I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

 genre: speculative dystopia/science fiction

Our narrator lives in a bunker, underground, with 39 other women.  No one knows how they got there but everyone besides our narrator (called "the child" by the other women) remembers a full life on earth, then some kind of disaster, and then nothing.  Our narrator was a child when she arrived in the bunker, so she has no memory of any kind of pre-bunker life.  She has no memory of physical connection or love from a parent and in the bunker, touching is prohibited.  She is given everything else she technically "needs" but emotionally, she essentially raises herself, trying to learn all she can from the women who are willing to share what they can from a past in a place they have determined they will never see again.  

What an incredible listen.  Speculative is a good word to describe it - it is a book with really no answers, only questions, but they are questions that often dig into the raw bits of what it means to be a human being.  The book is translated from French but the writing still has a stilted quality, at first it's a bit jarring, but by the end it makes so much sense, reading the memories of this woman who has had to figure out so much on her own.  It made me have some really existential thoughts about what IS the point of being human?    How much of what we learn is from the society and culture around us and how much is intrinsic to what we are born with?  I actually really loved this science fictiony look at humanity and womanhood and the profound pleasures of both curiosity and connection.

Also, I listened to the audiobook of this version and there is a really interesting afterward that really expanded my thoughts on the book.

The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King

genre: magical realism

Monica Tsai loves coding on her computer - not only does it stretch her brain and make her happy, but she feels like what she's working on can really help people.  The project she's working on with her professor, called Ember, will hopefully one day be a way for the internet to really help people connect in a visceral way.  Coding also helps her avoid thinking about the thing that is most stressing her out: the aging of her beloved grandparents that raised her.  When she is able to use her computer to help find her grandmother's long lost cousin in Shanghai, it sparks a friendship with someone new as well as a window into the history of her family and the pencil company they once owned in China.  

This story, told both in real time and letters, in a story in two time periods.  While we are experiencing Monica's contemporary life and slow burn sapphic love story, we are also experiencing life in China before and during the First World War through the eyes of Monica's grandmother Yun.  The special magical ability Yun and her cousin Meng learn from their own mothers will start a chain of circumstances that proves to separate them in ways both large and small.  

What an intriguing premise and interesting story!  I loved Monica's crotchety old Grandma Yun, especially on the audio she is such a strong presence, her heart full of so much pain from the trauma she's endured and the choices she's made.  This book is, ultimately, about owning our own stories and about the power of forgiveness to help us move on and continue to create the kind of life we most want.  I loved the pencil company thread and even their ability was unique in a way I did not expect.  There is a bit of a strange turn that it takes about 2/3 of the way through that I didn't quite understand but I decided to let my questions fade and just enjoy it for what it was.  I feel like I learned more about Chinese history and found even more sympathy for the families that called it home during so many different conflicts.  

Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory by Sarah Polley

genre: memoir, essays

Sarah Polley was such a familiar figure in my childhood. I didn't watch Road to Avonlea until I was older, I adored her performance in the Canadian TV series Ramona. My grandpa had recorded the episodes onto a VHS tape in Chicago and then mailed them to me in Utah to watch when I was the perfect age to appreciate Romona's antics. When I heard she'd written a memoir, I was interested enough to look it up and when I read the blurb, I knew I wanted to read it. She did not let me down. The six essays in this book are a raw look at a life of performing and the way it impacted Sarah both physically and mentally. It is about the challenges she was born with and, heartbreakingly, the ones that happened to her. It is about sexual assault and the way our society treats those who have been assaulted. It is about being a mother and being a daughter and the sinewy bits of life that make us human. I truly wept during one particular essay, she so perfectly articulates the emotions of early motherhood. I don't usually read books in essay format (is this maybe my first? ) but I was so impressed by how Sarah put her words together, how the ideas flowed and make me think. If you are interested in the impact of the entertainment industry on child performers, if you are a mom or have a mom, if you feel betrayed by your human body sometimes, if you appreciate vulnerable stories of grit and perseverance, I think you'd appreciate this collection.

Wreck by Catherine Newman

 genre: contemporary fiction

Rocky’s way of looking at the world is centered in her fierce love of her children. She loves her husband, yes, and her elderly father that has come to live at their home following the passing of her mother - but her children have a vice grip on her heart. So when what feels like a random accident suddenly isn’t and when a weird rash is maybe more than that, poor Rocky’s emotional bandwidth is stretched to its actual limit.

Here is why I loved this book: Rocky is living at my stage of life. I feel so much of what she feels down in my marrow, about being in a messy female body, about being a mom and a wife and a daughter. And she’s so very funny sometimes. I just wasn’t disappointed, not in any way. If you loved Sandwhich like I did, I bet you’ll love this too.

Libby: The Alaskan Diaries and Letters of Libby Beaman 1879-1880 by Libby Beaman , Betty John

genre: nonfiction memoir

Libby Beaman is the daughter of a well-connected Washington DC family. After her youth is disrupted by the horrors of the Civil War, finding work in the aftermath proves to be another challenge. Thus, when there is a chance for Libby's husband to have a stable job, she encourages him to take it, even though that job is on the unthinkably remote Alaskan Pribilof Islands, newly acquired by the United States from Russia.  Not only that but she packs up her skirts and joins him, despite everyone's insistence that she stay home. This book is a collection of her diary and letters, a memoir of place never before seen by an American woman.

It is amazing, the books I find at the thrift store. What a story! Libby Beaman is a fiercely independent woman who also, you can see in her writing, knows she is a pawn in a man's game. With society's expectations in her mind of what a good Victorian lady ought to be, she can look the part but she has a hard time playing it! The things she experiences in Alaska are fascinating and harrowing. I hadn't anticipated learning so much about the life cycle of seals but if you are an animal lover, this book might be hard to read. The job her husband is there to do, overseeing the seal pelt harvesting, is such a bloody, stinking job. And there's really nowhere that Libby can go to escape it - or her husband's boss - who is his own problem.

She definitely sees herself as a proper American and that the indigenous people whose island she now lived on are backwards natives who not only were "uncivilized" but also had been influenced by the Russians for years. Her feelings of cultural superiority are sometimes very glaring, which is not surprising.  But you can see her learning and trying too. I like how this book is both her diary and her letters - you get her brutal honesty in the diary and then you can see how she tells family back home, making it all so much more smooth and chill than real life. I try to imagine BEING her. She was a real woman, living in this real place where you are iced in for MONTHS. She was a witness to a changeover in national loyalty, with old customs slowly being meshed into new.

This is one of the best memoirs/diaries I have read. Libby had an incredibly unique experience and I'm so glad she took the time to write it down.

Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes (audiobook)

 genre: contemporary fiction/romance

When Evvie, a recent widow, agrees to let Dean, a professional baseball player with the yips, rent out her basement, it is for practical reasons.  She needs the money.  She has a hard time ever leaving her house and she knows that having another person around could be good.  She's already got a best friend and a community that is both grieving the loss of her dead husband as well as wondering when she's gonna get back in the saddle.  So adding this one additional thing feels right.

But this is a romance novel, so we can guess how it will go - but it is also a lot more than that, in my opinion.  It is about mental health and boundaries and the way we can be our own worst enemy in our head, especially when we can't bring ourselves to let the hardest parts out into the light.  I felt the dialogue was actually quite good and Dean is both dreamy but solid, I believed that he could be for real - his pain and own brokenness tracked for me.  I liked the small town Maine setting and I especially appreciated the arc of Evvie's emotional life showed a healthy way to put yourself back together again after something traumatic.  I just enjoyed this novel a lot.

Audition by Katie Kitamura (audiobook)

 genre: contemporary fiction

Our narrator is an actress, a woman who has made a name for herself both on stage and screen.  The play she's in and the young man who has come to ask her about it will set the stage, as it were, for a book in two acts that, frankly, went way over my head, maybe.  It's Meta, I can see that now, but in the reading I was NOT pulled in.  The main character made no sense to me - her behavior and emotions didn't track with how I feel like people generally show up in the world.  She has essentially no sympathetic qualities and so after a while, she just made me mad.  This feels like a book for people who want to feel like they are talking intelligently about art and performance.  Maybe I'm not one of those people?

Heartwood by Amity Gaige (audiobook)

genre: contemporary mystery

Valerie Gillis, trail name "Sparrow,"  was through-hiking the Appalachian Trail when she went missing, somewhere in Maine.  Seasoned warden and confident searcher coordinator Lt. Bev is determined to find her.  But the woods are vast and wild - and Valerie is just one small person out there.  With each passing day decreasing her chances of being found alive, Valerie's disappearance takes on the feel of a desperate emergency, both for her family and for Lt. Beverly and her team.  

This mystery is told from multiple points of view and it didn't take long for me to get my feet under me.  There is a minor secondary plot with a quirky character whose connection takes a while to emerge and I liked this tangent that eventually weaves in, as you know it will.  I liked how I got just enough fleshing out and backstory that the overall story is not just about Valerie being missing and the hunt to find her but it is also about being a mom and HAVING a mom and how both of those things can be so very complicated.  I ended up listening for hours straight today as I tidied my house because I was so invested in Valerie and the team searching to uncover her.  

A Land so Wide by Erin A. Craig

 genre: fantasy

Greer's town, Mistaken, is a tiny safe haven in a harsh new world.  Ever since Mistaken was settled, the Warding Stones have kept the forest and its host of creatures at bay - all the horrifying creatures that can kill a person as easily as they can destroy a town will leave Mistaken alone.  When the certainty of their safety is threatened and Greer is forced to obey her father's wishes, wild chances have to be taken.  If Greer is strong enough to accept the consequences.  

This is a bloody, spooky book.  Greer isn't a particularly memorable character but I did love how much she loves maps - her internal dialogue was just fairly wishy washy in a way that grated.  The creatures here are wildly evil but the plot itself just had some gaping holes that never really felt filled for me by the time it was over.  I liked the backstory and the frontier/backwoods kind of vibe.  I'm not sure why I didn't love it more, maybe because it felt like YA. but the protagonist is 27 and yet in her head, for sure younger.  Regardless, I was interested enough that I was engaged until the end but I didn't finish feeling anything in particular.

A Quiet Life in the Country: A Lady Hardcastle Mystery by TE Kinsey (audiobook)

genre: historical mystery

Lady Hardcastle has determined that a move out to the country is JUST the thing, a quiet life amid pleasant country people.  Of course, she's brought along her multi-talented and capable maid, Flo, to keep her organized and comfortable.  But before being there a week they stumble upon a very dead body and cannot help themselves from becoming involved with the solving of this mystery.

Oh my goodness, this was a delightful romp.  The relationship between these two ladies is actually hilarious and I found myself guffaw outloud more than once.  There is a genuine mystery here and although I did have a bit of a hard time keeping all the characters straight, I managed well enough to SUPER enjoy myself.  The narrator of the audiobook is phenomenal and I know that this will not be my visit with Lady Hardcastle and the ineffable Flo.