A decent amount of reading this week. Here are my goodreads reviews. If you’re on goodreads, add me as a friend so I can see your books too! I’ve also started an instagram account where I join my love of reading with my love of art.

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Drawing Home (3.5 stars): Sometimes a book comes at the right time, you’re ready for it and you fall right into the story. This is not how Drawing Home was, for me. I kept putting off reading it, thinking it was going to be too fluffy and I’d already filled up on fluff for a little while. 

But then I couldn’t decide on what else to read and it was coming up due in the library and next thing I knew, I had started listening to it. Within about ten minutes, I was so engrossed in the story that I had no idea what made me wait so long. 

It’s not a deep, richly layered, exquisitely told literary masterpiece. It’s a delightful, real, sweet, and genuinely enjoyable read. It’s written well, the setting is rich and meaningful and most of the characters will stay with you. I found myself wishing I could read more about several of the smaller characters and by the end, I could have spent another ten hours in Sag Harbor. 

I loved reading this one.

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Biased (4 stars):  I started this book back in April but was unable to finish it before it was due back at the library. My turn finally came back and I managed to read the rest of it. This is a really solid mix of wide statistics and studies around race with tangible results. There is a lot of historical setting as well as the author’s personal stories. You connect with the book both on a intellectual level and on a personal level. 

There is such a wide variety of useful information here that it’s a book I can see myself coming back to again and digesting in stages. I have so much to learn and Eberhardt’s book is one of the best and most comprehensive I read in a while.

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Olive, Again (5 stars): “It was as though waves swung her up and then down, tossing her high – high – and then the darkness came from below and she felt terror and struggled. Because she saw that her life – her life, what a silly foolish notion, her life – that her life was different, might possible be very different or might not be different at all, and both ideas were unspeakably awful to her, except for when the waves took her high and she felt such gladness, but it did not last long, and she was down again, deep under the waves, and it was like that – back and forth, up and own, she was exhausted and could not sleep.”

I can praise this book from so many different angles: the writing is exquisite, the character development is exceptional, especially for short stories, each story is so different and yet so similar that it creates unity without getting repetitive. But while Strout’s craft is impeccable, what makes her stand out is her perceptiveness. Her ability to zero into the human part in each of us and in all of us, is incredible. These stories are touching not in the superficial-sentimental way and not even in the raw-exposing-human-pain way but in the tiny truths of what it means to be human. How ordinary days are laced with sorrow, regret, and longing. What it means to be human and lose bits of yourself, lose bits of potential futures you though you had. Realizing all the ways in which life gets ahead of you and you end up in a place you never intended to but now it’s too late.

These stories are subtle, textured, and layered. These characters are complex and hard to understand because let’s be honest, humans are complex and hard to understand. There isn’t a clean line between cause and effect in our lives. We do things, we choose paths, we say things and it’s unclear what led to those. 

Strout has a unique ability to weave all this into her characters and stories. She has a way of exposing a moment in their lives in such a way that we get a peek into the complexity of what it means to be human. I might not like these characters, I might not relate to their individual characteristics or choices but I see their humanity. I see their struggle. These stories give me permission for the complicated bits of my life. They help me feel connected and understood. 

“People either didn’t know how they felt about somehing or they chose never to say how they really felt about something.”

The character here, including Olive, are not the most likable characters. They are petty, selfish, boring, rude and many other human characteristics. But that’s the whole point. Most people in life aren’t just purely likable. We all have parts of us that are petty, selfish, boring, rude, and more. We are not cartoons. Maybe some of these characters are a bit more unlikable than average. But even that’s not the point, for me. It’s that they are all human and even as they struggle, they touch each others’ lives and they make a difference. 

“And it came to him then that it should never be taken lightly, the essential loneliness of people, that the choices they made to keep themselves from that gaping darkness were choices that required respect.”

There are many themes in these stories but what I felt most acutely were the themes of loneliness and aging. Especially since Olive herself is aging throughout the story, these themes weave through many of the stories. Each story manages to weave a glimmer of hope through the sadness/reall-ness of life.

“You all know who you are. If you just look at yourself and listen to yourself, you know exactly who you are. And don’t forget it.” 

I knew all along that I would love this novel and Strout did not disappoint. Even if every single story didn’t speak to me equally, the collection will stay with me for a long, long time. 

Huge thanks to Random House and netgalley for an advanced copy in return for an honest review and to Elizabeth Strout for brining our humanity to the surface so very beautifully.

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Evvie Drake Starts Over (3.5 stars): This is the third book I’ve read in the last month that features a basketball player, I don’t know what that means but I thought that was an interesting trend. I really enjoyed this story. I connected with the story and the characters pretty quickly and the novel flew by. I didn’t want to stop listening to it. Even though I don’t think I will remember much of it a year from now, I will remember how it made me feel and smile again. If you’d like an enjoyable and sweet summer read, you can’t go wrong with this story.

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Apollo Leadership Lessons (4 stars): This book has lots of ideas around leadership in multiple dimensions. The ideas are presented in a simple way with tangible examples from NASA’s own projects and especially the journey to landing on the moon. The stories, lessons and examples are told through the lens of different people (the execs, flight directors, astronauts and more.) Each chapter has sections where the author goes one layer deeper into the story. These were some of my favorite sections either for some interesting NASA fact or how one idea might seem interesting but then the flipside is also interesting. For example there’s a chapter around learning from failure but then the author highlights how it’s important not to over index on this and that NASA does post-mortems for both failures and successes. This book can seem deceptively simple but sometimes the most profound ideas are the simplest ones. Just because they are simple to understand doesn’t mean they are simple to do. I really enjoyed the juxtaposition of leadership and learning more about NASA, especially at such an interesting time in history.

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The Islanders (3.5 stars): I loved this sweet and fun to read story. It’s the story of 3 people on the island for different reasons and their lives intersect. Each has his/her own healing to do. As they intersect and grow and go through experiences, we are there along with them, cheering them on and crossing our fingers. This is a generally feel good book with some real life issues thrown in but not a ton of depth in any of them. Lovely summer story.

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Heads of the Colored People (4 stars): I don’t usually read short story collections because I prefer character-driven stories and like to get to know the characters and see them grow and learn throughout the novel. But every now and then there’s a magical short story collection that’s written so well that it stands out. Heads of Colored People is one such example. Several of the stories here have the same character or a tie to a minor character in another story. Each story is poignant, sharp and well-written. There are layers of thought-provoking messages in each of these stories and I enjoyed every single one of them. But my very favorite was “Belles Lettres.” It made me laugh and wince and be sad as many of the stories in this excellent collection.

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The Last Book Party (3 stars): I’ve been trying to figure out my thoughts on this book. It’s a coming-of-age story that involves writers and poets. A big dress-up book party, and a girl realizing that people aren’t as glamorous as they might seem and everyone has issues even if they are amazingly talented and revered, etc. There was nothing wrong with this book. It read reasonably smoothly and the characters were somewhat interesting. But I also feel like I’ve read many books like this before. This was not a new spin on it, or even such amazing standout characters or writing that it will be memorable in some way. So I liked it just fine, just didn’t love it.

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And there we go, an okay week of reading. Here’s to a great week next week.

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Books I Read this Week 2019 is a year-long project for 2019. You can read more about my projects for 2019 here. I am also tracking my books in real time on Good Reads here. If you’re on Good Reads add me so I can follow you, too! I’ve also started an instagram account where I join my love of reading with my love of art.

A decent amount of reading this week. Here are my goodreads reviews. If you’re on goodreads, add me as a friend so I can see your books too! I’ve also started an instagram account where I join my love of reading with my love of art.

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Disappearing Earth (4 stars): 4 stars just for the beautiful, beautiful writing in this story. There are many reviews that outline what happened so I won’t repeat more than just to say two girls suddenly disappear from a town and the novel follows the year after. Each chapter is a month into the disappearance and it’s centered around a different character. Each chapter could easily be a standalone chapter of its own and each chapter will both give you a bit of hope and break your heart into pieces. The atmosphere, the characters, the misogyny are all alive in this novel but nothing is as extraordinary as the author’s incredible writing. The descriptions and the use of language are unlike any other and will stay with you long after you finish this book. So will the ending.

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Painting Masterclass (5 stars):  When I was in high school, Art History was my favorite elective, so it was with great excitement that I requested this book in netgalley. It easily managed to surpass my expectations. This book is broken down to sections by the subject of painting (nudes, figures, still life, etc.) and for each subject, it presents a wide array of masters using many different styles. Regardless of what your favorite style is, you are likely to find something you love here.

Each page has four sections: the art, a short background of the artist (often with interesting additional tidbits), the story and details of the art including the symbolism, and then a callout section with different techniques the artist used. This isn’t really teaching you the technique or breaking it out in enough detail for you to copy. It’s mostly calling attention to it and explaining it in a handful of sentences.

If you buy this book thinking it’s an art book to learn the masters’ techniques, I think you will be disappointed. If you buy it as a book to learn more about each amazing art piece and to dive into each maters use of different techniques, all the while getting a fantastic art history class, you will love this book.

huge thanks to netgalley and Quarto Publishing Group for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

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Ever After (4 stars): I have taken several of Tamara Laporte’s classes (in fact, I am taking a class from her right now) and I have always loved her kind, thoughtful and generous approach to both doing and teaching art. I have not taken the Ever After class, mostly because Fairy Tales do not interest me. But since she’s an excellent teacher, and I’m always working on developing my own personal style I wanted to see how much I’d like the book. 

This book has three main types of content: 
– examples of art she and some contributors have made where they share their thinking and how they made a fairy tale their own. These come with step by step instructions to recreate the art. Not in a lot of detail but I’d say more than average. You can likely copy them using the steps.
– advice on things like how to work around your negative self-talk, find inspiration, develop your own symbolism, etc. on the way to finding how to work on listening to things that speak to you.
– and finally ways to make the art your own, i think this content is a bit thinner than i’d like. but in the end, there’s no magic to developing your style, it’s hard work and consistent work just like everything else in life, so I wasn’t super surprised by the type of advice around this.

I can always use more Tam in my life. Her kind and supportive message is always just right for me. Her art, while different than mine, is always loving and kind and I learn a lot from her each time. When I am stuck or just want to feel encouraged and supported, all I have to do is pull out a Tam book and I know I will feel the warmth of her support.

with gratitude to netgalley and quarto publishing group for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

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This is How You Lose the Time War (5 stars): “Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.”

When I first started reading this novel, I was wildly confused. I didn’t understand the characters, the world building, or even what was going on. Had I not read about the time travel in the blurb, I am not sure I would have picked up on that at first either. 

As I started pondering what I had gotten myself into with this novel, I slowly found myself falling in love. After a few chapters, I didn’t even care a bit about any of those things. I wasn’t trying to figure out the plot or the world anymore. Not even the characters all that much.

“Blue sees her chosen name reflected everywhere around her: moon-slicked floes, ocean thick with drift ice, glass churned to liquid”

I completely fell in love with the writing of this story. With the imagery, the colors, the incredible choices of words. It was like reading poetry in prose format. It was like reading a painting. I can’t even describe how beautiful this story felt to read. 

“…every evening I see a red sky bleed over blue water and think of us.”

I fell in love with the characters and how they fall for each other. I fell in love with the ways they expressed their love and the creativity in the way they shared their letters with each other. The creativity in the way they solve the conundrums they find themselves in. The juxtaposition of the beauty of the world they create for each other vs the violent one they actually live in.

“But when I think of you, I want to be alone together. I want to strive agains and for. I want to live in contact. I want to be a context for you, and you for me.”

I can tell you that this story is weird and confusing and I am not sure I understood many of the things that happened in it. The world building was still blurry for me by the end. The plot, outside of their love for each other, had too many parts that left me unclear, too. But, alas, none of that mattered for me. The way this book made me feel surpassed anything else that mattered about the book. 

I fell in love with it hook, line and sinker.

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Red, White, and Royal Blue (3 stars): Really enjoyed this sweet, cute, and funny story. It’s wonderful to see more and better representation in novels and this was my first m/m romance story to read. I enjoyed the characters and the storyline. The pace was fast and uplifting and yet still covered some serious topics. I hope this book’s success encourages even more and wider representation!

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A Nearly Normal Family (3.5 stars): I found this novel very readable, especially considering how much I disliked most of the characters. I liked the pivoting from character to character in three sections instead of every chapter like most novels seem to do these days. I liked how each went back and forth in time but not in a systemic way as much as in a way that built up suspense. I also liked some of the moral questions posed by the story even if I didn’t necessarily like the way the novel resolves them. I think books that make you think are good. I don’t mind when I dislike the characters and I appreciated that while there was some sort of a twist here, it wasn’t one of those “i fundamentally think of this story differently” twists that assume the reader is stupid. It was windy but all within the range of plausible and interesting, to me. I also liked some of the content that was left open ended especially to emphasize that it wasn’t the point of the story. In the end, none of these characters will stay with me, I didn’t find myself empathizing with any of them even if I did empathize with the situation as a parent. Net, net it wasn’t one of my favorite reads but it was interesting and will stay with me a while.

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Tea and Cake with Demons (4 stars): “Ambition that’s born from shame and self-loathing is powerful, but unfortunately it’s a fuel that doesn’t burn clean.”

This book is a great combination of Buddhist tenants laced with the perspective of self worth and practical exercises to try out some of the concepts and incorporate the ideas into your daily life. Some of these concepts weren’t new to me but others were. In some parts, I found myself getting confused about different titles and systems but the concepts underlying them were always interesting and valuable and she did a fantastic job tying them to tangible examples.

“We are all deeply significant, and not at all special. We are all profoundly valuable, whole, complete, and sufficient, and there is nothing unique about this. This distinction can bring us back down to earth and to a sense of steady humility that doesn’t diminish our worth.”

If you’re struggling with self-worth, or even just trying to build out more awareness and intentionality in your life, there is so much gold in this book.

Thank you to Sounds True and Netgalley for an advanced copy in return for an honest review.

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And there we go, an okay week of reading. Here’s to a great week next week.

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Books I Read this Week 2019 is a year-long project for 2019. You can read more about my projects for 2019 here. I am also tracking my books in real time on Good Reads here. If you’re on Good Reads add me so I can follow you, too! I’ve also started an instagram account where I join my love of reading with my love of art.