Derry Girls Uncle Colm if he was an insufferable boy mom.
Actually, worse, because though Uncle Colm drones on and on, at least his stories are interesting at their core. This was like listening to a child: “this happened and then this happened and then this happened and then…” 
Flat characters who were self serving and annoying. 
Violetta marries a literal Nazi and only leaves him because he wasn’t passionate enough? Then stays with an abusive (passionate!) man despite her child pleading over and over for her to leave him. Her politics stay vague and meaningless even as she magically opens organizations to mysteriously help women.
She recognizes how the USA destabilizes her country, but praises the colonialist work her grandson does in the Congo. 
The book had so much promise with the idea of a woman born during the Great Influenza and dying during the COVID-19 pandemic, but nothing of substance came out of this annoying text. 
Only finished reading because I need it to complete a reading challenge and the other books I wanted for those prompts might not come off hold before the challenge end date. 

“Now the land had been pulled from under my feet and I wobbled in the unsteady terrain of refugees, struggling to carry on. It wasn’t like that for Mama or even Sitti Wasfiyeh, who had sworn she would never recover from becoming a refugee again... Maybe it was easier because the trauma of forced displacement was already well-known to them, and they understood how idleness and purposelessness could dull the mind, droop the eyelids, and seep too much sleep and despair into the day.”

I already can feel that the characters, the settings, every plot large and small will stick with me and replay in my mind. Abulhawa write such vivid and gripping details into every corner of this book, even in the most devastating and hearwrenching pages, I couldn’t look away or put it down.

 @transjewtalian wrote on Twitter today, “october 7th permanently shaped postcolonial studies as a discipline in that it revealed beyond all doubt just how many scholars are careerist unprincipled charlatans who wouldn't know what solidarity looked like even if it set up camp occupying the center of campus for weeks” and it perfectly breaks down the biggest issue I had with this book. 

The United States Empire is a topic under-discussed, and the beginning of this book was very detailed in how leaders in the USA were able to create such a web of exploitation outside the continental "borders."

There were a few offhand remarks and factual issues that reminded me to read with a sharp eye, but the core thesis was good enough that I kept going. 

This completely fell apart as the timeline neared modern day. 

Despite brining up the massive number of military bases the USA has abroad, there was little to no discussion of Vietnam or South Korea, not enough discussion of USA influence in Africa, and generally an underdeveloped analysis of impact in the Global South. 

Worst: the treatment of Palestine. This line explains it all: “in 1948, when Palestine gained independence as the State of Israel.” 

The arguments in the book completely lacked a connection to the impacts of this empire today. This made the entire book feel almost pointless. It is mind-numbing to be able to see the reach of USA imperialism globally, but not discuss the impacts of that force on the modern local populations. If you pick this up, I would urge you to take the history you may not have heard about before and search out authors from the parts of the world under the thumb of empire whose voices are not published with such large marketing budgets or New York Times reviews. 

“‘We’ve had our magic for as long as we have had our land,” her mother said. “It goes beyond spells and charms and evocations - it is an extension of our souls. We cannot imagine ourselves without it, because then we would not be ourselves.’”

Exactly the heartwarming and fun romance I needed today. Despite wanting to savor it, I flew through this in less than a day. Actually frustrated that this is Nadia El-Fassi’s first book - I need more immediately! 

“That old buffalo woman gave Nanapush her views. She told him that he had survived by doing the opposite of all the others. Where they abandoned, he saved. Where they were cruel, he was kind. Where they betrayed, he was faithful. Nanapush then decided that in all things he would be unpredictable. As he had completely lost trust in authority, he decided to stay away from others and to think for himself, even to do the most ridiculous things that occurred to him.”

This book wasn’t what I expected, and as someone who doesn’t typically reach for mystery novels (thank you to the Paperbacks & Frybread Decolonize Your Bookshelf Challenge for taking me here!) I’m so glad I picked it up. It was very uncomfortable to be in the mind of a 13 year old boy, but at the same time I am still reeling from the amount of growth readers get not only from the main character but from the complex web of community he is surrounded by. This is a book that will stick with me for a long time.

A beautiful meditation on what people betray, including themselves, for power.

Was this published as a prank to see if people would actually read it?
It was so disgusting and pointless that I would have thrown it aside early on if I wasn’t reading it for a bookclub. This is especially strange because it had such potential - an interesting setting, ruined by a total lack of commitment to the alleged time period (people know disease was spread by ships, travelers, and rats [yet take no predations, just continue to die]; a character is asked if he had a “girlfriend”; a kid proclaims that he wants to be an “explorer” when he grows up, and so much more) and themes of religion, family, truth, sexuality, class, abuse, pandemics, isolation, and so much more are introduced, and then simply thrown aside.

In an especially jarring section at the end of the second to last chapter, the reader is suddenly addressed directly: “Everything seems reasonable in hindsight. 

Right or wrong, you will think what you need to think so that you can get by. So find some reason here.” Unfortunately, there was no reason to be found there or in any other part of the book.

The only partial redemption and what even allowed me to finish reading was the flow and some actually funny lines:
‘What about heaven, Ina? Don’t you want to go?’ 

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I won’t know anyone.’
And even less often, a truly beautiful paragraph:
“his heart felt cold, like a sweat chilled by a sudden wind. It was a terrible feeling, the boy's first experience of nostalgia: the pain of his past.  Until now, time had had almost no meaning. The sun rose and set. The church bells donged, but he didn't bother to count them.”

“She had a wisdom that nobody could recognize; the deaths of her children hadn't torn the innocence from her heart, but had calloused her against her own rage.”

I love the writing style and atmosphere but I’m not connecting with the plot. Library loan was due before I finished, maybe I’ll come back to it if it calls to me.

I had never been so aware of the color of my skin as I was in New York. I saw myself, at that moment, against a paint palette, and I was truly surprised. How could I see myself as one thing and be another?

A satire on ethnic cleansing, a dark comedy on colorism, a carnival of dehumanizations, a  fever dream of the American Nightmare. 

A fun read that I flew through once I got into it! The start of the book really felt like YA, which I do not mean as any kind of insult, just that the writing style and inner thoughts of the main character felt more teenage angst than quarter life crisis. 
I loved the way the folk tales and deities were woven into modern life, though it would have been interesting to see how each character continued to acknowledge them after the main quest was over.
While the plot kept me reading, the writing also started to feel clunky. Action scenes were confusing, and even in calm conversations I had trouble keeping track of who was talking or when flashbacks/memories merged back into the current timeline.

At least the Lord of the Rings referenced outnumbered Harry Potter references… 

Also, just very curious to know… Do University Toronto dorms really have bathtubs?