Solutions and Other Problems

 Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh    518 pages

It's been 7 years (!!) since Hyperbole and a Half and Allie Brosh is back!  This is a new collection of funny, illustrated autobiographical essays.  And, like her first book, some of the stories are bit more sad than funny, all of them are quirky (and some of them are probably relatable to some of us).  Whether it's about naughty animals, childhood adventures, or introspective essays about loneliness and grief, this collection is filled with honesty (and some very funny illustrations).

Like her first book, I found some of the essays to be really funny (meaning, don't read them in bed before sleep if you're already tired . . . ) and some of them to be kind of sad and thoughtful. Not everything resonated with me, but I enjoyed the book --- and absolutely loved some of the stories. Like, the one about the argument she got into with her ex-husband which culminates in a directive about choosing bananas at the store (or not).  Welcome back, Allie!!

The Spaceship Next Door

The Spaceship Next Door by Gene Doucette   353 pages

"Three years ago, a spaceship landed in an open field in the quiet mill town of Sorrow Falls, Massachusetts. It never opened its doors, and for all that time, the townspeople have wondered why the ship landed there, and what—or who—could be inside.  Then one day a government operative—posing as a journalist—arrives in town, asking questions. He discovers sixteen-year-old Annie Collins, one of the ship’s closest neighbors and a local fixture known throughout the town, who has some of the answers.  As a matter of fact, Annie Collins might be the most important person on the planet. She just doesn’t know it."  (Goodreads)

This was a book I wouldn't known about, had it not been a book group pick. And, I really liked it! It is a slow starter and at one point, I wondered if anything was going to happen with the plot . . . and then it started to pick up, went in a direction I didn't expect, and then it went in the direction of BIG, interesting ideas.  So, very cool.  Something else I liked about this book is that the characters are very realistically written.  Annie is a smart girl, but she's not pretentious, or precious --- she's believable. And so are the other characters, even the quirky ones. This is the kind of story that you could see yourself in, or believe could happen.  And the science-fiction aspects of it made sense --- it's not hard science fiction, so it's what I call "SciFi Light."  Definitely a story where the ordinary person is a hero.

Radical Candor: Be A Kick-ass Boss Without Losing your Humanity

 Radical Candor:  Be A Kick-ass Boss Without Losing your Humanity  by Kim Malone Scott  246 pages

"From the time we learn to speak, we’re told that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. While this advice may work for everyday life, it is, as Kim Scott has seen, a disaster when adopted by managers.

Scott earned her stripes as a highly successful manager at Google and then decamped to Apple, where she developed a class on optimal management. She has earned growing fame in recent years with her vital new approach to effective management, the “radical candor” method.

Radical candor is the sweet spot between managers who are obnoxiously aggressive on one side and ruinously empathetic on the other. It’s about providing guidance, which involves a mix of praise as well as criticism—delivered to produce better results and help employees achieve."  (Goodreads)

I really liked this book and wound up using page flags to mark some things to share with some other people (and I also put it on my "Want" list in LibraryThing so I remember I want a copy for myself).  While I have studied emotional intelligence, communication styles, management, etc. over the years, I still found some new things to think about in this book.  I also found touchstones for things that I already practice, which was helpful --- always good to know if you're on the correct track.  

Wow, No Thank You

 Wow, No Thank You by Samatha Irby   336 pages

This is a collection of essays about marriage, aging, settling down, and being Black in white, small-town America.  Irby let Chicago and moved into a house with her wife and two stepchildren in a small town in Michigan.  As the book's description says, "This is the bourgeois life of dreams. She goes on bad dates with new friends, spends weeks in Los Angeles taking meetings with "skinny, luminous peoples" while being a "cheese fry-eating slightly damp Midwest person," "with neck pain and no cartilage in [her] knees," and hides Entenmann's cookies under her bed and unopened bills under her pillow."

I found some of the essays funnier than others, but what I really loved was reading about Irby's experiences in Chicago. I have gone to some of the same clubs, and really liked how reading this brought back my own memories of living and working in Chicago.  I also liked reading her perspectives on life -- I found some of the same things funny, but she's also nothing like me --- so it was cool to learn more about her.  Fun book!  Also, bonus points for the cute bunny on the cover.

Mama Black Widow

Mama Black Widow by Iceberg Slim    245 pages

Iceberg Slim knew Otis Tilson, a black homosexual man who's story he tells here.    Otis started out life on a plantation with his parents, his brother and his twin sisters, working hard for the white folks that owned it.   When his mother's cousin Bunny invites them to move to Chicago and offers to help them get an apartment in her building and pay them some for helping care for her (she is older and not in perfect health), Otis' Mama jumps at the chance and so his part-time preacher father went along with it to please his wife.   What they found when they got there was a tenement with a white slum lord landlady who lied and cheated people and was friends with the local beat cops so they would back her dishonest dealings up and never take the world of a black person.   Assaults were frequent, thugs ran the neighborhood, on the streets, drink, drugs and prostitution were rampant.  Crime was every where.and so were freaky molesters who felt no sorrow in abusing the young.   Iceberg Slim tells a sad tale brilliantly.  He takes you into the mind of Otis' mother who hated white people with reason her past will show but her love for money and fine things led her to fatally subject innocent lives to fates they should not have had.   Brilliant book.   Very, very  brutal and sad but so touching sharing the lives of this man and his family if briefly you will be glad you read it.   Excellent job, Iceberg Slim.    I would recommend this book to mature teens because of the adult content and graphic depictions of murder scenes and sexual content.

 - Shirley J.

Who Asked You?

 Who Asked You?  by Terry McMillan    400 pages

Well, life hits you full-frontal and who asked you if you want to have to deal with it all?  Nobody.   Who asks you if you want to stay and take care of a husband who is mentally slipping further and further away from you because he suffers from Alzheimers and you are his caretaker?  Who asks you if you want to take on two of your grandkids to raise because your daughter is on crack and dropped them off at your house for you to babysit but what you don't know is she decided to abandon them and move to Atlanta with her boyfriend on a whim?   Who asked you to put up with your uppity son who forgot where he came from and is putting on airs?   Who asked you to have to put up with your jailbird son who won't stay out of trouble and never admits to his own wrong doing always blaming someone else or society or the man and expects you to take his collect calls and put money on his books for canteen items in the penitentiary and expects you to send him more money to buy law books so he can become a lawyer when he gets out and so he can defend himself and other black men in the joint who couldn't afford a lawyer and who's public defender told them to plead guilty?   Who asked you if you wanted to put up with one of your sisters who is always telling you your problems come because you don't go to church and aren't religious enough and the other sister who always wants to know all your problems so she can criticize you for not handling things better.    Who asked you if you wanted to give up your dreams to work in a hotel for minimum wages and very occasional tips?   Huh?   Who asked you?    Betty Jean is faced with all this and more.    Another great book by Terry McMillan.   I highly recommend this author's works and the films made from some of her books.

 - Shirley J.

It's Not All Downhill From Here

It's Not All Downhill From Here: A Novel by Terry McMillan      496 pages

This is one of the best books I have ever read.   I love the character Loretha Curry.   She is aging gracefully and with a terrific sense of self and sense of humor.  (She gets it from her mother.)   So many hurdles she has to jump all throughout the book and one hugely devastating burn in your brain event that rocks her to the core.   One of those life changing events that changes the future course of life as you know it.   But, life just keeps happening around her to her friends and family who love her dearly (and how could they not) even if they don't always appear to.   Trust me, you want to read this one.   I even love her dog, B.B.King.   I recommend this book higher than any I have read in the last several years.

  - Shirley J.

Make Something Up: Stories You Can't Unread

Make Something Up:Stories You Can't Unread by Chuck Palahniuk    336 pages

Stories so wrong they are sometimes funny, but, sometimes just jaw dropping in their lack of  decorum.    If you can't make it through the first story it is not surprising.    I wavered between is this guy trying to alienate everyone on the planet or is he playing gauche?   Hard to say.   There are many offensive things to be found in this tome but also some really funny gallows humor.   Think if Stephen King's and Lisa Lampanellii's brains became fused in some freak accident then reanimated.  Kinda that.   Some of the stuff he comes off with is so off the charts I could not in full conscious recommend this one,  however, having said that, there is a special niche that would find this book amusing.   it has its moments. 

 - Shirley J.

Things in Jars

Things in Jars: A Novel by Jess Kidd     400 pages

Bridie (Bridget) Devine is a corncob pipe smoking Irish female known for her skills at locating people and things.   Having grown up in a life she prefers to forget Bridie was prized for her surgical skills at the age of 7 and her scientific mind that kept her from being squeamish.   Even though she meets a fellow Irshman in a cemetery who happens to be transparent she isn't afraid of him and they actually become friends.  Bridie is brought in on a case of a missing child that is rumored to be monstrously deformed and may have been taken by rabble hoping to sell her to a high society collector of oddities for a huge price.    The story is a good one and Jess Kidd is an excellent writer who draws you in from page one to the end.   I recommend this book to everyone from Middle School on up.

 - Shirley J.

Trick Baby

Trick Baby by Iceberg Slim    320 pages

Trick Baby is the true story of Johnny O'Brien, a biracial man that Iceberg Slim met when they were cellies in the joint (prisoners sharing a cell in a prison).    Johnny O'Brien's mother was black and his father white and though his parents were married, after his father left him and his Mom, other parents in the neighborhood referred to him in front of their kids as a "trick baby" insinuating his mother was a prostitute and he was the illegitimate child of one of her customers.  Not so.  Johnny's parents had been in love until his Dad just up and left them because he was too weak to deal with being ostracized by his white family for marrying a black woman.  His Dad's people did not acknowledge Johnny nor his mother and without his father around to take care of them times were hard and money sparse.  Because Johnny had such light skin, blue eyes and blonde hair the other kids in the neighborhood weren't allowed to play with him and started calling him, "trick Baby," the put down they heard from their parents.   Johnny had a hard time until he met an older man called Blue who had style, class and money that he made his living from grifting off the greed of "suckers."   .Blue taught Johnny several "cons" that they would get over on people with and score big money off of.   Enough to keep them in sharp suits and shoes and living the high life.   Johnny's "whiteness" was a valuable tool in conning white and black people as he and Blue could play that he was an unsuspecting white man and it worked like a charm getting over on people.    An excellent book.   I am a fan of Iceberg Slim's books.   Whether he is talking about himself or relating someone else's story that he knew,  his writing is real and honest in relating tales of life as he knew it.    I would recommend this story to anyone who is a fan of urban writing, for fans of events and life in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and early 70s simpler times that were more complex than many people realize.   Great story, like all of Iceberg Slim's books.

 - Shirley J.

I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President

 

I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President by Josh Lieb, 303 pages

After reading one funny book I was in the mood for another funny book and wanted to go with something I knew wouldn't disappoint me, so I went with an old favorite. I think this is at least my third time reading this.

What do you do when you're born with limitless intelligence but you still have to get through middle school and high school before you can fully realize your powers? If you're Oliver Watson you play dumb. To his family and classmates Oliver is an unexceptional student and is definitely not in the "cool" crowd. But he doesn't mind because when he's not playing the role of loser kid, he's running multinational companies and enjoying the benefits of his wealth by visiting the underground lair he accesses from his bedroom.

What I love about this book are the unbelievable (but unbelievably funny) situations a 7th grade genius deals with, especially if he's busy sending his least-favorite teacher secret messages, or he's busy subtly getting back at the school bullies, or he's visiting the permanently out of order stall in the boy's bathroom that has actually been redesigned so he can take a snack break. The laughs don't end, but there's more to the story: Oliver actually adores his mother, has a wonderful dog named Lollipop, and has a typical strained relationship with his father. It's to prove his character to his father that Oliver decides to run for class president. But when you're not a typical kid, even though there are so many ways to get short-term revenge, even Oliver has to deal with the consequences of his actions in a delightfully nutty middle school kind of ending. 

This book is a blast and is recommended for teens who will enjoy the sly humor and the ridiculous situations. And if you're an adult like me who needs smart fun on occasion, you'll love it too!

Failure is an Option

Failure is an Option by H. Jon Benjamin; 245 pages

H. Jon Benjamin is best-known as the voice behind the animated series "Archer" and "Bob's Burgers". And yes, in the book he admits he does not make Archer and Bob sound different in any way even though they are two very different characters.

This was light and funny. The premise, as the title suggests, is that failures aren't the worst thing that can happen and that sometimes it's okay to shoot for a failure. In these wacky times, I kind of get it. The chapters were short and funny. I would say that I didn't "learn" much but that wasn't why I picked it up. He told some funny stories from his youth to adulthood and it was a fun, quick read. I was impressed by his writing and his humor and I think Benjamin is a pretty smart guy. I was glad I read this on an e-reader because he used words difficult enough that I had to look them up in the e-reader's dictionary. 

And I did pretty much read the entire book with his Archer/Bob voice narrating it in my head. 

Strong Motion

 Strong Motion by Jonathan Franzen, 508 pages

This was Franzen's second novel. Much of novel centers around the Hollands. Louis, his father Bob, his mother Melanie and his sister Eileen.

Louis has moved to Boston for a job at a radio station. Soon after, his grandmother dies from an earthquake and his mom inherits a house and shares in a chemical company named Sweeting-Aldren. Louis discovers that money does strange things to people. His new girlfriend Renee is a seismologist and she finds information that implicates Sweeting-Aldren in causing the earthquake and others. 

The plot also includes a Christian fundamentalist church that is protesting abortion clinics. 

I would say this book is uneven. There are parts of it that are very good but other parts that are lacking. The plot is intriguing and Franzen does an excellent job writing his characters. Much of the novel is about people and what drives them but there is no real exploration of why Melanie is so obsessed with the inheritance. The biggest other shortcoming is that almost all but one of the women are written in a negative light. Despite its shortcomings, I would still recommend this book to fiction readers. 

Would You Kill the Fat Man?

 Would You Kill the Fat Man? The Trolley Problem and What Your Answer Tells Us about Right and Wrong by David Edmonds, 220 pages

Summary from Goodreads: "A runaway train is racing toward five men who are tied to the track. Unless the train is stopped, it will inevitably kill all five men. You are standing on a footbridge looking down on the unfolding disaster. However, a fat man, a stranger, is standing next to you: if you push him off the bridge, he will topple onto the line and, although he will die, his chunky body will stop the train, saving five lives. Would you kill the fat man?

The question may seem bizarre. But it's one variation of a puzzle that has baffled moral philosophers for almost half a century and that more recently has come to preoccupy neuroscientists, psychologists, and other thinkers as well. In this book, David Edmonds, coauthor of the best-selling Wittgenstein's Poker, tells the riveting story of why and how philosophers have struggled with this ethical dilemma, sometimes called the trolley problem. In the process, he provides an entertaining and informative tour through the history of moral philosophy. Most people feel it's wrong to kill the fat man. But why? After all, in taking one life you could save five. As Edmonds shows, answering the question is far more complex--and important--than it first appears. In fact, how we answer it tells us a great deal about right and wrong."

This is an excellent book that looks at the question from multiple angles and provides some insights in to why people answer the question (and similar ones) one way or another. The author does a good job of relating the hypothetical question to similar real world scenarios.  I would highly recommend this book.

Amyntas

 Amyntas: A Sylvan Fable by Torquato Tasso, translated by Frederic Whitmore, 72 pages

Amyntas, also known as Aminta, is a short verse play by the author of Jerusalem Delivered, centering on the young shepherd Amyntas and the nymph Sylvia, the object of his unrequited love.

     A simple girl, heedless as she is fair,

     And ignorant how hot are beauty's arms

     To sear, how edged to pierce; whose smiles and tears

     Slay, and slay all un'ware e'en that they wound.

Despite the efforts of the other shepherds and nymphs to convince Sylvia to submit herself to Love, she refuses, until unexpected events finally melt her hardened heart.  But will it be too late?

     In sooth, the laws of Love wherewith he rules

     In lasting sway, are ne'er unjust and hard;

     His works fulfilled with foresight, mystical,

     We blindly do condemn.  What skill is his!

Shadowplay

 

Shadowplay by Joseph O’Connor    400 pages

Seems I’m zero-for-two in the last several weeks. Books that I thought were going to be page turners turned out to be total duds. First, Kate Morton’s “The Clockmaker’s Daughter,” then this one.

 Have you ever not given up on a book because you are positive it’s going to get better?  I’ve done this on several occasions, but I must admit that I was too pig-headed to give up on this one.  Turns out, after I turned the last page, I could not tell anyone what this book was about. Oh, there were glimpses of that “it’s gonna turn around here,” but they never came to fruition. Basically the best I can do it a say it is an epistolary novel involving real-life theater folk and literary figures. 

Now if I was in y’all’s shoes, I’d be headed to Amazon to read the synopsis, so I’ll save y’all the trouble:

“…set during the golden age of West End theater in a London shaken by the crimes of Jack the Ripper.

Henry Irving is Victorian London’s most celebrated actor and theater impresario. He has introduced groundbreaking ideas to the theater, bringing to the stage performances that are spectacular, shocking, and always entertaining. When Irving decides to open his own London theater with the goal of making it the greatest playhouse on earth, he hires a young Dublin clerk harboring literary ambitions by the name of Bram Stoker to manage it. As Irving’s theater grows in reputation and financial solvency, he lures to his company of mummers the century’s most beloved actress, the dazzlingly talented leading lady Ellen Terry, who nightly casts a spell not only on her audiences but also on Stoker and Irving both.

Bram Stoker’s extraordinary experiences at the Lyceum Theatre, his early morning walks on the streets of a London terrorized by a serial killer, his long, tempestuous relationship with Irving, and the closeness he finds with Ellen Terry, inspire him to write DRACULA, the most iconic and best-selling supernatural tale ever published.

A magnificent portrait both of lamp-lit London and of lives and loves enacted on the stage, Shadowplay’s rich prose, incomparable storytelling, and vivid characters will linger in readers’ hearts and minds for many years.”

 “Shadowplay” receives 1 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world. 

The Clockmaker's Daughter

 The Clockmaker’s Daughter by Kate Morton    496 pages

I love Kate Morton novels. They are nice and thick with a mystery that spans generations.  I love to snuggle down in my favorite reading chair. I waited until October to read her latest, mainly because of the opening sentence: “We came to Birchwood Manor because Edward said it was haunted.”  What a perfect line for late fall with Halloween just weeks away! And one sentence in the dustjacket blurb (“Tensions simmer, and one hot afternoon a gunshot rings out.”). I was ready to stay up all night, expecting to be so engrossed I couldn’t stop reading. 

As I read further into Chapter 1, I was thrilled to discover that one of the narrators was a ghost.  How cool was that!? The ghost was not identified nor was its paragraphs, but those were easily discernible.

The first part of the book took place in 2017, when archivist Elodie Winslow discovered a satchel and sketch pad belonging to 19^th century artist Edward Radcliff. Part One was wonderful.

But then I reached Part 2. The ghost was still there, but new characters appeared. I had no idea what was going on. Yet I read, and read, and read. But to my disappointment, it didn’t make sense. It was like a different story set in the same place.

It took me another week to finish this novel.  It did comeback around, but by then I was so confused about Morton’s plotlines, that I turned the last page in utter disappointment. Well, all writers have one book that is a dud, and this is it for Morton.  Fingers crossed that her next one will live up to her talent.

 “The Clockmaker’s Daughter” receives 2 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world. 

 

Over the Woodward Wall

 Over the Woodward Wall by A. Deborah Baker  (Seanan McGuire)  204 pages

"Avery is an exceptional child. Everything he does is precise, from the way he washes his face in the morning, to the way he completes his homework – without complaint, without fuss, without prompt. Zib is also an exceptional child, because all children are, in their own way. But where everything Avery does and is can be measured, nothing Zib does can possibly be predicted, except for the fact that she can always be relied upon to be unpredictable. They live on the same street.  They live in different worlds. On an unplanned detour from home to school one morning, Avery and Zib find themselves climbing over a stone wall into the Up and Under – an impossible land filled with mystery, adventure and the strangest creatures. And they must find themselves and each other if they are to also find their way out and back to their own lives."

Woot!  Another great story from Seanan McGuire!!  Her writing is beautiful, evocative and so descriptive that you can imagine yourself right there with Avery and Zib. I really like how she writes characters who are children -- they are interesting and sometimes exceptional, but never precious and she never dumbs things down. This book reminded me of the best Neil Gaiman books (back when he wrote stories for adults like Neverwhere and Anansi Boys). 

I enjoy how the author weaves together a story where you cannot trust that everything will be ok. You can't trust that Avery and Zib will meet other characters who will be nice and good, and you also can't assume that those other characters are who they say they are. There's a lovely, unbalanced quality to the story and there's no shying away from things that might be uncomfortable just because Avery and Zib are children. I love that.  More, please!!!

Becoming Finola

 

Becoming Finola by Suzanne Strempek Shea    336 pages

I re-read this book about once a year, just because I like it and want to revisit it -- and it's a nice story. 

Newly unemployed Sophie has kept herself busy by holding together her recently widowed friend, Gina, so when Gina proposes they both go on a much-needed vacation, Sophie is happy to oblige. However, after one day spent in the charming small town in Ireland, Gina is ready to go home. But she implores Sophie to stay, so Sophie does, accepting a job offer on a whim in the village's craft shop: Finola O'Flynn. Sophie soon learns Finola is a bit of a legend in this town and when she takes on her old job in the shop, Sophie also takes on other things: Finola's house, her left-behind wardrobe . . . and then Liam, Finola's discarded boyfriend.  But what happens when Finola suddenly returns?

This is an easygoing read with some humor, and plenty of descriptions to make you want to move to a small town in Ireland and work in a craft shop (at least, it never fails to make me want to do this). It's a bit of a slow start, but I find that sometimes, it's nice to revisit this story that's a bit of endearing escapism.

The Lying Game

 The Lying Game by Ruth Ware    370 pages  

"Fatima, Thea, and Isabel—receive the text they had always hoped would NEVER come, from the fourth in their formerly inseparable clique, Kate, that says only, “I need you.”

The four girls were best friends at Salten, a second rate boarding school set near the cliffs of the English Channel. Each different in their own way, the four became inseparable and were notorious for playing the Lying Game, telling lies at every turn to both fellow boarders and faculty, with varying states of serious and flippant nature that were disturbing enough to ensure that everyone steered clear of them. The myriad and complicated rules of the game are strict: no lying to each other—ever. Bail on the lie when it becomes clear it is about to be found out. But their little game had consequences, and the girls were all expelled in their final year of school under mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of the school’s eccentric art teacher, Ambrose (who also happens to be Kate’s father)." (Goodreads)

I had an odd sense of deja vu when I started this book --- had I already read it?  Actually, no -- but I've read other books by Ruth Ware, and other books with stories about friends keeping secrets. Maybe that was why? 

This story is a slow burner --- it takes a while to develop, so you need to be patient and stick with it to really feel like you're getting somewhere. Once I got to that point, I started reading more quickly because I thought I knew what had happened and wanted to find out. However, the slow pace and slow story development make this a less than ideal read --- because you get partway in and have to figure out if you care enough about the characters to keep going. I admit I wasn't burning with curiosity. Instead, I had a weekend day to sit and read, so I just kept going.  Ok book, not great.