Shaina Reads

Disclaimer: I received Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science—and the World from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review... and then reviewed it almost two months late. Oops. Regardless, thanks to Crown Publishing/Broadway Books for offering me the chance to read it!

The other day I was strolling through a local indie bookshop and noticed that Headstrong by Rachel Swaby had finally hit the shelves. I swelled with pride; this was the very first advance review copy that I'd ever been approved for on NetGalley, and here it was in all its published glory! That little bubble burst as soon as I remembered that I was only halfway through the ARC, despite the fact that the book was released back in early April. Well, better later than never, right?

Swaby's debut comprises 52 profiles of women and their accomplishments in the hard and medical sciences. Her impetus for writing Headstrong came from the New York Times's cringe-worthy missteps in its obituary of Yvonne Brill. Brill developed technology that allows communications satellites to stay in geosynchronous orbit; even non-rocket scientists like me can understand why that might be important. However, the news outlet thought it fit to lead their obituary with Brill's prowess in the kitchen, as a mother, and as a "follower" of her husband rather than, you know, her immeasurable contributions to her field. (A related note: The Times later changed the first paragraph of the obit with no mention of the edits.)

An accomplished journalist herself, Swaby laments that this kind of error is all too common when discussing women's scientific accomplishments and entirely absent from media praise of men:

"We simple don't speak of men in science this way. Their marital status isn't considered necessary context in a biochemical breakthrough. Employment as an important aerospace engineer is not the big surprise hiding behind a warm plate of noodles." - Loc. 78, Headstrong

Swaby strikes back against this injustice by painting vibrant, detailed portraits of the women behind a wide swath of scientific breakthroughs, including the inventor of the aquarium (Jeanne Villepreux-Power), the first pioneers in water sanitation testing (Ellen Swallow Richards), food and occupational safety (Alice Hamilton), and in vitro fertilization (Anne McLaren), and the discoverer of the earth's inner core (Inge Lehmann). We also learn about Rosalind Franklin, whom Watson and Crick scooped in the announcement of DNA's double-helix structure (Watson went on to insult Franklin's taste in fashion, classy guy that he is), and Emmy Noether, a brilliant mathematician whom Einstein spoke of as the reason he became competent in certain aspects of calculus. The list goes on and on.

Of all the magnificent women Swaby spotlights, her profile of Hedy Lamarr stood out to me in particular. Born in Vienna, Lamarr went on to become both a famed Hollywood actress and a significant contributor to methods that allowed for better guidance of torpedoes and the invention of Wi-Fi, GPS and other technology. Sadly, the only place I'd ever heard of Lamarr before this book was in Little Shop of Horrors, in reference to how hot a date she would be. Lamarr's story isn't unique in this regard; nearly all of these women's careers were rife with sexism. It's maddening (if unsurprising) how reluctant universities once were to allow women among their student and faculty ranks.

Some other reviewers have complained that Swaby seemed to favor quantity over quality in her profiles, but I would have to disagree. I would have been glad to have a few more pages about certain women, but I'm happy that she featured a large number of accomplished scientists and gave them the due they've long deserved.

I would recommend this book for anyone with even a passing interest in science and a desire to learn more about some of the countless women who helped shape the much more convenient, safe and technologically-sophisticated world we live in today.

This is Tory, the prettiest pup around.

Last week, my boyfriend and I had the good fortune of spending nearly a week in Chicago. Not only did we watch two lovely friends get married, but we also got to spend multiple days with a few of our best friends from college. My boyfriend has an aunt, uncle and cousins in Evanston (northern suburb of Chicago and home to our alma mater), so we also spent a delightful evening with them, eating, talking and basking in that glorious feeling of home and lots of puppy kisses.

Getting to spend so much time with friends and family really threw into relief how much I've struggled socially since leaving college. My boyfriend and I moved to Connecticut on a whim after I got my lab manager position. We packed up our tiny apartment and headed off, cheerfully and more than a bit nervously, to a place where we didn't know a soul. Two years later, I still feel like I know very few souls here. For the most part, I've made it work—it's amazing how far a wonderful partner, a goofy cat and a penchant for solitude can get you—but sometimes I have to acknowledge how lonely it can be.

College bestie, boyfriend, me pre-wedding.

Academic environments are transient. Everyone is always shuffling between universities, and, beyond the graduate students (who are shackled here indefinitely), most people don't hang around for more than a year or two. For someone who forms friendships as slowly as I do, it can be devastating to feel like you're finally making progress with someone only to have that person pick up and move back across the country. Two of the closest friends I've made here are leaving this very weekend for graduate school and greener pastures in California. I'm thrilled for them, but I can't help but think about the gaping hole they'll leave in my social circle. (Actually, my social circle is more like a social pentagon, and they're leaving me with a social triangle.)

I know that things, including my social life, will never be like they were in college again. For the most part, I'm happy about that; I certainly didn't love every minute of my undergraduate career, and, on the whole, I feel much more love for the person I've become since donning my cap and gown. And yet there's nothing like having friendship and community at your fingertips. All I can hope is that there's more of it out there for me, and I'll continue doing my best to call it forth.

Speaking of being in Chicago and making new friends... LOOK AT THIS PRETTY LADY. Her name is Julianne, and she runs Outlandish Lit.

Don't kill me, Julianne.

She took me to a bookstore called Bucket o' Blood and made me buy some China Miéville. She fed me Oreos and toast (not in a weird way). We declared our undying love for each other. I also drank way too much wine while she filmed us talking about books. The evidence might pop up sometime soon. All in all, it was a really good time, and I'm glad our weirdness is just as compatible in real life.

I didn't have a ton of time for reading during my trip, but I did get some done (including some nonfiction, thank goodness) and hope to get reviews up soon. The writer's block has been fierce as of late, but at least I've been loving my reads.

You know how I've been learning a statistical programming language? (If not, now you do!) In a fit of nerdiness, I decided yesterday to take a crack at visualizing some of my Goodreads data from the last three and a half years of my reading life, and... I found something horrifying.

OK. This needs to get fixed pronto. pic.twitter.com/GcU5IzJrQw

— Shaina (@shainareads) May 20, 2015

I honestly had no idea that my nonfiction reading has declined so steeply over the years until I saw this graph. I decided to see how this compared to my fiction reading over time.

I've learned: 1) I didn't read much in 2013, 2) my fiction reading skyrocketed in 2014, 3) it's fun to make graphs. pic.twitter.com/347Yx9mlQ7

— Shaina (@shainareads) May 20, 2015

I'm not sure what happened in 2014 to make my fiction reading take off so significantly. Maybe I finally realized that I was done with college and could devote myself to all the non-assigned fiction I'd missed over the years. I do know that I started making a sincere effort to read more classic literature, so that could account for some of the increase. Still, the imbalance! I wrote recently that I want to get back to reading nonfiction, and now the impulse is even more urgent.

So, what do I want from you, dear reader?

All the nonfiction recs, please!

I usually describe my taste in nonfiction as "science, history, and social justice, and even better if all three are combined." Here are some of my favorite nonfiction reads from over the years. This might give you a better idea of the types of books I enjoy:

• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot


• Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World, by Tracy Kidder


• Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, by Bryan Stevenson (my review)


• The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan, by Jenny Nordberg (my review)


• Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, by Johann Hari (review hopefully coming someday)

And here are a few recommendations I've received recently that sound up my alley:

• Caro recommended Letters to a Young Scientist, by Edward O. Wilson.


• Heather recommended The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures, by Christine Kenneally.


• Lauren recommended Animal Weapons: The Evolution of Battle, by Douglas J. Emlen.

P.S. I'm heading to Chicago today for a friend's wedding, so things are going to get quiet around here. My comment replying and blog visiting will also be even slower than usual due to inconsistent Internet and food coma from deep dish pizza. Be back soon!

To carry on with the theme of reviewing books utterly oozing with bleak atmosphere, it's time we discussed All the Birds, Singing. By "discuss," I really mean "chatter to myself," since this one was published in April of last year and I imagine most of you got to it in a more timely fashion.

"Another sheep, mangled and bled out, her innards not yet crusting and the vapours rising from her like a steamed pudding. Crows, their beaks shining, strutting and rasping, and when I waved my stick they flew to the trees and watched, flaring out their wings, singing, if you could call it that. ... I'd been up that morning, before the light came through, out there, talking to myself, telling the dog about the things that needed doing as the blackbirds in the hawthorn started up. Like a mad woman, listening to her own voice, the wind shoving it back down my throat and hooting over my open mouth like it had done every morning since I moved to the island. With the trees rattling in the copse and the sheep blaring out behind me, the same trees, the same wind and sheep." - pg. 1, All the Birds, Singing

The novel tells the story of Jake Whyte, a sheep farmer living on her own on a dreary, frigid island in Great Britain. As the opening excerpt describes in graphic detail, something is killing her sheep. Interspersed with Jake's struggle to find out who or what is behind the slaughter is the story of how she came to be on the island. Wyld unflinchingly shows the reader just why Jake is the way she is; much like the opening paragraphs, most of it isn't pretty.

Actually, that thing I said about chattering to myself? I take it back. Immediately after devouring the book in two days, I unabashedly spammed chatted with Julianne of Outlandish Lit about how much it knocked my socks clean off.

I think sharing parts of our chat will help guide my thoughts on this. Note that it has been edited for clarity and spoilers.

The book's perspective shifts with each chapter; one moment we're with Jake in the present day, and the next we're learning how she got there in reverse chronological order. The narrative style made me sit up and pay attention, since I was constantly having to flip back to earlier passages to put the pieces together. For instance, Jake has disturbing flashbacks to her time spent with a man named Otto, but we don't actually meet Otto until a third of the way through the novel. We do, however, see how thoroughly he's unraveled her long before then.

Wyld also has a thing for animals. Parts of the story take place in Australia, and I found myself Googling all kinds of new creatures while I read.


The ending was a sticking point for a lot of readers, thus our extensive discussion about it. While I don't want to give it away, I'll say that it isn't a traditional way to end a story and might leave some readers dissatisfied. I felt that the ending fit the story perfectly, especially considering the glimpses we get into Jake's psyche and the trauma she's still experiencing.

The "beginning" of Jake's story that Julianne references was a bit of a letdown, mostly because it felt cliché in a way the rest of the story didn't. Because we only get a couple of chapters of young Jake, we don't get a great sense for how far back her mental deterioration began (for instance, was there abuse at home?). Like Julianne said, we don't really get why she acted like she did, which could have strengthened the story as a whole.

Overall, this felt like a minor flaw considering how masterfully the rest of the story was told. If you enjoy dark settings, offbeat storytelling, and troubled narrators, bump this one up on your TBR list. I know I'll be on the lookout for Wyld's next release.


Oh, and if you enjoy me and Julianne messaging each other (sometimes vulgarly) about books, you should check out our chat reviews of The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin.

Happy Sunday! Today I've got something decidedly unbookish for you to close out the weekend.

The past two days have been blissfully chilled-out, which is exactly what I needed after playing host to family last weekend and working a ten-hour Sunday the weekend before. Oh, and two bouts of illness. (OK, whining quota met.) I read, I played video games, I coded, and, tonight, I whipped up a beautiful batch of blueberry muffins.


One of my favorite hobbies besides reading is being in the kitchen, and I especially love to bake. I even had an extremely short-lived cooking blog in college. (Is anyone else noticing a pattern in my blog names here?) I don't bake nearly as often these days. In addition to being busier (you know, reading, gaming, and coding), my stomach has developed this annoying habit wherein it doesn't want me to constantly feed it sugar. What's up with that?

Anyway, these muffins are not only gorgeous but also delicious and super simple to make. I'm including the recipe below, but, honestly, you should check it out on the Smitten Kitchen website. Deb Perelman is my food goddess—I've never made a recipe of hers I didn't like—and she's a fantastic writer to boot.

Perfect Blueberry Muffins
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen, adapted from Cook's Illustrated
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
3/4 cup sour cream or plain yogurt (I used full-fat Greek)
1/2 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (I swapped half for whole wheat)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup blueberries, fresh or frozen (frozen don't have to be defrosted)

The recipe yields between 8 and 10 muffins.

Preheat your oven to 375F. Using an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar together until creamy. Beat in egg, then lemon zest and yogurt. Add flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt to a sifter and sift half of the dry ingredients over the wet. Stir until combined. Add the rest of the dry ingredients and stir until combined. Gently fold in your blueberries. Fill your muffin tins 3/4 of the way (or make giant muffins, like I did) and bake until golden brown on top and a toothpick comes out clean. This took 20 minutes for me, but SK recommends 25-30.

Weekend Cooking is a weekly feature hosted over at Beth Fish Reads, and this is my first time linking up for it. Go check out her blog for more information and to see all the other delicacies whipped up by bloggers this weekend!

The first thing you need to know about The Shore is that the setting is one of the most important characters in the story. This is no small feat, as throughout its 300+ pages, we meet more than two dozen others, nearly all of them loosely connected to one of two families that have called this collection of islands off the coast of Virginia home since (at least) the early nineteenth century.

The reader watches these families quite literally come alive over a series of stories spanning more than two centuries. Almost every vignette has a different narrator, and one of the most enjoyable parts of the book was trying to puzzle out how all of these people fit together. (Physical ARCs and the finished product should be coming with family trees, but my copy didn't have one. I actually think I prefer it this way, as it allowed the story to unfold more naturally.) The Shore likewise undergoes a metamorphosis from a tourist-filled beach destination to a dilapidated ghost town to... something else entirely.

While it has its moments of charm, this is by no means a light book. Taylor makes no bones about sprinkling her novel liberally with domestic, sexual and child abuse, addiction of various kinds, an extended gang rape and a couple of gruesome murders. I knew this book would be dark going in, but I would have appreciated someone tipping me off about some of the more graphic scenes. Consider this the warning I didn't get!

While that list sounds gratuitous, it didn't feel that way while reading. The Shore is the definition of a rural wasteland; its residents farm and fish and work at the chicken plants that spew what smells like "chicken soup, and a whole lot like dog food, with the inside of a molding coop mixed in" (Loc 258). Not until the very end—a vignette set 150 years in the future—do we get any real sense of hope for what comes next. I'm reminded of another collection of stories I read, The Uncanny Valley by Gregory Miller; one of the characters said that the valley "has a way of keeping its own where they are." The Shore likewise holds its own in a clenched fist, and it's only natural that they would turn against each other (and themselves) to survive.

And yet, like most good Southern folk, many of the Shore's children find a sense of pride in where they come from:

"Going home, at the end of a day of shopping or visiting or reporting to the draft, I used to imagine I was King Arthur going to Avalon, and none of the city mess could follow me. It wasn't just the trip away in reverse. The stink of the city faded and that ribbon of life resolved magically out of the haze on the water. It was all soft and green, and no one could tell me the Shore wasn't the most beautiful place on the face of God's earth." - Loc. 2120-2126, The Shore

If you're looking for a generation-spanning story that oozes Southern atmosphere—and don't mind a little bit of magical realism and a whole lot of bleakness thrown in for good measure—The Shore is your book.

The Shore will be available for purchase on May 26.

Obligatory disclaimer goes here: I received The Shore from NetGalley for review consideration. Thanks so much to Hogarth of Crown Publishing Group for giving me the chance to read it!

As I mentioned before, my boyfriend's mom came for a long visit last weekend. After a delicious Mother's Day brunch on Sunday, she asked if we could go find something for her to read on the plane back to Oregon. (Did I mention that I love my boyfriend's mom?) She specifically requested a used bookshop, so we took her by The Book Trader Café, a local shop specializing in cheap reads and good eats.

Of course, I couldn't pass up a chance to grab a new book or two myself. I found Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie for a mere $1.50 on the clearance cart outside.

Happy Wednesday, book buds!

It's been a quiet week around here, thanks to a visit from my boyfriend's mom as well as my second debilitating cold in less than a month. I didn't even know it was possible to get sick this frequently, but worry not; I'm very much on the mend!

Today I've got a round-up of mini-reviews of books I read during last month's Readathon, which already feels like ancient history. Come faster, October!


The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society tells the story of journalist and author Juliet Ashton, who stumbles upon a literary society formed on the Bailwick of Guernsey in the thick of World War II. Hoping to write an article about their society, Juliet befriends the group through a series of letters and soon becomes enamored of them, sharing in their happiness and their heartache.

This was a really, sweet funny story. It gets big points in my book for being epistolary (which is quickly becoming one of my favorite formats). While I was reading it, I couldn't help but compare my feelings to those I had about The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. Unfortunately, while A.J. Fikry ultimately succeeded for me, I wasn't as impressed with Guernsey. I felt that the ending was a letdown—it seemed to come on too quickly after a lot of build-up and was just too much of a cliché. In addition, I didn't think there was enough variety of voices in the novel, though this may be one of the downfalls of the epistolary style. The letters were funny and witty, yes, but I didn't get a great sense that all the people writing them were different, complex individuals. 

Overall, this was a pleasant read, but it didn't knock my socks off. 



Ashes in My Mouth, Sand in My Shoes is a teeny-tiny collection of short stories about a Norwegian boy named Arvid Jansen coming of age in the 1960s. The prose is spare and serious, much like Arvid himself, and it meanders through his memories of his grandfather's death, the night terrors and bedwetting that haunt him into his pre-adolescence, and the quiet, desperate horror of the Cold War. Arvid leaves school early one day after his teacher warns of impending nuclear war:

"He wasn't frightened, his body was just so suddenly tired that he had to concentrate on every step he took, and the tiredness grew and grew until it lay like lumps beneath his skin, he could almost feel them with his fingers, and his boots were heavy, as if filled with blue clay. He didn't cry because he and his dad agreed he would not do that so often now, but his face felt as dry as old cardboard and just blinking was an effort of will.

When he got home so early, his mother gave him a puzzled look but said nothing, and he thought that was fine, for when you'e about to die there's nothing really to discuss." — pg. 97, Ashes in My Mouth, Sand in My Shoes 

If we're being honest, I'm flipping through its 120 pages right now looking for sentences that jog my memory about the larger stories within. I blame this not on Per Petterson's ability as a writer and more on my failure to take notes. This was my first read on Readathon day, and there have been five or six books on my mind since then. Regardless, I remember enjoying the collection at large, and it is absolutely worth reading for passages like these:

"[His mother] looked the way she always had for as far back as he could remember, and she still did right up until the day he happened to see a photograph of her from before he was born, and the difference floored him. He tried to work out what could have happened to her, and then he realised it was time that had happened and it was happening to him too, every second of the day. He held his hands to his face as if to keep his skin in place and for many nights he lay clutching his body, feeling time sweeping through it like little explosions. The palms of his hands were quivering and he tried to resist time and hold it back. But nothing helped, and with every pop he felt himself getting older." - pg. 43-44, ibid.

The Complete Persepolis is my first graphic novel since my Watchmen and V for Vendetta days in high school, and it's my first memoir in this format. The story follows the scrappy, intelligent Marjane Satrapi through her youth in revolutionary Iran and her young adulthood abroad. Originally published in four separate volumes, the copy I read compiled the entirety of Marjane's story.

At its simplest, this is a story about a search for identity, from the opening panels describing the Iranian girl and woman's obligation to wear the veil to the closing story about Marjane's decision to start fresh in Europe. What really sets the book apart is its setting and characters. After reading the first volume and seeing I was reading it too, Sal from Motion Sick Lit pointed out that we rarely hear stories about the Iranian middle class. News outlets in particular tend to focus on the poor and uneducated or religious extremists in the Middle East; obvious as it sounds, I was struck by just how normal Marjane's family seemed, even with the violent chaos of revolution as a backdrop.

I would highly recommend this collection for anyone looking for a more intimate look at life in Iran in the late twentieth century. Be prepared to laugh, cry, rage and rejoice.

Happy Thursday, y'all! Today's my Friday because I worked more than 10 hours last Sunday (the life of a developmental researcher) AND my boyfriend's mom comes into town tonight. It's party time.*

Speaking of Thursday, I want to share my first ever foray into Thrifty Thursdays, a weekly book meme started by Sal over at Motion Sick Lit. (He's pretty cool—check him out!) Sal's rules for the feature are as follows:

All right, so I'm breaking two of his rules (or preferences) right off the bat. The book I'm talking about today was not found in a book or thrift store and it isn't a particularly weird one, unless you consider systemic racism and religion weird (which, like, fair enough).


I stumbled across a paperback copy of Go Tell It on the Mountain at a neighborhood tag sale a few weeks back. My boyfriend and I were on a walk when we noticed a handwritten sign advertising the sale and decided to check it out. When we arrived, we were surprised to find it was hosted by none other than a few of our favorite bartenders from a bar/restaurant we frequent downtown. One of the bartenders was moving to France and getting rid of his things, which just happened to include a smattering of awesome books. I picked up The Fire Next Time (because it's important and amazing) and Go Tell It on the Mountain, and my boyfriend grabbed The Female Gaze: Women as Viewers of Popular Culture (because he's also amazing).

All told, we spent $9 on three books, bringing my total for Go Tell It on the Mountain to a paltry $3. A classic, semi-autobiographical novel about the role of the church in black American identity, all for less than the cost of a latte? I'll take it. Also, it comes with the added bonus of being one of my Classics Club reads!

Have you made any particularly awesome or strange (and cheap!) book buys in the last week or so? Be sure to write about it and link up over at Motion Sick Lit! Thanks again to Sal for hosting this awesomeness.

*And, by party time, I mean reading books, drinking tea, and probably discussing feminism. His family is the best.

Kelly Jensen posted a fantastic piece over at Book Riot yesterday that discussed why some well-intentioned initiatives to get kids reading are almost completely useless for children in poverty.

One of her major arguments was that giving children free access to e-books might sound nice on paper, but it's essentially meaningless for that one-third of the population living at or below the poverty line that doesn't go online at all. (Note: These statistics come from adult survey respondents, but I'm willing to bet that children of parents who don't go online don't have significant access to computers themselves. For more about child/teen Internet access, Jensen linked to this Guardian article.)

I almost gave myself whiplash from nodding along to Jensen's points, and it got me thinking about yet another significant segment of the population that gets screwed over when it comes to accessing library resources: the homeless.

During my senior year in college, I interned for the National Runaway Safeline, a crisis hotline for runaway and homeless youth based in Chicago. Over ten months, I spent countless hours on the phone with children and teenagers looking for a place to sleep, a place to eat, or a safe place to get out of the cold. From my training there, I know for a fact that some libraries across the country serve as Safe Places; these are locations where runaway and homeless youth can go to find support and resources, such as information about shelters and food banks. However, I don't know how many of these libraries offer resource (e.g., book/computer) access to the chronically or intermittently homeless. I'd wager the number is pretty low.

While I couldn't find a statistic for this, I do know that every library card I've ever registered for came with a prerequisite; I had to present a piece of mail or some other document that attached my name to a permanent address. While on its face this may seem like a low hurdle to clear, it completely precludes homeless adults and children from accessing library services. (For context: On a given night in January 2013, more than 600,000 people in the United States were homeless, with nearly one-quarter of them children under 18.)

Reflecting on my time at the hotline, talking to kids who had nowhere (or nowhere safe) to sleep at night, I can damned near guarantee that at least a handful those kids would have jumped at the chance to get a library book. The American Library Association released a toolkit for how libraries can better serve homeless individuals; one of the testimonials in particular struck me as I was writing this post. When asked what he would want librarians to know about him, a homeless youth responded:

“And it’s always good to be able to have a safe space to relax and just open a book and just let the words take you. And having a place you can do that safely, without being harassed or attacked or any of that is extremely ideal, and extremely beneficial to the reader and pretty much everyone involved.” —pg. 4, Extending Our Reach: Reducing Homelessness Through Library Engagement

Sometimes these kids—and adults, too—want to do something besides just survive out there; libraries can make this a reality.

I know some of my readers work in libraries, and I'd be especially interested in hearing about this issue from your end. Clearly, I don't understand all the inner workings of libraries. I know why cards matter—accountability for missing materials, calculating collection utilization and other statistics, etc.—but it's also painfully clear that they can be difficult to obtain and, thus, bar some people from accessing library resources. Have you ever had to deal with this, and, if so, what did you do?

And, as always, I welcome thoughts from anyone else who'd like to weigh in!

This cover, ugh. So beautiful.

All right, enough's enough. I've been hinting about how much I loved (and cried over) Tell the Wolves I'm Home for weeks now. Maybe I should actually review this book already.

Carol Rifka Brunt's debut introduces us to fourteen-year-old June Elbus, a lone wolf of a teenager growing up in the early '80s in upstate New York. She has a penchant for the medieval and for spending time with her beloved uncle Finn. These days, with her parents busy at work and her older, more "talented" sister Greta becoming way too cool for her, June thinks Finn might be her only friend. This is just fine by her—that is, until Finn finally loses his battle against AIDS. The bulk of the story is June taking the reader through her final days with Finn (including his painting a portrait of June and Greta that serves a key role throughout the book) and the months after his death in which she connects with Finn's partner, Toby, heretofore hidden away from her.

Oh, June. She is just the picture of a precocious, reserved, anxiety-ridden teenager. Having been one of those myself, I couldn't help but love her, especially for gems like these:

"Watching people is a good hobby, but you have to be careful about it. You can't let people catch you staring at them. If people catch you, they treat you like a first-class criminal. And maybe they're right to do that. Maybe it should be a crime to try to see things about people they don't want you to see."—pg. 4, Tell the Wolves I'm Home

I ached for her as she stumbled her way through the aftermath of Finn's death and realizes just how much of the uncle she knew was actually Toby shining through him. She also grapples with the fact that what she felt for Finn (and, eventually, for Toby) may not have been entirely familial. As a gal who had a totally weird crush on her "cool uncle" as a child, this examination of how confusing love (and all its different manifestations) can be when you're young really hit home with me. We also watch June come to terms with the darkest parts of herself (the "wolves," if you will): a searing jealousy of Toby's relationship with Finn and her anger over the loss of her close relationship with Greta. Exploring the inner workings of a teenager dealing with multiple kinds of grief is ambitious, and Brunt's writing felt authentic in a way very few books achieve.

"The sun kept on with its slipping away, and I thought how many small good things in the world might be resting on the shoulders of something terrible." —pg. 233, ibid.

This isn't to say the book is perfect. If you look hard enough, there are plenty of things to pick apart. Some of the characters are woefully under-developed (I might have missed it, but I'm pretty sure June and Greta's father was never even named), and certain aspects of the ending, while touching, seemed out of keeping with the rest of the story. I read this for a book club, and one of its members said it well when he told us he loved the book, but he doesn't know if it would "hold up under scrutiny" or that he'll ever be inclined to re-read it. I'm not sure this one will warrant another reading for me, either, but I know one thing for sure: I'll look back on this first reading with utmost fondness.

There's so much more I could explore about this book—sibling relationships! parental pressure/expectations! AIDS hysteria in the 1980s!—but I'd much rather you just read it for yourself. If you like stories about love, grief, families, or being a teenager trying to survive the messiness of life, I implore you to pick this one up.

As the title of this post makes painfully clear, it's been a while since I've posted anything about the 2015 TBR Pile Challenge, hosted by Adam over at Roof Beam Reader.

It's not that I haven't been reading; on the contrary, I have been doing a ton of reading but not nearly as much reviewing. And this is how we've come to the start of May, and I'm only just ready to talk about a book I read over a month ago.


On to the books!


In March, I read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, probably better known by its movie adaptation, Blade Runner. My boyfriend made me watch Blade Runner with him once, but I fell asleep, so I really can't compare the two stories. I'll get back to you once I watch it again. See: above GIF.

The year is 2021. Earth has been plunged into the radioactive dust of World War Terminus; humans can control their emotions via a "mood organ" and use an "empathy box" to feel connected to each other. (I find that last note is especially interesting in the age of social media.) To own a single animal is to be a success in this world; those who can't succeed go for electric replicas.

Here we have the story of Rick Deckard, an "assassin" whose assignment is to hunt down humanoid androids and "retire" them. Assassin and retire get scare quotes because an ever-present theme of this book is what exactly it means to be human and why we're so desperate to destroy anything that is "other."

Here, Rick speaks with Phil, a fellow bounty hunter to whom he's going to administer his android test:

"'I'll give you my laser tube now. So you won't have to worry about my reaction to the test. In terms of your own personal safety.' He held out the tube and Rick accepted it.

'How'll you kill yourself without it?' Rick asked. "If you fail on the test?"

'I'll hold my breath.'

'Chrissake,' Rick said. 'It can't be done.'

'There's no automatic cut-in of the vague nerve,' Phil Resch said, 'in an android. As there is in a human. Weren't you taught that when they trained you? I got taught that years ago.'

'But to die that way,' Rick protested.

'There's no pain. What's the matter with it?'

'It's—' He gestured. Unable to find the right words." —pg. 121, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

The prose is spare and serious, mirroring the quiet desperation of life in the ruins of San Francisco. Two hundred sixteen pages flesh out this crumbling atmosphere, peppered with futuristic technology, and infuse it with age-old philosophy. What does distinguish a human from other creatures? Is it our DNA, our empathy, or could it be something much more basic? How can any of us really know it about ourselves?

I wasn't initially thrilled by the story, but it's grown more impressive to me over time. Any diehard sci-fi fans and/or armchair philosophers would do well to pick this one up.




Just a couple days ago, I finished Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. I originally intended it to be my February read for the challenge, but it took me much longer than expected to get through. This isn't to knock Bryson—he's a fantastic writer and an even better researcher—but man, this guy can pack a lot of information in a paragraph.

In just under 500 pages, Bryson tackles, well, everything: the tiniest parts of atoms, the forces that cause the earth to quake and spew lava, and all phenomena in between get their own chapters. He even ventures from our atmosphere to discuss supernovae, the shape of space, and the moons of Pluto (still a planet at the time this book was published!).

Bryson treats each of his topics with equal care, and he makes a concerted effort to bring the scientists he cites to life; this includes both those long-dead and those he met while researching his book. Here he describes the famed Isaac Newton:

"Newton was a decidedly odd figure—brilliant beyond measure, but solitary, joyless, prickly to the point of paranoia, famously distracted (upon swinging his feet out of bed in the morning he would reportedly sometimes sit for hours, immobilized by the sudden rush of thoughts to his head), and capable of the most riveting strangeness." —pg. 46, A Short History of Nearly Everything

And, here, a population geneticist he interviewed:

"[Rosalind] Harding is a small and chirpy Australian, from Brisbane originally, with the rare knack for being amused and earnest at the same time." —pg. 464, ibid.

I don't know about you, but I can totally imagine both of them.

There were parts that dragged, particularly the sections that discussed the classification of living things (hominids, animals, plants, etc.), but I really think mileage will vary depending on the scientific topics the reader finds most engaging. He also has a tendency toward gloom and doom—most of the sections on natural disasters seemed to edge toward doomsday predictions eventually—but perhaps this is a natural result from learning a hell of a lot about the planet we inhabit.

Overall, I highly recommend this book for anyone looking to learn a little bit about most things and who doesn't mind taking a couple of months to do it.

Whew, all caught up! It's been a science-y couple of months.