Category: Review

Review: Darius the Great is Not Okay, Adib Khorram, narrated by Michael Levi Harris

Posted on by Dana
Review: Darius the Great is Not Okay, Adib Khorram, narrated by Michael Levi HarrisDarius the Great Is Not Okay by Adib Khorram
Narrator: Michael Levi Harris
Published by Listening Library on August 28, 2018
Genres: Young Adult
Pages: 8
Length: 7 hours and 33 minutes
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
four-half-stars

Darius Kellner doesn’t make friends easily. He gave up on the Boy Scouts years ago—to his father’s lasting disappointment—and after being diagnosed with depression, he quit the neighborhood soccer club, too. As the only Persian boy at his Portland high school, he’s an easy target for Trent Bolger and his Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy.

Then Darius goes to Iran for spring break (and despite what the Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy say, it’s not to join ISIS). He’s visiting his mother’s hometown, Yazd, to meet his family—and his ailing grandfather—for the first time. But Darius speaks better Klingon than Farsi, and he knows the Silmarillion better than the Shahnameh. Even surrounded by Persians, he can’t fit in.

Not until he meets Sohrab Rezaei, his grandparents’ Bahá’í neighbor. Darius is drawn to the lonely boy who helps water his grandfather’s fig trees, and the two strike up a tentative friendship, filling their days with pick up soccer, trips to the Jameh Mosque, and walks through Dowlatabad Garden.

But things in Iran are far from perfect. Darius’s grandfather’s health is failing. His dad is more distant than ever. And when Sohrab faces family issues of his own, Darius is powerless to help—or to hold their hard-won friendship together.

But he still has to try.

My school is considering this book as an all-school summer read, and as an avid reader and English department chair, I agreed to check it out to see if it would be a good candidate. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this book. Darius is a great character, and the book’s setting in Yazd, Iran offers a counterpoint to other texts set in the country. Khorram depicts the country’s beauty and heritage, and Darius quickly falls in love with it.

I loved Darius’s interest in tea and geeky pursuits such as The Lord of the Rings and Star Trek. I especially approve of his fandom for Star Trek: The Next Generation. That was my show, too. I also liked the way Khorram handled Darius’s navigation of questioning his sexuality and getting to know grandparents he has only ever seen on Skype.

I teared up when Darius and his father finally have the talk that has been brewing for most of the book. I definitely want to read the sequel, especially since the audiobook version of Darius the Great Deserves Better is also narrated by Michael Levi Harris, who did a superb job with Darius the Great is Not Okay.

four-half-stars

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Review: If Beale Street Could Talk, James Baldwin, narrated by Bahni Turpin

Posted on by Dana
Review: If Beale Street Could Talk, James Baldwin, narrated by Bahni TurpinIf Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin, Bahni Turpin
Narrator: Bahni Turpin
Published by Blackstone Audio on February 1, 2016
Genres: Contemporary Fiction
Pages: 8
Length: 7 hours and 7 minutes
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
four-stars

In this honest and stunning novel, James Baldwin has given America a moving story of love in the face of injustice. Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin's story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions—affection, despair, and hope. In a love story that evokes the blues, where passion and sadness are inevitably intertwined, Baldwin has created two characters so alive and profoundly realized that they are unforgettably ingrained in the American psyche.

There aren’t many writers like James Baldwin. He wrote with facility whether fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. I mean, just listen to him speak.

Much of what Baldwin says here is centered in his novel, as his characters wrestle with being cut out of their opportunities to find happiness and achieve their dreams. In fact, one in the novel struck me particularly hard. Fonny refers to a man who assaults Tish as a “white American,” implying that the police officer who wanted to arrest Fonny for beating the man did not see Fonny as an American. He saw a Black man, and his guilt or innocence did not matter. I realize that police brutality against Black people has a long history, but it’s hard not to see Baldwin as prescient in writing this novel in the early 1970s. He is not speaking only to the moment in which he wrote the novel, but also to our current moment.

My favorite character was Tish’s mother, Sharon. I absolutely loved Tish’s family. They were so supportive of Tish and Fonny, and Sharon set the tone when she told Tish that she would tell the family about her pregnancy. So many families have not supported their daughters when they became pregnant, let alone when the baby’s father is in jail awaiting a trial for a crime he didn’t commit. Even before I watched the movie, I understood why Regina King’s performance was lauded. Sharon is a gift of a character.

I found the ending a bit confusing, so I listened to it again, and then I still had to read a summary online because I couldn’t figure out if what I thought happened at the end was what happened. Ambiguous endings do not trouble me, but this book didn’t feel like it ended. It felt like it stopped. I suppose a good comparison would be the fade to black at the end of the last episode of The Sopranos. The book also moves backward and forward in time, and it was sometimes a bit difficult to follow. Admittedly, this could have been my fault for listening to it rather than reading it. However, there are some beautiful moments in the book as well, and Baldwin’s characterization is realistic and engaging. His characters just seem like people you might know—they are intensely human.

I was able to find the film on Hulu and watched it so I could add my thoughts about the film to this review. The acting is incredible. Stephan Jones and Kiki Layne are perfect as Fonny and Tish. As I mentioned before, Regina King deserves all the praise for her performance, too. The entire ensemble cast was great. The film’s ending is a bit different, and I might argue that the film’s ending is an improvement. For one thing, it was a bit clearer, and it also ended on a note of hope. I understand Baldwin wanted to communicate something with the ending he wrote, and it’s such a beautiful love story that as a reader, I really wanted to have a little bit of hope at the end for the characters. One touch I really appreciated was a simple dedication to “Jimmy”—James Baldwin’s nickname among friends. The movie also helped me understand the book’s title. My audiobook didn’t have the explanation, but the film had some text at the beginning, and since I don’t have a paper copy of the book, I can’t verify this, but I think it was James Baldwin’s introduction to the story, explaining the name. I expected it to be set in Memphis rather than New York and was initially confused. I also loved the film’s score. It’s haunting and perfect. I definitely want to see other films by this director after watching If Beale Street Could Talk.

Bahni Turpin is an excellent narrator. I have listened to her read other books, and I appreciate her approach to the material. I highly recommend the audio version of this book, but you might want to read along to better keep track of the story.

One last treat before I close: Ikechúkwú Onyewuenyi, a Hammer Museum curator, created the ultimate James Baldwin playlist. You just might find some blues in there.

 

four-stars

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Review: The Arctic Fury, Greer Macallister

Posted on by Dana
Review: The Arctic Fury, Greer MacallisterThe Arctic Fury by Greer Macallister
Published by Sourcebooks Landmark on December 1, 2020
Genres: Historical Fiction, Mystery
Pages: 300
Format: E-Book
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Goodreads
four-half-stars

In early 1853, experienced California Trail guide Virginia Reeve is summoned to Boston by a mysterious benefactor who offers her a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: lead a party of 12 women into the wild, hazardous Arctic to search for the lost Franklin Expedition. It’s an extraordinary request, but the party is made up of extraordinary women. Each brings her own strengths and skills to the expedition- and her own unsettling secrets. A year and a half later, back in Boston, Virginia is on trial when not all of the women return. Told in alternating timelines that follow both the sensational murder trial in Boston and the dangerous, deadly progress of the women’s expedition into the frozen North, this heart-pounding story will hold readers rapt as a chorus of voices answer the trial’s all-consuming question: what happened out there on the ice?

My first book of 2021! I probably wouldn’t have picked up this book if not for the Book Voyage: Read Around the World Challenge. Before I share some thoughts about the book, I’d like to thank the challenge hosts for two things: 1) offering a list of recommended books for each region in the challenge, and 2) recommending this particular book, which brought me out of a reading funk and kept me up late wanting to find out what would happen next. I love participating in challenges, but I find it difficult sometimes because I don’t know what to read for the challenge, and it is refreshing to have a list of books to consider at least. I probably wouldn’t have heard about The Arctic Fury if not for this challenge, either, or at least I wouldn’t have heard of it for some months.

This book is just the kind of historical fiction I love. It puts women at the forefront of a plausible, well-researched story. I admit I struggled a bit with the notion that Lady Franklin would sink her hopes into an all-female expedition to the Arctic in search of her missing husband, but I was willing to go with the premise. However, without spoiling the ending, I’ll just say that Lady Franklin’s actions make much more sense by the end, and I wound up finding the premise more plausible.

If this book suffers from anything, it’s a little bit of a kitchen-sink approach—the author tackled just about every aspect of being a woman in the 1850s, from race to gender to pregnancy to sexuality to limited options to the threat of violence from men. Some of the aspects included didn’t feel strictly necessary to the story but rather an effort to be inclusive. I appreciated this about the book, but I think including the spectrum of experiences should be purposeful, and it didn’t always strike me that way in this book. Some pretty serious liberties were also taken with the protagonist’s (a known historical figure) story. Even though I understood the rationale for doing so, it bothered me, and I think the only other solution would have been to invent a person who didn’t actually exist to have a similar past. Once I figured out who she really was, I was able to find out what happened to her after what she calls the Very Bad Thing after about a minute’s search.

However, the other aspects of the novel are well-researched and feel authentic, which Macallister attributes to ensuring that “each woman [on the journey] had a real-life counterpart, an inspiration from the mid-nineteenth century [she] could point to and draw from” (401). As a result, each woman was believable. I particularly appreciated that the women each had their own strengths and flaws. They seemed much more human for being well-rounded. Each woman was also given at least one chapter in her own voice, which gave them even more depth and humanity.

I also appreciated the way the story alternated between Virginia’s murder trial and the voyage in the Arctic. The alternating timelines added more suspense to the story. I actually tagged this as a mystery in addition to historical fiction, even though it’s not a traditional mystery per sé. Like some of the best mysteries, neither what truly happened nor how it will all turn out was revealed until the climactic ending.

Bottom line: I definitely recommend this one to anyone who likes historical fiction, particularly with strong women characters. The Arctic Fury is well-written and researched, but most of all, the characters are memorable, intriguing, and real. 

four-half-stars

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Review: A Better Man, Michael Ian Black

Posted on by Dana

I received this book for free from in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Review: A Better Man, Michael Ian BlackA Better Man: A (Mostly Serious) Letter to My Son by Michael Ian Black
Published by Algonquin Books on September 15, 2020
Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction
Pages: 304
Format: Hardcover
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
five-stars

“Raw, intimate, and true . . . A Better Man cracked me wide open, and it’s a template for the conversation we need to be having with our boys.” —Peggy Orenstein, bestselling author of Boys & Sex

A poignant look at boyhood, in the form of a heartfelt letter from comedian Michael Ian Black to his teenage son before he leaves for college, and a radical plea for rethinking masculinity and teaching young men to give and receive love.

In a world in which the word masculinity now often goes hand in hand with toxic, comedian, actor, and father Michael Ian Black offers up a way forward for boys, men, and anyone who loves them. Part memoir, part advice book, and written as a heartfelt letter to his college-bound son, A Better Man reveals Black’s own complicated relationship with his father, explores the damage and rising violence caused by the expectations placed on boys to “man up,” and searches for the best way to help young men be part of the solution, not the problem. “If we cannot allow ourselves vulnerability,” he writes, “how are we supposed to experience wonder, fear, tenderness?”

Honest, funny, and hopeful, Black skillfully navigates the complex gender issues of our time and delivers a poignant answer to an urgent question: How can we be, and raise, better men? 


This is an important book for our current moment. I found it helpful to understand the messages men receive about how to be “correctly” masculine, and I think we can lay many of our current societal problems at the feet of these dangerous messages. Readers looking for Black’s characteristic humor will find the subtitle accurate: the book is mostly serious, and I really appreciated the vulnerability and honesty of its seriousness. The book serves as a contemplative memoir, a poignant letter of love and advice, and a meditation on our world. I walked away from it feeling that Michael Ian Black is a good husband, father, and most of all, a good man.

I recommend this book most highly to men, but I learned a great deal from it, too. Most importantly, it gave me an understanding. I don’t believe all men are alike, and I don’t believe they are all horrible, but I freely admit I was reaching a point of despair over the ability of men—White men—to recognize their privilege and work on unlearning some of the most damaging messages they have received. If I had to pick a moment when this feeling started to take shape, it was when Justice Kavanaugh was confirmed. I recognized that man. I am pretty sure I went to high school and college with a lot of guys like him. And I was pretty sure Christine Blasey Ford was telling the truth. I was also pretty sure that Kavanaugh thought he was telling the truth, too. That might seem like a strange thing to say, but I think he felt entitled to do as he pleased, and I think he felt pressured to prove his masculinity through sexual conquest, and I think a lot of the boys in his friend group were doing the same things, which normalized and maybe even celebrated treating women as less than people, only useful as sexual objects. Because I remember what it was like to be a girl in the era in which Kavanaugh allegedly raped Blasey Ford. Black devotes a whole chapter to consent, and he explains the messages both girls and boys receive about consent and how they warp our ability to communicate sexual desire.

I admit things seem hopeless right now. We have a racist, misogynist person in the White House. He operates out of the most toxic and dangerous aspects of masculinity. Our civil rights champion, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died yesterday. We are in the midst of a global pandemic that has completely upended our lives and taken the lives of a number most of us can’t fathom. The ending isn’t in sight. We are in the darkest part of the tunnel, or maybe the belly of the whale, and it is hard not to be resigned to despair. This book gave me a little bit of hope. It’s going to take some backbreaking work, but I’m comforted to know people like Michael Ian Black are doing their part for us.

five-stars

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August Reading Update

Posted on by Dana

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

I haven’t had much time to blog lately, but I am finding more time to read (finally). I successfully defended my dissertation proposal in late July, and since then, I have been working on a piece of writing for my action step—I’m writing a dissertation in practice, which means I have to actually DO something and write about how it worked out. In any case, I thought I’d share a list of the books I have read since my last book review along with short reviews of each. I have been trying to read more library books and not buy a lot of books. I am lucky that my local library has Overdrive, so I can read a lot of library books using my Kindle app. It got me through this quarantine, I can tell you.

  1. Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast, Ken Forkish: This is a great book about baking bread, and I learned a few things I didn’t know. I appreciate Forkish giving recipes in grams. I think it’s strange that Forkish’s recipes are almost always for 2 loaves, however. It seems like an odd choice. I also think he’s wrong about a few things (I know he’s more experienced than I am, but I haven’t found keeping instant yeast in the freezer kills it—it actually makes it last longer, in my experience). Still, I think it’s a great addition to my bread-baking library, and the one recipe I have tried so far turned out great. I initially checked this out from the library but then bought it. Read on Kindle. Rating: ★★★★½.
  2. Notes from a Young Black Chef, Kwame Onwuachi: I listened to this on audio, and Onwuachi reads it. I thought this was an excellent memoir. Onwuachi has a really interesting story. I heard recently that he is now leaving Kith and Kin, so it will be interesting to see where he goes next. Owned, audio. Rating: ★★★★★
  3. Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, Ibram X. Kendi: This book is an excellent introduction to several key historical figures and how they represent ideas about racism or antiracism in their times: Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, William Lloyd Garrison, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Angela Davis. I learned many things from this book. If I have one quibble, it’s that Kendi cites some secondary sources, and I think going back to the primary sources whenever he can would strengthen his arguments (not that I disagree with him, just that I think people who do will find his use of secondary sources a reason to poke holes in his arguments). Owned. Read on Kindle. Rating: ★★★★★
  4. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Taylor Jenkins Reid: I really enjoyed this book about old Hollywood. I know Reid was partly thinking of Elizabeth Taylor, but Evelyn Hugo seems owes a small debt to Marilyn Monroe, too. The author hints early on that there will be a twist at the end, and yep, it’s a pretty good one. I really need to thank Taylor Jenkins Reid for getting me out of my reading rut. Checked out from the library. Read on Kindle. Rating: ★★★★★
  5. Passable in Pink, Mike Sacks: This book is a spoof on John Hughes movies of the 1980s. You will recognize Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and maybe a few more films in the plot. The joke wears thin after a bit. I think the beginning is kind of funny, but then it starts to drag. Definitely listen to the audiobook with its great cast if you decide to read it. Owned, audio. Rating: ★★★☆☆
  6. The Leavers, Lisa Ko: OMG, this book is still in my head. I loved this book. It’s one of the best ones I read this year. It will have you thinking deeply about how the US treats undocumented immigrants and what happens to children adopted outside of their race as well. There are so many issues to think about. Well-meaning White liberals would do well to read this book. It’s incredible. You will think about the characters for a long time. Owned. Read on Kindle. Rating: ★★★★★
  7. Dear Martin, Nic Stone: I think teens will really enjoy this book. It tells the story of a teenage boy who goes to prep school but has to contend with the racism of police officers. It will inevitably be compared to The Hate U Give and may be found wanting in that comparison (which probably isn’t fair), but it tells a different story and is worth a read. Checked out from the library. Read on Kindle. Rating: ★★★★☆
  8. The Marrow Thieves, Cherie Dimaline: This book is set about 25-30 years in a dystopian future in which climate change has wreaked havoc on the world. People stop dreaming, and it makes them go insane and die. Somehow, they discover aboriginal people can still dream, and if their bone marrow is consumed, it can save the lives of non-Native people. The main character in this book is Métis, First Nations, and the book is set in Canada. It’s an interesting read, but I didn’t think it was as amazing as my teacher friends seemed to think. Checked out from the library. Read on Kindle. Rating: ★★★★☆
  9. Heart Berries, Therese Marie Mailhot: Tommy Orange said this book was good, and parts of it are really poetic. I understand Mailhot is writing from the perspective of a person with bipolar disorder, but I had a hard time with her. She is married to the man she was dating in this memoir, and he seems like an asshole, so I guess to each her own, but he came off like a fuckboi in this book. This is a book I can appreciate on the one hand, but that I didn’t much like on the other. I can’t figure out how Roxane Gay gave this book 5 stars and only gave There There four. Checked out from the library. Read on Kindle. Rating: ★★★☆☆
  10. Consider the Fork, Bee Wilson: This a great little book about all the common kitchen implements and cooking tools we use. The fork is only one. Wilson talks about everything from plates to refrigerators. I learned a lot from this book, and the audiobook is charmingly narrated. Owned, audio. Rating: ★★★★½
  11. When the Beat Was Born: DJ Kool Herc and the Creation of Hip Hop, Laban Carrick Hill: This crossed my radar the other day, and I have to admit I learned from it. I felt like the author could have been more thorough in covering what happened to DJ Kool Herc later on. I know it’s a kids’ book, but leaving it out felt like a cop-out (spoiler: he had problems with drug addiction and sort of receded into the background of hip hop). Owned. Paperback. Rating: ★★★★☆
  12. Grading for Equity, Joe Feldman: I read this as part of some research I was doing. Feldman and I cited many of the same studies in our research. This is a great book, and I’d highly recommend all teachers read it. Owned. Paperback. Rating: ★★★★★
  13. The Only Good Indians, Stephen Graham Jones: I picked this up because Tommy Orange blurbed it. It is an interesting book, and I admit I’m not a huge fan of horror, but this book was pretty good, and I was able to handle the horror parts. I am still kind of wondering what happened. I have a theory, but I am not sure I’m right. Anyway, there is something under the surface about being a good steward of the land and empathy for all creatures that I’m still trying to unpack. I liked the writing, and I would read more by this author. Checked out from the library. Read on Kindle. Rating: ★★★★☆

Books I re-read:

  1. Daisy Jones & the Six, Taylor Jenkins Reid (I read this book twice this year!)
  2. 1919, Eve L.Ewing
  3. Counting Descent, Clint Smith (I guess I have never reviewed this, but it’s amazing)
  4. Revolution, Jennifer Donnelly
  5. There There, Tommy Orange (I also read this one twice this year, too.)

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Review: She Lies in Wait, Gytha Lodge

Posted on by Dana

Review: She Lies in Wait, Gytha LodgeShe Lies in Wait by Gytha Lodge
Published by Random House on January 8, 2019
Genres: Mystery
Pages: 368
Format: E-Book
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
three-half-stars

On a scorching July night in 1983, a group of teenagers goes camping in the forest. Bright and brilliant, they are destined for great things, and the youngest of the group—Aurora Jackson—is delighted to be allowed to tag along. The evening starts like any other—they drink, they dance, they fight, they kiss. Some of them slip off into the woods in pairs, others are left jealous and heartbroken. But by morning, Aurora has disappeared. Her friends claim that she was safe the last time they saw her, right before she went to sleep. An exhaustive investigation is launched, but no trace of the teenager is ever found.

Thirty years later, Aurora’s body is unearthed in a hideaway that only the six friends knew about, and Jonah Sheens is put in charge of solving the long-cold case. Back in 1983, as a young cop in their small town, he had known the teenagers—including Aurora—personally, even before taking part in the search. Now he’s determined to finally get to the truth of what happened that night. Sheens’s investigation brings the members of the camping party back to the forest, where they will be confronted once again with the events that left one of them dead, and all of them profoundly changed forever.


With the caveat that I don’t read mysteries often and am not generally a fan of the genre, this book is a good representative of the genre. The hardboiled DCI has an interesting backstory, and his new recruit DC Hanson is also interesting. I thought for a bit that the book might have a Murder on the Orient Express vibe, but a) I suppose it is hard to top the master at her own game, and b) it would have felt a bit like cheating anyway. Lodge leaves the reader guessing sufficiently until the end, though the climax of the novel didn’t hit me right. I don’t like to give away mysteries, but let’s just say it is better placed in some Romantic novel Lord Byron might have cooked up than in a 21st-century mystery. Also, why is it that the villain unmasked always loses all their nuance and complexity and is just evil? Part of what makes villains interesting, at least to me, is that complexity. It’s why, for example, I think Voldemort is a sort of boring villain, whereas the Malfoys are more interesting. The other characters managed to be more complex and interesting.

I read this thinking it would be light and kind of entertaining. I am finding it hard to read during the pandemic, though that problem is easing up a bit for me as the school year ends. I never felt the urge to give up on this book, and it kept me entertained. I suppose you can’t ask for much more than that, but I don’t think I was invested enough to read the next DCI Jonah Sheens book. However, I must admit this is probably mostly me and my own reading proclivities. Mystery lovers might really enjoy it.

three-half-stars

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Review: Daisy Jones & The Six, Taylor Jenkins Reid

Posted on by Dana

Review: Daisy Jones & The Six, Taylor Jenkins ReidDaisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Published by Ballantine Books on February 4, 2020
Genres: Historical Fiction
Pages: 384
Format: Paperback
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
five-stars

Everyone knows Daisy Jones & The Six: The band's album Aurora came to define the rock 'n' roll era of the late seventies, and an entire generation of girls wanted to grow up to be Daisy. But no one knows the reason behind the group's split on the night of their final concert at Chicago Stadium on July 12, 1979 . . . until now.

Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock 'n' roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.

Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.

Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.

The making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the seventies. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work to a new level with Daisy Jones & The Six, brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice.


I have been having a lot of trouble reading, and as it turns out, that’s completely normal during a global pandemic. I had started a few books, but I didn’t get too far into them (although I’m doing better with audiobooks as I find them less taxing). It finally dawned on me that the topics I was picking were too heavy and not escapist enough. What I really needed to do was immerse myself in a different world and time with something “light” (not necessarily in terms of subject matter, but definitely in terms of complexity). Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid came to my rescue.

The main reason I responded to this book is that I spent a good chunk of my high-school and college years immersed in 1960s and 1970s music—especially 1970s music. On my heavy rotation at that time were Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones (particularly Mick Taylor-era Stones, which is the BEST Stones), the Beatles, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Pretenders (more 1980s, but their late 1970s-very early 1980s stuff is my favorite), the Who, Elton John, Rod Stewart (actually, just Every Picture Tells a Story), and the Allman Brothers Band. I grew up listening to Fleetwood Mac, too, because my parents were fans. When Stevie Nicks released her album Bella Donna, I remember picking up my parents’ copy and staring at the vinyl sleeve, thinking that Stevie Nicks was possibly the coolest woman I had ever seen.

Bella Donna

I thought the way she dressed was magic. Her heels were impossibly high, and everything she wore simply billowed and floated. I definitely tried to dress up like her in my room with the door closed and dance in front of the mirror. The first full album I got on vinyl was Fleetwood Mac’s album Mirage. It wasn’t the first album I bought on my own, but it was the first full album I received as a gift, and I had asked for it for Christmas. I was in fifth grade. I had no clue about all the romantic intrigue and substance abuse Fleetwood Mac (or perhaps, more particularly, Stevie Nicks) were involved in when I was that young. All I knew is I liked them, and I always have. I named my oldest daughter after their song “Sara,” though I added the “h.”

It’s clear, and Reid doesn’t deny it, that Fleetwood Mac was a major inspiration for Daisy Jones & The Six; however, the novel captures more than a veiled retelling of the story of the making of Rumours. It’s really the story of the whole Laurel Canyon sound, the Southern California music produced by the likes of the Eagles, CSN, Joni Mitchell, and so many others. I have read and watched so many rock documentaries that reading this book was almost like an Easter egg hunt: which artist’s story inspired THIS incident? A good example is Daisy Jones and Billy Dunne communicating through their performance. If you watch this version of the Fleetwood Mac song “Silver Springs,” especially if you know that Lindsey Buckingham not only contributed some great guitar parts to the song (Spotify link), a post-mortem of Stevie Nicks’s and Lindsey Buckingham’s breakup, but he also fought to have it removed from Rumours. It was released as a B-side to “Go Your Own Way,” Buckingham’s own response to their breakup. “Silver Springs” didn’t really receive its due until this recording for The Dance in 1997. You tell me Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham aren’t working through some stuff during the climax of this song:

There are moments when Reid describes Daisy and Billy’s chemistry in the same way. Don’t you wonder why Buckingham put so much work into that guitar part only to insist the song be practically buried for nearly 20 years? What about the fact that Nicks had to sing backup on “Go Your Own Way,” knowing it was about her and feeling what he claimed in the lyrics was untrue: “Packing up / Shacking up is all you want to do”? Honestly? They’re STILL feuding. Buckingham claims that Nicks had him fired from Fleetwood Mac in 2018. I personally believe that he’s one of the greatest and most underrated guitarists—no one tends to think of him when compiling their listicles. Rolling Stone ranked him 100 out of their 100 Greatest Guitarists. I have many problems with their ranking; this is only one of them.

Some of the sniping, particularly on the part of Eddie, recollects the relationships among members of the Eagles (they did call their reunion concert “Hell Freezes Over”) and, to a certain extent, Styx (if you have seen that episode of Behind the Music—wow—Dennis DeYoung and Tommy Shaw hate each other). Even more modern groups like the Civil Wars and perhaps the Black Crowes inspired Reid. I haven’t seen Reid mention Chris and Rich Robinson in interviews, but they do remind me of Billy and Graham Dunne. Daisy Jones may owe a little bit to Janis Joplin and Bette Midler’s character in The Rose, too.

Knowing these stories was part of the fun of reading it for me, but I think folks who don’t have knowledge of the Southern California music scene in the 1970s could still enjoy this book. The book captures the scene so well that no previous knowledge is needed. I particularly enjoyed the passages describing photography for the band’s album cover and the final concert and drama in the hotel. I also think Reid’s documentary format worked well. I have heard the audiobook is great. I am looking forward to the miniseries that is set to air through Amazon’s streaming service. I have seen some reviews that didn’t like that format, and others who quibble with the notion that the band is fictional, which requires more imagination when they are discussing their music, but I didn’t mind. In fact, I liked that aspect of the book.

The publisher made a playlist on Spotify which is really good, though the last song doesn’t work for me. There is a mix of more modern music that seems to fit the mood of the book. I’m thinking about making my own playlist with strictly 1970s tunes, but here is what Random House came up with:

five-stars

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These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson, Martha Ackmann

Posted on by Dana

These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson, Martha AckmannThese Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson by Martha Ackmann
Published by W. W. Norton Company on February 25, 2020
Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction
Pages: 304
Format: Hardcover
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
five-stars

An engaging, intimate portrait of Emily Dickinson, one of America’s greatest and most-mythologized poets, that sheds new light on her groundbreaking poetry.

On August 3, 1845, young Emily Dickinson declared, “All things are ready”—and with this resolute statement, her life as a poet began. Despite spending her days almost entirely “at home” (the occupation listed on her death certificate), Dickinson’s interior world was extraordinary. She loved passionately, was ambivalent toward publication, embraced seclusion, and created 1,789 poems that she tucked into a dresser drawer.

In These Fevered Days, Martha Ackmann unravels the mysteries of Dickinson’s life through ten decisive episodes that distill her evolution as a poet. Ackmann follows Dickinson through her religious crisis while a student at Mount Holyoke, her startling decision to ask a famous editor for advice, her anguished letters to an unidentified “Master,” her exhilarating frenzy of composition, and her terror in confronting possible blindness. Together, these ten days provide new insights into Dickinson’s wildly original poetry and render a concise and vivid portrait of American literature’s most enigmatic figure.


I have been waiting to read Martha Ackmann’s biography of Emily Dickinson, These Fevered Days, for a few years. Ackmann was one of my instructors at a weeklong workshop on Emily Dickinson’s life and work sponsored by National Endowment for the Humanities. In fact, she read the second chapter of this book to us during one session. At that time, she was contemplating calling the book Vesuvius at Home.

The conceit of this book, that ten days changed Emily Dickinson so that she was “different, say, at ten o’clock at night from how she was at ten o’clock that morning” (xviii), is novel and works well, especially considering Dickinson’s life has been the subject of much biographical writing (in spite of her more interior existence). While Ackmann engages in a bit of speculation about what her book’s subjects were thinking or doing, it rings true, and I know for certain that Ackmann’s conjecture is based on solid research. For example, she obtained permission from the Director of the Emily Dickinson Museum to go into the attic of the Dickinson home so that she could ascertain the “certain slant of light” in the room and read Shakespeare aloud, as Dickinson did, in order to determine what that experience was like so that she could render it properly. Dickinson proclaimed that “the rafters wept” at her own reading. Ackmann has also taught a course at Mount Holyoke on Emily Dickinson for years—even bringing her students into the Dickinson home to study her work. Having been a student of Ackmann’s for only week, I’m still not afraid to say she has lived and breathed the poet’s life and work for years, and that knowledge shines forth in this book. The final chapter on Dickinson’s final day of life is rendered especially poignant. Rather than witnessing the passing of a great poet, Ackmann made me feel like I had witnessed the passing of an old and great friend.

Even if you’ve read biographies of Dickinson before, you’ll want to read this book for its intimate portrait of the moments that changed Dickinson’s life. As Ackmann acknowledges, other Dickinson scholars might choose different days, but Ackmann focuses on the following:

  1. The day Dickinson decided to write.
  2. Dickinson’s decision not to commit herself to Christ at the behest of Mary Lyon, principal of Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, where Dickinson was attending school.
  3. Emily Dickinson’s first publication (despite popular belief, she did publish a few works anonymously in her lifetime).
  4. Dickinson’s decision to bind her poems together in fascicles and preserve them (Christanne Miller’s book Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them is a wonderful resource for more on this).
  5. Dickinson’s work on F124 “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers” with her sister-in-law Susan Gilbert Dickinson’s advice.
  6. Dickinson’s remarkable decision to write to Thomas Wentworth Higginson (who was living in my home city of Worcester, MA at the time) after reading his article “Letter to a Young Contributor” in The Atlantic Monthly and begin a lifelong correspondence and friendship.
  7. Dickinson’s brush with blindness.
  8. The first meeting of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson.
  9. The publication of Dickinson’s poem F112 “Success is Counted Sweetest” in the No Name series after much cajoling by her friend Helen Hunt Jackson.
  10. The day Emily Dickinson died.

Reading this book was extra special for me because I had the opportunity to visit Dickinson’s home on several occasions, and I was even permitted to take photographs. I was able to visualize the moments Ackmann describes with greater clarity—I felt like I was there, and not only because of my memories of the Dickinson homestead but also because of Ackmann’s precise description.  Check out Ackmann’s article at The Paris Review for some exquisite photos of Emily Dickinson’s dress. Even though the dress on display at the museum is a copy, I’ll never forget the first time I saw it. I was visiting Amherst for my birthday, and we were touring the Dickinson home. Our guide led us upstairs, and the dress was there on the landing. The light streamed in through the window and illuminated it. It truly took my breath away. One might almost have thought Emily Dickinson herself was standing there. After that thought, my second thought was, “She was so tiny!”

Emily Dickinson means a lot to me. Her poetry brought me comfort after a very difficult loss. Martha Ackmann’s book is well worth your time if you’d like to indulge in a delightfully intimate portrait of the poet in some of her most momentous events.

Emily Dickinson's Bedroom
Emily Dickinson’s Bedroom © Dana Huff

Emily Dickinson's Grave
Emily Dickinson’s Grave © Dana Huff

Note: Please do not reproduce these images. I am permitted to share them as long as I do not seek to profit from them, but I am not able to control what happens to them once they are stolen, and I have pursued websites with DMCA takedown notices for taking these images without permission or credit.

five-stars

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Frankenstein in Baghdad, Ahmed Saadawi, trans. Jonathan Wright

Posted on by Dana

Frankenstein in Baghdad, Ahmed Saadawi, trans. Jonathan WrightFrankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi, Jonathan Wright
Published by Penguin Books on January 23, 2018
Genres: Fantasy/Science Fiction
Pages: 281
Format: Paperback
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon
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three-half-stars

From the rubble-strewn streets of U.S.-occupied Baghdad, Hadi—a scavenger and an oddball fixture at a local café—collects human body parts and stitches them together to create a corpse. His goal, he claims, is for the government to recognize the parts as people and to give them proper burial. But when the corpse goes missing, a wave of eerie murders sweeps the city, and reports stream in of a horrendous-looking criminal who, though shot, cannot be killed. Hadi soon realizes he's created a monster, one that needs human flesh to survive—first from the guilty, and then from anyone in its path. A prizewinning novel by "Baghdad's new literary star" (The New York Times), Frankenstein in Baghdad captures with white-knuckle horror and black humor the surreal reality of contemporary Iraq.


I read this novel at the suggestion of some friends on Twitter. While I didn’t finish it in time for our online book discussion, I resolved to finish it before I had to return it to the library.

I found the book’s premise intriguing, and I appreciate the fact that it is one of the few books by an Iraqi author that captured the attention of Western readers—which is a shame. However, if I’m being honest, I had no trouble putting the book aside for days at a time. I wouldn’t say I wanted to stop reading it because I did want to finish it. I am also contending with being in graduate school and all the extra time that it takes to finish work for my classes. I also believe the book was engaging and well-written, but perhaps just not for me. I liked a few of the characters, especially Elishva and Hadi. In all, however, I found the book’s various threads a bit disjointed.

three-half-stars

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Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, by Patrick Radden Keefe, narrated by Matthew Blaney

Posted on by Dana

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, by Patrick Radden Keefe, narrated by Matthew BlaneySay Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
Narrator: Matthew Blaney
Published by Random House Audio on 2019
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Audible
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads
five-stars

From award-winning New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe, a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions.

In December 1972, Jean McConville, a thirty-eight-year-old mother of ten, was dragged from her Belfast home by masked intruders, her children clinging to her legs. They never saw her again. Her abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville’s children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress–with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes.

Patrick Radden Keefe’s mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders. From radical and impetuous I.R.A. terrorists such as Dolours Price, who, when she was barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and targeting informers for execution, to the ferocious I.R.A. mastermind known as The Dark, to the spy games and dirty schemes of the British Army, to Gerry Adams, who negotiated the peace but betrayed his hardcore comrades by denying his I.R.A. past. Say Nothing conjures a world of passion, betrayal, vengeance, and anguish.


I read this book on the recommendation of an English teacher friend, Carol Jago. She is one of the most voracious and widely-read people I know, and she has never recommended a book that wasn’t brilliant. This book is no exception. If you are like me and do not know much about The Troubles, this book is a great introduction that will leave you wanting to know more. I know, for example, that I want to read Ed Moloney’s book Voices from the Grave: Two Men’s War in Ireland. If I’m being honest, even though I understand why Ireland was partitioned, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me that the island is still divided, and I have a feeling it won’t be for too many more years.

I first remember hearing anything about The Troubles as a child, when the Irish Republican prisoners’ hunger strike in the early 1980s was in the news. I remember being really confused by the whole thing. Further, I remember feeling horrified that it was happening. The Troubles were mostly out of the new in the U.S., however. It was easy to know nothing about what was happening in Northern Ireland. Every once in a while, a story about some action or other by the I.R.A. would show up on the news. An episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called “The High Ground” centered on the struggles of the Ansata rebels against the Rutians—it was a very thinly veiled allusion to The Troubles. The Ansata rebel leader’s name was even Kyril Finn. Finn is not only a common surname in Ireland, but it’s also potentially a reference to Fionn mac Cumhaill, a mythological figure in Ireland and the inspiration for the Fenian Brotherhood, a precursor to the I.R.A. Commander Data makes a reference to terrorism effectively achieving the reunification of Ireland in 2024. The episode aired in 1990. At that time, it seemed unlikely, but Brexit will change the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic—as Keefe wonders in his book’s conclusion, I can’t help but speculate if, after years of bloodshed, it will be the politics of Brexit that finally prompt the reunification of Ireland on the same timeline, more or less, as Star Trek predicted. The idea is so incendiary that RTÉ has never aired the episode, and it only aired on the BBC in 2007.

Sinn Fein politician Gerry Adams does not come off well, and his repeated insistence that he was never in the I.R.A. strikes me as a bald-faced lie. The Price sisters, Dolours and Marian, are written in their complexity: at the same time as you know they engaged in terrorist acts, and you want to condemn them, they also come off as, well, kind of badass, and you want to admire them for that. I mean no disrespect to their victims in saying so. The descriptions of their force-feeding during their hunger strike are harrowing, and Keefe makes a fairly good case for the lifelong aftereffects seriously impacting the sisters’ health. Above all, Jean McConville emerges as a poignant victim. Whether or not she was a “tout,” as the I.R.A. claimed, she can’t have been providing much useful information, and if she was spying for the British, one can hardly blame her for trying to take care of her ten children, whose lives were irrevocably destroyed by their mother’s murder.

My husband and I listened to this on audio together. Matthew Blaney is an actor from Northern Ireland, and I have to say, it’s something else to hear this story narrated by someone who sounds like the people Keefe is writing about. I would definitely listen to Matthew Blaney read again, even if I have to put up with Steve mimicking an Irish accent into the bargain. His reading is an interpretation of the text—where he emphasizes, the listener learns to pay attention. As much as I recommend the audio, I know I missed some details (as well as the Notes), so I downloaded the book on Kindle for a re-read when I get the chance.

Definitely one of the top nonfiction books I’ve read in some time. It’s gripping, and it is told almost like a mystery novel (especially if you don’t know as much about The Troubles). The book’s final revelations will leave your head spinning.

I made a Spotify playlist about music inspired by The Troubles.

five-stars

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