The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

Rating: ★★★★★★★★★☆ 9/10

I liked this book because it provided clear, strong arguments as to why the current mass incarceration problem in the US is the new Jim Crow. I was aware of the incarceration problem because I had seen the documentary 13TH before, but it was great to read about some of the issues more in depth. Michelle Alexander’s main point is that the system of racial caste systems is cyclic, and after the abolition of Jim Crow laws, they took the form of mass incarceration and the War on Drugs.

The racist sentiments, conscious and unconscious, in society manifest themselves in the criminal justice system at three major points. At the beginning, the arrests are made by officers who are allowed, by the Supreme Court, to use race as a factor to “stop-and-frisk” people and search for drugs. Despite the evidence that white kids use and distribute drugs more commonly than black kids, and that crimes are committed at comparable rates between white and black populations, the overwhelming majority of those incarcerated are black. The second step is the prosecutorial step, which also happens to be the most blatantly racist. Crimes associated with black communities, like possession of crack cocaine vs. powder cocaine, carry much higher minimum penalties. Furthermore, the justice system encourages prosecutors to overcharge and then extract a plea bargain from the defendant. The third step is most pernicious, and perhaps most invisible to everyday Americans. When felons are released, or even if they strike a plea bargain and walk free, they are immediately a second-class citizen, subject to legal discrimination. Many can’t vote, or must pay off correctional facility fees before being allowed to vote, which can be compared to a poll tax. Employers are allowed to explicitly disallow felons from working at their establishment, making it hard for felons to find jobs after release. This becomes a vicious cycle where those who are unceremoniously arrested in troves are then spit out back into a community where they can hardly re-assimilate, and they are restricted from participating in elections to change their fate.

I liked how Michelle Alexander put everything into a historical context; it made the cyclical nature of a racial caste system more prominent and made her arguments more persuasive. I’m not giving it 10 stars because at times it was a little repetitive, and near the end of the book, she branches out into many different topics which seemed a bit rushed and underdeveloped. I would definitely recommend this book to everyone, including the documentary 13TH, because it’s a stark reminder of the invisible system we all take part in that systematically and structurally holds certain people down.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ 8/10

This was sort of reminiscent of a Black Mirror episode. I enjoyed the book a lot – it was very well written (I would have expected nothing less from Margaret Atwood) and the topics are extremely relevant today. I’d say a major theme would be the relationship between power and identity. In the feminist dystopian world, women are stripped of all identity: their names are patrimonial, they are grouped into sects (handmaids, wives, unwomen), they are dressed in the same vestments, and even the rooms they live in are devoid of personality. This is enforced because the sole purpose of a woman is to provide offspring. We see very quickly that this is the result of a huge power imbalance between the “true believers” and everyone else. I think it was wise of Atwood to form this dichotomy rather than the generic men vs. women dichotomy because the reality, as alluded to in the book, is much more complex. The fact that the Aunts were enforcing the rules on the handmaids because they were women reflects the practice of suppressing a people with one of their own. Nevertheless, in this society we still see the power imbalance between the sexes.

I was really hoping that I would be able to find out Offred’s real name by the end of the book. I read the last 5% of the book voraciously, trying to get to the part where her name was revealed, but it never came. I honestly don’t know if knowing her name would have made the book more enjoyable, or at least memorable, to me. Because Atwood never reveals Offred’s real name, and I’m 100% sure she does it on purpose, because the last chapter is dedicated to trying to figure it out, the handmaids really do blend together. The sexism and inequality is etched in the name Offred for eternity — and maybe that’s the reason why she chose this option.

Here are a couple quotes that I highlighted:

There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don’t underrate it.

pg 21

We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.

pg 48

A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze

pg 141

Better never means better for everyone, he says. It always means worse, for some.

pg 183

The Shining by Stephen King

Rating: ★★★★★★★★★☆ 9/10

A couple days ago, I was in the middle of the book The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr, reading about the research he’s done into how and why good stories are so good. He’s done a ton of research, and I found his arguments logical and his examples persuasive, but GOD it was boring to read. He should’ve used more of his tips in his own writing. I swung like a pendulum away from the non-fictiony books I’ve been reading recently towards fiction — even fantasy, and I settled on The Shining. I’ve always wanted to get more “cultured”, aka know more 70s and 80s cultural phenomena. I wanted to read a book I couldn’t put down, to keep me occupied for as long as possible, but not one of those books where after you finish, you sort of have an inkling of regret that you put so much time into (sorry) literary trash. The Shining is probably Stephen King’s most recognized stories because it was immortalized into one of the “greatest and most influential horror films ever made” (according to Wikipedia), so it was a safe pick.

The first three sentences sucked me in. After reading the first 30% of The Science of Storytelling and all of On Writing, I immediately recognized the factors contributing the novel’s irresistible beginning. It conveyed change and it introduced mystery. It also introduced the main character (Jack Torrance), but you couldn’t tell if he was the bad main character or the good main character. Or if he was the main character at all. I read the entire novel in three sittings over maybe five hours. After reading — even as I was reading — I marveled at how Stephen King slowly fed the backstory of the Torrances to the reader at the perfect rate, like a well designed slow release drug. I’ll probably end up reading it again to experience it once more, and maybe pay special attention to how he develops his characters at just the right pace. In the last couple chapters, I found myself reading faster and faster to the point where I was only reading maybe half the words on the actual page, so I had to force myself to reread. My eyes jumped down to the end of the page because they knew something was going to happen but they didn’t want to know the buildup. They were always right, of course, but I figured that the buildup is what makes good thrillers thrilling.

I’ve never seen the movie before. I’ve seen those famous shots of course: Jack peering through the hole in the wall created by his axe into a bathroom where Wendy cowered in the bathtub; the Grady twins standing in the hallway in front of a door; the blood rushing from the elevator. While I read, I kept a close eye out for these scenes, but they didn’t really appear. At least not the way I had in mind. The movie, it turns out, took quite a few liberties, and changed the story and characters to a point where Stephen King wholly disapproved. That makes sense though — in order to make a book scary, the author really needs to delve into the character, because it’s the character that scares people, not the screechy sounds and jump scares. It’s the crazy thought that “this monster doesn’t think too differently than I” that chills the reader’s blood. And Stephen King does just that. A simple desire to advance in life, to prove the haters wrong and create a career could be the start of a murderous rampage. Or a child’s desire to keep his parents together would totally stifle his premonitions that what brings his parents apart will actually destroy the family.

Nevertheless, I’m really excited to watch this movie. Gonna pop some popcorn and rent the movie for $3.99 from Youtube and settle in and watch one of the best movies in history.

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ 8/10

The story and the writing were amazing. I couldn’t put the latter half of the book down. That being said, I thought the characters were a tad shallow. Mia and Pearl were the “underdogs” fighting against white suburbia, with its planned neighborhoods and outward perfection. At the same time, because they stood for nonconformity everywhere, they were obviously the protagonists, with not much room to debate. The Richardsons, save Izzy (and Moody somewhat and Lexie at the end) were all paragons of these “Instagram perfect” families. So the clash between right and wrong here was very clear cut. Pearl is good and stays good for the entire novel. Lexie is charming and stays that way throughout the book; she only gets a bit more empathetic near the end when she learns of Mia’s warmth. I think I would have enjoyed a bit more complexity in the characters. We see glimpses of complexity when Lexie goes to the abortion clinic and uses Pearl’s name, but even that is a predictable action from someone living under Mr. and Mrs. Richardsons’s roof.

For example, when the Richardsons go to a baby shower, Lexie cooing over the baby seemed a bit over the top to me, to the point where I thought there was even some malicious intent. But no, she truly was a bubbly girl who just loved babies. We see glimmers of Izzy’s personality through her bits and pieces of dialogue, and I would have loved to see a lot more of her character developed.

Besides my gripes about the characters, it was a very well-written and well-paced book. I liked the format — introducing the closing scene as the opening scene, and telling the entire story almost entirely through flashbacks and flashbacks inside flashbacks. There were a couple of areas where I felt annoyed at the narrator at revealing a mystery so readily to the reader. When the Mrs. McCullough was talking to Mrs. Richardson about Bebe potentially getting an abortion, she laid out some reasons for her thinking that way. Bebe had gained weight, Bebe had thrown up a couple weeks earlier, this and that. Immediately after, the narrator tells us that Bebe, in fact, had not been pregnant. She had been stressed out at work and had stress eaten, and gained 15 pounds in a month, and that the cause of her throwing up was simply food poisoning. I think this was an area that Ng could have let readers eke out the details of the truth for themselves.

Overall, a great book and a nice uplifting message. 🙂

Memories of My Ghost Brother by Heinz Insu Fenkl

Rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ 8/10

This book was unique because it told the story of a half-German, half-Korean boy growing up in Korea after the Korean War, when American GIs were still stationed throughout South Korea, and the Vietnam War was ongoing. It’s a time period I had never really read about, and to be honest, a geographical setting I hadn’t read much about either. The influences of Western occupation in South Korea still manifest in pop culture, so reading about the early stages of it was very interesting. Even in South Korea, there was a sort of racism against Korean-ness amongst the GIs, and an equal loathing for foreigners among the native Koreans.

The most salient point was what happens when logical and emotional instincts collide. For many Korean women, marrying a GI was their ticket to America, where they could start new (and better) lives. But to do so, they had to navigate the tricky social scene of dating outside their race, and into a very exclusive group of foreigners at that. Sometimes mothers had to choose between their child’s life and a chance at freedom. We get to hear this from a child himself, and we see how these tumultuous times affect his childhood and his path towards adulthood.

This is long overdue (I’m writing this in APRIL 2020), but I wanted to quickly recap the books I read in 2019 (not including my January books, because I foolishly made a post for them already). In the future, I’ll try to make a blog post for every book I finish, even if I have very little to say. Reading more encourages me to write more, and this is the perfect opportunity for me to do so.

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Rating: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ 7/10

A poignant chronicle of his experiences in a Nazi Concentration Camp. It was interesting to read about his take on the power of human will and hope. I think it’s a book everyone should read once — it’s very short and it talks about a period of history everyone should know about.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson

Rating: ★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ 2/10

This book was awful – I gave it two stars because the title is the idea of the entire book, which is a wholly inaccurate and watered down version of how to succeed in life. Sometimes I can see the merit. Two stars.

AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order by Kai-Fu Lee

Rating: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ 7/10

An interesting take on China and why China is well-positioned to be the leader of the new world order with the rise of AI. China’s centralized government makes it very easy to aggregate data (unlike the US and Europe, where data is fragmented across many companies and government bureaus), which means that AI/ML algorithms will learn much faster and China will advance much quicker. One rebuttal I had was that China cannot become a world leader with just a surfeit of data – they need to have the intelligence to innovate

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

A classic, one of those old books that you can tell would have been SUPER gripping had you read it in the 1800s when it was written (or even the 1900s!). But nowadays, in the age of 10 second attention spans, some parts were very slow, and other parts I couldn’t put the book down. The entire book was well-written though.

Rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ 8/10

1st to Die by James Patterson

This is is like watching a new Netflix action movie with random actors/actresses. It’s not remarkable, but it will quench your thirst for a book. You’ll walk away with a tinge of guilt that you could have been doing something more productive or reading something just a little better.

Rating: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ 5/10

A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel

A classic, not much to review here. I think everyone should read this as an introduction to personal finance (and therefore everyone should read it period).

Rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ 8/10

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

A book that explained cancer and oncology in breathtakingly beautiful manner. Unfortunately, Mukherjee and Kevin Kwan must have taken the same English class, because they spend way too much time with descriptions that don’t add to the book. I actually started to skip introductions to new doctors because I really don’t need to know little quirks about them before I read about their contributions to humanity. I’m going to forget the quirks anyway.

Rating: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ 7/10

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

This was a beautiful novel following Mariam, an Afghan girl who grows up during the war. It’s a story of love, coming of age, and a social commentary on the gender structures in Afghan countries at the same time. I don’t remember too much of the details because I’m writing this review in April 2020, but I do remember how moved I was by this book, and why I gave it 10 stars.

Rating: ★★★★★★★★★★ 10/10

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

This was recommended to me by Michelle Wang, and my thoughts on this book are quite similar to my thoughts on 1st to Die by James Patterson. I will say that this was much more psychological than Patterson’s book. When you follow Camille and discover what secrets her family and her hometown hide, it feels sort of like passing a car wreck on the highway – you know you’re not going to get anything out of it, but you can’t look away. So for that reason I’ll give it a 7/10.

Rating: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆7/10

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

I actually really liked this book, but I’m only giving it 7/10 because it seemed quite biased and Harari’s conclusions at the end seem gratuitous and goody-two-shoes-y.

Rating: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ 7/10

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn

This book was recommended to me by Amanda Tang. I was in need of a quick read, and a quick read this was. I think I finished it in two sittings because it was so enthralling. I think the author also did a good job with the tone because I honestly felt in a haze after finishing the book too. I’m only giving it 6 stars though because it really feels like one of those one and done books.

Rating: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆ 6/10

How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking by Jordan Ellenberg

A book I think everyone should read, not just aspiring mathematicians or statisticians. It starts out with the anecdote about Abraham Wald and the bullet holes in returning planes, which I tell to everyone now (fun fact: Wald was at the Statistical Research Group at Columbia!). But it also gives a lot of intuition on why certain things in math are the way they are, and I think that’s really really helpful for anyone navigating the world of data and statistics nowadays.

Rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ 8/10

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

The Song of Achilles is so beautifully written and it takes something we all know and love (Ancient Greek history) and puts a modern twist on it with a hint of magical realism. It also follows the relationship between Achilles and his gay lover Patroclus as the storyline of the Iliad plays out. There was a perfect amount of love, war, and art bundled in this perfect novel.

Rating: ★★★★★★★★★★ 10/10

Recursion by Blake Crouch

The book version of Edge of Tomorrow sorta, where someone just keeps on going back in time to prevent some weird stuff happening. The technology is cool, and it was well-written, but I honestly just think I don’t like sci-fi that much.

Rating: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ 7/10

Educated by Tara Westover

This was a motivating, uplifting story about the human spirit, hard work, and a little help from your older brother who brings you textbooks. It was crazy to me how someone could live how Tara did, and yet as I read the book, I found myself thinking “if I had been in her situation, I would have made it to Cambridge too because I would’ve had this amazing story about my life to tell.” Which I guess is just me being salty because if I had actually been in her situation, I don’t even know if I would have been able to see the light and work as hard as she did. I like to think I would have, but it’s never as easy as it sounds.

Rating: ★★★★★★★★★☆ 9/10

Circe by Madeline Miller

I’m going to give this one a 9.5/10 because it was again beautifully written and Madeline Miller worked her magic again with Circe. However, there were bits that were a bit slow, mostly because a big chunk of the book is set on Circe’s island. I also read The Odyssey in 9th grade, so it was interesting to see the two storylines overlap!

Rating: ★★★★★★★★★★ 9.5/10

On Writing by Stephen King

Rating: ★★★★★★★★★☆ 9/10

I read On Writing because I just wanted to become a better storyteller. But his tips on becoming an okay-ish, or maybe if you’re lucky, a good, fiction writer were applicable in pretty much any other area that requires hard work and dedication. On Writing is not a manual on how to write, like The Elements of Style. It is part memoir, part personal opinion on what makes great writing and better fiction, which, given Mr. King’s status as one of the most prolific fiction writers of our time, can be taken as truth.

He starts by describing a writer’s toolbox. The toolbox contains multiple levels; on the top level, right when you open the toolbox, vocabulary. You get this by reading. A lot of reading. And don’t just concentrate on the big-brain books that are chock-full of SAT words; read indiscriminately, because what matters is not how long the words you use are, but how well they fit. But you need a large lexicon so that when a fancy big word does fit, you’ll need to use it. Just like that odd star-shaped screwdriver you have in your real toolbox just in case. The second compartment of the first level is grammar. This is basic ninth grade English stuff – make sure your verbs agree, etc. There’s not much to be said here, and I think every single writer in the world (even the bad ones) would agree with King on this point.

Underneath the top level of the toolbox, under the vocabulary and grammar, is style. Reading The Elements of Style helps here. In particular, King vehemently hates using adverbs to describe how someone said something, or using another verb in place of “said”. The dialogue and the character’s developed personality should tell the reader how the words are being said. There are no guidelines on how to break up chapters, paragraphs, or sentences, because these things come with time. What works for one writer may not work for another, so it’s important to write, and write a lot.

The other levels of the toolbox are not quite defined, but they include building characters, depicting scenes, and developing motifs, themes, and symbolism, all of those goodies in English class. I loved his section on characters and dialogue. The few times I wrote fiction, I had a set storyline that I wanted to have happen, and therefore I had predefined character traits for all of my characters. This is the wrong way to go about it. People in real life are never one-dimensional; no one is “the bad guy” or “the insufferable damsel”. We all have backstories, and characters should have them too. Characters should have a motivation for their actions, and it should be explained, either by description of the character, or his/her dialogue. Humans are extremely sensitive to awkward sounding dialogue. There are books (and movies, but that’s a little more nuanced) where dialogue just seems artificial. Maybe it’s because no one in real life ever says that phrase. Or maybe the character shouldn’t speak like that because their backstory doesn’t match up. Whatever the case, it’s important to make characters into living entities that dictate the plot, instead of the other way around.

Then, there is the issue of theme, motif, symbolism, pretty much everything I wrote commentaries on throughout high school. King emphasizes that you do NOT start with these ornaments at the beginning; the story comes first all the time. Later, after you re-read, you can notice certain repetitions that you might want to bring out in your second draft. These things are important, yes, but it is not worth detracting from the story in order to add some imagery in. Your goal as a fiction writer is to enrapture the reader, keep them reading so long they forget to eat, not make it into a couple university bookstores.

This has changed the way I watch movies and I suppose it will change the way I read fiction also (I haven’t finished a book since On Writing yet). When I watched Tigertail, the Taiwanese movie on Netflix, I recognized a lot of recurring images. The dishwashing scene that never happened in the beginning contrasted with the dishwashing scene at the end, father and daughter side-by-side. The poignant (in Netflix captioner’s terms) violin music playing at the beginning and regularly throughout, with slight modifications to indicate to the viewer “oh something new is happening!”. But a part of me wondered if that was added after the initial writing, or if the director knew he wanted to have these two juxtaposed scenes and fit the story around that. It seemed to me like the latter, because I could see it from a mile away, but maybe that’s not a bad thing. While I’m on the topic of Tigertail, let me just express my frustration at the dialogue between father and daughter. NO ONE PAUSES THAT MUCH BETWEEN SENTENCES!! I know the relationship is a bit strained and they’re not as close as other father/daughter duos, but people never talk like that.

Anyway, let me try to bring this review back to my original thought: that Stephen King’s tips on writing will help me in probably everything but writing fiction. The quote I remember most vividly is “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.” Reading, or watching educational Youtube videos, is a passive skill. You can learn things passively. You understand things by creating. To cement your foundation in fiction, you need to write. To truly learn how to code, watching smart Indian people on Youtube code is not enough; you need to code. And this extends to everything else in life. I would recommend this book to just about anyone. It was funny, candid, and extremely helpful. At the very end, he talks about his horrific accident which derailed his progress on this book for months. He talks about how he sometimes writes too much, but at certain times, it’s writing that bring him back to life. Writing brings him, and all of us, happiness. And best of all, it’s free to write — unlimited happiness!

Columbine by Dave Cullen

Rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ 8/10

Reading Columbine felt like narrating a gripping Netflix documentary to myself. I finished it in maybe ten hours of reading? Twelve? And it was ten hours of focused reading because I was anxious to read more — not the ten hours of unmotivated reading I do with a bad textbook that yields only a page or two of knowledge.

Dave Cullen created an excellent documentation of the Columbine massacre, and it was clear that he was an expert. However, all of the intricate details about how the killers’ families dealt with the aftermath, or how there was an entire web of lies spun by the Jeffco police department, were not thrust at the reader as a “look at me and how much knowledge I have about this”. The nuanced knowledge was fed spoonful by spoonful, exactly when and where you needed it. I grew to appreciate Cullen’s choice of jumping back and forth between the killer’s storyline and the multiple arcs in the aftermath. It was refreshing to see the growth of a community juxtaposed with the development of a plan of mass murder.

A couple months before I got this book from Catherine (in exchange for Sapiens), I read the entire Wikipedia page on the Columbine shootings. After I started the book, I realized that the Wikipedia page covered just the basics. I had examined a tree trunk, and the book brought me a couple paces back where I could see the tree in its entirety. Columbine was a massacre, but it was much more than that. It was the culmination of years of pain and sadness for Dylan, anger for Eric; it was multiple failed bombs in a mostly faulty plan; it was countless signs overlooked by friends, teachers, and police. But it was also a story of resilience, faith, forgiveness, and community. I had never once thought about the Klebolds or the Harrises outside of what their sons did at that high school. How they had to endure the brunt of the public’s anger because the shooters killed themselves. I had never thought about how the kids could even return to the school the next year, and what it would be like (can you believe the school reopened in August, not even four months after the massacre!?). I had never thought about all of the controversy that thousands of eye-witnesses could cause; how it would spin off into an entire evangelical martyr movement because of the death of Cassie Bernall.

Most of all, however, it exposed the hard truth that even in tragedies like Columbine, the story is often much more complex than it seems. It takes years and years to find out who the killers truly were. It might take even longer to find out the whole truth, even when there were so many people who experienced it first hand. And while it’s easy to wave your hands and say that we need to compensate all the victims, when it comes down to actually doing that, the entire ordeal gets very complicated. Do we count the Klebolds and the Harrises as victims? How should the families of injured students be compensated differently from the families of the murdered?

It was amazing to get a very full picture of the Columbine massacre. It was also nice to have a (somewhat) happy ending, with Patrick Ireland leading the kids into school and with some parents forgiving the Klebolds and Harrises. It feels like case closed, but it really isn’t. Transcripts of a sealed conversation are set to be released in 2027. New facts may come to light, but I don’t think they will be monumental. The fact is, we can’t ever really “close” a case like this in our society. The best thing we can (and should) do is learn from it and adapt. Zero-tolerance was a good start. Background checks on firearm purchases was a step in the right direction. The survivors of Columbine and the countless school shootings in the years since, are a testament to the resilience of a society. We as a nation have a long way to go, and we can’t let them down.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Rating: ★★★★★★★★★☆ 9/10

I traded Where the Crawdads Sing for this book (with Nancy), and based on the number stars I gave that book and the number of stars I’m giving this book, it wasn’t a very good trade. But if you think of it as how many total stars I got for the price of one book, this trade was the best trade in the history of all trades, maybe ever.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Secret History. Told entirely from first person, the story follows a young adult named Richard as he leaves his dysfunctional family in California for Hampden College in Vermont. Things get a little culty at the College, and, well, before you realize it, two people are dead. This book gave me very strong Crime and Punishment vibes because the guilt of murder very clearly gnaws at the boys’ consciences and slowly destroys their lives. At the beginning of the book, Julian’s (the Classics professor) crew is peppy, erudite, classy, distinguished, if not a little strange. They are all wealthy (Richard is not, but he fools people into thinking he is), and their living quarters are well-kept and extravagant in some cases. At the end, Francis’s room has “rats”, smells of old liquor, and remnants of broken furniture strewn across the room. It’s a very physical manifestation of the deterioration of the boys’ mental states.

I was on the edge of my seat for 80% of the book and completely bored for 20%. Donna Tartt punctuates the action (and when there is action, I literally can not put the book down) with a lot of flowery detail, which characterizes the narrator Richard a bit more richly, but I thought it was a bit too much. I also commend Tartt on her accurate description of college campuses – it was detailed enough that I actually Googled “Hampden College Vermont” (and the results yielded this book) yet also vague enough that my imagination filled in all of the details and created a rich campus. All in all, this book receives 9 stars — not a perfect 10, but darn close.

Men Without Women by Delia Owens

Rating: ★★★★★★★★★★ 10/10

Being in quarantine means I have a lot more time to read. I ordered Where the Crawdads Sing on Amazon not because I specifically sought out the book, but because I needed another purchase to make shipping free (I was ordering a tripod, and I don’t have Prime), and this was the first suggested book. I now understand why: it’s a beautiful story about resilience, family, and love, complete with a backdrop of ever-relevant themes of racism and prejudice.

Reading this book, I was reminded of the #MeToo movement. Harvey Weinstein was recently convicted of sex crimes, and I knew that that was a big deal. It was not just a win for the girls he had abused, but a win for those who were afraid to speak out, who waited with bated breath to see whose side society would put its weight behind. Seeing Kya’s relationship with Chase sour into hatred and fear reminded me how real abuse is. How perniciously relationships can inch towards something else, and you never see it crossing the line until it’s too late. It’s also something, as a guy, I will never truly understand — I’ve had discussions with my friends about how I’ve never felt scared to walk home late at night, or how I’ve never had to carry my car keys Wolverine style just in case something happens. But to be absolutely candid, I don’t think I’ve ever had a clear picture of how sexual abuse happens until I read Where the Crawdads Sing.

Another major theme was love. To most people, discovering love feels like discovering something the entire world has never seen before. For Kya, this feeling was amplified; her mom left her as a child, her siblings soon after, and her dad a couple years after that. She savored the few glimmers of love she experienced, her time with her siblings, Easter with the family, her dad taking her boating, but these memories were always tinged with trauma. After Tate, her first love, leaves without saying goodbye, Kya isn’t sure what love is, or how to interpret her feelings, which leads to the entire situation with Chase. I especially loved Owens’ use of symbolism: the only constant throughout Kya’s entire life has been the marsh. Tate and Kya exchange feathers as they begin to fall in love: their relationship is two-sided, and both Tate and Kya give up a part of themselves to the other. Kya’s relationship with Chase, however, is different: Kya gives him a shell necklace, which represents a part of her soul, and he wears it around like a trophy. At the end, the shell is eventually returned to the ocean, where Kya is “whole” again

The last thing I’ll talk the savior trope which really made me think about my relationship with other people. A lot of books/movies have this trope: the struggling main character (usually non-white), a good soul (usually white) who comes to them, helps them, asks for nothing in return, and helps them become the graceful, free person they are at the end. In Kya’s case, it was Tate (and Jumpin’ and Mabel). Tate literally teaches Kya how to read, write, and count, and pushes her to become the published author she ends up being. We often read these stories and relate ourselves to the main character, the one receiving this help, an angel that pushes us to be better. But I think it’s also important to relate to the people who help; to see yourself as not the main character but someone in a position to help another in need.

I don’t often give books 10 stars (the last couple were Song of Achilles, Circe, and A Thousand Splendid Suns), but whenever I do, I ultimately end up trying to compare all of my 10/10 books with each other. And I never can. Yes, some I enjoyed more than others, but I can’t possibly give any of them fewer than 10 stars — they each resonate very strongly with me, just at a different frequency.

Anyway, here are some of my favorite quotes:

They sipped until the sun, as golden and syrupy as the bourbon, slipped into the sea.

pg 60

She sensed that the words clinched a powerful meaning, but she couldn’t shake it free. If she ever became a poet, she’d make the message clear.

pg 116

But just as her collection grew, so did her loneliness. A pain as large as her heart lived in her chest. Nothing eased it. Not the gulls, not a splendid sunset, not the rarest of shells.

pg 146

Yet she had fallen for the same ruse as Ma: leapfrogging sneaky fuckers.

pg 212

A lone tear trailed down Mrs. Culpepper’s cheek, and then a shadow smile for the little swamp truant escaping again.

pg 347

Tate remembered his dad’s definition of a man: one who can cry freely, feel poetry and opera in his heart, and do whatever it takes to defend a woman.

pg 356