Shaina Reads

I read/reviewed:

Good morning, all! I'm checking in to say that I'm still kickin' (kind of), readin' (less), and grad school preppin' (very much).

I could probably fill this whole post with my graduate school application woes, but I'm not quite committed to renaming this place Shaina Applies to Graduate School. After a brief but intense existential crisis ("Do I even want to apply to graduate school?"), I'm back in the saddle, juggling GRE math exercises and statement of purpose drafts. Math is math, and I continue to be amazed by how much statements of purpose are like cover letters but somehow worse. On the bright side, my GRE testing date falls the day before next month's Dewey's 24-Hour Readathon, and I'm thrilled to have a built-in way to celebrate the beast being over. All-day reading parties are the best parties.

Speaking of bookish goodness, I finished a book last week! I was in desperate need of something I could fly through, and The Fever by Megan Abbott fit that bill swimmingly. Abbott brought me back to being a high school girl in a way that was both deeply nostalgic but also left me relieved when I realized how much I've changed since then. Bonus: it totally fit in with the R.I.P. X theme.

This week, I'll continue chugging along with IT. I hit the halfway point in my audio book last night, and I think the slow burn is finally erupting into an inferno. I can no longer listen to it if I'm home alone at night, and my boyfriend might be a little worried about me.

If I have time, I'm also going to dive in to Ancillary Mercy, the final installment in Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch trilogy. I requested an ARC from Orbit ages ago and had just about given up hope, and I shrieked when it arrived unannounced a couple of weeks ago. Did I mention my boyfriend is worried about me?

I'm hoping to get a review up this week (The Heart Goes Last, anyone?), but, as per usual lately, we'll just have to see.

Life has gotten a little crazy, and for a while I'm going to have much less time to craft the original, well-thought-out content that you've all come to know and love (*cough*). Thankfully, the fantastic book bloggers I follow put up oodles of excellent posts every week. This feature will help keep my blog rolling and serve as inspiration to dive into my Feedly reader every now and then, no matter how nutty the unread count gets.

Happy Friday, y'all! Welcome to the third edition of my Real Good Roundup. If you hadn't noticed, my posting was a little sparse (read: nonexistent) this week, and I'm more grateful than ever for some built-in content to keep things from plummeting to absolute zero.

Without further ado, here's a sampling (in no particular order) of some of the best things I've read recently, both bookish and less so:

• The giveaway portion of this post might be over, but Shannon of River City Reading's list of books for new teachers still offers up some excellent-sounding primers for the structural and social issues inherent to the American education system. I don't plan to go into teaching, and I'm excited to check some of these out!


• Lauren of Malcolm Avenue Review recently had her golden retriever, Bird, trained as a therapy dog. The pair attended their first official therapy event last week, and adorable photos and heartwarming stories ensued.


• Michelle of Free (Read and) Write analyzed the heck out of Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari, focusing on the relative dearth of interdisciplinary collaboration in academia and how careful one has to be when writing a research-heavy book intended for the layman. Her points are great, and I asked her if we can be research-nerd buddies. (She said yes.)


• Leah of Books Speak Volumes read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. Despite some pause with the book overall, Leah shared five extra-tasty morsels for thought, ranging from how to balance fear and creativity to how acknowledging (and accepting) the possibility of failure can show you what you truly love.


• Jessica at Don't Mind the Mess asserted that there is no one right way to blog, and anyone who tells you so is wrong. After fretting all week about my lack of posting, this was exactly what I needed to read.

Happy Friday, y'all! Welcome to the second edition of my brand new Real Good Roundup (check out my first one—and the motivation behind it—here!).  If you want the short version:

Life has gotten a little crazy, and I'm going to have much less time for crafting the original, well-thought-out content that you've all come to know and love (*cough*). Thankfully, the fantastic book bloggers I follow put up oodles of excellent posts every week. This feature will help keep my blog rolling and serve as inspiration to dive into my Feedly reader every now and then, no matter how nutty the unread count gets.

Without further ado, here's a small sampling (in no particular order) of some of the best things I've read recently, both bookish and less so:

• April of The Steadfast Reader fangirled over reverend and author Nadia Bolz-Weber and shared some of the best moments from the pastor's talk and their meet n' greet. The kicker? April is about as atheist as they come.


• The wonderful women over at The Socratic Salon got to talking about whether one can separate books from their authors. This is a subject I've hemmed and hawed over on my own, and I'm excited to see where the discussion in the comments goes.


• Alice of Reading Rambo reviewed Empire of Sin by Gary Krist and nerded out over the history of jazz and New Orleans. In typical Alice fashion, she packs excitement, intellectual geekery and snark into one neat package, complete with great GIFs.


• Arianna of Shelf Notes went on a whirlwind tour of the Pacific Northwest and squeezed in an impressive bunch of bookish sites along the way. I jotted down a few for the next time I head west.


• Amanda of The Zen Leaf is on a wellness journey and decided to blog about it. This week, she wrote about a time that she chose happiness for herself and how she can be her own worst enemy when it comes to doing the things that will bring her joy. It was a great reminder of the importance of making some decisions solely for our own fulfillment, without worrying about practicality or what others might think. 

Another Classics Club (and R.I.P. X!) pick bites the dust, and I'm feeling all kinds of ambivalent about it.

Ken Kesey's iconic One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest tells the story of a group of male psychiatric patients living in a hospital ward in Oregon. Our narrator, "Chief" Bromden, is an enormous, half-Native American man who thinks of the hospital as "the combine" that is literally trying to rewire him to be better adjusted to his surroundings. His paranoia begins to lift when a new patient, Randle P. McMurphy, arrives on the ward. A swaggering, gambling-prone redhead, McMurphy threatens to upend the oppressive routine of hospital life overseen by the austere head nurse, Mildred Ratched.

On its face, I adored this book, in no small part to Tom Parker's unparalleled narration. We meet and get to know an enormous cast of characters, and Parker manages to imbue nearly all of them with their own voices and quirks beyond what's found in the text. Most of the men's stories are devastating (Billy Bibbit and Pete Bancini's stories alone were enough to cleave my heart in two), and Kesey never lets us forget about the helpless feeling of inhabiting a world we struggle to fit into. McMurphy, in spite of his smooth talk and his eye on his own bottom line, fosters hope and camaraderie among the men. Maybe they can fit in after all, or maybe—just maybe—the world can adjust to them.

“What do you think you are, for Chrissake, crazy or somethin'? Well you're not! You're not! You're no crazier than the average asshole out walkin' around on the streets, and that's it. ” - Randle McMurphy, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

The film was also quite good (I mean, Jack Nicholson), but the producers made some changes that distinctly changed the tone (and sometimes the trajectory) of the story. The film does not follow a specific narrator, removing the unreliability of Chief's voice and, with it, the ominous uncertainty of just what is actually going on in the hospital. This shift casts some of the (spoiler-y) events in a different light, and I was grateful to have the book so fresh in my memory so I could draw comparisons. Although I enjoyed the film adaptation, it ultimately couldn't live up to the novel for me.

All that being said, there are some potentially nasty things lurking under the rosy tint of wonderful characters and excellent storytelling. This book is riddled with problematic representations of and attitudes toward women. The ward's hero, McMurphy, is committed in the first place for "statutory rape" (McMurphy, in his late 30s, rapes a 15-year-old girl). The ever-demonized Nurse Ratched is at once discussed as sexless and undesirable (and, therefore, not worth much), but one of the attributes the men keep coming back to are her enormous breasts. These breasts also play an uncomfortably pivotal role in the story's climax. The "system" the men of the ward are fighting appears to be almost entirely made up of women bent on emasculating them, and this makes me more than a bit squirmy.

I think this book has so many excellent points worth discussing (personal freedom; the individual versus society; and stark looks at mental illness, male friendship and male vulnerability), and part of me wants so desperately to believe that the sexism is just additional commentary. Since Kesey never seemed to openly address it (at least not that I noticed—correct me if I'm wrong!), I'm stuck feeling uncertain and more than a little troubled.

Wait. Do we really have to work five days this week? I missed that memo.

About where I'm at today.

Anyway, Monday's here, and I hope y'all are coming off some excellent week(end)s to soften that blow. I can't complain about mine; I got a lot done on the Shaina Applies to Grad School* front and even managed to get some relaxation in. Wine, pumpkin beer and this delicious herbed summer squash pasta bake helped. (If you've got zucchini the size of small dogs, I highly recommend that last recipe.)

To the books! Coming off an amazing listen of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, my boyfriend and I watched the film on Saturday (Peril on the Screen: complete!). I have numerous and ambivalent thoughts about both, and I hope to get them into a semi-coherent state sometime this week. I also finished Atwood's The Heart Goes Last yesterday. I'm honestly not sure what to make of it, and I'm glad I have some time to let my thoughts simmer before its publication date. I do think it's going to make for excellent debate fodder over at The Socratic Salon.

Inspired by Trish's enthusiasm, I started listening to the 44-hour monster that is It by Stephen King, narrated by Steven Weber. I might still be listening to it by the time Halloween 2016 rolls around, but Weber's narration is solid, particularly coming off Parker's unforgettable Cuckoo's Nest performance. I plan to truck along with that and start up some new visual/eyeball/optical reads this week. Two strong contenders are Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho (which I didn't end up getting to last week) and Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg, a library hold I did not expect to get my hands on so soon.

*But let's not talk about how I seem to be getting worse at math, rather than better. I haven't been making enough burnt offerings to the GRE quantitative reasoning gods.

As much as I love researching and writing my own posts here, I know it's going to get increasingly difficult to do so over the next couple of months. Not only will my writing time dwindle, but so will my chances to read, both book-wise and blog-wise.

If the choice is between reading a book and reading a blog post, the book is going to win 99.999% of the time. Because of this, I let my Feedly backlog pile up, and it can get a little scary in there. In an effort to go into the upcoming fray with a blank slate, I've whittled my feed reader down from more than 100 unread articles to 11 (as of writing this) in just a couple of days. That whole "mark all as read" thing? The rational side of me knows it's a good idea, but the perfectionist side doesn't often let the rational side make decisions.

Anyway, getting to the point: sifting quickly through such a huge number of posts really showed me the sheer volume of excellent content you wonderful bloggers generate each month. To kick off your Friday right, here's a small sampling (in no particular order) of some of the best things I've read recently, both bookish and less so:

• Lindsey of Literary Lindsey wants her son to grow up knowing that women have stories worth telling, too. She shared a list of some of her favorite children's books with female heroines.


• Lauren of Malcolm Avenue Review always puts up a fantastic "Strictly Positive" post on Fridays, but last Friday's really took the cake. It included a goose parade, lion hugs and a dancing dog. Go check it out, and then see what she's curated for you today!


• Michelle of That's What She Read got me thinking a lot about how we write about books, particularly in how we draw comparisons to other books in our reviews. There's tons of food for thought in the comments, too.


• Heather of The Bastard Title shared some of her anxiety triggers and how she prioritizes her own self-care. As an anxious person myself, this was a wonderfully honest read. 


• Erin at Manuscripts & Marginalia wrote about the value of discomfort when it comes to what we read. If you know me at all, you know I got whiplash from all the nodding I did while reading it.


• Rachelle of The Reading Wench is doing a Harry Potter read-a-thon, and she posed some thought-provoking questions about Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets that I'm still mulling over now.


• Emily of Books, The Universe and Everything wrote an excellent (spoiler-free!) review of Bill Clegg's Did You Ever Have a Family. It was touching and reflective and made me go put the book on hold immediately.

Pretty self-explanatory: watch a movie that gives you the heebie-jeebies. After an amazing audio experience with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, I'm making it a priority to watch the film sometime over the next two months. It's critically-acclaimed, one of just three films to have ever won the Big 5 Academy Awards, and Jack Nicholson is real good at being unsettling.

Really.

Turn on all the lights in the house and hide under the blankets, because it's time to get freaked out, y'all.

Happy Labor Day to my friends in the States! I hope you've gotten your fill of sunshine, barbecue and books over the long holiday weekend. My Monday off included GRE math prep (gross) and some of the last summer beer of the season (definitely not gross).

I don't want to speak too soon, but I think I've busted my infernal reading slump. Over the weekend, I gobbled up Koji Suzuki's Ring (yes, that Ring), successfully completing my first book for RIP X and scoring myself a Books on the Nightstand BINGO with its 1991 publication date. (Thank you again to everyone who suggested awesome reads for my bingo squares last week! I ended up completely ignoring them in favor of Ring, but you've added a bunch of footnote-y, early '90s books to my TBR. A lady couldn't ask for better friends.)


After a great first listening experience, I'm already making good headway into my second audio book: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, narrated by Tom Parker. So far, Parker is nailing the ominous atmosphere and juggling the large cast of characters like a pro. With just three-ish hours left, I can't wait to see how the story wraps up. I've also taken a chunk out of Atwood's The Heart Goes Last, due out September 29, and plan to finish it soon before diving into a late approval from NetGalley, Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho.

I was hoping to avoid a hiatus, but the graduate school application stress is kicking in in earnest, and things might get a little quieter around my neck of the blogging woods. I still aim to post a couple of times a week and fully intend to keep reading/commenting, but, from now until early December, I'll be doing whatever I can to keep my head on straight. If I vanish for a bit, I hope you won't forget about me!

I told y'all on Wednesday that I'm eating every word about my supposed aversion to audio books. I honestly thought I wouldn't be into them, but it turns out that all it took to get me going was to be completely incapable of picking up a book. It didn't matter that I was enjoying the two reads I was in the middle of last week; every time I picked them up, I'd find an excuse to put them down, and eventually I stopped trying altogether. Days passed without a single turned page, and I was developing a distinctly book-shaped hole in my soul.

Enter The Old Man and the Sea, narrated by Donald Sutherland. I have Amanda to thank for this gem; she recommended it as one of her favorites on that so-recently-inapplicable post. After activating my free Audible trial, I settled on the itty-bitty Hemingway as a way to use up my first credit. The whole story clocks in at just under two-and-a-half hours. I figured that, if audio did not turn out to be for me, I wouldn't have to suffer through much of it to finish off the story. (Spoiler alert: this was not the case.)

Hemingway tells the story of the old Cuban fisherman Santiago. Having come up empty for the last three months, most believe his luck on the water has run out, but he has a feeling that change is coming. That change arrives in the form of the most massive fish anyone in Havana has ever seen. The bulk of the story revolves around Santiago being towed along by this mega-fish in his skiff, all the while reflecting on a life spent at sea, his failing body, and his relationship with "the boy" whom he's watched grow from a five-year-old, frightened by jumping fish, to a compassionate young man.

The most punch-you-in-the-face obvious themes here are aging, the inevitability of death and the legacy one leaves behind after dying. Despite there not being a lot of mystery to the symbolism (i.e., a strong, beautiful fish being slowly chewed up by sharks over time), it works so well when paired with Hemingway's prose, spare and straightforward as ever. Santiago knows his time is coming—and soon—but he isn't going without a fight, even if that fight consists of keeping on just as he always has. From what I've read before (A Farewell to Arms, ugh), I'm not a huge fan of Hemingway, but I'll make an exception for this story and for the quiet mettle of his fisherman.

As for the audio, Dave of Canton, MI put it best in his review: Donald Sutherland is Santiago. His calm, gravelly voice captured the world-weary vigor of the old man perfectly. Sutherland's tone didn't change for the other characters, but, considering the novel is 90% Santiago, this didn't detract much.

All in all, I'm glad to have been proven wrong about audio books, because they served as a thoroughly enjoyable way to scratch yet another book off Ye Olde Classics Club list.

Remember that time I signed up for Books on the Nightstand summer bingo? Me too. Look at how much reading I've done!



Although I'm sure you've been obsessively following my Twitter updates and don't need the refresher, here's what I have counting toward each of the completed squares:

• Published in 2015: The Beautiful Bureaucrat, by Helen Phillips


• Currently on the bestseller list: The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins


• With an ugly cover: Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie (seriously, guys, this cover is gross)


• A verse novel: Autobiography of Red, by Anne Carson


• About a religion with which you are unfamiliar: The Book of Strange New Things, by Michel Faber (as an atheist-leaning agnostic, I'm fairly uneducated about the inner workings of most religions, so I decided our protagonist's devout Christianity could count)


• About a subject that challenges you: Citizen: An American Lyric, by Claudia Rankine


• Free square: Bird Box, by Josh Malerman


• By a Canadian author: Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel


• Romance or love story: The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, by Natasha Pulley


• Historical fiction: The Wives of Los Alamos, by TaraShea Nesbit


• From the Harvard Classics 5 foot shelf: Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen


• An audiobook: The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway


• Science fiction: The Girl with All the Gifts, by M. R. Carey