Book review: "The Bear and the Nightingale" by Katherine Arden

A book set in dark, cold Russia set in a world where the line between everyday life and the folkloric tales is smudged away. 

The setting of this book is truly one of the main characters. I'm so glad that I read this book in winter, the impact of this book would not be the same if you read this on a beach somewhere I think. The Russia of this book is cold and dark, with dark foreboding forests and squat, small villages.

The story centers around Vasilisa; the youngest girl of her land holding noble family. There is something different about her, maybe having something to do with the fact that her mother and her grandmother were always accused of having some magical or at least strange tendencies.  There's no denying that Vasilisa is different. The spirits that live in the forest, in their home, in their stables and even in the village bathhouse are all obvious to her. She talks to them and brings them food.

Upheaval comes twice in short order to Vasilia's life. Her mother died minutes after giving birth, so her father after a few years decides to go to Moscow to find a new bride. The czar basically forces him to marry a certain woman with noble blood...but who also sees the same things that Vasilia sees but instead of "oh these are just little magical beings who have been a part of this already old place for a very long time" she sees "DEMONS!". This gets even worse when she leaves the city for the country.  She's a very pious woman, and so she makes sure that a new priest follows her shortly after she leaves for the countryside. This new priest immediately feels that Vasilia is (somehow, simultaneously) alluring, frightening and  repulsive to him. Lots of mixed feelings there.

With the new priest comes big changes to the townspeople who are encouraged to disregard their superstitious ways. This means the little spirits that protect that village and it's occupants are weakened enough that something evil is able to find it's way in........

I liked this book. I like folklore stuff, I like magical realism stuff, I have a well documented weird obsession with Russia here on this blog. I feel like it maybe went a little of the rails at the end, but overall a very good book with interesting characters. Snuggle under a blanket and read this book!

Book Review: "Not Just Jane: Rediscovering Seven Amazing Women Who Transformed British Literature" by Shelley DeWees

I will say straight off of the bat that I've never been able to get into Jane Austen. I've tried. The horribleness of Mrs Bennett was enough to "nope" me out of there pretty quick. I always tell myself I should try again but then all the books on my TBR are like "choose me! choose me!" and I'm like "yeah, all of you get in the library requests. No Jane Austen right now."

So if, maybe, you find yourself thinking "I want a kinda obscure British woman author who SHOULDN'T be obscure and is kinda in the same time period and what have you" this book would be a great guide.

OR

If you are all amped up on girl power right now, and want to keep the empowering women homefires burning this would be a great way to do so.

Here's some quick bullet points:

-I like Samuel Taylor Coleridge as a poet, but he's basically a turd as a human. When his daughter, Sara Coleridge who is one of the 7 featured ladies, was born while he was away canoodling with his mistress. What was sad about Sara is that she eventually becomes a drug addict like her very distant father.

-Dinah Mulock Craik was my favorite of the women profiled. Honestly, maybe because she was one of the few who still got a happy ending on her terms.

  - This will come as no surprise to people familiar with the time period but it was HARD getting divorces so a lot of times these ladies lived separate from their loutish husbands who still then had rights to their earnings from their publications

-The French Revolution factored into some of these ladies lives WAY more than I thought it would.

-Did you know that some people thought "female hysteria" was caused by the uterus wandering willy nilly thorough the women's body?

 HOW WOULD THAT EVEN HAPPEN?




via GIPHY


If you are or are not a Jane Austen fan, it doesn't matter. If you're looking for some talented ladies who put up with more than their share of garbage to do their chosen profession this will round out your TBR nicely. Recommended!

First Friday Four - Favorite TED talks so far (Technically third Friday Four, come on you guys know how this goes.)

Welcome to First Friday Four! It took me a longer time than most to get into TED talks but just in case you are behind the times like me, here's my four favorite TED talks!


This talk has made it's way through a lot of my family and we talk about it so much as to be nerdskis. Shout out to my city too!




Architecture and death together? Yes.





I have power posed in the bathroom at work, I will not lie. Also, wear your seatbelt! Hat tip to L/E guest poster and friend for the heads up on this. She reviewed Amy's book for All Lady July in 2016.





This TED talk made me happy cry several several times. The joy of wonder that books can bring you. Also I MUST got to the time travel store and the pirate supply store. MUST. #Randolph

Book Review: "The Guineveres" by Sarah Domet

Four girls, all coincidentally named Guinevere, end up at a convent. They have each been left their by their parents for different reasons (which we find out later, which is good because I was going to be ANGRY if we did not get backstories). They all bond together immediately and spend their days talking about what their lives will be like once they are allowed to leave at 18 (or earlier, if any of their escape plans would go right.)

Their lives are pretty routine: class, mass, confession, some free time, chores, bad food, lights out. Then there are some new patients in the sick ward that changes the girls lives. This book gives you: teenage girl fights, big questions about love and God, the wonderfulness of great friendships, the general horror of being a teenager whose body is changing, and (IMHO) more than a few cases of undiagnosed mental illnesses.

Some reviewers criticize the girls for their "mindless drivel". I think that these girls who: have not much life experience (and what they have is not considered well balanced or "normal"), don't have any real safe relationships with adults where they can ask them personal questions, and have a lot of time to ruminate on things during hours of prayer and church services would talk pretty much exactly that way. Also, they are teenagers. Mostly they won't be discussing Shakespeare.

I thought this book was full of well fleshed out and realistic characters, believable scenarios, in an easy to follow narratives. I give this book a 3.5 stars out of 5. Tip of the hat to T from Traveling with T who a couple of months ago hosted a chat with the author and got this book on my radar.

Book Review: "Spaceman: An Astronaut's Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe" by Mike Massimino

I kind of igured that if you ended up as an astronaut that was something that you decided at the age of like, 6 and then spent your whole life dedicated to getting to that goal. I think some people that is absolutley the case. Mike Massimino - "Mass" - was less like that. He had a fascination with space but then as he grew older fell into different interests until it was ignited in him again during college. What he couldn't have known was that the path that he was on (studying engineering and how humans interact with machines) was actually just what he needed to catch the interest of NASA. Which is not to say things were easy.

He was in good shape, good mental health, fit well personality wise that they were looking for but....bad eyes. And it's not like he's a pilot. He's a payload specialist. So in the years before LASIK he worked with doctors to correct his eyes in nonsurgical ways. Through practice and training he corrected his eyesight enough to get in the range of what NASA would accept. High stress!

I think that Mass loved the science, and being in space but the feeling that I get from the book is that he loved the family aspect of NASA the most. The camraderie and the team mentanlity really appealed to him and he needed to lean on that a few times with bumps in his perosnal life.


Also, if you're a Big Bang Theory fan you may recognize Mass as the American astronaut that Howard goes to space with. He started as a science advisor for the show and then they're like...hey....so.....actor?







This was also a well timed read for me because I read it shortly after John Glenn's death and I needed a little space in my life.

A good, easy to read book that is less snark and more science than others that I have read by other astronauts. Though there is certainly room in my reading life for both types!

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review from Blogging for Books

Top Ten 2016 - A Review

A couple of people at work asked me if I had written a post on my top reads of 2016. And I said "uhhhhhhh....no but now that you say that I remember that I probably should!" (This has not been a super on top of it year for the blog, none of you need to be reminded of that).

So, here are my 10 favorite reads of 2016 in no particular order:

Because sometimes "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?" is a really fun place to be with a book.

Finally got around to reading this with blogger friend Jamie for her Quarterly Classics Club. So good. Not a dry, crusty, old, theological trial like some people might think. Find a good translation and pick this up!

Not just a pretty face. These classic fairy tales with a twist are perfect for new generations of (particularly female) readers. But that cover! Swoon!

Oh Mary Roach how I love you. Pick this up and learn so so much. And then donate money to a reputable charity that helps this nation's veterans. (You also learn about penis transplants which was ffaaaaaaaascinating).

Magical realism set in Krakow during WWII? Of course I loved this book. Scary and tense and funny and an inconclusive ending all makes this a compelling read.

This book scared the life out of me. And then my mom read it and it scared the life out of her! But it wasn't just scary it was creative and imaginative and the details were so on point.

I read this book after watching the author's TED talk. And after reading this book I put all of his other books on my TBR. Also a candidate for best cover of the year!

You guys know nothing trips my trigger quite like a great historical graphic novel. And this was a great one. All the cloak and dagger madness of the Manhattan Project kept me flipping through these pages at the speed of a blooming mushroom cloud! (Slightly inappropriate, mea culpa)

I honestly don't know how many other people would like this book as much as me but the seedy under belly of the dog breeding and showing world was a little gossipy and really informative, just how I like my nonfiction!

We'll end on another dog book. The story of how incredibly brave humans and their dogs saved countless lives in Alaska during a diphtheria outbreak had me with a lump in my throat and fighting the urge to stand up and cheer all at once.

Book Review: "Brilliance" by Marcus Sakey

My coworker Megan and I often talk about books, and she was telling me about this series that she had gotten for a really good deal for her Kindle. The more she talked about it the more I'm like yeaaaah, that sounds like a book I need to read. And my TBR grew three books that day.

So in the world of this book there are a small minority of people who are born with special abilities. Some of them are kind of the savant variety (I'm going to name a place and you will automatically know the address because you memorized the phone book) and some are more intuitive. Our main character, Nick, is able to really read people's body language and anticipate what they are going to do. Helpful in a fight, which he gets into a lot. So, since the government is always scared of what's different, all of these people with abilities are closely monitored and if you are "tier one" (especially gifted, or in the perspective of the government really potentially dangerous) you are placed into "academys" where you are basically brainwashed and then the government uses your unique ability to work for them. Everyone take a moment here to be shocked that that's how the government would work. No one shocked? Yeah, me either.

So Nick is an interesting main character because he is one of the gifted ones AND he works for one of the government organizations. He hunts down dangerous people who are affiliated with radical organizations and neutralizes them.
As is so often the case, not everything is as it seems and Nick finds himself seeing things from a different perspective and it's all manhunts and gun fights and all of the other things that come with a great thriller.

Two things that caught my interest in this book:

-After reading so many more YA geared dystopia/sci fi stuff this one has a couple decidedly more R rated moments. Which is not to say that there's like, big graphic sex scenes but it's written for a little older crowd and it's kinda nice. Someone gets thrown from a car and it's kinda badass.

-I want a WHOLE other book about a character named Samantha who is really only in one short piece of the book but I'm like THIS CHICK. I WANT MORE ABOUT THIS CHICK. She sounds like an interesting, sad lady.

So, since it's a trilogy I will be heading to the library to find the next installment! I give it a 3.5 of of 5. Excited to see what comes next!