Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Title: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Author: Jeanette Winterson
Pub Date: 2012
Genre: Memoir
Nutshell: Award-winning author Jeanette Winterson writes about her memories of growing up adopted and gay in a religious household and coming to terms with both of those truths as she grows up

This book's title is something Jeanette Winterson's adoptive mother actually said to her one evening as Jeanette was leaving home, after trying once again to explain why, exactly, she wanted to date other girls. She never got through to her ultra-religious mother, who preferred to take her life lessons from the Old Testament and Revelations, and who was probably more than a little mentally unbalanced. To say Winterson's childhood was harrowing at times is an understatement, and that she came out of it even as well-adjusted as she did is a minor miracle. 

This memoir is in some ways the true story behind Winterson's first book, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, which was a fairly fictionalized account of her upbringing and eventual coming out story. She says in this book that Oranges, as bizarre and bleak as it was, was in many ways more wishful and happier than the truth, because she couldn't yet deal with the real truth at the time. 

Why Be Happy bounces back and forth between two eras in Winterson's life.  The first is her childhood in Lancashire, which includes her unstable mother, her silent father, her religious life, her surreptitious trips to the library in order to read the books her mother bans from the house, and her eventual romances with neighborhood girls.  The second is her adulthood, after she leaves home to attend Oxford and eventually moves to London, where she continues to attempt to make peace with her adoption, her upbringing, and her parents. She also decides to track down her birth mother, which unleashes more trauma and grief than she bargains for. 

This was a good example of a memoir done well by an interesting author who definitely has a tale to tell. Her story continues to be one of hope and fighting past the odds, and also about the importance of owning your past, no matter how painful. 

Every Last One

Title: Every Last One
Author: Anna Quindlen
Pub Date: 2010
Genre: Fiction
Nutshell: A woman, her family, and what happens to her after something awful occurs

No spoilers, but if you can't figure out that something bad happens at some point in this book, we need to talk about your reading comprehension skills. It's mentioned on the book jacket. The only surprising thing for me was the exact nature of what happened and how long it took to happen. I don't necessarily think this was a failure on the author's part -- a failure of Foreshadowing 101 or anything, but it did get to be a bit grinding by the time the denouement finally occurred. You know from the book jacket that something bad is going to happen, and then within the first few chapters, you would get that sense even if you weren't the type that reads book jackets. And then it just keeps going. There's a Sword of Damocles hanging over the entire thing that nobody seems to see except the reader, and for me it just got wearisome. I don't know if it would have helped not saying anything about it on the book jacket and just letting you kind of read for yourself with no expectations, but it becomes pretty obvious pretty quickly that something is not right and, already provided with the information that something is going to happen, you're kind of set up with the expectation. 

So I don't know whose fault that was, but it kind of soured this whole experience for me. I never really felt connected with any of the characters--I couldn't even keep secondary character names straight, and there's not that many. I couldn't find anyone necessarily to really like or hang on to. Maybe that wasn't the point. Everyone is believable enough as real people. The writing is good. I just never fell into this book the way I do with something I really connect with. This was just something I read and said, "Okay, that was technically proficient and I didn't hate it." Maybe others will have better luck.

Plotwise, this is the story of a wife and mother who has three teenage children. The children have friends, the couple has friends and jobs, everything is fine, until one night everything becomes very much not fine, and then the rest of the book is the main character navigating the wreckage left behind. That's all I'll give you, because that much more or less exists everywhere including the book descriptions on Goodreads and Amazon.

Heart-Shaped Box

Title: Heart-Shaped Box
Author: Joe Hill
Pub Date: 2007
Genre: Horror, Fiction
Nutshell: A musician who buys a ghost on the Internet gets more than he expected

Most everyone who cares to know by now probably is aware that Joe Hill is the son of Stephen King. That fact may draw some people to his writing, or it may turn some people off. I'm not a huge fan of King myself--his stuff is either entirely too long (The Stand) or just too too. I like more than a little something left to the imagination, and I don't like a lot of gore and nastiness in my scary books. Personal preference. But I had heard that Heart-Shaped Box was on the more atmospheric and creepy side than the ew side, so when I finally found it at the library, I picked it up, since we're coming into October and the time of year for a spooky read.

I have to say, I was overall pretty happy with the book. It's generally creepy without being particularly gory. There's blood, but it is a horror novel. Nothing is overdone. There is a very icky (not necessarily horror-related) turn in the last part of the book, but it's handled deftly and nothing is dwelt on there that will make you feel like you need a shower. I will post two spoilers at the very end of the review: one that is a trigger warning, and one that is for people obsessed about the fates of animals in books. Be aware that those will be down there, and if you're not interested in either, you can skip them.

Plot: Musician and singer Judas Coyne is a sort of Gene Simmons or Alice Cooper kind of figure who has been into the shock metal scene for decades. He collects the sorts of things you might expect that sort of guy to collect, and in fact, most of the things in his collection are things his fans have sent him. One day, his assistant sees a listing on an auction site by a woman selling her stepfather's ghost along with his suit. He decides to buy it. The ghost does indeed come along with the suit, but who it is and what he wants aren't quite what Jude thought when he made the purchase.

I finished the book, which is not overly short (384 pages in hardback) in about a day. It's a quick read because the two main characters, Judas and Georgia, are definitely people you come to care about after a bit. They begin somewhat as sterotypes, but they grow on you as they let their guards down around each other and so around the reader and become more and more real as their situation grows more and more desperate. It's a good horror novel without being particularly gross or over-the-top. Hill definitely learned from his dad but brings enough of his own talent in that he should be regarded as a writer in his own right as well.


****End of Review. Spoiler Warnings Follow. Stop Here If You're Not Interested in Major Plot Points.****
Spoilers themselves are in white text. Highlight to read.








Spoiler #1: Trigger Warning (Sexual Abuse):
A major plot point concerns the longstanding sexual abuse of minor girls by older men. There are, however, no descriptions of the abuse other than the statements that it happened and a brief discourse into how (hypnotism) and the fallout of the abuse. Perpetrators are punished.


Spoiler #2: Dog Warning:
The dogs don't make it. But they are heroic and necessary, and there are puppies at the end. 

White Like Me

Title: White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son
Author: Tim Wise
Pub Date: 2008Genre: Memoir; Race RelationsNutshell: Thoughts on race and privilege from a white anti-racism activist


There's this thing that I do when I know that I don't know enough about something to have anything like an informed opinion on it. I go to the stacks. Even if that opinion is only for my own edification, I still like to feel like I know a little something about whatever is maybe troubling me in the news or whatever. This most recent time, it was all of what was going down in Ferguson, Missouri. Note: I am the whitest white girl that ever whited. I am the great great generationally go on back great granddaughter of English colonial settlers who came over to Virginia in 1633. I'm not off the Mayflower, but I am not that far off it either. There's not even, to the best of my records, any so-called "dubious whites" in my family -- none of those Popish Italian or Irish or Eastern European later arrivals here; no, sir. Now, I don't know how rich we were in the mother country (after we stopped ruling it -- RIP Richard II), and we certainly didn't do particularly spectacularly for ourselves over here in the long haul either, but we certainly do have a long history, and that history is about as pale in hue as you're likely to get out of anybody.

All of that to say that I know that I know zero about being black in America. I also know that I hold a fair amount of privilege due to the fact that I was born at the tail end of all that pale history up there. I can tell you about being a (white) woman in America, and I can tell you it's not always fantastic, but when all that blew up in Missouri, I knew there was a lot going on that I did not understand. And I wanted to. So, off to the stacks. And by stacks, I mean the library, because I don't buy books anymore (out of room and/or money -- usually both). I wanted something that would tell me specifically about privilege.  I knew I had it, but I wanted to find out exactly what it was, where it was, and how to see and recognize it. So I found this book, which does an excellent job of laying all that out.

Tim Wise was very lucky in that grew up in a home where racism was not acceptable. His mother fought against it where she found it and provided a role model for him to become an anti-racist and activist later in his life. Wise has fought against racism since college, and lays out in this book how white people who also want to fight against racism and promote social change can do so. But, as whites, we have a lot of unpacking to do before we just jump in. He doesn't pull any punches, either. He had a lot of unpacking of his own to do, and doesn't shy from telling the reader about any of it. He made a great number of mistakes, and admits to them with candor and honesty. This is definitely a very personal work and something that isn't always easy to read. But if you're interested in this kind of thing, I would say it's important to learn.

I took a great deal away from this book, and I think it helped a lot in terms of learning more about my place in society. Wise makes an excellent point that white people should fight against racism, not because we think people of color can't conquer it on their own and they need our help, but because it is a poison of our own race. It makes us less than who we could be because it diminishes our ability to see the best of ourselves and everyone else. We should do it for nobody else's sake than our own. And we don't deserve anyone else's thanks or recognition or approval for it, either. I had never viewed it that way, but he has a really valid point. 

I'd recommend this to anyone, really. But especially if you, like me, are white and wish you could do something more for social justice and change. There is a lot to be done, but we need to tread carefully, and this book is a good place to start on that journey.

The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons

Title: The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and RecoveryAuthor: Sam Kean
Pub Date: 2014
Genre: Medical History
Nutshell: The series of bizarre, horrifying and macabre circumstances that led to today's knowledge of neurology

I am a sucker for popular medical history and science. If you can tell it without requiring an actual medical degree, I'll probably be interested. I got my start with historical epidemiology (still my great passion, if it could be called that), but since then I've branched out into other interests. There are a few writers that can take something pretty complex (the brain is, you must admit, one of the more complex organs in the body) and make it entertaining and interesting enough that a layperson will enjoy reading about it. This is one of those authors, and this is one of those books.

Kean's book gives a good overall history of mankind's attempts to study the human brain and what exactly goes wrong with it and why. For most of our brief history with experimentation, we've simply been forced to wait until something catastrophic happened, and then sort of poke around in there and see what looked different. Sometimes that actually yielded results. We get a look at the different parts of the brain, what bits are responsible for what, and how scientists and doctors came by that information. As with a lot of medical experimentation in the past, some of the stories are certainly less than ethical. Some scientists in the olden days didn't necessarily lose sleep over shocking the brains of the mentally disabled in order to see what happened, or sticking unwashed fingers into holes in people's skulls at times. 

The things that makes this book unique among a lot of other medical histories are the stories it details. Unlike a lot of medical research, most of the real work that's been done on the brain has had to do, by the very nature of the organ, with living people. A dead brain doesn't really yield much. So much of what brain damage and brain regeneration is has to be observed in living patients, and Kean does a really good job of telling the stories of the people who contributed, oftentimes just with their initials, to science simply by having something happen to them and being observed. You get to know the people affected in a way that other medical histories don't always allow for, and that's interesting. It makes the book more personal, and better to read.

Overall, I'd recommend this to anyone with an interest in medical history in general or the brain in particular. It's definitely written with laypersons in mind, and all the jargon is explained. There are even cute little rebus puzzles at the beginning of each chapter, if you care to try your hand at them. The answers are usually fairly obvious once you start reading. 

The Terror

Title: The Terror

Author: Dan Simmons
Pub Date: 2007
Genre: Historical Fiction/Psychological Horror
Nutshell: The crews of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, stranded in the Arctic wastes while searching for the Northwest Passage, are being hunted by something on the ice.

Oh my gosh, you guys, this book is LONG. I read it on the Kindle, so I didn't have a real good idea of the length, but one reviewer said the book won't kill you unless it falls on your head. That may be true. But the length may be part of the point of the book, since the characters in the book are stranded in the high Arctic for years. The seeming endlessness of the book echoes the endlessness of the days. But boy howdy is this a slog in parts.

But anyway. The tale is told from the points of view of various sailors aboard the two ships, HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, who are on yet another expedition to find the fabled Northwest Passage, which Great Britain seemed to be obsessed with in the 19th century. Something goes hopelessly awry and the ships get completely stuck in the solid pack ice of the high latitudes, and after a while it becomes apparent that something is hunting them. After that, it becomes a slow winding down unto eventual death between the ice, the unrelenting cold, starvation, the thing, mutinous sailors, and various forms of illness. 

The story is based on the historical ill-fated Franklin Expedition to the Arctic of 1845, from which there were no recorded survivors. Of course, Simmons takes some liberties with the plot to add the element of horror to the story and twists the ending to make it more interesting than the likely more factual result. And for all that it was so incredibly long and I do admit to skipping parts, I did keep going to the end. Volumes upon volumes of Patrick O'Brian have made me used to longer seagoing narratives than I might otherwise be accustomed to reading. The main narrator, Captain Francis Crozier, was a compelling enough character that I couldn't leave him completely behind, and some of the other sailors, namely Lieutenant Irving and Surgeon Goodsir, were also interesting enough to keep me slogging. The beast/terror on the ice is presented vaguely enough that it remains mysterious until the end, which was a good choice. And, in the end, the fact that I started reading this in the end of August in Kentucky, when the temperature is 90 degrees and the humidity is staggering was likely the best possible environment for hundreds of pages of ice and snow and subzero temperatures. 

I would hesitate before recommending this book to any but the heartiest readers, honestly. I read this on a recommendation for psychological horror, and it's definitely not one for obvious gore or anything, but it is a long walk to get to much of anything. If you're interested in naval fiction, it's not bad for that. In terms of bleakness, it's no worse in its way than O'Brian's Desolation Island or The Unknown Shore, just infinitely longer. If you're really into Arctic exploration, have at it. If you're into Inuit mythology, there's a bit for you here too. But otherwise, it's a very, very long book. 

Hollow City

Title: Hollow City: The Second Novel of Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children

Author: Ransom Riggs
Pub Date: 2014
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
Nutshell: The peculiar children of Miss Peregrine's loop struggle to help their injured headmistress while keeping safe from hollows

I read the first book in this series (Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children) about a year or so ago. It's an odd premise--a novel seemingly built around a series of photographs the author found, more or less. But the narrative itself is quite good and definitely draws you in, and the quirky pictures eventually take a back seat to the story.

This is the second novel, and you have to have read the first to really understand what's happening. Suffice it to say that Jacob and his peculiar friends have been ousted from their safe home and are on the run from forces that want them dead. This book is the story of their journey toward London in their search for help for their wounded headmistress, Miss Peregrine, and also to rescue the other kidnapped ymbrynes that hollows are keeping locked up. On the way, they will meet other peculiars and learn a great deal about what they're up against.

This is another engrossing tale and a very quick read. There aren't a lot of punches pulled here, so for all that it's YA, very young readers might be a bit overwhelmed. But I would have loved this series at about age 11 or 12. Adults will also find it most enjoyable.