REVIEW: If You Feel Too Much by Jamie Tworkoski

There's nothing that I like better than books written by fellow Poles and especially one that was begin as the result of a short non-fiction piece called "To Write Love on Her Arms" that was written by the author in 2006.  That story literally blossomed, seemingly overnight, into a non-profit organization that helps with depression and suicide. The passages are everything from notes and emails to prose and span the period in between 2006 and 2015. It felt at times, like I was reading someone's personal diary or journal - that's how personal the material was.

This book is a collection of Jaime's short stories and provides insight into both his own humanity and mind but also the minds and humanity of the people that he surrounds himself with. It's no surprise that it's insightful, particularly if you've read his material before or if you've had the pleasure of seeing him speak. It opens a dialogue up about topics that would otherwise be insurmountable. They aren't scripted and remind us that it's truly ok to not be ok.

What I really appreciated about this book is that Jamie didn't try to present as if he were wiser than anyone else or that he was actively trying to farm out his advice to other people, which would have been really easy to do under the circumstances. He was REAL - and presented his TRUE self to people. If he was saying he was struggling, he was struggling. You could take that to the bank. The diary style sometimes made it feel disjointed, but that didn't necessarily detract from what was going on in the stories.

This was a tremendously wonderful and inspiring book that you should all read. Follow this link to his website.

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste NG

For a debut novel, this was fantastic with a hook right from the start: a teenage girl is missing and her family doesn't know about it, there's a lake involved and a bad boy neighbor. And it's 1977, and the girl is biracial - her father is Japanese and her mother is white - which adds an element to the whole thing.

Lydia Lee is the missing girl and the middle child - what is unusual is that she's the favorite and a biracial Asian/white girl with Asian features and blue eyes. She seems so driven that she's the least likely of the three children in her family to go missing. The police are called and ask questions of Lydia's parents - how was she doing at school, who were her friends, was she depressed - and her parents find themselves unable to answer with any degree of certainty or honesty. The question in this novel is why are they unable to answer the questions.

Marilyn, Lydia's mother, has her own demons - she's estranged from her mother.  James, a Japanese man that became a citizen, hasn't ever felt that he has belonged anywhere. He was the only Asian student at a private boarding school and one of the first Asians to attend Harvard in the 1960's. He's grown up and is growing old with a sense of loneliness that can't be shaken. While Marilyn and James aren't cruel to their children, it is painfully obvious that they are living their dreams through their children and, by extension, putting a lot of pressure on their children to do what they always wanted to do.

While Ng did a masterful job in addressing the issues that arise with racial issues and family issues, she was less sure on police procedural issues. She could do to brush up on those. The scenes of mourning aren't the best either but hey, if these are the only complaints that I have about a first novel, then I'll take it.  Ng is a wonderful storyteller whose powerful message is conveyed in brilliantly simple text. Definitely a must read.

Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein

I'm generally not a reader of celebrity memoirs.  I find that generally, celebrities don't write very well and don't necessarily have a voice that I want to hear, which is fine because their skill set may be elsewhere - acting, singing, whatever. But I heard positive things about this particular memoir so I picked it up.

For those of you that don't know, Carrie Brownstein was one of the founders of Sleater-Kinney, a Riot Grrl band in the early to mid nineties. That's not how I first became familiar with her - I became familiar with her through her absolutely brilliant and funny performances with Fred Armisen in Portlandia, on IFC. This book talks about Brownstein's life and her desire to be noticed and held in high esteem for her first love: music. She and her family lived in Redmond, WA and her proximity to Olympia and Seattle - the state's music centers - definitely had an impact on her. Music, after all, became her escape when her mother was hospitalized for struggles with anorexia and her father came out to her as homosexual.

The funnier, more endearing, and for me, more interesting moments, were at the beginning part of the book when I learned a lot about Brownstein's life growing up.  I live for and love those moments in books because I firmly believe that those moments give you insight into the type of person the narrator is NOW. One of my most favorite moments is when Carrie is doing a mock trial in school and she is assigned the role of the suspect's mother. Instead of sticking to script, Brownstein admits to being the killer in a moment of absolute drama that upsets both the teacher and the other players in the class, but which now gives me understanding as to how and why she's so wonderful in Portlandia.

I liked learning about the band but it wasn't the most interesting part of the book. It was interesting to learn how the band's main topic for their music was sexism - raising awareness of it and fighting it. She, for example, talked a lot about the double standards that existed in being covered by reporters - how they consistently asked about what it was like to be a female rock star band or what they were wearing on stage at a concert as opposed to the content of their music.  I respect that because those are still conversations that exist today - people talk more about Hilary's pantsuits then they do about Donald's suits (even though his suits are more of a political topic, considering that they were made overseas by people in jobs that were sent overseas by Mr. Trump himself).

Generally, a decent read especially if you are interested in the Riot Grrl movement.  

City of Mirrors by Justin Cronin

I was hesitant to pick up Justin Cronin's trilogy, which began with The Passage, because I was vampired out.  But it's different. It combines science fiction and westerns and spans about 1500 pages and 1000 years and generations, upon generations of people.  It's dystopian and hopeful all at the same time! The vampires don't sparkle, thankfully, and the story isn't just told in prose - it's told via letters, journals, scientific journals, flashback, the whole nine yards.
As the book opens, we find our beloved characters in a time of peace and relative prosperity.  There have been no viral attacks for twenty years. The main characters are all struggling with something that has broken them and they each struggle. And there was also Zero, the ultimate bad guy, that wants his say and his ultimate revenge. This book is wonderful in the sense that it is Cronin at his absolute best - he is a storyteller on par with perhaps the best of the fantasy writers - of any writer actually.  The books are detailed and thoughtful and speak to the souls of people.  What is also wonderful is that this book can be treated as both a standalone novel or as the last book in the trilogy. While it would be nice to have read the previous two books - I found that the previous two books gave me emotional connections to the characters that I might not have had otherwise - this book does not require it in the way that, say the Outlander books or the Fire and Ice books do.  A reader can come to this book totally cold and can enjoy it.  At the same time, the reader of the trilogy will not be let down by what Cronin accomplishes in the end with this book-  believe me, it's everything that you will hope it will be. Definitely worth it.

In Memoriam

One of my most favorite bookish podcasts, Books on the Nightstand, has ended its tremendously successful run.  It has been around seemingly forever and was one of my staples in book recommendations. It will be sorely missed and leaves a space in my podcast listening zone that I'm striving to fill.  While I understand that the podcast em-cees, Michael and Anne, have their own lives that they probably want to continue with (and podcasting takes a lot of time, particularly when you're as popular as they are and, for example, as popular as the Manic Mommies are/were), they will be sorely missed.  However you can find them on both Goodreads and on Twitter.

In anticipation of their ultimate decision to end the podcast, I found a number of other really awesome podcasts to fill the void, some of which are bookish and some of which aren't.  For your listening pleasure:

• BookRiot - more of a news in the publishing industry podcast but still pretty awesome;
• All the Books - a weekly podcast about new book releases
• Boy Vs. Girl - a short weekly podcast that looks at gendered things. Love this one!
• This American Life
• Dear Sugar - a weekly advice podcast hosted by Cheryl Strayed and Steve Almond
• Book Lust by Nancy Pearl

Please feel free to leave your recs here as well!!

The Importance of Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel passed away over the weekend - the Independence Day holiday weekend here in the States - and in some ways that was a fitting time for a man such as he to pass from the world that he tried so hard to make a better place.  In the picture to the right, Mr. Wiesel is on the second bunk. There is a man with a white cap on and another man, leaning up on his elbow and you can then see Mr. Wiesel peeking around the edge of that man.

Mr. Wiesel will be mourned and missed by all. In 1960, his memoir, Night, about his time in a concentration camp at the age of 15 was published, rocketing him to fame.  He continued, throughout the course of his life, to write about religion and humanity as a result of his experiences in that Concentration Camp during World War 2. In his writings and his life, he fought against atrocities perpetuated against  people and never let people forget what had happened to him at the ages of 15 and 16 while he was imprisoned. He touched the lives of thousands if not millions of people and will continue to do so even after his death.

Thank you Mr. Wiesel. May you rest in peace. 

The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker

This book came highly recommended to me by a number of co workers and other people that have since assumed a very special place in my life. I read during a period in my life that was particularly trying and it really, really hit home, additionally helping me overcome the stressful thing in my life. This book is a primer on violence written by someone who has a tremendous amount of personal and professional experience in dealing with violence. This book singularly changed MY life as far as my personal and intimate relationships go and I am forever indebted to the book and its author for the role it played in changing the course of MY life.

In short, this book is a brilliantly written discourse and analysis of various, common forms of violence. The reader is given many different perspectives during the course of the analysis - from the victim's perspective, the investigator's perspective and other outsider's perspective - in order to demonstrate to the reader that patterns exist that can lead us to predict violence or, at the very least, to trust our basic, gut level instincts. This book was thought provoking and well thought out. DeBecker uses case studies effectively in attempting to convince the reader of the truth and accuracy of his arguments. It was very, very well thought out.

In my life, shortly after reading this book, I had contact with an old friend relatively shortly after reading this book.  At the time, I had just come out of a difficult personal relationship and wasn't looking for anything. In talking to him, my instinct was to just ask this person out and see where it went.  I'm very, very glad that I did because I'm the happiest that I've been for a while and all because I trusted what my instinct was telling me.