Author Archives: Kate

My Top 5

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This year has been something, hasn’t it? I have done so little fun reading (hence the lack of posting) but I did read enough to do a Top 5!

5. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

I’m pretty sure that I read this in high school but I couldn’t remember how it ended, so I decided to re-read it. I also snap chatted my rage; the narrative inspired a lot of it.

Atwood gets the paranoia and tension right. She also nails the guilt, I think, of feeling like you didn’t do enough in hindsight to stop bad things from happening.

4. Wool by Hugh Howey

This is a claustrophobic dystopian tale. In a future in which all that is left of humanity lives in an underground bunker, exile is a death sentence and is used as punishment. Exiled folks are put into a suit and given steel wool to clean the outside censors so that those still inside can see a constant live image of the bleak landscape. Many death row inmates swear that they will not clean the censors when they leave and yet, they all do. This tale surprised me with its mystery, the humanity of its characters and ultimately with the horror of how the world came to be like this. It was great, even when it hit a little too close to home.

3. Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

I have a huge crush on Trevor Noah, so you know that I had to read this. Well, listen to it. Noah’s stories are heartwarming and heartbreaking and I loved listening to this audio book (read by the author.) I didn’t know a lot about Noah, outside of what I’ve gleaned from seeing some of his stand up and watching him on the Daily Show so I didn’t know where the story was going and was pleasantly, sobbingly, surprised by the end. If you are at all interested in reading a personal narrative from Apartheid South Africa and the following transition away from apartheid, this isn’t a bad place to start.

2. Whipping Girl: A Transsexual woman on sexism and the scapegoating of femininity by Julia Serano

This collections of essays is sharp and insightful. Serano is a trans woman and a biologist and she brings both of these things to a discussion of femininity and how it is viewed by society. She builds on that and focuses is on how views of femininity shape and have an effect on the public’s opinion of trans women. As a biologist, she addresses many common misconceptions of transness. This collection was great and I am so glad I read it.

1. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

I got this book from the library as an audiobook but then I thought I wanted to actually read it and not have it read to me, so I got it as an ebook. Then, it won the National Book Award and when I didn’t finish it during my loan period from the library, I got put on a stupidly long waiting list. Boring story short, I finally just bought it and two years later I have finished it. I’m glad this book had and still has a long wait list at my library. It is one of the most important things I have read in a long time. I am a numbers person, so I find statistics and well done analyses compelling, but this book really filled in the gaps on race in America that you can’t get from statistics. I know Coates has gotten a lot of shit lately but I’m glad his work is out there. If you’ve not read it, I really recommend it.

So, here’s to the end of this year and it a Happy New Year full of many books and book reviews!

Review: Knit One, Kill Two by Maggie Sefton

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I listened to this book while commuting to work with my car pool buddy. In it, Kelly Flynn returns to her hometown in Colorado following the murder of her aunt. This is the mystery that is solved in the novel. Who killed Aunt Helen? Why? Along the way, she meets her aunt’s knitting friends, who teach her to knit, and she uncovers secrets from her aunt’s past that may be the key to solving the murder.

This was a fun book. I particularly enjoyed that knitting was portrayed realistically and there weren’t any unrealistic buy-ins (like a single mother who supports herself and her child in a city where you knows no one by selling custom hand knits.) Kelly was believable. The yarn shop owner was believable. The other customers were believable. Since a lack of believability drives me crazy, these were all positives for me.

There were some moments where I wanted to know less about what people were feeling, but I’m also impatient and I wanted to know if I guessed the villain.

I would recommend this.

March: Discussion Post 1

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Beth and I have both finally gotten our copies of March in the mail, and I started reading it at breakfast this morning! This couldn’t be a more pertinent read. As I am sure you have seen, Senator Elizabeth Warren was officially silenced for the rest of the hearing on whether to confirm Senator Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. She was silenced for reading out part of a letter written by Coretta Scott King to the chair of the judiciary committee in 1986 on Sessions’ possible appointment to a federal judgeship. Warren was officially silenced for, ‘breaking Rule 19, which forbids members from imputing to a colleague “any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.”‘ (quote from NPR.)

 

In the letter, King writes about the march from Selma to Montgomery in the letter, setting the stage to discuss subsequent actions designed to deny people their right to vote. She writes, “I was privileged to join Martin and many others during the Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights in 1965. Martin was particularly impressed by the determination to get the franchise of blacks in Selma and neighboring Perry County.” You can read the letter in its entirety here.

 

Volume one begins with Lewis’s early life; we won’t get to Selma until volume 3 (I believe). It is not often that we read historical pieces that are so immediately relevant as we read them.

For this post, I’m not going to ask discussion questions. So, please feel free to comment with your first impressions of the graphic novel. Are you reading along with us? Have you started? How do you feel about pet chickens? We look forward to hearing what you have to say in the comments.

Beth and Kate read: Who is ready for March?!

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On this day in 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King and 300 others were arrested for walking to the Dallas County courthouse in Alabama to protest voter-registration rules.

 

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We will be starting to read  March by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell (Artist) this week. There have been shenanigans and I had to reorder it today from the bookstore. Friday I will post our first discussion thread! Please consider joining us as we work our way through this award winning graphic novel!