Goodreads Review: The Robber Bride

The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Yep, another Margaret Atwood book that is essentially literary perfection. She is an absolute wordsmith, and I especially enjoyed seeing themes in this work from the '90s that are echoed later in her MaddAddam series. The four main characters in this book seem to embody characteristics tied to interrelated themes of food and consumption, spirituality, history of civilization, and destruction. I am just completely enamored by Atwood's entire oeuvre, and found this to be a compelling, fast-paced book about women who are strong and feminist in very different ways.

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2018 Goodreads Reading Challenge

In 2017, I read 18 books. This doesn't seem like much to me, but then I think about all the proposals, manuscripts, journal articles, and monographs I read for work, and then I feel better.

In 2018, my goal is to read harder and finish 24 books.

Here are the first books I am looking forward to reading in 2018!

Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride

Paul Beatty's The Sellout

Alexander Chee's The Queen of the Night

Gayl Jones's Corregidora

Jaroslav Kalfar's The Spaceman of Bohemia

Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian

Nnedi Okorafor's The Binti Trilogy

And, ReadosaurusText is now on Goodreads!

my read shelf:

My Top Book Pick of 2017: Julie Lekstrom Himes's Mikhail and Margarita

2017 was a trash fire

Well, 2017 was a trash fire, but you know what wasn't trash? Julie Lekstrom Hime's Mikhail and Margarita, published by Europa Editions. This novel is a treasure, and it was my favorite book this year. I wasn't alone in my appreciation: it won the 2017 First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction, which is awarded to the year's best debut novelist.

I admittedly have a weakness for all things published by Europa Editions, and in fact have an entire bookshelf devoted to the press, but this book also appealed to one of my other bookish weaknesses: Stalin- and Soviet-era literature. One of the most classic Russian texts is Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov--a political commentary written as magical realism satire to subvert Stalin's censors and regime, and published in an uncensored version posthumously. Himes's book takes the author's life and his titular character, the beautiful Margarita Nikolaevna, and weaves a lovely historical fiction story about their relationship. I don't know how big the Venn diagram overlap is for people who like Master and Margarita and general Soviet history, but I am smack dab in the middle of it!

Timely in its subthemes of authoritarian regimes, censorship, and the power of satire and the arts, Mikhail and Margarita is a wonderfully written novel. While much Soviet literature speaks to the triumph of the human spirit, Himes's book seems to speak more to the inescapability and perpetual cycles of authoritarianism. Conceptually, this book made me feel like someone crawled into my brain and tailor-made a novel to my liking. I cannot tell you how much I dorked out about this novel when I discovered it, and without remorse I broke my 2017 resolution not to buy new books (with the intention of making a dent in my ever-growing TBR pile). While there was one rather graphic scene that I could have done without, the novel really is impeccable in its pace, vivid writing style, and literary calibre. Both entertaining and impactful, Mikhail and Margarita is truly a fiction gem, and I look forward to reading what Julie Lekstrom Himes writes next.

Himes, Julie Lekstrom. Mikhail and Margarita. New York: Europa Editions, 2017.

Edward P. Jones's The Known World

Happy Black History Month! When I started The Known World by Edward P. Jones last month, it was coincidental that I would be finishing it this month, but how appropriate that I'd be reading such a wonderfully powerful novel of African American historical fiction during a time we especially dedicate to the celebration of black history, and at a time when the president-elect has insulted and attempted to undermine the great civil rights hero, John Lewis, and seems to think Frederick Douglass is alive doing an "amazing job." Meanwhile, the vice president honored black history month by praising the work of a white man. Lest we ever forget the power of books, John Lewis's memoir and graphic novel trilogy sold out on Amazon when news spread about Trump's attack on the now politician. It is so important for people to engage with stories and histories that provide insight on the continuing inequalities in our government, society, and world.

The Known World among just a few other
books my TBR pile.

The Known World is set in the antebellum South as the US nears its Civil War. The plot is compelling because it complicates the history of the slaveholding south by telling the story of a freed slave, Henry, who then becomes a slaveholder. The book illuminates the varied reactions to this reality: disappointed parents who were former slaves themselves; a proud former-master who facilitates the purchase of Henry's new slaves; poor men in the community who resent that a black man has slaves while they do not. All these relationships illuminate the system that on the one hand views black people as property, but on the other hand has so engrained the idea of slavery that it can be legal for anyone to own slaves and to continue to reinforce the system.

I also celebrated Black History Month with Octavia E. Butler's Kindred and Miguel Barnet's Biography of a Runaway Slave. Next I'll be digging into Daina Ramey Berry's hot-off-the-press The Price for their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved from Womb to Grave in the Building of a Nation from Beacon Press. Don't limit reading about black history to this month--these stories and histories are crucial every day.


Barnet, Miguel. Biography of a Runaway Slave: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition. Trans. W. Nick Hill.
     Evanston: Curbstone/Northwestern University Press, 2016.
Butler, Octavia E. Kindred. Boston: Beacon Pres, 2003.
Jones, Edward P. The Known World. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.

My Top Book Pick of 2016: Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad

Hasta la vista, 2016

There were a lot of things not to like about 2016. A lot. But there was also some good interspersed among the gut-wrenching disappointments. Some of my favorite things about 2016 included my discovery of the book app Litsy (where you can find me @ReadosaurusText), Teen Vogue emerging as a serious source of political news and commentary, and it was an incredible year for the visibility and popularity of African American nonfiction and fiction. Ibram X. Kendi won the National Book Award for Nonfiction for Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Heather Ann Thompson's Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy was a finalist for the same award and has earned oodles of other accolades. On the fiction side, we saw the Collected Poems: 1974-2004 of Rita Dove, the latest Walter Mosley, and of course Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad.

I realize that picking The Underground Railroad as my favorite book of 2016 is not especially groundbreaking--as a best-selling, award-winning, Oprah's Book Club title, it is not much of a revelation to declare this book as good and worth reading. This book is truly special, though. The Underground Railroad follows the motivations and experiences of a young enslaved woman named Cora. As she undertakes a personal journey, so does the reader, and that journey is at once difficult to read and impossible to draw away from. I read this book months ago, and Cora still says with me, the way you think back to a person you met briefly but who had a deep impact on you. The book's mix of accessible while artistic prose and a history-inspired plot influenced by the genre of magical realism leaves nothing to be desired. The book adds to the exceptional body of literature (both fictional and nonfictional) that provides a lens into the legacy of slavery. Whitehead paints vibrant pictures of the historical realities of slavery, inequity, and the quest for freedom. Some parts of the narrative are alarmingly relevant almost 200 years later. In one passage describing the policing of slaves, Whitehead writes: "The patroller required no reason to stop a person apart from color. . . . Rogue blacks who did not surrender could be shot." Sound a little familiar to how black bodies are still policed? The book's narrator goes into more detail about the systems that constantly worked to enforce the system of enslavement:

Slaves caught off the plantation need passes, unless they wanted a licking and a visit to the country jail. Free blacks carried proof of manumission or risked being conveyed into the clutches of slavery; sometimes they were smuggledto the auction block anyway. (p. 153)

Is it any wonder that such egregious racial inequalities exist today when persistent systems of violence and suppression were unilaterally sanctioned?  

Reading this book was a plethora of experiences. There was the experience of pure appreciation of the book's prose and plot. There was a huge emotional component of experiencing this book, as we follow the hardships and brutality that Cora and her collaborators endure. What also added to my experience of reading this book was a small but exciting interaction with the author on Twitter. I don't expect famous people to respond to every cray cray fan, but given how easy social networking makes it to engage with people who are legitimately engaging with literature, I really appreciated that Colson Whitehead liked one of my tweets about his book.

Exhibit A: Colson Whitehead like my Tweet!

We don't know what is in store for 2017 of course, but make sure that The Underground Railroad is in store for yourself if you have not yet read it. It is imperative that we all keep reading books that challenge our emotions and conceptions, because literature that challenges us remains one of the surest ways to expand our humanity, compassion, and knowledge. 

Whitehead, Colson. The Underground Railroad. New York: Doubleday, 2016.

BookExpo America 2016

I had the opportunity to attend BookExpo America, and while I have been to various book events before, none were as big as BEA, and certainly none as commercial. The 2016 Expo took place May 11 to 13 at McCormick Place, Chicago. I went on the last day of the Expo and could not have been more pleased about the fantastic books and ARCs I picked up! It was a smorgasbord of book totes, engaging discussions with book industry folks, and bookish swag (like artistic literary postcards from Obvious State).

One of my favorite takeaways from the meeting was a journal. I do not journal (despite best attempts), but this is a notebook that I just could not resist: it is a novel journal. The lined journal pages actually contain all the lines from classical literary favorites. Available from Thunder Bay Press's Canterbury Classics imprint, these journals are a clever concept and also struck me as well made, with covers soft to the touch. I picked up the Great Expectations journal.

I was also quite excited to learn about a relatively new book app from the same folks that founded the Out of Print clothing company. Their app is called Litsy, and I think think their tagline sums it up best: "Where books make friends." While I've only been using Litsy for the last 2 days since I first learned about the app, it is a bit like if Twitter and Instagram had an adorable little bookish social networking baby. Find me on Litsy with the username @ReadosaurusText, and learn more about Litsy from their engaged Twitter feed @getlitsy.

I cannot understate how incredibly enthusiastic I am about the stack of new books I picked up to read! My first objective was to find the Europa Editions booth--they are one of my favorite publishers because they consistently publish high quality literary fiction from international authors. When I found Europa Editions, I was delighted to discover they were having a signing! In addition to getting a copy of Sergio Y. signed by author Alexandre Vidal Porto, I was also given a copy of Animals by Emma Jane Unsworth. Northwestern University Press had hot-off-the-press copies of The Fiftieth Anniversary Edition of Biography of a Runaway Slave. I picked up a copy of Redskins: Insult and Brand by C. Richard King from University of Nebraska Press. And yes, in the background of the picture, that is a t-shirt for University of Georgia Press's new book, Blood, Bone, and Marrow: A Biography of Harry Crews by Ted Geltner.

I received a number of advance review copies, which I am listing here along with their release dates. Stay tuned for posts about these books!



August 2016

Ulitskaya, Ludmila. The Kukotsky Enigma. Trans. Diana Nemec Ignashev. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

September 2016
Foer, Jonathan Safran. Here I Am. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.
Gray, Sarah. A Life Everlasting: The Extraordinary Gift of Thomas Ethan Gray. New York: HarperOne.
Mazzeo, Tilar J. Irena's Children: A True Story of Courage. New York: Gallery Books.

October 2016
Bennett, Britt. The Mothers. New York: Riverhead Books.
Günday, Hakan. More. Trans. Zeynep Beler. New York: Arcade Publishing.
Szalay, David. All That Man Is. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press.
Whitehead, Colson. The Underground Railroad. New York: The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Mario Lopez: A Classic Writer of Our Time

I know that it was simply misshelved, but seeing Mario Lopez' Entre Nosotros mistakenly next to the classics/poetry sign amused me. Maybe it is a great literary work, but Mario Lopez will always be A.C. Slater to me.

I spotted this in a Salt Lake City airport bookstore before I boarded my plane. In looking more closely at this picture, I'm not quite sure I'd classify any of these books as classics, and I don't see any poetry.

Reading in the Wild: Provo, Utah, and Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones

Work travel recently took me to Provo, Utah, in the gorgeous Utah Valley. As a Phoenix native, I feel most at home when I'm near mountains, and the snow-covered peaks of the Utah Valley mountains made quite the impression on me. Though it was my first time visiting Utah, I felt right at home.

Book Counter, Pioneer Book, Provo, UT

When I'm traveling for work, it might go without saying that I don't have much in the way of free time, but I got to sneak in a couple of quick treats during my time in Provo. My first night in town, an open schedule coupled with a late 9 pm sunset gave me the opportunity to explore the small, adorable downtown area. Filled with small restaurants and shops, I came across Pioneer Book, and never able to resist a bookstore (and a used one at that!), I went in to explore. I came to find that it was a newer establish, but I am not exaggerating when I say it was one of the most organized bookstores I've seen. I lost track of time browsing the fiction shelves, and before I knew it, the music volume turned up as a gentle reminder that the store was closing. I checked out with the exceptionally kind staff member who agreed to pay my loyalty card forward to the next local shopper,  and I left quite happy with my decision to get Elie Wiesel's Dawn (it is my name after all!) and Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. 

When I settled in for the night in my spacious yet noisy Marriott Hotel room, unmotivated to continue with my current read, Continental Divide by Russell Banks, which I've been forcing myself to read because I'm not a quitter, I picked up The Lovely Bones. I picked it up and carried it right up a mountain with me.

Y Mountain is one peak in the Wasatch Mountain Range. Because of it's proximity to the Brigham Young University campus, the mountain became involved in some junior versus senior class prank over a hundred years ago. In the years since, it became tradition to maintain a Y on the mountain. This must have been no easy feat. Now at least there is a trail, but one that consists of 11 painful switchbacks, not to mention the elevation change. I felt like a champion when I reached the top of the Y, only to discover a trail that goes further, but after I realized that proper hiking boots rather than sneakers might fit the bill better, I turned around, followed the trail to the bottom of the Y, and parked myself there reading until the sun rose over the mountain.

Over the next few days, I read the book in every spare moment, and due to several hours of frustrating travel delays out of Salt Lake City, I finished The Lovely Bones before the plane even left the runway. The book is moving and suspenseful. About the tragic murder of a young girl in a small community, the book details the struggle of the victim looking down from heaven as her family mourns and wonders if her murderer will ever be discovered. I was left with the thought that we would all hope to be fortunate to have a family that passionately remembers and seeks justice for their lost loved one, but simultaneously melancholy at the family's reality that the death grew into an obsessive life of its own.

Sebold, Alice. The Lovely Bones. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2007.

Paul Auster's Oracle Night

Paul Auster's Oracle Night is writing (n.) about writing (v.). Our main character Sidney Orr is a New York author who, when we meet him, is convalescing after an accident that had him on the brink of death. As we get to know Sidney, we learn he is madly attracted to his wife Grace, who works in book design, and that his best friend is another author, John. Our stable of characters is entrenched in a literary world, and as such there is a great deal of material devoted to authorly things, like the frustrations of crafting a story and deep appreciation of stationary and notebooks.

At the core of the story, though, are characters who are struggling with nostalgia, mortality, and fulfillment.The theme of fulfillment is pervasive.(At this point, I'll caution that there are a number of spoilers in the following sentences. Skip to the last paragraph if you don't care to know major plot points.The novel is a veritable Russian nesting doll of stories; however, we find Sidney unable to bring any of his writerly pursuits to fruition. He takes one story to the point where the main character is locked into a room; instead of letting him die or writing him an escape route, Sidney abandons the story. Sidney wanders on daily walks, searching for fulfillment in meaningless encounters, but a stationary store that amuses him closes; the notebooks he finds the most inspiring are no longer in production; and Sidney's pinacle of sexual fulfillment is a result of infidelity, resulting in guilt and ultimate lack of fulfillment. One of the greatest sources of happiness for Sidney is Grace's pregnancy, yet she miscarries; an event which epitomizes how aligned the issues of mortality and fulfillment are in this text.

What we have here is a book with some really exceptional writing, but the fulfillment that lies out of reach for the characters in the novel in a Tantulus-like manner also creeps into the readers sense of fulfillment as the book transpires. Of course, this is an impact skillfully created by the author, but I still yearn for resolution for some of the subplots in the book. The point though, of course, is that fulfillment is not always obtainable, and the ways in which we seek fulfillment may not always result in it.

Auster, Paul. Oracle Night. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2003.

Adam Johnson's The Orphan Master's Son

I'll get straight to the point: I loved this book. This is the first book I finished in 2015, and if every book I read this year is even half as good, I will be one happy reader. The Orphan Master's Son follows the story of one man. The story isn't about one man, though; it is about survival, identity, memory, and love. It is about interconnectedness and truth (or assessing what truth is). It is about the son of an orphan master, who unlike the orphans at the orphanage knows his parents and lives with his father, but who like the orphans ends up spending a life wondering where his parents are and of being identified by others as an orphan.

The book is divided into two parts, clearly identified as Part I and Part II, and also signaled by a significant narrative shift. I have no doubts as to why this book has been so acclaimed. The story is intriguing, the writing is excellent, and the plot is so impressive--everything happens for a reason, either because it is important to the plot as it unfolds or because it is lousy with meaning later in the book. Sometimes a plot point functions as both and makes for the most pleasurable reading. 

When we first meet our protagonist, we see him caring for the orphans who come through the Long Tomorrow's orphan house in rural North Korea. He even names the orphans, and he symbolically names them after the 100 Korean martyrs; it is significant that he knows the names and stories of each of the martyrs, significant that he has the power of naming the orphans, and significant that he names the orphans based on characteristics that remind him of the martyrs. These opening scenes lay the groundwork for the themes of identity, heroism, and sacrifice as well as give us a glimpse into the communist political climate and the squashing of individuality (the names of the orphans are not even their own; they are someone else's). From here, we move forward into a story that is very much set in the present, and yet the pages are filled with vignettes of humanity that are familiar and timeless. With descriptive prose, inventive narrative turns, and clever conceptions of plot and storytelling, Adam Johnson achieved a book that is moving and entertaining, is melancholy while inviting, and tells a story while also making a reader think about larger implications for politics and propaganda. By now, I am sure it is clear that I recommend this exceptional book, and along with it Johnson's 2003 work Parasites Like Us, which I read years ago and explores some of the same themes of existence and memory.

Johnson, Adam. The Orphan Master's Son. New York: Random House, 2012.

Sprouts: My New Favorite Bookmarks, Naturally

If you had asked me last year what my favorite bookmark was, the answer would have been easy: my Phoenix Suns bookmark circa 1994 from the Charles Barkley era of the Suns. I mean, the bookmark had Dan Majerle AND the Phoenix Suns gorilla, so how could it have not been my favorite? Used to mark my page in many a book, I had to retire the beloved place holder many years ago as it started to deteriorate, but without a doubt it remained my favorite because of sentimentally attached.

If you ask me now what my favorite bookmark is, I would have no choice but to tell you my favorite bookmark has changed, thanks to a gift I got from a dear friend. These bookmarks are adorable. They are little green silicone rubber sprouts that shoot out of the top of the book. Here is a shot of the bookmark in action.

How cute is that? The sprout bookmarks are from Fred & Friends. They come in a pack of six, so no worries if you read multiple books at a time and need a marker for each. Another bonus is that they are synthetic, and so I'll never have to worry about the wear and tear of a paper bookmark. They also give a little touch of nature to your book, which just makes me happy. 

In sum, if you are looking for a gift for a bookworm friend, or if you are in the market for some sturdy bookmarks to replace the random things you're using to mark your place now (I am guilty of using hair ties, receipts, even a Kleenex from time to time), then I would recommend these, my new favorite bookmarks, naturally.

It Seemed Like a Perfectly Good Weekend to Read Ender's Game

With the threat of 8 inches of snow coming to Champaign, Illinois, it seemed like a perfectly good weekend to read Ender's Game. Luckily, there was much less snow than anticipated, but that didn't stop me from hunkering down and getting cozy in some blankets to get through the first in the quartet of books by Orson Scott Card about Ender Wiggin. Admittedly, I don't read much science fiction, but this book has been on my shelf since about 2009 when a friend in grad school considered doing her master's thesis on Card's work. Instead, she took a medieval studies route, but still her consideration of doing such in-depth work on the author had me intrigued. Of course, with the release of the movie (which I did not see), I was reminded that this book sat gathering dust on my shelf, and it has been sitting at the top of a stack these last few months, just waiting for a weekend of crappy weather to present me with the opportunity to dive into the story.

Mildly familiar with the plot, it was easy to get absorbed quickly and finish the book in two sittings. On top of that, I find it easy to get drawn into stories about exceptional people--after all, don't we all wonder what it would be like to be exceptional? Yet another draw was the dystopian aspects of the book. I have always been keenly interested in dystopian fiction, and while this book was an interesting departure from other more typical dystopian plot lines, perhaps the differences helped to accentuate the politcal games that are given a different presentation in other dystopian books. So often, the political wag the dog is what characters in dystopian novels are trying to overcome; however, Ender's game is indeed him being instrumental in the wag the dog, though often unaware of the real effects of his actions. While Ender is endlessly called upon to simulate and strategize war games, that is only one, overt game within the book. The other  more covert (in more than one sense) game is how the official higher ups manipulate his social settings in order to create a person they believe will be the ultimate commander for what they consider a humanity-saving mission.

For as serious as I can take this book to be, it did get me pondering a more lighthearted notion involving another exceptional youth in literature. I found myself entertaining the thought of what it would be like to match the serious and often dark but well-meaning Ender with the equally powerful and well-intending but sometimes vengeful Matilda. After all, both effortlessly manipulate the realities around them with their minds. Matilda literally moves objects through space with the power of her telekinesis, which is so very similar to the way Ender masters reorientation within gravity-absent situations and can seemingly move himself through zero gravity with the power of his mind through logic and strategy. For both of these characters, their special abilities create problems for them, but in a way also create solutions and eventually afford them agency over their own futures. Mostly, though, I think it would be super cute for them to be boyfriend and girlfriend and hold hands on the playground; alas, for children who have been treated and have acted like adults for most of their lives, they would perhaps scold me for my childish wish for them.

Card, Orson Scott. Ender's Game. New York: Tor, 1994.

Damon Galgut’s In a Strange Room

I’m always on the quest to read more international literature, and as such, I rely a great deal on Europa Editions, who specialize in publishing and translating literary bestsellers from around the world. I especially gained a significant amount of respect for them when I heard Muriel Barbery, the author of The Elegance of the Hedgehog (and one of my favorite books), speak at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books about what a collaborative translation process went through with Europa Editions. Even though In a Strange Room is not a translation, I still consider the Europa Editions insignia as a stamp of literary approval, and Damon Galgut’s book was no exception—especially as a finalist for the Man Booker Prize.

What I liked most about this book was the way it captured the tension—that comes with traveling—between experience and the feeling of being removed from that experience. In my humble opinion, true traveling is not only a journey between one geographic point and another, it is also a personal journey dependent on deep internal reflection on one's self and one's culture. Often, there is little distance between having the experience and reflecting on the experience. Galgut captures this two-state experience with shifts between the first and third pronouns as he refers to himself. Switches between “I” and “he” parallel the experience of traveling and knowing you are having experiences, but also feeling as if you are looking at yourself as part of a story or narrative. His shifts also serve to echo his transitions between feelings of connectedness and feelings of isolation and loneliness. It was easy to identify with his moments of deep connection with strangers he met as he lets change and companionship dictate his travels, which quickly changed to moments of isolation and loneliness upon the consideration of the unarticulated relationships with his companions. 

Galgut, Damon. In a Strange Room: Three Journeys. New York: Europa Editions, 2010.