Man, apparently I’ve read a lot since the last time I posted!
Status Anxiety is written by a philosopher, and it’s about why we as citizens are so concerned with our social standing, and what to do about it. It had some interesting ideas, but I didn’t like the overall presentation of the book. It had these weird mini-chapters, and it was philosophy rather than research. Plus, the examples given are historical characters in literature, or, like, artists from the Renaissance era. I prefer books that have more anecdotes related to present-day, as well as solid research.
Along those lines, I also read The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry. This book was written by a journalist, so there’s definitely more of a present-day feel to it: the interviews and anecdotes are all recent. Still wasn’t as much research as I’d like, though – I like books where the last third of the book are notes on the sources. I wish Ronson would do something like the authors of Freakonomics did, where a journalist and an industry expert team up together.
I read The Female Brain, which is exactly what it sounds like: a book on how the female brain is distinct from the male brain, and how it changes as hormone levels fluctuate. The introduction to the book talked about some anatomy and technical terminology, but the bulk of the book was more about behavior, and the vocabulary used was a vocabulary that someone without the scientific background could understand. I enjoyed the book and learned a good deal from it.
I tried my hand at You Are a Badass because a friend of mine recommended it, but tbh, I found it awful. The second chapter was all about spirituality, which just does not hit home for me at all. But worse (far, far worse, in my opinion) – this book feels like one of those books written for people who don’t normally like to read. Do you know what I mean? The short sentences, the wink-wink “I don’t normally read self-help books,” the slang terminology, none of it sat well with me. I like to read, and any book that seems like it’s been dumbed down for a wider audience is not my style.
And those were just the nonfiction books I read!
In fiction, I read and enjoyed Friend Request. I learned of the book in one of these threads, so if you were the person who mentioned reading it, thank you! Wasn’t a big fan of the ending, but I loved it up until about the last fifty pages.
Also read a Sandra Kring novel, Carry Me Home. Sandra Kring can write a heartwarming story better than anyone I know. She has this way of writing endings that are filled with hope and love, but also achingly honest – if the story necessitates that someone dies, or someone leaves, or someone doesn’t find their way to being a better person, then she writes the story that way. This particular book was written from the point of view of a young man who was afflicted with a fever as a baby, and the fever left him brain-damaged. It takes place in small town America (Wisconsin, I think) during World War II. I tried to read this book years ago, but abandoned it early on because the “bad English” bothered me. (Since the narrator is mentally slow, sometimes his grammar is incorrect.) But then I was itching to read more Sandra Kring, because I’d fallen in love with three of her previous books (The Book of Bright Ideas, A Life of Bright Ideas, and How High the Moon), and her other offerings hadn’t grabbed me, so I gave this book a second try, and enjoyed it the second time around.
Finally, I listened to Karen Russell’s St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, a collection of short stories, on audio book. I had already read and re-read this book on my Kindle, along with her other short story collection, her novella (I forget the name of it), and her novel, Swamplandia! (For the record, I absolutely do NOT recommend Swamplandia!.) I thought the short stories might translate well to audio book, because Russell is a huge fan of similes and uses a lot of poetic language to create a vivid mental image of the scenes she’s describing. Unfortunately, it didn’t translate well. While Russell is a talented writer overall, ending a story is not one of her talents. Her stories will often just stop, without any sort of resolution or indication that the ending is coming. When I was reading this on my Kindle, I could see how long I had until the end of the chapter, and when I reached the last page I could see how many words were left on the page. But on audio book, every time the narrator paused I would get this knot in my stomach and wonder if that was the end, and then get poised to stop the audio book, if I was almost home from work and didn’t have enough time to get into another story. So I wound up listening rather tensely for much of the book. I recommend her short stories in written form, though, as long as you’re the sort of person who enjoys reading some rather surreal dreamscape type stories where the plot sometimes takes backseat to the unusual setting (think ghost prom, boarding school for daughters of werewolves, oversized seashells you can curl up inside of, and haunted swimming goggles).
