What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding by Kristin Newman

3/5 stars

What's it about? While contemporaries settle down and start families, sitcom writer Kristin Newman chases romance and adventure around the world. A lighthearted, sometimes bawdy read that guarantees a happy ending (thank you, thank you) as early as the dedication page.

How’d I find it? A delightful colleague at Solid State Books recommended this some months ago, and I picked up a copy at Multnomah County Library.

Who will enjoy this book? Amy Schumer’s The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo has a similar tone and energy.

What stood out? Newman delivers a cohesive narrative with developed characters (the enigmatic “Ferris Bueller,” her besties Hope and Sascha), and I enjoyed her travel recommendations. The book’s humor and epiphanies all read as too obvious for my taste, though this might not ring true for others.

Which line made me feel something? Newman and I share an ick: “There were a few months spent with an overly emotional French writer, who absolutely made it into my Top Three in the bed department, but who called his own writing ‘beautiful.’”

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

5/5 stars

What's it about? I recognize that this may be very confusing within a book review for Jurassic Park, but I cannot restrain myself: “‘God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs.’ ‘Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth.’” An apt synopsis of the book, though the earth inheritors are unstoppable female dinosaurs rather than human women.

How’d I find it? My spouse said I should read this, and I couldn’t put it down for four days. Thanks to Powell’s for the copy.

Who will enjoy this book? I’m pretty sure most readers already know whether or not they like Jurassic Park. Horror fans, you are in for a terrifying book.

What stood out? Crichton’s ability to build tension rewards the reader mightily; he had me chewing my nails over breakfast at Lutz Tavern. I appreciated the story’s pacing, its tangents into chaos theory, and the perspective shifts between characters. Not a page is wasted. A downside: Dr. Sattler gets little to do except nurse, and Crichton only tells us a character’s race if they’re not white.

Which line made me feel something? Ian Malcolm with the truth bombs: “But we have soothed ourselves into imagining sudden change as something that happens outside the normal order of things. An accident, like a car crash. Or beyond our control, like a fatal illness. We do not conceive of sudden, radical, irrational change as built into the very fabric of existence. Yet it is.”

This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? One of my truest joys is browsing the horror section at Powell’s Books on Hawthorne on a Saturday afternoon. This was a jewel from one of those excursions.

Why not 3 or more stars? This Thing Between Us is worth a look; it’s not a bad book by any means. I took issue with the epistolary format that didn’t end with the book’s climax and its meandering conclusion. There’s a certain sloppiness here that gets under my skin, especially when the story has such potential. Itches remain unscratched. Siri gone mad? I craved something a bit more ME3AN.

The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery

5/5 stars

What's it about? Sy Montgomery makes friends with octopuses in this exploration of the soul and of the diversity of consciousness on Earth. A hug of a book that I was ready to dismiss but couldn’t help but admire for its spirit and openness to discovery.

How’d I find it? My spouse says this book was given to him to prove the cruelty of eating mollusks. It’s effective — you’ll never want calamari again.

Who will enjoy this book? If you’re constantly watching documentaries on Netflix or anything narrated by David Attenborough, this read is for you. A fiction readalike? The Overstory by Richard Powers or The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler.

What stood out? Montgomery inhabits her project by befriending cephalopods, learning to dive, and becoming entangled in the happenings of the New England Aquarium. I appreciated the memoir approach to consciousness as a subject. Blending personal experience and science, The Soul of an Octopus is a human book about something beyond our species.

Which line made me feel something? “Perhaps, I muse, this is the pace at which the Creator thinks, in this weighty, graceful, liquid manner — like blood flows, not like synapses fire. Above the surface, we move and think like wiggly children, or like teens who twitch away at their computer-phones, multitasking but never focusing. But the ocean forces you to move more slowly, more purposefully, and yet more pliantly.”

Supermarket by Bobby Hall

1/5 STARS

How’d I find it? Bless the Little Free Libraries of the world. On a rainy day in DC while walking to the metro, I spotted this bright cover and tucked it into my jacket.

Why not 3 or more stars? Hall shows his hand far too soon in this novel about aspiring writer Flynn, who takes his craft so seriously that inspiration and mental illness quickly muddle. The cues that suggest that all is not what seems give the game away around page 16, and the rest is preposterous dialogue and signal fires for the truly inattentive.

CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders

4/5 stars

What's it about? George Saunders mines the human condition in a witty collection with sprinklings of the dark consumerism and theme park background of Westworld. A masterfully executed first book.

How’d I find it? A friend who loves George Saunders gave my spouse this copy. I got to it first.

Who will enjoy this book? What are you waiting for? Saunders is an American treasure that always deserves a read. But, in the interest of following my self-imposed formula, fans of Nana Adjei-Brenyah, who studied under Saunders, will find inspirations for both Friday Black and Chain-Gang All-Stars in CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. Watchers of Black Mirror and Neil Gaiman should enjoy the book’s themes and humor.

What stood out? The writing is impeccable: irreverent, funny, and joyfully spot-on. You’ll be laughing out loud and thinking to yourself, “Man, he nailed it.” Saunders intuitively understands when to tickle the brain or strum a heartstring; the turns surprise and delight. The title story and the novella “Bounty” are particular standouts.

Which line made me feel something? The last paragraph of the story “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline” is perfection, but it would be unfair to spoil it. Here’s an excellent tidbit from “Bounty:” “Discipline and other forms of negativity are shunned. Bedtimes don’t exist. Face wiping is discouraged. At night the children charge around nude and screaming until they drop in their tracks, ostensibly feeling good about themselves. ‘We ran the last true farm,’ one of the kids screams at me. ‘Until the government put us out,’ the wife says softly. She’s pretty the way a simple white house in a field is pretty. ‘Now we’re on the fucking lam,’ says a toddler. Both parents smile fondly.”

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? Another book gifted by my bookworm aunt. I tend to avoid the bestseller table but was intrigued by the mystery element in this one.

Why not 3 or more stars? While ambition is a core theme, Everything I Never Told You is not an ambitious book. It rests firmly in “very special episode” territory, squandering the potential complexity of a plot centered on the death of a teenage girl. Everyone is very privileged and very self-absorbed. Characters are constantly surprised to find tears on their faces. A surface-level treatment of racism doesn’t land but is tarted up to feel poignant. Long story short: Ng’s writing chops can’t salvage this one.

In Deep by Maxine Kumin

4/5 stars

What's it about? Poet Maxine Kumin talks craft and country living in this volume of essays about managing a farm in New Hampshire while maintaining a writing life. A warm hearth of a book.

How’d I find it? I picked this up at Normals Books & Records in Baltimore, which has the kind of selection that makes me say, “Ooh!” and pluck a book off the shelf that I never even knew existed.

Who will enjoy this book? In Deep is for horse girls young and old, as well as for Mary Oliver and Henry David Thoreau acolytes.

What stood out? In Deep owes much to Kumin’s admiration of Thoreau, whose influence can be seen in essays dedicated to taxonomic descriptions of mushrooms and species of cattle as well as in “The Unhandselled Globe,” which centers on Thoreau himself. Kumin rejects the Freudian links to women who love horses and gendered assumptions about her mares; she and the animals she loves are the focus here, and glimpses of her human family are brief. She writes beautifully about the day-to-day labors of keeping a farm running, from building fences to keeping everyone fed.

Which line made me feel something? From the closing essay, “A Sense of Place,” an outstanding analysis of the stamp of home on Kumin’s poetry: “In a poem one can use the sense of place as an anchor for larger concerns, as a link between narrow details and global realities. Location is where we start from. Landscape provides our first geography, the turn of the seasons are archetypes for our own mortality.”

Later by Stephen King

2/5 stars

How’d I find it? My aunt and I share a love of Stephen King, and she passed along this title.

Why not 3 or more stars? Thanks to King’s writing skills and ability to fully inhabit a persona, Later is generally a good time. Readers will find this story easily digested in a sitting or two, and Jamie Conklin makes for an amiable narrator.

However. A well-written story with low stakes requires something to make it shine, and Later lacks that gleam. The use of the title as a literary device didn’t work for me; the payoff it promises fails to materialize in the closing pages, though little should be expected from the one dimensional characters we come to know (Villains gotta vill, right?). The supernatural and crime elements never coalesce either, but this may have more to do with the choice of perspective. The corrupt cop Liz as our narrator would have made for quite an ending. If only!

Most egregiously, King resurrects the Ritual of Chüd but deploys it weakly. Mr. King, if you’re going to reference It, a truly outstanding piece of literature, you better make it count.

Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky

5/5 stars

What's it about? Citizens of the town of Vasenka refuse to hear after occupying forces murder a deaf child. A powerful story of resistance, community, and the body weaponized.

How’d I find it? Kaminsky gave a moving reading at Folger Shakespeare Library in 2019 as part of the O.B. Hardison Poetry series, and I had to have a (signed) copy. In fact, the reading was so memorable that my spouse and I read large parts of the book aloud together.

Who will enjoy this book? Check out the poets featured in American Journal: 50 Poems for Our Time, also published by Graywolf Press. If you enjoy this brand of poetry, Deaf Republic will speak to you.

What stood out? The poems of Deaf Republic comprise one cohesive narrative, so while many of its poems can be savored solo, you’d be missing out on Kaminsky’s larger achievement. Yes, this is a book of poetry, but it’s also a protest, a play, a puppet show. Deaf Republic juxtaposes the experience of the citizens of Vasenka with that of people not in the throes of unrest (see the oft-quoted “We Lived Happily During the War” that opens the book), and evokes our responsibility as humans to speak out against injustice regardless of where it occurs.

Kaminsky also takes on in this project the illusion of silence — an “invention of the hearing” — and intersperses throughout the book illustrations of the signs that the townspeople use to communicate, functioning as lines or poems in their own right. Deaf Republic serves up poetic forms suited to a variety of performance: on the page, aloud, and signed.

Which line made me feel something? From “A Cigarette:” “You will find me, God, / like a dumb pigeon’s beak, I am / pecking / every which way at astonishment.”