Okay — it says right there in the description of the book meghan: ghosts. There are talking ghosts in this book. You hate random additions of ghosts, or aliens, or multiple personalities, or bunny coke-orgies, and yet you requested I’ll Take You There from Netgalley and this is why you cannot have nice things.

Setting aside the ghosts for a second (ghosts! really?), we have a narrative about a guy being told/shown about women. Apparently this makes it,
according to some other blurbs and reviews, a feminist novel. Can we all just stop and appreciate for a moment that a guy learning about what some women went through (anorexia, unplanned pregnancy, pregnancy complications, same-sex relationships) is somehow considered a feminist novel? Has patriarchy set the bar so low that merely having a man realize that women can have complex lives and stories is somehow groundbreaking? Why even have Felix, our protagonist, anyway? Why not cut out the ghosts and just tell the story of the women? That’s the interesting part of the book, not Felix’s ramblings about this-and-that, telling (and who’s he talking to anyway) us that no one’s going to remember Bieber in fifty years. Felix is likeable, in a sort of tolerable, rambling-great-uncle way. He seems like a nice enough guy, but why make the book about him learning about some women in his life. If I was feeling mean-spirited, I would say that the whole narrative structure is set up to reinforce that without being viewed through a masculine lens, women’s lives are meaningless. But I’m not that mean-spirited. I honestly think that Lamb’s framing device is ingrained, not-mean-spirited, patriarchal structures at work.

Now setting aside both ghosts and gender politics, it’s a Wally Lamb book. So it’s easy to read and somewhat endearing, but it’s also mild pablum, and probably the most forgettable of any of Lamb’s books.

I’ll Take You There by Wally Lamb went on sale November 24, 2016.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

(in which my hetero-normativeness is reinforced)

Okay — so I totally thought the ghost was a girl until it was explicitly stated the ghost was a guy. Then I went back and re-read up to that point and realized, nope, nothing said hey, I’m a girl, so good on Taproot for making me stop and realize how ingrained my hetero-normativity is.

So that’s the good. The bad: Taproot is a good idea too lightly applied. A gardener and a ghost fall in love, there’s a evil spirit/menacing spirit forest, then a brief story about another ghostly presence. Each of these should be a full comic/novel in their own right, not smushed up and run through as quickly as possible. Stories shouldn’t be a race to the finish and Taproot goes by so fast that everything ends up a muddle and the ideas and the artwork are not appreciated.

Maybe Taproot is the first of a series and the pace will even out later?

Maybe Taproot is more for shorter-attention span people than for me?

Maybe Taproot just needs a re-release under a tough-love editor who says Slow the heck down!

I’m always angry when good ideas are wasted. So I’m angry at all that Taproot could have been. I wanted a meal and got a pack of airplane peanuts instead.

Taproot by Keezy Young went on sale September 26, 2017.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Oh my goodness — this book is so beautiful and dark and scary and wonderful and I just want to print out every page on a high quality coloured printer and hang them around my house. It’s a gender-swapped/creature-swapped version of Little Red Riding Hood that I just want to have written myself. I devoured the book like a wolf devouring a little girl, and, normally, I’m a bit meh about picture books. But not about this one. I wanted to wrap myself up in it like a warm blanket.

The Little Red Wolf by Amélie Fléchais went on sale October 1, 2017.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

There are certain topics that, if one is writing a novel of, you expect to be devastating. I’d say that a novel about breaking-in an underage, trafficked prostitute should probably be devastating. The Parcel isn’t particularly devastating, and could use a good edit to remove some of the repeated phrases or explanations. It’s a good book, and there’s enough that kept me engaged, but, ultimately, it’s just a book I read. Good, but not great.

The Parcel by Anosh Irani went on sale September 6, 2016.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

In which I read another novel about the Holocaust, set in a Polish Ghetto, from the perspective of a child, but without the magical talking dolls. I think I appreciate books about the Holocaust more that don’t feature talking dolls, as much as anyone can, or should, appreciate a novel about how truly sh*tty humans can be to each other.

So, Wordwings is about a girl who tells stories in the Warsaw ghetto, writing them between and around the lines of a worn book of fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen. That’s why I requested it; there’s something poetic about where she had to write. It has a sort of fairy tale logic in its necessity. And then there’s some talk of The Six Swans, which I always think of a The Three Ravens from the Jim Henson Storyteller TV show. So, little pieces I liked dappled throughout.

I approached Wordwings as a children’s book, maybe because the last novel I read about the Holocaust was geared towards kids. But then Netgalley tells me it’s General Adult. But then Rivke, our protagonist, doesn’t really write like a child, although does one write like a child in such situations? I am blessed that I never had to find out. But as an adult book, Wordwings only kind of works, mainly since the secondary characters are more sketches than people. If we put it back as a middle-grade novel, the characterization work better. But then we’re again with the voice, which I can’t reconcile with a child’s one. But I think a middle-grade reader would see past that. And I think that even if it says General adult, I might put it under mature middle-grade (and weirdo grown-ups like me who like middle-grade books).

Wordwings by Sydelle Pearl went on sale October 1, 2017.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Many many moons ago, I read Briar Rose and have had a soft spot for Jane Yolen ever since, although a soft spot in that until now I haven’t read any of her other books (mainly because I aged out of the YA ones pretty much immediately after I read Briar Rose and I don’t tend to read too much adult fantasy, but I have bought some of her other books, like Foiled for Miss T).

So soft spot for Jane Yolen plus Jane Yolen books for request on Netgalley equals I have The Emerald Circus and another Jane Yolen book to review. And The Emerald Circus is a shout-out to Oz, and there are other fairy tale retellings/fairy tale inspired stories and then Disraeli casts cabalistic magic on Queen Victoria and Emily Dickenson is abducted by space aliens and …

Yeah, I’m back in the world of books with bizarre twists out of nowhere (no squid sex, so I guess we have a kinda win here?). So if you like odd, and short stories, and fairy tales, and aliens, The Emerald Circus might be the book for you. The Oz retelling was pretty nifty, I do have to say.

But then aliens. Sigh. Maybe my tombstone could read Always managed to find the books with surprise aliens in them.

The Emerald Circus by Jane Yolen went on sale November 14, 2017.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Yay! A fun read! I almost never have fun reads! So now, let’s criticize my fun read! Yay!

So Jacobs gets an email from a distant cousin, sparking an interest in genealogy, and decides to have a big ol’ family reunion, where, basically, anyone can show up. Sister Sledge is going to sing. The non-ancestry.com genealogy companies are going to sponsor. Jacobs talks to some people about … stuff … Mormons, Hatfields and McCoys, and … well, the whole thing sort of peters out. It’s kind of a stretch to fill the premise to a whole book, so there’s a lot about Jacobs’ family (he’s descended from the Vilna Gaon, and some guy who owned a pretzel stand!), which, I assume, if you are Jacobs or interested in genealogy might be more intriguing to you than to me. The book is fun, but it isn’t very deep. It is, as Jacobs does point out, very much the college stoner telling you “Woah, we’re like all related man.” Well, yes. So what?

So I had a lot of fun reading this book. I still enjoy Jacob’s shtick. But it’s an entertainment book, rather than a non-fiction book, so after the fact, I’m feeling let down by the whole thing (and also angry at myself that I can’t find an article I read like a year ago about in-fighting within the amateur genealogical community that I could have used as a suggestion for further in-depth ideas that Jacobs’ could have incorporated into his book to give it more heft).

And I’m guessing he didn’t get the world record? That part was kinda dropped, rather than explored?

It’s All Relative by A.J. Jacobs went on sale November 14, 2017.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A twisty, repetitive, lost-in-her-own-thoughts maelstrom of a book. Basically, it can all be summed up with a quote straight from the book:

your writing is so unbelievable, intelligent, muddled, but always luminous, accessible, direct, physical. Your readers don’t understand a thing and they understand everything. It’s intimate, personal, shameless, autobiographical, and universal.

But it’s harrowing subject matter — the dissolution of a relationship takes up maybe the first three quarters of the book, then the last quarter details of Angot’s (or a fictional version of Angot, it is purposefully unclear) incestuous relationship with her father, but all trapped in spiraling thoughts. I often get trapped in my own spiraling thoughts with no way out too. Yay for not feeling so alone, even if the subject matter isn’t about me at all. Overthinking writers of the world — unite!

Incest by Christine Angot went on sale November 7, 2017.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.