Review: Between the World and Me (by Ta-Nehisi Coates)

 

My Rating: 5 stars

Browsing through my book news emails a couple weeks ago, I kept coming across reviews for Ta-Nehisi Coates’s newest book The Message (which I have not yet read but definitely want to) and it reminded me that I’ve had his award-winning masterpiece Between the World and Me on my TBR forever, but never got around to reading it.  Well, recently, I had the chance to pick this one up and I have to say, I was absolutely blown away.  In this book-length autobiographical essay, which is written in the format of a letter to his teenage son Samori, Coates shares his struggles growing up as a black man in America.  In meticulous, beautiful prose, Coates presents the harsh realities of America’s deeply ingrained attitudes toward race, placing it within the context of our country’s fraught history and the implications it has had (and continues to have) on society.  Coates does not mince words – he is searingly honest about the “American plunder” and how the nation was built on the backs of colored bodies.  At the same time, this essay can also be read as a father’s passionate (and desperate) plea for his son’s continued survival navigating a system where the odds are perpetually stacked against him.

In her endorsement of Between the World and Me back when it came out in 2015, the late, great Toni Morrison not only called the book “required reading,” she also praised Coates as essentially the heir-apparent to James Baldwin’s legacy: “I’ve been wondering who might fill the intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died. Clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates.”  Indeed, a close reading of Coates’s book shows the numerous ways in which he pays respectful homage to Baldwin, from the epistolary format in which he frames his personal narrative (which is a nod to Baldwin’s famous letter to his nephew in his seminal essay collection The Fire Next Time) to the writing style, phrasing of words, narrative voice, and most significantly, emotional resonance.

This is a profound and powerful book – a modern classic that is absolutely a “must-read” for all Americans.  At once a gut-punch and a wake-up call, this book is not an easy read by any means, but it is a necessary read as well as a timely one (especially given the events of the last few days). Highly, highly recommended!

 

Review: Regarding Anna (by Florence Osmund)

My Rating: 2 stars

This was another book that was on my list to read for the A to Z Author Challenge – it was for the letter "O" which is one of those letters that I had a hard time finding a book/author that matched.  Coming up against the end of the year, this was one of the last few books I had left to complete this challenge and in all honesty, I regretted a bit saving this one until the end, reason being that if this had been earlier on in the year, I would have DNF'ed this book without hesitation.  Instead, I forced myself to finish it, as there was no way this late in the game that I was going to start all over again and look for another book, especially with the time crunch this month and the already little time that I have for reading.

As is probably obvious from my rating, I did not like this book at all.  Reading the summary, I thought the premise had potential and even after finishing the book, I still think the same, however the problem was in the author's poor execution of the story.  First of all, I had a lot of problems with the writing – I don't know how else to put this, but the writing came across very "elementary" to me, almost feeling as though a teenager wrote it for a writing class and didn't do a good job getting it proofread before turning it in.  There were a lot of grammar and sentence structure errors, misspellings, punctuation errors, etc. – a huge distraction for me, as I found myself trying to correct the errors in my mind as I went, which made it hard to concentrate on the story itself.  But in the scheme of things, this actually turned out to be a relatively "minor" issue given that the problems with the writing went far beyond merely grammar and spelling mistakes – the inconsistent and overly-simplified style of the writing was a bigger problem that made this a very tedious read for me. There was way too much of what I would characterize as "fluff"—space fillers that had little to nothing to do with the plot, which bogged down the story tremendously.  The author spent a lot of time describing things and events that didn't matter, details that, as the reader, we did not need to know (for example – I'm paraphrasing here but many of the sentences were similar to this: 'I started the car.  It took me 30 minutes to drive to [name of the restaurant]. When I arrived, I sat down and ordered the breakfast special from the menu.  It was the best breakfast I had in years. After that, I paid the bill, got back in the car and drove home.  Exhausted, I went to bed.  The next morning I woke up at 4:15 and started my day').  There's more though -- the main character in the book, Grace, is a private investigator (I will come back to this part later) and instead of focusing on the main storyline of Grace wanting to find out about her past, the author spent an excessive amount of time describing in detail each of the cases that Grace took on (from names of all the people involved in the cases to the various actions Grace took to "handle" the case for her clients – such as following so-and-so in her car and watching them walk into a hotel, then come out x number of minutes later with someone else, etc.).  I would be ok with this type of detail  if this were, say, a police procedural or a true "mystery" novel with legitimate cases to solve – but unfortunately, this was not the case at all, as NONE of the cases had anything to do with the main storyline about Grace's personal quest to find out whether her "hunch" about her identity was true or not.  To be honest, I feel like 50% of this book could have been cut and the story would not have been affected in the least. There were also a lot of "coincidences," things that happened that were just way too contrived, convenient, and I felt like throughout the entire book, I had to suspend disbelief in order to get through the story.

I've seen this book classified under "historical fiction" and I can tell you right now that classification is wrong based on the way this book was written.  Supposedly, the setting of the story is in the 1960s, with references to an earlier time period for some of the characters (the character mentioned in the title, Anna, her story actually took place in the 1940s), but if you were to tell me that this story actually takes place in 2017, I would absolutely believe it.  That's because the style of the writing was way too modern and most of the word choices did not seem to fit the setting.  At one point, I felt like I was reading a YA novel – books that I'm definitely not the target audience for.  A few examples:  words like "no kidding" (which was so over-used throughout the book that it verged on the point of being annoying), "what the hell," "crap" (and a bunch of other modern day curse words), "wuss," "potty break" (which was used to describe a grown man taking a break from his work to use the restroom), etc. – and that's just scratching the surface!  I did not feel a sense of time and place with the story at all, which is obviously a huge problem. 

In terms of the characters – well, all I'm going to say is that there was very little character development.  A bunch of characters were thrown in throughout the story, but none of them were developed, with many of them being "side" characters that had nothing to do with the main story.  Also, the way the author wrote the main character Grace made her utterly unlikeable.  From the getgo, I was annoyed with Grace and her unsubstantiated "insistence" that Anna was her mother and her adopted parents had perhaps "kidnapped" her when she was a baby and even though they loved her, she could not shake away the possibility that they were somehow involved in her birth mother's death – this is the premise that was reiterated throughout the entire story and it seemed that Grace's main goal throughout the entire narrative was to "confirm" that these "assumptions" were true. What irritated me most about Grace though is that she was a private investigator, a supposedly "smart" woman, but yet everything she did was completely opposite of what someone who had gone to "law enforcement school" as she put it, would actually do.  Not only did Grace have no common sense whatsoever, she also had no investigative skills beyond rudimentary level and often ended up in disastrous situations due to her own (self-admitted) stupid and stubborn actions.  In fact, at multiple points throughout the story (way more times than needed), Grace would actually comment how bad her investigative skills were (i.e. she repeated every couple pages – 'so much for having a private investigator license' or 'so much for going to law enforcement school') – it was especially annoying given that the entire narrative was told from Grace's first person point of view, so the reader had no choice but to endure her constant whining and flip-floppy decision-making.

In the end, after pushing myself to finish this book, I decided to rate it 2 stars.  This might sound generous given all the issues I had with this book, but in all fairness, there truly was a legitimate "mystery" in here in terms of Anna's backstory and there were also a few twists and turns worked in that made that part of the story interesting enough to want to find out what happened to her.  In the hands of a more capable writer, I think this would have ended up being a good, intriguing story – unfortunately though, that wasn't the case here and after about the halfway mark, I skimmed the rest of the way through the book.  While this is a book I would not recommend, I seem to be one of the outliers here, as there were some highly rated reviews for this book from other readers so perhaps check those out before deciding.

Review: After You (by Jojo Moyes)

My Rating:  3 stars

I had actually read this book more than a year ago, not too long after reading the first book Me Before You, however I had put off writing a review for it because of several reasons, the main one being that I was seething mad that this sequel even existed.  I enjoyed Me Before You immensely and even though at the time I read that book, I may not have been as emotionally invested in it overall as other readers were, I still felt that there was a “specialness” to Lou and Will’s story that was uniquely and irreplaceably theirs.  Despite the controversial ending, that book worked perfectly fine as a stand-alone novel and I finished the book feeling that there was enough closure for this to be a memorable read that was not overdone.  But then I found out that there was a sequel and despite my misgivings due to a general disdain for sequels/spinoffs/follow-ups that involve the same characters and story, I decided to go ahead and read After You anyway – once again, my curiosity got the better of me.  My very first reaction after finishing the sequel was that I wanted to throw the book against the wall (yes, I was that upset) – the only thing that prevented me from doing so was the fact that I had bought a paperback copy of the book at the airport (I was coming home from a business trip) and seeing that it cost way more than I should’ve had to pay for it, I didn’t want to ruin the physical book itself.  To me, the entire story in After You was totally unnecessary and it frustrated me the direction that Moyes decided to take the sequel, introducing characters that I felt did nothing to enhance the original story.  In fact, I felt like the way things went down in the sequel actually eroded some of that “specialness” that had made the first book so good and memorable.  Also, there were too many times throughout the book where I felt like the story was being dragged out unnecessarily and I actually started to lose patience.  Worst of all though, this sequel ended up tainting my memory of all the characters from the original story -- by the end, I was so irritated and annoyed with Lou that it was hard for me imagine her as being the same “special” person she was in the first book.  If After You had been a completely separate story, a stand-alone that had nothing to do with Me Before You, I think I might have been able to overlook some of the things that frustrated me about the story (i.e. some of the plot points that were a bit far-fetched) and maybe, just maybe, even like the book. But I guess it was not meant to be….

So then, since I obviously didn’t like the sequel much and procrastinated on writing this review because of it, why did I decide more than a year later to finally put my thoughts to paper?  Well, I just found out (and very shockingly so) that Moyes will be coming out with a THIRD book to this series (the third book is titled Still Me and is scheduled for publication in January 2018).  Of course, my first reaction to this news was – REALLY??? ANOTHER SEQUEL???  Do we really need a continuation to this story?  Part of me wants to steer clear from the third book because seeing how my reaction was to the second book, I’m pretty sure this go around is going to be the same (reading the summary for the third book didn’t help things either) and I’m not keen on the idea of putting myself through all that frustration again. BUT of course, once again, my curiosity got the better of me, plus the fact that I’m already so “invested” in this franchise from reading the first 2 books, I feel like it’s impossible at this point not to read the third book too.  I’m not sure what to expect (in a way, I don’t WANT to expect anything) but I’m going to try to keep an open mind and hope for the best….

(Read in August 2016)

Review: Swimming Home (by Mary-Rose MacColl)

My Rating:  4 stars

This book was a surprisingly good read and a quick one too despite its length (400+ pages).  I will admit though that when I first saw the title and read the summary, I wasn’t sure if it would be my kind of book.  The main reason is because the story seemed to revolve around swimming, both for recreation and as a sport – nothing wrong with that of course, but I tend to shy away from books about athletics and sports because, well, I’m not “outdoorsy” and because I’m not into sports of any kind, I’m afraid I might get bored if a book gets too technical about the sport.  Well, it turned out that with Mary-Rose MacColl’s Swimming Home, I had nothing to worry about.   Yes, the book was about swimming and yes, the sport played an important role in the story, with the author even blending real life swimming history into the story (for example -- names of real swimmers with real achievements, real swim organizations, historical facts about swimming and the women’s movement, etc.).  However, there was much much more to the story than just swimming.  MacColl actually explores a variety of different subjects in the book, including family relationships, friendship, society convention and prejudices, gender equality and women’s rights, coming-of-age, class system (rich versus poor), etc. What I liked best though was the good dose of history that the author was able to incorporate into the story, both via the setting (1920s Europe and U.S. when aviation hadn’t really taken off yet so people took the train or boat when travelling between countries and also no telephone either so people wired one another via telegrams) as well as actual historical events that had taken place (i.e.: the WSA’s fight for women’s rights in swimming, the changes in society that were part of the aftermath of World War I, famous achievements such as swimmer Gertrude Ederle being the first woman to swim the English Channel in 1926, etc.).  There were even some undercurrents of a subtle mystery that ran throughout the story, which resulted in a bit of a twist in the end that I totally did not expect. The beauty of the way the story was written though (yes, this book was definitely well-written), was that none of the subjects this book dealt with were overpowering in any way -- each subject/theme was given adequate treatment without going overboard, which I definitely appreciated.

This book also had good character development, especially with the 2 main characters :  Louisa Quick, a doctor in London who was instrumental in helping to lead the female empowerment through education movement in her youth, and her niece Catherine Quick, a teenager born and raised on a remote island in Australia whose affinity with the sea and swimming was as natural as eating and breathing.  To be honest, I really didn’t like Louisa much in the beginning and some of her actions were truly appalling, but then I realized that the way her character was written was actually very realistic.  Basically, she was a good person who made mistakes – lots of them….in other words, she was flawed just like the rest of us.  Catherine, on the other hand, was a character I liked from the start – her carefree manner was infectious and I enjoyed getting to accompany her as she comes-of-age after her father dies unexpectedly and she is relocated to London to live with her aunt.  I loved that Catherine grew and matured after her various experiences in London and New York, but yet the core of who she was never changed and her passion for swimming stayed strong throughout.

I read a few reviews of this book that said the plot was too slow, which made it hard to get into the story.  I partially agree in that the plot was indeed slow at first and it did take a few dozen pages for the story to really take off, but after that, I didn’t have any problems getting into the story.  In fact, I found the story quite engaging at this point and I was so invested in the characters that I just wanted to keep reading so I could find out what happens to them in the end.  I also appreciated the good use of descriptions and imagery throughout the story – again, adequate and not overpowering while staying true to the historical context of the time period.

This is a book I would definitely recommend, especially to those who enjoy well-written historical fiction that is also well-researched, with a story that has depth, but is also easy to read.  One observation I would like to mention though – I noticed this book was originally published in October 2015, but I received an ARC of this last month with an expected publication date in June 2017.  I didn’t really look into it but I noticed the 2017 release is for the paperback version – so I guess this is technically an “older” book from 2 years ago that is being re-released in paperback now.  Just a random observation in case there is confusion on the release dates for this book.

Received ARC from Penguin Books via Penguin First-to-Read program.

Review: Tiger Moms vs Western Parenting: Is There a Happy Medium? (By Dori Nolan)

My Rating: 2 stars

First off, before I even go into whether I liked this book or not, I have to ask the question – did anyone edit this book before publishing it?? The number of grammar, spelling, and sentence structure errors I found in this book was ridiculous to the point that it really affected my ability to get through the book. The Kindle edition was only 99 pages, which normally would be a very quick read for me, but this one was laborious because of all the errors, since I'm the type who gets really distracted and frustrated when I see grammar and/or spelling errors in books. It also didn't help that, topic-wise, the author seemed to be all over the place, which made it even harder to follow what her main point was. At times, it appeared that she actually supported the "tiger mom" approach to parenting while other times, it felt like she was outraged at such a parenting style and was venting her frustrations with it. 

If you were to ask me whether I liked this book or not, I would have to answer "not really." Granted, the author did make a few good points when comparing the two styles of parenting, but those same points were talked about over and over again, to the point of being overly repetitive. From an originality perspective, there really wasn't anything said in this book that hadn't already been said previously by someone else (I personally didn't learn anything new). In fact, I actually felt like 99 pages was too long for what the author had to say – take out all the repetitive stuff and this book easily could have been half the length it was. Actually, at several points throughout the book, I kind of felt like I was reading someone's (poorly written) term paper rather than an actual published book.

Basically, this book isn't worth the time to read. For those who are interested in this topic, there are way better books out there that talk about parenting styles in the East vs West that are better written for one and also way more informative and entertaining.

(Read in January 2017)