I would like to start sharing my thoughts, reviews, photos and projects with the world in the same place. I have plenty of random reviews posted on disparate sites, musings on FaceBook and a now defunct LiveJournal… A new blog is a perfect home for my content!
Join me on my journey, if you wish! I plan to explore many of my interests here–from food and film to crafts and cleaning to books and more.
I look forward to your comments, suggestions and creative criticisms. It is nice to meet you!
Animal Farm by George Orwell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
**Spoilers ahead** This classic cautionary tale is still as relevant today as ever. It’s also a really quick read, re-read, or listen. I listened to this audiobook again after studying this book in school many years ago. We follow a group of animals living on Manor Farm, roused to plan for a rebellion by Old Major’s inspiring speech, singing “Beasts of England” all the way to freedom from man and beyond.
Old Major dies, but the revolution lives on without him and the animals successfully rebel soon after his death. They kick out Mr. Jones, his wife, and all their farmhands. Initially, the newly re-named “Animal Farm” is the picture of an ideal communist community. Snowball, one of those clever pigs, writes up the seven rules or commandments of Animalism on the barn wall:
The (Original) Seven Commandments of Animalism
1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
3. No animal shall wear clothes.
4. No animal shall sleep in a bed.
5. No animal shall drink alcohol.
6. No animal shall kill any other animal.
7. All animals are equal.
These tenets of Animalism are reduced to the most essential idea by what the sheep can remember, “Four legs good, two legs bad.” The pigs and the dogs are the most clever animals on the farm and the most capable of learning, aside from Benjamin, the only donkey on the farm, who is thoroughly cynical. Most of the other animals are capable of memorizing small phrases or a song like Beast of England, but cannot learn and recall the entire alphabet. In fact, some of the horses(like Boxer) try to learn the alphabet but cannot remember more than the first few letters. This difference in literacy and capacity for learning becomes one key to the decline in conditions on Animal Farm over years after the initial rebellion.
Key pigs lead the animals on the farm, with the initial leadership and inspiration from Old Major, and then the dueling leaders of Snowball and Napolean, two more pigs that have conflicting ideas on what tasks are most important to complete first (building a windmill, or not). Snowball learns how to build a windmill, and draws out complex plans for one on the floor of one of the rooms in the farmhouse. He argues passionately for the creation of the windmill, as the creation of this would reduce the need for labor from the animals on the farm, and increase the quality of life as a result. Napolean does not want the labor of the animals to focus on the windmill yet and works with another pig named Squealer as his official spokesperson to try and win the support of the other animals. This is only one piece of many different plans for improving the lives of all animals on the farm. Many ideas are proposed, from establishing standard ages for when animals of different species can retire to setting up electricity and running water in all the stalls where they sleep, among other ideas.
But Napolean doesn’t play fair and he brought up a litter of puppies to be his personal watchdogs and enforcers as Snowball’s attention is focused on the windmill plans. Snowball is driven out in a coup and this is the beginning of the end for Animal Farm as a communist community where all animals are equal and consider each other to be comrades. Snowball becomes the byword and reason for everything that goes wrong, in addition to the idea that no matter how bad it gets–the conditions are better than when Mr. Jones ran the farm. Discussions of proposals in the barn between comrades in the evenings are stopped and replaced by orders handed down by Napolean to Squealer.
Boxer (one of the horses) takes on two maxims:
1. I will work harder.
2. Napolean is always right.
He wakes up earlier(and progressively even earlier) than all the other animals and takes on most of the grunt work of breaking up large stones on the property with the use of gravity to provide smaller stones for the structure of the Windmill. The pigs work to learn everything they can from the books people abandoned in the farmhouse and they start working on trade deals with the owners of the neighboring farms, and initially are fooled into accepting (supposedly) counterfeit bills for a load of seasoned dry wood they sell off instead of taking a check as payment. This leads the neighboring humans to see weakness and attack the farm and attempt to take it back from the animals, blowing up the windmill and destroying countless hours of works.
As the animals recover from the attack, with some dead or injured after, they rebuild the windmill with much thicker walls than the original plan. They labor to till, seed and reap what they sow in the fields, but Napolean progressively withdraws from public life, speaking only through announcements that he sends Squealer to make to the other animals, always surrounded by his cadre of loyal dogs, and the pigs make small periodic changes to the various commandments of Animalism to suit their own purposes and want for luxury. Eventually, the seven commandments of Animalism are replaced entirely by one maxim: “Four legs are good but two legs are better” immediately before all the pigs walk a tour of the farm ground on two legs, dressed in clothes left by the humans.
Many years down the line, after they build the second windmill and Boxer fell and was sent off in the knacker/glue truck, Napolean has established solid trade relations with the neighboring farm owners and has managed to make the living and working conditions even worse for the rest of the animals, while ever-increasing the efficiency of the workers and the tools they use to produce excess goods, with only the pigs and dogs benefiting from this excess.
The pigs start to meet with the humans for social reasons as well as for reasons of trade, they have been brewing beer and using excess goods to exchange for money and then for cases of whiskey, which leads to the ultimate moment at the end of the story when the other farm animals peer into the farmhouse window and they cannot tell the difference between the pigs and the humans as they have become the same. The humans even praise Napolean for managing tools and labor practices that lead Animal Farm (which even loses its revolutionary name at the end) to be more efficient than the human-led farms, and they pledge to take on some of these practices at their farms too.
There are clear parallels to different historical events, the biggest influence being the story of communism in the USSR and how it became so different from Marx and Lenin’s original intentions under Stalin’s leadership. Most of the main characters who are pigs have direct parallels to major figures from the USSR. But one of the key tenets/ideas of capitalism is centered around trying to eke out the most possible productivity from your workers while increasing the amount of excess goods/labor they produce while providing the least possible compensation and services to these workers. These ideas are expressed so well in this short novel that it is a perfect parable for the contrast between communist and capitalist ideals–especially the slow shift from one to the other, relying on the low intelligence and lack of literacy from their constituents.
This clearly mirrors some of the issues we have today with social media replacing many people’s access to news (unbiased or otherwise) and the creation of an echo chamber where we only see ideas we agree with as we unfollow or unfriend those people we disagree with. When people can read but choose not to, it’s much easier to be taken advantage of by their employers and government. I highly recommend reading or listening to this book now, whether or not you previously studied it in school. Here is the ISBN number for the audiobook I enjoyed: 9781481540544.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Belzebubs is a short, entertaining read centering around a black metal family, their band, and the romances and friendships of the various family members. This graphic novel gathers up a number of single 4-panel strips of the popular webcomic of the same name. There are some story threads that weave through the entire graphic novel, but there are a bunch of one-off comics here too.
To get this out of the way, I will say that there were one or two comics that felt racially insensitive to me. Other than those, I solidly enjoyed this quick read. The Belzebubs are a close-knit family with a chosen few friends and bandmates that make up the cast of this comic. The family’s interactions are very cute and lighthearted, even though they seem extreme for a “normal” family. The author relishes turning concepts of love (familial and otherwise) and friendship on their head with a “metal twist”. If you enjoy tongue-in-cheek references to biblical tales of evil and Dante’s Inferno, keep an eye out for references on t-shirt design and especially the town map that is laid out in one spread.
One memorable example of how the author turns standard situations into ripe comic fodder is when one of their kids complains about the monsters under their bed and the mom responds that they need to go to sleep now and they can keep playing with the monsters under their bed tomorrow. Definitely a fun book–my favorite sub-plot was the daughter’s budding romantic obsession with a guy in one of her classes at school AND the daughter’s friend’s equal (if not greater) obsession with a girl in their grade. I was also thoroughly entertained by the romantic moments between the husband and wife, especially when the husband describes his love and servitude towards his wife when it initially seems like he is talking about Satan/the Devil.
I enjoyed the friend’s perversion of a sonnet, describing her dark passionate emotions towards this schoolmate during one of their classes. Here are a couple of screenshots that may help you to determine if you’d enjoy this graphic novel too.
(Direct link to Imgur post with above images, to see more details: https://imgur.com/gallery/BD0Aykj )
I will say that I feel the book could have been more cohesive, especially when you can tell with the date the comics are written and how they are regularly put out of order… I wonder how cohesive the story felt when told serially through the webcomic site compared to this compilation.
Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I enjoyed a lot of different aspects of this audiobook while listening to it. The author, Talia Hibbert, has a real knack for writing inclusive romantic stories that are super relatable–at least for me! A quick look at her author page led to this related item: “She writes sexy, diverse romance because she believes that people of marginalized identities need honest and positive representation.” Topics around social anxiety, invisible chronic illnesses, and abuse are broached in this novel. Now, it’s worth noting that I knew this was a novel and assumed there might be a romantic sub-plot, but I did not start reading knowing that romance would be such a large part of the novel.
I got hooked by the concept of the book–the lead character, Chloe Brown, is trying to make a major shift in her thoughts and actions through the use of a “Get a Life!” itemized list. She has fibromyalgia and runs a successful business designing and coding websites for her clients around the limitations that come with her illness. After she had a scare and was almost run over, she decides that the life that flashed before her eyes left something to be desired. She takes action and starts a list (I love making lists!) of goals to meet that she thinks will improve her life, or at least give her a great story to tell. Her family is very well off, so one of the very first things she does is to get her own flat/apartment rather than continuing to live in her grandmother’s mansion.
She starts tackling the items on the list one by one, taking each item very seriously and uses her analytical mind to plan exactly how to go about each one. Redford(aka Red) Morgan, the superintendent at the apartment building, got this job as a favor from his friend who owns the building. He is a handsome painter who is very kind and attentive to the tenants in the building as he carries out various handyman tasks. Red and Chloe cross each other’s paths, and Chloe is quite curt(even awful) to him initially–but they both catch each other’s eye (and thoughts). Red and Chloe come to an agreement/arrangement together and become romantically entangled in the process.
The development of the relationship between Red and Chloe is delightful to experience, and since Chloe’s illness is an “invisible illness”–it is relatable to those with mental health concerns, anxiety issues (and more diverse concerns too, I’m sure) as something ever-present, that must be considered, but not something to be used as an excuse to not interact with the world. We learn that Chloe has a group of friends from college and even a former fiance in her past, but the break with her friends and former fiance had a huge impact on her life and how she interacts with the world.
But Chloe is finally ready to be vulnerable again, and Red has his own specters that rise from his past to affect his current situation that he must deal with as well. One of their first major interactions is an email string back and forth between them that just drips with sarcasm–like much of their interactions do.
I do understand how a romantic interest can have a huge impact on your life, but I do wish the novel focused more on Chloe’s “Get a life!” list and less on the romantic relationship development. That being said, Red and Chloe’s romance is mostly real and incredibly funny. The author’s tendency to anthropomorphize body parts and thoughts during arousal is hilarious… But I do feel like Chloe is better developed as a character, while Red is a bit of a mishmash of stereotypical “attractive” male qualities. He does get better developed as his own character, but much of this happens in the last 15% of the novel, while he exists as this paragon of male beauty and kindness for much of the novel. He is a handyman and a “tortured artist” with a perfect body and long, lush, curly red hair. Is this because the novel will naturally focus on how the main character sees him through her lens/her mind, or because he was just not developed enough?
Putting aside nit-picking character choices, so much of the interaction between Chloe and Red feels very real. For example, when Chloe is not feeling great and is wearing a fleece animal onesie and Red stops by, we hear some narration from Red’s point of view and learn how much he is turned on by Chloe, regardless of her state of dress or undress. There are so many moments where Red’s concern for Chloe and his notice of the smallest detail that indicates she may be suffering from chronic pain more on any given day–it just makes your heart melt into a molten puddle.
There was a moment I was sure to make note of in my bookmarks in the audiobook. Regardless of Chloe feeling okay or under the weather on a given day–Red thinks about the fact that being sick/in poor health really has nothing to do with how sexy someone is (or is not). Simple, kind thoughts like these are peppered through the novel and really made me consider how I interact with the people I care about in my own life. The simple existence of these thoughts through the novel prompted me to try and improve my interactions with people with some simple observations and trying to check my anxieties at the door(as much as one can).
Happiness Is a Choice You Make: Lessons from a Year Among the Oldest Old by John Leland
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
John Leland spent a year speaking with a group of six elders (85 years old and up) on a variety of topics during a crossroads in his life. He was trying to answer a major question he had: “Is there a threshold at which life is no longer worth living?” His marriage had fallen apart and at age 55 he was helping to care for his elderly mother, who had a strong wish to die.
Leland is a strong writer and divided the book up into different chapters, switching back and forth between tales of his interactions with these six elders, and concluding the novel with a chapter on the “Lessons” he learned from how these different folks dealt with the things that happened in their lives over that year. There was also a lovely bit at the end of the audiobook I listened to (during the afterword) that had a brief recording of each of their voices, telling readers their name and (briefly) what keeps them going in life.
We learned all kinds of details about the personal lives, health, living situation and support system of each of the people he spent the year with. Here are some of the major life lessons that were identified, with some overlap, that I took particular note of while listening:
1. Be Grateful. When you receive a gift from someone in any form, the gift is not important compared to how grateful and thankful you feel towards the person that gave it to you and what they mean to you. Practice being grateful/thankful in your everyday life for what you have.
2. Be flexible — learn to constantly adjust your expectations and goals as your situation changes. Identify wants versus needs and only focus on what is most important to you.
3. Those with a more positive view of old age and those who have a purpose/driving passion in life live longer than those who don’t.
4. Keep on singing and dancing, have a good drink and don’t get too serious.
5. Keep up with your purpose in life after you identify it.
6. Shut out all the less important noise and try to realize how amazing life really is.
7. Embrace the life you have now—there will always be impediments to our happiness, but don’t wait for external circumstances to change to be happy. Be fulfilled in the imperfect now.
For my personal life, I feel that the most important takeaway is this one: it is better when you disagree about something with your spouse/partner it is better to simply disagree rather than fight and try to make a big deal of it and try to change the other’s mind. Allow the other person’s beliefs to exist without needing to agree with them or fight about it.
Understanding the value of time, effort and money spent on others and becoming more generous with spending my physical and emotional capital (including time, effort and money) on the folks that I care about most. It’s about what you give freely to others, not what you get back.
I would recommend this audiobook to others interested in exploring the idea of happiness we can control and what happiness looks like for the 85-and-up crowd.
The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck: How to Stop Spending Time You Don’t Have with People You Don’t Like Doing Things You Don’t Want to Do by Sarah Knight
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book is an interesting mix of comedy and self-help/life advice that plays off the four steps of Marie Kondo’s famous decluttering book(and method), “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up”. This mix is often entertaining, but I found myself getting annoyed at many of her more outlandish suggestions, especially around her not-sorry method examples to use at work when you do not care about a particular task or meeting series. You try to avoid attending all meetings and conference calls that you need to attend at work and let me know how long you keep that job… Now, this experience will be different for everyone(some folks may never attend meetings to start with!), so you may not be bothered by some of the ridiculous options she presents and be able to take them completely at face value for a sarcastic nod to x, y or z.
Her actual methods for laying out what you do or do not care(AKA “give a f*ck” or not) are well thought out and quite legitimate. I have created the shell of my four lists of things I do or do not care about in four categories (Things, Work, Friends/Aquaintances/Strangers, and Family) and plan to dutifully fill them in now that I’ve completed listening to this short audiobook.
Here is an example of a flow chart from the author on how to determine whether or not to care about a given thing or person:
Here is an example of the list of things you care about/don’t care about (and have to comment–she may care more today about the threat of a nuclear Iran compared to when this was written a few years ago…):
This book is still a kind of decluttering book, but it’s more about decluttering your life instead of your stuff and reprioritizing your current activities and what time you spend with the people in your life. The core idea is great–I just wish there were more “real” examples and fewer joke examples throughout, but removing these will by necessity remove much of the humor associated with them.
I did like that in the afterword the author also noted some of the things that folks regularly mention regretting at the end of their life, and invited the reader to try caring more about these items now, not later. The two key items I took away from this brief part were traveling more widely and freely and to new places, and to take better care of your health now before it’s a bigger issue to do so.
This was a pretty good read overall and I got halfway through it on a plane ride. It’s only about four hours long(Marie Kondo’s book is also pretty short–maybe 5 hours?) so it is not a big time commitment and the core idea is simple. I found after listening that I’ve already incorporated the “don’t give a f*ck”/”not-sorry” method into many parts of my life, but I need to establish some balance between my work life and the other spheres of my life, and I REALLY need to put into practice less care about physical belongings… But that points me right back to the inspiration for this book–Marie Kondo’s work. Maybe I can take the pieces of this idea that I already practice and try applying it to all the extra stuff I have and combine it with the “spark joy” idea from Kondo. Also realizing that stuff may spark that “what if I need it later!?!” urge which stops me from dumping/donating more things.
Have you read any decluttering or life-advice/self-help type books recently? Do you have a favorite book in one of these categories that you return to multiple times? Let me know what’s helped you to change something about your life or stuff in the comments.
Last, but not least, remember–it will all be okay:
The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
**Spoiler Warning**
I’ve completed listening to these dramatized abridged versions of the Lord of the Rings novels. It has been interesting to hear and notice differences in the written version compared to Peter Jackson’s film adaptations, and certain scenes have just as much impact in both versions.
After listening to the final novel in the trilogy, certain scenes stood out. The most stirring to me was definitely Eowyn’s incredible scene when she confronted and slew the Witch-king of Angmar, Lord of the Nazgul, after her father Theoden, the king of Rohan, was mortally wounded (with help from a good stab from Merry).
I also enjoyed the scene after the battle where Aragorn was harassing the local folks in The Houses of Healing chapter to get him an herb(Athelas, commonly known as Kingsfoil) that the people did not know the value of, so he could heal the wounds of those damaged by their encounters with the Nazgul. It was a very calming and funny scene after such an intense battle outside of Minas Tirith.
Towards the end of the Fellowship’s journey, when the host of men and elves and others that Gandalf led to the front gate of Mordor, the scene with the Mouth of Sauron was pretty cool–but even hearing the same mocking cruelty in the written and film versions, I feel like the film version conveys so much more with the Mouth’s small, unnatural movements and corrupted smiles.
I was also surprised that the scene where the ring falls into Mount Doom was much the same between book and film, and we saw how much Frodo had been affected as the ring bearer over so much time and striving and struggle–and if not for Gollum, the ring may never have been destroyed.
I found it endearing but a bit silly that the eagles could talk with Gandalf as they came to bear him to Frodo and Sam and take them away from the realm of Sauron as it collapsed in on itself. But it makes sense and falls in line with Gandalf’s ability to speak with all creatures, from men and elves to moths and eagles. It did feel more ethereal in the film when the eagles did not speak and simply carried Frodo and Sam away when they almost perished and started the denouement of the tale.
I was surprised to see the changes in the Shire when the hobbits returned, with gates erected and all their beautiful trees cut down. Merry and Pippin led the battle as commanders against the ruffians(with Frodo and Sam’s help) that had taken over the region with Saruman as their supposed true leader and were encouraged by Lothos. Everything is wrapped up much more neatly in the film, but it was great to see that The Shire was not a perfect place, protected from the ravages of war in some kind of unrealistic limbo.
It was interesting to see the final scene with Saruman and Wormtongue. Frodo showed great wisdom there, regardless of how it fell out in the end. Sam became an even better gardener and keeper of the Shire and the realm around it with his little box of seeds and tiny grains that restored the Shire’s foliage with a great 20 years of growth in a single growing season after Sam had planted those grains everywhere–another demonstration of the wondrous magic of the Lady Galadriel.
The description of the scene when Frodo leaves with Bilbo to sail to the Undying Land of the elves (Valinor) is sublime and when he sees the far green shores coming into view after the silver veil of mists falls away–I wouldn’t mind seeing the same thing when I die.
I enjoyed this third installment a lot, and I’m not sure if I enjoyed this or The Fellowship of the Ring better. The Two Towers is also great, but I’d pick my favorite from the other two if I had to. I would highly recommend these abridged audiobook versions as a fast way to enjoy these tales–and you’ll learn a lot more about the content of the novels if you’ve only ever seen the films.
Confessions of a Funeral Director: How Death Saved My Life by Caleb Wilde
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Caleb Wilde has written a very accessible, poignant short book on his life, mainly relying on his experience as the 6th generation funeral director of Wilde Funeral Home in Parkesburg, Pennsylvania. As a resident of Chester County in Pennsylvania myself, it was pretty cool to hear so many towns mentioned that I know of or live near myself.
I enjoyed hearing about Caleb as a young man with desires to become a priest or evangelist in locations all over the world for people who otherwise would not have access to the religion he wanted to share with people, as a way to serve people well outside of his family’s business. When he went on a mission, the mission was to set up a “pop-up” medical clinic and treat as many people in the remote Madagascar village and surrounding area as possible, instead of the evangelizing he was hoping for–he had a great experience which did eventually lead him back to realizing there were all different ways to live a meaningful life and help people, including returning home to eventually become licensed as a funeral director.
He had a deep-seated fear of the ever-present death he lived with throughout his childhood, with the kitchen in his family’s home traditionally serving double duty as a family gathering place and an embalming place until they had another room built for that purpose. We saw straight into fascinating memories of frequently being warned about doing something improperly, that his father or grandfather had seen lead to the death of another child or young person–like when he rode in a car and was told to make sure the seat’s headrest matched up with the height of his head to prevent a nasty death in a car accident due to insufficient head support, or when he rocked back in his chair at the dinner table, like so many kids do, until he was warned to put the chair back on its feet, as another death they had taken care of was due to a simple fall back from an unstable chair.
Experiences like this made death an ever-present thing in his life, and after seeing a few too many tragic deaths–an infant choking on a candy wrapper careless left on the floor after a Christmas party and dying, a young man cut down early in life due to a motorcycle accident and how hard they worked to try to put his head back together after the crash to allow a viewing, but they couldn’t get him looking “as normal” as they’d like, but the mother moved forward with an open casket at the viewing anyway, he had signed up to what he refers to as the “death negative narrative”.
But with other transcendent experiences, he was able to slowly move from that very common “death negative” viewpoint to a more “death positive narrative”. He saw the death of a young man from an overdose and met his mother, who said she was sleeping the best she had in weeks, now that she had closure with her son and was no longer in a constant state of worry and anxiety over his life choices and safety. Another story about an adult woman with a disability (maybe down syndrome? I don’t recall) who lived with her parents died in her sleep due to sleep apnea caused by asphyxiation, and her parents felt adrift without her and they set up a little shrine at her place at the dining room table and told Caleb all about the different objects there and their meaning. Their daughter was so kind that she changed her parents to be more kind and loving as well, and Caleb had rarely seen such a positive example of active remembrance of a loved one–this being such a healthy way to incorporate the dead into our day-to-day lives, as there really may never truly be closure after the death of a loved one. But that does not have to be a negative thing, as we remember our loved ones after they pass, they live on in us and in the love we share with the living.
These experiences all deeply affected Caleb, and he has always had an especially tough time around the death of young children and infants, as he and his wife are infertile. They eventually got to a point in their relationship, and in his experience after rejoining the family business as a funeral director, where they felt they could be good parents, but could not have their own children. Instead, they were able to work with an adoption agency and a pregnant woman who had the son that became Caleb and Nic’s son Jeremiah. There was a beautiful letter Caleb wrote to the mother of their child about how much they love, honor and appreciate her impossibly generous gift, and would teach Jeremiah to do the same.
I would definitely recommend this book. I listened to it over a few days easily, as it was about 4 or 4 1/2 hours. A warning I’ll give is that spirituality and a belief in God and a religious bent is definitely present, but I feel Caleb treats these subjects respectfully and has a healthy questioning of his beliefs throughout the book, and especially as he struggles to reconcile ideas of hell and heaven and a loving God, and struggled to see the beauty of this world in the now, in the present, and in death after as a result. In fact, near the beginning of the book, I thought he did not believe in God due to the way he talked about it. This struggle with reconciling his own personal religious beliefs with his experiences with death is a core thread throughout the book, but I enjoyed hearing the author work through these struggles, and never felt that he was proselytizing.
A last vignette to leave you with–there was a nursing home who bucked the trend of most nursing homes and hospitals with a “back door policy” with dead bodies, hiding the dead bodies of residents and patients and sneaking them out to the waiting hearse or another similar vehicle with a big space in the back. Caleb always feels nervous and anxious in these situations, forced to feel shame with his role in the process. This one nursing home had a “front door policy” for their dead residents, with all the staff forming an honor guard along each wall to honor the resident who passed away and acknowledge them, at any time of day and night, for every resident who passed. This really touched Caleb’s heart and my own.
I definitely teared up a few times while listening to this book, especially when he talked about grief that frequently gets downplayed or ignored–like the grief of one miscarriage, or more, or the grief of infertility as a couple for the children that you cannot create. He says some beautiful things about grief, and it was interesting to hear him develop as a funeral director as more of a natural introvert who worked to be social and worked to find the right words for different grieving people, while his grandfather was social and magnanimous and always made friends easily, which was his gift.
The conclusion of the book is that the more you embrace and lean into death, the more you can embrace and appreciate life. It is important to remember and reflect on this ourselves as death waits for us all, but it doesn’t have to be a disconnected shameful thing, it can be beautiful, freeing, and transcendent, experienced together with the community of people around the dying or deceased person in their life and in their death. And there is nothing like death to remind you to live in the present, and forget the small annoyances, and live a meaningful life–whatever that means to you!
I’m Not Dying with You Tonight by Kimberly Jones
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
(**Warning: mild spoilers, but I did not get specific, except with one scene.**) This is a good young adult novel that delves pretty deeply into different forms of racism, including some beliefs held so casually as if they were true. This provides much of the most thought-provoking moments, as Lena and Campbell clash with each other earlier in the night the book explores.
The two main characters, Lena and Campbell, are the main attraction here as they form a hard-won friendship over a dangerous night with violence breaking out after a football game at the school and a protest in the town, which becomes a riot in a “bad” part of town. They become friends during this single important night and its dramatic events, and we see the good that Lena sees in her boyfriend Black come out finally into the open towards the end of the novel when he must make a decision to stand with or against his friends. We also see Lena’s cousin(not a biological cousin, but a cousin all the same) through much of the middle and last part of the novel as well, as he does his best to protect Lena and Campbell, and feels naturally protective around Lena and does not like her boyfriend Black.
I feel like Lena is a better fleshed out character, while Campbell feels a bit underdeveloped to me. I would recommend reading or listening to this book, and I think it’s suitable for all ages(maybe not for children too young, but teen/tween and up), as long as you don’t mind some teenage drama. It’s been a bit since I finished the novel, so everything is not as fresh in my mind as it was.
I can leave you with an anecdote that stuck in my mind. The major goal in the story for Lena is to meet up with her boyfriend Black and his friends that he is hanging out with. The major goal in the story for Campbell is to reach her Dad’s hardware store during the riot and try to protect it from looters. During the riot, Lena and Campbell are let into a store that is getting ready to board up against the looters, as the owner has met Campbell before and knows her Dad, as his son works in Campbell’s Dad’s hardware store. After they are let in, a little while later the owner’s son shows up with a bunch of plywood to board up the store. And where did that plywood come from? From Campbell’s Dad’s hardware store. And Campbell is fierce when she asks about the plywood he technically stole from the hardware store and then abandoned to help board up his Dad’s store instead. It’s a memorable scene and just stokes the fire in Campbell’s belly in regards to her Dad’s store.
I also was surprised at the end of the novel to hear the afterword from the author, talking about the plague of rampant police violence against black people, and as she explained–she wrote this book in order to do her part to fight against this madness and hate. The author expresses that there is always something you can do to fight the injustices in the word that seems impossible and insurmountable. It definitely made the novel feel more meaningful afterward for me.
The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Spoiler warning: I enjoyed listening to this abridged theatrical audiobook of The Two Towers. Two parts stood out to me as I listened, keeping in mind I was always comparing the abridged book to the film in my mind. I thought the part after The Battle of Helm’s Deep when the orcs of Saruman’s forces beat a hasty retreat was a bit haunting because no one knows what happened to those orcs, as they retreated through temporary “grove” of trees formed by the Ents. They were presumably ripped apart by the Ents, taking their revenge against those who had hacked apart so many trees from their ancient forest.
I also enjoyed the description of the great spider demon Shelob and her endless evil hunger, knowing that no one had ever escaped her lair after they entered… But then Sam was able to temporarily defeat Shelob so quickly that it felt a little cheap and like another deus-ex-machina, but maybe some of that was due to the abridgment. I’d like to search through ebooks or PDFs of these books and The Silmarilian so I could read more about the bits and characters that go beyond what the films could show and piqued my interest.
MirrorMask by Neil Gaiman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I listened to this audiobook because I was interested in the story of MirrorMask after looking at information about the film. I wanted to explore the story before committing to buying or renting the movie to watch.
I think it was a mistake to go for the audiobook over a printed version due to the loss of the illustrations. Maybe I’ll rent the book from the library and check them out. I am still interested in seeing the film, but of course, everything is demystified now. The story has a good amount of surrealness and weirdness in, but the fact that the protagonist’s day job as a juggler/hawker/announcer in her family’s small circus/sideshow may be the least weird part. Parallel worlds are essential to this tale and there is definitely a feel of escapism as the protagonist falls into a dream-like world after her mom falls ill.
I enjoyed my time with this story but was not blown away. There are definitely some standout moments though. I think the added visual medium of illustration in the print copy or watching the film itself would be a better way to experience this story. I look forward to watching the film.
Maggie Cann Can Do It! 