I was on a cruise ship library (yes, girl, they had a library on a cruise and I was ALL.FOR.IT) and wasn’t able to check out my target book: Moonglow by Michael Chabon. Instead, the only section was the book exchange section, so I checked out a book from there called Girl in Translation.
At first I was disappointed to not be able to check out Michael Chabon’s book, but I’m glad I got to read this book instead. It’s about a young woman named Kimberly who immigrates from Hong Kong with her mother to New York City, where they find work in a sweatshop. Kimberly has a hard time fitting in because she doesn’t speak English and the other kids tease her. Her teacher also treats her poorly because she doesn’t speak English. However, she befriends one girl in her class named Annette, and they continue to be friends through thick and thin even when Annette, who is white and upper middle class, can’t fully understand Kimberly’s life, or why Kimberly has to work while the other kids get to go to academic programs and do other things over summer. Kimberly also meets a guy at the sweatshop named Matt, and later on as she grows older, he changes her life, and not exactly in a good way (no spoilers here, you’ll need to read the book to find out what I mean by this.) This book is a fast read and not just because it is accessible in terms of language, but because Kwon’s writing is so on point and as the reader, even if I couldn’t directly relate with Kimberly and her mother’s situation, I felt for her throughout the novel. It also made me want to educate myself more about classism (the discrimination of someone based on their socioeconomic status) because Kimberly not only encounters racism but also classism. She cannot afford nice things, and Annette is constantly asking her why she can’t come over to her house to hang out, and feels upset when Kimberly won’t tell her the truth. Reading this novel made me want to think more carefully about what I say, since I have said things before that could be considered classist.
The Poet X: Another excellent novel. I took back Girl in Translation, and wanted to check out another book from the cruise library (also because I’m nerdy and was still so hyped about the fact that there was a library on the cruise. I brought three books with me, but feared somehow–totally irrational fear, come to think about it, since I didn’t even finish the books I brought with me on the trip–that I would finish them.) I saw The Hate U Give, but I already read that book, then I found another book next to it, and it had a beautiful cover, so I decided to check it out. I understand it’s bad to judge books by their covers, but this cover was just so amazing I couldn’t pass it up. I didn’t know if I’d be able to finish it, since it’s a pretty long book, but I finished it in one evening. Not only was the writing spellbinding and raw, but also it was in the form of poetry, so the lines just flowed so well. The book is about this young Dominican woman named Xiomara, and she struggles in school with students teasing her about her body, and also feeling her mother instilled a sense of guilt in her. She is also conflicted about her faith in God. However, one of her teachers shows her a video of a young Black woman reciting spoken word at a slam poetry event, and immediately Xiomara is hooked. So she writes poetry like it’s nobody’s business and joins the poetry club that the teacher sponsors, but she also has to keep it a secret from her mom because her mom wants her to focus on school and faith, and writing poetry in her spare time would go against that. It’s an incredible novel and I felt inspired to write more after reading how Xiomara uses writing as a medium for expressing all of the human emotions she feels every day: frustration, angst, depression, guilt, love, the list of emotions goes on, but when she writes about how free she feels writing poetry, I could relate. Writing for me has allowed me to express myself in ways I normally wouldn’t, especially as someone who tends to be introverted even though I like talking to people, too.
Solo: I found this at the time that I found The Poet X. I saw that both books were in the format of poetry and I thought, “This is epic,” so I checked them both out. This is a really good book about a guy named Blade whose dad, Rutherford, is a famous musician fresh out of rehab who is trying to get his life back together but is failing in the process. Blade feels embarrassed when his dad tries to come back into his life, and on top of that, his girlfriend cheated on him for some big-name rapper. He goes to Ghana because he wants to find his birth mother, and through his journey in Ghana he finds out stuff about himself and his relationship with his family roots that he never thought he would find out. He also develops a deeper bond with his dad because at first, he is embarrassed that his dad followed him to Ghana (even when Blade’s sister, Storm, tried to talk him out of it) but he learns that his dad is more than just what the media portrays him as, and he learns to appreciate his time with his dad more. It’s a really heartfelt book and the music recommendations are pretty sweet.
Dog-Man and Cat-Kid: There was no way I was going to pass this book up. Honestly I saw it was Captain Underpants author Dav Pilkey and I knew I needed a knee-slapper. Like most, if not all kids, I loved Captain Underpants as a child: Wrath of the Wicked Wedgie Woman, Invasion of the Incredibly Naughty Cafeteria Ladies from Outer Space, Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants, you name it. So of course, it was no surprise that after watching dramas and reading dramas, I would want to check out a lighter read. If you haven’t read Captain Underpants, it’s about these two little boys named George and Harold who do goofy pranks to try and bug their teachers and principal, Mr. Krupp, who becomes Captain Underpants and gains superpowers when he drinks alien juice. This time, George and Harold sought inspiration from a book they read in school called East of Eden (honestly, I think they just skipped seven grades because I didn’t get to read East of Eden until senior year of high school. I would never have grasped the language or content of that book at George and Harold’s age. Also it has some pretty raunchy scenes in it, as well as racism) and this book influenced their newest comic Dog-Man and Cat-Kid. I won’t give away spoilers, but as a grown adult, I needed to read this book. Life as an adult can be pretty stressful sometimes, but reading this book taught me that it’s ok to laugh at potty humor sometimes even if it seems immature to do so at my age.
I just finished the book I Owe You One by Sophie Kinsella and it is absolutely marvelous! This is probably the umpteenth (not literally) book I have read by this author and I swear, every time I read her books she spellbinds me with her writing. I devoured this book like her other books, a sweet devil’s food cake. It is about this young woman named Fixie Farr who runs a small shop with her brother, Jake, her sister, Nicole, and her mother. The family is struggling to cope with the death of their father and Jake’s ego gets the best of him when he threatens to revamp the shop so they can cater to a wealthier clientele, meaning that a lot of the inexpensive goods Farr’s would sell wouldn’t sell anymore and that pricier goods would replace the old ones. Moreover, Fixie’s ex-boyfriend, Ryan, who is just as egotistical as Jake, moves back to London with no money and no job after a failed attempt to make it as a film producer in Los Angeles. It gets worse when Fixie goes to a coffee shop and the ceiling collapses on her, leaving her soaking wet. A mysterious man named Sebastian has her watch his laptop, and mystically, the laptop goes undamaged even when Fixie herself is soaking wet from the damage. Sebastian not only thanks her in person for saving his laptop, he gives her a coffee sleeve with the letters “I.O.U” so that he will repay the favor to Fixie someday. Sebastian teaches Fixie a lot of important life lessons, the main one that while it’s ok to do nice things for others, you also have to do nice things for yourself and create some boundaries with others. Otherwise you just burn yourself out and cannot make yourself happy.
Take, for instance, Nicole, Fixie’s sister. She doesn’t do much around the house and when Jake lays out a plan at a family dinner while their mom is on vacation, Nicole says that they should not only tear down the merchandise that’s already there, they should have a yoga studio in the store and an Instagram page. But the Instagram page ends up just being Nicole taking photos of herself and not of the store’s merchandise. Nicole is so used to Fixie doing everything that she doesn’t make any real contributions to the household. Even though my struggles weren’t the same as Fixie’s, I can relate to her personality because she is an empath. I am an empath myself, and while being an empath helps me experience the world in ways I wouldn’t normally experience it, and while it helps me awaken to the beauty that life can hold, being an empath can be a mental and emotional drain. I think that’s why Fixie has a hard time accepting that she is in a loving mutual relationship with Sebastian where the two give to each other as much as take from each other. Fixie feels like she should do all the cooking, cleaning and other stuff, which is how Ryan viewed their relationship (i.e. the woman does all the household stuff and takes care of me while I try to become successful and get a lot of money again.) Sebastian, however, respected Fixie and knew how to take care of himself and his own business (he even makes her fudge. Ryan doesn’t even cook, let alone clean.)
This book is truly awesome, and I cried a lot toward the end because Sebastian and Fixie’s chemistry was amazing, and how Fixie grows closer to her family by honestly communicating with them about how they give her most of the responsibility. Fixie also comes to terms with the fact that you can’t please everyone and can’t solve everyone’s problems. Ryan bullies Fixie to get him a job because he finds out about the I.O.U. from Sebastian, and Fixie gives in because she thinks Ryan will break up with her if she says no. Fixie has this idealistic vision of her and Ryan in a long-lasting beautiful commitment, and yet her friends warn her that Ryan is flaky and does not like commitment. Fixie doesn’t listen though and gives Ryan the benefit of the doubt, only to realize that he really doesn’t care about her and the only reason he comes over is because he doesn’t want to work hard for his own money or take any responsibility for his own life. Jake eventually realizes that he is in debt due to his excessive lifestyle and that he spent so much time trying to impress others that he hasn’t taken the time to reflect on himself and what really makes him happy in life. He eventually goes back to not taking himself so seriously, and this helps humble him.
I can kind of relate because I had this lofty goal of getting into a professional orchestra, and I sort of put on airs about it, but I didn’t have any full-time work. I was also getting rejected by a bunch of other jobs, and at the same time looking down on people who worked jobs in the service industry (ok, not really looking down, but I was pretty indifferent to working in food service.) So it’s little surprise that the universe sent me a magical gift: I got a job at a coffee shop, and while I did apply to coffee shops because I needed the money, I expected them to reject me, too. Working this job at the coffee shop really taught me that while I should work hard and do my best at work, I shouldn’t take myself too seriously or else my job won’t be fun. When Jake trades in his expensive lifestyle for full-time work at the shop during the holidays, he is funnier and feels a lot better and more relaxed around his family. When Nicole, Jake and Fixie communicate honestly with each other, they develop a deeper bond than before, which showed me how important genuine communication is. Genuine communication isn’t as pretty as sweeping stuff under the rug, but it is way better than holding in all these negative feelings and letting them fester until it becomes a problem and the person holding in those feelings takes out their anger on themselves. Like Fixie, I bottled up the anger I felt when I felt like I was expounding too much energy on taking care of someone else’s mess, and like Fixie, I blamed myself for not making everyone happy and fixing their problems. But eventually I had to realize that you can’t please everyone, and that when you realize this your life actually becomes more fulfilling.
Overall, I loved this book and because there is so much happening in the world today, I needed some fiction to calm me down. So thank you once again, Sophie Kinsella, for your wonderful writing. I wonder how this book would be if it became a film, but the films don’t always do justice to the books (probably for copyright reasons.) I could read this book again; it is truly a treasure! 🙂
As a philosophy major in college, I wish I had read this book a lot sooner. It approaches the question of good vs. bad in a rather hilarious way. Of course, I didn’t laugh the entire time that I read it, as some parts are quite dark and make you sit and think for a minute. This is the third book I have read by Nick Hornby, besides his novels About a Boy and Slam, and How to Be Good never fails to satisfy me. It’s about this couple named Katie and David who are struggling to maintain a happy life with their two kids, Tom and Molly. They are a middle-class couple who both have stable jobs: Katie is a doctor and Davis is an angry news columnist. But there is one problem: Katie has an affair with a man named Stephen, and now David has to deal with not just his stressful job but his wife cheating on him, too. However, David goes through this spiritual change through the encouragement of his spiritual doctor DJ GoodNews. David then quits his job and decides he is going to have everyone on his block, including him and his family, bring in someone on the streets to live with them. At first, everyone on the block is skeptical, but then Monkey, the homeless kid who the family takes in, turns out to be a good guy and even gets back the possessions of one couple on the block whose adopted homeless person stole from them. While Tom and Katie think David and GoodNews are being ludicrous, Molly sides with David and becomes self-righteous. Katie begins to question whether her work as a doctor is as morally sound as the work David and GoodNews are doing with the homeless, but finds out that their plan to do good backfires and they lose hope in humanity.
This novel wrestles with the question of what does it truly mean to be a “good person.” Katie becomes a doctor because she wants to help people, but every day that she works with patients they are not happy. However, when GoodNews intervenes, people start taking his work seriously even though he lacks the qualifications to be a doctor and tries to “treat” people’s medical problems by giving them head massages instead of medicine. Katie eventually realizes that she cannot please everyone and that just because one isn’t doing what David does does not necessarily mean one cannot do good in life. In fact, I believe that if you truly want to do good in life, you should start with your family and friends. In Buddhism, we have a term called “human revolution,” which means that each of us can change the world and foster world peace by changing our attitude and striving to be the best at our workplaces, in our schools, at home. Naturally when we do this we become happy, and we naturally encourage others around us to share in that happiness. There are also the terms “relative happiness” and “absolute happiness.” Relative happiness is defined by material things: great grades, great college, wonderful spouse, your dream job, the nice car, anything that brings you joy in that moment. However, relative happiness is fleeting, because if that thing or person leaves you, breaks or gets destroyed in some way, you feel bad you no longer have it and you sink back into despair. Or even if those things still exist in your life, over time you may find yourself wishing for a better job, a better car, better food, etc., and so you attach your happiness to those things. Now, I’m not saying we shouldn’t want nice things; we’re human, we go through stuff, we deserve to have hot water, a nice meal, access to Netflix. However, when we define our lives only by the stuff we have and stop valuing others in our life, we feel empty inside. Absolute happiness, however, is a happiness that you feel while you go through struggles in life. Katie doesn’t have the perfect life, but she comes to terms with its imperfections. Life is messy and many times you will cry until your eyes hurt. But I have personally found that the times I remember the most are the times when I challenged myself to my limits and conquered something so seemingly impossible, and over time I laugh when I look back at those times, and I even cry tears of appreciation that I went through that time so that I could learn what I was capable of.
The novel also makes a great point about loving the ones you are with. One night David and GoodNews call people they wronged in the past to apologize and ask forgiveness so that they don’t have to feel guilty and burdened by the past. For David, the person he called was a kid he bullied years ago, and for GoodNews it was his sister Cantata for reasons I am still not clear about (something to do with a poster of Duran Duran frontman Simon LeBon.) GoodNews, unlike David, ends up cussing out his sister when she refuses to forgive him and hangs up. Even when Katie tries to console GoodNews he still says that he feels like a failure for what he did to her. Katie realizes that no matter how much she tries to convince him he isn’t a failure, he did in fact mess up. She wonders “who are these people, that they want to save the world and yet they are incapable of forming proper relationships with anybody? As GoodNews so eloquently puts it, it’s love this and love that, but of course it’s so easy to love someone you don’t know, whether it’s George Clooney or Monkey. Staying civil to someone with whom you’ve ever shared Christmas turkey–now, there’s a miracle.” (How to Be Good, Hornby, 275)
I have found from personal experience that even as someone who passionate about social justice, I need to be a human being and look out for my friends and family, too. There are lots and lots of problems in the world: suicide bombings, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, white nationalism, global warming, the list goes on (why do you think there’s a Good News section in your Microsoft Newsfeed? Life is tough, and we could all use some acts of compassion once in a while.) However, as I am not God, I cannot solve all of the world’s problems. But what I can control is my outlook on life. I can choose to value my current friendships, my family ties, and having such ties grounds my approach to social justice. Sure, working at a coffee shop after college wasn’t the equivalent to being the CEO of the International Monetary Fund, or being the star onstage playing the Edouard Lalo Cello Concerto for a climate change festival (although I would actually love to do this someday, to be honest), or being principal cellist of the New York Philharmonic. But if anything, it was this: a way to bring home money and pay my bills so I can in fact afford to pursue my music activities and charitable pursuits. In order to take care of others, I had to take care of myself, which means taking care of my finances, saving money for myself, getting rid of any debt, and spending time with family and friends. When I was in college, I invested a lot of my rage in theses about the factories polluting the predominantly Black low-income Altgeld Gardens in Chicago. I threw myself into my papers on the Harlem Renaissance, police brutality and the ethics of freegans.
Yet I had quit my job at the local daycare because I felt this work was more important, when the reality is that other kids had to work while studying so they could send home money to an ailing parent or provide for their kid. I wasn’t focused on the preschoolers I needed to show up for every day as part of my work study, I wasn’t focused on taking care of my finances, I was solely concerned with my grades. And while I don’t regret my college experience and appreciate even just going to college, I will say that I took a lot of things for granted, like thinking I could survive each waking day after staying up studying until 2 am to polish the perfect two-page essay for that medieval philosophers class, or the times I left my phone off and didn’t call my family to check in on them. Like Katie said, it is easier to value someone outside of our immediate environment, and if we can’t treasure the people closest to us while we are out saving the world, we may end up regretting that we didn’t spend more time with them. I know I cannot speak for everyone, but this has just been my experience, so even if I go to graduate school because I want to study some noble thing and go on to make big contributions to society (because, to be honest, I want to do this), I still need to value my loved ones so that when they pass away (as I will, too, someday, like everyone and everything on this planet) I will look back on the time I spent with them with a sense of gratitude rather than wishing I could have spent more time with them.
Reading How to Be Good taught me that taking care of yourself isn’t selfish, and it doesn’t mean you did something bad for society. And doing acts of kindness is a good thing; I would never want to say it was something people should stop doing. I myself remember doing an acts of kindness project for a class I took in high school, and it was so much fun because I had to do it anonymously. However, it’s important to have a healthy relationship with yourself and your boundaries so that you can carry that healthy self-esteem in your relationships and in broader terms your work for world peace. This novel was a New York Times bestseller when it came out almost two years ago, and I can see why. I finished it in just a couple of days, it was that good.
Of course, this wouldn’t be wise in reality. Honestly, with all the surveillance and debate around privacy rights, this book, while a comedy, had a slightly disturbing undertone to it. It’s why you need to erase any personal data on your computer’s hard drive before giving it away or recycling it, because if someone accesses your data, it’s not so fun when someone is stalking you because they know your information from your computer (8/30/21: how much I can follow this in my own life, I don’t know.) But of course, if the situation was desperate, I’m sure I would have done what Poppy did (of course, it wouldn’t be the right thing, but it would have saved my friends a ton of stress.) I remember one time I was texting and walking down the stairs, and because I wasn’t paying attention and was in a rush, I fell down the stairs and my phone went crashing with me. It hit the hardwood floor of the office where I was supposed to turn in my key (for the dorm I stayed in during a summer program) and I found myself without a phone. I cried all through the flight because I couldn’t contact my closest friends to let them know I was alive and was on the flight back home. I also couldn’t check the time when my flight boarded, so much to the dismay of the woman checking everyone’s boarding pass before they boarded, I was so caught up in my sadness about dropping my phone, and so busy calling myself every demeaning term in the book for dropping it, that I didn’t realize everyone had boarded until the lady was telling me, rightfully upset, that the flight was going to leave without me. Of course, I could have averted the situation completely by not texting until I had gotten down the stairs, but you live and learn, right? I also learned to back up my phone in case I did something like that again (which probably won’t happen, after I remember to this day the pain and agony on my friends’ faces when I told them I couldn’t answer their calls and texts because I dropped my phone and broke it.)
Overall, excellent novel; Poppy and Sam make an incredible duo; I seriously hope they make a movie out of the book! 🙂
I’ve Got Your Number: A Novel. Sophie Kinsella. 435 pp.
I was browsing the shelves of the library last week, searching for Shopaholic Takes Manhattan, the sequel to Sophie Kinsella’s bestselling novel, Confessions of a Shopaholic. My face fell when I saw it was not on the shelves, but then I wasn’t going to lose hope, and instead spotted a green book with a young woman and the words “My (Not-So) Perfect Life” written diagonally. I wondered if it was part of a series, and then found it stood on its own, so I wouldn’t have to read anything before it, so I checked it out. After watching so many dramas and reading dramas, I needed to take a break and read some funny stuff.
I devoured the book in less than two days. Sophie Kinsella continues to amaze me with her plot twists, her witty characters and her sheer talent for writing. This may sound weird, but it kind of reminded me of a novel version of The Financial Diet. The Financial Diet is a blog where people share about their personal financial experiences, such as how they lived in a big city on a budget, paid offtheir student debt, changed careers, or found great deals on flights and travel. The blog also has a lot of stories about comparing ourselves to others and the use of social media and its effects on our happiness. However, there are also posts about a healthy use of social media, such as Chelsea Fagan’s post on using Instagram positively.
My (Not-So) Perfect Life is about a young woman named Katie Brenner who is trying to start her career at a marketing agency in London. She expects her life to be better than in her hometown in the countryside of England, and even changes her name to Cat so people will treat her like a serious city person, but she gets a reality check. Her roommates are terrible, her job pays little and is quite boring, she doesn’t have a boyfriend. Some of her colleagues also make fun of her accent and her countryside roots. In short, Katie’s life is less than perfect.
Her boss, Demeter, on the other hand, seems cool as a cucumber (I kept imagining Demeter as Amy’s boss Dianna, played by Tilda Swinton, in the film Trainwreck.) Demeter seems to have the perfect life: a husband, two children, a nice home, a nice life and a top position at her job. However, at work she is controlling, berating her employees and putting so many demands on them that her entire staff loses respect for her. One day, without warning, she lets Katie go and Katie moves back to her family’s farm in Somerset. Even though she doesn’t want to be at home, she helps her dad and his girlfriend, Biddy, with their glamping business. Soon after the glamping business takes off, and Dad, Kate and Biddy get new customers. However, when Demeter ends up visiting Somerset to glamp with her family, Katie must keep her cover so she doesn’t let her dad and Biddy know that Demeter fired her. Katie plots a revenge plan to get back at Demeter for firing her, but eventually sees that Demeter is less perfect than she thought.
This book taught me a lot of things. First and foremost, it taught me the importance of being my own person and not comparing myself to others. Katie spends most of her time in London looking at other people’s lives and assuming that she is the only person who doesn’t have it all together. Instead of deciding to be herself, she thinks that she only has to post good stuff on her Instagram in order to not let her friends know that she isn’t having a great time in London. Her friends post their positive moments, but rarely, if ever, post whether they’ve had a bad day. However, later in the book we find out that most of these people in Katie’s peer group, despite moving to these luxurious places, still have problems like every other human being on the planet. While it’s important sometimes to “fake it ’til you make it” in order to do your best work, social media and the Internet in general have made it easier for us to compare ourselves to each other and seek happiness outside of ourselves in things that, in the end, don’t last long. Social media can be great for a lot of things, but I have noticed after celebrating my 1-year anniversary of not having a Facebook account, I don’t miss it at all and have come to embrace myself without trying to keep in contact with everyone. Instead of deleting her Instagram, Katie starts a hashtag where people can post imperfect photos of their lives, such as a crowded subway platform, soaked hair, and other things that people deem failures.
This book also taught me to never forget your roots. Wherever I move, I cannot forget who I am and where I came from. As a musician, even if I do make it to Carnegie Hall and other prestigious places, I want to stay grounded and not let my ego get in the way of letting me be myself. Katie tries to leave behind her identity as a young woman growing up in Somerset with her father, but when she moves back home she gets in touch with her roots. There’s this idea that to be an adult, you need to enjoy things that we typically consider to be for adults, such as going to the bar every evening, dining out, having the dream job. But trying to be someone besides herself ends up draining Katie, and she comes back acting like Demeter towards Dad and Biddy until she realizes how much she has let Demeter’s controlling demeanor influence how she acts towards others.
Although I must say, like Confessions of a Shopaholic, this book felt like a movie. I awwwed at the sad scenes and whenever Katie spoke up for herself and even won back Alex, her coworker she was crushing on who Katie thought was having an affair with Demeter, I snapped my fingers and kept saying, “You go, girl!”, “Amen!” or “Yasssss, slay queen!” In one scene, Katie overhears Demeter trying to engage her two spoiled children in conversation while they are glued to their phones. She observes that Demeter feels lonely and broken inside even though it looks like she has the perfect family, and her kids don’t respect her or show any appreciation towards her. So Katie, when Demeter is gone, calls the two kids out, in the calmest way, for not appreciating everything their mom has done for them, telling them that her (Katie’s) mom died when she was young, so she wasn’t able to spend time with her mom, unlike Demeter’s kids. When the kids hear this, it seems as if they ignore her, but then later Coco, Demeter’s daughter, briefly looks up from her phone and thanks Demeter for taking them on the glamping trip. This scene taught me that if we want to make it anywhere in life, we need to have a deep sense of gratitude.
This novel also taught me that everyone has their own definitions of perfect. This blog post isn’t going to be perfect. None of my blog posts are perfect. My music playing isn’t always perfect. But to someone else they may be the thing they need to get through the day. I do think it’s important to work on improving yourself every day, but I try not to be a perfectionist anymore because I don’t have time to keep worrying about whether people will like me or not. Life is messy sometimes, and to get through life and your day to day means embracing the messiness. This book was awesome and so relevant to this day and age. Thank you once again, Sophie Kinsella.
My (Not-So) Perfect Life: A Novel. Sophie Kinsella. 438 pp. 2017.
Ten summers ago, I was bored out of my mind. School had let out and all I had planned was summer reading and vegging out in front of the TV while knitting. And then I came across it, a magical treasure, one of eight incredible summer reads I delved into that sticky season: The Friday Night Knitting Club, a beautiful touching novel by Kate Jacobs. I vaguely remember not finishing it, but then I rediscovered it one day at the library nearly a decade later, and thought, “I need to finish this book.” So I read it, and I’m pretty sure I shed more than a tear or two. Set in modern-day New York City, it narrates the lives of a group of women who all meet on a Friday evening in Georgia Walker’s yarn shop called Walker and Daughter. In the first book, Dakota, Georgia’s daughter, is thrilled to be around so many incredible women and learn from their lives as they knit afghans, scarves, hats and other things.
While I can’t remember much in detail about the characters’ backgrounds, I remember enough to know how they develop in the sequel. At the end of the first novel, Georgia dies of ovarian cancer, and in the second, Peri, one of the members of the knitting club, takes over the shop and renovates it. She wants Dakota to take more responsibility for the shop, but Dakota is now eighteen and has other interests, namely attending college at New York University and getting a cute guy at school to notice her. Anita, an elderly woman, is trying to find love after the death of her husband; Catherine is not sure she’ll ever find a man who loves her truly for her after her divorce; Lucie is searching for the father of her newborn daughter, Ginger, not only raising her but also taking care of her mother. Not to mention Darwin is now a new mom with twins and KC is struggling with her career. Like the first book, each character has their own struggles they deal with, but nevertheless, they stick it out and support each other, especially because they want to honor the incredible life that Georgia left them through the shop.
At first, I started the novel but then thought I would need to read the first again just to get into the beginning. I read the book rather a long time ago, so it took me a while to catch up to the characters, but once I remembered the plot line from the first novel, I once again devoured it like the most delicious piece of (vegan) chocolate cake ever in the entire world. This book almost got me a little choked up because these young women support each other even through the rough times. I love to knit but have only been knitting by myself for the longest time, and reading The Friday Night Knitting Club helped me understand how I really need to find other people to knit with. I like knitting alone, it’s just that it’s fun to do with friends, too. Once again, I can’t thank Kate Jacobs enough for another excellent read. This book reminds us knitters that the things we make carry our personal stories with them, and that our projects as knitters can help us connect to one another even at the times we feel alone.
Back in 2006 or 2007, around that time, they said Julia Roberts was going to star in a movie adaptation of The Friday Night Knitting Club. Fast forward ten years later, and I’m still crossing my fingers hoping they live up to their promise. And maybe it’s for the best; sometimes when people make movies from books, they have to leave a lot out, not just for time constraints but also probably for copyright policy. And I have no doubt that Julia Roberts is working on other great projects right now, but even if she didn’t play in the movie, they could have another actress play in the film. I am still (more than a little) sad that no movie has come out yet, but oh well. Maybe someday. I guess I’ll just keep crossing my fingers and praying for a movie adaptation.
Knit Two: A Friday Night Knitting Club Novel. Kate Jacobs. 326 pp. 2008.
I devoured this book. At first I went to the library this weekend to get some novels, but then I thought I needed to get another book on personal finance, even though I had already read Get Money by Kristen Wong and absorbed The Financial Diet like osmosis.
And to be honest, Confessions of a Shopaholic really is one of the most important personal finance books out there, even if it’s a novel that came out eighteen years ago. I don’t care if people think it’s mere “chick lit” or a silly story about a woman who can’t control her shopping habit. But after listening to so many financial literacy podcasts, reading articles in the Money section of MSN and preaching to the Holy Temple of Suze Orman (I’m pretty sure I’ve perfected the way she says “Roth IRA” at this point), reading this book made me really think about our consumer culture, clutter, and our society’s lingering reluctance to talk about money, especially how society has conditioned women to talk about money.
I saw the movie a while ago, and can’t really remember it other than the gorgeous Isla Fisher starring as Rebecca, the main character. However, I do remember that, unlike the book, the film takes place in New York City. The novel takes place in London. Rebecca (“Becky”) Bloomwood thinks she is living the high life, with her upscale apartment in an affluent area, but she has a whole host of other issues to deal with, namely her credit card debt. She writes as a financial journalist and yet doesn’t get paid much or even practice Successful Savings habits even when she works in finance. She feels extremely out of place among the super-powerful financial gurus in the city, and her friend Suze tells her that her problem is not necessarily that she spends too much money, but that she doesn’t make enough money. So Becky applies for a job at a clothing store, but gets fired on her very first day for trying to steal a precious item of clothing from a customer that she (Becky) really wants. Becky tries to practice frugality, and yet after a few days she goes back to spending on things she doesn’t need, like eating out and buying books. She takes on a side hustle which involves her putting together frames for pictures and selling them for a profit, but doesn’t get far with it. Becky also has to deal with Luke Brandon, an arrogant financial advisor who looks down on Becky and doesn’t really take her seriously. However, Becky is determined to make her life work for her by actually confronting her financial issues instead of running away from them.
This book reminded me that while it’s okay to have nice things, having too much can run you ragged and actually make you feel unfulfilled in the long run. Don’t get me wrong, I love spending $11 at the movies just as much as the next person. However, movies are much cheaper when you get them on the Red Box or even at the library, so I never really feel anymore like I just have to go to the movies every week because it does add up. When I do go to the movies or eat out on those rare occasions, I can appreciate it more than if I did it every day. Becky’s struggle also made me think of how Suze Orman would react to this book; I honestly don’t know if Suze would have made it through because Becky’s spending habits are over-the-top ridiculous. However, in a way, it does imply that women are traditionally stereotyped to be bad with money and don’t have enough saved up for their own needs. I mean, there are men who are bad spenders, too, and there are also several women who manage their finances just fine. There are also women like Becky who spend and never save for themselves. The book also made me understand why it’s important to have an emergency fund, because Becky is underpaid at her job and doesn’t like it very much, but instead of saving money so she can leave for a better opportunity (or work on her own projects), she spends money so that she can push the stress she feels at work under the table. However, she continues to get multiple letters from her bank about her overdraft fees and that she needs to meet with them to discuss her financial situation. This novel also taught me that we really need to talk about money. Even though most people talk about it, it still brings up uncomfortable feelings, and that’s okay because our financial situations are unique to each of us. It made me think of the money personalities Kristen Wong talks about. Becky avoids talking about money because socially speaking, she has been conditioned to believe talking about her own financial situation was bad. But when she finally confronts the issue of money head-on, she feels less ashamed to talk about it or encourage anyone in her same boat. It reminded me of Paulette Perhach’s essay “A Story of a Fuck Off Fund,” in which she talks about how she inflated her lifestyle to fit in with everyone else, but that she was dealing with a toxic boss at work and really wanted to leave her job, so she saved up an emergency fund and took on extra work and just lived below her means so that she could leave any kind of messy situation knowing she had the means to do so.
Overall, I really loved this book, and cannot wait to read its sequel! 🙂
Confessions of a Shopaholic: A Novel by Sophie Kinsella. 312 pp. 2001.
I just finished On the Come Up by Angie Thomas and think there needs to be a sequel to the book. It is that good. I read her novel The Hate U Give about a year ago and devoured it within a few days. For those who haven’t yet read the book, The Hate U Give is about a young Black woman named Starr who loses her childhood friend when a police officer kills him. Starr, over the course of the novel, learns to transform her grief into a call for everyone to protest racial profiling. This novel earned Angie Thomas a spot on The New York Times bestseller list and a movie starring Amandla Stenberg as Starr.
On the Come Up is also incredibly good. It is about a young Black woman named Brianna (nicknamed “Bri”) Jackson who lives with her mom and her brother after the murder of her father, who was a prominent rapper. Bri, like her family, is struggling to make ends meet while aspiring to be a famous rapper, but then her Aunt Pooh encourages her to enter a rapping battle to get a record deal with Supreme, a prominent rapper who was in competition with Bri’s dad. Bri enters the battle even though her mom and teachers want her to focus on studying for the ACT so she can get into college, and she ends up roasting her rival, Supreme’s son Milez. Her song goes viral and everyone at school now knows who she is, but the further immersed she gets in her career as a rapper, the deeper in trouble Bri gets with her family and friends. Jayda (nicknamed Jay), Bri’s mom, was able to recover from her substance abuse and get a job at the local church, but when she gets laid off, she struggles to provide for herself, Bri and her son, Trey. Bri’s fame becomes the talk of the community, and not in a good way. One day, two police officers profile Bri and accuse her of having drugs in her backpack when she actually has candy she is selling to make money. Everyone at the school sings Bri’s hit, but a lot of people criticize her because the lyrics seem to the public to glorify drug use, gun violence and money. Supreme tries to sell Bri out, but Bri eventually realizes how, in the end, the money and fame doesn’t matter if it jeopardizes your safety and the safety of your friends and family. She realizes that one can still be a rapper and not have to play into people’s mainstream ideas of who rappers are. In fact, rap can be used as a means of fostering community and addressing social injustice. This book really spoke to me, especially with Trey’s character. Trey went to college, got straight A’s in high school, and got a degree in psychology. However, he couldn’t find jobs in his field, so he got a job working at a pizza restaurant to support the family while looking for a better job and applying to graduate school. His grandfather pities him for having a college degree and working in food service, but Trey’s situation is a real reality that speaks to a lot of us millennials who get these college degrees but don’t have many opportunities after college to use these degrees in the real world. However, even though Trey doesn’t directly use his psychology degree in a job-market sense, he still uses it to his advantage when helping out Bri. In one scene, Bri cries because she is overwhelmed with the unwanted attention she is getting at school for getting her music out there, with her family’s financial situation, and with the death of her father. She gets on a radio show and calls out Hype, the interviewer, when he belittles her music and makes her out to be this violent person when she’s really just trying to survive, and she gets backlash from it. It is overwhelming, and she thinks she is weak from crying in front of Trey, but he tells her that crying doesn’t make you weak and that “admitting that you’re weak is one of the strongest things you can do.” (Thomas p. 362)
This made me think of the film Moonlight, which is about Chiron, a young Black gay man growing up at a time where no one other than a few people would accept him for who he is. In one scene, Chiron cries in the principal’s office because Kevin, the guy he fell in love with, beats him up after a homophobic school bully pressures him to do so. The principal tries to convince him that he should have told someone that he was being bullied, but Chiron tells her that she doesn’t know how hard it is for him to do that. In another scene, we see Juan, a drug dealer who supports Chiron when his mom doesn’t, break down and cry at the dinner table because Chiron is living this painful reality where kids at school are calling him slurs and his mom also neglects him at home, and he just doesn’t know what to tell this little kid when Juan himself is just trying to survive. This movie shows that crying is human, but that Hollywood hasn’t always been good about just letting Black individuals, especially Black men, have space to just release their pain through tears. I totally agree with Trey that crying doesn’t make you weak, even though our society has historically stigmatized the shedding of tears. Crying shows that you are willing to admit that something is wrong, and it is a powerful way to communicate. Of course, crying too much is not always a good thing (I’m an empath, trust me, I know.) So even though it seems Trey’s degree is useless, it actually helps him read people and know what they are going through. This is how I feel with philosophy and Africana Studies. As much as people love to bash philosophy majors, our degree really isn’t useless because regardless of whether you pursue economics, STEM, or the arts and humanities, you need a solid philosophy on which to base your studies, otherwise you’re just doing all this research with no purpose. Even when working all these different jobs not related to my major, I learned how to think and act like a philosopher. As a philosophy major I learned how to question everything: What is the purpose of being a creative? What is my purpose in life? Are there perks to being a perfectionist? I have applied philosophy to everything: when I listen to music, when I write, when I watch movies, when I go to my job every day, when I interact with my fellow human beings, when I perform music. I live philosophy every day even though I don’t get to sit in my dorm room and reread Descartes’ Meditations ten times like I did in college.
The Mask Stereotype
Even though my second degree, Africana Studies, didn’t get me a job working at the Smithsonian (I still need to just get a ticket and go visit the National Museum of African-American History), I have used my training as a philosophy major to think more deeply about the deep roots of Black pain in our country’s history and how we can continue to address these roots through music, writing and other mediums of expression. When Bri’s song becomes a hit, Supreme goads her to do more music with lyrics about gun violence, but after understanding the risk that producing this music has on her loved ones, Bri realizes that Supreme is using her as a pawn to beef up his already successful career. When she goes into the studio expecting to rap her own lyrics, Supreme says Dee-Nice, another rapper, already wrote the song for her. She reads the lyrics and finds that it’s the same subject matter she rapped about in her hit: possessing guns and killing other people in the community if they criticize her. James, an older white man who is friends with Supreme at the record label, only has this single perception of the Black community: problems. Everywhere problems. Drugs, gangs, violence, prison, unemployment. He doesn’t know rap’s potential to address the institutional inequality that caused these problems in the first place. But because James only cares about making a profit from Bri, he thinks that all she wants to rap about is “sassy black-girl shit” (Thomas 381) and that pigeonholing her will make the record label richer. However, as an outsider, Bri can see through their nonsense even though she has gained access to this rich powerful boys club of music producers, so she speaks to Supreme in private and tells him she’s got her own music and won’t rap what Dee-Nice wrote. Supreme tells her that she can’t worry about all that because she is in the music business and “this is about making money” because James has the money they don’t have to succeed in the business. In reality, if Bri were to keep making songs that didn’t personally speak to her, she would just keep getting paid less than a profit while James and Supreme enjoyed most of the money without really doing any of the hard work themselves (aka writing the music from their hearts.)
Bri says the moment when Supreme is threatening to end her career reminds her of when she went to the zoo, and these little kids were making faces at the animals in the exhibit and trying to get them to come up to the glass or make sounds, solely for the sake of entertainment. Even though these animals obviously didn’t pay attention to these kids, Bri remembers feeling bad for the animals, and after giving in to Supreme and rapping the song Dee-Nice wrote, she feels like she’s “in an exhibit, and there’s room full of people waiting for me to entertain them. I have to say what they want me to say. Be what they want me to hear.” (Thomas 384) There is a concept I learned about in one of my Africana Studies classes, and that was “putting on the mask,” or what happens when Black individuals feel like they are always performing for the public eye. Black individuals have diverse identities and experiences: straight, gay, trans, Democrat, Libertarian, Republican, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, biracial, multiracial, rich, poor, middle class, the list of identities goes on. However, race is about perceptio, and how people were brought up to view Blackness can condition how one wants to see Black people behave, and often these perceptions of Blackness are not very well-founded. James operates from a position where he feels it’s okay to belittle Bri, her dad and other Black citizens, because he promises her money and fame if she lets him say all these bigoted things about Black individuals. Instead of feeling like she can be free with her music, Bri feels trapped in the industry and is trying to hold onto her sense of self, but when her mom finds out what happened, she asks Bri who she really is and Bri can’t answer on the spot because she has other people telling her who she is. She realizes that she can still kill it as a female rapper without catering to macho bigwigs who couldn’t care less about her humanity.
This book reminded me so much of the film Dope. In the film Malcolm, Diggy and Jib are three high school “geeks” living in Inglewood who love ’90s hip-hop, want to go to college, and play in a punk band called Awreeoh. The school bullies pick on them for loving these things, and when a drug dealer named Dom invites Malcolm, Diggy and Jib to a party , Dom and the other partygoers at first make fun of them, but then when Malcolm finds out that Dom put a gun and cocaine in his backpack and Malcolm and his friends sell the cocaine on the black market, they suddenly become popular very fast. But when they get further enmeshed into the pickle of selling the cocaine, Malcolm’s ego gets in the way and I worried his friends were going to desert him. But Jib and Diggy stick with him through the whole thing even if it nearly costs them their future dreams. The friendship between Jib, Diggy and Malcolm reminded me of the friendship between Bri and her friends Sonny and Malik. They give each other the Wakanda handshake from the film Black Panther:
and they also love quoting Yoda from Star Wars. Their friendship is tight, and even when Bri’s hit goes viral and gets her backlash, they stick through with her all the way. I also liked how Bri and Malik never make Sonny feel different from them just because he is gay. Similarly, Jib and Malcolm love Diggy for who she is even when other people make fun of her for being a lesbian. As a queer POC, I was really happy that the rare gay characters were well-represented in Dope and On the Come Up.
While reading this book, I couldn’t help but plead in my mind: pleease let there be a movie for this. And sure enough, I Googled “on the come up movie” and Variety had just published a piece a couple of months ago about Fox purchasing the rights to produce the upcoming film based on the novel. I cannot begin to emphasize how important it is that we teach The Hate U Give and On the Come Up in our high school English classes (then again, I am lightyears removed from high school so I don’t know how the curriculum is nowadays.) We need to give kids of all races, especially young Black and Latinx kids, an opportunity to read books where they feel well-represented. I remember we read the occasional Gwendolyn Brooks poem for English class and Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street, but for the most part the books we read had few to no POC characters with rich backstories and character development, and a lot of the authors, frankly speaking, were dead white men. After taking Africana Studies and reading literature by writers such as Teju Cole, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Nell Larsen, I at first got angry because I never got to read these writers in school, but then came to appreciate in the end my college education and understand how much of a privilege it was to have access to even just knowing these writers exist and that they published these deeply personal works for us to read. Not everyone knows these works exist, and English teachers who just have their students read The Great Gatsby, Huckleberry Finn and Julius Caesar (8/10/21: not hating on these books, I enjoyed them as much as the next person) aren’t giving their students a chance to know that these narratives like those of Starr and Brianna exist. On the Come Up is especially powerful because it encourages kids who might want to be rappers or other musicians that, while it’s okay to make money from your art to pay your bills and put bread on the table, music should also speak to social inequalities and musicians not be afraid of speaking up when something is wrong or people are taking advantage of their well-being. Brianna later uses her music to address the sexism she has encountered as a female rapper and people’s expectations for her to be someone she isn’t. As a musician who doesn’t say much, Bri’s story was inspiring for me because as an introvert she uses music to express her anger. At this point, after watching so much news, it’s hard for me to express how overwhelming it is. I could just shut off and not think about it, but I feel inspired after reading On the Come Up to use my music to address racial injustice, climate change, sexism, domestic violence and other forms of injustice. I recently came across this powerful performance of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings by Cremaine Booker, and in the video description he dedicates the performance to the late Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, two unarmed Black men who died at the hands of police in 2016. After seeing this performance I gained the confidence to use my music to address things that make me angry but that I didn’t have the words to express my anger about. I have seen orchestras on YouTube perform this beautiful solemn piece, but Cremaine’s was the first version I have seen that was directly dedicated to addressing social injustice.
Overall, excellent novel. I wouldn’t mind reading it again. Truly a blessing to read another work by Angie Thomas! 🙂
I just finished the novel Queen of Babble, by Princess Diaries author Meg Cabot. I, like a lot of folks, am a huge fan of Meg Cabot and while I didn’t read all of The Princess Diaries books, I managed to devour All-American Girl (the first book and its sequel) and Princess Lessons (I’m pretty sure I read the first book in The Princess Diaries after seeing the Disney classic with Anne Hathaway. Princess Lessons is a sort of follow-up to the series.) However, I heard about Queen of Babble but thought I wasn’t old enough to read it since I was a preteen reading YA books. I am glad I got to savor it this time though, because it is FUNNY. After reading so many serious depressing books I needed to read something that was going to help me sleep at night.
It’s about this young woman named Lizzie, who lives in England with her boyfriend, Andrew, and his parents. Andrew works as a waiter to pay his way through school, but then he gambles all his money with some friends and is now broke, so he files for unemployment benefits. But Lizzie gives away the fact that Andrew is working already, jeopardizing Andrew’s chance at getting unemployment benefits and his relationship with Lizzie. When he asks Lizzie for more money, Lizzie loses trust in him and goes to visit her friend Shari and Shari’s boyfriend, Chaz, in France for a wedding they are attending. On the train to France, Lizzie meets a dashing man named Jean-Luc (Luke for short.) Honestly, throughout this book I kept envisioning Timothee Chalamet playing this guy. They have the same looks (dark curly hair and seductive eyes) and are sensitive beings. Also, considering Timothee spent a lot of his summers in France and his dad is French, and Jean-Luc is French, this would be a casting choice that would make any of us swoon with joy. But Lizzie finds out Luke already has a girlfriend even with their very intimate encounter on the train, and it turns out this pretentious girlfriend, Dominique, doesn’t like Lizzie all that much. The thing that really gets Lizzie involved in everything going on at the de Villiers estate is the wedding for Luke’s cousin, Vicky. Here is where Lizzie’s passion and skills for fashion are put to the test; she discovers many designer dresses when at the estate, dresses that people would normally not care much for, and she comes to learn more about herself than she ever did living with Andrew back in England.
Lizzie reminded me so much of Miriam Maisel, the title character of the TV series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. In the show, Miriam is a mother of two kids who lives in a traditional American 1950s home. She seems to be happy as Joel, her husband, goes off to work every day, but then she finds out he has been cheating on her with his secretary, Penny. Joel works a traditional 9-5 job and brings home the bacon, but he also performs at the local comedy club in the evenings because he wants to be a stand-up comedian. Unfortunately, most of his jokes are weak, but after Midge leaves Joel, she drinks heavily one night and does a stand-up routine that catches the attention of Susie, who books the gigs at the club. Like Lizzie, Midge voices her opinion and doesn’t apologize for it, but her chattiness also gets her in trouble with relationships. One time Midge does an act where she badmouths a famous comedian and it backfires on her; she also does an act where she publicly insults her father’s work at a lab and his relationship with her mother. But although Midge’s loquacious nature has gotten her in hot water with those closest to her, she also speaks truth, especially when it comes to addressing issues of sexism. During her first gig at the comedy club, she lets loose on how Joel cheated on her for Penny and curses so much that the police arrest her for “indecency.” Midge’s willingness to speak truth and not be afraid of calling people out on their stuff (especially chauvinist male comedians who talk down to her) meant a lot during that time, especially because women were still expected to not speak up about social issues.
Lizzie ends up developing a close friendship with Agnes, the resident au-pair at the de Villiers’s estate, because she is so unassuming and doesn’t come from the prestige of Luke or Dominique’s background. In one scene, Agnes brings over a delicious-sounding sandwich (which sounds like pain au chocolat) consisting of a Hershey bar wrapped in a French baguette (oh gosh, just thinking about it is giving me ASMR tingles…) and while everyone else turns up their nose at it (Shari, Chaz, Dominique), Lizzie eats it because she knows it is rude to say “no” when Agnes went through the trouble of making them such a delicious sandwich. Also, she eats it and thinks it tastes out of this world, so of course she wouldn’t turn down something so delicious. On a side note, this makes me think that I need to be more gracious when I go to another country and people offer me food that I cannot eat. In India, I felt bad because I couldn’t drink chai or eat sweets since they had dairy in them, and so one of my fellow classmates told me she would eat the sweets for me, but that I should take one because it was good manners. I mean, how would I feel if I went through the trouble of making a delicious dish and then find out the person I was offering it to didn’t want it? It probably would feel like a punch in the gut.
The book also reminded me of The Clique by Lisi Harrison. In the series Massie Block is a rich New Yorker who is popular and has a group of friends who gossip and are just straight-up vain. Claire Lyons is an enthusiastic girl from Florida who moves with her family to Massie’s guesthouse. Massie wants nothing to do with Claire, but Claire wants to be friends with her. But because Massie is the stereotypical Regina George-style mean girl, she and her friends do everything in their power to put Claire down, to make her feel small. Dominique reminded me of Massie, and Lizzie reminded me of Claire. I was also feeling elements of Bridesmaids and Legally Blonde while reading Queen of Babble because these films feature women who don’t conform to the rules and, as outsiders, gain a very unique perspective on life, like Lizzie gains a new perspective by being this super outgoing person among people who keep to themselves.
This book also taught me the importance of loving yourself and using your untapped potential to discover new opportunities. Lizzie thinks her fashion degree or retail work won’t get her anywhere because other people tell her it’s useless, but when she is tasked with fixing Vicky’s wedding dress, her self-confidence is put to the test and she learns how to actually put her skills to use and overcome that imposter syndrome that tells her no one cares about what she does with fashion. Lizzie’s struggle to make her career viable reminds me of my own self; I struggle with the idea of a music career because many people aren’t far from the truth when they say it is very hard to have a full-time career in music, and I also think that it’s really what you make of it. Yes, music opportunities are hard to find, but I have learned to work on my own personal creative projects, such as this blog, so that I don’t have to limit myself in terms of how I see myself as a musician. I also sometimes fall into that self-pity pit where I think no one cares about philosophy majors or musicians or writers, and then I try to block out these thoughts each time they come up by writing, playing music, or thinking with a critical eye about the world around me wherever I find myself. It’s also important to have loved ones to be there to give you the real when things are rough; Lizzie’s grandmother is unfiltered, and straight up tells Lizzie to stop with the tears and just leave Andrew. She tells Lizzie to not give up, that she will have a boyfriend, and to go see her friend Shari instead of dwell on Andrew. In fact, she’s pretty much the only one in Lizzie’s family to let Lizzie do her own thing and encourage her to not come back home.
Overall, I really love this book (especially when Lizzie and a certain someone get together and kiss. For the sake of prospective readers, I will not tell who this special someone is) and cannot wait to read the sequel! 🙂
Queen of Babble: A Novel. Meg Cabot. 309 pp. 2007.
It took me a while to finish this book because 1. I was reading five other books at the same time as reading this one and 2. the violence was pretty graphic. Not in a bad way, it was just hard to stomach for many of the scenes.
But just to give a brief summary of this novel. It is told in the third person narrative, but each chapter switches back and forth between different characters in the novel. It is about a power that all women and girls–not men and boys–possess, and Naomi Alderman, the author of the novel, illustrates the effects–whether good, bad, or in-between–of having this power on society and the girls and women themselves. A year ago I read a book called Vox by Christina Dalcher. That book takes place in a society where lab agents put trackers on all women and girls so that they don’t say more than 100 words per day. If they say any more than that, they get electric shocks. It gave me goosebumps because in reality, many girls and women have faced this silencing at work, in school, in the government, and elsewhere. The Power took that narrative and turned it on its head by having women and girls rule society and men as the oppressed group. The novel also shows how bad toxic masculinity can be because several men’s rights groups are trying to get back at the girls and women and kill them so they can take their power from them (I thought about meninism and how it wants to push back against feminism.)
The power that the women and girls have in the book is a skein that each of them have on their hands. If they touch someone, even lightly, the other person will feel the power rise up from the girls’ palms. If the girl or woman presses their palm with great force, it can burn skin, send intense shockwaves throughout the other person’s body, and cause other injuries. Alderman shows that while on the surface having a society where women have this power sounds so empowering, this power must be used wisely and if it gets in the wrong hands it can wreak serious havoc (later in the book, one of the dudes tries to kill one of the girls and ends up getting the skein of power in his hand. He doesn’t stand a chance against the women who also have the power.)
The end of the book gave me chills, but I think that was what the author intended because it shows you to never underestimate the strength of women and their power to unite. Overall, excellent read.
The Arts Are Life 