Book review: Moonglass

Moonglass by Jessi Kirby

Description from Goodreads (below) can be found here along with other reviews.

"I read once that water is a symbol for emotions. And for a while now, I've thought maybe my mother drowned in both."

Anna's life is upended when her father accepts a job transfer the summer before her junior year. It's bad enough that she has to leave her friends and her life behind, but her dad is moving them to the beach where her parents first met and fell in love- a place awash in memories that Anna would just as soon leave under the surface.

While life on the beach is pretty great, with ocean views and one adorable lifeguard in particular, there are also family secrets that were buried along the shore years ago. And the ebb and flow of the ocean's tide means that nothing- not the sea glass that she collects on the sand and not the truths behind Anna's mother's death- stays buried forever.

Moonglass took me a while to get into. I was actually about to return it to the library. It starts out fairly slow--Anna and her father are moving and Anna is mad. The first couple chapters or so deal with this theme.

Push through. Push through until you meet a character named Ashley and see a man crawling down the beach. Because Kirby's greatest strength in Moonglass is her characters. She wrote amazing characters. Characters that are somehow both true to life and completely original. Characters I want to be or know in real life. Ashley, the beach crawler, and another girl named Jillian are the real stars of this novel. They are the catalysts for action and the most entertaining parts.

Moonglass is a book of introspection, not one of action. It's a book that will make you think and feel. It takes a bit to get into and will not be the most exciting book you ever read, but you'll think about it after you finish. You'll remember the characters, and you'll wonder what happened to Anna long after the conclusion.

Book review: Shatter Me

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

Goodreads description:

Juliette hasn't touched anyone in exactly 264 days.
The last time she did, it was an accident, but The Reestablishment locked her up for murder. No one knows why Juliette's touch is fatal. As long as she doesn't hurt anyone else, no one really cares. The world is too busy crumbling to pieces to pay attention to a 17-year-old girl. Diseases are destroying the population, food is hard to find, birds don't fly anymore, and the clouds are the wrong color.

The Reestablishment said their way was the only way to fix things, so they threw Juliette in a cell. Now so many people are dead that the survivors are whispering war-- and The Reestablishment has changed its mind. Maybe Juliette is more than a tortured soul stuffed into a poisonous body. Maybe she's exactly what they need right now.

Juliette has to make a choice: Be a weapon. Or be a warrior.

I don't remember how I heard about this book--probably from one of the many YA authors I follow on Twitter. I started following the author even before reading the book and grew even more excited to read it.

I have to admit, I was a little disappointed. I love the premise of the book--a girl who can't touch people without hurting or killing them, first imprisoned, then used as a weapon of war? Awesome.

But other than Juliette's power, I found little of the story very original. The land is more barren than most stories involving attempts at reestablishment and utopian societies, but that seems a minor detail. There is a love interest (or two?), which is common in most YA. The book gave me pretty much what I expected and not much else.

I found it hard to get into the book at first. Juliette had been in isolation for hundreds of days, and her thought processes suffered for it. I found myself skipping paragraphs of introspection to get to the point or the action.

Despite these negative impressions, I did finish the book, which says a lot because I don't finish books I don't like at least a little (why should I read something I'm not enjoying when there are so many other options?). And the end of the book was my favorite. Tahereh finally threw something at me I had not expected.

Shatter Me is the first in a trilogy. The ending of the book picked up a lot--enough that I know I'll be reading the rest of the series.

I'm not sure yet if I recommend this book. I think I do. It was entertaining and easy to read.

Book review: Room

Room by Emma Donoghue

Description from Goodreads (below) can be found here along with other reviews.

To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world. . . . It's where he was born, it's where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.
 Room is home to Jack, but to Ma it's the prison where she has been held for seven years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in this eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But with Jack's curiosity building alongside her own desperation, she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer.

Room is a tale at once shocking, riveting, exhilarating--a story of unconquerable love in harrowing circumstances, and of the diamond-hard bond between a mother and her child.

I was excited when I got this book from the library. I'd heard the premise and heard good things from acquaintences who had read it. But I found myself delaying starting the book because I wasn't in the mood for a story I predicted to be very dark.

Though Ma and Jack's situation is very bleak, the story isn't--it isn't a difficult read and not nearly as much of a downer as I'd predicted. Because the book is told by five-year-old Jack, there is little sense of the desparation of the situation--he doesn't know that he and his mom are being held captive.

Jack is very hopeful, intelligent and sweet. It can be really difficult to write in the voice of a child, but Jack's voice almost always was on perfect pitch for a five year old. I only questioned this once whenn Jack expressed that the other people of the world were just like him--they were happy or sad and breathed and slept, and if you cut them, they would bleed, just like he does. I felt this was way over the head of a five year old--maybe even over the head of some adults.

I did have issue with one very small thing--Jack was still breastfed and talks about it regularly. I'm not sure why this bothered me so much. I have no problem with breastfeeding. Maybe I just didn't want it to be so descriptive? or it might have been Jack's age. But every time it was mentioned, I cringed.

I only rated this three stars on Goodreads ("I liked it" rather than two, "it was ok," or four, "really liked it") because it didn't really surprise me at all. Other than the approach (more hopeful than dark) I pretty much knew what I was going to get when I picked up the book and there weren't really any surprise twists. But the book does have a pretty high rating on Goodreads (3.96) and plenty of rave reviews.

I do recommend this book because it's like nothing I've ever read before.

Book review: The Help

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

The Goodreads description of this book is way long, but you can find it and other reviews here.

I may have been the last person out there to read this, but I thought I'd review it anyway. The Help was forced upon me. My older sister read it and decided my mother, younger sister and I all needed to read it and over Thanksgiving this year we would all see the movie together.

She only announced this plan to us the week before Thanksgiving, and between the four of us we only had one copy, so her plan didn't work. But! We all will be home for Christmas and plan to see it then.

Anyway, to give my own description, The Help is set in 1962 in Mississippi--a very prejudiced place. The book follows the stories of many women, alternating narration between Skeeter, a white 22-year-old girl trying to find her way after college, and two African American women who are the hired help to white women in the area. The three women begin a dangerous project together and hope to use this project to effect some change on the racist attitudes of the area.

As I said, I'd never had any intention of reading this book. Somehow, despite its being turned into a movie, I had no idea what it was about.

I ended up giving it five stars on Goodreads. I was invested in the story. I couldn't put it down near the end. I almost cried several times and, despite that the  book is quite long, I wished the story had continued because I so wanted to know every detail of the rest of their lives.

I immediately cared about each narrator. I recognized in every character truth from the people in my lives.

There's the quintessential mean girl, Hilly. Who hasn't had a Hilly in their lives?

Elizabeth, high school friend of both Hilly and Skeeter, is the kind of spineless people pleaser that gives mean girls the stage they hold dearly. Elizabeth has a young daughter, whom she graces with very little attention or affection.

Aibileen, Elizabeth's hired help, was kind and loving, but also fierce. She is the first to agree to the potentially life-threatening project the three undertake. I also related to and admired her attempts to help little Mae Mobley love herself and love people of all colors.

Minny is sassy and says all the things the rest of us wish we could. She is brave as many of us wish we could be.

I probably related most of all to Skeeter, who is, like me, a 22-year-old college graduate who wants to be a writer but has no idea how to get there or what she's doing, really.

There are reviews on Goodreads that say this book is an author hiding crummy writing behind a topic that can't be criticized. I disagree. Her writing style might not have been the best, but I don't remember thinking about it even once, so if it was sub-par, it was unobtrusive.

But anytime an author creates characters that are so true to life, that remind me of people I know or of how I am or wish I was--characters I can picture existing in real life--that is a huge thing.

I highly, highly recommend this book and can't wait to see the movie!

Book review: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

I read a lot. Here's a review of a book I read recently, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling. You can read other reviews and see the official description here. (and while you're there, add me as a friend! aestrusz)

I’m not really sure why I picked up this book. I saw on twitter that Mindy Kaling (Kelly Kapoor/writer of The Office) was promoting a book. I immediately put it on hold at the library.

I think one of the reasons was the title. I mean, who hasn’t though that before? (Confession: previously I hadn’t realized anyone else did wonder if everyone else was hanging out without them.) I had just read Tina Fey’s Bossypants over the summer and enjoyed that a lot. I knew Mindy from The Office. (Although you definitely do not have to be an Office fan to enjoy the book.)

So I went into the book with pretty much no expectations and absolutely loved it. I can’t recommend it enough. The structure of the book is a modge-podge: Some chapters are written as full-fledged stories from Mindy’s past, some are lists, and some are just her thoughts on different topics, like celebrity roasts.

Mindy is humble without being fake. She doesn’t glaze over potentially embarrassing moments, like the awkwardness of her guest-writing stint on SNL or her terrible interviews.

I mean, just look at the back cover:

That is not someone afraid to tell of their modest beginnings.

The stories Mindy tells range from hilarious to heartfelt. She discusses serious issues but maintains the tricky balance between too-serious and too-funny. I laughed out loud a lot, and related to Mindy more than I expected to. She talks about job searching, a process I was in for months and hated. She talks about body image. She talks about what has made her cry. She’s a real human person and isn’t afraid to show it.

Some of my favorite moments:

• Mindy trying to understand one-night stands and defending those of us who are just not interested.
• Mindy’s description of the women in romantic comedies that just don’t exist in real life, including The Klutz, The Ethereal Weirdo, The Woman Who Is Obsessed With Her Career And Is No Fun At All, etc.
• Pretty much every chapter title and caption: I Love New York and It Likes Me Okay, My older brother Vijay, and me, interrupted as I was plotting to eat him (caption), Non-Traumatic Things That Have Made Me Cry

Most of all, I loved that there were so many parts of the book that spoke to me personally, and I’m guessing to a lot of her readers. Like the chapter Best Friend Rights and Responsibilities, where almost every rule made me think of one of my friends. When she talks about being a chubby kid and chubby adult. Her chapter about marriage is everything I want my relationship to be.

I loved this book. I guess that’s all I really have to say.

Are any of you reading anything fun?