Books and Sensibility

We're an Open Book

4.0 stars

Audiobook Review: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

     Leave a Comment

  • Release Date: September 9th 2014
  • Audiobook Hours: 10 hours and 41 minutes
  • Genre: Literary….Science Fiction ?
  •  
  • Publisher: Random House Audio

I feel like three years ago you couldn’t trip anywhere in the book-sphere without falling into this book. Station Eleven is the fascinating and deeply haunting story of what happens after a flu epidemic kills 99% of the Earth’s population and infrastructure collapses.

Everything I knew about this book happens in the first 20 pages; An actor in a production of King Lear dies on stage in front of child actor Kirsten Raymonde. Jump cut to 20 years later where Kirsten is part of a traveling symphony, a theater troupe that performs Shakespeare in the small towns dotting the the desolate and often dangerous North American landscape.

I am seriously in awe of the narrative structure of this book. The novel moves back and forth through time, telling stories of people who were in the theater that night with Kirsten. Mandel effortlessly weaves her characters fates through and around each other. There is also kind of a twist, I’m not sure how soon you’re supposed to see it, but it took me by surprise.

…

Read this Post

Magonia by Maria Dahvana Headley

     Leave a Comment

Release Date: April 28th 2015

Pages: 309

Genre: Fantasy

Publisher: HarperCollins

When Aza Ray Boyle dies in the middle of an unusual storm; one life ends and another begins. Because her true destiny lies with the captain of a ship that sails the sky, but not everyone on Earth is ready to let Aza go.

…

Read this Post

The Husband’s Secret and Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

     Leave a Comment

The Serpent King by Jeff Zetner

     Leave a Comment

  • Release Date: March 8, 2016
  • Pages: 384
  • Genre: Contemporary
  •  
  • Publisher: Crown (Random House)

Apparently my new jam is contemporary told from the POV of a trio of friends because in a lot of ways this book is like Fans of The Impossible Life by Kate Scelsa which I read last year around this time and enjoyed.

Our unlikely friend group in The Serpent King consists of; Travis who lives in a fantasy world to escape his abusive home life; Dill, the son of the Pentecostal signs preacher who handles snakes and is currently in prison for possession of child porn and then there is Lydia. Lydia should be the popular girl, her parents are upper middle class, she runs a successful fashion blog and is internet friends with the daughters of New York elite.  But all of that makes her a misfit in Forrestville, a small Tennessee town named after the founder of the Ku Klux Klan.

The dynamics of the characters and sense of place are just perfect. There was an interesting tension between Lydia and the boys because she is from a richer, more liberal family while they  are from poorer and more religious conservative upbringings. I happened to hear Gwen Glazer on The Librarian Is In podcast describe this book as evocative and that is just the perfect way to describe it. I actually read the first 50% of this in May and then forgot about it until August, but I was thrown right back into the story and characters, three months later.

…

Read this Post

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

     Leave a Comment

I don’t usually read buzzy commercially successful  authors–but when I do I read them at least 2-5 years after the buzz has died down and nobody cares. I’m looking at you Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Fifty Shades of Grey and Girl on The Train. I’ll get to you. . . eventually.

Instead of picking up  Gone Girl (Which I have NOT read. No spoilers) I picked up Sharp Objects cause it was on a nifty library display.

…

Read this Post

Fresh Off The Boat by Eddie Huang

     Leave a Comment

  • Release Date: January 29, 2013
  • Audiobook Hours: 7 hours and 55 minutes
  • Genre: Memoir
  • Publisher: Speigel & Grau (Random House)

I really wanted to start this review by saying something like ‘move over Anthony Bourdain, there’s a new bad boy chef on the market, but that doesn’t really fit what Huang is trying to do with this book. While Huang’s claim to fame is his restaurant, Baohaus, this book isn’t really a food memoir. It’s about Huang’s fraught relationship with his Asian identity while growing up around what he calls American Whiteness.

As he recounts growing up in suburban Orlando Huang dismantles the idea of the model minority. Fear of assimilation is a point of tension for him. There is a long history of America being the worst to Asian immigrants and then erasing them from history. His story is a story we don’t hear and I think Huang put together a biting and honest memoir that was also entertaining.

Most people are probably familiar with the ABC show based on this book and while I enjoy the show Iknew Huang publicly expresseda lot of dislike for it and after reading his memoir I get it. ABC bowdlerized the crap out of his story, but kept his family’s names are all over it. I think when Huang sold the rights for a show he wanted something like Aziz Ansaris’s show Master of None where they tackle issues of racism with more dark humor and edge that doesn’t care about offending the audience.

…

Read this Post