"She'd become attached to the phone as if it was another limb, as if she was trying to recreate in our house with her calls back home."

Beautifully written coming-of-age. I liked the time -jumps, it made most of the book feel like vignettes, though the action definitely picked up at the end. I wanted so much more for Razia, but I love how the ending showed her she did have community. 

Oh my god I loved this so much. A socialist Pride & Prejudice is right, and since I love P&P so much I can't believe it too me this long to read this! I only watched the BBC North & South miniseries for the first time in 2020, and have re-watched it so much since I almost had it memorized. Normally I try to read the book first, but some of Gaskell's writing was confusing for someone not familiar with the dialects she included in dialogue, so in this case it helped to have a reference. 

No slight against the book, but this edition (Duke Classics eBook printed 2012) was awful. I switched to reading a Project Gutenberg and listening on LibriVox (really enjoyed MaryAnn's reading!) because the Duke version was missing punctuation and had many other mistakes (printed "hack" instead of "back," "he" instead of "be," etc.) Definitely will be avoiding checking out any more from Duke and hopefully will find a way to report it to my library so they can get a better copy.

It was also disappointing that a book about inequality contained so many slurs and stereotypes against the Roma and the Irish, and such disgust towards Catholics, but it was enlightening to see what was so socially acceptable to say about minority groups then.

Finally, the ending was so abrupt! Gaskell built up the romance and tension so beautifully, I wanted more, so please forgive me if I finally start logging FanFic reads on here... 

Dialogue and steamy scenes were too cringe. Very graphic sex scenes normally don’t bother me, but these were too much. Then there was the unbearable tensions between the sisters. Most of the characters are horrible to each other. If Rome really fell in love at first sight with the Janelle, where is their tension now that he gets his chance? She thought he hated her, but there’s no thought given to his sudden interest now? So much potential for great longing flushed away in favor for petty group drama.

This book is an interesting time capsule of COVID-19 policies. I wasn't expecting to hear so much about how COVID impacted her hospitalization and how Tendler questioned the lack of clear COVID-19 guidelines at her facilities. It was disappointing how in the end she then quickly jumped to declare COVID-19 a worry of the past (as of this writing, the WHO still classifies COVID-19 as a  pandemic, excess deaths remain higher than expected, and  Long COVID is disabling more and more, etc.) Having this reflection from the early days of the pandemic is especially important as most people seem set on ignoring not only the ongoing impacts of COVID but also the fear and grief from that time. 

The other aspects of the memoir mostly focus on Tendler's mental health journey and how men in her lief have wronged her. The mental health portion was heart-wrenching, but her ableism also made this hard to process. Instead of reclaiming the word "crazy," Tendler titled this book to attack men, not to topple the toxic view society has of people struggling with their mental health. She also used slurs against people with cerebral palsy and against people with other disabilities. 

The men in her life have certainly done her wrong, but her conclusion that all men suck was shockingly surface level for someone who has such a strong relationship to different spiritual practices and went through so much therapy. This view also felt confusing - perhaps Tendler should spend less time with straight cis men and she might find better community in a queerer definition of manhood. 

It was also strange to read her passionate tirades against men as it became clearer that her mother was the root of many of her insecurities and mental health struggles. Reading about how she was better able to navigate their relationship after she learned coping mechanisms and found more understanding in the emotions behind her mother's actions was refreshing, but it seemed something Tendler was unwilling to explicitly write about.

Tendler also refused to address any information about her divorce, beyond mentioning at parts that she had a husband and later that she was going through a divorce. After getting such an in-depth look at her past relationships, this also made the book feel off-balance, though I can see there could be many reasons she was unwilling or unable to write about that particular relationship. 

Knowing Tendler as an artist, I was excited to hear more about her creative process, but this also felt under-discussed. When Tendler talked about her photography, interior design, hair and make-up work, or other projects, it was typically offered as something she was curious to do once, sometimes accidentally found monetary success, and so continued to do until it became uncomfortable or unbearable. I wish there was more introspection on why she was pushed to create and what these different art forms gave her, but maybe that is something that will come later.

Normally I'm quick to give a star rating, but I'm pretty conflicted about this book. At the start, I was worried having so many main characters would be confusing, but each character and their place was clear. I loved the world building and settings, but did feel that some aspects should have been given more time.

The biggest example for me was Xiala's Teek heritage. Everything revealed felt like a tease - we kept slowly learning more about her homeland, and then her wild powers are revealed but only used once and only through an accident? Then her quest continues with minimal reflection on any of it.

As a series, this was probably too much surface-level exposition for me. Yes, the first instillation is building up to future books, but for as long as it was, I wanted more and leaving the ending at the climax instead of resolving but with a cliffhanger was so disappointing. 

“The bombing of Afghanistan had already been under way for a fortnight, and I had been avoiding the evening news, preferring not to watch the partisan and sports-event-like coverage given to the mismatch between the American bombers with their twenty-first-century weaponry and the ill-equipped and ill-fed Afghan tribesmen below. On those rare occasions when I did find myself confronted by such programming in a bar, say, or at the entrance to the cable company's offices I was reminded of the film Terminator, but with the roles reversed so that the machines were cast as heroes.”

“That a heart will not back down 

is also a love story.”

I loved Water & Salt and this collection was a gut punch in a new but similarly beautiful way. My favorites include: When The Sky Is No Longer, First Generation, This Day Our Daily Bread, On Translation, Notes from the Civil Discourse Committee, Iconic, Sfumato, Long Distance, Zaghareed

“‘Why am I here today? I’m asked this question often”—by those who made it inevitable. “And yes, I would love to go back home”—even that dismissal requires something other than “peace.’”

This took me almost a year to read and I’m not sure why. The characters were confusing, but the plot was fast paced and the topics gripping, especially with the horrific developments over the year I read it. Maybe it was the format - I should have found a physical copy, but am glad to have at least had the ebook.

I was excited to read this after loving Braiding Sweetgrass, but it was an incredibly disappointing follow-up to such a detailed and loved book. In contrast to the care I felt Sweetgrass was written with, Serviceberries felt like reading a first draft. In one chapter, a paragraph reads, “The economic contest between colonial and Indigenous currencies did not end with the Buffalo.” But Buffalo were not mentioned at all in that chapter, or that I can remember in any earlier chapters. There were many similar places where it felt like more had been cut without revising what was left.

The idea of a Gift Economy and living in mindful reciprocity with everyone and everything around us is a strong and much needed replacement for endless consumerism and exploitative capitalism. However, Robin Wall Kimmerer only brushes over people already doing this work through Mutual Aid groups and hardly touches on other anarchist organizations working to share and protect against the current systems. Instead of researching these organizations, Kimmerer simply says she’s not online much and mostly knows about rural areas. She continues to make bold statements like “Capitalism… is not going away anytime soon.” More research and more detailed examples could have better shown how to practice reciprocity today, or explained more thoroughly workings of this system in the past and in nature.

The one example she used too much was a stand with free goods from a local farmer. At the end of a season when all the goods were taken, the stand was still there with a sign reading “Free Farm Stand.” If I was passing by and saw that, I would assume the stand itself was being given away, as apparently someone did because they took it. Instead of accepting this possibly generous - but in my mind acceptable - explanation, the person who took the stand is called a thief and is used as an example of how selfish and greedy people can ruin the gift economy. This destroyed her argument, at least to me, that living in reciprocity requires not only that we don’t take more that we need but also that we work to assume the best in those around us and trust that they also take only what they need, give extra away, and leave what they can.

“My window was
broken my room morphed into an abandoned place    eaten by dust   I left my pens behind
Now I write on the walls of houses along the road of my displacement and I know that they will wilt, I mean, turn into rubble”

A free collection from Read Palestine Week, but it took me longer to process it. Grief, perseverance, rage, and hope scream from each page. The horrors being inflected on the Palestinians are almost incomprehensible, but we must not look away. The book ends with tangible action items, fitting as every page must be heard by any caring person as call to action.

“Every time I write, I’m afraid. I’m afraid that a missile will, at any moment, pierce through my body, and my story will remain forever trapped in my head, incomplete.”