ktrain3900's reviews
260 reviews

Possession by A.S. Byatt

adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

5.0

I read this book once before, many years ago, possibly in college--there are passages underlined dealing with curiosity, particularly that of women in myth & folktale, which was something I studied in college--or possibly in the years following, when that topic was still very much of interest to me. I loved the book then, and I still love it now. There is a lot here, exquisitely written, fully engaging, with wit and formality and fidelity, if perhaps a tad British, and starting to be a tad dated, for a contemporary American reader.

I don't recall specifically what I loved so much when I read it previously. I'd guess the love story, and the romance of discovery & research & academia, and the rich detail & atmosphere, the travel, museums, books, writing. Now, I see better the craft of the writing. Neither time period is favored, but wonderfully navigated and moved between, as is the poetry with the prose. The book is of each time and every place which it both inhabits and is inhabited by. The characters are full, flawed, strange, each distinct, yet also a bit cliched, enlarged, never overwhelmed by the plot, nor is the plot overwhelmed by them. There is a delicate balance maintained throughout.

In this reading, I paid more attention to the title, and to themes of possesion. One can be possessed by love, and possess (and be posssessed by) a lover. This veers to obsession, ownership of person as property, belonging to someone and thus off limits for all others, or the possession of a child by parents. There's the possession of actual property, of intellectual property, of the fine line of the law in regards to all forms of possession. There is spiritual possession, the belonging of the soul to the body as well as to other souls. Perhaps most importantly there is self-possession, belonging to oneself, being free and independent, and truly oneself. And this book touches on all of these themes with skill, poise, and a beating heart. 

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Content Warnings

Minor: Suicide

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad 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

3.75

An engaging and thought-provoking look at spirituality, mission work, colonization, and social structure. Sure some characters can grate at times. Sure some of the technical parts require some heavy-lifting suspension of disbelief even for sci-fi. Sure there's occasionally exposition and passive storytelling in places where I felt action would have better suited. But it's a first book, and it's incredibly well-written for a first book. 

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Content Warnings

Minor: Child death, Death, Rape, and Murder

Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

This is not a likable book but it is a great book. I had a hard time answering the usual fiction questions as there's a uniqueness here that doesn't always lend itself to easy categorization. It is a stunning book, however, and a real gut punch, detailing a life flashing before a soldier's eyes if a flash can be in torturous slow motion down an endless dark hallway. This is a very difficult read, but also (and I generally hate using this word) a very necessary one, and it's somehow still a very relevant critique of our world.

Walking the Ojibwe Path: A Memoir in Letters to Joshua by Richard Wagamese

emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

3.75

I'm not sure I have much to say about this book that wasn't said better by other readers. It's an exquisitely vulnerable account of a life's journey, with all of its flaws and errors, woven with Indigenous stories and broader lessons. In this time of toxic masculinity and a return to deeply divisive Christian capitalist patriarchy, this alternative possibility of full personhood is a breath of fresh air. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction and Alcoholism

Coming Home by Brittney Griner

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective tense medium-paced

4.0

While this book centers around Griner's saga in the Russian prison system--from the silly mistake that put her there, to her time in prison and a labor camp, to her release--it's also very much a story of seeking a sense of belonging. As a queer black woman of exceeding athletic ability and height (6'9"; even my tallest cousin, male and a Marine, is only about 6'5" or 6'6") Griner has always stood out. Without the extroverted personality to match, she repeatedly struggles with racist and sexist stereotypes and assumptions. Griner delves into these experiences in flashbacks shared throughout the main narrative of illegal detainment in Russia. This is a memoir that is both heartbreaking and deeply inspiring, and that is likely to ignite a spark to join the fight to return American hostages home. 

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline

adventurous dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad tense 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? Yes

3.25

The reader is dropped into a near future dystopia where Indigenous people are forced to literally run for their lives, running with a boy name Francis, or Frenchie, who, separated from his family, finds a new family and learns like them to live off of the land, to keep moving, to leave little trace, to not just survive but endure. As so often with SFF, you have to suspend a fairly hefty chunk of disbelief, and as an adult reader of YA you have try to keep that audience in mind, to remember what it's like to be 15, 16 years old, when even the most mundane life is magnified by drama. (I mean, the dangerous Recruiters dress like gym teachers - only a high school kid would find that more apt than goofy.) But overall I think this book is worth those efforts, a page turner with some real heart that teaches with a friendly punch to the arm rather than a heavy bash over the head. 

We Were Pretending by Hannah Gersen

adventurous funny lighthearted reflective tense medium-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? Yes

3.5

An almost deceptively simple story of friendship, family, work, and the meaning of life. I keep coming back to this book as an allegory for white privilege, barely touching on matters of politics or race yet centered in Washington, DC. Instead, it concerns itself with climate change, the environment, and the fuzzy boundaries between science and nature, expectation and reality, what's legal and what's moral. Leigh, a thirtysomething divorcee and mother, is our wishy-washy, bougie every(white)woman who, although she deals with some consequences, never seems to pay the full price of any of her mistakes. 

At first I found the book a bit tedious, the characters mostly mundane, frustrating, or annoying, but then I found myself turning pages more rapidly, barely able to wait and see what terrible decisions Leigh might make next in her attempt to live a life of meaning, and how she might escape what should inevitably come after but often doesn't. A lot of us, myself included, often feel we're pulled along in our lives like leaves in a stream, unable to change the current, or alternately feel mired in the mud of choices we made with little forethought as a different self. Only now I'm getting stuck on how much of this is more privilege than oppression.

See? Deceptively simple. Almost. It's debatable if we need the set up at the very beginning, despite what we later find we've learned from it, as we never come back to this moment at the end. It's a solid sophomore effort, dotted with threads of potential just waiting to be tugged. And who knows, perhaps I'll come back and fiddle with that start rating?

Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe

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

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

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.