Books about Home🏠🛖

 

    I suspect Gretchen Rubin isn't for everyone, but I like her. This week I read her book, Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life, and I liked it. This is a sequel to her book Happier which I reviewed here: theology-nihilism-and-self-help-or-im.html. She takes a large concept and breaks it down into pieces, and then explores each piece. She examines parenting, romance, interior design, and other things relating to the home. These are things that I am experiencing, and her book addresses my life right now.

"The pleasure of doing the same thing, in the same way, every day, shouldn't be overlooked. The things I do every day take on a certain beauty and provide a kind of invisible architecture to my life." 
― Gretchen Rubin, Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon Self-Control, and My Other Experiments in Everyday Life

    Both books revolve around her Eight Splendid Truths (link here: https://gretchenrubin.com/articles/the-eight-splendid-truths-of-happiness/). What she has to say encourages me to thoughtfully consider this life of mine. 

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    Binti, Binti: Home, and Binti: The Night Masquerade, written by Nnedi Okarafor, are award-winning science fiction. The three books are more novellas than novels, but the story is rich and deep. With space science fiction, it is difficult to deviate from the formula of there's a war; how will the good guys win? Then a chosen one arises to bring order out of the chaos. The main character, Binti, a master harmonizer becomes more than she imagines or wants. Okarafor creates innovative characters that are fully orbed--they have desires and drives that are sometimes misunderstood, leading to unforeseen conflicts and consequences. I found the books absorbing and was so glad all three were available because it would have been hard to wait! 

    The central theme of her books is home--leaving, returning, and finding. Binti wants more than home can give her and her family wants her to stay. 

    Nnedi Okarafor's parents are from Nigeria, and she draws upon African culture to inspire her work. She coined the phrase African Futurism. Her work reminds me of Haruki Murakami, a Japanese science fiction writer, in its not-what-I-anticipated plots and characters. These will likely be the best science fiction books I read this year.

    The cover art on the three books is evocative of what happens on the pages, a great pairing of story and picture. 

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In🐙Celebration🐙of🐙Octopuses🐙

    This has been Octopus Week at my house. I read two books where octopuses (Not octopi because octopus is an English word rising from Greek, so it doesn't take a Latin plural. plural-octopus) were the main characters.

     Many years ago, when I was in Germany, I ordered seafood spaghetti. It came with several small, intact purple octopuses that were so unexpected and unusual my husband and I started laughing, causing a waiter to come over and check on us.  I remember them being delicious, but Sy Montgomery's book The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness makes me sad to have eaten such an intelligent creature.  I enjoyed listening to Sy Montgomery narrate her book. During her research, she interacted with four Pacific octopuses at the New England Aquarium and visited octopuses in the wild. As a naturalist and a writer, her big question was, does an octopus have a soul or consciousness? The book displays a depth of research and also sincere contemplation. She conveys the different personalities of the octopuses she has befriended and moves them from scary monsters to fascinating specimens to intelligent companions.

   Octopuses are also amazing escape artists. Check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IveCcHnNGwo

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    It took a long time to read Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt even though it had been recommended by several significant people: my daughter, my sister, Anne Bogel, and finally, my writing mentor, and I wished I'd read it sooner. The writing is beautiful. The untraditional robust characters are endearing, wounded, and brave. The plot is unlike any other--it makes you long for a happy ending and lives outside the conventional formula enough to create the tension of uncertainty. It resembles A Man Called Ove, with an octopus playing the grumpy old man with a broken heart. As a child, some of my favorite books were about a connection between lonely humans and wise creatures, like Charlotte's Web and A Cricket in Times Square. Shelby Van Pelt has captured that element of magical realism those books contain. This might be one of the best books I've read this year.

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    Freebie: One of my favorite Sci-Fi writers, Adrian Tchaikovsky, has a space book featuring octopuses as astronauts. It is called Children of Ruin, and it's stunning.

    We Are the Brennans by Tracey Lange was on a list of juicy family dramas, a genre I didn't know I liked. I enjoy observing family's struggles and wondering how, or if they will resolve them. I think juicy family dramas make me wonder what a happy ending would look like? There is a saying that our secrets make us sick, meaning the power of the things we hide and conceal poison our relationships. I was not surprised to discover Tracey Lange has a degree in psychology. Many of her characters have shameful secrets that, as they're revealed, lead to good endings. We Are the Brennans isn't moralistic about therapy, but optimistic about the difficulties of living and loving others wrapped up in a well-told, entertaining story. 

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Familiar Authors, Newer Works

 

crass, funny, insightful, strange, cringe

    I have mixed feelings about reading David Sedaris and Carnival of Snackery: Diaries 2003-2020. Sedaris is masterful at comedic writing. He makes me laugh out loud. Part of his humor springs from observing how mean people can be to each other. He can gross me out talking about a seatmate who eats his boogers, tell crass jokes that offend me, and rail against George Bush continually, but he records his father's decline and his sister's death in its painful awfulness and brings tears to my eyes. We are very different and not so very different. 

    Here is a link to another Sedaris book I reviewed: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/2022/11/looking-for-humor-finding-something.html

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    I was fortunate to read the latest Louise Penny Inspector Armand Gamache novel, A World of Curiosities. If her writing is like her personality, I wouldn't mind meeting Louise Penny in real life. To sit at the Bistro in Three Pines and eat some of their delicious food while chatting would be amazing. As usual, Inspector Gamache ruminates deeply about his inner life, his monsters, and his motives. A hidden room is discovered in Three Pines containing odd, sinister artifacts. I liked this suspenseful book and was glad to revisit Three Pines, but it stretched my credulity at points--another mystery room? 

Here is a link to a previous Louise Penny review: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Louise+Penny&max-results=20&by-date=true

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I Visit Ancient Rome and Communist China--Via Books

 

  If forced to say my favorite historical mystery writer, I'd give in easily. It's Lindsey Davis. I've been reading her excellent novels for over thirty years. In the Flavia Albia series, her eponymous protagonist is witty and intelligent, and the supporting cast is nutty. While Davis solves a mystery in each book, she also gives the next installment of Albia's life. In a previous book, on her wedding day, her new husband, Tiberius, was struck by lightning. Albia is a newlywed with a sick husband, moving into an unfurnished home while unexpectedly becoming the primary wage earner. She is relatable. Pandora's Boy is sixth in the Flavia Albia series. A fifteen-year-old girl mysteriously dies in her bed. The girl's father suspects poison and hires Albia to discover the truth. I've read a lot of mystery books, and I didn't anticipate the solution. The book is witty, clever, and a little naughty. There are many jokes about a statue of the Egyptian God of fertility Min. 

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  Dreams of Joy, by Lisa See, is the follow-on of Shanghai Girls. See writes vividly of life in China in the late 1950s. Her book feels authentic with sensory descriptions of the food, clothing, surroundings, and daily life. Nineteen-year-old Joy runs away to Communist China after learning her birth father lives there. Her mother, Pearl, follows to find Joy and bring her back. Mother and daughter become tangled in the political and economic turmoil of the time. I don't know much about Chinese history, but I remember a terrible famine. There are gruesome details of the horrendous things people do when starving. The women claim to be communists but still face persecution for being Imperialist Americans. Shanghai Girls describes the burden of American hostility and ill-treatment despite seeking to live as loyal Americans. Spoiler alert: Joy's adopted father kills himself, overwhelmed by being hounded by the FBI to confess to being a communist sympathizer. Dreams of Joy illustrate life under a totalitarian communist regime. As American Chinese, neither country entirely accepted them. See's characters fight for a good life free from fear and want in both nations. 

    To keep the grain crops from being eaten, Mao ordered farmers to bang pots continuously to scare away the sparrows until the birds died of exhaustion, leading to insects ravaging the crops. Pearl and Joy remind me of sparrows seeking rest, but being driven from place to place.

    I gave this book five stars on GoodReads.

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