Remember When the Music

I finally got around to reading the incredible Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder as recommended by my friend Sarah, and I can’t figure out why it took me so long to get to reading this! I guess sometimes I have to be in the mood for non-fiction but I don’t think I ever could have fully prepared myself for this incredibly moving story of one man’s mission to cure the world wherever he could.

Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains documents the unparalleled work performed by Dr. Paul Farmer in locales from Haiti to Russia in one compelling and absorbing volume. A leading expert in infectious disease, Farmer’s contributions to the medical field go above and beyond mere contributions to science. For he has devoted his life to providing medical care to some of the most impoverished nations in the world, fighting tuberculosis worldwide, bringing life-saving modern medicine to individuals on the brink of death. Dr. Farmer’s influence is nearly impossible to quantify – even Kidder’s 300 page book could not possibly list all the lives Farmer has touched. From the individual patients the doctor runs into wherever he goes to his international fight for addressing global health issues, Farmer has truly done everything within his power to devote his life to saving those of others.

Kidder aptly explains early on that Farmer isn’t out to educate the world – he wants to transform it. Though he aims to provide sustainable and culturally relevant medical aid whenever possible, Farmer’s work is positively unrepeatable and absolutely impossibly to imagine without the doctor himself behind it all. He sometimes makes seemingly cost-ineffective decisions to aid people that others would disregard as lost causes. He provides expensive, essential care and worries about attaining the funds later.

The man travels tirelessly between his professorial post at Harvard, his medical center in Haiti, his wife and child in Paris, and the myriad other locations where he has medical projects, relations, conferences, speaking opportunities, and fund-raising initiatives. He makes house calls through rural Haiti, traveling hours by foot to reach the homes of single patients to ensure they are still alive and well. He confers with the United Nations’ World Health Organization on fighting tuberculosis in the destitute communities where it still rages. Despite generous funding from Boston-area developer Tom White, it is primarily through Farmer’s tireless devotion and footwork that Partners in Health, the organization under which Zanmi Lasante, Farmer’s Haitian medical center, is housed, has flourished in such a relatively short period of time.

Mountains Beyond Mountains is profile the charismatic and endlessly energetic doctor’s work, work ethic, and philosophy in a way that imparts Farmer’s passion and urgency to readers. Harvard-educated, Dr. Farmer’s background was in medical anthropology. When he first traveled to Haiti, Farmer’s anthropological perspective allowed him to understand the Haitians’ medical issues in ways that brought about more effective results than ever before. He spoke with the locals about their belief in Voodoo. Rather than disregarding a system of beliefs that he had yet to fully understand, Farmer attempted to reconcile the Haitian belief in Voodoo with their experience and understanding of disease – and medicine’s ability to cure them. Farmer never fails to account for all the factors impacting individual, community, and national health – politics, social circumstances, economics, living conditions, family life.

In the words of Farmer’s favorite medical figure Rudolf Virchow “The physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor, and the social problems should be largely solved by them.” Farmer carries out this aphorism to the extreme on a daily basis. He recognizes the role that the United States has played in the dismal poverty of Haiti, the national health impact of existing under a harsh military regime, the importance of a patient’s religious beliefs in curing disease. No matter how far their needs may fall outside the medical realm, the doctor never fails to do anything within his power to help the poor of Haiti.

I could list all of Farmer’s remarkable accomplishments or summarize his work at Zanmi Lasante, but I think that would be doing Kidder a disservice. The author does an excellent job of profiling Dr. Farmer’s work in a compellingly readable and inspiring book. Though I could go on at great length about the doctor himself, I would never have learned and been inspired by his work if not for Mountains Beyond Mountains which tells Farmer’s story, and all the relevant political and social history, so well.

So I’ll leave you with a few insights and tidbits from Dr. Farmer (and trust me, there are plenty to take from this book). Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains will leave you galvanized and inspired, appreciative and amazed. This is certainly a book (and Farmer is certainly an individual) I will never be able to forget, and here are just a few of the reasons why.

“The fact that any sort of religious faith was so disdained at Harvard and so important to the poor – not just in Haiti but elsewhere, too – made me even more convinced that faith must be something good.”

“She thought [Farmer] had never experienced true depression, a freedom so enviable she almost resented it. “I’ve never know despair and I don’t think I ever will,” he wrote [Kidder] once. It was as if in seeking out suffering in some of the world’s most desperate locales, he made himself immune to the self-consumming varieties of psychic pain.”

“[Farmer] said patients came first, prisoners second, and students third, but this didn’t leave out much of humanity. Ever sick person seemed to be a potential patient of Farmer’s and every healthy person a potential student.”

It didn’t take much for me to fall in love with Elizabeth Warren. Her progressive politics, her earnest concern for the plight of all Americans, her frustration with policy decisions that routinely reward big finance over honest people, her ability to shut down detractors with facts and heart, her near-obsession with the stories of bankrupt families in an effort to figure out how we can help them… she just makes me swoon.

Warren’s memoir, A Fighting Chance, left me quite smitten with the Massachusetts senator. It also lead me to an even earlier work of Warren’s entitled All Your Worth that has the potential to transform the way most Americans handle their money for the better. Written with Warren’s daughter Amelia Warren Tyagi, All Your Worth is a financial how-to for the average working American. The two Warren girls set out strict but clearly outlined (and thus, easy to follow) rules for the way we should spend our money in order to maximize the value of both our saving and our spending. I don’t usually write about (or read about for that matter) financial books, but I couldn’t fail to provide some humble promotion to a book as rare, useful and comprehensible as All Your Worth (and much more practical than the lottery or a Mr. Money Mustache lifestyle). Plus I think a book like this, one that is so unfaltering in its commitment to helping everyday people, proves yet again why Mrs. Warren would be a wonderful leader of this country if she ever decides to take the Presidential plunge.

The basic formula set out by our authors is a 50-30-20 balance between our Must-Have expenses, our Wants spending, and our Saving, respectively. Challenging the way we conceptualize need in 21st century America, Elizabeth and Amelia define items in the Must-Have category as things you cannot cut out, the bills you would still pay without fail if you lost your job or faced a major financial downfall. So no, cable TV, an internet connection, and dinners out do not fall into this category. But beyond tightening the circle of need, Warren and Warren Tyagi explain methods to downsize on those Must-Haves that seem fixed in stone. There’s a very thorough beginner’s guide to refinancing your mortgage with a large emphasis on questions to ask a lender when shopping for new loans. There’s advice on how to tackle daunting credit card debt – lots of advice. There’s straightforward methods for lowering your insurance costs, exploring every possible option to get those Must-Haves to 50% of your monthly take home pay or less. And there’s clear and simple explanations as to why 50% is the magic, practical balance.

Then come the Wants. Trips to the movies, a trip to the local pub, subscriptions to HBO, vacations overseas, birthday and Christmas gifts. All those things, big and small, that make life a little more pleasurable or exciting or relaxing after the mortgage and the doctor’s bills are paid. What’s more, the Warren ladies make it super simple to track these types of expenditures. Just use cash. I know, it can be difficult to pay for everything you want with cash due to the proliferation of so many online marketplaces. And true, maybe that credit card company wants to reward you with goodies for a certain level of spending. But the only way to have a fast and hard idea of where you stand with your budget is to use good, old-fashioned cash for the things that aren’t budgeted for, the bright little spots of fun in your spending. I haven’t been one to use cash ever since I received my first debit card. I used to cringe at the thought a pocket full of twenties despite the eye rolls when I told people I only carried plastic. My mother, the kind of woman who is infamous for her ability to render exact change from her wallet, has stopped asking me for money when she’s at the register and needs a spare one-spot. But reading All Your Worth forced me to challenge my assumptions about this longstanding method of financial transaction. When looking at my bank account statements, it’s really a headache to parcel out where my spending diverges from my spending on wants. And of course I won’t stick to a Wants budget if it isn’t easy, or downright effortless, to do. So I’m trying cash for the first time in ages, just a budgeted amount I put in my wallet each week. If there are any leftovers, I’ll put that cash to the side in a little rainy day fund, ensuring I’ll have something to pull on when I want to buy a pricey concert ticket, take a vacation, or shower my mom with a really thoughtful Mother’s Day gift. The more I think about it, the more doable it seems. I may be required to pay with a card every now and then, but it won’t be difficult to remember to detract a certain amount from my weekly cash allowance when plastic purchases are made so sparingly. So far, it seems simple as pie.

Finally, there’s the savings category. I was actually a little surprised by the low budgeting – only 20% – to savings. But All Your Worth really stresses the importance of having a good chunk of Wants spending to enjoy life – and saving smartly to make your 20% grow it something much more than the face value of what you initially put in. The world of investing seems impossibly daunting to me. As often as I see my elderly housing clients barely subsisting on their monthly Social Security checks, I’ve kidded myself into thinking that smart saving will be enough to supplement that inevitable fixed monthly income. But the Warren ladies bring the world of investing out into a more accessible light, with overviews of what type of stock options to seek, defining all those acronyms like IRAs, explaining all the means of growing a retirement plan. They don’t even need to devote that many pages to their savings advice because it’s reduced to the simplest, most user-friendly tidbits that readers need to know before their money is off and running. After 15 minutes of research on my bank’s website (and of course reading All Your Worth), I set up a retirement account that I’m confident is a small step towards a more comfortable life when my working years are over. And once a down payment on a house is out of my pocket, even more of my savings will be invested in the type of investment options that are safe and just plain smart for someone my age. Thanks Warren girls!

If nothing else, All Your Worth gave me more confidence in myself as a financial powerhouse. Maybe that’s strong language, but I feel like I can get there someday. I know what to look for when mortgage shopping, something that was previously so scary as to make me reconsider my dream of home-ownership. I know how much money I should keep in the bank and how much to invest. I know that I’m doing what I can on a daily basis to make managing my money easy and effortless. I know how to still enjoy myself without a wracking sense of guilt every time I spend money on me. I know how to have difficult financial conversations with my husband even. All Your Worth lays out an incredibly easy plan for reducing debt and reducing worry, for building wealth and building financial happiness. The book is really more of a kick in the butt, than anything else, reminding us of our personal responsibility in our own financial security but also highlighting the often obscured ways we can exercise that responsibility. It’s unnerving to hear Warren hearken back to the days when there weren’t foreclosures in every neighborhood because the bank wouldn’t even think to lend you the money on a home you could not afford. While the financial rules and regulations certainly don’t make it easy for people to hold on to their hard-earned money, we as educated consumers can do just fine avoiding the loopholes and debt that banks and credit card companies prey upon. And if there’s one person that can elucidate everything a consumer needs to know about his or her money, I don’t think it could possibly be anyone other than Elizabeth Warren.

I picked up Barry Estabrook’s Tomatoland with a little bit of resistance. I’m a huge fan of food non-fiction, but I also had gotten to the point where I felt as though I’d exhausted the genre. What more was there to learn that would be so starkly different from all that the Michael Pollans and Marion Nestles of the world had already shared? I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the answer was, in fact, quite a lot.

Estabrook’s book focuses, as the title suggests, exclusively upon the tomato industry, particularly as it exists in the sandy and unfavorable soil of Florida. He throws out facts and anecdotes that are sure to scare the modern grocery consumer, from violations of regulations regarding pesticides to the way in which industry standards favor a certain tomato appearance, rather than a flavorful taste. But most horrifying of all are the conditions in which farm laborers struggle to live and making a living. Though other books (particularly Karl Weber’s Food, Inc.) have touched upon the plight of those workers who occupy the lowest of the low rungs on the industrial agricultural hierarchy, Estabrook takes a more incisive look at the issues that shape the lives of these laborers that is sure to make any reader think twice before picking up their next factory-farmed tomato.

The plight of the tomato farm laborer is one that doesn’t ease at the end of a long day of work. A vast majority of farms only pay their workers for the amount of tomatoes they pick in a day without regard to the lapses in time which occur while waiting for their daily assignment each morning or the hours they must wait at the end of a long day while the amount of work they have completed is tabulated. Under good conditions, a farm laborer does stand a chance of filling enough bushels to earn what would amount to minimum wage, however rain, those waits before and after the work day, illness, and a whole host of other factors come in to play and reduce earned income.

But beyond the injustice of the way in which pay is set up, the very conditions of the work are inhumane, so much so in fact that tomato labor is considered one of the prime sites of modern day slavery. Stooped to a crouch under the hot sun for 10 hours a day, picking tomatoes that are drenched in pesticides, often before the requisite waiting period is over, is just a daily occurrence for these people. Further troubles arise when they got home to crowded trailers operated by their bosses, who threaten them, their lives, and those of their family if they attempt to leave or dare to raise a complaint. It’s a dangerous cycle which far too many uneducated, non-English speaking laborers have found themselves trapped within.

Luckily there are a few recourses to action that are signs of hope for the Floridian tomato workforce. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers is a non-profit dedicated to fighting for the rights of Florida workers, particularly in Immokalee, one of the most destitute and corrupted communities where farmworkers live and work. After three Immokalee women gave birth to children with severe birth defects, some of them unable to live more than a mere three days because of the severity of these defects, the Coalition sought action. They hired a powerful lawyer who took the case on pro bono to prove that such defects were a cause of chemicals used on the fields and tomato farm supervisors failing to adhere to regulations that the fields be empty during spraying and remain so for a requisite period of time post-pesticide-application. The coalition has fought for countless other basic rights in the name of these farmworkers, primarily by joining forces to stand up to crew bosses that failed to fully pay their workers or that were hurling physical abuse upon their laborers and tenants. There is still plenty of work left to be done, but Estabrook does a wonderful job of highlighting why there is reason to be hopeful.

Tomatoland touches upon plenty of aspects of the tomato industry, from worker’s rights to corrupt industry executives, from dire health concerns and violations to the long sequence of events that made taste a non-factor in factory farmed tomatoes. Similar to Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals, Tomatoland won’t necessarily deter you from eating the food which is the prime subject of his book. Rather, he ensures that the next time you do eat a factory farmer tomato, you will do so with full consciousness of all that goes into harvesting that fruit in the hope that this will influence your opinion of the tomato and how you both acquire and enjoy it.

When I picked Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-Sided up from the library, I was almost embarrassed to be seen with the book, even going so far as hiding the cover under those of the other books in my stack. The promotion of positivity is so pervasive in our society that I felt self-conscious checking out a book whose title suggested that positivity’s track record wasn’t so pristine. While it may seem counter-intuitive to practice anything other than positive thinking, Ehrenreich’s book questions the origins and virtue of blind optimism in a handful of the major industries, social groups, and academic fields in which positivity has gained wide traction. Ehrenreich’s argument is far from flawless and I’m not planning on embracing outright pessimism anytime soon, but Bright-Sided employs the type of critical thinking that is vital to improving America.

Starting with breast cancer support networks, then moving on to the origins of positivity and the industries of motivational speaking, corporate positivity in concordane with major layoffs, mega-churches, positive psychology, and finance, Ehrenreich tours the American optimism landscape in a handful of its myriad forms. While I appreciated each of Ehrenreich’s chapters for their own merits, her argument that these instances of blind optimism were undermining America, as suggested by the book’s subtitle, was not as well developed as expected. It was certainly interesting to take a glimpse into the bland, God-less, positivity-driven megachurch, televangelist, prosperity preacher culture, where religious teachings take a back seat to self-help sermons and weak anecdotes as evidence of the power of positive thinking. I’ve long held issue with the breast cancer survivor culture – in particular the “pink-washing” of products whose proceeds are purportedly directed to breast cancer research efforts in spite of the fact that many of these products (ie. water bottles, cosmetics, other plastics) contain cancer-causing agents themselves. I was delighted that Ehrenreich referenced Breast Cancer Action, a nonprofit challenging the dominant discourse on breast cancer in favor of one focused on prevention efforts and environmental changes to reduce exposure to carcinogens, although her main beef with the breast cancer culture is how blindly optimistic both patients and survivors are. It was mind boggling to recognize how the stories of those who have succumbed to the cancer are hidden behind the stories of survivors who consider themselves lucky to have been diagnosed with cancer for changing their lives in positive ways. Further, it was enlightening to have the holes in research supporting positive psychology revealed, as so often scientific findings are highly exaggerated by and for the media, while the null results and those that disprove desired hypotheses are buried.

But these disparate pieces failed to coalesce into a sound argument as to why having a positive outlook is comprising our entire nation. She did conclude with a chapter on the connection between positivity and the financial crisis, drawing a bit on the arguments set up in her chapters on prosperity preachers and corporations. I appreciated the way in which she tied issues of inequality and social justice in to this and the final section of her book. Despite the fact that upward mobility is more common in plenty of other nations, the fable of picking oneself up by his or her bootstraps is so pervasive in the US as to make Americans more tolerant of inequality and less cautious with our investments. Self-delusion was a large force behind the financial crisis, Ehrenreich argues, on the part of individuals, buying on credit they could never possibly repay and purchasing houses with adjustable mortgage rates that eventually forced them onto the streets, as well as bankers and executives, making unwise lending decisions, holding unbelievably high expectations, and failing to confront reality. The dissenters on Wall Street were routinely derided for their negativity and pessimism, so at odds with the new corporate culture. It is this portion of the book where Ehrenreich’s argument as to how positivity has undermined a nation becomes most solidified, though still not fully formed. And it segued quite well into her conclusion, in which she ultimately calls for realism, defensive pessimism, an acceptance of our vulnerability, and ultimately action to remove the threats to circumstantial happiness wherever we can.

As someone who partakes in meditation, I firmly believe in the immense power of our minds. Ehrenreich’s framing of positivity in the terms of “laws of attraction,” whereby you can exercise control over your world through your thoughts such that the things you want will come to you, did give me some pause. Her contention aims at the power of the mind in a more tangible sense; simply thinking hard about what you want will not make it appear for you as so many of the positivists referenced in this book profess. It is undeniable to me, however, that we exercise more than a modicum of control over our worlds with our minds – it’s why my wallpaper cellphone reads “Change your thoughts and you change your world,” a potent reminder of the way in which the things I dwell upon in my head shape my daily life experience. I do not disagree with Ehrenreich’s refusal to accept the law of attraction premise; it would be foolish to believe that we can get the things we want without working for them. But there is a fine line here that Ehrenreich fails to establish between the imprudence of meditating on prosperity in the hopes that it will effortlessly reveal itself and the faculty practicing meditation provides us in creating and controlling our experiences of the world.

While I’m not a highly cynical person, I also don’t adhere to the other extreme of naive optimism. From my middle road stance, I cannot see any fault in putting a positive face on in the glare of this at times harsh world. Even if positivity does not necessarily cause or correlate with improved outcomes in indicators such as life expectancy and financial success, it does undeniably contribute to happiness, which is enough of an indicator for me to give a positive attitude a shot. Blind optimism is certainly problematic when it undermines the work ethic that Americans have prided themselves on for so long. When we rely on prayer and visualization exercises, rather than practice, effort, risk-taking, and a little industry to get what we want, positivity breeds a dangerous laziness, a naiveté which easily transforms into an unsurpassable obstacle, even an abyss of bottomless debt. Bright-Sided is important for its very stance on the American mentality of positivity, its practice of constructive criticism, its call for widespread realism, and its exploration of certain worlds where people are taken advantage of and even placed in danger by the promotion of positive thinking. But that doesn’t mean we can’t attempt to exercise control over our own thoughts and minds toward the brighter side of life for our own personal wellbeing and improved life experience, even if we do so with a grain of skeptical salt. If nothing else, Ehrenreich’s book provides us with a healthy dosing of reality so as to prevent our positivity from reaching dangerous extremes while motivating us to take action towards improving controllable circumstances in order to make happiness more readily available to everyone.

I’m pretty smitten with this Meghan Daum character. I read rave reviews of her recently released essay collection The Unspeakable, only to find that every other reader in town found these same reviews and requested the book from the library before me. So I get my hands on the only other Daum work offered by the Baltimore County Public Library system (which marks a shamefully huge omission in their catalog since she has published a total of three essay collections and one novel), Life Would Be Perfect if I Lived in that House, a surprisingly delightful read about Daum’s years-long obsession with finding the perfect home. When the library’s automated system emailed to let me know The Unspeakable was finally mine for a short three weeks, I jumped straight in to this volume with even more enthusiasm for having had a taste of Daum’s talent already.

Daum is a dazzling writer, there’s really no other way to put it. Her essays are ripe with gorgeous metaphor, display her unparalleled intelligence, and steal readers’ attention with their painfully honest wisdom. I found myself reading certain passages over and over again, caught up in the beauty of their perfect structure and artful parlance. But Daum doesn’t just have a way with vocabulary and phrasing; she pours her whole heart into every last sentence she composes, producing profound truths that left me marveling at the depth of her grasp on everything from life’s most meaningful mysteries to the dark fathoms of her own psyche.

Take Daum’s essay “The Best Possible Experience” which recounts her participation in a panel on delaying marriage trends, peppered with reflections on the poor example of marital bliss provided by her parents and tales from Daum’s own bizarre dating history. Personally, I wish I could have witnessed Daum deliver her carefully prepared piece, a meditation on the intersection of materialism, marriage, socioeconomic status, and the randomness of falling in love, to the aging audience members of the halfheartedly-attended event. Daum’s recollection of this (seemingly brilliant) speech isn’t self-aggrandizing so much as self-deprecating, poking fun at her audience’s complete disinterest in and, what she initially believes to be, misreading of her speech. The audience then proceeds to sap up every word from their next panelist, a best-selling author who simply reads from the introduction of her book in which she humorously derides women for being so choosy when it comes to love.

When one audience member labels our author as the romantic one and her fellow panelist as the practical one, Daum is completely taken aback, then ensues on a thoughtful consideration of romance and authenticity rivaling the brilliance of her previously recounted speech. You see, Daum always categorized herself as a profoundly unromantic person, given her aversion to traditional notions of commitment and long-term partnership. But upon further inspection thanks to a vocal audience member, she realizes that maybe her openness to experience and near-religious belief in the importance of authenticity are actually evidence of a nascent romantic nature, that her desire to meet wildly diverse types of people and to hear their stories indicates a sentimental hope that a stranger’s life could come to intertwine with hers in a great, unlikely love story. What I love about this piece is its display of Daum’s uncanny talent for slyly reeling readers in so that they end up just as surprised as Daum at her concluding discoveries; at first we, like her, are duped into thinking Daum’s no-holds-barred approach in these essays is far from sentimental, only to realize upon further consideration that her sincere efforts at writing authentically are better classified as heart on your sleeve, an undeniably romantic approach.

Basically “The Best Possible Experience” completely stole the show for me, and it was only the second essay in the book. In fact, I would have desperately loved The Unspeakable even if every other piece downright sucked. But that isn’t to say that the following essays are a drop off in any way; I simply connected with this piece and immediately wanted to ponder it at great length and depth, while also fighting the urge to forge on to the next wonderfully insightful installment.

Many of the other essays are actually much darker than this one, but the book never borders on depressing or cynical. Daum brings a refreshing degree of honesty to her writing that touches on those unspeakable things (hence the title) that most people would find ways to skirt around. She contemplates her mother’s death, their troubled relationship, and her ambivalence of feeling toward a person so overly concerned with appearances and desperately lacking in motherly warmth. Modeling after her mother, Daum worries how the home health aide, hired to care for her mother through her final days, views this family that faces its matriarch’s death in such a matter-of-fact, unsentimental, and tearless way. Daum forces readers to face truths about aging that are blatantly unpleasant, from the misguided nostalgia we feel for a youth that was never as good as it seems in hindsight, to the irreconcilable loss of a future ripe with possibility once certain decisions force our lives into corners and dead ends we can never hope to navigate out of. She highlights the contradiction between our overly-sappy, sentimental affection for animals, particularly canines, and their patently genuine animal nature, exploring her own fathomless love for these “ticking time bombs that lick our faces,” a species which she would rather have present at her deathbed over any human companion.

One of the more unspeakable topics that Daum touches upon in many of these pieces is motherhood, or rather her lack of interest in entering the realm of motherhood, even after learning that she is pregnant by her husband who desires to raise a child, followed by a miscarriage that is both a welcome relief and a source of great sorrow. These disclosures are heart-wrenching and at times unbelievable. They fall outside the lines of civil conversation, verging on bold truths we would be equal parts scared and shamed to admit even to ourselves. But what makes Daum such a gifted and unique writer, what makes her work so necessary to read, is that these harsh and unpleasant admissions also readily evoke deep empathy from readers.

In a piece reflecting on her experience meeting Joni Mitchell, Daum attributes to Joni the lesson that “if you [don’t] ‘write from a place of excruciating candor you’ve written nothing’.” The Unspeakable itself is a testament to this teaching, an exercise in exploring the ungenerous and unexplored sides of life with poignancy, frankness, and comedy (because what reveals the darkness of things with more honesty than humor?). Daum truly takes Joni’s words to heart, and luckily she is gifted with the rare ability to speak the unspeakable and gain so many devotees in doing so.

Meghan Daum’s pseudo-memoir “Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House” is an account of her life told in zip codes, outrageous home prices, swoon-worthy woodwork, disastrous architectural layouts, and soul-crushing house hunting failures. I worried that I would quickly grow weary of a 245-page book about the trials and tribulations of real estate, despite my love of all things interior design and HGTV which, like Daum, I can wholeheartedly attribute to my mother’s influence. But “Life Would Be Perfect” is far more engrossing than even a final reveal episode of Rehab Addict. Via her constant search for the perfect home, Daum takes readers on a deep and entertaining exploration of her life story and the seemingly-innate desire for homeownership. Our author is a fascinating and intelligent personality in her own rite which makes her book so readable; Daum writes brilliantly, with great wit and an expansive vocabulary, but also frankly, exposing her flaws, pretensions, and ridiculousness to readers with no holds barred.

By meditating on her history of homes, and a very robust history it is as she tried on dorms, apartments, and houses with more fervor than most brides search for the perfect gown, Daum explores the way our abodes cradle not just our daily lives but also our very precious identities. We follow Daum in her exhausting efforts to fulfill her childhood dream of renting a sprawling and elegantly bohemian New York apartment to her more adult (but still childlike) desire for a Laura Ingalls Wilder-style prairie farmhouse, farm included notwithstanding the fact that Daum has really only ever lived in suburbia or New York City.

Over each incarnation of Daum’s elusive, imagined perfect home, she explores what longings were at the heart of her search – the desire to be among the New York literary elite, living in a home filled with the warmth of worn Oriental rugs, the sound of intellectual conversation, and the subtle essence of effortless wealth; a display of rugged individualism and the pull of a vast landscape in her own little house on the prairie; the appearance of self-possession, confidence, and excellent taste conveyed via careful interior design as a prerequisite for introducing one’s home, and thus one’s very self, to a new suitor. This theme of home being mixed up with imagined identities and real hope is perfectly captured in the very title of Daum’s book, playing upon the equal parts ridiculous and rational belief that our homes define us, that our houses can make or break or alter our lives, that the places we live are of profound significance, that our decor has meaning all its own.

Though this is a story of housing dreams and disasters, it also encourages readers to engage with Daum, at once a frustratingly impulsive and entirely relatable narrator. As she signs yet another lease or completes the paperwork to purchase a home in Lincoln, Nebraska the very same day she first saw it, readers will at turns cringe, be consumed with jealousy, wonder at the cost of all those damn movers, cheer her on, and wish to see these homes, both the gorgeous and the ramshackle ones, in the flesh. I reveled in descriptions of her beloved New York City apartment on 100th St between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive, pursed my lips in disgust at her search for a home in the smog- and traffic-laden, over-priced hills of Los Angeles, and envisioned what my own prairie farm home would entail. I wished I could try on homes for size just as much as Daum, then gently reminded myself how much I deplore the reality of moving. But my shuffling thoughts were always followed by a wistfully envious phase, envy of Daum’s freedom both financial and geographical, her bold search for a perfect place to call home.

Balanced by the reality that our homes, like ourselves, are imperfect and impermanent spaces, “Life Would Be Perfect” inspired dreams of my own ideal forever home and sparked reflections upon the places I have lived, been defined by, missed out on, and hope yet to find. Unlike the cookie-cutter perfection of interior design and home-buying shows that leave me bereft, covetous, and unsatisfied with my own slightly grubby, hand-me-down rental, Daum’s indulgent meditation on her housing history made me more fond of my own space and all its reflections of me (not including its grubbiness though). Culling wisdom from years of attending open houses, making more moves than I could keep track of, and renovating to perfection, Meghan Daum considers why home is so important to us, how the physical and aesthetic concerns begin to override the true function of a house, and the true measure of a perfect home.

Have you ever realized how clothing is restocked so much more quickly in stores these days than a decade or two in the past? Or how vintage finds produced prior to the 1980s stand up over time so much better than things purchased only a month ago? Or that finding a trendy outfit is increasingly easier and alarmingly cheaper than its ever been?

Elizabeth L. Cline’s Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion uncovers the highs and lows of fast fashion. The term “fast fashion” was actually new to me upon reading this book but it perfectly describes the current state of the US clothing industry. Comparable to the fast food industry, fast fashion is defined by the ubiquity of stores and a high volume of sales, allowing for low prices but also forcing major sacrifices in quality, social consciousness, and environmental-friendliness of the product. Certainly everyone understands the horrors of sweatshops, and while Cline explores some of the off-shored factories where our favorite US brands produce the latest trends, she goes even deeper into the history and vast repercussions of our changing clothing culture.

Cline did the necessary legwork to help me realize what actually happens to all that merchandise we so generously drop off on Goodwill’s doorstep. Those colored tags on thrift store clothing correspond to the week when the item hit the floor. That way, employees can take items that haven’t sold after a specified length of time (usually four to eight weeks) out of the stores. And then what happens to them? Well I was happy to know that some of our donations are repurposed into other useful cloth items – rags, towels, and such. And some are donated to third world countries, largely to South Africa, wear the Western obsession with fashion trends has taken hold. But a sizable tonnage (literally, tons) of those clothes end up in landfills, having been deemed unwearable or undesirable. While it isn’t ridiculous to believe that someone less fortunate may be happy to take a few hand-me-downs, it is entirely unrealistic to think that there is demand for all the clothes that Americans of each and every class are trying to get rid of.

The reason so many of our clothes end up in donation bins and landfills isn’t just because we have so many clothes nowadays, though it is intimately tied to that fact. Why do we have so many clothes in the new millennium? Because we can afford sizable wardrobes built of $15 tops, $20 jeans, and $30 formal dresses. Unlike our counterparts from 70 years ago, clothing is affordable and ready to wear right out of the store. And why is it so affordable? Because the quality of our modern day garments is so significantly lower than that of clothes made in the past. From the original design to stitch and fabric selection, today’s clothes wear out faster, fit more poorly, do not wash well, and literally unravel in ways that our mothers’ and grandmothers’ clothes never would have. As Cline wisely points out, clothes that cost so little are more disposable in our minds because of their negligible price. We’re more likely to give up on a $20 shirt than a $100 one. But cheap clothing is also more disposable in a literal sense, given that it is so poorly constructed and not built to last. The life cycle of today’s clothes is grossly short, and oftentimes looking for second life at the thrift shop is a lost cause. But imagining our unwanted pieces in someone else’s wardrobe is much more pleasant than imagining them in a landfill.

Cline explains the rise of fast fashion, how affordable stores like Gap and Old Navy quickly gave way to uber-cheap and trendy lines at Forever 21 and H&M. The movement of garment production offshore, the decline of the American fashion industry, the ethical implications of fast fashion, the environmental impact of these changes, blog cultures that espouse trends, and potential solutions to these problems are all covered in Cline’s expose. From the plush carpeting of Bergdorf Goodman to the factory floor of Bangladesh’s garment manufacturers, Cline leaves few players untouched in the fashion game, fast or slow.

Though she ultimately focuses a bit more on alternate answers rather than changing the essential question (how to make more ethical clothing choices? vs. do we really need to buy that many clothes in the first place?), I do appreciate the author’s appeal to rediscover the lost art of sewing (though I can’t say that I’ve always been on friendly terms with my sewing machine – ours is a volatile love-hate relationship closely tied to the complexity of my project) and to visit tailors and to educate ourselves as clothing consumers. Far too few people understand the pros and cons of different fabrics and even less take the time to visit a tailor when the fit of a could-be-beloved item is just a bit off. She ends on an optimistic note, profiling the efforts made by talented sewers in her local Brooklyn neighborhood to transform our wasteful attitudes toward clothing and explaining how the current unsustainable system is bound to force production efforts back to the US. But I still cannot help thinking about the reality of our dilemma – where are all these unwanted clothes piling up? How can we force consumers to associate their purchase at the local mall with the overworked and underpaid factory ladies churning out thousands of identical products each day? And what will it take to make enough people change their ways so as to counter big fashion business? Here’s hoping that suggesting Overdressed to a few more readers will help.

I recently finished re-reading one of my most favorite books, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. Though technically a young adult novel, Zusak’s book tells a brilliant and important story for all ages. Set in Nazi Germany, The Book Thief highlights the struggles of maintaining friendships and a sense of humanity amidst the hatred, cruelty, and violence of Germany in 1939.

Liesel Meminger arrives to 33 Himmel Street to live with her new foster parents shortly after her brother’s death. Before Liesel is even 10 years old, she has already been torn from her mother and lost her younger brother – and life only gets harder from there. Told from the perspective of death, this ambitious novel follows Liesel’s path in her new life, the relationships she forms there, and the solace she finds in words.

Her first book, The Grave Digger’s Handbook, was a stolen from her younger brother’s gravesite. Though it takes her quite some time to complete the book, with the help of her gentle foster father, a poorly educated man himself, Liesel masters the book, and yearns for more. Over the years her episodes of thievery increase, but the compulsion to read proves a more powerful motive than the rush of burglary.

While reading offers Liesel a temporary respite from her reality, she soon learns the true danger of the real world when she befriends a Jew. Max finds his way to Liesel’s foster family’s front door and things are never the same from then on. The relationship that Liesel builds with her secret housemate plays a powerful but fragile role in her life, one that is defined by Max’s need to stay hidden in Liesel’s basement, his frail health, and his understanding of the power of words.

Though this novel is, at times, incredibly heartbreaking, it has moments of completely pure and simple joy. This dichotomy helps demonstrate the true despair and helplessness that shaped the lives of many people in Nazi Germany; The Book Thief illuminates the power of friendship at a time when maintaining certain relationships could be nearly impossible and positively life threatening.

I don’t believe I could ever really do this book much justice. It’s full of beautiful imagery, devastating loss, ambitious storytelling, childhood nostalgia, transcendent relationships, and a whole lot of heart. In my opinion the New York Times said it best when they reviewed this book as one with the potential to be “life-changing.” No matter what your reading style or genre of choice, this is a book that anyone with even a shred of humanity in them can learn from and appreciate.

Vendela Vida’s Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name has been on my to-read list for quite some time now. I’m not sure what took me so long to get to it, or what source recommended the novel in the first place. I think part of the reason it stuck with me was the lure of the title – I’ve always been drawn to the aurora borealis and the novel’s title, taken from a poem by Marry Ailoniedia Somby, conjured enticing images of the majestic natural phenomenon that I couldn’t resist. Once I finally delved in this book, I devoted an entire night to reading it, finishing the novel in the space of a few hours. Vida’s story drew me in with ease and effortlessly compelled me to reach the last page in a single sitting.

The northern lights play a large supporting role in this story primarily located in the Arctic Circle. Upon her father’s death, Clarissa Iverton discovers that the man she always called Dad was not, in fact, her biological father. Though her mother left the family when Clarissa was just fourteen years old, the man she believed was her father, Richard, raised her to adulthood as any true parent would have. When she reveals the truth about Richard to her fiance Pankaj, Clarissa grows even more bewildered to learn that Pankaj was privy to, and withheld, this secret for years. Fueled by a sense of betrayal and confusion, Clarissa journeys to Helsinki where the father listed on her birth certificate lives.

On her frigid northern quest, Clarissa comes to terms with the reality that Richard is dead, that her mother deserted the family, that she never knew her real father. Through cities that hold untold secrets of her mother’s past, the parallels between mother and daughter become increasingly apparent. Though she set out to uncover the identity of her father, during the course of her travels Clarissa learns more about her mother than anyone else. And with this newfound knowledge, a semblance of understanding takes hold. Befriending members of the Sami community, lying beneath the magnificent northern lights, living out days entirely devoid of sunlight, spending a night in the famed Ice Hotel, the rather vague personal intentions with which Clarissa originally sets out take more rigid form as she is welcomed to the Arctic Circle and narrows in on her origins.

Amidst an arresting frozen backdrop, Vida instills a refreshing sense of adventure into the somewhat tired story of uncovering tightly bound family secrets. Though this novel deals with some of the most painful discoveries that a daughter could possibly make, it is appropriately touched with levity and as miraculous and stunning as the northern lights from which it takes its name.

Haley Tanner’s debut novel Vaclav and Lena is a particular brand of boy meets girl story that was a true delight to read. Vaclav and Lena are both Russian immigrant children living in the same Brooklyn neighborhood. They meet when placed in the same elementary school ESL class. On a trip to Coney Island, an outing that marks their first real foray into friendship, the two find themselves unable to board a single ride on account of their short stature.

But a quick trip to the sideshow is within their budget and bars no restrictions on short or young patrons. Vaclav and Lena are transfixed by the magic show and spend the rest of their afternoons perfecting their magic act at Vaclav’s house until his mother sends Lena home after dinner. Vaclav the Magnificent and his assistant the Lovely Lena anxiously await the day they can take their own act to the boardwalk at Coney Island.

Lena’s is a heartbreaking story. She never knew her parents and so lives with her aunt, a woman who works as a stripper and only agreed to take custody of her niece for the monthly check Lena’s presence brings in. Vaclav’s mother Rasia takes pity on the poor girl, doing her best to care for the motherless girl. But when her desire to do right for Lena leads Rasia to take matters into her own hands, Vaclav’s mother’s actions put an untimely end to her son’s relationship with the young girl. Nine year old Vaclav is unable to comprehend why his mother would make such a decision that serves to remove Lena from his life. But after a seven year separation, the two childhood friends find themselves reunited under sensitive circumstances.

Though the true crux of Tanner’s story is Vaclav and Lena’s reunion, it isn’t until the final 70 pages of the book that we are even introduced to their teenaged selves. But this late placement is far from detrimental to the book as it allows readers an opportunity to really get to know both Vaclav and Lena. Tanner narrates with an authentic voice, describing with alarming clarity the unique situation in which these immigrant children find themselves. Though Lena has lived in the United States for as long as she can remember, her exposure to the English language has been rather minimal, wrecking havoc in her school life and loading an overwhelming degree of anxiety upon young Lena’s shoulders. Quiet and subdued, Lena often follows behind Vaclav and remains practically invisible among groups of adults, so frightened is she of speaking incorrectly and embarrassing herself.

Though Vaclav has picked up on the English language more readily than Lena, his is still an outsider among most of his peers. In fact, before Lena’s entrance into his life, Vaclav had no friends to speak of. For both Lena and Vaclav, magic offers a welcome respite from the real world and all the fear, misunderstandings, and confusion it brings. Though this magic act is the source of their tight bond, it is a worrisome hobby in the eyes of Rasia who imagines that Vaclav and Lena’s performance will only end with the two subject to further ridicule and embarrassment.

Tanner’s novel is as unforgettable as Vaclav and Lena are to one another during their teenaged years apart. Unpretentious and honest, Vaclav and Lena was a fairly simple story, both in narrative style and structure but completely affecting nonetheless. Tanner’s no frills writing, paired with a unique imagination, delivers a stand out debut novel that I highly encourage readers of all sorts to try.

completely relished my reading of Alexis M. Smith’s debut novel Glaciers, a delightful book that took barely two hours to finish. It was a perfect treat in fiction form.

Glaciers is all about Alaskan-native Isabel, a twenty-something living in Portland, Oregon who collects relics from the past. But Isabel’s affinity for thrift stores and vintage clothing is not the stuff of a passing trend; it is indicative of her enduring desire to explore the quiet histories of simple people, to forge a useful meaning out of long-forgotten items, to amass a collection of personal treasures. Much as she likes to dwell in the past, both her own and that of an era long before she was born, Isabel’s affection for a coworker at the Portland library is the present she most passionately wants to create. Glaciers is a novel about storytelling and memory, about the importance of what we make of both past and present.

Though Isabel’s story is a simple one, it is beautifully and poignantly told. Smith’s narration is straightforward and unpretentious, her characters effortlessly drawn and achingly real. Glaciers was reminiscent of Vendela Vida’s Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name in that I was completely captivated for those few short hours required to finish reading and also the film Spooner because it was so unassuming and unaffected, a piece of art that never tried to be more than it was.

I’ve heard quite a lot of good buzz about Glaciers and am so glad to have made the time to find out what it’s all about. It’s a thoughtfully crafted novel, but compact and precise enough to finish in just a day. I anticipate many more novels to treasure from Alexis M. Smith in the future and am sure to revisit the delightful Glaciers again soon.

What starts as a slightly sketchy job opening working the night shift in a 24-hour bookstore nestled beside a questionable establishment named Booty’s soon leads readers on an epic adventure, fueled by the limitless potential of computer technology and the hunger for immortality. Attempting to categorize Mr. Penumbr’as 24-Hour Bookstore is quite the task; is it science fiction? Adventure? Mystery? If I knew that the book’s genre classification mirrored any of the above, I may not have been so inclined to read it. And if I knew the general subject matter of thisnovel before I checked it out from the library, I also may not have been so inclined to read it. But the hype kept this title on tons of best-seller and must-read lists, so I cracked it open as soon as I got home from the library. And it was took me on such a delightful and engrossing journey that I finished the book in two short evenings – a pleasantly surprising read in much the same way I found Ready Player One to be.

Author Robin Sloan’s story begins with Clay Jannon, an unemployed San Francisco-based web-designer who chances on a help wanted sign in the window of a 24-hour bookstore. Desperate for work, Clay accepts the position of night clerk from the store’s owner and namesake, Mr. Penumbra. The fact that the bookstore remains open all night long is curious enough, but further oddities of the shop reveal themselves immediately. There are two distinct sections in the bookstore. The first is the short shelves up front containing a limited number of titles typically found in bookstores, which occupy a relatively small portion of the shop. The vast majority of the store, however, is devoted to towering shelves of mysterious and beautifully bound ancient books, tall stacks that require the climbing of ladders if a clerk hopes to procure any of the volumes contained therein. Despite Mr. Penumbra’s strict order to never break the spine of the books belonging to the second category of the store’s inventory, Clay soon discovers that they contain impenetrable code rather than dense prose after one of his visiting friends takes a look inside one such volume.

Stranger still is the store’s clientele. Apart from the sparingly seen legitimate shopper, drifting in with the express purpose of purchasing a book, Mr. Penumbra’s store is frequented by a contingent of quirky characters who utilize the inventory of coded books as though it was a lending library. This rotating cast of readers enters the store at all hours of the night, though Clay will work many shifts without seeing a single soul cross the Mr. Penumbra’s threshold. One of Clay’s odder duties is to carefully document each and every visitor to the store, including their build, manner of dress, and demeanor, in the shop’s age-old ledger books.

When Kat Potente wanders into the store while awaiting her bus, Clay is immediately smitten by the adorable Google-employee who effortlessly cleans up the code he is working on to create a 3D digital model of Mr. Penumbra’s store. As Kat and Clay grow closer still, she reveals a staunch belief in the ability of computer technology to outpace human intelligence, the perfection of an unimaginable future, and the idyllic dream of immortality. The quiet secrets of an antiquated bookstore and the limitless power of the world’s leading internet-search engine soon merge in a way that the young lovers employed by these respective companies could never have presumed.

And so the stage is set for a delightful adventure that could only take place in the 21 century. Uber-internet-savvy Kat unveils a multitude of web tools which allow Clay to uncover the perplexing patterns of Mr. Penumbra’s cultish band of repeat customers borrowing coded books. But this isn’t only a journey set in the virtual world; Clay and Kat, along with Clay’s childhood friend Neel, follow the case on a physical journey to track down others involved in Mr. Penumbra’s scheme, ultimately aiding Clay’s boss in the process. Clay’s resourcefulness proves itself again and again as he relies upon his talented network of nerdy friends and his own intelligence to solve the multitude of puzzles surrounding the cryptic books in stock at Mr. Penumbra’s.

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore may sound like a novel for bibliophiles, but it’s much more bizarre and complex than that. Easily in the running for one of the most uniquely imaginative novels I’ve ever come across, the narrative reads like a Murakami novel (which may explain why I took to it so much). This is a story containing dark-robed decoders in underground reading rooms, weightily important typeface, historical entertainment storage facilities whose self-propelled, wheeled shelves contain more artifacts than any museum could hold, and the high-paced, green-grassed, and blue-skied Google complex. Stretching from the hills of San Francisco to subterranean New York City, Clay’s effort to understand the secretes of Mr. Penumbra’s books dwells upon the vast potential of computer technology but vacillates between its good virtues and evil effects. It is a meditation on old versus new knowledge, evoking in readers’ minds long pro and con lists relating to our newly digitized world. And Kat’s pursuit of immortality, a token of her bottomless optimism and enthusiasm for all technology’s potential, cannot be ignored as it is one of the great questions readers must ask themselves.

At times unpredictable (although the key to the master puzzle does become increasingly obvious to readers as we near the book’s end), constantly exciting, touched with humor, always thought-provoking and endlessly satisfying, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore was simply a brilliant read.

Author Suzanne Rindell crafts an enticing, easy to devour story of deception and sin in her debut novel The Other Typist. This is the kind of book you can (and I certainly did) finish in a single weekend, a pleasurable story full of suspense and scandal. Set in the 1920’s, Rindell’s prose rings with the effortless formality of that era’s speech, never jilting or awkward to read as such writing can sometimes be. Her picture of Prohibition-era Manhattan is replete with flapper dresses, edgy bob-haircuts, dark alleys leading to speakeasies, and all the glamour and depravity expected of that time.

Rose is an immediately endearing character, but her reliability as a narrator and her purity don’t take long to come into question. At first, she seems the picture of simplicity and goodness with her uncomplicated lifestyle, her remarkable plainness, and her ability to recognize and quickly forgive the faults and flaws of others. As it is revealed that Rose grew up in an orphanage, we learn about her exceptional capacity for observation, developed at a young age but in her adulthood, bordering on voyeurism. The purity of Rose’s nature becomes increasingly questionable when a new girl is hired at the office, an alluring but mysterious woman whose favor Rose fools herself into thinking she doesn’t desperately want to win.

Working at a Manhattan police precinct during the early days of Prohibition, Rose is initially one of three typists on staff, but becomes one of four when Odalie is hired to meet the increased demand for stenographers due to rising alcohol-related arrests. Odalie’s arrival is treated as ominous from the moment she steps through the precinct’s doors for her interview. Fashionable and obviously from a moneyed family, Odalie possesses a magnetic presence and a stunning wardrobe. Through the first person narrative, Rose drop hints as to how everything will change once Odalie comes into her working life. At first we are just privy to the daily minutiae of the precinct, gossip about the new girl, minor transgressions when some of the typists exclude the other ladies from a lunch date, and a cast of drunken criminals providing incoherent testimonies for Rose to transcribe. During this time, Rose’s keen observation of her new coworker manifests itself as she keeps notes on Odalie, becoming both overwhelming suspicious and jealous of the new hire. But when Odalie befriends Rose, treating her to lunches at white tablecloth restaurants and eventually inviting her to live in the spare bedroom at Odalie’s spacious apartment, Rose’s initial misgivings about Odalie are immediately forgotten.

Rose delivers her narrative from an unidentified point in the future, struggling to tell the story of past events in chronological order. She makes repeated reference to her doctor, assumedly one from the mental health field as it becomes increasingly obvious that she is unstable, easily influenced, unreliable in the narrative, and maybe even prone to illusions of grandeur and resolute morality. Odalie introduces Rose to the world of speakeasies, fashion, and high society. Though she strenuously argues otherwise, Rose’s will and sense of goodness is not so strong; she quickly succumbs to the temptations placed before her by the new typist, going so far as to forge the testimony of a serial murder who won’t speak in an attempt to see justice done. Odalie’s motives for applying to the precinct were initially questioned on account of how she presented herself; such a stylish woman obviously comes from good breeding and shouldn’t need to work to survive. Rose accepts Odalie’s haphazard excuses for these sorts of incongruities, accepting that the truth of Odalie’s past will never be nailed down. But to both readers and Rose alike, the later revelation that Odalie is involved in the speakeasy community, importing illegal alcohol, comes as no surprise.

In fact, the majority of the book hovers upon similar suspicions that are usually confirmed. This predictability, however, isn’t boring because the personalities and stories are so fascinating to discover in their unveiling. While there is an overriding ominous feeling that something large, terrible, and irreversible are about to occur, the beauty of the book lies in seeing just how such events play out, in determining the full extent of Odalie’s sinful nature and Rose’s blind loyalty and naivete.

Rose’s story is ultimately about betrayal, temptation, loyalty, and the ways in which morality can go against the grain of social codes. So completely obsessed with Odalie, Rose ties herself tighter and tighter into bundles of trouble that she has no hope of removing herself from, sometimes consciously and other times at the hands of Odalie without a hint of suspicion from Rose. The play of deception is a constant undercurrent of the story, the source of the twists and turns that make it so interesting despite the often easily foreseeable turns of events. The course of Rindell’s novel also speaks to the glitz and glamour that makes it easy to forgive, if not deny against all evidence, the sins of others, and how we are so easily enraptured by such superficial and socially valued things as wealth, expensive wardrobes, and glittering diamonds.

Although The Other Typist doesn’t offer anything groundbreaking in the world of suspenseful, thriller novels, it’s a highly satisfying addition to the genre that will quickly envelop you in Rindell’s fictional world, never sure whether to champion, abandon, denounce, pity, or even trust the unsteady Rose.

While the setting is not one to which I would typically be drawn – a Depression-era North Carolina lumber camp – Ron Rash’s characters, boldly drawn and irresistibly ruthless, are what make Serena truly worth reading. It begins when the title character, Serena, arrives in Waynesville, North Carolina with her new husband George Pemberton. As the head of a timber empire in the region, Pemberton is, unlike his wife, already well known around town. Rachel Harmon, a Pemberton employee pregnant with the newly married man’s son, is waiting at the train station for Pemberton with her father. After Mr. Harmon’s fatal confrontation with his daughter’s employer, readers and Pemberton’s coworkers who are present gain their first glimpse of Serena’s nature, fiercely loyal and fearlessly unforgiving.

Serena tells the story of an anachronistically strong willed woman, a female who fully participates in the operations of her husband’s lumber company with the foresight of a champion chess player and the rightfully-earned respect of everyone on her payroll. Alongside her husband, Serena will go to unimaginable lengths to secure the lumber company’s stronghold in North Carolina, fighting preservationists intent on buying their land for a national park, effectively eliminating threats posed by even the most peripheral of employees, and paying off whomsoever they can to ensure the unfettered spread of the Pemberton reign. Initially the title-character seems admirable, an unlikely female hero in a time when women weren’t wont to wear pants much less to run timber operations. But as her efforts to protect the Pemberton company expand, what once seemed to be remarkable confidence and business acumen in Serena prove far more dark, mad, and dangerous.

The title character is easily one of the most willful and fully realized female protagonists in modern fiction, which is why I can’t think of a more perfect title for this novel than her very name. Rash’s portrait of Serena evokes an unforgettable image and her character is equally hard to overlook. Colorado-born, the new Mrs. Pemberton is not one to tailor her behavior in the ways expected of high society East Coast women in her time. She rides her white Arabian through the work sites on a daily basis, monitoring the lumber company’s business as much as her husband does, if not more so. More often than not, a novel which goes by the name of its female lead is a love story, some sort of romance novel, even if not a necessarily trashy one. And while Serena certainly does not belong in that category of fiction, the title is completely appropriate for Nash’s tale of unfettered power, deception, crime, murder, and even a little love because it is Serena who single-handedly carries this book.

That is not to say, however, that Rash’s other characters are any less intriguing. Serena’s husband George is a man who married his beautiful, powerful wife only a few months after being introduced to her. Though Pemberton instills requisite amounts of both respect and fear among his employees, readers quickly recognize his weaknesses, prime among them his son born out of wedlock to Rachel Harmon. The Harmon girl seems at first to be a minor figure in the Pemberton landscape, an annoyance in the back of Pemberton’s mind and a smudge on his otherwise flawless record. But to imagine that Rachel Harmon, a central character in the opening scene of Serena, plays anything less than a pivotal role in this novel by its conclusion would be entirely erroneous.

An aging Pemberton employee, Galloway, is one of the more delightfully devious figures in this story. After Serena saves his life, Galloway pledges to cater to Mrs. Pemberton’s every wish without reserve. He becomes an accomplice to Serena’s many crimes, all committed in an effort to preserve her unquestionable power in the lumber camps. Serena values loyalty above all else, a virtue which Galloway seems to hold in endless reserves, even more so than Serena’s husband.

The gallery of timber company laborers whose dialogue readers occasionally find themselves privy to offers some semblance of morality in the Pemberton world, as well as a bit of comic relief. Workers are offed without reserve, some deaths and disappearances more accidental than others. The various employees to whose conversation readers are occasionally party not only serve narrative purposes, they also set the moral compass for readers, reflect on and digest the Pemberton’s decisions, and add levity to balance the darkness of Rash’s story. Life under the Pemberton empire is dangerous, and fatalities only abound as the owners’ greed steadily outpaces their concern over worker safety. Without the a variety of workers to offer some perspective, Serena would otherwise be a very heavy novel indeed.

The true nature of these smartly devised characters slowly unravels in this great vacation read. A thrilling page turner with substance and intrigue to boot, Serena isn’t packed with constant action, but rather gets by on the strength of its various protagonists. This isn’t your typical serialized crime novel, nor was a frustratingly formulaic and predictable book. Much as I relished reading this one, I’m equally curious to see how it translates to film as Jennifer Lawrence (absolutely perfect casting!) and Bradley Cooper are slated to reunite in order to portray Mrs. and Mr. Pemberton together in the movie version this fall.

Bella Pollen’s The Summer of the Bear was an absolutely incredible novel. I read all 430 pages in a matter of three days, so enraptured was I with the story Pollen beautifully wove out of the tragic suicide of Nicky Fleming, an English diplomat stationed with his wife Letitia and three children, Georgie, Alba, and Jamie, in Berlin.

Nicky’s sudden death sends Letty and her children to the Hebrides, the sparsely populated Scottish islands where Letty grew up. Though she imagines a return to her childhood home and favored relaxation spot will help heal the wounds of widowhood, Letty realizes that her decision was rather brash and potentially at odds with the wishes of her grieving children. Nonetheless, Letty wallows in grief at her seaside home, damaging her relationship with her children in the process. But thorough investigations from the British Embassy into Nicky’s death force Letty to question the circumstances of and motives behind her husband’s suicide. As Letty grows more suspicious of the man she thought she knew so well, she further distances herself from the children who hold the greatest potential as sources of both happiness and truth about Nicky.

For teenaged Georgie, the Fleming’s stint in the Hebrides is simply transitory as she hopes to attend college in London and enter the world of dating and intimacy. A classic middle child, difficult and stubborn Alba incessantly picks upon both of her siblings. No one is spared her harsh criticism and biting sarcasm, until Georgie crafts a deal with Alba that she cannot refuse, one that protects Jamie from Alba’s meanness for an entire month. And young Jamie stumbles through the world of fatherlessness, lost in his imagination and inability to process the death of Nicky. So confused is Jamie by the euphemisms employed by family and friends to protect the youngest Fleming child from the reality of his father’s death that he begins to question whether his father truly is dead, if he can return from heaven, and what elaborate mission has kept Nicky from his family for so long. But all of the children demonstrate a great fondness for their late father, from the imaginative stories he told his children to the fascinating way he had of making them each feel like his special favorite, Nicky was a very attentive and present father despite his high-powered political post.

The entire story is situated against the tense backdrop of the Cold War, the bleak environment of Scotland’s northernmost islands, and the mystery of a grizzly bear who has supposedly inhabited the island. Though there have been numerous sightings by island natives prior to the Fleming’s arrival, it is Jamie who continues to hold out hope that the grizzly is still prowling the land long after the rest of the Hebrideans reason that the bear must have perished. And the cast of island characters are themselves a wellspring of great intrigue, each one presented with their own unique story and all of them devout believers of island legends that frame the Flemings’ story.

Jamie’s imaginative and colorful theories about the fate of both his father and the bear are juxtaposed with the unapologetically realistic portrayal of an insensitive Cold War era investigation into the lives of a grieving family. The Summer of the Bear seamlessly transitions through the various Fleming family members’ anguish; from Jamie’s immersion into a fantasy world built upon reticence and denial to Georgie’s desire to break free from the bonds of her sorrowful family, from Alba’s hardened facade which requires constant reminders to be maintained to Letty’s anger as the facts reveal Nicky to have been an incomprehensibly different man from the one she knew. Pollen demonstrates an enviable talent for storytelling and construction, for balancing the stuff of childlike imagination and more mature and weighty content.

What’s even more, Pollen’s novel isn’t heavy or daunting. Though the story itself is far from lighthearted, the narrative is engaging and as easy to navigate as a bestselling beach read. Pollen has a way with words, crafting the most tantalizingly apt descriptions in her own mellifluous but intricate style. The world of the Hebrides and the Fleming family tragedy is one that Pollen quickly reels readers into almost without their knowledge. I found myself completely hooked by the time I reached page 10 and surprised to see that I had made it nearly a quarter of the way through in a single sitting.

The Summer of the Bear is not to be missed and I imagine that Pollen will continue to be source of great fiction in the future. This novel reminded me a lot of the Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna and I can easily see Pollen finding her place amongst writers of Kingsolver’s distinction. I only wish that I could get my hands on one of Pollen’s four prior novels, especially Hunting Unicorns which was a bestseller, so as to spoil myself with another spectacular read by one of my new favorites Ms. Bella Pollen.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig is an iconic story chronicling a father-son American West motorcycle journey, peppered with philosophical musings and observations on American culture. This was a (530 page) book which I truly could not put down. Though Pirsig touches on everything from small-town USA to the definition of quality, from the structure of a cycle to the teachings of Plato, his book retains a coherence that draws you in and keeps you absorbed the whole way through. It’s pretty obvious why this book, based on events from Pirsig’s own life, has gotten so much hype.