Tag Archives: book review

Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne

Leave a reply

This summer the boys and I read an abridged version of Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne, written in 1864. I have to admit that this story was quite entertaining!

L is interested in the concept of Earth (as well as outer space), so I think he was interested in it because it was about the earth. A was not deeply interested, but did pick up on the fact that there was hot lava (!), which is a game we love to play.

I was interested in which aspects of the story were intentionally fantastical and which aspects were a result of changing beliefs and scientific information. What they thought about Earth 150+ years ago was dramatically different from what we now believe and understand.

The book had me asking questions like which is the deepest cave, and where is the deepest bore hole in the world. I also learned, from the Wikipedia page, that this book represents an early version of the idea of time travel, a literary concept that would be deeply expanded in the decades to follow (reaching it’s fulcrum, imho, in 1985 with the film Back to the Future). All in all it was a cool book, one that was gripping and suspenseful, but also interesting in both its literary and geological explorations.

Advertisement

Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit

Leave a reply

True to form, my “breezy summer beach read” was neither breezy nor read on a beach. Instead, I read Rebecca Solnit’s 2021 book, Orwell’s Roses. Solnit is an incredibly prolific author, and I like her work, but it is heavy and deep, and I rarely feel up to the task. However, at the beginning of the summer, this copy caught my eye at the local library, so I checked it out and read it whenever grading was complete and babies were asleep.

Here’s the copy that I read.

This book is about Orwell. Politics. The roses that he grew at his cottage. His interest in gardening and the natural world, and the hope that can be found there. Writ large, the book is about labor and freedom and politics and all of the themes of Orwell’s own writing, reflecting on labor and illness in Orwell’s time and also today. Solnit draws links between political strife that Orwell wrote about and the political strife of today.

As you know from my Instagram, I am interested in plants and gardening, especially flowers. I love the idea of growing food in whatever piece of earth one might inhabit. I like my own sheep, chickens, and flowers. I love to take a close look at a plant and watch it as it changes throughout the seasons and over the years. Evidently, Orwell and I have that in common. Unlike Orwell (and Solnit), however, I am less insightful and imaginative when it comes to politics, so I appreciated Solnit’s ability to meld the two together in ways that helped me learn and see these subjects all in a new light.

When I start reading Solnit, I think “This is mostly boring and only a little interesting,” and those thoughts are interspersed with with absolutely lovely prose and engaging content, and I love that about her writing. Reading Solnit is like the good feeling I have after I eat my vegetables and get my exercise. When it comes to nonfiction, Solnit is the realest deal. She also gives me permission to go on long tangents, and take up words and space, because it is meaningful to me, and trust that it will be meaningful to others as well.

A Lover’s Discourse by Xiaolu Guo

Leave a reply

I am blown away by the slow burn called A Lover’s Discourse by Xiaolu Guo. The first and majority of the book is a quiet, steady dialogue between the main character and her “lover.” As you know, I am not a theory hound, but this book was one of few that has made me want to turn steadily back to some of the theories presented in this book, and in grad programs across the world, including my own, and see if I can now find a different way in to them, more my own, perhaps feminine, a more first gen, working-class, creative, put two ideas next to each other to see the new, true, and also beautifully enigmatic knowing that emerges.

I love some of her snarky responses to the rote theories her partner espouses. I found the book to be an incredibly bold and feminist and completely empowering that she takes on subjects that are often, almost always (always?), interpreted through a male lens. She even uses Barthes’ exact same title. So bold! How might I do more of this myself? The book ends with both the theory and physicality of reproduction.

Often I find modern literature to be too cold and unemotional. This book had some of those qualities, but I still felt deeply and identified with many of the main character’s experiences. New motherhood is depicted in almost entirely negative terms, but much of the book is.

In new motherhood, I, too, started to think of mothers in response to every act of killing I heard on the news. These mothers have worked so hard to raise of their children, up until the very moment that their lives are taken. Guo has this exact same insight. We are all one, I suppose.

Finally, the relationship–I’ve felt nearly every one of the feelings or loneliness, isolation, desire, and confusion. I have yelled for him to “Bring wipes” as the baby’s mess grows, only to have him emerge too late, confused and groggy. “When have you had time to listen to music?” The changing home, the changing dynamic, described so uniquely and so true, perhaps especially for the creative woman.

Through it we are two people, changed, and in discourse with each other—lovers.

Dog Flowers by Danielle Geller

Leave a reply

For whatever reason, I’ve been reading a disproportionate number of memoirs by Native American women. I’ve also been loving them. The most recent is Dog Flowers by Danielle Geller. The book is troubling and straightforward. It seemed to be divided into two distinct sections, although it’s not formatted as such. I found myself wanting to read two separate books: one about childhood through the death of her mother and another about life after that death. (I don’t think it’s a spoiler to mention the death here because the reader knows about it from early on.)

Most children with parents who are addicts and homeless don’t go on to write beautiful books, so in that regard this novel is unique and offers a perspective that’s rarely told.

One of the main takeaways for me is the way that dysfunctional families impact their members constantly. The always immediate need for housing, medical help, mental health support, food, emotional support, and on and on, just never seems to end, and it impacts every aspect of one’s life. It’s something I’ll understand in a new way in my interactions with others who may be experiencing this same constant and continual drain from their own dysfunctional families.

This book is heavy and hard, but important. Oh, and there’s weaving! I hope the next book has more weaving.

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Leave a reply

One of this year’s “big reads” through the NEA is Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street. I read this in college and have lugged around a copy for about two decades. I decided it was time to read it again, and I’m glad I did.

my own well worn copy of The House on Mango Street

I remember almost nothing from reading it the first time. It truly is an excellent book, and I think very original, especially given it’s publication date (1984). I noticed that it seems more dated and even historical than the first time I read it. Her childhood happened in the early 60s, and that was 60 years ago! However, some things about childhood never change.

Rereading this book made me realize that I am now old enough to reread books, which I never did before. I’ve lived long enough now to have forgotten books I read in my early 20s. I’ve lived long enough now to gain completely new and different insights from some of the books I read in my early 20s. I was also an English major, and so I read a lot of books during that time! I find myself scanning my bookshelf wondering what other old gems could be rediscovered.

2021 reading list

Leave a reply

I read twice as many books this year as the year before, and although this year still felt very hectic, wrapped up entirely with child care, farm prep, and work work, I feel like somehow I hit my stride and was able to read a few books during key breaks throughout the year. Here’s hoping I can continue this pattern into the year ahead.

Idiot by Laura Clery

The Secret Teachings of Plants by Stephen Harrod Buhner

Meditations with Cows by Shreve Stockton

The Beadworkers by Beth Piatote

Iep Jāltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter by Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner

Not Your Happy Dance by Ryan Scariano

Raising Sheep the Modern Way by Paula Simmons

Iep Jāltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter by Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner

1 Reply

Iep Jāltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter is a beautiful book of poetry by Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner. I don’t usually read a lot of poetry, but this one drew me in and held me there.

The place where I work has a relatively large population of Micronesian students. In fact, a summer program for work put this book on my radar, and I’m so glad it did. I find myself wanting to learn more about this population. From the book I read about the indigenous connection to place, language, racism, climate change, climate refugees, refugees from US nuclear testing, food, love, religion, womanhood, family, and more.

I found myself searching for plane tickets. Just how far away are the Marshall Islands?

The Beadworkers by Beth Piatote

1 Reply

The Beadworkers by Beth Piatote brought back memories of gingham table clothes and picnics near Clark Creek with Grandma, trips to Omak, where I learned about suicide races, and the smell of tender beef stew from the crock pot, sliding in Grandma’s passenger seat as she accelerated over the railroad tracks, the proper way to make a flowerbed, the importance of reading, assimilation because your life depended on it, adoption.

Piatote knows the inland northwest well, and reading her work is like learning that someone else has the same secret you do. I have a similar feeling when reading authors like Sherman Alexie and Raymond Carver. They know these places and these people too, and it’s so nice to feel seen by them.

Reading is one thing that renews me and gives me a stronger sense of who I am. That sense of who I am has changed in wonderful ways in the past few years as I’ve become a mother, but also in worrisome ways. There is a daily grind, a constant sense of work to be done, no rest for the weary. Reading Piatote’s bio, I saw that she is also a mother, and I felt even more reaffirmed. She is able to remember. So can I.

The book made me feel creative and curious and revitalized, and in reading it, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for my job, my colleagues, and my students and the life I get to live that puts me in the way of this literature.

The Nez Percé language throughout
the book was powerful to see and sound out.

Meditations with Cows by Shreve Stockton

1 Reply

I’ve long been a fan of her blogs, especially Honey Rock Dawn, and read her second book about raising a coyote, but have really been looking forward to Meditations with Cows, which is about, well, cows and Shreve Stockton’s relationships with them.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612876/meditations-with-cows-by-shreve-stockton/

The book is beautifully written. New York Times-style think pieces about the environment, the importance of grass, our relationship to food, and especially meat, and the nature of cows are interspersed with personal essays about milking cows, calving cows, and dying cows.

The book helped me think more about the importance of having personal connections to specific pieces of the land, to watch over the same path as the seasons change. There are dreary statistics: “[T]he amount of land owned by the one hundred families with the largest holdings totals forty-two million acres. And this is a 50 percent increase from 2007.” The arguments are absolutely true about our unhealthy and unsustainable relationship to the planet, but I found myself overwhelmed by the hopelessness of it all. Still, the book encouraged a “meditative” approach. One moment, one breath, one choice, and one relationship at a time.  

While reading this book, I am currently bottle feeding a little group of calves that for one reason or another could not be raised by their mothers, and so bovines have been heavily on my mind. I grew up on a cattle ranch and ate a lot of red meat growing up. As I grew up, and moved away from the ranch, a choice I made primarily because it is impossible to make a living raising cattle if you’re starting from the ground up, I naturally ate less red meat. I had less access to the good stuff, and store bought meat is just not as good. Finally, after years of work, I have a little place of my own that allows me to have livestock (though not nearly enough to making a living). I wondered if working closely with the cattle again would make me want to stop eating meat for good. Instead, the opposite has happened. I have been surprised to realize that the closer I am to the food source, the more at peace I feel about consuming beef (and chicken and eggs).

Not everyone can raise their own food, and not everyone wants to, but many of us now can have relationships with our farmers, can follow blogs and Instagram to see the life of a farm, the early lettuce sprouting, lambing season, the richness of July, and the cool autumn harvest. Connecting to the place and the food makes it all so much better in every way: spiritually, but also nutritionally, as we know now that foods produced outside of monocultures are more highly nutritious. Our taste buds can also confirm the difference.

The Secret Teachings of Plants by Stephen Harrod Buhner

1 Reply

I’m including The Secret Teachings of Plants by Stephen Harrod Buhner on my booklist this year, even though it got a hard skim after the first few chapters, which only occur after a lengthly “Note to Reader,” Introduction, and then Prologue. Finally, the reader gets to “Section One: Nature.”

The book promises to be split into two parts: the first half “Systole” and the second half “Diastole.” Systole promises to be the more linear, factual, mathematical half and diastole the more creative and emotional half of the book. However, the tone and approach is nearly identical in each “half.”

The approach is a rambling mix of pot smoker, metaphysical, mystical philosophy popular in the ’60s. It’s a meaningful and worthwhile philosophy, but it’s definitely a type. The writing is fragmented, made worse by constant quotes by the likes of Thoreau, which constantly disrupts the flow of the text.

My deepest disappointment is that the book promises to explore the emotional and creative teachings of plants, and that concept is completely intriguing and compelling to me. I would love to read that book! Unfortunately, this book does not deliver on it’s promise.