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