A friend of mine just came back from a memoir-writing workshop. We talked about it on a walk around the duck pond near our houses. You need to have a narrative, my friend said. You need to have yourself as a character. You need to have a focus and a lens and a frame and basically, you can’t be all rambly (like I often am).

The Song and the Silence is rambly. It’s a unfocused. Neither means that it isn’t compelling, but it’s muddled. Johnson discovers her grandfather appeared in a 1960s television documentary about desegregation attempts in Mississippi. Her grandfather, a black singing waiter at a white’s only restaurant, detailed how no matter what, around the white restaurant patrons, he smiles. He smiles but that doesn’t mean he’s happy. As the book’s blurb says: he described what life was truly like for the black people of Greenwood, Mississippi.

Except the book isn’t about Johnson’s grandfather. It’s about Johnson discovering about her grandfather, and maybe it would just be better about her grandfather. I’m rarely a fan of making the discoverer the protagonist rather than the person who is being discovered. As an example, I don’t really need to read about Johnson having a fight with her mother about whether her kids can watch some Disney movie or not. If that fight could somehow be tied back into the struggle Johnson’s grandfather endured, then maybe. But the clumps where Johnson writes about her own life are not deftly woven in to her grandfather’s story. Johnson works hard to make this a memoir, when maybe this was better suited as a non-fiction about her grandfather’s life. Her writing is stronger not writing about herself.

I just don’t know what I was supposed to take away from this experience.

The Song and the Silence by Yvette Johnson went on sale May 2, 2017.

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

A decent potboiler, genre: midwestern gothic, to while away a lazy summer day. Unfortunately, for a book that deals with repeated sexual abuse, it’s surprisingly unsympathetic to the victim, with the female narrator having a slight Humbert Humbert-esque rationale of the situation. So that was uncomfortable. Obviously, no one in the story (except maybe the narrator’s high school flame Cooper) is that sympathetic, but at the same time, none of the characters really have enough depth to make their unsympathetic personalities compelling. Of course, it’s not a literary novel; it’s a (slightly trashy, although not in a bad way) mystery novel where Engel trusts her writing and her readers enough not to make the sexual abuse the lurid, end revelation. Out of everything in the book, I appreciated that the most.

The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel went on sale March 7, 2017.

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

So I read this self-help book last week and I already don’t remember much of what was in it, except for the general theme of actually do the things you need to do to get where you want to go. There was making lists, I remember that, and prioritizing those lists. I haven’t made a list yet, but the past week I’ve been making an effort to actually do the things that will let me get to where I want to go. Maybe. Now if I could just figure out where I want to go with my life, I’d be set.

The book’s tone is kind of sassy. It was a quick read. I don’t know whether, truly, I needed a book to tell me that doing things works better than not doing things (unless not doing things was my goal), but it was good to have a reminder that my natural state of lazy bump isn’t always the best to get things done.

Now off to do things!

Get Your Sh*t Together by Sarah Knight went on sale December 27, 2016.

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

So why did I leave science again? … Was it because I didn’t like it or I wasn’t good enough to do it?

Does it matter?

Maybe this book won’t resonate with people who aren’t like me and the narrator: people who’ve left science. Or maybe it will. Everyone has left something behind. Maybe that feeling of loss is universal? If not, maybe I’m not the one to review this book because it read like the internal monologue that goes on in my head when I can’t sleep, or when I’m walking to the mailbox, or when I’m driving to the library, or whenever there isn’t anything to distract me from my own thoughts. Our narrator leaves science (chemistry) and then has to decide whether to follow her boyfriend, who is still nuzzled into science’s temperamental embrace, to a small town where he has gotten a job. I left science (math) and then had to decide whether to follow my husband, who is still nuzzled into science’s (math) temperamental embrace, to a small town where he has gotten a job.

I am the girl who followed you and I know what happens to those girls. They are never happy and then they carry that unhappiness everywhere.

I detached myself from reading this, otherwise I would have gone mad. I didn’t have any beakers to destroy, like the narrator, but I would have if I had some. This book gave me the plunging feeling in ribs of having made the wrong decision all over again. I know every feeling, the narrator’s every feeling. Detach all I want, doesn’t work when I’ve been emptied out like this.

Maybe go find an English major. Maybe their review will give a dispassionate appraisal. Reading my own truth and mine doesn’t.

Chemistry by Weike Wang went on sale May 23, 2017.

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

(or wherein I once again prove that the parts of poetry which intrigue me may not be what I am supposed to be talking about)

You know what I really appreciated about Tremulous Hinge: the layout of some of the poems. Like the indentation. Seriously. Or there’d be a thin poem, maybe only eight or nine spaces worth of letters on each line. Then each verse would be only lines long and it would be these little rectangles like a path down the page.

I can hear one of my high school English teacher’s sarcasm right now: That’s what you think is important about poetry?

Yes. I mean, how do the poets know

   where to end lines and

how much to

             indent?

So I read Tremulous Hinge and thought about that. The poems that were over a page were too long and could have been tightened. One poem mentioned a Catholic grandfather, which made me think of my Catholic grandfather. The poems felt working class, close houses, thin walls lacking insulation (I don’t mean that in a negative way, because I read what I just wrote and it sounds super classist. I mean more like you felt you were walking through that sort of neighbourhood as you read the words; some of the poems drew the scene like a photograph).

I wonder how one becomes a poet. It’s so different than how I see the world. Sometimes I feel like an alien when I read poetry. I didn’t mind so much with Tremulous Hinge though.

Tremulous Hinge by Adam Giannelli went on sale April 15, 2017.

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

After my previous realization that physics is hard, I needed to go back to basics with physics so easy that even a baby could understand it. And here was General Relativity for Babies up for review on Netgalley, so I grabbed my copy and well, it’s a board book (ages zero and up the back tells me) with the very basics of general relativity laid out (flat space, curved space, mass curves space, lots of mass in small place = black hole, etc.) The book ends with Now you know General Relativity! Do I? I already knew all of what the book defined. Cambridge University physics books hurt my brain and Baby University books are too simple. My pursuit of physics knowledge leaves me like Goldlilocks — nothing is just right (okay, except it ends up that things are just right for Goldlilocks, who eats the porridge and falls asleep in the bed, and then gets eaten by bears, I think. I can’t remember the ending, probably because my mind is filled with physics.)

It would be a cute book for the babies of scientists. I would have liked reading it when Tesfa was teeny. If they ever need someone to write Galois Theory for Babies, I’d totally do it. I love Galois Theory.

General Relativity for Babies by Chris Ferrie went on sale May 2nd, 2017.

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

After getting the first book from a librarything giveaway, I got the second one from Netgalley. Score me getting free books!

Tesfa dislikes having me ask her questions about her books. So she did a book report for me instead.

The deets (including creative spellings):

The title of my book is: Super narwhal and Jelly Jolt
The author’s name is: Ben cLanton
The illustrator’s name is: (same)

Character:
My favourite character was: Jelly Jolt
Four words to describe this character:

1. cute
2. funny
3. nise
4. happy

Setting::
One place where the story happened was: when narwhal has a tie.
Three words to describe this setting:

1. funny
2. cute
3. very awesome

The Story:
Beginning: narwhal gets to be a superhero
Middle: narwhal plays with a sea star
End: narwhal and Jelly make a book

The book was:

My favourite event:
all of it!

Super Narwhal and Jelly Jolt by Ben Clanton went on sale May 2, 2017.

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

Well, I had a good run of ARCs that didn’t have something bizarre in them. No squid sex or unexpected aliens or guess what someone has multiple personalities and we’re like sixty percent of the way through the book before we even mention it once. I’d even started getting into The Lucky Ones. I wasn’t that enthused after the first two or so chapters (each one a self-contained slice of characters that are all inter-related somehow in Columbia’s many and varied civil wars/war on drugs/insurgencies/etc.), but then I got into the rhythm, wasn’t thrown off by the jumping perspectives, the changes in viewpoint, even the second-person (you, we, etc.) parts.

Then rabbits. On cocaine.

Not just rabbits on cocaine. Rabbits on cocaine from their perspective because, of course, their thoughts and everything would be exactly like humans. Word-for-word.

One of the rabbits smokes a crack pipe.

And so, my respect for the novel was pretty much ruined. I tried. I really did. I got to the end. I thought all the different connections between the characters were interesting. I could see it all in my mind, the locations, the people, the sounds, but, no matter what, this is a book where a rabbit smokes a crack pipe and my mind is so small and petty that that’s all I’m going to be able to associate with it.

The Lucky Ones by Julianne Pachico went on sale March 7, 2017.

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

I read this comic, then promptly forgot that I read it, which is odd since it’s actually a kinda cute book about cute little crabs who can only move in a straight line.
Then two crabs intersect at a perpendicular angle and the world is their oyster (hee hee sea pun!), and if not the world, than their little French estuary. The drawings have that French mod/new-wave feel and I did enjoy reading it, but then again, I keep forgetting that I did, which must mean something, if I could only figure out what.

March of the Crabs Volume 1 by Arthur de Pins went on sale March 31, 2015.

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

Other than getting the theme song stuck in my head, what is the purpose of a rebooted Flintstones? Nostalgia I suppose. Getting to play around within the confines of a system? All those stories you wish the Flintstones had told while you were home sick at lunch during grade school (The Flintstones came on at noon when I was growing up. This may not be the case for people who did not grow up in the same environs as I did — I don’t know. And so, The Flintstones always make me taste Zoodles because that’s what you ate when you were home sick. Again, that might not be a universally understood *thing*)?

Recently I read A Hundred Thousand Worlds by Bob Proehl, which briefly touches on whether readers want new characters and new stories or simply new stories for comics. Would I have requested a comic about early humans that weren’t the Flintstones? I don’t know. So I guess that’s the purpose of a rebooted Flintstones, for people like me, who are indecisive about what they want out of reading-life, I guess.

And none of this has anything to do with The Flintsones Vol. 1 per se. Hmmm.

So it’s The Flintstones, but more for grown-ups with digs at vitamins and chimpanzees spouting David Bowie lyrics. Fred and Barney are veterans of a Vietnam-War-type-of-debacle that clear-cut the way for Bedrock’s establishment. Wilma is an artist (was she on the TV show? I remember she was a cigarette girl in one episode). Betty is just Betty (boo!). The elephant vacuum cleaner forms a friendship with the armadillo bowling ball that is the most compelling relationship in the comic, although I get the impression that there are a lot of sight gags and *wink wink nudge nudge*’s that I missed because I am lousy at reading comics (I tend to read the words and gloss over the pictures) and, as an ARC, the quality is not as great as it would be in the actual book.

The strength in The Flintstones Vol. 1 (and I keep typing Flintsones rather than Flintstones, so I apologize if that typo squeezes its way into the final review) is the way each comic feels like an episode of the TV show, even with updated drawings and situations and style. It feels like I watched six episodes of The Flintstones yesterday, eating Zoodles, in my pyjamas. Russell captured that television feeling somehow, and I’m not exactly sure how, but he did, even if I think the whole thing should be abandoned for a spin-off Vacuum and Bowling Ball story line instead.

The Flintstones Vol. 1 by Mark Russell went on sale March 28, 2017.

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