cobbled together so many primary sources into "her book" but it was so easy for me to ignore this detail that it almost didn't matter. This is a clever, fast-paced romp of awfulness and impossibility, and I enjoyed nearly every minute.
Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine by Uché Blackstock

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challenging informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

We've all heard that the personal is political; the political is also personal. This is a stunning accounting of both family legacy and racism across the medical field. Even if you consider yourself progressive, if you're white (as I am) you're going find this book challenging to read. You need to sit with that and really consider not only your own privilege, but how much more challenging it is to deal with systemic racism in your lived experience, not just in your reading. I'm left with a lot to think about, and then to apply that in action.
Unlikely Rebels: The Gifford Girls and the Fight for Irish Freedom by Ann Clare, Anne Clare

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challenging informative reflective slow-paced

2.75

A lesser-known story of the fight for a free Ireland. While their brothers remained largely apolitical, the six sisters of the unionist, mixed Catholic/Protestant Gifford family became involved with the nationalist cause, both in Ireland and abroad in America, with two married to leaders of the Easter Rising. While the book focuses more on the sisters who left the most in writing, Nellie and "John", the book touches on the contributions, personalities, lives, and works of all six. There was a lilting, meandering quality to the writing, leading me to be lost in time a bit at times, and there was some mundane repetition that didn't always work for me. Note that it helps to have a good knowledge of late 19th/early 20th century Irish history, but it's not essential. I'd love to see more about the Gifford sisters.
Jersey Mercy by Laura McCullough

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funny informative reflective medium-paced

3.0

A gritty, down-to-earth poetry collection about the Jersey Shore. But then again what else could an honest book about the Shore be? I didn't connect with the poems in the first section, to the point I considered a DNF, and think perhaps they'd have worked better as prose, but the collection bloomed from there, with the third section ("Underwater Horse" and "Empathy" were favorite poems) a fine achievement of magic and reality, and the fourth, our requisite encounter with Bruuuuuuuuuuuuce, as smooth a ride as you'll get on the backroads of Jersey. Additionally, the endnotes are as interesting as the poems and worth reading, despite some surprising errors  (Monmouth Park is in Oceanport, not Eatontown, and WHOI is Massachusetts not Maine). You want a trip to the dirty Jerz, you want this book, not your MTV, and if you go to WindMill, you get hot dogs not burgers. 
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

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adventurous funny lighthearted mysterious sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

This fast-paced jaunt through 1938 New York's creme de la creme features almost impossibly witty characters who speak with a tinge of noir, and who exist on the fringes of a Wharton novel, had she come along a generation later. I found it fun, escapist fiction, requiring the reader to apply a dash of good ol' suspension of disbelief. The exploits of our intrepid heroine, the preposterously named Katey Kontent, are exhausting - just how does one balance the heavy work schedule with the heavy social schedule? - but I was 25 once, with that sort of bounding boundless energy. While it's good for a first novel, it's still a first novel: did it need the preface and epilogue; do we believe a bold broad like Katey would be such a Dickens fan (and was it only because she was named a bit like a Dickens character); could it have done without some of the dated racisms and still felt genuine? I'm not sure, but overall, I wouldn't kick this book out of bed.
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The Heart by Maylis de Kerangal

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adventurous emotional hopeful sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

I think where this book is most fascinating is its premise: 24 hours in the life of a heart and those affected by it. I liked how it meandered among the lives and perspectives of its ordinary, extraordinary characters. I sometimes liked those characters, I sometimes found them tedious. I liked how it moved in time, past and the present twisting together in what often felt like infinite strings and knots, or layering like mortar and large bricks (like the long paragraphs) building to... what? I'm not entirely sure. Everyone you know has a full and complicated life of which you know little. I think that's a lot of it. There is an ethereal quality yet it was also very mundane (in the literal sense of being of the world). In a sense it's a slice of life novel... or slices of lives maybe? Certainly a book writers should read, I think.