August was quite fun. We went on a couple of short trips to get away. Sweet Girl started 8th grade, but not before she helped me re-organize my office bookshelves. 😉 In fact, she helped me get lots of cabinets and drawers organized around here too! Each of us had doctor and dentist checkups and we celebrated some family birthdays. I’ve been catching up on scrapbooks. I’ve had a little bit of a lull in my classes, which I don’t particularly know how to fill, but not to fear… my next class starts this coming Tuesday. I’m very excited.
I’ll keep the book reports short this time:
A Hundred Other Girls: A Novel by Iman Hariri-Kia
Devil Wears Prada meets the digital age. Eh. It did have some nice messages about not falling into the usual stereotypes of beauty.
“For the first time, I looked a little more like myself. Or, at the very least, the image I’ve always had in my head. I realized, then and there, how deeply I’d internalized the Western idealization of beauty, the time and energy and I had wasted feeling trapped inside of my bag of skin. But the fat, the blood, the bones—none of it mattered. Appearances are easy to fake. I could mold myself into whatever I wanted to look like. I could become anyone I wanted to be. But first, I had to figure out what feeling like myself meant. That would be the real challenge.”
The Pleasing Hour by Lily King
I wanted to read an earlier book that King wrote (1999 I think). I can’t say it was my fave, and I had a little trouble understanding the plot and timing shifts, but it was good. Her writing is almost lyrical.
“Across the water, streetlamps blinked on, then hung unsuspended and haloed pink in the fog. Grainy daylight drained out slowly through the long kitchen window. This was the start of the devastating time of day, when, if you turned on the overhead, the texture of the walls and the edges of objects became too vivid and you found yourself straining to remember one thing that had ever brought you any joy, but if you didn’t and just let the window continue to blacken, sick and slow, it felt like being lowered into a grave. It was the moment when all pleasure of solitude vanished and you needed a body beside yours—or at least a voice calling your name.”
Short Stories: Ash Wednesday by Paula McLain and A Wild Rose by Fiona Davis
McLain’s story was devastating and compelling at the same time. 4 stars. Davis’ has more of an internal landscape of personal change. 5 stars.
All the Names They Used for God: Stories by Anjali Sachdeva
OK Sachdeva is an incredible writer. Truly impressive. 5 stars. I had to ration these stories out one per night as a treat for myself because they are just so good. Some are more realistic than others, but each is an entire world in itself.
“The mermaid sank down into a hollow of it and began to sing. Her voice had a deep, liquid sound like a separate current within the water. The shark could hear it but it meant nothing to him, and he paid no attention to it. The fish heard it, too, though, and they were entranced by it. The song was the sound of joy without depth, of clear waters and warm blood and the sunlight that pierced the tops of the waves. Fish were drawn from miles away. They orbited the mermaid in a slow swirl of fins and scales, and she could think only that the shark would be well fed, that she could be close to him more often.”
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong
I found this whole book incredible. Each animal lives within its own unique sensory bubble, only accessing some of the sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, and electric and magnetic fields. Every animal can only tap into a small fraction of reality’s fullness, including humans. We think we have all the information, but we would have a sharper sense of hearing if our ears were at different heights, like an owls is, or if we could sense vibrations in the air, like ants can. The world is filtered for us through our senses. Yong helps us visit each creature’s perceptual world and understand it. I have so many highlighted parts of this book that I honestly can’t decide which to share here.
“Life exists within that planetary electric field and is affected by it. Flowers, being full of water, are electrically grounded, and bear the same negative charge as the soil from which they sprout. Bees, meanwhile, build up positive charges as they fly, possibly because electrons are torn from their surface when they collide with dust and other small particles. When positively charged bees arrive at negatively charged flowers, sparks don’t fly, but pollen does. Attracted by their opposing charges, pollen grains will leap from a flower onto a bee, even before the insect lands.”
That’s it… but I am reading a bunch of books right now. Faves so far are:
- What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill: Impressive scientific and moral arguments.
- The Blessing of a B Minus: Raising Resilient Teenagers by Wendy Mogel: So helpful!!
- Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid: This just came out on Tuesday and I already gobbled it up in 2 sittings
