Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick (audiobook)

genre: nonfiction

For those of us on the outside, North Korea can feel like a mystery.  You know things aren't okay, you've heard some stuff in the news about it or maybe you saw a documentary once about it.  But this book takes you deep into the lives of several different North Koreans.  While, of course, each of their lives is unique and, especially based on class, full of different kinds of challenges and trauma - across the board the common denominator is that a totalitarian government did not care about them.  It didn't care that they were fed, that they were warm, that they had electricity.  The cult of the Dear Leader was such that the average North Korean was taught since birth that THIS life, their sparse North Korean life, was exactly what it was supposed to be and that it was all thanks to Kim Jong-il.  So complete was their seclusion from the rest of the world that there was no way to learn anything different.

Told from the reporter's perspective, this is a raw and heartbreaking look at several individuals over years of time.  We watch the crumbling of infrastructure, the startling death of Kim Jong-il, the beginning of the famine and the true depth of the famine crisis.  I was impressed by the ingenuity of these individuals and was super intrigued by what it was that finally made each of them in their own way, open their eyes to the reality of life in the only country they'd ever known.  

The jumping around between people was hard for me, sometimes it felt disjointed - but I do think that this way of narrating fleshed out the human experience since depending on who your parents were or where your relatives lived, your North Korean life looked quite different.  While a hard story to listen to sometimes, this is an important record.

Prison Island: a Graphic Memoir by Colleen Frakes

 genre: graphic memoir

When both Colleen's parents take a job on the last prison island in the US only accessible by air or sea, at first it seems like just another move in a long series of moves.  But for Colleen and her older sister, McNeil Island ends up being home for a huge part of their childhood.  Both the solitude of the island and the proximity of both the other residents and the prisoner's made for an incredibly unique upbringing.  This is a short memoir but super engaging and did a good job of reminding me that no matter where we are, being a preteen and teenager is just tricky.  The occasional back and forth in time didn't bother me and the drawings are stark but do well to tell the story.  I liked this!

A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella L. Bird

genre: travelogue, non-fiction

Isabella Bird is my kind of woman.  She is an adventurer, a real life Wander Woman, who in the 1870s makes a solo trek into the wilds of the Rocky Mountains and writes to her sister all about it.  This book is a compilation of the letters she wrote home and sometimes it is too crazy to believe.  Isabella, in her petticoats and taffeta, rides her beloved horse for hundreds of miles through snow storms, she finds shelter by the fires of strangers and climbs icy peaks IN HER DRESS.  This woman is not dissuaded by freezing cold or by serious discomfort.  She wants to climb all the heights.  She wants to see all the views.  While staying in a hand built cabin in what will become Estes Park, she becomes besties with a literal outlaw mountain man who, I researched afterwards, is completely real and legit.

I find the weirdest and most fascinating books at the thrift store sometimes!  I bet I would have never learned about Isabella if I hadn't been captured by the title on the shelf.  She is so adventurous and such a flexible thinker - her way of seeking and experiencing and then recording her exploits was so well done that she ended up becoming the first women to be made a Fellow at the Royal Geographical Society!  Who knew?  Now, you should know that Isabella uses 100 words when 10 would suffice.  She absolutely has racist and colonialist views.  Sometimes this book drags so much.  But then other times I was absolutely in awe of what she managed to survive.  I loved seeing, once again, the way that hospitality worked out West during this time period, how truly everyone would watch out for everyone else, assuming that sometime they would need the same courtesy.  This way of life just feels so foreign, just letting random strangers come and sleep in your house on a freezing night, it is hard to imagine that this world she is describing was all that so many women EVER knew.  

Also, if you love descriptions of beautiful places, you will appreciate her keen eye.  Isabella Bird is now a name that I know and I love the image I have of her in my mind, all alone, on her horse Birdie, her dress billowing as she rides up a canyon in the falling snow, literally just guessing her path based on some directions that a random beaver hunter gave her ten miles back. And she always makes it through.  Tenacious Isabella.  Well done.

Lost Ark Dreaming by Suyi Davies Okungbowa

 genre: speculative climate fiction

The oceans have grown beyond the borders we know and coastal Africa is underwater.  To save those living there, towers are built to replace familiar communities and within it's walls, the Pinnacle is a lifeline.  It is not, however, a safe and equitable place and when something strange happens in the bowels of the tower, three brave inhabitants will have to face what lurks both in the waters - and inside themselves.

This is short but does have a tight enough arc.  The ideas interested me and it read swiftly.  But I'm still thinking about some of the short journal entries, maybe you'd call them, in between the plot sometimes just felt confusing. Like I was missing something.  And there is a whole sort of folklore that is sort of at the core of the story but I needed more fleshing it to help it land better for me. Maybe I just needed a little more actual telling me things in a direct way so that I could feel a little more grounded.  Sometimes, also, though, it was truly beautiful.  So, a mixed bag but despite that, I think it absolutely deserves 3.5 stars.

Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts (audiobook)

 genre: historical fiction

A novel in two time periods, Finding Dorothy is not just about the drama surrounding the making of the classic film based on the book The Wizard of Oz, it is also the story of a the wife of the author, a woman named Maud Gage Baum.  Along with Maud, we learn about their hardscrabble life both in big cities and tiny prairie towns, with Frank always searching for the next hot thing that will fullfil his dreams.  In that way, this is just as much a story of a marriage as it is about Oz, which I don't think is a bad thing.  Maud's early years with her formidable Suffragette mother strengthened her to know what she's capable of and what she deserves.

If you already are very familiar with the book or movie, this story is full of fun little Easter eggs!  It was fun to catch them, even if every dang time I found myself wondering - wait, is that true?  Was THAT true? The authors note at the end did a pretty good job of helping answer my questions.  For me, the storyline with the sister was an interesting side thread that sympathetically illustrated the plight of women on the plains during the time period.  Also, I also just love that Maud's mom WAS a suffragette, for me that really added to my interest in the story and it added another dimension that really worked for me.  Literarily, it was sometimes a bit meh, I wasn't blown away by the writing, but I am not sorry that I read this one.  Once again, thanks to Book Club for stretching me because I'm not sure I wouldn't tried this otherwise.

Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick

 genre: history

My knowledge of the Plymouth Colony has expanded somewhat since my elementary school days but in many ways, I knew hardly anything.  My vague notions of what happened to the native population of New England were so spotty I feel embarrassed, having finished this book that begins a few years before the sailing of the Mayflower up through two generations removed from the "landing" at Plymouth rock.

This is the story of how "America" began, in all of its complex and colonial baggage.  It is a story of expectations and desperation and yes, courage, but also treachery and baseness and downright small-minded racist superiority.  Early America is ALL of that.  Our forefathers did amazing things AND they did horrible things.  They had complicated motivations and they fought when they should've talked and compromised and they had really rigid thinking and were sometimes so NOT curious that I wanted to shake them.  

I chose this book because I recently delved into my own family history in early New England I sure got to know some of my great grandparents!  A few of them were really not particularly admirable - one was literally called a "malcontent and rabble-rouser," which I find deeply amusing.  Others I maybe had more strange pride in but nevertheless, this is a story FULL of names and people.  If you focus too hard on remembering every single tribe's name or person's name, the book could be frustrating.  I tried to appreciate the journey without getting bogged down or frustrated in the details - and there are a LOT of details.

Truth: I got bored of war times.  I said it.  Did you even know there WAS a King Philp's War?  And that it was almost three years long, 20 years before the Salem Witch Trials and well before any kind of Revolutionary War?  I had a lot to learn but man this sometimes draggggggged. I had to force myself to read it. I will say, though, I am glad I powered through because I really liked the conclusions the author pulled together at the end, some really good big ideas for me to ponder.  And so it gets three stars for teaching me some important things.  But I can't give it more than that because it took me almost a month to get through it.

The Small and the Mighty by Sharon MacMahon (audiobook)

 genre: non-fiction ish

I was pretty sure I knew what I was going to get when I chose to listen to this book - and I wasn't wrong.  Sharon is incredibly personable and her storytelling is right up my alley.  This book tells the story of the players in United States history who were not center stage - but whose decisions and actions created waves that made a big impact.  From revolutionaries, suffragettes politicians to educators and civil rights activitists, the stories were, for me, almost completely unfamiliar but within a familiar context, which I liked.  I liked finding out how different people connected and all the ways they found to do the best kind of good they could.

Also, though, Sharon doesn't shy away from the nonsense or the times that people really screwed up.  She does include a lot of commentary throughout, which is why it's hard to look at it as ONLY a history book, but I actually appreciated her way of reminding us about nuance and considering factors that we may not know.  I DID cry.  Not sobbing but yes, tears and chills.  Some of these people are absolutely astonishing in their courage and tenacity.  I particularly was moved by the story of Daniel Inouye, whom I have somehow literally never heard of.  Sometimes, she gets way off track - sometimes so much so that I have a hard time remembering who we are learning about.  And while the tangents were maybe a little disconnecting from the wider arc, they were also nearly always super interesting.  I never got bored in this book.

What I most appreciate is the way that Sharon really does her best to remind us that these people could do it - and so can you.  You can choose to be on the right side of history when you see injustice.  Her HOPE just shines so bright and the little tid bits designed as takeaways resonated clear as a bell to me.  For that, I'm rounding up from a 4.5 to a 5

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman

 genre: short story, fiction

In this powerful short story, a troubled woman is given a “cure” by her doctor husband which is intended to help her melancholy moods after having a baby. This “cure” involves her not seeing anyone, not doing anything with her mind or with her body. Just “rest.” Of course, this cure is exactly the opposite of what our woman needs and thus begins an obsession with the papered walls in her rental home - the only thing she is allowed to see or interact with without being deceptive to her husband.

My brain is a little stunned from reading this. It’s well over a hundred years old but it feels strangely fresh and terrifying. As a woman, she’s told to not think, not to act, just to let her husband make all the decisions because he knows better. And eventually, this loss of any kind of autonomy truly drives her to the brink of her sanity. It’s a super fast read but I feel like I won’t forget the either the beautifully or creepily rendered images.

The Book of Witching by C. J. Cooke (audiobook)

genre: historical fantasy

On the remote Orkney Islands in the 1600s, a young mother uses her knowledge of spells and healing for good - even though she knows that the bad kind of witchcraft exists.  In the Scotland of 2024, Clem gets the worst kind of news when she finds out her own daughter is in hospital under very strange circumstances.  How these two stories will collide is at the heart of this book of witch trials and the kind of magic you can't control.

I chose this one specifically for a moody sort of fall book and it definitely had that vibe.  I was hooked to both storylines within the first hour of listening and I didn't want to stop!  The historical story is both political and violent in a way that feels painfully authentic, Scotland was a harsh place in those times.  It may be so political that some readers might get bored but it didn't bother me.  The modern story is a bit of a slow moving mystery but I was just as interested when we switched to the present.  The things we learn near the end were so intriguing to me and while I did have a tiny bit of a hard time letting my disbelief go regarding the actual "magic" in the book, I decided to just go all in and I'm glad I did.  This was a really entertaining atmospheric listen for me, just right for what my October needed.

The reader is exceptional, by the way.  Amazing accent to listen to that really surrounded me in the story.

White Bird by R.J. Palaco

 genre: historical fiction graphic novel

This book is subtitled A Wonder Story, as it is written by the same author as the middle grade novel Wonder and is the backstory of one of the character's grandmother.

Lots of thoughts and feelings about this book.  First off, I found it very visually appealing.  I loved the art and the visual thread of the white bird.  Even the font just really popped to me, so reading it was a lovely experience in this way. This is the story of a young girl living in France who ends up in hiding as the Nazis come to power.  There is a healthy amount of scariness for the age-group this is geared towards and and in some ways it is a good introduction to Holocaust literature in the sense that it acknowledges the horror and divisiveness of the time period without being so graphic that it isn't appropriate for a middle school audience.  

What doesn't sit quite right is how NOT Jewish our main character is, especially for a book about the Holocaust.  There is nothing to see about her life that is Jewish when she's living with her family - and maybe the point was that it didn't matter how Jewish your life was, you still weren't safe.  But I feel like this was a lost opportunity to share some of the culture and traditions of Jewish life, even in a small way, to help completely unfamiliar young readers to learn a little bit.  Another tricky piece is the ableism near the end - I don't want to spoil the story because while it is very moving, it also feels like it is sending the wrong message about the value and lives of people with disabilities.  I'd be interesting in discussing this with other readers and see if they have the same take.

In the end, I did enjoy the read and I personally found the conclusion to be an important look at how everyone has a part to play in making sure the people around us are safe.