It IS the American way, I guess

I usher at Ford's Theatre, where they--like many other theaters around the country--put on A Christmas Carol every year. I've ushered since 2009, and taking out 2020, and considering that I saw it at least two times each season...[insert math]...I've seen it dozens of times. Particularly when you add in watching A Muppet Christmas Carol every year.

One year, I decided to read the Dickens. Just triangulating the two versions, I could identify a good amount of what must've been from the original. (Including one of my favorite exchanges, when the charity collectors ask for a donation:

“What shall I put you down for?” 
“Nothing!” Scrooge replied.
“You wish to be anonymous?”
“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge.

A Christmas Carol is funnier than you think it is!) And from my viewing of various adaptations, there are parts of the story you're always going to see and some parts you're not going to see (we actually get another glimpse of Belle after she ends the engagement) and some that show up sometimes (the children Ignorance and Want).

We need to accept there are a million adaptations and there will be a million more (though, again, with Muppet Christmas Carol existing, we certainly don't need any more because that one is perfect). And now there's...this.

From just the most basic point of view, getting a backstory on Ebenezer Scrooge is not "the story we don't know." It's very much in the source material. The entire Ghost of Christmas Past sequence is Scrooge's backstory! Which is not to say that there's nothing to explore; A Christmas Carol is a novella; it's short enough that Dickens toured it and I know that FDR, for example, would read it to his family on Christmas Eve. There are definitely opportunities to go more into Ebenezer's childhood, and what changed for Ebenezer after he and Belle got engaged.

But.

This characterization, as shown in the trailer, is doing nothing for me. They're touting the return of Johnny Depp as "the master of misfits," which is not who Ebenezer Scrooge is in any way. Sticking out his tongue? Throwing snowballs? The whole "Humbug" in the window scene? Hard, hard pass. It just indicates to me a lack of comprehension about who Scrooge is.

He's not a misfit. He's not wacky or zany.

Anyway, a definitely pass from me. I'll continue with Craig Wallace as Scrooge at Ford's and Michael Caine on my tv.
 

Writing elevates this book club pick. Also excellent literature references.

⭐⭐⭐⭐  

I quite enjoyed The Wedding People by Alison Espach, though it was definitely not what I thought it was going to be. I probably should've paid more attention to the part of the book jacket that read that our lead character Phoebe is "at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself" and less to the part where she's the only one at a hotel in Newport, Rhode Island not there for Lila and Gary's wedding. Which is to say that the first chunk of the book is a bit difficult and full of things there should be trigger warnings for--suicidal ideation and infertility, particularly.

I couldn't give this the full 5 stars because I feel like people who have depression might have issues with the depiction of Phoebe; not her depression itself, so much, which felt to me pretty realistic, but rather at her somewhat miraculous bounce back from feeling suicidal (though she'll undoubtedly snap out of it, so...I don't know). I also don't know that we needed the scene when Phoebe's ex-husband shows up and begs to take her back and I have mixed feelings about whether everything was really just too neat. Of course Lila doesn't want to marry Gary, making Phoebe's feelings less of a problem...because of course Lila and Jim have feelings for each other. And of course Phoebe gets along great with Gary's daughter Juice, and of course a fabulous fantasy job opportunity in Newport appears. Life usually doesn't work out quite that well, but also, I do read books for escapism.

All that said, I really liked this. As an English major, I enjoyed the references to Victorian literature and I loved the setting--Newport is on my list of places I want to visit. I enjoyed how because Phoebe wasn't actually invested in any of the wedding people, she could be honest while also getting to know everyone without any preconceptions. The description of Phoebe's marriage falling apart, and the gradual realization that it probably wasn't ever as good as she may have thought. The looks at Phoebe's childhood and how they made Phoebe into who she was...and Phoebe taking this moment to change.

I liked her journey of trying to figure out her own life, past, present, and future, and I appreciated that the ending was left fairly open. Also, I quite liked Espach's writing:

Nat and Suz are excited to hear the story, and Phoebe imagines they could probably listen to it a thousand times the way her father could watch Vietnam War movies over and over again. Bridesmaids need the same kinds of stories soldiers do, stories that justify why they do what they do. Why they are willing to sacrifice who they are and a good night's sleep for the noble cause of defending democracy and Lila and Gary's love. (p. 112)

Under [her dead mother's] gaze, Phoebe was careful never to make any mistakes. Phoebe was quiet and obedient, never talking too fast or too loudly, because she never wanted to be a burden to her father. She had felt this way in her marriage, too--careful never to cry too hard or tell meandering sties at dinner. Careful always to wear nice pajamas to bed. Careful never to lose control. (p. 66)

But Phoebe is starting to understand that on some nights, Lila is probably the loneliest girl in the world, just like Phoebe. And maybe they are all lonely. Maybe this is just what it means to be a person. To constantly reckon with being a single being in one body. Maybe everybody sits up at night and creates arguments in their head for why they are the loneliest person in the world. (p. 151)

Recommend.

Word nerds, unite

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

A really enjoyable read, particularly for me as an English major who works in publishing. (Thinking about this, I'd say someone should write a similar book about The Chicago Manual of Style, but it doesn't have quite the same appeal or universality as a dictionary. But I would love it!) Author Stefan Fatsis is a sports journalist, but I remember him for Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players. In Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary, he embeds himself at Merriam-Webster, tries to get some words added to the dictionary, and immerses himself in dictionary culture.

It's a fascinating book. Fatsis focuses mostly on Merriam-Webster and American dictionaries, but naturally Samuel Johnson's dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary come up quite a bit. Fatsis goes through the history of Merriam-Webster and the process for creating entries, some of which I was familiar with from having read multiple books (both fiction and nonfiction!) about the creation of the OED. The books is recent enough that Fatsis goes into depth about not only the effect of the Internet in general on dictionaries, but also AI and how it's progressed over the years and how dictionary publishers use social media to make money now that the sales of print dictionaries aren't what they were.

The book is also unabashedly political, which is interesting for a book about a dictionary. Fatsis goes into pronouns, including a lengthy discussion of the attempts and challenges to make gender-neutral pronouns happen (and, of course, the history of "they"). He writes about slurs and swears and the debate about how to include them in the dictionary, and how the definitions change over time. He discusses how politics affects language and evolution of words like "woke." 

There's also descriptions of dictionary collections and the groups who choose the word of the year and conferences for professionals and enthusiasts. Fatsis's description of the world of dictionaries is well-done, all around. Recommend for word nerds.

(Side note: I was consistently blown away every time Fatsis mentioned how much it cost to produce these things. There are times I hyperventilate a bit over the production costs of the books I work on [Don't pirate books, people! We spend a bunch of money to make them!]; the amount it takes to make an unabridged dictionary is...mind-boggling, though actually understandable. Clearly these companies are doing it for the greater good, and God bless them for it.)

Comforting as a jigsaw

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Fellowship of Puzzlemakers is a charming book about various types of love and friendship and finding your people and knowing that it's never too late in life. Clayton Stumper was left at the door of the Fellowship of Puzzlemakers in Bedfordshire, England, in the early 90s and is taken in by founding member Pippa Allsbrook. When she dies 25 years later, Clayton follows the clues she left to try to figure out who he is. The book jumps between the founding of the Fellowship and Clayton's quest.

I am actually not that much of a puzzle person--unless you consider trivia to be a puzzle, which the Fellowship does. Even so, I still found the book appealing. Their membership includes all sorts of puzzles, games, mazes, crosswords, and so on. Pippa lost her parents young and was raised by an uncaring aunt, then grew up to make crossword puzzles for a newspaper. She found a group of like-minded folks and by force of will brought them together.

Clayton, now 25, has spent his life with this group of older folks, living a pretty quiet life. He and Pip were close and he has the other members of the Fellowship, and doesn't really have friends his own age. So when Pip spurs him on after her death, he faces a learning curve.

Author Samuel Burr manages to portray Clayton as being a bit sheltered, a bit shy, without him coming across as too twee. He has his routines and enjoys his life but knows that's probably missing out and it stops him from being a frustrating character. The various members of the Fellowship all have their foibles and their stories.

Because of the framing device of Clayton with flashbacks to the earlier days of the Fellowship, we know certain things, which I honestly found comforting as I read the book. I didn't have to worry too much about the resolution of various issues that popped up for Pippa.

There was also a lovely little bit of romance for Clayton; it definitely isn't the point of the story, but it's well done, doesn't overtake the story, and manages to pull together a few of the story strings.

Recommend if you're in the mood for some cozy fiction.

A collision of murder and post-Revolutionary America

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Probably a 3.5, but I'm rounding up, mostly because I learned about a part of history that I didn't know much about.

In Kingdom of Devils: A Tale of Murder in the Shadow of the American Revolution, author Katherine Grandjean combines two of my areas of interest--true crime and early American history. Brothers Wiley and Micajah Harp went on a killing spree in Tennessee and Kentucky at the end of the 18th century, killing almost indiscriminately in what was then the country's frontier. The story of the brothers, who might be America's first serial killers, remained ensconced in the lore of that part of country, though many of the details are sketchy. Grandjean goes beyond the passed-down stories to go after the facts of the killings, while also connecting the murder spree to the mindset of America during George Washington's Presidency.

Grandjean dug through the records to find the historical Harp brothers--court cases, legal documents. She inserts herself throughout the narrative, which I have mixed feelings about; as a history major, I enjoy learning about her process. At the same time, though, I don't necessarily want that in the story; that's what introductions or afterwords are for.

Ultimately, though, I got frustrated at Grandjean coming up a hypothesis for why the Harps did what they did and then state motivations as given: "The Harps were just the sort of men who Kentucky's gentry feared were coming for their share. And maybe that was the point" (loc. 2047). 

Rampage killing, almost always, is about revenge. It isn't about savoring violence. It isn't about any of the perverse, sadistic pleasures that we associate with modern serial killers. It isn't usually about worldly or material things to be gained once the victims are dead. The gains are mostly psychological: It is about having the last word, about vengeance against those who have caused the killer's unhappiness. Others must be made to suffer "as he has in the past," criminologist James Alan Fox writes of the typical offender. (loc. 2261) 

Her theory is that the Harps tried to do things right--buy land, get married--but that they lost what they had due to much larger forces than their own actions. In response, they killed a bunch of people. Brutally. She writes about them as America's losers (in a way that makes me think of Sondheim's Assassins), about how the Revolution turned the world upside down and made men think they were equal and get upset when they don't realize the American dream:

In ways that historians have not quite grasped, some of the murders of Wiley Harp's era are tied to the very core meanings of the American Revolution--the defining features of the republic itself. Appalachia's disease may only have been a more severe case of something that infected men across the United States in the wake of the American Revolution. Everywhere, in the new republic, men struggled. Shaken free of traditional safety nets, loosed into new places without family, and drunk on a giddy cocktail of new markets and new expectations, they stumbled. Then they fell. (loc. 1404)

(I also don't love the "In way that historians have not quite grasped" here.)

It's not that I don't think she's right; losing everything does drive people to extreme acts of violence. It's the connections to the ethos of the American Revolution that I'm not sure of: "In America, men compete. That is the basic ethos. To be American is to cherish the idea of material success, which, you understand, will be chased by everyone, competitively. But what happens when men fail to realize the dream? Or worse, when they feel it has been robbed from them, or withheld unfairly?" (loc. 1500). 

Murder was its own kind of treason. An affront to the state itself. An affront to the people, as it tore at the very foundations of society. That was how it stood in American law and in American minds, and that is how best to understand Wiley and Micajah Harp. American society--with all its promises--had not worked for them. . . . So in 1798, he decided to step out of society and levy his own little war on its people. . . . Murder, in the end, is social protest. (loc. 2745)

Grandjean is honing on something that is still very much talked about today, with the talk of the male loneliness epidemic and similar. I think she's right, in that the Harps saw their dreams of owning land and living presumably quiet lives with their families being taken away from them. And I'll say that I really appreciated Grandjean going into details about the fickleness of land ownership and deeds at the time, and the relations with Native Americans and their relationships with early American governments, and that while the Revolution may have changed how men saw each other, that didn't particularly change how women were treated. There's a lot of detail and narrative about the early United States that was really interesting and is why I rated this book as high as I did.

I guess it comes down to whether the various storylines in the early American period percolating in the background really affected the Harps. Grandjean mentions at one point a study that showed violence increasing during times of political turmoil in the country, so maybe people are affected. I guess the question for me is, how much of "The world screwed me over, so I'm going to go on a killing spree?" is actually political? And I don't know that it is. In that vein, how political are the murders of Sweeney Todd?

I will say that this book provided a lot of food for thought.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House for an advanced reader copy of this book.

Let's try to learn from the past

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

I like history and nonfiction, but I've found I can't really handle reading nonfiction about contemporary events. I like historical nonfiction because I know how things end and how everything turned out. The story of January 6th...well. We know how it ended, namely, that there were no real consequences. It's upsetting, and reading the details of the day in Storm at the Capitol just make it more upsetting, and it does somewhat lead to spiraling about the current state of the country.

Author Mary Clare Jalonick was in the Capitol that day to cover the certification of the 2020 election; she includes her own story at the end of the book. I appreciated that Jalonick limits the book to January 6th itself; it starts that morning and ends in the early hours of January 7th. She doesn't bother going through the election and the lies and the lawsuits and the rulings. In the beginning, she just notes that the election wasn't stolen--there's no evidence. And it's treated as the truth that it is.

This book should be required reading for everyone. Jalonick includes quotes from Republicans, Democrats, rioters, DC police, Capitol police, staffers, journalists. She includes Trump's tweets from throughout the day. Watching events unfold on tv, I was horrified, but it was so much worse than what it looked like. The descriptions of the fights between the police and the rioters are harrowing. (Though I could've done without the police frequently referring to "antifa" as though that's a real group when discussing the 2020 protests.)

The book also brought back the feelings of the Covid lockdowns and strangeness of being around other people; Jalonick mentions various officials having just gotten or about to get their vaccines. What a strange, awful time for the country (and the world).

The fact that the current president has not only pardoned the people who caused this damage--physical, emotional, and philosophical--but is also trying to give them money defies comprehension...though, of course, he was at the root of the riot itself. It's amazing how quickly some of the people who feared for their lives began undercutting their own experiences.

Primary sources like this are invaluable, particularly in today's landscape. Highly recommend, though it will depress and horrify you.

A 100-year-old feminist novel...with Satan. Literally.

 

⭐⭐⭐ 

 

I feel like Lolly Willowes, or The Loving Huntsman is a solid 3.5; I did quite like it and I liked what author Sylvia Townsend Warner was going for, but I'm not sure I'm totally on board.

Honestly, I would've enjoyed this had it been a more...let's say typical story. Laura Willowes is born toward the end of the 19th century; she has two older brothers and her mother dies while she's very young, so Laura becomes her supportive father's hostess. But when he dies, she gets shuffled off to live with one of her brothers in London. So moves from her father's house to her brother's, where she becomes Aunt Lolly and loses her identity. She lives a very quiet, regimented life and only very belated understands how unhappy she's been. So she leaves! She goes to a village and honestly, that's all I needed. I didn't need her to become a witch and literally meet and converse with Satan.

I realized after reading some Barbara Pym books that I find the stories of women's quiet lives in England, written in the interwar period entertaining. Townsend Warner's writing style is excellent; I was delighted throughout the book:

Mourning [clothing] was never satisfactory if one bought it in a country town. (p. 2)

It was a decent family boast that great-great-aunt Salome's puff paste has been commended by King George III (p. 5)

During the last few years of her life Mrs. Willowes grew continually more skilled in evading responsibilities, and her death seemed but the final perfected expression of this skill (p. 12)

and so on.

The book ultimately comes down to this:

One doesn’t become a witch to run around being harmful, or to run around being helpful either, a district visitor on a broomstick. It’s to escape all that - to have a life of one’s own, not an existence doled out to by others.

That was one of the advantages of dealing with witches; they do not mind if you are a little odd in your ways, frown if you are late for meals, fret if you are out all night, pry and commiserate when at length you return. Lovely to be with people who prefer their thoughts to yours, lovely to live at your own sweet will, lovely to sleep out all night!

Laura finds freedom by fleeing the constraints of society and her family and I feel like that can be done without saying "I'm a witch! In a town of them!" Simply the juxtaposition of her life in Great Mop with that of her life with her brother is enough to show her freedom. But I guess in that world, being a witch is the only way to have those freedoms.

I like what Townsend Warner was saying and I liked her writing, but I wound up slightly aggravated by the book as well. It's still great to get this perspective from that period of time. 

A readable, scholarly-ish look at the magic of baseball

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

Probably more like a 3.75, but I rounded up, because baseball is magical. If you're a baseball fan like I am, you will read The Magical Game: The Spirit and History of Baseball's Superstitions, Rituals, and Curses and think "Relatable" over and over ("Being a fan of any sport is stressful at best and terrifying at worst. Before my miraculous conversion via Syndergaard-ian fastball, I would've laughed at that sentiment, but now I say it with total seriousness. It's scary to want, to root, to hope, to put your faith in strangers, to surrender control--and that is what is asked of us as fans" [loc. 1109]).

Author Addy Baird manages to balance scholarship with the mysticism of baseball and its fandom pretty well. The book starts very strong, but ends a bit weakly. She delves into players' rituals, jinxes, fans and how fans are convinced that they are somehow affecting the game, curses (focusing, naturally, on the Cubs' Curse of the Billy Goat and the Red Sox's Curse of the Bambino), and luck. The last two chapters are...more vague and feel unnecessary, honestly, though they did involve a description of watching a Mets game from the broadcast truck, which is neat.

If you're a baseball fan, you'll enjoy this. Baird delves into the histories of a lot of words like myth and magic, but she also understands the passion and irrationality and fears and hopes of fans. She tries to find the truth behind the story of baseball itself and Babe Ruth's called shot. She describes the curses, but acknowledges that the teams' real curses were those of bad ownership and bad play ("[Historian Glenn] Stout calls the idea a 'fantasy' that he feels has given Red Sox fans a reason to excuse generations of bad baseball, bad management, and bad history . . . You don't need curses or hexes or ghosts or gods to smite down a team when your owner will do it for free (or for, you know, $100,000 and a mortgage on the park" [loc. 1450]).

She talks about how just thinking you're cursed can be enough for players to act like they are cursed, and how those little player (and fan) rituals reinforce themselves: "The daily nature of the game, the quick reinforcement of any superstitious ritual, and the long and storied history of the sport's magical culture all seem to come together in a way that appeals to our innate, evolutionary desire to control and understand our environment" (loc. 1230). Baird goes into the different attitudes of Japanese and American players; Japanese players believe their superstitious rituals help the whole team, not necessarily their own personal stats.

I enjoyed the perspective of the players, the acknowledgment of luck in the game: "This can be maddening for a pitcher--to perform well and produce a poor outcome is a recipe to drive a person crazy" (loc. 424). You can make the perfect pitch and it still turns into a bases-clearing double. What to do? Blame your new socks. In 1948, Al Demaree wrote "Often, there's a difference of no more than half an inch between a three-bagger and a foul ball--with the game, perhaps the pennant, perhaps even the World Series depending on it" (loc. 1766). Ballplayers need something to cling to.

As do fans. Fans' beliefs in their ability to affect the game from afar, whether by watching or not watching or having to maintain their own streaks along with the teams sounds nuts. And it is. But that's part of the magic of the game. (I also learned that early baseball fans were called "cranks," which is just completely bizarre! But also, given the comments on the Orioles site I frequent, sounds completely accurate.)

One notable absence from the book is that of Latin American players, who I'm sure have their own cultures of myth and curses and superstition. Baird ties baseball to America quite a few times, but she still manages to give us some stories from Japan. I'd rather have the Latin American perspective than the more squishy last couple chapters, where Baird starts getting more metaphysical about the game.

Still, a very fun read for baseball fans.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for this advance copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

The duality of Jim Jones

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Closer to a 4.5, but not quite 5 stars.

I've always been mildly intrigued by Jonestown because the mass suicide there happened only a couple of weeks after I was born. And recently I've heard more about how Jim Jones was actually pretty progressive...before. So when my book club decided to have this month be "Pick a book about a cult," this seemed like the way to go; plus, I thought author Jeff Guinn's Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson was very good.

Here's the thing: Jim Jones actually did quite a number of very good things. He was always...off-putting, let us say, but did truly seem committed to equality. Guinn doesn't shy away from the progressively bad parts of Jones, but he also doesn't portray him solely as a power-hungry cult leader (which is obviously where Jones wound up).

Guinn details Jones's rise as a minister while also examining Jones's beliefs (while noting that obviously we have no way of knowing what Jones actually believed about God or religion). One of Jones's strengths was his ability to work a crowd; he started off opening a church in a Black-majority part of Indianapolis and instead of preaching about being rewarded in the afterlife, he focused on what could be done here and now. He attended Black churches and worked Midwest revivals and learned from Father Divine, who claimed to be God in human form. He preached for hours, so much that if you were in the crowd, you probably heard something that made you think "Yes! This guy gets me!" Guinn illustrates the tricks that allowed Jones to make people think that he had psychic abilities, but also shows that Jones was a guy who was charismatic and was good with people.

Jones did, it seem, truly believe in a lot of socialist principles; he wanted racial equality and he wanted to feed and clothe the needy (and did so!). The Peoples Temple opened nursing homes in Indiana and California and they were legitimately good facilities.

As this happened, the church (nominally affiliated with the Disciples of Christ) also took in a lot of money for Jones that didn't make it to the Disciples...or the poor. And naturally, over the years, Jones moved away from focusing on socialism and more on controlling people--by preying on fears of nuclear war, by creating suspicions of any outsiders and especially the government. He lured people in by helping others and then turned on them, forcing people to sign over their Social Security checks and real estate. He curried favor with the right people and got mad if he didn't get what he wanted. Guinn details the progression of the Peoples Temple from socialist church to full-on cult; he describes Jones's descent from a narcissist to cult leader, paranoid and controlling. Jones dropped hints of mass suicide years in advance.

And, of course, came the sex with everyone and the paranoia and the drugs and the physical abuse of parishioners and getting the members to spy on each other, etc., etc.

Ironically, Jonestown itself seemed like it was a fairly decent place; the original Temple members who went to the jungle seemed to have a decent-enough time of it. The work was hard, of course, but they saw themselves as creating the ultimate socialist paradise. Multiracial (Jonestown, at the end, was about two-thirds Black), growing their own food, excellent school facilities. It got a lot worse once Jim Jones got there (fleeing bad press to a place where he thought people couldn't defect from), but even so, many government officials (from both Guyana and the U.S.) went and spoke to residents and genuinely thought people were OK. Sure, their family members were upset, but what could you do?

The story of Jim Jones and what he did to his followers in Guyana is an incredibly depressing one. And it's made more so when you realize the amount of good Jones was actually able to accomplish, and when you contemplate what more he could have done. The details of what happened in November 1978 are horrifying; so is the story of the descent of man who really could've helped make the world better. You know. If he weren't evil.

Watching Hamnet while remembering Hamnet

I was excited when I saw that the Shakespeare Theatre would be bringing in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Hamnet this season; when it came time to actually usher, though, I was slightly less enthusiastic (though part of that was just how crowded my calendar has been lately). I enjoyed the book well enough, but didn't see the recent movie.

The play, adapted by Lolita Chakrabarti based on the Maggie O'Farrell novel, focuses on Agnes Hathaway (Kemi-Bo Jacobs)--a slightly witchy resident of Stratford-upon-Avon who has a crappy stepmother and whose brothers are tutored by a young man named Will (Rory Alexander). She and Will get married and have some children, one of whom dies (the novel actually has a subtitle: "A Novel of the Plague") and the family has to come to grips with that loss.

Chakrabarti changes quite a few things about the book as I remember it. I was pleased that the Agnes of the play wasn't quite the witch that she is in the book; the Agnes on stage is how I wanted her to be in the book--strong and independent and talented with healing and animals and such; different enough that the people in town whisper about her but not actually, like, supernatural.

However, though I was bothered in the book that William was never specified as Shakespeare, here he definitely is. And while I remember his family playing a large part in the book--the married couple does live with them--in the play, Will plays too large a part. There are scenes of him and his fellow actors rehearsing and performing. I enjoyed those bits, but they didn't seem to belong in the play.

Kemi-Bo Jacobs and Rory Alexander as Agnes and William Shakespeare in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Hamnet. Photo by Kyle Flubacker.

The story of Hamnet is that of Agnes, about her life and grief and coping. I remember it permeating the book, and while the play has some ghostly children running about in Act One, Hamnet's illness doesn't occur until the second act. The book is told in flashback format and I feel like the play would've benefited from that as well. 

And once the boy does succumb, Will continues to remain in the forefront while Agnes seems more sidelined. Grief, since it is usually pretty internal, can be hard to be depicted, particularly on stage, which doesn't lend itself to closeups and such. But I still felt like more of Agnes's grief should've been seen.

Of course, that's all with the knowledge of the book; without those vague memories of a book I read 5 years ago, I probably would've enjoyed this a lot more. I thought Jacobs and Alexander were both great; likable, with good chemistry. I enjoyed seeing their relationship develop. Ditto the various side characters, particularly Troy Alexander as Bartholomew, Agnes's brother, and Bert Seymour as Richard Burbage. I was confused about who some of the side characters were, however, which was a bit distracting during the show. I also thought the set design was neat, with a platform being raised and lowered to stand in for various rooms.

I did largely enjoy the production, though ultimately I think I would've liked it more without any knowledge of the source material. Sadly, I don't think it lives up to the book.

Secrets, Self-Discovery, and a Not-So-Mad Mabel

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

I read Mad Mabel almost cover to cover on a cross-country flight and it really was the perfect companion; an entertaining combination of intrigue, character development, and reflection on how people come to be who they are.

Eighty-one-year-old Elsie Fitzpatrick has lived a quiet life on Kelly Lane for decades, though recently a single mother and her daughter have moved in and young Persephone has taken an interest in her neighbor. But after Elsie discovers the body of an elderly neighbor (whom she describes as her "nemesis"), people start taking an interest in her past and quickly discover that Elsie is actually "Mad Mabel," a figure connected to a number of deaths, infamous enough to be covered in schools. 

Author Sally Hepworth jumps between the present and the backstory in a way that feels natural; the two stories build on each other. I see this book tagged as "Mystery" and "Thriller," but that's not how I'd describe it (though it seems like that's a lot of what Hepworth writes); it's truly a character study that somewhat leads to a meditation on how people become who they are...and how others' and our own perceptions of ourselves influence our lives. It's a drama.

The core of the story is Elsie/Mabel's relationships, with her parents, with her schoolmates, with her neighbors. With others. There's a lot of plot, but the book rests very solidly on its characters. Did I gasp a couple of times at reveals? I did. Did my heart break over and over? It did. Did I want to put this book down? I did not.

I did feel at times that Hepworth tried a touch too hard to be clever with certain plot points and the whole "Elsie thinks she's a crank nobody likes, but she's actually good inside!" trope, and I found it hard to believe that Elsie would be so flippant with the police in the present, given her past. Still, these are nitpicks. Definitely recommend.

Thank you to the St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A love letter to friendship

⭐⭐⭐⭐
 

I wasn't as in love with this book as I was with Maame, but I still really really liked this.

Remy has written a bestseller based on her relationship with her three close friends, but life has pulled them in different directions (one had a baby, one moved to New York, etc.). She bumps into Simone, with whom she went to school (though they weren't close), and the two manage to become friends--even though Simone keeps herself closed off from the world after her family finds out that she has a side hustle as an escort. It's sort of a black cat/golden retriever trope situation.

Author Jessica George does an amazing job exploring friendships--making new ones, uncertainty about established ones. Remy finds herself adrift; she quit her job after the success of her book and now is trying to deal with writer's block while also not having anything (or anyone, other than her mother) to anchor herself. Simone's sister was her best friend, but after becoming estranged from her family, Simone's talked herself into believing that she doesn't need anyone. George's depiction of adult loneliness struck home over and over; I certainly remember having the same revelation as Remy: "I'm not the priority. Their own families and careers will come before me, of course they will" (loc. 304).

The book focuses pretty much exclusively on friendship, not romance, which I appreciate. I've dealt with the loss of friendships over the years (who hasn't), some with blow-up endings and some drifting. We get older and people make different choices about their lives and relationships and careers and children and it's hard to maintain friendships, and there's a lot of reflection on that that I so appreciated:

"I keep debating whether I'm being overly emotional and that this is an expected part of life, that I'm just supposed to move on. The girls all seem to be doing exactly that, and it breaks my heart that I'm the only one reacting like this. I'm the only one who seems hurt and impacted by their absence. It makes me feel like my friendship wasn't meaningful enough. You only miss what you truly loved, right?" I look away. "Maybe that's on me, maybe I loved harder than I can be loved." (loc. 2513)

---

I decided I'd much rather devote time and emotional energy to my friends, rather than to a romantic partner. It had never fully occurred to me that, someday, my friends would not do the same. (loc. 519)

---

Or maybe it's comparable to romantic relationships, where after years together, it's less about trying to replicate what you once had an more about growing alongside each other, and allowing the other person to change. Maybe the answer lies in figuring out how we maintain what we have with distance and new priorities between us? (loc. 2132)

Not that that 100% describes me--I am not as good a friend as Remy is, to be sure--but it resonated as I reflected on my relationships over the years.

There's also a decent amount of discussion about having children or not having children, (view spoiler) There's acknowledgment that women aren't necessarily meant to have children, and that there's a middle ground between women who want children and women who don't want children. There's so much nuance and grace given permeating the book.

One minor quibble is that while the actual plot ending worked for me, it dragged on a bit too long. I didn't need a "6 months later" AND a "1 year later" AND an epilogue. We did need that information to wrap up these stories--or, at least, these parts of these stories--but I can't help but feel like it could've been handled a different way.

Still, highly recommend. George manages to take a lot of nuanced relationships and situations and bring them to a satisfying place. This book hasn't even released yet and I'm already looking forward to what Jessica George does next.

Thank you to the St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A history that breaks the heart: How the Tulsa Massacre was shaped by history—and memory

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

I think the first time I heard about the Tulsa riot/massacre was a news story that was about the effort to find mass graves. If I recall, the people doing the searching didn't find what they were looking for, but it did make an impression on me.

Riot and Remembrance: The Tulsa Race War and Its Legacy was first published in 2002; the edition I read had a preface in 2021, written for the 100th anniversary of the event, when the massacre was very much on people's minds after the summer of 2020. Author James S. Hirsch begins the new preface by noting "Anytime you write a book about a historical event, the question inevitably arises: What relevance does that event have today? No one is asking that anymore about the Tulsa race massacre of 1921" (p. 6).

This is an excellent book. Hirsch goes through the history of Tulsa, describing how the city developed and the attitudes of the residents and how those led to the events of May 31-June 1, 1921 ("Even in its early boom years, the city's lawlessness was virtually impossible to stop" [p. 33]); I was surprised to learn how new a city Tulsa is and how ingrained racism was in Oklahoma and Tulsa itself ("The ascendancy of the Democratic Party at statehood . . . meant the denial of civil liberties to blacks, but Oklahoma was determined to out-Jim Crow the other southern states" [p. 44]). Hirsch goes into racial violence and lynching and the tropes that white people believed about Black people being happy during slavery and how that affected race relations in the 1920s:

The "new Negro" was the malevolent counterpart of the "old Negro," or "Sambo," whom whites invented during slavery and later romanticized in merchandise as a simple, carefree "darky" who lived in an antebellum racial utopia. The "new Negro," according to this view, lacked the civilizing restraints of slavery and was therefore regressing to a state of barbarism. Physical force was the only way to restrain him. (p. 62)

Hirsch describes the precipitating events and what happened in Tulsa during the massacre, but it took up less of the book than I expected. It's still hard to read. Part of the issue goes hand-in-hand with the second part of the book title: "remembrance." Because in the years after the massacre, a lot of the primary documents disappear. There's debate about whether a newspaper published an editorial "To Lynch a Negro Tonight"; the editorial page and front-page story about the inciting incident were both cut from the newspaper's bound volumes. Even the official documentation has disappeared. So mostly what we're left with is what participants and victims told their descendants.

Hirsch details what happened after the massacre, what happened to the residents of Greenwood (which was awful and incredibly degrading, which shouldn't have surprised me but still did) in the immediate aftermath and as time went on. He talks about the town rebuilding and what happened to various people involved, and then how it was remembered--or denied.

Essentially, white people believed that Black people invaded their side of town and they had to defend themselves. Black people believed that a Black teenager was going to be lynched for assaulting a white woman--a white woman who pretty quickly denied that she was assaulted and said she wouldn't pretty charges--and so they went to where he was being held to prevent that from happening. In the time to come, both groups came to believe certain things, whether or not those were factual.

Hirsch spends a lot of the book going into the remembrance of the event, how people try to deny it, how it was discussed or not, how it was researched, how the threat of another one loomed over the residents of Tulsa, both Black and white, how it was commemorated. A commission was assembled in the 1990s to study it and make recommendations, including about reparations. He gets into what actually happened as well as he can.

I appreciated how even-handed he was. The horrors of the destruction of Greenwood aren't denied; he delves a lot into issues like whether the area was firebombed and whether there were mass graves of victims. (Having read this, I feel like planes definitely flew over the area but didn't bomb it; there were definitely more victims that the official tally, but I'm unsure about the mass graves.) He tells the stories of victims with respect and my heart absolutely broke for them, but he doesn't accept everything they say at face value. He does tell their story, sharing things, for example, like the idea that the massacre was planned by white city officials; my impression is more that these people took advantage of what was going on to destroy Greenwood, but they didn't plan it. Circumstances were definitely in their favor. He follows Don Ross, a Black journalist-turned-politician (who fought to get the Confederate flag off the capitol grounds) throughout the remembrance section. Ross is a fascinating figure and this from him really struck me:

When a white interviewer suggested that race relations had improved since the 1950s, [Ross] leaned forward and glared. "How in the hell can you tell me that?" he demanded. "You know, you talk about privilege and entitlement. The biggest entitlement white folks have is the entitlement of being white. Break that for me . . . I mean, it don't make sense to me, the white folks' attitude, that somehow I ought to be appreciative that you don't hate me as much. That's the progress. Once you would physically kill me, and I have evidence of that, and now you just choke me to death economically and politically and socially, and you want me to say that's progress from dying! 'Because you sonofabitch you, we coulda killed your black a**,' that's what you're telling me. But now we let you live, and I'm proud of that progress. White folks let me live. Until I get the same entitlement irrespective of skin color, f**k you . . . But I love you. (p. 228)

I feel like I learned a lot from this book, and as a history major, the discussion of how events are remembered, officially and unofficially, fascinated me. But ultimately, the book just broke my heart over and over again.

Recommend.

A solidly Plot-ted thriller

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

More of a 3.75; The Plot is definitely closer to 4 stars than 3 stars.

Jacob Bonner had a promising debut novel, a disappointing follow-up, and then found himself wandering the world of a novelist who doesn't really have another one in him...but doesn't have the skills for anything else. So he winds up teaching at a program where a student tells him the plot for the novel he's working on; Bonner realizes that the student is right, the plot is guaranteed to be a hit, but over the years, the novel never appears. After finding the student died, Bonner writes the book himself (using just the central conceit of the book) and becomes a celebrity novelist, getting the fame, fortune, and even love he didn't really think was possible. But he's living with the guilt of having stolen the idea.

Of course, ideas can't be stolen; as is detailed in the book, you can only copyright actual written material. Even so, Bonner has a hard time living with himself. He knows that he did the work of writing the book himself, and after years of teaching and doing online writing consulting, he is very well aware that someone having an idea for a book is very different than actually writing it. I wonder how much of the guilt was because the student was a competent writer; not a great one, but decent.

We do learn the big twist of the plot eventually, for which I was very relieved; there's a lot of talk in the book about how it's this huge can't miss idea, guaranteed to be picked up and directed by a big name, will definitely sell millions, etc. And when I got to the twist, it was...you know, good. It's a solid story. It's not something that's never been done before, certainly (and I listen to and read enough true crime to know that it's something that has happened in real life many times). Is it a good story? Yes. I don't know that it would help Bonner to realize that the book probably wouldn't have been as big a hit if the student had written it; Bonner has the training and experience of being a good writer to turn the book into a hit. Like, I'm sure other people had probably written Gone Girl-like books before Gillian Flynn did; they just didn't go anywhere.

So I found the beginning of the book more interesting than the rest, when Bonner starts poking around the student's life after getting "You're a thief" messages from someone online. I loved the look into the writing program where he taught and how it just kept getting sadder over the years; I loved him setting himself up as a writing consultant online and working at a hotel-turned-writer's-retreat. I honestly probably would've been happy with a book about him working at that hotel, trying to eke out a life that way.

The ending worked for me, though I got a bit frustrated with Bonner not putting certain pieces together sooner in the story. Of course, it is hard when you're the main character in a story because you don't realize you are the main character of a story, and that your life will involve twists of its own.

A compelling thriller. I'll probably pick up The Sequel at some point.

Romance round up

⭐⭐⭐ 

I enjoy author Olivia Dade's writing and particularly enjoyed At First Spite, the first book in this series, so I was very excited for Second Chance Romance to come out. Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed.

Molly moved a ton growing up, so she learned not to put down roots and make attachments. But in high school, she wound up in Harlot's Bay, Maryland, where she became friends with Karl. They liked each other and almost kissed, but neither pursued it and Molly abruptly moved across the country. They stayed in touch for a bit, but eventually, 20 years have passed and Molly and Karl haven't spoken. Then Molly hears Karl died, so she heads back to Maryland. He's very much alive, very much wants her to stick around, and they are both very very bad at communicating.

The basic conflict is good. Molly and Karl both suck at communicating. Molly has some pretty solid reasons; Karl shows his feelings via actions, but is truly terrible at actually talking to people. I probably would have liked this a bit more if Karl were literally better at talking; a lot of his dialogue is in sentence fragments, which just grated on me after a while. And I guess some people are just like this, but it kind of bothered me that there wasn't any backstory about why Karl, for example, was sick with flu for a week and told literally nobody about it, even though they were checking in on him. He doesn't listen when people try to tell him things, and I was a bit turned off when, very early into Molly's time in Harlot's Bay, he told her that he wanted her to move across the country for him. (But not saying it would be "for him," of course.) At that point, he didn't know much about her life in LA and it just struck me as incredibly presumptuous.

Molly, happily, is much more likeable, even if she is also a grump. Her backstory made sense to bring her to the place where she is in the book. She spends the book trying to figure out whether she trusts Karl and examining her feelings and trying to determine what could change her mind (and heart). Her journey felt real to me. Karl, on the other hand, naturally has some revelations late in the book, but I just never really warmed up to him.

Still, I like the world of Harlot's Bay. I'd love to read a book about Lise.

---

 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I had already gotten A Novel Love Story home from the library when I noticed it's by, Ashley Poston, the author of The Dead Romantics, which I quite enjoyed. The premise intrigued me--lost in a storm in New York's Catskills, Elsy takes an exit and winds up in what she realizes is the town from her favorite romance series. Everything and everyone is familiar, except Anders, the town's bookstore owner...who also happens to be the only other one to know that they're in a fictional town.

I really liked this. The romance series isn't done--the author died in a car crash between books 4 and 5--and Elsy finds a town that's stuck. Poston explores whether happily ever afters actually are and the perils of a town in stasis. She grapples with grief, over the death of a loved one and the death of a relationship. She examines how people need to be careful to remain themselves in relationships, both romantic and friendship, and how easy it can be to just try to be go along and coast in the wake of someone else.

I loved Elsy getting to interact with her favorite characters and I think Poston did a good job handling the details of the magical fictional town (e.g., details like WiFi and cell coverage). Elsy has to deal with the fact that she's interacting with people whom she knows intimately but has to act like she doesn't; she has to try not to butterfly effect anything, but it's hard to not blurt out what you think after spending years reading and re-reading and discussing. And getting comments from the various characters on what their lives are actually like was great; glimpses of authorial intent vs. reality for the characters. And I liked the reveal at the end of the book about Anders, as well as Elsy figuring out what to do with her own life. I liked how much this was about friendship.

That said, I do wish we had actually seen some of the minor characters; they were mentioned, and there were a few group scenes, but I don't think any of them even had a line in the book. I also got frustrated with Elsy a few times in the book for not figuring out a few things more quickly (mostly just about where she has cell service in town). I think Poston managed to make Eloraton come across as less twee than the town in Dead Romantics--though it probably is that twee in the actual series--there were a still a few elements that were a bit much. But the artifice of the premise helped.

Still, I read the vast majority of this book in one sitting. A good balance of high-concept and real emotion. 

Looking back to King for a road ahead

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I never know whether it's encouraging or depressing to read books about history and feel hit over the head again and again with parallels to what we're dealing with today.

This biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., is fantastic. Author Jonathan Eig does an amazing job truly bringing King to life. He never puts King up on a pedestal; his King is fully human and his more problematic traits--particularly his womanizing and his plagiarizing--are addressed throughout the book. (Also, and it comes up a lot, King was not tall. He was 5'7". People throughout the book are like, "He was shorter than I expected.")

Eig brings home that King never really planned what wound up being his career in civil rights; he wanted to preach, maybe go into academia. (I wonder how that would've affected his plagiarism?) He basically wound up caught up in events; he knew he wanted to preach in a Southern church, but it was luck or fate or what-have-you that brought him to a church in Montgomery, Alabama to be there for the bus boycott.

Reading the book, it also hit home how much King (and other leaders) were winging it. They'd try to create organizations but didn't really have much in the way of plans or goals or methodology. Decisions frequently were made spontaneously, which was understandably frustrating for many people involved. And King wound up walking a tightrope of the fight for civil rights while trying to leverage his relationship with the Kennedys/LBJ. He was blasted by other activists as not doing enough; he was blasted by many as being too radical. And there was no clear path for what he was trying to do.

His commitment to nonviolence was striking. He was attacked and literally kept his arms at his sides. Eig takes us on King's journey; his thoughts weren't always on nonviolence being the best path, but when he committed, he committed. His acceptance of his own death also made an impression. There was just so much violence all around him, from the violence during marches to bombs being thrown into people's home and churches to activists getting murdered, King knew his own murder was inevitable, particularly as the 1960s progressed. He was under so much stress, felt all the pressure of winning the Nobel Peace Prize and being Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the leader everyone looked to, agonized over the knowledge that the FBI was trying to plant stories in the media about his adultery and what that could mean for him (not to mention the FBI trying to get him to kill himself, good Lord, J. Edgar Hoover really was the worst). It all weighed on him as he took the civil rights battle to the north, where he discovered people were just as bad as in the South. Some people thought his job was done, with various civil rights bills signed into law, but he saw more and more how much needed to change. He became more radical in his thinking, speaking out against the Vietnam War, which Eig points out again and again was still fairly popular with the general population, and more people hated him and he felt he wasn't doing enough and he was tired. There was so much to do, and he knew he didn't have much time.

King's gift was in his words, both spoken and written. The story of "Letter From Birmingham Jail" was fascinating, but what impressed me about Eig's storytelling is how he managed to convey King's speeches and preaching via the written word. His descriptions of how King actually spoke was stellar. And I just wanted to go through and underline so much of what King said because it remains powerful and applicable. His words resonate today as they did 60 years ago.

This book is incredibly worth the read. Eig's narrative is engaging; it's a big book, but it goes quickly. And the acknowledgments and notes are also worth a look.

I'll end with how Eig ends his story:

Young people hear his dream of brotherhood and his wish for children to be judged by the content of their character, but not his call for fundamental change in the nation's character, not his cry for an end to the triple evils of materials, militarism, and racism.

...Where do we go from here? In spite of the way America treated him, King still had faith when he asked that question. Today, his words might help us make our way through these troubled times, but only if we actually read them; only if we embrace the complicated King, the flawed King, the human King, the radical King; only if we see and hear him clearly again, as America saw and heard him once before.

"Our very survival," he wrote, "depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change."

Amen. (pp. 556-557)

Netflix's show about President Garfield is Lightning in a bottle

I've spent the last 10 years recommending Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard to people, particularly when I'm volunteering at Ford's Theatre. Most people don't know anything about President James A. Garfield, much less about his assassin; before reading that book, I only really knew what I had learned from Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell and the musical Assassins. The book is fantastic; go read it.

So naturally I was VERY excited when I saw that Netflix was released a limited-run series based on it, titled Death by Lightning (from a letter written by Garfield, in which he noted that "Assassination can no more be guarded against than death by lightning"), and prayed that it would be better than Apple TV's Manhunt. Of course, being much less versed in Garfield assassination lore than in Lincoln, I knew I wouldn't be turning quite the same critical eye on it--particularly since it has been almost 10 years since I read the book.

Matthew Macfadyen (Charles Guiteau) and Michael Shannon (James Garfield). (Larry Horicks/Netflix)

I was struck that, like Manhunt, the tv adaptation told a pretty different story than the book did. There's maybe 40 minutes left in the series when Charles Guiteau shoots President Garfield, which seems like an odd choice, because one of the remarkable things about the Garfield assassination is how very long it took Garfield to die (more than 2 months). Another fascinating piece is the Guiteau trial, one of the first major trials where it looked like the insanity defense could come into play.

One of the biggest things I remember from Destiny is the involvement of Alexander Graham Bell--his history, his inventions, his motivation to try to help find the bullet lodged inside of the President. In Lightning, he's basically a cameo.

I do wish the show had spent more time after the shooting. But the story the show wanted to tell was, for some reason, the clash between Garfield and Roscoe Conkling. It makes some sense, in today's world, to want to tell the story of Garfield, who seems to have been an excellent person, fighting the political machine and winning. If there's a takeaway from this story, it's that the spoils system is bad. And especially right now, it's good that people (a) learn what the spoils system is and (b) learn that it's bad.

The show does a good job of weaving Guiteau through the story. We only get flashes of his life before 1880, but it's enough. Macfadyen's portrayal is pretty much exactly as I've picture Charles Guiteau--enthusiastic and off-putting and sometimes charming but a bit strange. It's truly a fantastic performance. The flashes of anger, of betrayal; his convictions; the way he writes his story in his head, it's all there. There are moments when you feel bad for him, but then he goes and does something and you're out.

Honestly, the entire cast is fantastic. There's a lot of great performances, including Michael Shannon as Garfield, Nick Offerman as Chester Arthur (and I feel like Arthur historians undoubtedly were yelling at their televisions throughout the show; I know virtually nothing about the man and still feel like liberties were clearly taken with his story), Bradley Whitford as James Blaine, Betty Gilpin as Lucretia Garfield. Like, yes, thank you, I do want to watch Josh Lyman and Ron Swanson go at it! And when Gilpin's Crete confronts Macfadyen's Guiteau while he's in jail...that scene was amazing. I'm sure it never happened, but I don't care. 

Do I wish the show reflected Millard's book better? Absolutely. Do I plan on recommending it to anyone and everyone, particularly when I'm volunteering at Ford's Theatre? Also yes. Seriously, go watch this show; it's only four episodes and is well worth your time. 

On change and book-tracking

In which you get to work through my thought process with me. 

Like many others, I'm trying to use Amazon less. For a long time, my line in the sand in buying stuff from Amazon was books; as someone who works in publishing, and who deals with the fulfillment and distribution side of it, I know how bad Amazon is for publishers. (And just to work with, in general, from that side. Ugh! My go-to answer for "What's the least favorite part of your job?" in interviews has been "Dealing with Amazon," and it pretty much always gets a knowing laugh.)

But there's a book-related entity that's owned by Amazon that I use regularly and keep trying to ignore its ownership: Goodreads. I joined Goodreads in 2010, three years before its purchase by Amazon. And it's always had its controversies, but still. At some point I got bored and inputted my reading history, going back to 2004. 

There are alternatives, I know, the most prominent being The StoryGraph, which I try not to judge too much for the "The" in its name. (I'm sure it was so they could get the web domain or some other valid reason.) I tried to do StoryGraph maybe a year or so ago. I ported over all my data, so I wouldn't lose everything. But I just find it incredibly not user-friendly. Some of that undoubtedly is my own resistance to change.

I admit I like re-reading the reviews I've written for books; someone mentions a book and I'm like, "Oh, I've read that! What did I think about it?" (which is why I write reviews for pretty much everything I read nowadays; I'm mad at my past self for not writing down my thoughts and now I don't remember anything about the book). On Goodreads, if I pull up a book that I've written a review of, it pops right up, followed by reviews from other people.

On StoryGraph, the review is there. You just have to hunt for it.

And I'm sure I'd get used to clicking on the little "see review" in the upper right. It's just that I'd rather see that--or others' comments on the book--than what they actually have on the main page:

I...do not particularly care about any of that. Or, I do, but I definitely will not consult StoryGraph when I'm figuring out what to read, though I'm sure many do. There are times when I'm more in the mood for plot-driven than character-driven, and I'm sure rating this kind of thing is helpful for many other readers. It really comes down to wishing that I could customize the page. 

I'm also annoyed that if I go to thestorygraph.com on my browser, it assumes I'm not logged in, so I sign in--in a new window--and it's all, "You're already signed it." Dude, I know. I just need to learn to go to app.thestorygraph.com.

That said, even just playing around on the site has gotten me more familiar with how it works, which is good. I also quite like the Stats page they have and that you can give books half (or quarter!) stars. 

Honestly, the biggest hurdle to totally switching is that pretty much all my friends are on Goodreads. I like seeing what they're reading and reading their reviews. Right now I only have one friend on Storygraph; I guess if you want to join there, feel free to friend me--my handle there is @editbarb. We can all see whether I get bored enough to load the books I've read since...um, November 2024. Sigh. And then stay active.

It's also interesting seeing what other options are out there. For example, NetGalley, which I sometimes use to get advance reader copies of books, has launched Booktrovert. They aren't really going for the same vibe; they're less about tracking books and more about discovering books through giveaways or sweepstakes, getting preorder offers, actually reading books through their platform, playing games, participating in reading challenges, and that kind of thing (per their "About" page). You can track books there (and categorize them in "Stacks"), but it doesn't look like you can even rate them, much less write reviews.

It is kind of neat. I'm always pro offers of free books, and you can create cute virtual bookshelves and do bingo cards for reading challenges. They also have book-related merch, which is also fun. It's probably smart of them to not challenge Goodreads in the book tracking sector but instead offer something adjacent with the reach they have of NetGalley. 

There are other sites/apps, too, like Fable, Bookmory (seems to be app-only), Hardcover, LibraryThing, Bookwyrm, Bookly, and more. It's enough to make me wish I had the energy to evaluate all of them to see what matches best for what I want.

Though as I said, one of the biggest drawbacks to leaving Goodreads would be losing my friends there. I could always just keep getting the Goodreads emails to see what people are up to...we'll see. 

Booktok pick not hitting for me

⭐⭐⭐

I don't believe I've read romantasy before, not even going back to The Mists of Avalon or Mercedes Lackey; I'm not huge into fantasy, really, but the concept for Assistant to the Villain looked cute and the series was on my sister's shelf when I visited, so it was easy enough to borrow.

The premise of the book is good: Evie Sage winds up working as the executive assistant for The Villain (whose real name we learn thankfully early in the book) through Circumstances. This is a world where many people, though not all, have magical powers; there are dragons and other creatures and kings and sort of a standard fantasy set-up. The plot ultimately becomes Evie and the Villain trying to figure out who's betraying him and wreaking havoc at Mayhem Manor (or whatever the actual name for his place is; it's something like that).

The book took a while to get going, but once we got more into the plot about the spy and things happening there, it picked up and I got invested. I enjoyed the various people who worked for the Villain and the details of their jobs and what working for a fantasy villain entails.

However. Evie is clearly meant to be endearing, but it's in that "Blurts out inappropriate things and then babbles" way; when she's not doing that, she's fine, in a too-perfect way. I really just needed the book to cut, like, 80% of Evie and the Villain thinking about each other and how much they like each other and "Stop thinking about your boss that way, Evie!" internal thoughts, etc., etc. The Villain himself was pretty interesting, but his backstory...just did NOT work for me. Or, at least, the details of it didn't; its general arc made sense.

The actual plot itself is pretty good, but the book just took too long to get going and honestly, the writing isn't great. I'll still read at least the next book in the series--this one ends in a cliffhanger--and I'll see how I feel after that.

Another in the "Don't Read While Hungry" series: Trigger warning for rugelach

⭐⭐⭐⭐

I quite enjoyed The Matzah Ball, by Jean Meltzer. Rachel is the daughter of a prominent rabbi and a doctor, has myalgic encephalomyelitis (a.k.a. chronic fatigue syndrome), and is in love with Christmas--to the extent that she makes her living as a Christmas romance novelist. She's told she needs to write a Hanukkah book, though, so she determines that she needs to attend the Matzah Ball, a party being thrown on the eighth night of Hanukkah by Jacob, who was her camp boyfriend when they were 10 years old.

Having read a bunch of holiday-themed rom coms lately, I particularly appreciated that both Rachel and Jacob are flawed. (And I really appreciated that the book does include both POVs.) A misunderstanding at camp affected both of them, but it's not like they've spent the last 20 years pining for the other. Jacob has issues from his upbringing and Rachel is pretty self-absorbed. The two of them together were good, though.

I also enjoyed getting a look at the life of more observant Jews; the description of the Shabbat where Jacob visits Rachel's parents, particularly, was illuminating. It brought me back to 2002, when I wound up booking a hotel in a quite Jewish neighborhood, staying on a Saturday night. (There was...not much available. Also, the elevators stopped on every floor!) I also found the discussion of Hanukkah interesting--how it is a minor holiday, but the characters brought their own depths and perceptions to it. And characters run the gamut from very observant to less; it all felt very inclusive and realistic.

A big highlight for me was Jacob's journey and him coming to terms with his past and family issues. He's truly more than just the love interest in the book; he has his own arc and adorable, supportive bubbe.

Recommend for a good late-year read.