ktrain3900's reviews
264 reviews

Daughters of the Winter Queen: Four Remarkable Sisters, the Crown of Bohemia, and the Enduring Legacy of Mary, Queen of Scots by Nancy Goldstone

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informative reflective relaxing medium-paced

3.5

A solid accounting linking Mary Queen of Scots to the current English monarchy. I don't know that I needed to dwell quite so much on James I to enter the story of his daughter Elizabeth Stuart (The Winter Queen) and then her daughters, and it was a bit uneven in places, likely due to the lack of writing left behind by 2 of the 4 daughters, but overall I enjoyed it. The best sections heavily utilize the correspondence and other writings of the other 2 daughters, the eldest (also Elizabeth) and the youngest (Sophia), who is the link to the Hanoverians down to the current monarchy. Overall I tend to lean more Tudor than Stuart, but if you want to go Stuart, the ladies are where it's at. 
Animal Life by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

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hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This book is a warm blanket, a crackling fireplace, a morning or post-nap haze, a snowbound evening. It unwinds like spools of wool. It is aloof in moments, keeping its secrets. It is multiple manuscripts, merged, mixed, knitted together. It's hard to really summarize or describe. You lose yourself in places and you'll want to come back to it. I have a hard time going back to reread books but this is one I think I could.
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Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

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challenging hopeful informative reflective slow-paced

5.0

Wilkerson has a gift for making serious, difficult topics not just readable but satisfying to read. Looking at the USA as a caste system was fascinating and enlightening. To view American history through this lense was eye-opening, however the real epiphany for me was viewing our most recent history this way: it seems to explain a lot of what often feels inexplicable. I found that the personal experience sections were the hardest to read. It was almost unbelievable that this sort of thing still happens, yet this is why these sections must be included. My experience as white woman shields me from a lot and I need to hear these things and sit in my discomfort. All in all this is a thought-provoking and dare I say potentinally life-altering read. 
House of Caravans by Shilpi Suneja

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adventurous challenging hopeful informative reflective sad 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

4.5

This is a truly stunning debut. It begins in the thick of the action, leaving a breadcrumb trail to follow through decades and generations. As we do, we journey through the tragedies of colonialism, the chaos of Partition, and the expulsions and separations that ensued. This is a family saga of loss and grief, but also of life, adaptability, sheer will, and strength of many varieties. There is much suffering and no one escapes unscathed, only alive. Here is a bit of balm for our messy postcolonial times, for the divisions of faith and the displacement of peoples that continue unabated.
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This Is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone, Amal El-Mohtar

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adventurous challenging funny hopeful mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

Probably the fairest thing for me to say would be that this book wasn't my cup of tea (which, if you've read the book, you'll get the choice there). I had a hard time situating myself in the beginning, which resolved for me enough to follow the main thread, but never entirely. The idea of all times and all possibilities happening at all times with essentially all possibilities was really confusing to me. Braiding and unbraiding and sliding and upthread and downthread, oh my! The writing, however, was fantastic, and the love story was beautiful, and the epistolary form was executed so well, that it's a worthy read even if scifi isn't your thing. 
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People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present by Dara Horn

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challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone calls a book "necessary". The frequent use of the word for books of all stripes and types feels like a lazy marketing ploy. It cheapens the effect when a book truly needs to not just be in the world but also be widely read. This is a book that needs to be widely read. Fortunately it has an attention-grabbing title equaled in power by the dynamic writing it contains. It's unflinching, unapologetic, deeply felt, well-researched, and packed with historical and contemporary accounts of living (and dying) while Jewish. This is a real gut punch of a collection, hard to read and hard to rate, and ultimately vital, eye-opening, and...necessary. 
On Lighthouses by Christina MacSweeney, Jazmina Barrera

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adventurous emotional informative inspiring mysterious reflective medium-paced

4.75

The best way I can describe this is book is that it's like a sunset (or a sunrise if that's more your thing) - it's lovely, and simple, and utterly ordinary on the surface, but when you start to think about it, meditate on it, take some time with it, it becomes so much more. There are layers, threads, paths mapped and unmapped, and connections are collections in a sense (and vice versa). It's philosophical and esoteric, but without becoming too erudite or aloof. It's searching and personal, yet never overly revealing or intrusive. It's immersive, like the night and the sea, and a lighthouse to assure you resurface.
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell

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

3.25

A solid work of fiction, well written, with much lovely imagery and plenty of intrigue, if unevenly paced in places, and with a not wholly satisfying ending I should have seen coming. While I think the framing (the moving between time periods) worked, I did find it hard to place myself back in the right timeline after particularly long chapters. I enjoyed the poetic license in making Lucrezia an artist; I thought it was a skillful bit of character depth and connective tissue. The discomfort of the teenage wife when in bed with her husband was very well written, so much so that, in my opinion, folks who've experience sexual assualt or trauma may not be able to stomach it. The treatment of servants also felt very real, and was thus also hard to handle, as blase as it was. I am glad to be from where and when I am, and I'm as curious as ever to learn more about women from other times and places. 
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The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li

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dark emotional funny mysterious reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Beautifully written account of two girls who are the closest of friends with a secret, and victims of a time and place. You probably won't like either of them. They are cruel and demanding and complacent in the different ways that teenage girls have mastered such domains. Not to blame the girls, of course - they do what they can with the meager hand they were dealt; this in a sense is a book about survival. Part of me wanted a little more outside of the telling of the secret, more than the account of those early teen years, more of their lives, how they drifted. But the author is always firmly in control of voice, and pace, and plot, and this is not that book. 
Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel

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

3.5

Come for the mythology, stay for the feminism. Refreshing to read a book with so many capable and strong yet imperfect female characters. You don't need to know the <i>Ramayana</i> to enjoy this book but I feel I probably missed some nuance because I'm not familiar with it. It was maybe a little long, although I wouldn't be sure exactly where you'd edit. And I can't believe I'm saying this, but maybe some of the male characters could have used some of the depth the female characters were so well imbued with. Otherwise it's a solid debut that you'll find yourself getting lost in.