ktrain3900's reviews
276 reviews

Coming Home by Brittney Griner

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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. 

The Maid and the Queen: The Secret History of Joan of Arc by Nancy Goldstone

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3.5

An entirely satisfactory book about Joan of Arc, who every little girl who grew up Catholic like me thinks they know, and Yolande of Aragon, who I must admit I hadn't heard of before reading this book. It's simple enough to say that without Yolande, there would be no Joan, or rather that we wouldn't know of Joan and she may never have been able to attempt her rather incredible exploits. But it's also that women were, and always have been, doing far more than history has shared with us, until the current crop of women scholars like Goldstone plucked their lives out of obscurity, much as Yolande plucked Joan (there were many potential Joans). I learned much about Yolande, and learned more than I'd previously known about Joan, and had my heart broken, and got to have a little chuckle here and there at the expense of some of the men in this tale, and walked away with a satisfied sigh. No real oomph here, perhaps, but much to think about.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

dark funny lighthearted tense fast-paced

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

3.75

This is is the most fun you will ever have with a bunch of characters you would never in a million years want to meet as living, breathing people. It's a joyride of atrocious behavior, snarky wit, and self-centered posturing, all wrapped up with a great big bow of suspended disbelief. No, I don't buy the conceit that an 8th grader, no matter how precocious, cobbled together so many primary sources into "her book" but it was so easy for me to ignore this detail that it almost didn't matter. This is a clever, fast-paced romp of awfulness and impossibility, and I enjoyed nearly every minute.

Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine by Uché Blackstock

challenging informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

We've all heard that the personal is political; the political is also personal. This is a stunning accounting of both family legacy and racism across the medical field. Even if you consider yourself progressive, if you're white (as I am) you're going find this book challenging to read. You need to sit with that and really consider not only your own privilege, but how much more challenging it is to deal with systemic racism in your lived experience, not just in your reading. I'm left with a lot to think about, and then to apply that in action.

Unlikely Rebels: The Gifford Girls and the Fight for Irish Freedom by Ann Clare, Anne Clare

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

2.75

A lesser-known story of the fight for a free Ireland. While their brothers remained largely apolitical, the six sisters of the unionist, mixed Catholic/Protestant Gifford family became involved with the nationalist cause, both in Ireland and abroad in America, with two married to leaders of the Easter Rising. While the book focuses more on the sisters who left the most in writing, Nellie and "John", the book touches on the contributions, personalities, lives, and works of all six. There was a lilting, meandering quality to the writing, leading me to be lost in time a bit at times, and there was some mundane repetition that didn't always work for me. Note that it helps to have a good knowledge of late 19th/early 20th century Irish history, but it's not essential. I'd love to see more about the Gifford sisters.