Nonfiction November - My Year In Nonfiction

Well, this month clearly got away from me and I'm hard pressed to say how. Nevertheless, as nonfiction is something I'm really pushing myself to read more of, I definitely didn't want this month to go by without me playing along with everyone for Nonfiction November. So this week, I'll be playing catch up. Week 1's was hosted by Jules of @JulesReads:

Take a look back at your year of nonfiction and reflect on the following questions – What was your favorite nonfiction read of the year? What nonfiction book have you recommended the most? What is one topic or type of nonfiction you haven’t read enough of yet? What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?

What Was Your Favorite Nonfiction Read Of The Year?
This one's a tie between Elizabeth McCracken's An Exact Replica Of A Figment Of My Imagination and TaNehisi Coates' We Were Eight Years In Power. Two very different books - one that made my heart break and one that made my brain work.

That Nonfiction Book Have You Recommended The Most?
Even more than fiction, I feel that nonfiction is something that I recommend based on what I know about particular readers. For example, I have recommended Shrill by Lindy West to all of my feminist friends but West's language and graphic subject matters make it a book that's not for everyone. For biography buffs, I highly recommend both Grant by Ron Chernow and Victoria: The Queen by Julia Baird. But they are both very big books and definitely not for the faint of heart. For my more liberal friends, I always recommend Sarah Vowell's books and Assassination Vacation is no exception. Perhaps the book that I find myself recommending most, of the nonfiction books I read this year, is Notorious RBG which really has something in it for everyone.

What Is One Topic or Type of Nonfiction You Haven't Read Enough Of Yet?
Easy - science. I'm not looking for textbook reads but I would like to read some of Mary Roach's books, perhaps some Carl Sagan, and, definitely, Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Astrophysics For People In A Hurry.

What Are You Hoping To Get Out Of Participating In Nonfiction November?
As always, it's a great chance to remember the nonfiction books I've read this year and to kick myself in the rear for not reading more nonfiction (although I may have reached a personal best this year). Most of all, it's always great fun to visit the sites of everyone participating so I can find even more nonfiction reads I want to read.

What about you - how was your year in nonfiction?

Life: It Goes On - November 12

Thursday morning everyone in my company was pulled into a meeting where they announced that 15% of the company was being laid off and by noon they were gone. In the hours between the meeting and noon, the tension was through the roof and, afterward and into Friday, there was a sense of mourning hanging over those who survived the cut. I was lucky and still have a job but it certainly makes one concerned for the future.

On CBS Sunday Morning today, they had a story about charity where those in need can come to get free books. A fire had destroyed the warehouse the charity is housed in and the man who runs it thought that was that. But locals weren't letting it go and soon they were holding fundraisers and cash and book donations poured in...7,000 boxes of books. My husband looked at me and said "You could run a place like that." To say that the wheels in my head are spinning now is an understatement. I mean, after Thursday I can't help but think it might be time to make a change.

This Week I'm:

Listening To: NPR in the mornings and podcasts most of the rest of the time, including Crimetown, Singing Bones, and Stuff You Missed In History Class.

Watching: "La La Land," finally. I do love movie musicals and the sets and cinematography were incredible. Ryan Gosling turns out to have one flaw...he's not much of a singer. Luckily, the filmmakers managed to work around that, giving Emma Stone the lion's share of the work in their duets. I'll likely watch it again, maybe even this week.

Reading: I'm racing to finish The Witches by Stacy Schiff for book club on Tuesday. I'm very impressed by Ms. Schiff's research and writing.

Making: Chicken and noodles, taco salads, lasagna and brownie sundaes (the last two for dinner with my parents today). I'm planning on making chili this week. The Big Guy thinks it's going to be too warm for chili but I disagree. I'm in the mood for chili and cinnamon rolls.

Planning: On ordering Christmas cards this week; I'd love to have those in the mail and off my to-do list by the first of December.

Thinking About: What it takes to start a nonprofit. See above.

Enjoying: A basketball game today with my girl.

Feeling: Is it getting old for me to say, I'm feeling like I need a third day to this weekend?

Looking forward to: Book club this week!

Question of the week: If I open a nonprofit book warehouse, will you please come volunteer?

Artemis by Andy Weir

Artemis by Andy Weir
Published November 2017 by Crown/Archetype
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:
Jazz Bashara is a criminal.

Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent.

 Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down. But pulling off the impossible is just the start of her problems, as she learns that she's stepped square into a conspiracy for control of Artemis itself—and that now, her only chance at survival lies in a gambit even riskier than the first.


My Thoughts:
A couple of years ago, we gave Weir's The Martian to Mini-him for Christmas. He read it, passed it along to us, and it sat on the shelf for two years. Until a couple of months ago when I read it and thoroughly enjoyed it. Just in time to find out that Weir's latest, Artemis, was available for review so I immediately downloaded it. Then got very nervous that it wouldn't live up to its predecessor. So, how did it live up to my expectations?

Set in space? Check.

Yes, yes, I know the whole point of grown up books with descriptive words is to paint a picture in the reader's mind of what the scenes look like. But, dang, I really wished this was a picture book so you know I can't wait until this gets turned into a movie. Which you know it will be.

Filled with humor? Check.

It's official. I'm pretty much in love with Andy Weir's sense of humor.

Loaded with tension? Check.

This time the it's not just space that's trying to kill our hero. There are actual people with actual weapons. And there's murder, and chase scenes, and a cop trying to take down our girl.

Also loaded with science? Check.

As with The Martian, I have no idea if all of the science rings true. It mostly sounds plausible enough and Weir writes it interestingly enough to make me want to read it and try to understand it.

But, this is also the only real problem I had with Artemis. It's set 100 years from now, right? But, on several occasions, Weir refers to devices and such that we use now. Based on the way that the world has changed in the past 100 years, I can't help but think that people wouldn't still be watching cable TV; that even for the older generation, laptop computers might be archaic; and that fiber optics might have been replaced by something we can't even imagine yet. Still, that's all a small enough thing, because...

Book I couldn't put down because it was so much fun? Check!

I adored Jazz, with all of her faults. And this time, Weir's lead character got to have real interactions with his other characters and I thoroughly enjoyed the relationships Jazz had with the men in her life. Did I like it as much as the first book? Maybe not quite; but, to some extent, that was only because I knew something of what to expect from Weir. Still, it's a a book I will happily recommend to anyone who enjoyed The Martian. In fact, I might just have to make this one a Christmas present for Mini-me as well!

Life: It Goes On - November 5

Thirty-five years. Thirty-five years The Big Guy and I have been married as of last Monday. So often my brain still tricks me into believing I'm not much older than that so it's hard to imagine that we have been "we" for so long. Not long ago I met a woman who has what can only be described as a very unusual marriage; still, she called her husband her soul mate. I'm never sure I understand what that means or if BG and I are, in fact, soul mates. But I do know that no one knows me better than he does, I would not be the person I am without him in my life, and that he is my rock. As opposed to the days I feel 35, some days I feel pretty old so it was strange to think, when he said to me "here's to another 35" that, theoretically, that could happen!

This Week I'm:

Listening To: Podcasts (including Criminal, Pod Save America, and Classical Classroom), NPR in the mornings, and Sam Smith's new album, after listening to him on an NPR interview.

Watching: The World Series, football (it's quite the bleak year for this fan), Disney's 2017 Beauty and the Beast (I loved it in the theaters; in rewatching it, I was as big a fan), and Bridget Jones' Baby.

Reading: Starting a new book today, Beverly Gray's Seduced by Mrs. Robinson, about the making of the iconic movie, The Graduate. I just finished Andy Weir's Artemis, which I'm reviewing tomorrow. I enjoyed it a lot.

Making: For our anniversary, I did roast a pork tenderloin, baked hasselback potatoes, and made chocolate-dipped strawberries. We did chicken flatbread pizza one night. And last night, we had pasta with tomatoes from our garden that are still ripening on our counter and basil I've brought inside to keep growing.

Planning: On continuing work in my office this week. Doesn't it feel like I'm always talking about working in this little room? It does seem to be a room that is always in flux as things change around here. One of these days, I'll finally decide what it's real purpose is!

Thinking About: Yeah, it's one of those weeks when my head's aswirl with so many things I can't even seem to alight on one thing long enough to finish that thought.

Enjoying: A quiet day yesterday while BG was off to spend the day with friends and Miss H took a four hour nap in anticipation of a very late night last night with her best friend who is on leave from her post in Virginia.

Feeling: Like I need to get busy cleaning but I'd much rather be doing organizing and decluttering things.

Looking forward to: A very quiet week. Again.

Question of the week: Last week a lot of you were surprised that I had already started shopping for Christmas. I couldn't possibly get it all done if I didn't start early. My question for you is, how do you find the time to get everything done for the holidays that needs to be done? Start early and spread it out or devote the month of December to getting it all done?

Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak

Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak
Published October 2017 by Penguin Publishing Group
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:
It’s Christmas, and for the first time in years the entire Birch family will be under one roof. Even Emma and Andrew’s elder daughter—who is usually off saving the world—will be joining them at Weyfield Hall, their aging country estate. But Olivia, a doctor, is only coming home because she has to. Having just returned from treating an epidemic abroad, she’s been told she must stay in quarantine for a week…and so too should her family.

For the next seven days, the Birches are locked down, cut off from the rest of humanity—and even decent Wi-Fi—and forced into each other’s orbits. Younger, unabashedly frivolous daughter Phoebe is fixated on her upcoming wedding, while her older sister, Olivia, deals with the culture shock of being immersed in first-world problems.

Their father, Andrew, sequesters himself in his study writing scathing restaurant reviews and remembering his glory days as a war correspondent. But his wife, Emma, is hiding a secret that will turn the whole family upside down.

In close proximity, not much can stay hidden for long, and as revelations and long-held tensions come to light, nothing is more shocking than the unexpected guest who’s about to arrive…

My Thoughts:
When I was pitched this book, I read that summary and imagined "light and frivolous." While there is a lightness to the book, frivolous it is not. Hornak touches on infidelity, homosexuality, cancer, deadly viruses, adoption, abandoned dreams, and complicated relationships within families.

Sometimes when I sit down to write a review, I think it might just be easier to start giving ratings and leave it at that. This one would get, for example, three of five stars. Which, as it turns out, makes it harder to review than a book that got one star or a book that got five stars. So why isn't this a five-star book?

• Because the characters are somewhat caricatures. Andrew, for example, is the crotchety middle-aged man who dreams have been squashed and who takes it out on the restaurants he now reviews. Phoebe is very much the pampered younger daughter who believes the world revolves around her. And her fiancé, George, and his family are the stereotypical upper class English family, with the macho, sporty men. To some extent, those tight characters forced Hornak to follow particular plot lines; more rounded characters would have made some of the action less predictable. It might also have made it easier to like the characters and this is a book that needs readers to like the characters.

• Because, while the writing is perfectly acceptable, there was nothing that particularly exceptional about it.  Some of it is predictable. There weren't passages that made me think, "wow" or "that's beautiful." If I'm giving a book five stars (theoretically), it has to have that kind of writing. 

• I was never entirely sure how I was supposed to feel about one of the love stories and I wasn't clear if Hornak meant for the reader to wonder or if that was just the way I felt about it.

More importantly, I suppose, it what makes this book rise about a one-star book, as in why should you read it?

• Because this is a book that, despite all of those heavy subjects, mostly stays away from being overly dramatic and predictable; and it does maintain that lightness which makes it the kind of book that you can read almost any time. People who don't read a lot may not even know why that's important. But for those of us who do, we know that, sometimes, you need a book you know you're not going to carry around with you (figuratively) when you finish it. Sometimes I need a book that I can enjoy while I'm reading it and then be done with it when I'm done. That's a good thing, really it is.

• There are a couple of things that really took me by surprise. One thing in particular that I did not see coming and I always love when a writer can do that without making it feel unnatural.

• I don't want to give away the ending. But...this is the kind of book that you know going into is going to have a happily-ever-after ending. And then Hornak doesn't do that. Not everyone is going to come to their senses. Every relationship is not going to get tied up with a pretty bow. That made me very happy because it felt just right. And if you leave a reader feeling like the ending was just right, then you've done a job well worth a three-star rating. 

*Would this one make a good book club choice? Yes, with all of those themes, there is a lot here book clubs could discuss. Plus, it might be just right for those members who get scared off by heavier books.