Shaina Reads

Guys, it's April tomorrow, and I drove to work through snow yesterday. SNOW. Why is this still happening?! Could someone come get me out from under my comforter when it's all over?

Full Storify of the tweets here.

My Twitter feed was all abuzz yesterday after young adult author Melissa Grey (@meligrey) posted a series of tweets about re-imagining the classic story of Cinderella as the triumph of a child abuse survivor. She challenged the idea that the story is "antifeminist dreck," all about a woman who "waited around" for her prince (a man, naturally) to rescue her. Instead, she sees Cinderella as a woman who overcame impossible circumstances to find her own happiness. Sure, it might be the old trope of "finding love," but as Grey says, "Do you have any idea how hard it is for survivors to believe they're worth loving?"

As someone who grew up in an unstable home and went on to have an awful first romantic and sexual relationship, Grey's tweets really hit home for me. To say that a person is simply letting his or her family treat them a certain way is invalidating the fear and feelings of powerlessness experienced by those who suffer from abuse. This holds especially true when you're talking about children being mistreated by their families. When your fundamental model of what loving and caring for another person looks like is warped, is it any surprise that you may go on to have trouble with relationships later in life? Maintaining a supportive, loving relationship—romantic, platonic, or otherwise—is an enormous achievement.

Sure, this analogy isn't perfect. We don't find out how happy Cinderella's "ever after" really is, falling in insta-love might not be the best strategy for cultivating an enduring, healthy romance, and, as my boyfriend pointed out, Prince Charming definitely gets cast more as "the rescuer" than "the partner." I still think that Grey gives us plenty of food for thought.

Source: This article from The Artifice.

To switch gears here, I want to address Grey's refutation of the idea that seeking love is inherently antifeminist. I always find it hard to put my thoughts into words about questions like these, but I'll try my best. It's true that our literary tradition is full of women who see marriage or romance as the key to everlasting happiness, and this indeed is a woefully limiting message for girls and young women to hear. But does this mean that a woman who sees a romantic relationship as a worthwhile component of a happy life is automatically "part of the problem," or somehow not worth talking about?

Ana of Things Mean A Lot has a favorite motto when it comes to writing about women: all the stories, please. I take this to mean stories about women seeking love, stories about women not seeking love, and stories about women that have nothing to do with love at all. The idea that a woman's life (or story, as it were) is only meaningful if she's shattering stereotypes strikes me as extremely antifeminist. Women (like men, like all people) are multifaceted, and just because one aspect of a woman's life strikes you as "cliché" doesn't invalidate her worth as a human being. Still, this does raise a very important question: how do we successfully get the message across that whatever makes a woman happy is worthwhile without unintentionally reinforcing harmful tropes?

This is not a particularly positive review. Julianne, you may want to avert your gaze. To everyone else, avert your gaze if light spoilers bother you.

After waiting for what felt like an eternity but was actually a totally reasonable amount of time, I got my hands on the last two-thirds of the Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer. I came home giddy that night. This was gonna be great! I'd heard that the second book was a bit slow, but no matter—I was finally going to find out what the heck is going on in Area X! (If you haven't read my post about Annihilation, you might want to check it out for context.)

And then... Authority happened. Ugh. It had such promise initially. A blurb on the back cover described it as "a spy novel given the same dark lacquer [as Annihilation]," and I was totally on board to watch the Southern Reach's new director, Control, bust some weirdo mysteries wide open. There were some interesting bits along the way (and that climax, my goodness), but mostly I felt like I was watching some guy with serious mommy issues bumble his way through a stagnating government agency mummified in red tape. Of course a lot of what's going on in Area X would be classified or otherwise opaque, but wow, does it make for some boring reading:

"The Southern Reach called the last expedition the twelfth, but Control had counted the rings, and it was actually the thirty-eighth iteration, including six "eleventh" expeditions. The hagiography was clear: After the truth fifth expedition, the Southern Reach had gotten stuck like a jammed CD, with nearly the same repetitions. Expedition 5 became X.5.A, followed by X.5.B and X.5.C, all the way to an X.5.G." - pgs. 114-115, Authority

And so on. All things considered, the second installment was a bit of a snoozefest. By the end, though, I was still invested—Control had found Ghost Bird (the biologist's doppelgänger), and the two might have made their way to Area X. Things were about to get more interesting! ... Right?


Well, kind of. Acceptance definitely was at the beginning, since we started hearing the story from a few different perspectives (Control, Ghost Bird, the former Southern Reach director, and the lighthouse keeper). Around page 100 or so, I started finding reasons to put the book down. I was traveling and couldn't focus, or I wasn't in the mood for something so meandering. Finally, I had a quiet moment over coffee to try again. After I read the same paragraph for what had to be the sixth time and my mind was still wandering, I paused to reconsider. Why was I still trying to read this? Did I really care about what was going on in Area X anymore? And the answer, unfortunately, was a resounding no. I even stopped flipping through the remaining pages for spoilers—I was that disengaged. I DNFed at page 171 and haven't looked back since.

Despite my failure to get pulled into the story, VanderMeer has some really great moments, particularly in setting his stage:

"The long, wide swathe of green that was the island at that distance was made irregular and disheveled-looking by the few tall oaks and pines that, along with the shattered spire of the lighthouse, broke through the skyline. Trapped between: the calm motionless sky and the always restless sea, the island shimmering in the middle distance, surrounded by distortion as if it emanated heat. Sliding in between them from either side, rangy, scruffy islets with pine trees contorted low upon them, the silhouettes of these outposts extended by the rough gray-black line of oyster beds shot through with a startling iridescent white from dead shells pried open by birds." - p. 112, Acceptance

Would it have worked for me at another point? It's entirely possible, especially if I hadn't been traveling and coming up on a due date without an option to renew. A couple of days after my decision to DNF, I'm still not regretting it, so I don't think I'll be making another effort.

I think this trilogy could be fantastic for someone with significantly more patience and concentration to devote to it. It's mysterious, cerebral, and anything but straightforward. I hope you get more out of it than I did!

This is my super serious academic face and 1/4 of my poster.

I'm back, baby!

If you haven't checked in recently, I spent the latter half of my week at an academic conference on child development where I got to present some of my lab's recent research. This was my first time attending a conference, not to mention my first time presenting a poster, and it was equal parts awesome and exhausting. I attended sessions about social identity and academic achievement, how to re-assess the data from the Head Start Impact Study, and how housing status and neighborhood composition affect childhood health. Needless to say, I got my justice-oriented social scientist nerding on.

The number of poster sessions and symposia was astounding (this was a particularly big conference, clocking in at 30,000 people attending over three days), and after a while my brain stopped absorbing new information and my inner introvert was clamoring for some peace and quiet. I ended up bailing on the last day of presentations, preferring to spend it in the city doing some solo exploring.

Source: Wikipedia

Of all the things I saw—including Benjamin Franklin's snow-covered grave, the charming Elfreth's Alley, and the Liberty Bell from a distance—my favorite was undoubtedly the Reading Terminal Market. Before you ask, no, there isn't much reading material here (there supposedly is a small bookstore, but I couldn't find it in all the hubbub). It's an enormous, extremely Amish indoor marketplace that slings every type of prepared food and other edible good you can possibly imagine. No, really, look. I had to exercise significant self-control to not give myself a stomach ache, though this ice cream and these doughnuts sorely tempted me. The market also introduced me to the most delicious fudge ever. My boyfriend can vouch for me here.

Some other trip highlights:

Finding a MOON TREE.

Meeting this little sweetie at a local animal shelter.

In just about an hour, I'm hoppin' a train (by which I mean purchasing a ticket and quite legally riding) to Philadelphia for an academic conference. I get to present some research I worked on early last year, because I'm an adult (or, at least, someone out there seems to think so). I've been a busy bee getting loose ends tied up in anticipation of my absence, which accounts for my radio silence so far this week.

I'm hoping to do some fun stuff (and maybe even visit a few bookstores!) while I'm in the City of Brotherly Love, but I'm not sure I'll have much time to blog or comment.

I hope you all close out your weeks on fantastic bookish or non-bookish notes, and I'll see you again this weekend!

Last week  Er, in January, I knocked another title off my Classics Club list when I finished The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. As you might have gleaned, it's taken me a while to get a review up because 1) I'm lazy, and 2) I've had a hard time coming up with what I want to say about the book.

At its simplest, The Good Earth is the cradle-to-grave (or young-adult-to-grave) story of Wang Lung, a farmer in rural China. We first meet Lung on the way to retrieve his wife, O-lan, a slave of the House of Hwang (the sprawling home of very rich landowners in a neighboring town). We watch Lung start his family and move from simple beginnings to growing wealth as he purchases land. As his economic circumstances change, so do his tastes; he seeks out richer food, finer clothing, and quiet, dedicated O-lan pales in comparison to the painted courtesans of the town. All the while, the earth itself looms large in the background, giving and taking away, the ultimate arbiter.

I oscillated between being Lung's biggest cheerleader to wishing he would just drop dead already. The latter feeling is probably self-righteousness on my part—I can't say I wouldn't become just as superficial and self-interested if my coffers were suddenly flooded. Despite disliking him, I admire how real Lung seemed, perhaps because of how clearly we do see his unsavory traits.

Another strong aspect of this book is Buck's willingness to face the hard realities of famine dead-on. If you choose to read it, know that you're in for references to infanticide and cannibalism. None is particularly gruesome, but I can see how these topics wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea.

Outside of the content of the story, I kept coming back to its origins. Born in West Virginia, Pearl S. Buck spent a significant portion of her life in China with her missionary parents. A white woman, she continued to think in Chinese well into her English-speaking adult life. In an interesting parallel, I was having similar thoughts while recently reading A Partial History of Lost Causes by Jennifer duBois. (Review will come whenever I get around to it.) The book tackles Russian politics from the 1980s to the late '00s, and, as far as I can tell, the author has never been to Russia and doesn't have particular ties to the country. This got me thinking about what makes a person "qualified" to write about a certain country or culture. Do you really have to be qualified? I'm of a few minds on this one, so I'd love to hear what you guys think.

I've been thinking a lot about the different reasons we might have reading and/or blogging slumps (because I'm currently in one).

There are a whole bunch of them out there: maybe you just came off of a really amazing or soul-crushing read and now have a book hangover; or maybe you're burned out on books and could do with a break; or maybe you're just reading the wrong book, or too many books, or too many of the wrong books!

Certainly these are things all book bloggers deal with that can have a real effect on how much blog content they're generating, but I want to talk about something different: an insidious thing called impostor syndrome. According to the definition I ganked from Wikipedia (italics are mine):

Impostor syndrome is a psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments. Despite external evidence of their competence, those with the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be. Notably, impostor syndrome is particularly common among high-achieving women.

(Note: I know there are some great non-lady book bloggers out there, but the book blogging community seems to be primarily made up of women. Humor me here!)

We most often hear about this phenomenon in reference to women who have high-powered or traditionally male-dominated careers, but it's absolutely applicable to blogging, too. Do these thoughts sound familiar to anyone?

• "Are my judgments about this book wrong/stupid/unfounded?"


• "Why would anyone take my thoughts about this book seriously?" 


• "When will my readers figure out that I'm just winging it and call me out on it?"

I think these are somewhat normal feelings for new bloggers to have when they're first getting their legs under them and building up readership, but I would also wager that plenty of established writers have them now and again (or perhaps more often than that). After all, we're not Wonder Women here.

Whenever I start feeling impostor syndrome creep up on me, I try to remind myself of a few things.

1. First and foremost, my blog is for me. Do I love having readers and interacting with them? Of course! It's one of the main reasons I blog. Ultimately, though, I write for myself. As Leah told a commenter recently, this isn't The New York Times. 
2. Do I ever look back on posts and cringe? Sure. Does that mean I'm a bad writer/reviewer who should close up shop? No way! It means that I'm becoming a more critical, thoughtful reader and writer. I know that, as I move forward, I will be grateful for this ongoing record of how I've grown.
3. I have yet to come across anyone in the book blogging community who was not supportive of other bloggers. I personally have not had anyone tear down my ideas or writing or be otherwise non-constructively nasty. I'm sure those people are out there, but I'm thankful to have surrounded myself with bloggers interested in positive, productive engagement. Bring on the friendly debate!

Yes, this is cheating. Yes, I'm doing it anyway.

If you follow me on Twitter, you've probably been bombarded with seen my tweets about being in something of a reading and blogging slump. It's been quiet around here the last week or so, and I'm hoping to bounce back into it very, very soon. Andi's post about curating her own book tasting menu inspired me to pop by my library yesterday and check out the first five reads that grabbed me. Hopefully one of them reignites the reading and writing fire.

One upside to not generating my own content is having way more time to sift through my Feedly and read everyone else's posts! (Never mind the fact that I still have an unread count of 400+... la la la.) Today brought some especially good ones, with The Broke and Bookish's Top Ten Tuesday fill-in-the-blank prompt: top ten books for readers who like ________.

In lieu of my own list, here are ten of the most creative responses I saw today. Some are from blogs I already follow, and a few are from new-to-me bloggers. If you don't follow these blogs already, go check these awesome lists out:

• Shannon at River City Reading shares her top ten books for fans of Wes Anderson films.


• Leah at Books Speak Volumes talks ten books for people who like their female characters with a rebellious streak (or, y'know, complete personality). (Happy Women's History Month!)


• Julianne at Outlandish Lit writes about ten books for people who dig experimental formats. She's weird (read: awesome) like that.


• Trish at Love, Laughter and a Touch of Insanity shares ten books for people who love random factoids. Me, me, me!


• Stefani at Caught Read Handed lists ten comic books for people who'd like to get into comics.


• M of Backlist Books shares ten books for people who like books about reading. Because what bookworm doesn't love those?


• Sarah at What Sarah Read talks ten books for "readers who like to have their feels destroyed." Um, yes.


• Cait at Paper Fury writes about books for readers looking to appease their inner con artists. She includes a few movies for good measure.


• Amanda at The Zen Leaf shares ten books for readers who like friendship in their fiction. Because, really, it doesn't always have to be about the romance.


• Finally, Sarah at Sarah Says Read talks her top ten books for readers who like science. As a not-so-closeted science nerd, her list was totally written for me.

FYI: My recent inability to shut up about this trilogy is 100% Julianne's fault.

The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer comprises Annihilation, Authority and Acceptance. The first is sub-200 pages, with the latter two close to 350 each because VanderMeer is a tease. I finished Annihilation at the start of February was really hoping I could read all of these around the same time and post a hefty, well-organized review. Alas, the library gods were not on my side.

The other two books came in five days after I tweeted this. I'm going to be sad about my first world problem and post my thoughts on Annihilation in the meantime.



Annihilation introduces us to the all-female team of the twelfth expedition to Area X, a stretch of wilderness cut off from civilization after a mysterious, unknown "thing" happened there. The Southern Reach, an equally mysterious agency, sends teams of scientists into Area X to investigate its weirdness. Because it's really weird. There are creatures that moan in the night, spore-spewing/message-writing plants and pulsating, possibly living buildings that don't show up on maps. Explorers from previous expeditions come back from Area X placid and hollow or don't come back at all. Add in that not all the expedition members are on the same page, and we've set the stage for a LOST-esque creepfest.

Our protagonist, the expedition's biologist, is pretty weird herself. We never learn her name, because the Southern Reach doesn't do names. As we explore Area X alongside her, we learn about her past—her inattentive parents, her troubled relationship with her husband (who previously went to Area X and came back an empty husk), and her seeming disinterest in connecting with anyone. I found her detachment from the situation fascinating. Instead of visceral, emotional reactions to the pure WTFery that's happening around her, she waxes logical, perhaps philosophical. We get statements like:

"Nothing that lived and breathed was truly objective—even in a vacuum, even if all that possessed the brain was a self-immolating desire for truth." (pg. 8)

Then,  not long after a terrifying, agonizing encounter with one of Area X's inhabitants (vague because spoilers), she says:

"I am aware that all of this speculation is incomplete, inexact, inaccurate, useless. If I don't have real answers, it is because we still don't know what questions to ask. Our instruments are useless, our methodology broken, our motivations selfish." (pg. 192-193)

I'm hesitant to share much more, because I feel like this is a book that defies summary. It's also only part one of a larger story, so it's difficult to analyze it on its own. I did feel that it occasionally got too caught up in its own grander ideas; it was less "What's going on in Area X?" and more "What does what's going on mean?" I don't mind getting meta, but sometimes it gets in the way of the thread of a story.

All in all, this book was (you guessed it) weird, and I'm excited to see where VanderMeer takes Area X and the Southern Reach next. I would recommend it for people who enjoy supernatural elements and grand philosophizing with their sci-fi.

First things first: Nowadays I can't think about Tuesdays without this song starting in my head. You can either blame or thank my boyfriend for that one. It's a mix for me, probably due to the mere-exposure effect.

Speaking of that dude I live with, we had our fifth(!) anniversary last week. He took me out to a lovely French dinner (très délicieux) on Thursday, and on Saturday I took him on an aborted brewery tour (their water mains broke down, boo). Since we had some time before we had to take our rental car back, we killed our last hour by seeing how much all-you-can-eat sushi we could stuff in our faces. We, er, outdid ourselves.

We also went to a college hockey game on Saturday night. I'm a pretty big hockey fan. Big, bearded guys splitting time between graceful skating and hitting each other? Sign me up. Beyond that, it's a pretty fast-paced sport, which makes it the perfect game to follow for space cadets like me.

All in all, a definite improvement over last week...

... and it just keeps getting better, because The Broke and the Bookish want me to talk about the top ten books I would classify as all-time favorites that I read within the last three years. I expected this to be harder than it ended up being!

All covers from Goodreads. Collage by Picmonkey.

The ones I have reviews for: A Wizard of Earthsea, A Clockwork Orange, The God of Small Things, White Teeth. This means that I read 4/10 since I began blogging! It's been a great few months of reading.

The ones I've mentioned my love for before: Anna Karenina (here), Possessing the Secret of Joy (here, here, and here), The Cider House Rules (here, here, and here).


That leaves Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, and We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. I love the first two for very similar reasons. MBM first ignited my love for public health/medical anthropology, and it wouldn't be a stretch to say it's been a huge influence in what I hope to do career-wise. Henrietta Lacks is similarly social-justice-inclined, and it is an engaging, well-reported story to boot. And then there's Kevin, a horrifying story of motherhood gone sour (or, really, sour from the start). If you can stomach gruesome violence and taking a hard look at what it would mean to not love your children, I can't recommend it more.

And last but not least, we have Bibliophile by the Sea's First Chapter, First Paragraph Tuesday Intros. I just started Authority, the second installment in Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach trilogy:

In Control's dreams it is early morning, the sky deep blue with just a twinge of light. He is staring from a cliff down into an abyss, a bay, a cove. It always changes. He can see for miles into the still water. He can see ocean behemoths gliding there, like submarines or bell-shaped orchids or the wide hulls of ships, silent, ever moving, the size of them conveying such a sense of power that he can feel the havoc of their passage even from so far above. He stares for hours at the shapes, the movements, listening to the whispers echoing up to him... and then he fells. Slowly, too slowly, he falls soundless into the dark water, without a splash or ripple. And keeps falling.

What do you think? Would you read on?

The last time I reviewed a horror collection, I mentioned that I hadn't found that horror book, the one that would scare me as much as some of my favorite/oh-lord-why-did-I-do-this-to-myself horror films. Well, I found it, and... oh lord, why did I do this to myself?

I first got this book in the middle of February, and it took me just about two weeks to get through it. It isn't very long—my e-ARC came to 327 pages for twenty short stories—but I kept having to put it down because it was making me so, so uncomfortable.

The most unnerving parts of these stories weren't the supernatural elements (though those were plentiful and awesome); I was much more disturbed by the things that could happen in everyday life. Cluley addresses this in his foreword to the collection:

"Nowadays, when people ask me what I'm writing about, I tend to say 'probably monsters.' Sometimes the monsters are blood-sucking fiends with fleshy wings, and sometimes they're shambling dead things that won't rest. Sometimes. Sometimes they're people, people like you and me (well, maybe you, certainly not me) and these ones are everywhere. But sometimes they're worse than any of these. They're the things that make us howl in the darkness, hoping no one hears—monsters we've perhaps made ourselves and struggle to overcome. Despite what our parents may have told us, there are such things as monsters. Lots of them." (pg. 7)

For instance, the most horrifying story in the collection for me was "The Death Drive of Rita, nee Carina." I don't want to spoil too much, but I'm just going to tell you that there are lots of car accidents in it and, as you might guess, not all of them are really accidents. A bit over-the-top, for sure, but as an already uneasy driver, I couldn't help but think of this story the next time I got behind the wheel. In summary, ugggggggh.

A few other scary standouts: "A Mother's Blood" (gah motherhood), "Pins and Needles" (mostly because I hate hate hate shots/getting blood drawn), "Knock-Knock" (domestic violence) and "The Festering" (child abuse/neglect with some graphic sex stuff thrown in).

Then there were the few that scared me less than they made me smile, laugh or cry. "Shark! Shark!" is as ridiculous and funny as the title, and the final story, "Beachcombing," was a surprisingly tender piece about how a child might perceive suicide.

All in all, this collection is fantastically written and will appeal both to those looking for the visceral and the psychological. All I can say is that I'm really glad I'm done reading it and am going to take a long break from horror. Ray Cluley, you scary.

Disclaimer goes here: I received an advance review copy of Probably Monsters from NetGalley for my honest review. Thanks to Chizine Publications for the chance to read it!