Yellow Wallpaper

Take Me Apart by Sara Sligar This book alternates between two timelines, and suffers from the fact that one story is much more interesting than the other.  The author tries to make up for that fact by having the protagonist of the contemporary story start investigating events from the older one, but she never firmly establishes why there is a mystery or why it needs investigating. I thought this might have been a better book if it had only focused on one story and told it as more straightforward literary fiction instead of trying to manufacture unnecessary suspense. The Dearly Beloved by Cara Wall I'm not sure how to feel about this book. On the one hand, Wall is wonderful writer and the first half of the book builds up beautiful portraits of four different people. In some places it reminded me of Wallace Stegner and his attention to relationships. On the other hand, however, the plot wasn't formed around a particularly compelling conflict and last third of the book dragged...

Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver This is a big, sprawling book that covers a lot of different characters and two different time periods. In some ways this works and in others it doesn't; some aspects of the book, especially the historical parts, felt underdeveloped. It took a while to really get into it, but by the end of the book I was absorbed in the story and had a hard time letting go of the characters. Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha This book seems like it should have gotten more buzz than it did last year. It's a complicated story about race, violence, and family legacies. The author alternates focus between two families who are intertwined as victims and perpetrators in different ways throughout the book. There aren't easy answers to any of the questions raised by the book, and I thought Cha did an excellent job leaving things realistically open in the end. Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter I knew this book was going to be terrible, but I wanted to read...

This year I decided to put all my reviews of Whitney finalists in one post. This year I read books from the General/Historical category and the Historical Romance category. Whatever it Takes by Jessica Pack My biggest issue with this book is the fact that it centers on a protagonist who is so closed off and defensive that it is hard as a reader to want to root for her and sympathize with her. The writing, however, is solid and the pacing is good. Pack (a pseudonym of Josi Kilpack) is an experienced writer and it clearly shows, even though this book wasn't my favorite. Deborah: Prophetess of God by H.B. Moore The Biblical story of Deborah is one that I'm not very familiar with, but I liked Moore's depiction of her as a strong and spiritual woman. Moore's books are always rich in detail about the lives of women during Biblical times and I feel like I learned a lot from this one. The Book of Abish by Mette Harrison I have to admit that I had low expect...

Saints: No Unhallowed Hand: 1846-1893 I actually read this in February and reviewed it over at Segullah . I enjoyed this latest installment in the series and look forward to the next two books. A Student of History by Nina Revoyr I grew up in Southern California, but not in Los Angeles--a distinction I never really understood until I was an adult and no longer lived there. In this book, Los Angeles and its history form an essential part of the plot, and Revoyr is a skilled writer who conveys a sense of the importance of this history for anyone who has never lived there. I also appreciated her skill in helping the reader sympathize with a character who spends the entire book making terrible decisions. They Called Us Enemy by George Takei This was a fairly quick read, but still powerful and important. Two of my kids also read it and loved it just as much as I did. I thought the art and the story were both excellent; it also thoughtfully ties together Takei's experiences a...

One Day: The Extraordinary Story of an Ordinary 24 Hours in America by Gene Weingarten How does the year 1986 feel simultaneously like it just barely happened and also like ancient history? This book was an interesting collection of a variety of different stories about many different people and the many ways in which one particular day fit into the rest of their life. Weingarten uses a few stylistic tics that I don't particularly enjoy, but I mostly had a great time reading this book. The Tenth Muse by Catherine Chung Math is not a subject I know a lot about, but thankfully the author of this book describes it in such a way that I can still appreciate its significance to the story without fully understanding all the details. Some elements of the plot were a bit too melodramatic and cliche for my taste--it's getting hard to write an original novel about World War 2 in Europe anymore--but I still enjoyed reading it. The protagonist feels both historically appropriate and ...

The Guardians by John Grisham It's been years since I last read a novel by Grisham, but I read a number of positive reviews of this new title and thought it might be worth my time to give it a try. Like many of the author's other novels, this focuses on a contemporary social issue (wrongful convictions), which made it feel a little too didactic in spots. It also wasn't as suspenseful as I had thought it would be--I kept waiting for the conflict to increase or for something awful to happen, and yet it did not. I think it might be better to skip this and just read Just Mercy instead. Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America by James Poniezowik I rarely read books about politics, but I had read an interview with the author of this book last year and found his ideas to be intriguing. When I ran across the book again at work, I decided to check it out and give it a read. First of all, it reminded me that I have actually watched very litt...

My reading totals for 2019 are right on track with trends from the last few years (here is 2018's post ). I read a total of 110 books--averaging around 8 books most months, with heavy reading in the spring when I worked on Whitney books. I didn't participate in any reading challenges this year after all, since the one I completed before was from a local used bookstore and I had a hard time spending my prize gift certificate (turns out I don't really like buying books, and used bookstores make it hard to find anything I want to actually have in my house). I did notice that I read more young adult books this year, which is something I had gotten away from during the last few years. I was not surprised to find that I had read 87 books by women, 21 books by men, and 2 by multiple authors. I read a lot of fiction, and the genres I favor tend to have more female authors. I also read several adult categories for the Whitneys and they were all heavily female. Additionally, there ...

A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit While there were some passages in this book that I loved, I felt like overall it wasn't as strong as some of Solnit's other writing. I love her way of drawing connections between so many disparate ideas and her skill in depicting small details that others might miss. Although I don't think this is my favorite of her books, Solnit is still one of my favorite writers. The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud This is a book that popped up on a lot of 'best of the decade' lists recently so I thought I'd give it a chance. To be honest, I kind of hated it for at least the first half of the book. The protagonist is prickly and reacts to things in ways I had difficulty understanding. However, as I persevered, things started to come together and I began to see how wrong I was about the assumptions I was making. This is a difficult book to describe, and a difficult book to read, but it really is worth the effort. Never ...

The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware This was my first book by Ware, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Despite the fact that I started to figure out the big twist before the end, I still didn't guess all the details and couldn't put it down. Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness by W. Paul Reeve I'd read a few different pieces from Reeve about his research and wasn't sure whether I wanted to put the time into reading the whole book. I'm glad I did, because even though it's fairly complicated, it was fascinating. This is one of my new favorite books to tell people about because I learned so much from it. Mercury by Margot Livesey Even a month after finishing this book, I'm still not sure what to think about it. It's a long, complex book and uneven in the way it's written. The central conflict was muted and it didn't have a strong narrative arc, but the characters were well-realized and it posed a numb...