ARC Review of Anger is my Middle Name by Lisbeth Zornig Andersen: A Memoir

I received an ARC of Anger is my Middle Name by Lisbeth Zornig Andersen translated by Mark Mussari. This is Lisbeth's memoir of growing up in Denmark in a very dysfunctional household, dealing with neglect, sexual abuse, and physical violence. Her story was difficult to read for two reasons, the first because the content was hard to stomach. The people in her life who were suppose to protect her were the ones either putting her in harm's way or directly hurting her. Immediately, I bonded with her and felt protective of her. The other reason this book was difficult to read was the uneven narrative structure. I'm not sure if it was a translation issue but several times I would need to reread sections to try to understand what I had read. Additionally she would bring up people she had only briefly mentioned earlier without reminding the reader who they were, which I found confusing.

Lastly, I found as a reader not familiar with Danish institutions, I needed a little more information. She tells us she is put in an orphanage. (Both of her parents are alive but they are neglectful so this seems the best option.) Later she mentions she is embarrassed at the orphanage because they are hosting Parent's Day and all the parents show up except hers. I need more understanding as to how Danish orphanages work. Why are all the parents showing up? Why are they putting their children in the orphanages if they are capable of showing up? I need background information. This is just one tangent but there were a few times I was confused. Her story is dark. It reminded me thematically to The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls or Educated by Tara Westover but overall the writing was a bit clunky. I gave it 3 stars.



This book will be published March 1, 2020. Thanks to Netgalley for my ARC.

February TBR

1. Anger is my Middle Name by Lisbeth Zornig Andersen
2. The Girls with No Names by Serena Burdick
3. Cleanness by Garth Greenwell
4. Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky
5. Caliban's War by James S. A. Corey
6. Miracle Creek by Angie Kim
7. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
8. The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
9. Sulwe by Lupita Nyong'o
10. Stay with Me by Ayobami Adebayo

ARC Review of The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s: An Oral History by Andy Greene

     I received The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s: An Oral History by Andy Greene as an ARC. The author interviews the writers, actors, creators, directors, and nearly everyone involved in The Office and weaves together their answers to create a narrative. He starts with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant who were the creators of the original UK The Office television show. The book is broken up into chapters about each season, talking about specific episodes, and includes a lot of behind the scenes information that will bring a fresh perspectives to my next viewing of The Office.
   
While he personally interviews many people, he doesn't manage to interview Steve Carell. Similar to seasons 8 and 9 of The Office, it definitely was missing something without him. He does throw in a quote from Carell from another source at the end, but I definitely wanted more. Additionally, at 464 pages, I felt it went a tad long and included some writers drama that was unnecessary to the story. Overall, very enjoyable. I gave it 3.5 stars and would recommend to anyone who is a fan of The Office and would like to learn more. Thanks to Netgalley for my copy.


This will be published March 24th, 2020.

January Wrap Up #2

Since I've last updated you, I've read 7 things.

I read Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid. The premise is that a young black babysitter is called to babysit her white charge and while doing so, is accused of kidnapping the child. The story unfolds from there. While that does happen, it does not set up as much of the book as I thought it did. While the author does set up a conversation about race, I felt she did not dig deep enough. It read more like chick lit to me. The dialogue was somewhat cringey to me and most of the characters were very unlikable. I honestly won't remember it in a year. I gave it 3 stars.

Then I picked up my first reread of the year with A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. It was such a joy to revisit the characters as they trekked throughout the galaxy visiting different planets, meeting many species, and learning varied customs. I gave it 5 stars.

I read a poetry collection called Wade in the Water by Tracy K. Smith. I'm not big on poetry but she is coming to an event that I will be attending this year and I wanted to familiarize myself with some of her work. This was weird. Overall, I didn't really care for it. The poems didn't really seem to go together at all. Some were about slavery, some were about motherhood, some were about pollution. I did like one, which was about refugees. I gave the collection 2 stars.

My next read was The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing by Mira Jacob. This is family story about a family who moves from India to United States. It is told in two different timelines. In the current timeline (1998) Amina's mother calls her and tells her to come home because her father keeps talking to his dead mother and she's worried about him. Amina flies out, skeptical and suspicious that this may be a ploy of her mother to set her up with someone. What follows is a heart-wrenching family story. The events in the former timeline help you to understand some of the motivations and scars of the current timeline. I will say that for a lot of the book, I was preferring the past timeline because I was really connecting with Amina's brother Akhil. The last 20 pages had me sobbing. I will admit, this is not perfect. There are some pacing issues. But I really connected with the characters and loved being in this world. I loved this book and gave it 5 stars. I will automatically pick up anything this author puts out next.

Speaking of loving the world, I really wanted some more of A Long Way to A Small Angry Planet and so I decided to pick up a short story by Becky Chambers titled "'A Good Heretic" which was published in a collection of short stories called Infinite Stars: Dark Frontiers edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt. It was a 20ish page story about Mas who was a Sianat we briefly meet on Arun in the first book. Because the story is so short, I will not give any descriptors because it will be spoilers, but I really enjoyed the story and the character of Mas. I gave the story 4 stars. I'd have loved it to be a little longer.

I read the graphic memoir titled The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui. Her memoir was about her family emigrating from Vietnam to the United States during the Vietnam War. This was hard to read. She talks individually about her parents childhood's in Vietnam and Cambodia which were pretty difficult. They were fleeing the Vietnam War with young children in tow and living in a refugee camp. Making a new start in a country where they spoke very little English was quite a struggle for them. This story was well told and the artwork fit with the story. I thought this was a beautifully constructed graphic memoir. I gave it 4 stars and would definitely recommend.

Lastly, I finished I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. I have had a lot of people recommend this to me and I had high expectations for this. I was slightly disappointed. I started off loving it. Cassandra is a 17 year old girl writing in her diary about living in an old castle in England. She writes about her odd father, artist-muse stepmother, and sister who longs to marry rich so they can get out of their crippling poverty. They meet two new neighbors who are American and turn out to be rich and also their landlords. Obviously the sister is going to try to catch the eye of Simon (the one who has the money) so she can marry rich. All is going swimmingly and I'm loving the story. Then all of a sudden, Cassandra decides for basically no reason that she loves Simon which provides so much angst. It changed the tone of the book so much and made Cassandra such a whiny character. In addition, she also is mean to a character who is nothing but good to her. I gave the first half of the book 5 stars, the second half 1 star, so an average of 3 stars.

I finished one more book but it was an ARC so I will be writing a separate review coming soon.

12 Books I want to Read in 2020

I was hesitant to create another one of  these since I only read 5 from last year but I thought I would try anyway. Here are the 12 books I want to prioritize in the year 2020.

1. Burial Rites by Hannah Kent
2. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
3. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (repeat from last year's list)
4. The Five by Hallie Rubenfold
5. Elantris by Brandon Sanderson
6. You Will be Safe Here by Damien Barr
7. The Overstory by Richard Powers
8. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
9. Red Sister by Mark Lawerence
10. Columbine by Dave Cullen
11. Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
12. Hollowpox: The Hunt for Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend

Most of this will be stretching me. Lots of fantasy, more non-fiction, and some historical fiction. I'm really hoping most of these will be 4 or 5 star reads for me as well.

January Wrap Up 1

So far I've finished 4 books in January.

I've already summarized Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse in my previous post---3 stars.

The one I picked up after that was This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay. This was a nonfiction diary type book of his experience working as a junior doctor (intern/resident) in the NHS system in the UK. Some of the stories were funny, a lot were very gross, and some were quite sad. A lot were focused on how understaffed they were and how he often had to give up his social plans and how this constant overworking led to some problems. However, abruptly, as he has reached the pinnacle and is about to become a senior doctor with a lot more flexibility, he tells a story in which a patient dies. He has a strong emotional reaction and decides he can no longer be a doctor. We knew from the start that he had quit being a doctor but the tonal shift from funny to depressing was very fast. I knew he wrote this book as a call to make changes in the NHS so I felt it is important for people living in the UK to read, but as an American, maybe less so for me. I gave the book 3.5 stars.

I then chose to read Strange Planet by Nathan Pyle. This is a collection of his comics that are told from an alien's perspective about normal everyday things humans do but are put in a comedic light. It was fun and light. I gave it 3 stars.

The last book I read was Me by Elton John. I have been a fan of Elton John's music since I was a teen so I was excited to pick up his autobiography and learn more about him. I want to admit, the beginning was quite slow. There was a lot of name-dropping of industry people I had never heard of and it was pretty boring. I was keeping my DNF-ing goal in mind and considering dropping it but the audiobook was so good I decided to keep going and I'm glad I did. It really started to pick up as he started discussing his drug addiction, his friendships with people I had heard of (like Rod Stewart, John Lennon, and Princess Diana), and his charity startup to help people with HIV/AIDS. He is not entirely likable in this book which I think is something people should know going in, but his story is fascinating and I really enjoyed reading about his life. (So much so that I then went and rented the movie Rocketman which is a musical based somewhat on his life.) I gave the book 4 stars, for being difficult to start.

Magical Readathon Wrap Up 2

So my Magical Readathon leaked into January a bit but this is how it finished.

My fourth week I received one prompt: to read a book with an author's surname that started with a "T', "M", or "R". I chose to read both volumes of manga of My Brother's Husband by Gengoroh Tagame. This manga is about a Japanese man who has a gay twin who moved to Canada and married a man. The twin died and the husband visits Japan to meet his brother-in-law and his niece. The adult brother-in-law is homophobic and very unaccepting but the girl has no preconceived notions and accepts him as a loving uncle that he is. She slowly brings her dad around and it is such a heart-warming story that I immediately felt the urge to pick up the second volume. I gave both volumes 5 stars.

The fifth and last week's prompt was to read a book with a sword on the cover. I chose to read the book Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse. This was an urban fantasy story based on Native American folklore invoking gods and monsters. I really thought I would like it and I'm quite split. There is so much potential for interesting world-building and the characters could be very complex. But the ending became quite cliched, shoe-horning some romance in where it was unneeded, and trying to surprise us when we definitely had received enough clues to not really be surprised. The main character was a bad-ass female warrior in the beginning and became whiny and pathetic. In addition, the author would put the characters in tight spots, and then just create ways for them to get out without explaining the new powers or reasons they survived. There seemed to be a lot of plotholes and the author got very lazy in explaining why some characters survived when they really shouldn't have. Overall, I gave it 3 stars because they were so much potential. I will read the next book but if it doesn't improve, I will drop the series.

Overall, this was a fun additional to the Magical Readathon series. I do however like planning my readathons out ahead of time and am looking forward to the O.W.L.s in April when I will be able to do that.