Well, 2021 sure started off with a bang. Insurrection. Unrest. A new president and the very first female, Black, South Asian vice president (!!!) . . . truthfully, I still haven't sorted out all my feelings about everything, but I do know that I feel a profound sense of relief now that we have a new president. I'm not hoping that things go back to normal; I'm hoping that the country progresses on a new, better track. Only time will tell.
Anyway, in book news, January has been a very good reading month. Months ago, I wanted to reread some of my favorite books that I own, but couldn't find them. I figured that I accidentally donated them during our last move. But as I was putting away Yule decorations, I randomly decided to open a box marked Office and it had all my books inside! I was so happy. So I got to reread some of my favorites as well as devour new books from the library.
1. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
I'm hit or miss when it come to Neil Gaiman's books. If I'm being honest, it's mostly miss. But the ones I do love, I love, and they are the reason why I keep coming back for more. This book was definitely a hit. I loved everything about it.
This bewitching and harrowing tale of mystery and survival, and memory and magic, makes the impossible all too real...
A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse where she once lived, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.
A groundbreaking work as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out.
2. The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson
So I've definitely become a fan of middle grade mystery novels. This mystery is wrapped up in a treasure hunt, which makes it all the more fun. But it also spans generations and examines racism, Jim Crow, and segregation. It's no wonder it won the Coretta Scott King Author Honor.
When Candice finds a letter in an old attic in Lambert, South Carolina, she isn't sure she should read it. It's addressed to her grandmother, who left the town in shame. But the letter describes a young woman. An injustice that happened decades ago. A mystery enfolding its writer. And the fortune that awaits the person who solves the puzzle.
So with the help of Brandon, the quiet boy across the street, she begins to decipher the clues. The challenge will lead them deep into Lambert's history, full of ugly deeds, forgotten heroes, and one great love; and deeper into their own families, with their own unspoken secrets. Can they find the fortune and fulfill the letter's promise before the answers slip into the past yet again?
3. Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents By Lindsay C. Gibson, PsyD
Outside my husband and a few close friends, I've never revealed that I come from an abusive family. I wasn't physically abused, so for a very long time I didn't know that what happened to me was abuse. I thought a lot of the toxic behavior was normal because it was all I'd ever known. But I did realize I was extremely depressed, yet I couldn't figure out why. In my high school journal, I once wrote, Why am I like this? It's not like I was abused. Even then I was linking my mental state to that of an abused person. Then one day (well into my thirties) I clicked on a click-bate article on mental illness and it sent me into a research frenzy. I learned about parentification, emeshment, and parental alienation, and suddenly I understood why I was the way I was. And from there I could make the changes to my life I need to make to protect myself, start processing the abuse, and finally heal.
Everyone should read this book. While it didn't really teach me anything I didn't already know (I am very well researched on the subject) it did validate my experience. It's short and layman-friendly and just might explain your childhood better than you ever thought possible.
In this breakthrough book, clinical psychologist Lindsay Gibson exposes the destructive nature of parents who are emotionally immature or unavailable. You will see how these parents create a sense of neglect, and discover ways to heal from the pain and confusion caused by your childhood. By freeing yourself from your parents’ emotional immaturity, you can recover your true nature, control how you react to them, and avoid disappointment. Finally, you’ll learn how to create positive, new relationships so you can build a better life.
Discover the four types of difficult parents:
The emotional parent instills feelings of instability and anxiety
The driven parent stays busy trying to perfect everything and everyone
The passive parent avoids dealing with anything upsetting
The rejecting parent is withdrawn, dismissive, and derogatory
4. Under a Dancing Star by Laura Wood
This young adult romance is loosely based on Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing and takes place in 1930s Italy as fascism threatens to take over the world. I immediately fell in love with Bea--she's smart, fearless, and her matter-of-fact personality is utterly charming. Though based on a Shakespearean play, it also reminded me a lot of a Jane Austen novel as well as Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle (which is another favorite of mine). If you're looking for a great light read, I highly recommend this book.
In grey, 1930s England, Bea has grown up kicking against the conventions of the time, all the while knowing that she will one day have to marry someone her parents choose - someone rich enough to keep the family estate alive. But she longs for so much more - for adventure, excitement, travel, and maybe even romance.
When she gets the chance to spend the summer in Italy with her bohemian uncle and his betrothed, a whole world is opened up to Bea - a world that includes Ben, a cocky young artist who just happens to be infuriatingly handsome too. Sparks fly between the quick-witted pair until one night, under the stars, a challenge is set: can Bea and Ben put aside their teasing and have the perfect summer romance?
5. As Brave as You by Jason Reynolds
Are you tired of me recommending Jason Reynolds's work yet? I'm sure not tired of reading it. I think this may be my favorite prose novel of his. I love how his kids always act and think and feel like actually kids and not like how adults think kids would act, think, and feel, if that makes sense. Genie and Ernie are no exception, and the setting is as much a character as the brothers.
Genie’s summer is full of surprises. The first is that he and his big brother, Ernie, are leaving Brooklyn for the very first time to spend the summer with their grandparents all the way in Virginia—in the COUNTRY! The second surprise comes when Genie figures out that their grandfather is blind. Thunderstruck, Genie peppers Grandpop with questions about how he hides it so well (besides wearing way cool Ray-Bans).
How does he match his clothes? Know where to walk? Cook with a gas stove? Pour a glass of sweet tea without spilling it? Genie thinks Grandpop must be the bravest guy he’s ever known, but he starts to notice that his grandfather never leaves the house—as in NEVER. And when he finds the secret room that Grandpop is always disappearing into—a room so full of songbirds and plants that it’s almost as if it’s been pulled inside-out—he begins to wonder if his grandfather is really so brave after all.
Then Ernie lets him down in the bravery department. It’s his fourteenth birthday, and, Grandpop says to become a man, you have to learn how to shoot a gun. Genie thinks that is AWESOME until he realizes Ernie has no interest in learning how to shoot. None. Nada. Dumbfounded by Ernie’s reluctance, Genie is left to wonder—is bravery and becoming a man only about proving something, or is it just as important to own up to what you won’t do?
Bonus Books:
The Last Dive by Bernie Chowdhury
This one of my favorite rereads and I was so happy when I found it in the box of books I thought I donated. I have no interest in diving (I'm happy to snorkel and stay on the surface where a breath of air is always readily available), but I love reading about things I've never experienced--diving, mountain climbing, living on a sail boat, etc. It's a sad story, but an engrossing one.
Spurred on by a fatal combination of obsession and ambition, Chris and Chrissy Rouse, an experienced father-son scuba diving team, hoped to achieve wide-spread recognition for their outstanding and controversial diving skills by solving the secrets of a mysterious, undocumented, World War II German U-boat that lay only a half day’s mission from New York Harbor.
The Rouses found the ultimate cost of chasing their personal challenge: death from what divers dread the most—decompression sickness, or “the bends.” In this gripping recounting of their tragedy, author Bernie Chowdhury, himself an expert diver, explores the thrill-seeking, high-risk world of deep sea diving, its legendary figures, most celebrated triumphs, and notorious tragedies.
No Angel: My Harrowing Undercover Journey to the Inner Circle of the Hells Angels by Jay Dobyns
Another reread I like because it's so far outside my experience.
Getting shot in the chest as a rookie agent, bartering for machine guns, throttling down the highway at 100 mph, and responding to a full-scale, bloody riot between the Hells Angels and their rivals, the Mongols—these are just a few of the high-adrenaline experiences Dobyns recounts in this action-packed, hard-to-imagine-but-true story.
Dobyns leaves no stone of his harrowing journey unturned. At runs and clubhouses, between rides and riots, Dobyns befriends bad-ass bikers, meth-fueled “old ladies,” gun fetishists, psycho-killer ex-cons, and even some of the “Filthy Few”--the elite of the Hells Angels who’ve committed extreme violence on behalf of their club. Eventually, at parties staged behind heavily armed security, he meets legendary club members such as Chuck Zito, Johnny Angel, and the godfather of all bikers, Ralph “Sonny” Barger. To blend in with them, he gets full-arm ink; to win their respect, he vows to prove himself a stone-cold killer.
Hardest of all is leading a double life, which has him torn between his devotion to his wife and children, and his pledge to become the first federal agent ever to be “fully patched” into the Angels’ near-impregnable ranks. His act is so convincing that he comes within a hairsbreadth of losing himself. Eventually, he realizes that just as he’s been infiltrating the Hells Angels, they’ ve been infiltrating him. And just as they’re not all bad, he’s not all good.
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