Book Report

[stormkeeper_lovedoris]

 It's already time for another book report!

My rating system:

10 – life-changing, an all-time favorite

5 - average for what I read

1 – terrible; why did I finish it?

 

 

Bored and Brilliant by Manoush Zomorodi – The message of this book is to put down your smartphone and allow your brain some time to rest because that’s when it gets creative. There are plenty of anecdotes and data to back up what we probably already know. I think the book serves as a good reminder, and it’s pretty readable. Grade: 7

 

 

 

Sand in my Bra edited by Jennifer L. Leo -  A collection of travel essays by women, many of them detailing embarrassing/almost-funny situations. (An author’s panties come loose in public, and she’s in a Muslim country wearing almost nothing else other than an abaya. Another author gets locked out of her hook-up’s apartment in Paris, just wearing his shirt, not knowing his name, no phone etc). I have to mention that one essay made my stomach turn. The writer was in Thailand, says she’s a prude, and writes about going to a sex show. She mentions that the performers (female, of course) look to be about 14. There’s not one line in her essay about, oh I don’t know, how children performing sex acts (on stage or not) is illegal in any decent country, not to mention horrific and gross. Or about how even if the performers were 18, Thailand is notorious for forced prostitution (also known as, you know, sexual assault). It’s like this performance she went to was just something for her to gawk at instead of devoting any thought to what was behind it. I mean, yay for not being judgmental and trying to go with the flow but I don’t know how you can be so tone-deaf either. I have to admit that it brought the whole book down for me. Grade: 4

 

 

Tomorrow Will be Different by Sarah McBride – A memoir. As McBride tells us, by age 25 she is transgender, a window, and has become the first trans person to address a major political party’s convention. I loved her story and read it in just a few days. She describes being politically active from a young age, coming out, meeting the love of her life only to lose him to cancer 2 years later, and then addressing the 2016 Democratic Convention. A great read about love and loss and how to find your voice. I wish McBride had shared more about how she coped after losing her husband. It happened so recently that I suspect she is still working on it. Grade: 8

 

A Meal in Winter by Hubert Mingarelli – A novel taking place during World War II. Three Nazi soldiers are stationed in a remote, freezing area of Poland and are tasked with tracking down Jews who might be hiding in the wilderness. The novel is brief, sparse, compelling, and haunting. Grade: 8

 

Every Note Played by Lisa Genova – The author of this novel has a PhD in neuroscience from Harvard. I’ve read most of her other novels and they are similar – someone (in fact, I think it’s always someone who is white, hetero, and has at least some money and resources) gets a serious illness. In “Every Note Played”’s case, the illness is ALS. Part of me wants to lambaste the formula, but Genova almost always writes with a lot of heart and makes the story very compelling. And at least in this one, the characters feel real and are not cardboard cut-outs. Grade: 6