emilyinherhead's reviews
1143 reviews

Lifeform by Jenny Slate

emotional funny medium-paced

4.5

Man, I love Jenny Slate. I read her first book, Little Weirds, a few years ago and distinctly remember where I was—in a cabin with a few of my best friends, awake before everyone else, no sound besides my sniffling as I wrote down a favorite quote in my reading journal—which is always the mark of an outstanding reading experience for me.

This one, like Little Weirds, is a memoir in essays, but the focus has shifted a bit; now, instead of looking for and ultimately finding romantic love, we’re following along as she maintains a long-term relationship, brings a pregnancy to term, and becomes a mother. There are also plenty of day-to-day observations as well, some silly and some poignant, a few of which I had trouble transcribing with voice-to-text because oops, Jenny’s out here making me cry again (rude).

Like this, from the imagined perspective of a raccoon that Jenny and her husband have temporarily captured in a trap to relocate in a nearby park:

I am made to be just my small size, but in the biggest of spaces. Me and then the night sky, that is the right pairing of my smallness with a largeness, and I am made to be totally unrestrained! What is happening to me in this cage?! (86-87)

Or this, about the grief of losing a loved one:

We make a deal with fate: I’ll keep this flame that signifies the one you took. I will let it scorch me in my heart if you let it die down naturally, and eventually there will just be a scar on my heart, and I will always know what I have lost. But by then, I will feel only the emptiness, not the terrible scald. I will let the fire of the loss run its course. This is the debt I will pay so that I can have a more bearable sadness. (208)

Something about Slate’s writing, no matter the subject, just feels so familiar and true to me. I adored Lifeform and will continue to read anything she releases.

The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken

emotional reflective slow-paced

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

3.5

From the beginning, the narrator continually mentions that this short little book is fiction, not memoir, but let’s be real, it’s preeeetty autobiographical. Not a lot happens; the Elizabeth figure (not Elizabeth, seriously, this isn’t a memoir) travels to London and spends her time there introspectively, visiting museums, taking a ride on the London Eye, wandering the streets, eavesdropping on strangers, reminiscing about her mom.

Bereaved. That I’d own up to. Bereaved suggests the shadow of the missing one, while grief insists you’re all alone. In London, I was bereaved and haunted. (6)

One of my favorite things about this little book was all of the quotable bits. I wrote down quite a few of McCracken’s musings on parent-child relationships, pieces of writing advice, and funny observations. Something about the narrator’s voice kept me at a distance throughout, but I could occasionally manage to peek through her careful exterior to the soft little weirdo inside.

There is something wrong with a person who loves ballpoint pens. I believe nothing so deeply as this. (77)

(Rollerballs and gel pens forever, bay-bee.)

The Flitting: A Memoir of Fathers, Sons, and Butterflies by Ben Masters

emotional informative medium-paced

4.0

I very much enjoyed this nature memoir, sent to me by one of my favorite small publishers (thank you, Tin House)!

Ben’s dad has been a naturalist and butterfly enthusiast for as long as Ben can remember, but he’s never really shared that interest (and in fact has resisted it for many years)—until his dad’s cancer returns in 2020 and Ben is forced to face losing him. The book chronicles Ben’s foray into butterflying, a hobby he adopts as a way to connect with his dying father, and also includes a lot of literary criticism (did you know that Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita, was a butterflyer?) and deep examination of the father-son relationship.

But we all spend our adult lives translating our parents one way or another, making sense of them in new contexts, asking them to communicate across time, to speak to and for different selves. (51)

This is a poignant read for sure, and an informative one (I was fascinated by the mutually beneficial role of black ants in the silver-studded blue’s hatching process, for example)! It felt perfect for this time of year, since Masters talks a lot about cycles and natural progressions and death.

Fang Fiction by Kate Stayman-London

funny lighthearted medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.5

What a spooky little delight!

Fang Fiction is all about Tess, a comparative literature graduate student in New York City who has left her program for Reasons (about which we find out more as the story goes along) and become the night manager of a boutique hotel. Tess also happens to be a huge fan of a vampire book series called Blood Feud—and when a character from the series suddenly shows up in her real life, she is faced with a challenge that will completely upend everything, ultimately bringing her healing, strength, new love, and reunion with an estranged friend.

The author is a Swiftie and a huge fan of Buffy, The Vampire Diaries, Twilight, etc, and these influences are very present in this book! As a somewhat picky occasional romance reader, I appreciated that there was a lot going on besides the love plot lines, and I had fun losing myself in the dual worlds of the story.

Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly

emotional funny medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

In the most general terms, this novel is about a Māori and Russian sister and brother, the titular Greta and Valdin, just living their lives in New Zealand. Greta is a comparative literature graduate student with a crush on one of her cohort, Holly, who actually turns out to be kind of a self-absorbed asshole. And Valdin is throwing himself into his work, trying to get over a breakup that he definitely is not over. It’s all very immersive and slice-of-life. I didn’t care so much about the plot as I did about just being able to spend time with these characters; Greta and Valdin’s family and friends are a truly diverse and compelling bunch.

I’ve seen this book compared to the Wes Anderson film The Royal Tenenbaums, which I can see in some ways. We’re following a cast of interesting and exceptional people, all of whom are witty and cultured and smart. But the tone of Greta & Valdin feels different somehow. Warmer. If you’re looking for a funny and comforting reading experience to snuggle up with this fall or winter, this might be the one.

Women's Hotel by Daniel M. Lavery

funny lighthearted 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? No

4.0

I’ve loved Lavery’s previous work, especially his most recent, Something That May Shock and Discredit You, which is part cultural criticism, part humor, and part memoir about his gender identity and trans journey. This new one is quite different in subject—it’s a novel set in 1960s New York City that follows the residents of a fictional women’s hotel called The Beidermeier. If you’re a plot girlie, I’ll go ahead and tell you that not much happens. But also, everything does. People move in, they look for jobs, they secretly go to AA meetings, they get arrested and have to be bailed out of jail, they befriend fire escape cats, they riot when the Beidermeier stops serving daily breakfast, they get bad haircuts, they get married, they move away. The focus here is on relationships and group dynamics, and the writing is incredible. Lavery is SO smart and wryly funny. I would definitely recommend Women’s Hotel if you like the dry humor of Jane Austen, the ensemble cast of Girl, Interrupted, or the way The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel puts a fresh spin on a past era.

Haunt Sweet Home by Sarah Pinsker

funny mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

I picked up this Tor novella after hearing Sarah speak at Bookmarks Festival this fall. It’s about a haunted home renovation reality show, the titular Haunt Sweet Home, that’s basically a mashup of Ghost Hunters and Fixer Upper. The protagonist, Mara, is the host’s cousin and uses her family connection to get an entry-level production assistant spot on the show—her job is basically to do the haunting. Things get interesting when she starts receiving some unexpected help with her special effects. It’s a fun and spooky seasonal reading experience, with a bit of emotional depth to balance things out; the theme of wood carving comes into play (Pinsker explains the origins of this in her acknowledgments) as Mara slowly figures out her place as a new adult within her family and in the broader world.

Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts by Oliver Burkeman

informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

I was lucky enough to read an early copy of this book and it! is! excellent! Burkeman’s previous book, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, was quite literally life-changing for me—it’s about the fact that an average human lifespan is four thousand weeks long, and how keeping this number in mind can help you decide how you truly want to spend your limited time.

Meditations for Mortals continues in a similar vein and builds on the idea of creating a meaningful and satisfying life, whatever that looks like for you specifically. It’s written in a month’s worth of small chapters that you can either read through daily, like a secular devotional that you soak up slowly and ponder a bit at a time, or gulp up in a few sittings like a regular degular book. I read it quickly this time, but I will absolutely be getting a physical copy for my shelf, and I imagine that I’ll try the one-chapter-per-day thing when I revisit it in the future.

Burkeman was targeting me at multiple different points in Meditations for Mortals, but here are just a few of the ideas and bits of advice that made me feel the most seen:

• Just do something today—don’t worry about researching the hell out of that thing, or building a habit of that thing, or becoming the kind of person who does that thing. Just do the thing, and if you keep doing it over time, boom, you’ve built a habit.
• We’re obsessed with finding freedom from limitation, when we should focus instead on finding freedom in limitation. You can do anything, as long as you’re willing to face the consequences (good or bad).
• Don’t stress about an unbroken streak, when doing something “dailyish” is completely sufficient.
• One way to defeat perfectionism is to set quantity goals. Don’t worry about doing something good, just do something.

Burkeman also talks about how lots of people are scared to commit to choices, lifestyles, jobs, etc. because they want to “keep their options open” and they’re worried about making their lives narrower and smaller. “But Emily,” he writes (he doesn’t really say my name in the book, I’m doing a bit) (and also this isn’t a real quote), “refusing to make a decision is, in itself, a decision—time doesn’t stop just because you can’t make up your mind. By stalling, you’re just choosing to spend your life in a nebulous space of forever pending. IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?” To which I say no, Oliver, it isn’t. And please stop shouting, you’re embarrassing me in front of my friends.

Anyway, I highly recommend Meditations for Mortals!

Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo

informative inspiring medium-paced

3.0

Master Slave Husband Wife was the August pick for The Stacks book club and not at all the sort of book I would pick up on my own. History simply isn’t my jam; I flip open to a random page and see a bunch of names and dates and my eyes immediately glaze over. I’m out. However! Feeling the library copy I checked out two months ago glaring at me from my shelf and recognizing the resistance I was feeling toward picking it up, I had the genius idea of tracking down an audio copy instead. I ended up listening to a large portion of it through Spotify and found it pretty compelling.

This is a story about a husband and wife, both enslaved, who escape by posing as a young white man (the wife, who is light-skinned) and his servant (the husband, whose skin is darker). They travel by ship and by train, from Georgia all the way up to Boston, then Canada. The whole time I was reading or listening, I was thinking, why in the world isn’t this story taught to kids in school? It’s truly incredible what this couple accomplished, escaping and outsmarting their former enslavers and the Fugitive Slave Act at every turn, even while living out in the open and speaking publicly about their experiences! If you’re interested in American history, definitely check this one out. And if you’re hesitant or intimidated like I was, give the audio a try.

Colored Television by Danzy Senna

funny 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? No

3.5

Colored Television is about a biracial writer in LA who finally finishes the sophomore novel she’s been working on for nearly a decade, only to have her agent and editor reject it. She fudges some truths and ends up in the television industry, hoping to find success in “selling out,” but that… doesn’t ultimately go great either? I won’t spoil anything, but whew. Senna’s writing is really smart, and funny in an “oh god, oh yikes” kind of way; I enjoyed this book even though I was continually stressed out for the main character and her family.