sandrinepal's reviews
1227 reviews

James by Percival Everett

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adventurous dark funny inspiring reflective tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

 First of all, Percival Everett can do no wrong. Well, at least when it comes to writing. Second of all, people jumping on the bandwagon just because they have seen American Fiction need to sit down. Phew. Okay. This book was amazing and I wish it could have been two hundred pages longer. The only thing missing for me was the kind of eerie weirdness that came with The Trees, for example. Not entirely sure about the plot point centering on James's connection to Huck, but fair enough. The code switching, on the other hand, was absolute all-caps GENIUS. The lesson scene, early on in the book, where James tells the kid "That is the correct incorrect grammar" just absolutely made my soul sing. And not Virginia Minstrels sing, either. Broadly, the plot seems more accessible than other Everett books, maybe in part because most of us have a built-in understanding based on expectations from Twain's narratives. The satire is less in-your-face and more somber in places, too. 
Old Babes in the Wood by Margaret Atwood

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

 Margaret Atwood: come for the translation, stay for the short stories! I had to translate an excerpt from "My Evil Mother" for an exam I am taking this year and I was so intrigued/amused by the short 1000 words or so that I sought out the whole book. It did not disappoint. The story in question really hit me in the feels, both as the daughter of a feminist mother, and as the mother to a pre-teen daughter. The echoes were almost all there for me. Except for Brian.

My next favorite story of the bunch was "Metempsychosis; or, the journey of the soul" in which a snail is reincarnated into a woman's body (and not, mind you, vice versa: no Gregor Samsa here). It was delightfully weird and provided that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to truly empathize with a gastropod.

Special mention to "Death by clamshell" for the ancient history and to "Old babes in the wood" for the sibling-sharing of family cabin woes and joys. 
Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America by Michael P. Winship

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challenging informative slow-paced

3.0

 I was really taken with this book at first, because it focuses the historical background around individual anecdotes, some centering on lesser historical figures. In the grand scheme of things, that can make it hard to keep track of the big picture, especially if, like me, you don't have the whole timeline down pat. Time permitting, I will try to read this again after I have studied the historical developments better. 
Why We Read: On Bookworms, Libraries, and Just One More Page Before Lights Out by Shannon Reed

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funny informative inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing medium-paced

4.5

Yes, yes, yes, ALL the yesses! What a treat when you find a new writer that turns out to be one of your tribe. For me that tribe is: "3rd-generation teacher with a pretty severe reading addiction and an ancillary obsession with libraries and bookstores". My grandma also taught me how to read! Unlike Shannon Reed, I do not write for The New Yorker or McSweeney's, but I *wish* that I could! So... that counts, right? 𝘞𝘩𝘺 𝘞𝘦 π˜™π˜¦π˜’π˜₯ was so relatable, in a Daniel Pennac's "Rights of the Reader"-meets-Grant Snider kind of way. Because Prof Reed and I are about the same level of spring chicken-itude, many of the books that she obsessed over as a kid were also my jam: I see you, Nancy Drew (whose French nameβ€”fun fact!β€”was Alice Roy) and π˜“π˜ͺ𝘡𝘡𝘭𝘦 𝘏𝘰𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘡𝘩𝘦 π˜—π˜³π˜’π˜ͺ𝘳π˜ͺ𝘦 series. It also took me back to a place I hadn't thought of in a long time: my childhood city library, which was in a building known locally as "the red castle" and where the children's section was in a super cozy wooden loft area. Can't make that stuff up, folks, it's what dreams are made of. If you need me, I will be looking for Shannon Reed's 𝘞𝘩𝘺 π˜‹π˜ͺπ˜₯ 𝘐 𝘎𝘦𝘡 𝘒 π˜‰?, because that title also speaks to my soul.
The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai

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emotional hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.5

In the nearly immortal words of Hanson: "Mmmnope".
The premise was alluring, but oh my stars, the execution... You know that scene from π˜™π˜’π˜΅π˜’π˜΅π˜°π˜Άπ˜ͺ𝘭𝘭𝘦 where Anton Ego the food critic sits down to try the eponymous dish made by Remy the rat and is instantly transported back to his grandmother's kitchen? Well, this book is that five-second flashback played out five or six different times (I lost count, honestly) at grrrrrrrrrreeeeaaaat length. There's a curmudgeonly old lady who is forced to admit that the food is good, there's a young woman who cries anytime she eats good food, and, of course, there's the rich a-hole who initially doesn't even acknowledge the cat (technical foul!) and is turned into a human being by a family epiphany brought about by... you guessed it: the food. Not to mention the umpteen dead people whose memory is honored/awakened/otherwise centered by the food.
I guess my beef (sorry not sorry) with this book is that food memory is a well-trodden literary path (*cough cough*, Marcel Proust), and this does not do much to add to the trope. It just sort of wallows in it, without elevating it in any significant way. I can see why it was a best-seller in Japan, as it is a) completely non-challenging and b) a paean to Kyoto cuisine. But for me, it kind of read like a weepy version of 𝘐𝘳𝘰𝘯 𝘊𝘩𝘦𝘧 and nobody needs that.
I Am Not Sidney Poitier by Percival Everett

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adventurous dark funny informative lighthearted reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Ted Turner and Jane Fonda. On a boat. With a seasick young Marxist.
That's just a few pages' worth of the awesomeness that is "I Am Not Sidney Poitier." The word that comes to mind is picaresque. I realize it's not entirely apt, since the picaro is typically a dishonest character, and that is one thing you absolutely cannot fault Not Sidney for. All the same, Not Sidney is tossed through storm after storm, encountering unlikely-but-all-too-likely characters along the way. His straight man take on each situation only makes the ridiculousness more apparent. 
Reading this also made me reflect on what a difference ten years makes (or doesn't, in some respects). This was published in 2009 and Not Sidney's adventures are a satirical indictment of many things, ranging from the Deep South to Black Republicans, higher education to the media, police brutality and the inequities of the justice system. And yet, in the course of this odyssey, Not Sidney "only" undergoes one major beating (not saying at whose hands, so not a spoiler). Ten years later, "The Trees" was cover-to-cover death-centered. I'm not sure if that's Everett's own evolution as a writer or if it speaks to the changes that we as a society have undergone in that time. Maybe both. In any event, for anyone (who even ARE you?) not yet familiar with Everett's writing, I would say this is the best entry point out of the books by him that I have read.
Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz

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funny mysterious relaxing medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

A much better Hawthorne & Horowitz than the previous installment, for my money. The small cast and slightly claustrophobic setting are great, as is the fact that neither Hawthorne nor Horowitz feature too prominently in the book. Fun little summer read.
Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie

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emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

3.0

 They do say "Never meet your heroes". And Salman Rushdie is certainly a hero of mine. Ever since reading Midnight's Children as an undergrad, I have been hooked. He's one of very few authors whose books I actually own and have kept through several international moves. Back in the day, Imaginary Homelands was even my answer to a security question.

With all that said, this is not so much a book by Salman Rushdie as a book by AND about Salman Rushdie. Once you get past the lurid details of the attack and the painstaking recovery, you are left with the title's eponymous "Meditations", which cast an oddly mundane light on fame, healthcare, family, and friends. It's not that I don't care when a lifelong friend who happens to be Martin Amis dies, it's just that I don't know, in sharing your final exchanges with him, where the memoir ends and where the name-dropping begins.

Of course, I can't begin to comprehend what it must mean to have lived so much of his life under this sword of Damokles, only to be attacked thirty years later. And I certainly can't begrudge a person, especially a writer, the need to gather some closure into words. I think, though, that I would rather have read this as a shorter think-piece in a magazine than as a standalone book. 
Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis by Jonathan Blitzer

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challenging dark emotional informative inspiring sad slow-paced

4.0

Wow. This is not for the faint of heart. It reads like a 544-page New Yorker exposΓ©, so do get comfy before you crack it open, but then expect to have your mind blown. Even after an undergraduate minor in Spanish (ahem... some years ago) and a year-long graduate course on US-Latin American relations this year, I wasn't fully prepared for all the knowledge this book dumps your way. The clarity is matched only by the humanity of it all (well, except for Stephen Miller, but that's a given). I found myself periodically setting the book aside and looking up the people whom the book follows, to read more interviews of theirs. As the US is gearing up for Republican and Democratic conventions in the next few weeks, with the pall of "Project 2025" swirling around in the media, it's especially chilling to read how fragile democracy has been in the Northern triangle, and even in the US starting in 2016. This is a challenging read, but immensely rewarding.
A History of the African-American People Proposed by Strom Thurmond by James R. Kincaid, Percival Everett

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dark funny medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

If you had told me that I would give less than four stars to a Percival Everett book, I would have laughed you right out of the room. And yet, here we are. This particular book didn't do it for me, probably in part due to the epistolary format. Also the fact that Everett "plays himself" in the book didn't really land for me. The satire of the publishing industry is effective a lot of the time, but I couldn't keep up with the absurdity of it all as the book unfolded. I was also bemused by the treatment of the Strom Thurmond character/figure, which seemed to veer from rightful indictment to a sort of resigned acceptance? (Read the previous sentence with the rising intonation of an indecisive freshman in a seminar course.) All told, this book didn't live up to its title and/or my fangirl appreciation for its author's other works.