A Sloth's Guide to Mindfulness by Ton Mak

This cute little sloth instantly calmed me down. He reminded me to focus on my breath, to enjoy my surroundings and to chill out. That it's good to reach for the stars, but it's okay to go at my own pace. Who knew a little drawn animal could do so much good for my peace of mind? It's a quick read that highlights a slow pace. If your mind is going a million miles a minute like mine often does, take the sloth's advice and focus on the present. As he says, you do you, keep mindful and everything will fall into place. Hang in there!

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

Queenie has man troubles. She's devastated to learn that her long-term boyfriend, Tom, wants to go on a break from their relationship. She's in love with him and can't imagine life without him, but she's forced to move out of their shared apartment until they figure out their future once and for all.

In the meantime, she attempts to distract herself. She goes to a party where her friends fill out an online dating profile for her. Subsequently, between men she meets on OKCupid, a few acquaintances, and a random hookup she meets in a bar, she spends a lot of time using her body rather than her mind to try to mend her broken heart. But no matter how many partners she spends time with, she can't seem to get her true love, Tom, out of her mind.

The shared house she ends up moving into is damp, dirty and gross, so she spends quite a bit of time over at her grandparents' house. They're old-school Jamaicans and set in their ways. They provide some comic relief, as do group text chats with her friends, dubbed "The Corgis". She also spends an inordinate amount of time over at the sexual health clinic due to her rising number of assorted one-(sometimes more) night stands.

Queenie has a lot of potential (both the character and the novel), but for me personally, there's a bit of a disconnect. It has a lot of elements of (forgive me for the terrible term) chick lit - the snappy, fun dialogue and quirky characters - but there are also a ton of elements that could make for a true thought-provoking drama: Queenie's complex relationship issues, her estranged mother-daughter relationship, crippling night terrors and panic attacks, the Black Lives Matter movement and interracial relationships, as well as Queenie's career hanging in the balance as she tackles her mounting personal challenges. 

A word of warning: the sexual encounters with the random men Queenie gets involved with are actually quite horrible and shocking for what at first seems to be a light-hearted novel. They had me cringing and wanting me to grab her from the pages out of those situations to tell her she deserves better than the way she's being treated. Furthermore, while there are flashbacks to her earlier times with Tom, I didn't feel as though I had a complete enough picture of him to care about whether or not they got back together. Some of the characters are downright unlikeable to the point where, again, as a reader, I didn't really care much about what happened with their storylines, while others definitely added likeability and a well-rounded complexity to Queenie's story.

Overall, I'm not quite sure how to rate this one. I really liked certain parts over others and felt that there was a ton of potential. I just felt as though either the lighthearted parts needed to be a lot more funny (doesn't it drive you crazy when a character is doubled over with laughter at a quote that you barely cracked a smile at?) to turn the entire thing into a laughing-at-life comedy or that the author could have taken all of that darker, hard-to-swallow material and made it into more of a sweeping drama. I feel as though the author could have produced a real gem if she'd gone with the latter. It didn't swing quite enough in either direction for me, so I'm going to split this at around an indecisive 3.5-4 stars out of 5. Overall, I thought this was good for a debut novel and would certainly be interested to see what else Candice Carty-Williams writes next.

Judge the cover: 5/5

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

I chose to read Of Mice and Men as part of the Read Harder challenge: to re-read a book that was assigned in school. I can't remember how I felt about this book back when I was a teenager. Bits and pieces were familiar, but I couldn't remember the entire story. I was probably focused on more important things in my life back then, such as daydreaming about Jordan Catalano.

Overall, it was alright - however re-reading it felt a bit like an assignment since it's not a book that I'd gravitate towards nowadays for pleasure. I've never really connected much to the classics. I purposely chose a really short book. I got it out of the way early in the year so I can focus on books I want to read more.

I guess not much has changed, though I've finally moved on from Jordan...

Judge the cover: 4/5

The Baltimore Book of the Dead by Marion Winik

This little book is an accompaniment to Marion Winik's book titled The Glen Rock Book of the Dead. This second book is comprised of people the author knew who died between 2008 and 2017. 

I was having a bad day when I first picked this up and I didn't immediately connect to it. Who wants to read about a bunch of dead people that someone else knew?, I thought. However, the next day I picked it up again (it's tiny after all, and that cover is so cute). I approached it with a fresh attitude and ended up being really intrigued.

The subjects themselves are not identified by their names, but by little nicknames that the author's bestowed on them. Only about two pages are devoted to each person, but the author manages to sum up what they each meant to her in such a succinct way that even though we aren't given a great deal of detail, a clear image of each person and how much they meant to her comes through.

The summaries almost reminded me of haiku in their precision: each person's essence is distilled down to carefully worded anecdotes and each one ends with a pithy final sentence or two that perfectly sum up the stories and the characters.

These mini eulogies aren't just limited to people, though that's the case for the majority for most of them. There are relatives, mentors, professors, friends, celebrities, a body of water and tales of a goldfish so special one would think it's made up if this book wasn't clearly non-fiction.

This book made me think of the very small number of people I've lost along the way and realize how grateful I am that I haven't lost very many in my lifetime. It's clear how much these people meant to the author, though, and just how lucky she is to have met most of them even though they're no longer on this earth.

Judge the cover: 5/5

People I Want to Punch in the Throat by Jen Mann

When your book is blurbed by Jenny Lawson on the front and your writing style is compared to David Sedaris on the back, before I even open the cover, I have high hopes. Like, really high. Also, the title's pretty catchy. And there's a smashed cupcake on the front! Yum, cupcakes...

So, I was a little bit disappointed to discover this book reads mostly like a (sorry sorry sorry) mommy blog. Please believe me when I say in no way do I mean this as a dig - especially after reading a chapter titled "Motherhood: The Toughest Competition You'll Ever Judge" full of passive aggressive oneupmomship. I can't stand that people actually engage in the mommy wars, I'm just using the term so you know exactly what genre you're in for if you choose to read this book. I'm guessing this is likely due to my own ignorance, not having read Jen Mann's blog (or, um, the table of contents) and thinking there was going to be more of a variety of funny. That said, motherhood is funny. It's ridiculous the things your kids say and the unforeseen situations you can find yourself in. And Jen Mann, despite finding herself at one point at the bottom of the hierarchical ladder of playgroups and the social pariah of the suburbs, is a really funny mom. Someone who I'm sure I'd have a blast hanging out with and laughing with. (I thought your dry humour with the neighbours was funny, Jen!) She says what we all think in our heads out loud and will do anything for a good story.

Still, I read mainly to escape and even though the stories about motherhood and small children were pretty funny, I wanted a bit more range. If you're a mom with small kids and you just want to laugh about how hard and silly and unpredictable it all is - and you could envision yourself at a gun range with the other moms on your one night out a week - then this book is definitely for you.

Also, I learned something really quite interesting about white boulders, so there's that. 

Judge the cover: 4/5

Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama by Alison Bechdel

After writing Fun Home about her father, Alison Bechdel felt the need to write a book about her mother. Her mother did not approve. She already felt exposed by Alison's first book and didn't want to open herself up to even more scrutiny.

While I enjoyed Fun Home, I felt that Are You My Mother? got blurred too much by psychoanalysis and external flotsam. The author was heavily immersed in the writings of Donald Winnicott, a psychoanalyst and pediatrician who studied child/mother relationships. She was drawn to his work because she was trying to discover more about her own relationship with her mother. Already part of a fairly non-demonstrative family, she essentially felt abandoned and less worthy than her brothers when her mother abruptly stopped kissing her goodnight at age seven.

As she's showing her experiences with her mother in the frames, many are captioned with Winnicott's theories as to why mothers don't always properly bond with their infants. She also has references sprinkled throughout analyzing the relationships in Virginia Woolf's work, as well as revealing visits with her own therapists whom she confides in over the years. While I appreciate this duality of storytelling and its unique form, for me personally, it got in the way and felt excessive. 

It's not to say that Alison hides behind these sub-stories but I feel that they overshadow her own. It makes sense how she's incorporated these additional references into her own body of work, but after some time, it feels as though we're not getting a focused enough picture of her relationship with her mother. It must be hard to feel compelled to write a memoir when the subject of the memoir is reluctant to be written about. At one point, her mother quotes the following by Dorothy Gallagher about memoirs during one of their conversations: "The writer's business is to find the shape in unruly life and to serve her story, not, you may note, to serve her family, or to serve the truth, but to serve the story." followed abruptly by "I know! Family be damned!" You can sense the unease of her mother throughout the book and a walking-on-eggshells quality to how Alison writes about her. She tries to be as candid as possible, but somehow, with all of these extras going on, I feel that a large part of the narrative is missing. In comparison, Fun Home was written after the death of Alison's father. Perhaps while attempting to write about an uneasy relationship while the other person is still alive (and let's not forget, not entirely supportive of the entire endeavour) was just too much of an obstacle. 

In any case, the author must write what they are compelled to write even if, like life, the story isn't always so straightforward.

Judge the cover: 2/5

How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon

"People make mistakes. They look at the surface of things and see what they want to."

This one quote from the book perfectly sums it up. Tariq Johnson, a black teenager, is just sixteen years old when he is gunned down by a white man. But the question everyone needs an answer to is why? Was he armed as some bystanders said or was he only holding a chocolate bar? Had he just robbed a convenience store or did it just appear that way? Was he a gang member as some claimed or holding strong and resisting initiation as others said? Was the shooter acting in self-defense or was it a race issue? Why was he let off so easily? Was it because he was actually innocent or was it yet another case of white privilege?

This is a story told in multiple perspectives from Tariq's family members, friends and a various members of the rough neighbourhood where he grew up. There are many, many viewpoints, yet the way they're all written, flowing from one into the next with clear captions doesn't makes it at all confusing, so don't overthink it and you'll be just fine. You'll be left with a cohesive panorama shown from many clear points of view.

This is the kind of book that makes you think. It shows how easily people jump to conclusions when these types of terrible events take place. So much depends on individuals' own perspectives, biases, and status. It's how a human life can mean a lot or nothing at all and how people can literally get away with murder when facts and fiction are blurred.

Judge the cover: 5/5

Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden

T Kira Madden had everything a girl could want: she lived in a mansion, had access to all of the shoes from her family's empire, barely had any rules growing up, wads of cash in her hands, and her very own pony (yes, her very own pony!). So, she should have been flying high, footloose and fancy free, right?

Well, the high part, sure. But the rest, well, it just goes to show that money can't buy happiness is not just a platitude; for T Kira, it was a fact. Because when your parents are mostly failing at sobriety, you can get away with a lot more than you should. There were so many times when reading this book that I had to check back on her age. The timelines of her memories float back and forth and all around, so when she was talking about being taken advantage of by older men, hanging out with drug dealers, and drinking down half of her father's vodka and orange juice, I'd forget and assume she must have been in her late teens. Sadly, so many terrible things happened to her when she was eight. Nine. Ten. She was a prime target for so many things that should have been safely out of reach. 

This is a story of a privileged childhood fraught with a hell of a lot of money and lot of danger. It's what happens when a beautiful child is left to her own devices in a world where everything comes easy, but forgetting is hard. When things happen to a soul, when innocence becomes a thing of the past even during childhood and when a girl finds her voice and tells her side of the story to the world.

Normal People by Sally Rooney

One thing that makes a book bad is not making the reader care about the characters. I had the opposite problem with Normal People. I cared too much. I literally felt as though this book lifted my heart out of its protective cage, turned it into crystal, and threatened to shatter it at any moment. So many times I caught my breath suspended in the air, my mind hanging onto words that made me forget to exhale.

I felt a longing for the characters as though I was one of them. I felt their needs, their isolation, their heartstrings stretching to capacity and I could hardly take it. At times, I wanted the book to end so I could get myself back to normal, to morph my heart back to its natural state, safely beating at a regular rate within my chest. On the other hand, I didn't want it to end. I wanted it to be endless, this perfect interplay of tension, of giving you everything you want and then ripping it away. It's the perfect formula, yet this book felt unique and anything but formulaic. To be able to immerse yourself in fiction, to be utterly swept up in two people who make you forget all about the real world and anything but what you're reading, is the best kind of way to spend some time.

I am left in awe by Sally Rooney herself, this woman I have never met, whose books I've never read until now, yet I feel like she has such an intimate knowledge of empathy and turmoil and anxiety, of the human condition, of how it feels when you don't feel as though you fit neatly into the world. I can't wait to read more of what she's written. She really has a deep understanding of humanity, a natural conversational tone, and a way of not tying things up neatly. I want to tell you about the plot, to drop crumbs about these people she writes about, especially about Connor and Marianne, but I would ruin the plot, so I just hope you love them as much as I do.

Judge the cover: 5/5 (Perfect cover, perfect book)

Ohio by Stephen Markley

If you're the type of person who thinks action and excitement only takes place in big cities, you haven't let Stephen Markley lead you through the small town of New Canaan, Ohio. You're in for a big surprise or two.

We follow four main characters as they find themselves reconnected to their hometown. Bill Aschcraft has a mysterious package duct taped to his torso and a belly sloshing full of alcohol and pills. Stacey Moore is reluctantly returning home for a dreaded meeting with her ex-girlfriend's mother. Dan Eaton is home from the war in Iraq to meet up with a former flame and Tina Ross is back with a Plan-with-a-capital-P up her sleeve that no one - including the reader - sees coming.

The format switches back and forth from present-ish day (2013) and reflects back to the characters' high school days in the early 2000s. They all know one another from growing up in the same fading town - or at least they think they do - but what a living hell high school can be and everyone's been affected in different ways now that they're in their twenties. Some are frantically grasping back to when they peaked in high school; others are clawing ahead trying to distance themselves as far away as they can from their supposed glory days which were, in fact, anything but.

Though time and distance have separated some of them, their lives are all still tethered in different ways and they find their ways back to each other via dark alleys and crappy bars. The small town rumor mill is in full swing and still can't be avoided. No one seems to have gotten through their youth untouched and while some tried to toss their former selves to the wind, they now find themselves back right where they began. They're pregnant, high, drunk, abused, heartbroken, ashamed, coping, untouchable. They're all looking for an escape from their messed up lives. They're all back in New Canaan and it seems the only way to move forward is to go back and deal with the past.

Judge the cover: 5/5

The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray

The Butler girls are hungry. Some are hungry for food, some for attention, all for love and understanding.

This book blows open with the incarceration of the unofficial heads of the Butler family: Althea and her husband, Proctor. They ran a popular restaurant in their small town and were known and respected for their charity work, especially after a giant flood ravaged their community.

Althea is the oldest sister of adult siblings Viola, Lillian and Joe. Althea and Proctor are parents to teenage twins Kim and Baby Vi. Althea took over the role of helping raise her siblings when her own mother passed away at a young age. Their father was a preacher who was chasing his demons and was rarely around. 

When Althea and Proctor are locked up, Lillian primarily takes over caring for Kim and Baby Vi, with the help of Viola who's visiting from out of town. As if the incarceration of their sister and parents isn't enough, each of the characters is also going through at least one other major (generally unrelated) personal conflict. Through all of this, the adults are trying to do their best while trying to also take care of the twins and the twins are trying to adjust to their new situation while battling the challenges of teenage-hood. Throughout all of this complexity, however, they really want nothing more than the pure love of their mother, something she is sadly not able to provide.

All of this drama makes for complex characters and an engaging plot. It's very much a multi-layered story. At one point, I thought it was almost overreaching having so many subplots going on, but upon further reflection I realized it actually made the story more realistic. In real life, people usually don't just have a limit of one struggle per time period; instead, we're untangling many conflicts at the same time. Some are bigger and more tangled than others but usually our struggles affect not only ourselves but those closest to us. This is certainly the case with the Butlers, who are really mired down with not only their own personal problems, but at the same time they're being shunned by association by the majority of the community members who have now turned on Althea and Proctor.

What they all need the most is to be loved and cared for. They need a respite from the strange hell they've been dumped into. The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls shows us that the superhuman strength we all carry deep inside ourselves will gradually find its way to the surface if we have an honest and strong support system. It shows us that as long as we have tight bonds and do our best with whatever events life throws at us, we can overcome and, more times than not, come out even stronger on the other side.

Judge the cover: 5/5