What I Read in April
With our vegetable garden growing and the vaccine rollout going strong, we are fully in the spring of things over here! April reading roundup below.
In Praise of Walking by Shane O’Mara
3/5 Stars
I have a special place in my heart for people who like to geek out on the things they love, and this book is one big geek-out on walking. It's like the author is telling me literally everything he knows about walking, from our anthropological development to the social change of marching.
I found the material hard to connect to and absorb because it felt very textbook-like. Vibrantly written, but still textbook material; I was missing a personal connection from the author and would have loved a story arc to give the book more direction and focus. There were a few anecdotes of the author just walking around Edinburgh, but they were too minimal to really tell me anything about the author.
I also picked up this book thinking it would be somewhat similar to Born to Run, and hoped it would speak more about the benefits of walking and reveal some kind of hidden science or discovery about walking, but it kinda just felt like what I already learned in my college anthropology class.
How to Fail at Flirting by Denise Williams
4/5 Stars
One daring to-do list and a crash course in flirtation turn a Type A overachiever’s world upside down.
A well-written romance novel with a lot of heart and some heavy subjects (TW: abuse). Pacing was great, the chemistry between the two main characters was great, and it was an interesting setup about work relationships. Honestly though, Jake seemed too good to be true. I get flawless men are a trope in the romance genre, but like... it was unrealistic that he always had the right thing to say. Contrast that with Davis, who is the antagonist, and you get some pretty one-dimensional male characters. But at least the main character, Naya, felt complex and real.
The Leavers by Lisa Ko
4/5 Stars
Set in New York and China, The Leavers is a vivid and moving examination of borders and belonging. It’s the story of how one boy comes into his own when everything he’s loved has been taken away--and how a mother learns to live with the mistakes of her past.
Definitely a thought-provoking, complex story with a lot to say about immigration, assimilation, and adoption in the US. This book lends a voice to the mothers and children who are torn apart through the ordeal of trying to immigrate to America and make it above the poverty line. I think the book does an amazing job in bringing to life that agony through hyper-specific detail of the everyday life of an immigrant. The characters, especially Polly, are complex and flawed, which I love.
At a certain point though, I found the plot got a bit bogged down in that detail. At times it felt way too zoomed in and I just wanted to get on with the story, which is an incredible story.
Madam by Phoebe Wynne
2/5 Stars
Rose Christie lands a prestigious teaching position at an elite Scottish boarding school for girls. But amidst the gothic setting, strange rules, and concerning behavior from the girls, she soon learns all is not as it seems.
I really wanted to like this book because it was compared to the Secret History, which I loved, and featured an atmospheric, gothic setting (also love). But unfortunately for me, the execution stumbled for this book.
My biggest gripe with it is that I truly disliked the main character. She makes no sense: she’s supposedly highly educated/successful in her field, and yet makes the dumbest decisions (signing away her mom’s power of attorney to the school because lol what’s that?) and naively shows her suspicions about the school on her sleeve. Read the room, Rose. These people are all obviously cool with what’s going down at the school, so don’t waste your time trying to reason with them about how it’s all wrong. But the weird thing is that Rose is inconsistent with her reactions to things she discovers at the school. She makes a scene and freaks out over one thing, then keeps her head down over things that are way worse. I can only follow a main character for so long when she behaves in the exact opposite way I would.
Other gripes include heavy-handed feminism (would have killed for some subtly), A LOT of dumbed-down teaching scenes about Greek mythology and the accompanying juvenile (read: annoying) dialogue from the students (they sound like literal 8-year-olds, not teenagers). There were also just so many missed opportunities for suspense; I kept expecting something more sinister to go down with her mother, but that was kind of a dead end. Then the mysteries that are woven throughout the book (who keeps moving her ceramic owl? Who keeps sending her notes?) are all revealed in the most lackluster way, like one character deciding to tell her all of a sudden rather than some exciting scene where Rose puts two and two together, which would be so much more satisfying.
The book could have benefited from more development first in the beginning to really lay the groundwork for why Rose would be so desperate to fall for this school’s trap, and also in the character development of the school’s founder. This is a cult-y book without much of a leader, which doesn’t work in my opinion.
I think this book could have worked as a dystopian or horror novel, but it was just so hard to believe these people and this place were supposed to fit into our current world.
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
5/5 Stars
Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home.
A tough tale, but a masterpiece of a memoir! Walls captures the absolute heartbreak of seeing your loved ones stuck in their own cycle of suffering and being powerless to help, and the unique shame and guilt that children can have for their parents. The pacing was quick, the descriptions vivid. I felt so much for this family, both for their deeply flawed personae and yet their redemptive qualities too.
The Cold Millions by Jess Walter
4/5 Stars
The Dolan brothers live by their wits, jumping freight trains and lining up for day work at crooked job agencies. While sixteen-year-old Rye yearns for a steady job and a home, his dashing older brother Gig dreams of a better world, fighting alongside other union men for fair pay and decent treatment. Enter Ursula the Great, a vaudeville singer who performs with a live cougar, and who introduces the brothers to a far more dangerous creature: a powerful mining magnate who will stop at nothing to keep his wealth and his hold on Ursula.
It took me a while to get into this book because I typically don't like novels made of vignettes. I like a good linear plot with one or two main characters. But once I was able to straighten out what was going on and whose story this was, the action really got going and the brothers' relationship grew on me. However, I do think novels with political undertones are hard to do well; they often are too heavy handed, giving too much space to the political plight rather than just letting it enhance the plot. Obviously this plot is about unionization and characters whose literal job is to give political speeches. That's the point, but to me it's very hard to make that interesting. Good thing this book also has an assassination plot to keep things juicy.
Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
3.5/5 Stars
As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody's coming of age ceremony in her grandparents' Brooklyn brownstone. Unfurling the history of Melody's parents and grandparents to show how they all arrived at this moment, Woodson considers not just their ambitions and successes but also the costs, the tolls they've paid for striving to overcome expectations and escape the pull of history.
This is an odd book where it seems complex on the surface but actually gets more and more simple as I thought about it. To me, it is not so much a story (as not much plot happens) as it is an examination of the facts of one's life and family history. It really is just ruminations from various characters about the life-changing events of adolescence, the legacy of parenthood, as well as the sacrifice of it. If you're not a fan of character-driven novels, maybe steer clear.
The writing style was beautiful but underdeveloped, in my opinion. Almost every scene was somehow hyper-specific in detail and yet murky about what was actually going on, and I found that frustrating. This is such a short book that there was definitely room to explore each scene more.
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
4/5 Stars
Neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker provides a revolutionary exploration of sleep, examining how it affects every aspect of our physical and mental well-being.
Ok, it was super long and a tad dry in some parts, but sleep is such a fascinating subject to me that I still enjoyed this a lot. This is a very immersive look at pretty much all aspects of sleep. If you don't already, you really need to know just how important sleep is to your overall health, especially brain health and immune health.
I have always lamented society's obsession with constantly being booked and busy, pulling all nighters as a badge of honor and show of dedication to their work. I even followed the "5 am club" movement for a minute there, seeing as most CEOs, billionaires, and general successful people wake up at the crack of dawn to start the grind. But even Bill Gates read this book and admitted the all nighters he spent in the early days of Microsoft were not worth the health hazard that lack of sleep poses. Healthy sleep is basically a wonder drug that will improve almost every aspect of your health, and nothing is really worth sacrificing it.
I valued the discussion of circadian rhythms and how it isn't possible for a natural night owl to shift to being an early bird. As a morning person myself, I admit to thinking of sleeping in as "lazy" when it's just a person's natural, healthy habit to do so and it's actually quite difficult for night owls to wake up and function during an 8 am meeting. So if you're a morning person, go a little easy on the night owls in your life. And for the love of god, please never schedule 8 am meetings.
It was pretty eye-opening how much society has set our teenagers up to fail, as their natural circadian rhythms tend to shift a little later than adults, and they need a few more hours of sleep than adults do. Instead, we force them to wake up and expect them to perform at school at 8 am and then send them home with hours of homework. So glad I'm not in school anymore.
I also enjoyed the evolutionary angle of this book, especially the idea that perhaps sleep was life's original state of being, as it is so nourishing and restorative, and we evolved to wakefulness in order to eat and mate. The sleeping habits of mammals was also fun to read about.
