Category: Read This Book

In this dual timeline, multi-POV novel, Emily St. John Mandel tells the story of how life as we know it falls apart in the wake of a deadly pandemic that kills 90% of the population in mere weeks, and what life looks like twenty years after this collapse. At the center of the story is Kirsten, who was a young girl acting in a production of King Lear with the famed Arthur Leander on the night the virus broke out. Years later, she’s part of the Traveling Symphony, a ragtag group of actors and musicians who travel through what used to be Michigan, performing at every stop and reminding what remains of humanity that “survival is insufficient.” But when they return to a town they’ve visited before, they find it’s been changed by a self-proclaimed prophet who has a dark vision for the future, and the past and present collide.

I loved everything about this book, from its eerie premise to the gorgeous, lyrical writing, and I especially loved how everything and everyone is connected. The connections are sometimes expected, sometimes surprising, often fleeting, but always impactful. The author does a great job of exploring communities and how individuals can influence a community, exploring the symphony, the Prophet’s followers, and other groups that crop up in unlikely places: gas stations, airports, and on the road.

Being a Michigander, I particularly liked the exploration of the various settings and the descriptions of how settlements re-establish themselves across the landscape. Michigan is a unique setting in that it’s a peninsula surrounded by enormous lakes—in some ways it’s sheltered, in some ways it’s dangerous. The author created a convincing setting that was as unsettling as the premise.

Finally, without giving away too much, what really stuck with me, especially on my second read, was the questions about how a major collective trauma like this affects people. For some, the effect is very external, while for others it’s much more internal. Children who don’t remember much about the before times or never experienced them have a hard time bridging the gulf between adults who know what they’ve lost—not just people, but a way of life and a way of understanding their world, and together they must all create a new one. That was the most powerful part of the novel, and one that I didn’t likely fully appreciate on my first read in 2015, but certainly did when I re-read the book earlier this year.

Liz Lighty is a Black, awkward, over-achieving, adorkable senior in high school in Campbell, Indiana, a small midwestern town that is pretty white and affluent and obsessed with prom. You know how some high schools are obsessed with football? Well, Campbell is out of control obsessed with prom and this has gone on for generations.

Liz (or Lighty, as some folks call her), is desperate to get out of this small town and go to Pennington college. Liz’s family does not have a lot of money and the scholarship she is depending on to get her to Pennington falls through; however, not all hope is lost. The people crowned prom queen and prom king get a nice chunk of scholarship money.

The absolute last thing Liz Lighty wants to do is join the competition for prom queen. She hates being the center of attention. Of course her nemesis (and the nemesis’s crew) will try to do everything to stop Liz from winning, which given Liz’s gpa, she might actually have a chance at with the help of her friends. It also means that she is going to have to cooperate with an ex-friend, Jordan.

Liz and her brother live with their grandparents. Her mom passed away young and her brother has sickle cell anemia. Liz intends to become a doctor, like her mom, to do sickle cell research.

But that’s not all! There’s a new girl in town, named Mack. Mack is also an outsider, a skater girl, and not necessarily prom queen material and she’s joined the competition as well, which complicates things because every time she is near Mack, Liz Lighty gets major butterflies. This book is queer and sweet and funny and when Liz and Mack are around each other, even I got butterflies. Also, I went into this book thinking that I was going to be able to predict everything but it’s full of surprises.

Content warnings for racism and homophobia and a deceased parent.

Set in Lucille years before the events of Pet, this novel follows Bitter, Jam’s mother, as a teen. Bitter has had a rough upbringing, but she’s so grateful that she’s found herself at Eucalyptus, a school for teens gifted in the arts. Eucalyptus is a safe haven against the chaos of Lucille, with its constant protests and rampant corruption. And as Bitter’s time as a student comes to an end, she knows she’d rather stay within her safe walls as a teacher than venture out, even if her friends and classmates are tempted by Assata, the rebel group fighting against corruption. But when Bitter’s secret talent for bringing her paintings to life with a drop of her own blood releases strange creatures on her world, Bitter will have to face the conflict head-on.

First off, Emezi is an incredible writer. I was in awe of their turns of phrase, the beautiful way they built this fictional world in spare, striking language, and how they deftly created so many interesting and multi-dimensional characters. They write with a skill that looks easy, so you know it must be well-honed. I loved that we saw the dystopian side to the utopian Lucille that they presented in Pet, and they managed to maintain that allegorical feel of the story while also grounding it in very real details and moments. This is a book about the personal cost of fighting against injustice, and how scary and overwhelming and hopeless it can feel. But it’s also a book that reminds us of the responsibility we have to each other, tying back to their use of Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “Paul Robeson” in Pet, and that despite that hurt, fear, and shame, it’s important to build community and look out for one another.

This is yet another powerful novel brimming with diverse characters and you can really feel the acceptance and love in this story, despite the hate and fear the characters must face. It’s a reminder that love thrives, even in dark times, but you have to be brave enough to cultivate it.

I’ll admit, when I started this book I had no idea what was going on. Reading it is like putting together a complicated puzzle without knowing what the final image is supposed to be. Partway through it starts to show itself a bit before presenting surprise after surprise. How this author fit so much in such a compact book is a magic of its own.

The book begins by introducing Chih and their companion, a neixin named Almost Brilliant who is also a talking bird. Chih is a Cleric from the Singing Hills Abbey and as such, they are a historian of sorts. They travel to a home on Lake Scarlet where they meet an elderly woman named Rabbit. Rabbit was the handmaiden of the Empress, and The Empress of Salt and Fortune is this Empress’s story, as told by her former handmaiden to the cleric Chih.

Each chapter begins with careful descriptions of a few objects, written with the words of someone cataloging the items. The someone, of course, is Chih. Rabbit then tells Chih the deeper meanings and stories of the sometimes seemingly benign objects they are documenting. Together, the objects reflect the tale of the Empress’s rise to power, starting with her being sent from the frosty north to the south, to marry the Emperor and bear him a child. Because she was foreign, she was not really accepted by the royal court and her handmaiden, Rabbit, was the closest person to her. The Empress eventually becomes known for her adoration of fortune tellers and mystics, often having them to the palace. After she has a child for the emperor, she is sent into exile and Rabbit with her. It’s when she is in exile that her real cleverness and power is proven.

In a fantasy world where dragons and their cousins quigutl roam the land, Tess Dombegh is a disappointment to her family. Despite all of her mistakes, she’s determined to make one thing right and help her twin sister Jeanne find a noble husband and marry well. She manages to do just that, but when her actions ruin Jeanne’s wedding, Tess finds herself at a crossroads. Her family is determined to send her to a convent, but Tess doesn’t want to go—she’d rather run away. So she does just that, and sets out for the open road with a vague direction in mind. Along the way, she reunites with an old friend, encounters danger, intrigues of the natural world, and some of the world’s most mysterious secrets all the while running from her past. But it’s just as she’s about to discover an exciting future she never could have imagined that she realizes her painful history must be faced head on.

What I love about this book is that story-wise, it’s the inverse of most fantasy novels. Many of the fantasy titles (YA or otherwise) that you find on shelves are about a high-concept premise first, and then character growth or a character’s personal journey is secondary. This book is all about lovable, messy, misguided Tess who doesn’t believe that she’s worthy of love or a second chance after she makes a mistake, and her self-loathing is palpable by the time the book starts. She’s also surrounded by toxic people who seem more interested in punishing her than showing her even an ounce of compassion, so it’s no surprise she’s miserable and makes the ruinous choices she soon regrets.

But once she strikes out on her own, Tess begins to center. Her sense of humor comes out, and so does her compassion, curiosity, and her fears. While the reader doesn’t know all of the details of her past, you can’t help but love her as she slowly finds her path and purpose on the road. Through a series of misadventures, Tess encounters a variety of people who give her perspective, show her kindness, and offer her a chance at redemption. They also challenge her worldview and all that she was taught about herself and her nature, opening her eyes to the possibility that she’s not broken or bad or ruined, but someone with a bright future ahead of her. The plot, which feels episodic in the first half, starts to come together in an exciting, high-stakes way that sets up the sequel, leaving you breathless to see where Tess will end up!

I read this book for the first time when it released in 2018, and then again recently in anticipation of the release of the sequel, In the Serpent’s Wake. I loved it both times, and in reading the sequel it’s exciting to see all of the clues and connections Hartman planted in Tess for an exciting and fulfilling sequel.

Note: This duology is a companion to Rachel Hartman’s Seraphina duology (Seraphina and Shadow Scale) and it takes place a few years after the end of the events in Shadow Scale. While I love and highly recommend those books, you don’t have to read them in order to understand what’s going on in Tess’s world, but there are some spoilers for Seraphina’s story if you pick up Tess first!

Elaine Welteroth is best known for her phenomenal work at Teen Vogue, where she became the youngest Editor-in-Chief at a Conde Nast publication and only the second African American to hold such a title at Conde Nast. More Than Enough is her first memoir; however, given she is only in her 30s and continues to do amazing things, I’ll bet it’s not her last.

Elaine’s story arc is one that many high-achieving cis women can identify with. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and she was a fearless child who, while doing great things academically and even career-wise, made some boneheaded decisions when it came to relationships. She went through a period of making herself small, trying to fit into boxes that not only weren’t her shape, but weren’t for her at all.

While this is a memoir, there are also some really great pieces of advice in this book. One that resonated with me was when she got a coveted internship at Essence Magazine and they asked her where she wanted to be placed and she said she’d be happy anywhere. Truly what she wanted was to be in fashion. Her mentor told her then and there to always ask for what she wants.

As expected she talks a lot about her experience as a Black woman in a predominantly white industry as well as her experiences among many different subcultures of Black people because hey, we provide a range. And of course, she talks about both holding onto your dreams and working toward them as well as finding you’ve outgrown your dreams or that your goals have changed.

Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha is a pediatrician who was working in Flint in 2015, running a pediatric internship program for new doctors, and serving her patients, many of whom lived in poverty, in a holistic, community-based way. When her patients started asking her if the water in Flint was safe to drink, her first instinct was to say, “Of course!” After all, if it wasn’t safe, even despite the rumors to the contrary, the city officials would say something, right? Wrong. Once the lead poisoning was brought to her attention, she saw the devastating effects it had on her youngest patients and she immediately sprang into action, relying on her colleagues, patients, community leaders, and various governmental officials who were also concerned but were being ignored by the higher-ups to not only gather the data, but put together an IRB-approved study in record time that showed definitively that Flint’s water was being poisoned, and force the state and city government to take action.

This was at times a really harrowing read, because it becomes clear very quickly that Dr. Hanna-Attisha’s trust in the authorities and scientists who work to keep public drinking water safe was completely misplaced—although through no fault of her own. Who among us wants to believe that those in power are willingly ignoring the signs that the drinking water isn’t safe? She talks about how it was hard for her to believe at first, but when faced the truth, she was physically sick and couldn’t just sit by. But it wasn’t as simple as calling up public services and telling them her patients had lead poisoning…she had to prove the poisoning was coming from the water, and then she had to prove that Flint’s recent changes to the water supply were at fault. I’m impressed with how she made what would normally be a boring process of filing a lot of paperwork to get her study off the ground sound riveting, but that’s in part because it was absolutely urgent—kid’s lives were in imminent danger.

Aside from the high stakes recounting of her realization that the water was being poisoned to successfully exposing the crisis, I really enjoyed Dr. Hanna-Attisha’s contemplation of what we owe each other, how we ought to look after our neighbors, and how an alarming lack of empathy or care can lead to a devastating loss of life. She fought hard, not just to expose the crisis, but to hold those who looked away accountable for their part, and she succeeded, to an extent. But she also grieves for the families and kids who were affected, whose lives are forever changed by the malfeasance of those in charge of contaminating Flint’s water supply, and that’s sometimes difficult to read.

Overall, this is a moving book that’s part science, part environmental and public health exposé, and part examination about what it means to be community-minded. I highly recommend it!

Shetterly grew up in Virginia and her father worked for NASA. Hidden Figures is nonfiction about the African American women who worked for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) which eventually morphed, with other groups, into the National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA). While the film version concentrates on NASA, and a few women, the truth is that African American women started working at NACA during WWII. It was only supposed to be a short commitment, but then it turned into so much more. The women started as mathematicians, or as they were called, “computers.” There was East Computing, where the white women computers were, and there was West Computing, which had the African American women.

I thought the book was better than the movie (and I liked the movie). The book offers so much more context and gravitas to what these women were achieving, especially during segregation, the Jim Crow Era, and the Civil Rights Movement. Shetterly points out how the racism in the U.S. was damaging (and still damages) how other countries viewed (and view) the U.S. and questioned the U.S. as a global superpower when our own citizens were not being treated fairly. It really lays bare the hypocrisy of opposing the treatment of Jewish people in Europe while here at home, our own citizens weren’t being afforded basic human rights.

I had no idea how incredibly significant the West computers were not only at NACA, then NASA, but as part of U.S. history. They not only were integral in aeronautics and the space race, but in integration as well. In addition to Katherine Johnson, we read about Dorothy Vaughan, who paved the way, and Mary Jackson, who went from computer to engineer, which was rare for African American women, especially at that time. The book also teaches us about so many more of the women and a handful of the African American men that we never hear about in the history books.

Shiori is the princess of Kiata, the youngest daughter of the emperor. She’s been betrothed to a young man from the north for as long as she can remember and she’s not happy about it: She’d rather stay close to her beloved brothers, and find her own future. So on the day of her betrothal ceremony, she runs away and falls into a lake, where she happens to meet a dragon. Dragons are rare and magic is taboo in Kiata, but Shiori can’t help her excitement at befriending a dragon, or the secret magic inside her. And it’s just as well, because not long after she discovers that her stepmother is hiding her own magic, and she and her brothers are cursed. While her brothers transform into cranes each day, Shiori is left with a bowl over her head and the loss of her voice, and she’s banished from her home. If she wants to break her stepmother’s curse, she’ll have to complete a series of impossible tasks, all while trying to stay alive.

I loved this retelling of “The Wild Swans,” with details mixed in from Japanese fairy tales and other Asian culture. Shiori is a headstrong and stubborn protagonist who is maybe a little silly and naive at first, but when she finds herself banished, alone, and cursed, she draws upon previously unknown strength and resilience within to find her brothers and figure out a way to break the curse. Along the way, she finds herself entangled with a political plot to overthrow her father and wreak havoc on Kiata, which is complicated by the fact that she must remain silent or risk her brothers’ lives, and she learns that her perception of court politics and the other nobility might not be entirely accurate. She also finds herself in the very last place she expects: Her betrothed’s stronghold, where she learns that there is more to him than she initially believed. The magical details and the political intrigue were quite fun, and new reveals and twists sent me racing to the end, which provided a few surprises and have left me really eager for the sequel, The Dragon’s Promise, out later this year.

As a bonus, I loved how much Shiori loves food, and all of the fun foodie descriptions in this book. Shiori learned to cook from her mother and enjoys it because it makes her feel close to her mother’s memory, and finds herself working in kitchens and connecting with other characters through food. This book made me hungry while reading, and I would love nothing more than to order a feast of the food mentioned in this book! Consider yourself warned!

I’m a big fan of Nagoski’s Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, which I recommend every chance I get and wanted to also recommend Come As You Are. This book is focused on the sex lives and the sexual response cycle of cisgender women. This is because there is a bunch of research on the sexual response cycle and sex lives of cisgender women and not a lot of research on transgender women or nonbinary folks. That being said, a couple of the trans folks in my life have read this and told me they still were able to get some helpful information out of it. The language is definitely gendered, especially around anatomy, and that can turn some people off so I’m making sure you’re informed before you pick this book up.

Nagoski offers fresh ways of looking at things and dispels a lot of common myths around sex, such as the ideas that “women don’t want sex as much as men do” and “women that have a high sex drive have more testosterone.” One of the main, recurring focuses of this book is the Dual Control model of the sexual response cycle which is the idea that there is an accelerator and also a brake and sometimes they work together and sometimes they work in opposition. Nagoski fills the book with both anecdotes and advice on how to “turn on the ons and turn off the offs,” or to put it another way, how to press on the gas and ease up on the brake.

One of the things that Nagoski talks about that I deeply appreciate that is not talked about enough in sex ed is context and the power of context to either hit your gas pedal or hit your brake. And that the context that does one or the other for you may not be the same that does it for your partner. There’s also a context worksheet that helps you figure out these things for yourself as well as other questionnaires that can be helpful in figuring out your own brakes and gas pedals.

Come As You Are is a fun, informative read which I highly recommend.