Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed and a RANTY RANT

Tiny Beautiful Things was the best book I read in April- and, to be honest, one of the only books I finished in April. APRIL IS THE CRUELEST MONTH OK LEMME ALONE. I featured the book in Book Riot's Round-Up: TheBest Books We Read in April. For those who don't read the Riot, here's what I said about it:

"I loved Wild when I read it last year, but I hesitated to pick up this collection of pieces from Cheryl’s stint as advice columnist Sugar on The Rumpus. Mostly because I’m not interested in the clichéd platitudes dished out by so many advice columns, and a little bit because I never actually read Cheryl-as-Sugar and was afraid (based on what I’d read in Wild) that this book would be too hippy-dippy for my tastes. INACCURATE. Sugar/Cheryl is a loving hard-ass, the greatest guidance counselor you never had, a maybe-slightly-older-than-you cool aunt who dishes out the hard stuff and then buys you a margarita and a cookie. And yeah, Cheryl can write like a motherfucker."

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IN OTHER NEWS I very angrily DNFd a new book called HomewardBound: Why Women Are Embracing the New Domesticity, which I thought was going to be a feminist look at the DIY/raising chickens/knitting/canning blog phenomenon that's happening these days. It sort of was that, but was mostly the judgiest thing I've ever read. The author is snide, likening women who work from home as bloggers or Etsy crafters as "Avon ladies" and basically suggesting that if you're a stay at home mother (or a work-at-home mother like all the bloggers she highlights, and of course like I am) you're a bad feminist. As in, if you homeschool, you don't care about improving the public school system, and if you work at home for yourself or stay at home with your kids, you're not out making changes for women in corporate America and therefore you're less than.

The author tries to make the trend of women working from home or staying home with kids a sort of rich person's trend, but all the stay-at-home mothers and work-at-home mothers I personally know do so in large part because they can't get jobs that pay enough to cover child care- myself included. And if women in that situation can improve their financial state by doing something they enjoy doing (like knitting, even if it is icky "women's work") and then selling the shit out of their skills, I say more fucking power to them, and who are we to judge women who are just making the best decisions they can for themselves and their family? And now I've come to love working at home so much that if I was offered a corporate office job I would tell the offerer to shove it- even if that means I'm an icky bad feminist.

Making feminism all about abandoning activities that are "domestic" because they're historically associated with women just makes women who ACTUALLY ENJOY THAT SHIT feel guilty- or worse, makes them feel like they are therefore NOT feminists, even if they actually are. "Well shit, I actually enjoy baking and prefer working for myself- guess I'm not a good enough believer in equal rights." Give me a fucking break.I don't usually get so angsty about books I didn't finish because I don't think it's fair, but I gave this book half its length to stop being so offensive and snooty, and it just didn't happen. So I put it down and baked some cookies because I fucking love cookies and I did it in the middle of the day because I was at home with my kids. And you can pry my feminist card from my cold, dead hands.

NOW this rant is not to say you shouldn't read the book. I disagree with what the author is saying, but the conversation about the affects of the rise of domesticity on feminism is one worth having.

Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson

You guuyysss, I hate to travel. Not just like the process of being on a plane or train and smelling that recycled air and being told that I have to turn off my Nook like I'm an infant (though I do, in fact, hate those things), I hate being in places that aren't my house. I don't like not knowing where the closest Chipotle is. I don't like places that don't have Chipotle. I don't find New York magical and fun, I find it too big and everything is annoying and I just want to go home. Replace New York with any other place that isn't my townhouse in Richmond, Virginia, and my feelings are the same.

But I do like travel memoirs? They do exactly what books should do: transport you somewhere without you having to put on pants. And I love Bill Bryson, having read A Short History of Nearly Everything, so I expected this to be pithy and great and it was.

In Neither Here Nor There, Bryson travels across Europe, recreating the trek he made as a backpacking youngster (like you do). He drinks coffee at small cafes in France, marvels at how clean it is in Sweden, remarks on the declining quality of the sex workers in Amsterdam (?), gets grossed out by the piles of trash in Naples and how everyone in Austria hates you (THIS IS WHY I DON'T GO ANYWHERE), etc., etc.

You could rename this book All These People Are Exactly Like Every Cliched Joke You've Ever Heard About Them, And Are In Fact A Little Bit Worse. But The Food is Nice. Sometimes. I was taken aback several times by the complete lack of political correctness Bryson expresses about the various people groups of Europe, but he says them with such aplomb and smart-assitude (which I love) that you're sort of fine with it? Even though you're sort of not? Like, hey that was a really rude thing you just said about secretaries in Holland, but it was really funny. And I've never been there, so maybe they do spend all day sunbathing without shirts on in the park. What do I know.

So the real question for me was: is this book going to make me want to go to Europe? Yeah, no. But I wanted it to! I wanted to be pulled out of my sight-seeing laziness! But mostly he makes All The Countries sound hot and dirty OR freezing cold and also dirty and with long lines to get into the museums and a lot of good food but also a lot of shitty food and sometimes the strangers are rude. WHICH IS EXACTLY LIKE VIRGINIA WHY WOULD I EVER LEAVE.

Ok, I do want to go to Capri because that's maybe the only place he didn't make sound awful. And Amsterdam. PARTS of Amsterdam. The parts without aging hippies. And Paris. BECAUSE IT'S PARIS GET OFF MY BACK.

Three stars out of your mom.

Amazon Buys Goodreads

This post originally went up on Book Riot on Saturday, but I wanted to have this conversation with readers over here who aren't also Book Riot readers. Let me know what you think about the acquisition!

Goodreads has announced that it has been bought by Amazon. The immediate response on the bookternet (or at least my corner of it) was shock and a fair bit of outrage/disappointment.

The response on Goodreads’ announcement and in their Feedback forum has been overwhelmingly and surprisingly negative. As happens with any big change to something people are used to, Goodreads loyalists are suspicious, upset, and threatening to leave (and some are doing more than threatening- there are plenty of [deleted member] tags on the feedback threads this morning).

I would consider myself a Goodreads moderate-to-super-user: I’m a volunteer librarian for the site, have been a member for several years, am sometimes-active in a handful of groups, and check it daily to update my reading journal (though I use LibraryThing for serious book cataloguing for reasons I’ve previously outlined). After the announcement, I went through one of those Very Emotional And Confused periods of five minutes. But the feelings of shock or disappointment quickly dissipated into a little bit of HEY WAIT A MINUTE I DON’T LIKE AMAZON SORT OF WILL THEY CHANGE STUFF WAIT WAIT WHY ARE THEY EVERYWHERE UGH.

And now I’m pretty much over that and have landed where I think a lot of Goodreads users have landed: cautious optimism, with my finger resting ever-so-gently on the “export” button. Here are a few of my scattered thoughts/concerns:

1. Good on Otis and Elizabeth. They spent five years busting ass to build something interesting and useful for readers that I get daily mileage out of. The number of GR users (somewhere around 16 million) don’t lie: Goodreads is a great site and the builders deserve their pay-out. It doesn’t make them sell-outs. It doesn’t mean they’ve betrayed any noble bookish ideal. They built an innovative start-up that millions of people find value in, and they deserve whatever eight-figure amount Amazon gave them.

2. Indie Bookstores. A lot of the outrage directed at the acquisition is about this: if the 16 million Goodreads users have Amazon buy buttons shoved in their faces, is that going to negatively impact indie bookstore sales? I don’t think it will make a difference. People who shop at indies do so for reasons that don’t have anything to do with the internet (at least in my experience) and will continue to do so. If you’re concerned about the state of indie bookstores, put your money where your mouth is- rage doesn’t pay their bills. The bigger question here is, do you want to continue using a site that is owned by an indie bookstore-killer? This is a little more complicated, but I think it boils down to not mattering (again). Amazon also owns IMDB, which I use frequently but don’t buy anything from, and I think it will be the same here. I’ll use Goodreads and just…keep buying books from the little shop down the street. Talk and righteous indignation are great, but it’s dollars that matter in keeping indies afloat. Deleting your Goodreads account won’t do anything to keep indies’ doors open, and the doings of an international monolithic corporation can quickly become irrelevant to your local indie if enough people in your specific neighborhood are supporting them.

3. Ooohhh, Publishers. This is Awkward. Publishers advertise on Goodreads. Will they continue to do so now that it’s owned by a company that seems hell-bent on market control and sorta-maybe-destroying everything they hold dear (whether or not that’s actually true, that’s often the perception)? Sure they will. Goodreads is the largest bookish community on the internet- the advertisers aren’t going anywhere. What that says about publishers (or at least the Big 6) and Amazon bedding down more and more as time goes on…we’ll have to see.

4. The State of the Review Policy. Is Amazon going to own my reviews? In his comments on the Feedback forum, Otis says that there is no plan to change the review policy (which currently is that you own your reviews). That’s corporate speak for maybe? We’ll see what the new boss wants? This concern also reaches to writing reviews themselves: the Amazon policy is famously draconian, sometimes bordering on censorship. They’ve been known to delete unfavorable reviews. Authors aren’t allowed to review other authors’ books, in some cases. Is this going to happen on Goodreads? Will we lose review freedom and the unbiased, independent nature of the place in order to placate authors or Amazon’s sales department? This is my biggest worry: if my reviews are imported over to Amazon without my permission, or if the “anything goes” review policy changes, I will delete my account with a quickness. But Amazon also owns a minority share of LibraryThing and they have kept all their review policies, so I doubt this will happen.

5. Keep the Authors Away From Me. I’m the type of Goodreads user who does not appreciate the amount of self-published author spam I already get over there- enough that I had to set up a message whenever I get a friend request that amounts to “if I haven’t already shelved your book, please leave me alone.” The communication from Goodreads about the acquisition has a lot of double-speak about how the merge will make it easier for authors to find customers who might otherwise not know about them: does that mean more author spam? Come to think of it, this might also be enough to make me leave the site. I’ve never had an author bother me on LibraryThing, but it’s daily on Goodreads.

6. There’s Nowhere Else To Go. Goodreads’ only real competition is LibraryThing- but Amazon also owns part of that site (LT is partially owned by Abebooks, which Amazon bought). The owners of LT still maintain majority ownership so nothing has really changed over there, but it remains that there are no really effective bookish social media sites that don’t have at least some Amazon presence.* Shelfari, of course, is also owned by Amazon. If you want to avoid Amazon altogether, you’ll have to catalogue your library on a spreadsheet and go back to a reading journal kept on a .doc or in a spiral notebook. On a more universal level, there’s nowhere else to go in almost all of the book world: Amazon is in publishing, self-publishing, e-books, all the social media sites. For many people, this acquisition could be the last straw. They’ll leave Goodreads not because of any particular site change, but because it’s just one more indication that Amazon is monopolizing the book world.

So those are things I’ve been mulling over since the announcement. Review independence, intrusive authors encouraged by a shift from a social media atmosphere to a selling atmosphere, and a mix of “good on ya, Otis.” I haven’t decided if I’m going to delete me account, keep it but stop using it for reviewing, or what. What do you guys think?

*This is not to say that LibraryThing and Goodreads are the same. They have some major differences, not the least of which is how they use your data. Check out this thread from LibraryThing’s owner for their response to the acquisition.

Publisher Swag: Classics Edition

SOO I've got a few classics-related things that publishers have kindly sent my way over the past little bit that are super-fancy/drool-worthy/cute in which I think you guys might be interested. I guess this is my version of In My Mailbox (do people actually still do that [nevermind, don't answer that]). Actually, I've gotten quite a few things, but these are the ones that I actually think are interesting, so. I'm linking to the Goodreads page for each one so you can check them out on your own if you want to and buy them from whatever outlet makes you happy (FOR NOW, I HATE THAT AMAZON BOUGHT GOODREADS ERGH*):

This is maybe not unrelated.

The Super-Fancy: This edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise from Alma Books

The cover is gilded and shiny, the paper is good quality, and it has end-flaps. Winning.

The Drool-Worthy: Steampunk H.G. Wells from Running Press Kids

This is a hardcover, illustrated collection of The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, and The Country of the Blind. AS YOU MIGHT IMAGINE, the illustrations are steampunk and colored and very, very nice.

The Cute: This tiny book, Jane Austen: Her Complete Novels in One Sitting from Running Press 

Don't let the size of this picture FOOL YOU, for the book is actually POCKET SIZED and WEE. It has character lists and summaries for all of Jane Austen's novels. Would be nice for a super-fan/Jane Austen completist. 

There you go! If you've encountered any new editions of classics/classics-related items you'd like to tell everyone about, let me know in the comments!

*I have ranted about the Amazon acquisition of Goodreads and what I think it means for users over at Book Riot, if you care to check that out.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

The Song of Achilles is the last book in the Tournament of Books field that I picked up/am going to pick up because meh, the rest of them sound like a parade of White People Problems about which I give no shits.

Also, if you're interested in the TOB, the brackets have been announced here. I expect you to put on your bookie hat and start that wagering.

So The Song of Achilles is a re-telling of The Iliad from the point of view of Patroclus. For those who are unfamiliar with the general myth: Patroclus is super-besties with Achilles, a half-god-half-man who is also the Greatest Living Guy With A Spear. They are in Troy because: war, and also plunder. In The Iliad (spoiler, though I really don't know if you can spoil Homer), Patroclus is killed when he dresses up in Achilles' armor. Achilles then goes on a grief-centered killing spree that eventually results in his own death.

In Miller's re-telling, Patroclus goes to live with Achilles' father as a child after he accidentally kills another boy. He falls in love with Achilles, who is all Golden Hair and Shiny Skin and Smells Like Sandalwood (or something) and all that jazz. There are also gods and centaurs and mythological shenanigans. The beauty of it is how it humanizes Achilles- by showing him through the eyes of the man who loved him, we see a side of a Great Hero of Killing Stuff that we never have. Achilles eating figs, Achilles playing in a river, Achilles running on a beach. Though honestly, I though Odysseus was more interesting than Achilles or Patroclus. While the latter are busy being all moony-eyed and romantic in each other's direction, Odysseus is being smart-assy and trying to win a war, etc.

Which I guess is me missing the point a little. This is a more romantic, gentler, kinder, more victim-of-fate Iliad, and I'm still looking for bits of the bromance, kicking-against-the-goads, let's-run-people-over-with-chariots Iliad. But that's a reading that says more about me than it does about the book.

The writing is lush and evocative and squishes your heart into tiny pieces.

Five stars out of your mom.

Where'd You Go Bernadette and The Round House

Tournament of Books update! So here's what's the what: the goal was to read the field, but that is not going so well. I'm a DNFer- if a book isn't captivating me within about 50 pages, I give that shiz up and move on. I was on a DNFing streak with a few TOB books, so I've changed the goal from Read the Field to Give Each Book In the Field a Chance to Give Each Book In The Field A Chance/Read the Reviews And If It Sounds Stupid, Skip It.

So I gave up on A.M. Homes' May We Be Forgiven, which was about a middle-aged wealthy white professor's personal problems (ugh, gag me), and then I gave up on The Orphan Master's Son because I just wasn't groovin' on it. The writing was quite lovely, and I might go back to that one later in life (right, like that's really going to happen).

I've also decided to skip Fobbit by David Abrams, or at least skip reviewing it because he is a writer at Book Riot (where I am an editor) and it just gives me the maybe-nots to review a sort-of-not-really-but-maybe-could-be-considered-a coworker. AAANNND I've decided to skip Sheila Heti's How Should a Person Be mostly because of this review which describes it as "a blog circa 2001 by someone who isn't particularly interesting" and because the description makes it sound like a novelized version of the show Girls, which, no thank you. Now on to a few that I did finish:

Where'd You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple

Another Smart Lady Disappears book a la Gone Girl (but really, nothing like Gone Girl). Bernadette is a wealthy former architect-turned housewife who lives in Seattle with her Microsoft guru husband and precocious (of course) daughter. Bernadette turns out to be agoraphobic and a bit nutty, agreeing for some reason to take her daughter on a trip to Antarctica. She hires a virtual assistant in India who takes on more and more of her daily life. Add a dash of Crazy Private School Moms, an interesting format (the book isn't told in traditional narrative, but in the form of letters, faxes, e-mails, etc.), and thoughts on what happens to a creative woman when she becomes a mother, and you've got an original, bizarre thing going. Also, you can tell Semple wrote for Arrested Development. This shiz is funny. 

Four stars out of your mom.

The Round House by Louise Erdrich

Hello, unexpected whodunit page turner! So Joe is our narrator, a grown-up recalling events from his childhood. He grew up on a Native American reservation, and one normal day, his mother is brutally raped on a piece of land that might be under tribal jurisdiction, or might be under federal jurisdiction- legal tangles that are common in Native American crimes, and that often prevent justice (especially against women) from ever even starting to happen. I haven't read much literature by Native American authors, and let me tell you- reading this book and then watching the vote on the Violence Against Women Act happen was interesting. I finished a book about violence against Native American women, which happens at a rate twice that of white women, and then watched 22 male Republicans vote against the act because it would allow non-tribal men who violated and abused tribal women on reservations to be prosecuted by the tribal courts. The timing was bizarre, and I am more than glad the act passed having just read something relevant to it, and now I am more convinced than ever of the importance of literature. *steps off soapbox*

Anyway, political thought-provocation aside, the book is brilliant and will wreck your face. It's not just a fascinating mystery and judicial web, it's also a coming-of-age story: after her attack, Joe's mother retreats to her room and doesn't come out for months (understandably), leaving Joe to his own devices. It's poignant and heart-breaking, but in a necessary way.

Five stars out of your mom.

Buy, Borrow, Bypass

This is a post that I did for Book Riot a few days ago that I wanted to put up here in case some of you aren't readers over there- it's a post about some upcoming books that I'm super-thrilled about and wanted to spread the love for far and wide (one of which is very Vonnegut-ish and another of which is based on the life of Flannery O'Connor, so very relevant vis-a-vis youz guyz).

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

R is a young professional with a pleasant life, or at least he was before he became a zombie. Or he think he was, he can’t really remember. Now he lives in an airport with other zombies, listening to old Frank Sinatra records for days at a time and, you know, eating people. His existential ennui finally manifests when he saves a young woman from himself and tries to make the world a better place one grunted syllable at a time. While the movie trailer makes the story seem like a CW-style teen comedy (the movie comes out February 1), the book is decidedly more adult, darkly funny, and violent (obviously). Not your typical zombie book, if there is any such thing.

VERDICT: Borrow if you’re not generally into zombie fare, buy if you are.

Man in the Empty Suit by Sean Ferrell

Every year for his birthday, a lonely and jaded time traveler revisits the same decrepit New York hotel in the year 2071 to celebrate, along with all his other selves. The party is always the same: drunkenness, rice pilaf, bad time travel movies, etc., until his 39th year, when he finds his 40 year old self dead in the hotel elevator. All the selves over 40 are understandably upset (with Self #40 dead, how are we all still here- and will we still be here five minutes from now?), and hoist the responsibility of solving the crime onto Self 39. Enter a mysterious woman with parrot tattoos, a post-apocalyptic Manhattan, Vonnegut-sharp humor and Hemingway-spare prose, and you’ve got some seriously good sci-fi.

VERDICT: Buy, you fools!

The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things by Paula Byrne

A Jane Austen biography told through small items she would have encountered in her personal life- a method that brings the reader a more intimate look at Austen. It’s two parts narrative about the author’s life and one part about how her life influenced her work (for the literary critic among us). An example: Austen discussed Indian shawls in her letters, which Byrne uses to discuss how internationally traveled Austen’s family was, and uses that to defend Austen against accusations of being myopically regional. The book walks a fine line between being academic and being slow, so if you’re not a dedicated Austenophile, it’s probably not for you (but then, any Austen bio probably isn’t).

VERDICT: Buy if you love Austen with all the loves, bypass if not

Frances and Bernard by Carlene Bauer

A novel-in-letters inspired by the lives of Flannery O’Connor and Robert Lowell- but you don’t need to be familiar with them to love this book. The two characters (she a hard and no-nonsense Catholic novelist and he a man-about-town poet) meet at a writer’s workshop and begin exchanging letters, developing an unlikely but natural friendship. It’s the wittiest, most heart-breaking book I’ve read in recent memory. It has several of my literary hot-buttons: dry humor, discourse on faith or the lack thereof, romance, New York, mockery of writers colonies, feminist considerations about sacrificing your own art for those you love (or not), smart literary allusions a-plenty. The characters’ voices are clear, the writing is heart-stopping-good. I haven’t heard much buzz about this book, but it deserves All The Buzz. ALL OF IT.

Verict: Buy It. Buy All The Copies You Can Find, and Use the Extras To Decorate Your Town With Amazing Prose.