Books Read September 2018: 219 - 247

Pictured: This month's 5-star reads

219. The Wrong Heaven by Amy Bonnaffons ***** (print galley; my review)
220. Struck by Lightning by Chris Colfer *** (Hoopla audiobook; my review)
221. The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo ***** (Hoopla audiobook; my review)
222. Ohio by Stephen Markley **** (eARC; my review)
223. A Man Called Ove by Fredrick Backman *** (postal book swap; my review)
224. Secrets of a Hutterite Kitchen by Mary-Ann Kirkby **** (interlibrary loan; my review)
225. The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben **** (Hoopla eBook; my review)
226. Rodeo in Reverse by Lindsay Alexander **** (eARC; my review)
227. Dumplin' by Julie Murphy **** (Hoopla audiobook; my review)
228. Solo by Kwame Alexander *** (Hoopla audiobook; my review)
229. The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell **** (eARC; my review)
230. Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore by Elizabeth Rush ***** (Hoopla eBook; my review)
231. From a Low and Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan *** (eARC; my review)
232. Sabrina by Nick Drnaso ** (library book; my review)
233. The End of the Moment We Had by Toshiki Okada **** (eARC; my review)
234. The Best American Poetry 2018 ed. Dana Gioia **** (eARC; my review)
235. The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh **** (eARC and library book; my review)
236. Normal People by Sally Rooney ***** (eARC; my review)
237. A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler **** (postal book swap; my review)
238. Baking as Biography by Diane Tye **** (interlibrary loan; my review)
239. The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan **** (Audible audiobook; my review)
240. In Our Mad and Furious City by Guy Gunaratne **** (library book; my review)
241. Premonitions by Elizabeth Schmul **** (eARC; my review)
242. Milkman by Anna Burns ** (eARC; my review)
243. There There by Tommy Orange **** (library book; my review)
244. Our Homesick Songs by Emma Hooper ***** (library book; my review)
245. Girls and Boys by Dennis Kelly **** (Audible exclusive; my review)
246. Annie Muktuk and Other Stories by Norma Dunning ***** (personal copy; my review)
247. The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah *** (library eBook; my review)

Total books read: 29
Review copies: 12

Audio: 6
eBook: 12
Print:11

Canada/Alaska 2018: 5
Postal Book Swaps: 2
Newest Literary Fiction Group: YA Theme: 4
Science September: 2

Giller Prize Longlist: 1

Man Booker Prize Longlist: 5
Man Booker Prize Shortlist: 1

National Book Award Longlist: 2

Review: Our Homesick Songs

Our Homesick Songs by Emma Hooper
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I requested this book after hearing about it in Litsy, not realizing it was longlisted for the Giller Prize, but always nice to accidentally read from a prize list!

Big Running, Newfoundland, has run out of fish, and the government is pushing people to leave, as they will no longer support the infrastructure. The Connors don't really want to leave - Martha and Aidan, the parents, are rotating traveling north for work to make enough money to live, while Finn and Cora, the children, are finding creative ways to stay. The story alternates between the story about Martha and Aidan's original romance and the "present day" which in the book is 1994, with the village staring down the reality of a depleted ocean.

In between is all kinds of magic, somehow making this the perfect book for me. Folk songs and lassie pies and meetcutes and just a lot of connectivity and coincidence, probably when I as a reader needed it most.

View all my reviews

Review: Annie Muktuk and Other Stories

Annie Muktuk and Other Stories by Norma Dunning
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was mentioned on the Best Reads of 2017 Reading Envy Podcast episode and then Lindy included it in a package of books from Canada, so I pretty much knew this book was required reading. And for my Canada-Alaska reading goal in 2018, it counts for a territory in Canada I hadn't touched yet - Nunavut.

Any of the facts I'm spouting about the author and the background to these stories comes from this excellent interview with her from the CBC.

I felt like these stories were different and wanted to understand why. Dunning had been writing for years and shoving her stories into a drawer. She said a lot of Inuit authors write but are afraid of their stories being colonized. She first thought to look into publishing after reading an anthropologist's take on the Inuit, and her reaction was, "Why is it that aboriginal women are never in charge of their own sexuality? Why are we presented as women who can be used? So that's where Annie came from — what inspired her was getting mad."

And there is definitely a theme of women owning their sexuality in these stories. These are not from American or Canadian sensibility, and I really appreciated that peek into the world.

When the author talks about being a Southern Canadian Inuk, she means anything south of official Inuit territories. The story "Annie Muktuk" is set in Churchill, Manitoba, which is the "polar bear capital of the world" (and you can see in this feature by Google Maps. Her mother was born in Whale Cove, Nunavut, although she herself did not grow up there. (Check out this interactive Inuit Nunangat Map from the Indigenous and Native Affairs Office in Canada.)

Some of the stories go back farther in time, and some are present-day. One is based on stories she heard about her grandfather while others are based in her own life. She's giving the name "story" but feels the majority are stories she has been told. Many of them include the same characters and are linked together, but not all.

Themes include survival, sexuality, family, Inuit vs. white people (these are usually hilarious), mythology and magic, and more. There's so much in the 200 pages, I can see why I've seen this so highly recommended. I loved it.

View all my reviews

Reading Envy 130: All the Jennifers (REPOST)

I really screwed up the first time I tried posting this, and some people are still seeing the old episode. So I'm trying a second post of Episode 130. If you've already listened to Jenny and Fern talk books, this is nothing new, but if you tried to listen to Fern and got Nadine, this is your episode.

Fern Ronay is an author, host of various things including a new podcast, and an avid reader, especially of women's fiction and historical fiction. She spoke with Jenny recently and you can join us at the pub.

Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 130: All the Jennifers.

Subscribe to the podcast via this link: Feedburner
Or subscribe via Apple Podcasts by clicking: Subscribe
Or listen through TuneIn
Or listen on Google Play
Listen via Stitcher


Books Discussed:



We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter
The Overstory by Richard Powers
The Summer I Met Jack by Michelle Gable
I Am Hutterite by Mary-Ann Kirkby
The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown
The Wrong Heaven by Amy Bonnaffons

Other Mentions: 

"Signs from the Other Side" podcast
Better in the Morning by Fern Ronay
Barkskins by Annie Proulx
(Annie Dillard is great but I said the wrong Annie)
Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese
Secrets of a Hutterite Kitchen by Mary-Ann Kirkby


Related Episodes:
Episode 029 - Joni Tevis and the Secret Shape with guest Joni Tevis
Episode 041 - Grotesque Beauty with Nathan Ballingrud


Stalk us online:

Fern Ronay website
Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Fern Ronay on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy
Fern is @fernronay on Instagram
Fern Ronay on Facebook
Believers in Signs (private Facebook group from Fern, request membership)

Review: There There

There There by Tommy Orange
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I wish I hadn't read this immediately after In Our Mad and Furious City because the structure is SO similar that I was confusing some pieces. Alternating viewpoints, varying points of view and tense, etc.

Tommy Orange is focusing on the present-day experience of the Urban Indian. (He uses the word Indian so I will too; I would probably go with a more PC term if I were to do it.) Set in Oakland, CA, it follows a bunch of people who are connected in some way, all moving toward a major powwow event at a stadium.

There are some pieces in the beginning and halfway through that feel like the author confronting the reader, and I felt like maybe I did need to be confronted... Despite everything I've read and despite growing up in the northwest, I didn't have any idea that 70% of our native population lived in urban areas and not on reservations. Ugh, I feel dumb.

One thing that Orange seems to be discussing is the issue of family vs. isolation. There is a difference between how a tribe used to function when everyone lived and worked together and now, when people have moved around and aren't in contact. The story works toward a finale where people are more connected but it is empty, it is violent, it is unsatisfying. Even in connection, what is mostly felt is loss.

The ending seems to be in tribute to Tarantino (I wouldn't have known that, I don't watch his films, but the author is a fan and this is mentioned several places.) I didn't care for it, to me it took the oomph out of a thoughtful, meaningful novel by reducing it to a cinematic finale. I think this is a common mistake of the first novel, honestly. We don't need it to be so dramatic! Real life has enough drama.

I like the different people portrayed, how all characters are at least part native but their lives are unique - more of this please, more real life, more people how they are, not as how we've written them for centuries.

The style of writing and the pacing make for a quick read, and I devoured it in an afternoon. After being on the hold list at my public library for a few months that felt a little anticlimactic!

View all my reviews

Review: Premonitions

Premonitions by Elizabeth Schmuhl
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've read this collection three times and it sends a chill up my spine every time. The cover is pastels and the illustrations are watercolor in feel but the poems are about self-harm and blood and gore but in reaction or in an attempt to connect to nature. Everything is so visceral and disturbing in a very effective way. I can't quote from it because I have a review copy. The imagery accompanying the collection makes me think the intention is ethereal, spiritual, connection to nature; all the reviews o her website talk about nature's ghosts and the sensory nature but I felt it went much darker. And revisiting them was a delightful shudder.

See for yourself with five poems that are in this collection, on Hobart Pulp.

Thanks to the publisher for providing me early access; this collection became available 17 September 2018.

View all my reviews

Reading Envy 130: All the Jennifers

Fern Ronay is an author, host of various things including a new podcast, and an avid reader, especially of women's fiction and historical fiction. She spoke with Jenny recently and you can join us at the pub.

Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 130: All the Jennifers.

Subscribe to the podcast via this link: Feedburner
Or subscribe via Apple Podcasts by clicking: Subscribe
Or listen through TuneIn
Or listen on Google Play
Listen via Stitcher


Books Discussed:



We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter
The Overstory by Richard Powers
The Summer I Met Jack by Michelle Gable
I Am Hutterite by Mary-Ann Kirkby
The Vanity Fair Diaries by Tina Brown
The Wrong Heaven by Amy Bonnaffons

Other Mentions: 

"Signs from the Other Side" podcast
Better in the Morning by Fern Ronay
Barkskins by Annie Proulx
(Annie Dillard is great but I said the wrong Annie)
Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese
Secrets of a Hutterite Kitchen by Mary-Ann Kirkby


Related Episodes:
Episode 029 - Joni Tevis and the Secret Shape with guest Joni Tevis
Episode 041 - Grotesque Beauty with Nathan Ballingrud


Stalk us online:

Fern Ronay website
Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Fern Ronay on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy
Fern is @fernronay on Instagram
Fern Ronay on Facebook
Believers in Signs (private Facebook group from Fern, request membership)

Review: Normal People: A Novel

Normal People: A Novel by Sally Rooney
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The night before the Man Booker Shortlist was announced, I was approved for the eARC of this title, so I stayed up late finishing it. Sadly it was not included in the shortlist, but if you like novels about relationships, this is excellent. It traces Marianne and Connell's friendship from childhood, and also tackles class difference and family violence.

(I often find my favorite books from award lists are long but not shortlisted anyway.)

Thanks to the publisher for granting me early access; sadly this doesn't come out in the USA until April 2019. You can bide your time by reading her earlier work.

View all my reviews

Review: The Water Cure

The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The writing in this book, and the way the author is able to describe the somewhat strange setting, is stellar. In the Man Booker Prize longlist wasteland that is 2018, I found it one of the more compelling reads. I love the little backstory italic parts between chapters, the ending and questioning everything, and the sisters. I felt like the story itself, what actually happens, to be less satisfying.

The italics backstory is where the story connects most with other recent books from The Power by Naomii Alderman to Red Clocks by Leni Zumas. Here is one passage in particular:

"I didn't understand how rapidly things had changed, how all that had been needed was permission for everything to go to shit, and that permission had been granted. I didn't know that there was no longer any need for the men to hold their bodies in check or to carry on the lie that we mattered."

These sections make the reader think they know what the book is. But is that what it is?

I have no idea how to classify it now that I've reached the end. (view spoiler)[Is this dystopia on a grand scale or more like Room is for the two in it? Are there actual environmental toxins going on or are the daughters being poisoned? Is the third sister really not related or was that a convenient story to tell for King to get what he wanted? Who were the women who used to be with them, and why aren't there any more? (hide spoiler)]

I have to admit, I kind of liked mulling over these questions, maybe the best part of my reading experience. That coupled with the writing made it more of a solid read for me.

Thanks to the publisher for providing access to this title through NetGalley. It doesn't come out in the USA until 9 January 2019, but my library bought it already so it can be found online. And I wanted to try to finish it before the shortlist was announced.

View all my reviews

Review: Best American Poetry 2018

Best American Poetry 2018 by Dana Gioia
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read a lot of poetry, a lot. But I learned a few things about the current state of poetry from this anthology of the Best American Poetry 2018, or at least I learned something about how I consume poetry differently than Dana Gioia, the editor, does.

1. Dana is a man. I have never read his work, and should.
2. There are more rhyming poems being produced in 2018 than I would have thought. Or is it that Dana Gioia is more drawn to rhyming poems? I felt like there were a lot of them in this anthology comparatively. Maybe we could ask the hero of The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker, who also loved rhyming poems (but saw them as something people no longer appreciated.)
3. Most of the poems Dana Gioia is consuming are coming from literary publications, where one poem from a poet is printed/published. Most of the poems I am consuming come from single-author collections, because I don't even try to keep up with the multiple publications and tend to pick collections based on reviews, publisher tables and deals at AWP, advanced reader copies in NetGalley and Edelweiss, award nominees, etc. These awards are for collections, not individual poems. But the poems getting anthologized are not necessarily in a collection... at least not yet. This is their infancy. As such I only had immediate recognition of two poems in this anthology, that I had probably read in actual collections and not where he got them from.
4. Instagram and Tumblr have gotten noticed. And Gioia chooses at least one poem that first came out in this format. Very 21st century of him.

My standouts include:

Against Dying by Kaveh Akbar (read on poets.org
"...I spent so long in a lover’s
quarrel with my flesh
the peace seems over-
cautious too-polite...."

Ghost Ship by Sonia Greenfield (read on Rattle)

Thanks to the publisher for giving me access to this title through Edelweiss. It's really gotten me thinking about how much an editor influences the selection in an anthology like this. It comes out 18 September 2018.

View all my reviews

Review: From a Low and Quiet Sea

From a Low and Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I really loved a previous book by Donal Ryan, The Spinning Heart, which I also read because it was on the Man Booker longlist, back in 2013. What I loved in that book, Ryan's ability to portray the inner lives of his characters, is present in this book as well, but where that novel felt like a cohesive story this never really came together for me. I struggled to understand what the author was trying to do. Why these characters? Why these stories?

In the Man Booker Prize universe, though, the first page of this book was astounding in the way it harkened almost directly to The Overstory by Richard Powers, about how trees communicate, etc. What a coincidence! And I think the author intended for it to lay the groundwork for the novel, something I was waiting for and didn't find.

I will still try another novel by this author. I do think he is trying to write Ireland in a different way, but I think he needed more space to accomplish it with these characters in this case.

Thanks to the publisher for giving me access to this title through NetGalley. It came out July 17, 2018, but I misread the info and thought it came out today!

View all my reviews

Reading Envy 129: Coming Back to Books

Nadine has been a listener of the podcast and in a Goodreads group with Jenny for some time. After retiring from a career of academic librarianship, Nadine is settled into a new state and ready to chat books!

Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 129: Coming Back to Books.

Subscribe to the podcast via this link: Feedburner
Or subscribe via Apple Podcasts by clicking: Subscribe
Or listen through TuneIn
Or listen on Google Play
Listen via Stitcher


Books Discussed:



Smoke City by Keith Roston
The Reservoir Tapes by Jon McGregor
Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg
Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher
The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
Instant Mom by Nia Vardalos

Other Mentions: 


Newest Literary Fiction Group in Goodreads
When She Woke by Hillary Jordan
Pegasus Books
Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor
The Reservoir Tapes (BBC Radio 4)
The Beggar's Opera by John Gay
Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
August by Romina Paula
My Big Fat Greek Wedding (film)
Milkman by Anna Burns
Summerland by Hanu Rajaniemi
The Aviator by Eugene Vodolazkin
Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin


Related Episodes:

Episode 047 - Sex with Elvis: Bonus Book Speed Dating Episode
Episode 090 - Reading Envy Readalong: East of Eden with Ellie and Jeff


Stalk us online:

Jenny at Goodreads
Nadine at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy
Nadine is @booksndogs on Litsy