2019 TBR Pile Challenge Wrap-Up

It is the end of the year, and time to look back at my reading challenge for this year. My original post is here, but I'll copy and paste the list here if you don't want to click through.

Here is my list, with links to reviews and the dates I finished reading the books.

1. Nefarious Twit by Tony McMillen (failed in 4/19)
2. Shattering Glass by Gail Giles (finished 1/18/19)
3. Version Control by Dexter Palmer (finished 8/11/19)
4. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (finished 3/17/19)
5. We Are All Shipwrecks by Kelly Grey Carlisle (finished 5/18/19)
6. Caroline: Little House Revisited by Sarah Miller (finished 2/19/19)
7. Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward (finished 2/3/19)
8. Red Sister by Mark Lawrence
9. Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser (finished 3/10/19)
10. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman (finished 5/28/19)
11. Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment by Robert Wright (admitted defeat 2/17/19)
12. Paradox Bound by Peter Clines (finished 4/28/19)

My two alternates:

1. The Wolves of Winter by Tyrell Johnson (finished 8/24/19)
2. My One and Only by Kristan Higgins (finished 7/4/19)

It was quite successful in that I finished 12 books, but technically unsuccessful in that one of them was actually published a couple of days too late to qualify (they were supposed to be published before 2018, but The Wolves of Winter was published on January 2, 2018. Whoops.)

There were two that I just couldn't get through, but luckily that's why there are alternates. All the others I not only finished, but liked, which is a great success. It's hard to pick favorites, but there were two that I gave 5 stars to: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine and Caroline: Little House Revisited. And now I'm going back changing my rating for Version Control from 4 to 5 stars, because I don't think I've stopped thinking or talking about it since I finished it back in August. It was a very strong list, other than the ones I couldn't finish. I really liked and would recommend every other book I read.

The person who runs the challenge won't be doing it in 2020 as he's focusing on other projects. There have been other years when he didn't do this challenge and I just did it on my own, and I considered that for 2020. But I don't actually have a ton of books languishing on my To Read list that I'm still super interested in. So I probably will be prioritizing some of those but I won't do a formal challenge.

I hope you've all had a great reading year!

Red Sister

Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor #1) by Mark Lawrence (2017)

Eight-year-old Nona is set to hang for murder, but at the last minute she is saved by Abbess Glass, who takes her away to the Convent of Sweet Mercy. Here she is to train in fighting, poisons, and the faith of the Ancestor. However, the family of the man she tried (unsuccessfully) to kill have not forgotten her and will do anything to stop her.

In this world there are special bloodlines, and Nona is hunska, which means that she is extremely fast. Gerants are giants, including the man she tried to kill. Quantals and marjals are able to tap into various types of magic. At Sweet Mercy, Nona learns of a prophecy about a Chosen One with multiple of these bloodlines, and a Shield who is destined to protect the Chosen One.

This all takes place in what appears to be an extended ice age, only a small part of the world habitable. Past civilizations have been lost, but people have manipulated the sun (and/or moon? the details are fuzzy to me now) so it focuses and keeps the Corridor open and habitable. But the sun is dying so they know they don't have a ton of time left. It's a desperate time, many people are starving, and Nona is grateful for the luxuries she finds at Sweet Mercy: a soft bed, hot water, plenty of food at every meal.

At some point, each girl will decide on her focus: Red Sisters are fighters; Grey specialize in espionage, stealth, and poisons; Holy Sisters focus on the faith; and Mystic Witches are those gifted in magic. Each year of training focuses on one of these areas, and during this book Nona is in the Red Class where they learn fighting. There are three books in the series, but I don't know if it's complete.

I found the setting and story pretty fascinating. I'm always drawn to books set in cold climates, and I like stories about someone being taken from their crappy life and set off to train in a special school. It suddenly sounds a lot like Harry Potter, now that I describe it that way! I admired all the young women in this story for their strength, bravery, and loyalty to each other. It wasn't the easiest book to get through, taking me close to two weeks. I don't know if that's just because of how my life was in those two weeks, or if it's actually because of the book. It's fairly dense and doesn't move super fast, but I have no real criticisms about it. The world-building and plot were compelling, and there were passages I re-read because of the beauty and cleverness of the writing. Part of me does want to continue this series so I can find out what happens and learn more about this world, but right now I just need to read some shorter, easier books for a bit.

Red Sister was the final book for my 2019 TBR Pile Challenge.

The Wolves of Winter

The Wolves of Winter by Tyrell Johnson (2018)

After nuclear war and a widespread deadly flu, Lynn lives in the Yukon with what's left of her family. She's in her early 20s, great with a bow and arrow, and pretty fearless. She misses her dad a lot and is kind of tired of being cold all the time and eating nothing but potatoes, carrots, and whatever they manage to kill. Now, after years of seeing no other humans but those in their makeshift settlement, a stranger appears and changes everything.

Jax arrives with little explanation, obviously hiding something, yet he seems trustworthy. It's not surprising though that where there's one newcomer, others will follow. Soon Lynn and her family feel like they are in serious danger from a world they thought they had escaped.

I was concerned about reading this immediately after another post-apocalyptic novel, The Lightest Object in the Universe, but it's very different story. I'm happy to say that they're both ultimately hopeful though. But The Wolves of Winter took place in an isolated area, so there's no rebuilding of society - in fact, there was an avoidance of society. Lynn's family moved from Chicago to Eagle, Alaska to the Yukon Territory to get away from everything when the world started going wrong. The nuclear wars were devastating enough, but it was the flu that really drive them out into the wilderness. They had no connection with any civilization and they were happy that way. Well, Lynn always knew she would end up leaving - she wanted to go find out where there were people and what was happening in the world. However, it turns out that there's a lot she doesn't know about the reasons her family left the city in the first place.

This was on my list for the 2019 TBR Pile Challenge. Now I realize it shouldn't have qualified because it was published in 2018, but it had been on my TBR list for more than a year because I added it pre-publication. Well, in my own head it counts. As a post-apocalyptic novel and one that takes place in a cold climate, it hits a couple of marks for me and I'd be very interested in a sequel.

Version Control

Version Control by Dexter Palmer (2016)

After a tragedy claimed their son, Rebecca and Philip got their lives back together. Rebecca has stopped drinking and has a job a Lovability, the dating site through which she and Philip met. But everything seems off to her, just a little bit wrong. Philip doesn't seem to share the feeling, buried deep in his work. He's a physicist working on something called a causality violation device - essentially, a time machine.

This is kind of a hard one to talk about without spoiling it, but I'll spoil one thing that should be obvious anyhow, which is that the device works and there is time travel. But Palmer has taken some of our usual assumptions about how that would work and what the rules are and changed them in a way that still makes sense but is different from anything I've read or seen about time travel before.

It's the kind of book that leaves me with questions, so many questions. After I finished I went to bed but kept thinking about it and was thinking about it when I got up. I immediately went back to the book and re-read a number of passages to make sense of everything. It does make sense, it's just that of course I didn't remember everything by the time I finished.

The story is about more than just Rebecca and Philip, though I liked their story a lot, especially how they first met through the dating site and Rebecca was put off by Philip's dry, logical messages to her. We also get to meet some of Philip's coworkers at the lab, Alicia and Carson. Rebecca's good friend Kate dates Carson for a time. Rebecca's father is a minister and enjoys having philosophical conversations with Philip - there's a good amount of philosophy in this book actually, which is not surprising given that the work of the scientists is so largely theoretical. Physics and philosophy seem fairly intertwined from the little I know about each of them.

It's set in the near future, and there are some things that are different from our own reality. The president, for instance, is always just barging in on people's tvs or phones or computers to talk to them individually. Super creepy. The country is on the verge of a Civil War as the Dakotas are trying to secede from the Union. There are cars that drive themselves, and the $20-bill has Ronald Reagan on it. It was kind of fun to see all the ways that things are different in their world.

I read this for my 2019 TBR Pile Challenge and what made me put it off for so long, I think, is that it's 500 pages long. But surprisingly, it goes fast. Unlike a lot of science fiction, this one is pretty character-driven which is something that makes any book easier for me to read. Also, once I got into it, I just couldn't put it down. I spent most of a beautiful summer weekend immersed in this book (some of that outside on my back porch, at least.) I'm glad I know a couple of people who have also read it because it's definitely the kind of book you want to talk about when you finish it!

My One and Only

My One and Only by Kristan Higgins (2011)

Harper James is a divorce attorney who is skeptical about love. She's never gotten over her youthful failed marriage to Nick Lowery, and now she spends her days urging people to get their "hearts to accept what their heads already know." Suddenly her younger stepsister Willa is getting married to a guy she just met and Harper has to leave her home in Martha's Vineyard to attend the wedding in Montana. And it turns out that Willa's groom-to-be  is none other than Chris Lowery, Nick's brother.

Harper, along with her dog Coco and her boyfriend Dennis, heads to the wedding, dreading running into her ex-husband. Especially now that Dennis has so recently turned down her marriage proposal. She's also very upset that Willa is getting married for a third impulsive time. By the end of the weekend, Harper and Dennis have broken up and Harper finds herself unwillingly on a road trip with Nick who is just as attractive as he ever was.

I'm already a fan of Kristan Higgins, having read my way through the Blue Heron series and the more recent (non-romance) Good Luck With That. This is an older stand-alone romance that I picked up at a used book store ages ago, and I kept putting it off because I was afraid it wouldn't hold up to Blue Heron. (I had cause for concern as I tried reading Just One of the Guys from 2008 and couldn't get through it.) I needn't have worried. This novel was not only as good as my other favorites of hers, it may have been even better.

This story is complex. We have Harper's history with Nick, their passionate young relationship and disastrously short marriage, which has left them both a mess emotionally. Harper's problems go even deeper, back to her mother walking out on the family on Harper's 13th birthday. This story is a big part of the novel too, coinciding with marital troubles between Harper's dad and his wife BeverLee. Not to mention Harper's current relationship with Dennis, a sweet firefighter who she wants to marry only because it seems practical somehow, having long ago lost any romantic notions about true love. Dennis sports a rattail and calls her "dude," but she is grudgingly willing to overlook these details. He's really not a bad guy at all, and honestly deserves somebody who loves him more than Harper does.

I like how unusual the premise of this story is: it's a romance between people who used to be married, and when the story begins one of them is still in another relationship. Their (half- and step-) siblings are marrying each other, and Harper disapproves. When they meet at the wedding, she and Nick immediately start bickering with each other, volleying insults that were, frankly, kind of hilarious. Plus she lives in Massachusetts and he lives in New York so they have that whole Red Sox vs. Yankees thing going on. But also there's all this interesting family stuff, like with Harper's mother - who she ends up seeing for the first time in decades during this story - and her stepmother. BeverLee is from the south and she's very bubbly and chipper and uses a ton of hairspray and is super excited that her daughter is getting married, even though she barely knows the guy. But she's also loving and loyal and, as Harper eventually realizes, more of a mother to her than her biological mother ever was.

I just loved all of this - the emotional depth, the difficulty of these relationships, the acknowledgement of how hard you need to work to make relationships last. Nick and Harper have a whole painful history they need to grapple with, and even that is not enough because if they're going to start up again they have to figure out how to make it different this time. When they were married, Nick worked all the time, leaving Harper feeling alone and neglected. She, in turn, made a life for herself that was very separate, not even telling her new friends that she was married. They need to make sure they won't fall into the same patterns.

Other elements that added to the story were the beautiful descriptions of Montana and Harper's comparisons between its natural beauty and that of Martha's Vineyard, and Higgins's trademark humor. I could have used a few less instances of the word "boobage" (zero would be perfect), but her funny zings and quips more than make up for it. This is probably one of the better romances I've read, and I highly recommend it.

As I said, I've had this paperback sitting around for a while, so I put it on my 2019 TBR Pile Challenge. Amazingly, I only have 3 more books to read for the challenge this year.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman (2017)

Eleanor lives with an unwavering order and routine. She goes to the same job she's had her whole adult life, and where she maintains a professional distance from her coworkers. She goes home and eats the same dinner every night. She does the crossword puzzle, reads a book, listens to the radio. On the weekend she drinks vodka and stays in a haze until it's time to return to work. On Wednesday evenings her mother calls her from prison and they talk for 15 minutes.

But then two things happen that begin to break Eleanor out of her routine: one, she develops a mad crush on a musician and becomes convinced that he is her destiny; and two, Raymond from the IT department befriends her and they end up in the right place at the right time and help out an elderly man who has collapsed in the street. Now Eleanor has a social circle including Raymond, the older man, Sammy, and his family. Meanwhile, she has begun a project of self-improvement meant to help her secure the musician with whom she is obsessed. These changes disrupt the order she has been accustomed to, and dredge up feelings and memories from the past that she has forced to stay buried for far too long.

Eleanor is socially awkward, not at all self-aware, and judgmental. Early on, she described her office manager Loretta: "She has overinflated ideas of her own administrative abilities, and in her spare time makes hideous jewelry, which she then sells to idiots." She often makes such proclamations, sure of her opinions and using a formal, lofty language that she apparently got from her mother, who also has firm ideas about how things should be done and lives should be lived.

But her honesty and pragmatism are endearing. She is nothing if not sensible, her carefully-maintained routines assuring fiscal responsibility and a generally low risk life. Although she keeps a careful distance from people and is often bewildered by them, she has more of an understanding with animals. "If I'm ever unsure as to the correct course of action, I'll think 'What would a ferret do?' or, 'How would a salamander respond to this situation?' Invariably, I find the right answer."

It's not hard to see why her colleagues kept their distance, but not so with the new IT guy, Raymond. From the first time she called upon him for help, he reached out in friendship, apparently unbothered by her polite but cold demeanor. He kept reaching out to her and despite her initial distasteful view of him, she warmed up to him a little. They were together one day when they saw an older man collapse in the street, which set off a chain of events that resulted in more human contact that Eleanor was used to. They visit Sammy in the hospital, where they meet his grateful family who befriend both of them and begin inviting them, together, to family occasions. This leads to Eleanor meeting Raymonds mother, a stark contrast to her own. "She was, quite simply, a nice lady who'd raised a family and now lived quietly with her cats and grew vegetables. This was both nothing and everything."

Her hard shell begins to crack, her meticulously crafted life melting in the warmth of human companionship. This only works to dredge up the dark secrets she has kept buried for so many years, and reveals the full extent of the toxic relationship with her "Mummy." She has put off dealing with the truth of her life for so very long, but now she is able to handle it with the help of the friends she has finally allowed into her life.

Both heartbreaking and humorous, this is a novel about the ultimate unlikable, quirky character. I knew I'd like this book from the time I first heard about it but somehow just didn't get around to reading it. I finally got to it for my 2019 TBR Pile Challenge. It reminds me a lot of books like The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, Where'd You Go, Bernadette, and Sourdough: books about socially isolated people going through transformations, told with a certain quirky humor that I like. I don't know what you call this genre, but I want more of it.

We Are All Shipwrecks

We Are All Shipwrecks by Kelly Grey Carlisle (2017)

When Kelly was three weeks old, her mother was murdered. She grew up with her grandfather and his much younger wife, sometimes staying with her grandmother and her friend Dee. Her grandfather owned a porn shop and as he got older and less able to work, his wife Marilyn assumed most of the responsibilities of running the business. At one point he bought a boat and because of the costs of fixing it up, they ended up giving up their house and living on the boat full-time. In her memoir, Kelly Grey Carlisle documents her unusual childhood and adolescence, while trying to unravel the mystery of her mother's life and death.

Her grandfather, Richard Grey, was British and insisted he was titled, calling himself Sir Richard Grey. He claimed a lot of things about his life, some of which were true. Although he took good care of Kelly, he was an angry man, what some called verbally abusive. The little he told Kelly about her mother was not necessarily true. She had mixed feelings about her grandfather and so did I by the time I finished reading.

Marilyn put up with a lot, and I was struck by her devotion to taking care of Kelly. She married Kelly's grandfather because he was stable and she very much wanted a baby. Since she didn't have children of her own, when Kelly's mother was killed, Marilyn was the person who most wanted to take care of her. She wasn't happy with some aspects of her life and I really think she would have left had it not been for Kelly.

The idea of living on a boat in the marine seems very foreign to me, but apparently it's not that unusual. For one thing, they had lots of neighbors who also lived on their boats and they made up a pretty tight-knit community. While reading this book I happened across a new book called The Tiny Mess, which documents people who cook in tiny kitchens. Their living quarters vary from tiny houses to vans to converted water towers, but I was struck by how many people live (and cook!) on boats. They're primarily in Southern California, which is also where Kelly grew up. It's a whole world that I didn't know existed.

Mostly this book was slice-of-life in that there weren't major events or catastrophes she was documenting, but just what it was like to grow up the way she did. Always in the background though were the questions about her mother and the years leading up to her murder. Kelly got conflicting stories from family about why her mother was living on her own so young, and what her relationship with her family was like. As an adult Kelly got in touch with the investigators assigned to the case and finally learned some answers to her questions. Ultimately it was a satisfying story that explores themes about family, both blood-related and not.

We Are All Shipwrecks first caught my eye because of the title - I do love a good title - but it has languished on my To Read list for quite a while. It was the 2019 TBR Pile Challenge that finally got me to pick it up. If you're interested in delving into a quirky life filled with complex people and relationships, you may also enjoy this story.

Paradox Bound

Paradox Bound by Peter Clines (2017)

In the town of Sanders, Maine an eight-year-old boy named Eli has an encounter with a mysterious woman wearing a tricorn hat and driving an old Ford Model A. He sees her again when he's 13. But when he next meets her as an adult, it's followed later by a visit from a faceless man. He asks Eli about the woman, forcing him to give answers about where she was headed, so Eli decides to head to Boston to warn her. He soon learns that the woman, Harry, is a searcher traveling throughout history looking for a literal incarnation of the American dream and that the dangerous faceless men are after her. Eli ends up hopping aboard the Model A with Harry and joining the dangerous search.

Honestly, it's so hard to describe this book because it sounds kind of ridiculous, but believe me when I say it's worth reading. I've been a fan of Peter Clines since I read 14 and he hasn't disappointed me yet. I don't actually want to go into too much detail because half the fun is figuring out what the hell it's all about as you go along. And I wasn't super clear on a lot of it, to be honest. I didn't understand what form the dream took - was it an actual object? And Harry was very particular in saying that she traveled through history, not through time, and correct Eli if he referenced time travel. I'm not sure of the difference. But none of this really matters, and it didn't make the story confusing for me.

Sanders was sort of a sleepy little town that hadn't completely caught up with the modern day, and Eli had lived there all his life so far. I think he was 29 when he leaves to travel with Harry. He always wanted to get out of his town but never quite got motivated. His childhood bully, Zeke, grew up to be a cop which can't have made things easier. He also had a relationship go South recently, so his life situation was pretty perfect for a grand adventure. As much as Eli was sort of obsessed with Harry, it wasn't a romantic thing, for which I am grateful. But they were a great duo as they traveled through history searching for the dream, encountering some famous actual people from history, and evading the creepy faceless men.

This is a page-turning adventure that moves quickly, but not so quickly that there's not good character development. It's very well thought out and well-crafted, which is exactly what I've come to expect from Peter Clines. The fact that a town in Maine features so prominently led me to look him up and discover that he is, in fact, originally from Maine. Turns out he has worked as a props master on Veronica Mars, which I am currently rewatching and somewhat obsessed with. Worlds collide.

Paradox Bound is on my 2019 TBR Pile Challenge, which I am almost ashamed to admit since he's an author I always read now so I don't know why it took me so long to get to this one. It was fun and entertaining and unexpected and strange. I've never read a story quite like it. I think I've said that about his other books too. As always, I'm very much looking forward to seeing what he writes next.

Pachinko

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (2017)

Spanning most of the 20th century, Pachinko is the story of a Korean family in Japan. It begins with Sunja, a teenaged girl in Korea who attracts the attention of an older man. When she becomes pregnant, he says he's already married but offers to keep her as a mistress. She refuses, Her situation feels hopeless, but a kind man offers to marry her and they go to Japan together. There the family stays, never quite fitting in but not feeling like they can return to Korea either.

Starting a new life in a new country is hard. Sunja and her new husband stay with his brother and his wife, but they are all poor. Gradually they became settled and the family did better. Sunja couldn't read, which was not unusual for women at that time, but it made things even more difficult for her. She and her sister-in-law bought a cart to sell kimchee on the street, slowly building up their small business. Her sons were more educated and successful than she was - one went to college and the other went into the pachinko business.

The family's status as foreigners was one of the main themes of the novel. Sunja's children and grandchildren were born and raised in Japan, yet were never quite accepted. This shaped their lives in very significant ways. Being Korean cut off certain opportunities for work and relationships. One character passed as Japanese, but it meant cutting off from family and keeping this huge secret. Sunja often said that it's a woman's lot to suffer, but everyone suffers in this story. 

There's a lot more to it than I've gone into - more characters, more death, yakuza, the return of the man who got Sunja pregnant. It's a lot! It was sad, but not depressing. Although there was tragedy and hardship, the family kept going and over the years they really did make their lives better and easier in a lot of ways. This was just the sort of immersive experience I love in a historical novel. It sucked me in from the start and I spent many happy hours reading about all these lives and experiences that all felt so real to me. 

This is on my 2019 TBR Pile Challenge, and it's my fifth completed book out of twelve.

Prairie Fires

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser (2017)

This biography covers the lives of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, within the larger context of American history. I've read the Little House series numerous times, Pioneer Girl, and some articles here and there, but this is the first time I've gotten such a full story. The Little House books are a fictionalized version of Wilder's early life and Pioneer Girl sets the story straight, but it still doesn't go past the early years of her marriage. Prairie Fires gives us a picture of her whole life, extending also through the end of Rose Wilder Lane's life, touching on Wilder's legacy.

At over 500 pages, this book covers a lot of ground. I'm admittedly not as educated about American history as I wish, and this filled in some gaps for me while providing the backdrop for stories I've been reading over and over again since I was a child, while giving me new perspectives on parts of history I did know about. For instance, I didn't know there was a depression in the late 1800s, nor did I realize how many farmers opposed the New Deal. I knew almost nothing about the Dust Bowl except that there were a lot of dust storms, so it was fascinating to find out that it was caused by farming.

Of course Fraser covers all the parts of the Ingalls's lives that were left out of the Little House books, but then later on when Laura is writing the books about her early life with Rose's editing help, there are some interesting conversations about what constitutes truth versus fiction. Laura and Rose had a number of disagreements about what to leave in, what to take out, and what to change to make the stories more palatable for children and to maintain the narrative of independence and self-reliance. Laura was concerned about not telling the truth. Lane says: "Facts are infinite in number. The truth is a meaning underlying them; you tell the truth by selecting the facts which illustrate it."

I really liked how she put it and agree with it, but that doesn't change the fact that Rose Wilder Lane, despite being a journalist, was prone to lying and embellishing the truth throughout her entire career and was totally oblivious to journalism ethics. She was also a libertarian who admired Ayn Rand and Hitler. Her life was always sort of a mess and she supported her parents financially while also constantly borrowing from them until their finances were so entangled it became unclear who was supporting who. She also borrowed heavily from Laura's stories in writing her own fiction. She was hot-headed and opinionated and would cut people out of her life without a second thought. She was also depressed and mentioned suicide many times.

Rose was invested in Laura's work telling the story of the family in such a way that it emphasized self-reliance, and Laura was pretty on board with this. They left out or glossed over any situation in which the Ingalls family accepted assistance from others or, as happened in one case, left town in a hurry because they couldn't pay their debts. The truth is that the family was very poor. The books hint at this with their simple life, but present that as a choice. In fact, Charles Ingalls never could make a living at farming, and Laura and Almanzo also struggled their whole lives. Relief only really came when Laura's novels became so popular. Which is not to say that their lives weren't happy or satisfying in many ways, but they weren't as easy as they'd like us to think.

My one criticism was the way that Fraser presented the relationship between Laura and Rose because she kept saying that it was extremely strained or that it completely broke down, but didn't show that. What she showed was that they constantly wrote to each other when they weren't living near each other, and she didn't really present any specific conversations or letters that illustrated the breakdown of their relationship that she kept alluding to. I was a bit confused about this point. I know there were things Laura was unhappy about, like when Rose populated a book with thinly-veiled versions of their neighbors in Mansfield, much to their displeasure, but it wasn't clear to me that Laura ever confronted her about it.

Prairie Fires was definitely what I was looking for in rounding out the story of Laura Ingalls Wilder's life for me. It wasn't perfect and I was much less interested in Rose than in Laura, but it felt comprehensive. I spent a week or so reading it because it was so detailed and didn't move along that quickly, but that's not really a criticism. It has kind of made me want to learn more about Westward Expansion, especially about the treatment of Native Americans. More than anything it just made me want to read the Little House books again. Yes, even knowing how much of those books are untrue and how much they try to promote a philosophy I'm not especially on board with (including the desire for the Indians to just "go away") I will always love them for the simple stories about traveling across the country in a covered wagon and a way of life that is gone forever.

This book is part of my 2019 TBR Pile Challenge, which I'm doing well with so far. The rest of it is fiction (except one memoir) so I think I've gotten the most difficult ones out of the way - this book and the one I read half of before abandoning. I'm looking forward to the rest of the books on my list!

Caroline: Little House, Revisited

Caroline: Little House, Revisited by Sarah Miller (2017)

As you may know, I'm fairly obsessed with Laura Ingalls Wilder. I've read the Little House books over and over, and a couple of years ago I read Pioneer Girl, Laura Ingalls Wilder's annotated autobiography. As much as I enjoy the Little House books, I know they're fiction and children's books and I want to know more about that family and their experiences. I have two related books on my TBR Pile Challenge this year. One is a biography of Wilder called Prairie Fires, and one is this fictional work told from the view of Ma, Caroline Ingalls. This challenge is made up of a list of books I've been putting off, so it may seem strange that I keep putting off books on a subject I claim to be obsessed with. Prairie Fires is very long, and I always delay long books. With Caroline, I was just concerned that it wouldn't live up to what I wanted it to be, especially since I didn't hear much from the reviews and the Goodreads rating is fairly low. I needn't have worried: it was everything I wanted it to be.

The story begins in Pepin, Wisconsin or what I have come to think of as "the Big Woods." Caroline is pregnant, and the family is about to set off on a long journey to Kansas, where they will stake a claim in what as known as Indian Territory. It's a hard journey, fraught with danger, and there were a few times the family was lucky to escape with their lives. When they finally arrive, they need to build the house they will live in, plant some crops, and do all the many things needed to start their new lives. All this while Caroline battles nausea and grows more physically cumbersome as her pregnancy advances. And always the dread that her female relatives who helped deliver Mary and Laura are in Wisconsin and she will have to have the baby alone.

From the very beginning, I was completely immersed in this story. I read most of it in two days over a long weekend, finishing the last bit on the third day immediately after work. Miller's writing is richly detailed, bringing this story to life in a way the children's versions couldn't. Oh, I had always imagined the details in my mind, but this novel painted a rich portrait that filled in the gaps in my imagination. It also made Caroline into a fully realized person for the first time - in the Little House books Ma was always capable and resourceful, but I loved seeing the inner life that Miller has imagined for her. Her fears about their journey and their new life and the impending birth of their daughter Carrie, and how she always portrayed on a strong demeanor despite her fears so as not to worry the girls. Her feelings about her husband and the girls. In Little House, Laura always felt she was never as good as Mary, but in this book Caroline takes notice of the way in which Mary shows off how virtuous she is as though she's being good not for the sake of being good, but so she will gain approval from the adults. I loved that.

One of the themes of the Little House books is independence, and the stories are carefully crafted to show the family taking care of themselves without help from anyone else, which is factually inaccurate. (They got help from the government, friends, and family pretty regularly. Everyone did - nobody could survive frontier conditions alone.) But the details of this book reveal just how strong and capable Caroline and Charles had to be to get through the obstacles that faced them every day. Making a meal while traveling in a covered wagon was a huge pain and they were all so tired from their journey, but you have to eat. And the time they were caught in a horrible rainstorm, and Charles had to go out in it to build a makeshift lean-to along the side of the wagon for the horses, and then came in soaking wet without a fire to hang his clothes in front of. Their lives were perpetually inconvenient and uncomfortable, even when they finally made it to Kansas, and for the first time I saw just how strong and capable these people were. You don't get that from children's books.

This is not to say that I loved everything about Caroline and Charles. They were products of their time and sometimes their attitudes frustrated me. Caroline was deathly afraid of the Indians and just wanted them to be gone, complaining that they were all over the place. I wanted to yell at her "This is their land and you're stealing it!" and ask what she thought it would be like, moving to a place that was literally called "Indian Territory." The way she viewed these people who were being pushed off their own land, visibly hungry, was awful. But I'm glad Miller left it in there, because I don't like to pretend that people were different than they actually were. I'm totally fine with creating fiction in which people have what we think of as "progressive" views, but this is fiction about a real person who existed and who felt this way and I'm glad in this instance she remained true to her character, even though I was annoyed at her ignorance.

Although this book was written for adults, it retained the feelings of positivity I remember from the Little House books. Despite their hardships, Caroline and Charles did everything they could to cast a positive light on their lives and appreciate what they had. In this way, it feels like a wonderful compliment to the books I've loved my whole life, adding more to the story that I've always wanted more of.

Even if you're not obsessed with this family, this is a great historical novel in itself. It's richly descriptive and character-driven, filled with insights about pioneer life and the role of women at that time. Here's a paragraph in which she considers her work and that of her husband:

"Always, the scale of Charles's work dwarfed her own. In the time it took him to build a wall or plant an acre, she might knit a sock or churn a pound of butter. One task was no less vital than the other; he could not build or plant barefoot and hungry. Charles knew that as well as she did and never failed to thank her for a new shirt or a good meal. But to have a hand in fashioning something that would not be consumed, worn out, outgrown--something as grand as a house? To be able to lean against that solid wall for years to come and know that she had helped put it there? Caroline thrilled at the thought."

In a dark moment, Caroline wants to cry in anger but has no privacy and doesn't dare go outside because of the Indians. She holds it all inside while watching Charles make bullets:

"Again and again she watched the thin silver stream of liquid lead flow into the bullet mold, then pop out a moment later, hard and shining. If only she could do just that--pour all her scalding thoughts into a tight, smooth ball capable of piercing the very thing she was most frightened of."

I found everything about this book captivating, and I desperately want it to be series. If I could read about all the adventures and journeys of this family through Sarah Miller's vivid storytelling, well. But as Caroline would say, I should be grateful for what I have, and I'm very grateful for this book.

Sing, Unburied, Sing

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward (2017)

I like to think I'm being thematic by reading this book at the beginning of Black History Month, but the fact is that I've been wanting to read Jesmyn Ward for years. Salvage the Bones was a Big Deal when it came out, but there are dogs in it, pit bulls, and I think maybe bad things happen to them? It put me off a bit. But then this book came out and everyone raved about it and I didn't get around to reading this one either for a while and now it's made its way onto my 2019 TBR Pile Challenge list. And now may go back and read Salvage the Bones too, even though it may rip my heart out. I think maybe that's just what her books do.

The story takes place in Ward's home state of Mississippi. Jojo is a thirteen-year-old boy, fiercely protective of his younger sister Kayla, who also lives with his grandparents and his mother, when she's around. He calls his mother Leonie and his grandparents, Mam and Pop, are more like his parents. His white father, Michael, is in prison. But he's getting out and Leonie packs up the kids and her friend Misty to go on a road trip to pick him up.

Things don't go terribly well. Kayla throws up all over the car, for starters, which makes everyone miserable. Leonie thinks she can heal her with plants, but Jojo doesn't trust her. They spend the night at Michael's lawyer's house where the adults all get high together while Jojo watches over the sick Kayla.

I've mentioned that Jojo's father is white, and this is significant because Michael's father, Big Joseph, is extremely racist and will not accept that his son is in a relationship with a black woman. There's also some family history here that I won't get into but it shows even more what kind of person Big Joseph is.

I can't believe I've gotten this far without mentioning the ghosts. Leonie's brother Given, who was killed at a young age, appears to her when she is high, which is part of the reason she keeps doing it. Pop (who by the way was possibly my favorite character) told Jojo stories about his time in Parchman, the same prison Michael is being released from. Some of these stories are about a boy named Richie, who was Jojo's age then, and how Pop tried to look for him at the prison. On the car trip, Richie appeared to Jojo and talked with him along the way. I don't know if I should use the word "ghost" to describe these appearances of dead people, but since they are dead people appearing to (some of) the living, that's basically what they are.

Leonie is not the mothering type, her awareness pretty centered on Michael. The kids were always frigging hungry in this book and she didn't think to feed them, or, it was almost as if she didn't want them to eat. Michael was her priority, and getting high. I kind of hated her for how she treated her kids, but also really felt for her in some ways. Losing her brother was horrible, and being in love with a guy whose family hated her (for no good reason) was also terrible, and her mother was dying. It's no excuse to treat your kids the way she did, but I do think she actually felt a bit of affection towards them. She just screwed up early and now they don't go to her for comfort or really even trust her. I have such mixed feelings about her but I can say for sure that she felt real.

All the characters did, even the ones who appeared just as ghosts. The perspective switched between Jojo, Leonie, and Richie so you get a much more full story than you would if it was just from one of them. Everything about this book felt real, in a raw and gritty way. It wasn't an action-packed story, but had a lot of momentum that just propelled me through. The chapters were short and that made it go faster too. It only took me a few days to read but I imagine I'll be thinking about it for much longer.

Shattering Glass

Shattering Glass by Gail Giles (2002)

Here's my first read for the 2019 TBR Pile Challenge. Unlike most books on my list, this book has actually been sitting in a physical pile rather than just languishing on a list. A friend bought it for me, oh, several years ago now. I have no idea why it took me so long to read it. It's a short (just over 200 pages) teen book that I knew would be quick. And the premise was intriguing! So when mid-January came and I was panicking because I hadn't even begun a book for the challenge yet, this seemed like the perfect one to start with.

A group of high school boys, particularly a new student named Rob, are tired of this super-popular Lance guy being in charge. One day when Rob sees Lance picking on Simon Glass, a fat nerdy kid, he decides he's going to make Simon popular. He enlists his friends, including the story's narrator, Young Steward. We know from the beginning that Simon Glass ends up dead. The chapters all move forward in a linear manner, but each chapter begins with a quote from five years later that fills in a few details here and there until the story reaches the final deadly scene.

Some aspects of this story reminded me of Lord of the Flies. The way these kids aligned themselves and manipulated each other was cruel and dangerous and some, like Young Steward, weren't easy to categorize as good or bad. It was a chilling portrayal of human nature. Teenagers are especially vulnerable to the influence of someone who takes a strong leader role. At that age you're not experienced enough to know that someone like Rob is bad news, and of course you're trying to fit in with your friends and not risk being the victim of harassment and bullying yourself. This was easy to see in Young, who is told by another character, "You're everybody's idea of a 'good guy,' but you're not good because of any convictions or moral compass. You're good because you don't say no. You do as you're told and so far, nobody told you to do anything wrong...But someday, someone will."

It took me a bit to get into the book because the dialogue was awkward in spots and the character development wasn't as strong as it could be. For instance, Young disliked Simon from the beginning but didn't spend much time reflecting on why that is. Several of his friends had pretty interesting flaws that weren't really delved into, and in many ways I think a deeper exploration would have made a stronger story. On the other hand, it would have been longer and moved more slowly, and this is a book written for teens, not for middle-aged women. I can definitely see teens who aren't patient enough for a detailed plodding novel really enjoying this one. It's a quick easy read - I blew through it in a 24-hour period - but leaves you with a lot to think about.

Now that I've read the shortest, easiest book on my challenge list, it will only become more difficult. But I had a lot of books out of the library, plus an ARC I want to read before it's actually published, and now things are a little more manageable. I need to make a plan so I can be sure to read everything on my list this year (plus all the new books I have on hold from the library!) but I'm sure I can pull it off.

2019 TBR Pile Challenge

It's time it's time it's time! It's time to make a book list for 2019! Yay!

As you may know, I've been doing the TBR Pile Challenge for many years and it never gets old. In fact, there were a couple years when Adam at Roof Beam Reader wasn't hosting it and I just did it on my own. This reading challenge works for me and I can't let go of it.

The way it works is this: you make a list of 12 books (and 2 alternates) that have been languishing on your TBR pile or list for more than a year and try to read them in the upcoming year. Right now this means books I've been wanting to read since before January 1, 2018. I don't own a lot of books myself, so most of mine are from my Goodreads "to read" shelf, which I stopped using for a while and started again in mid-2017. Most of these are from that list, but a few are books I do have copies of sitting around.

My 2018 list is here, and as you can see from my linked reviews, I read all but one book on my main list and both alternates. Which counts as a win! It was such a great list too - I can't believe how long I put off reading some of these amazing books. Here's hoping this year's list is as good.

1. Nefarious Twit by Tony McMillen (failed in 4/19)
2. Shattering Glass by Gail Giles (finished 1/18/19)
3. Version Control by Dexter Palmer (finished 8/11/19)
4. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (finished 3/17/19)
5. We Are All Shipwrecks by Kelly Grey Carlisle (finished 5/18/19)
6. Caroline: Little House Revisited by Sarah Miller (finished 2/19/19)
7. Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward (finished 2/3/19)
8. Red Sister by Mark Lawrence
9. Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser (finished 3/10/19)
10. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman (finished 5/28/19)
11. Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment by Robert Wright (admitted defeat 2/17/19)
12. Paradox Bound by Peter Clines (finished 4/28/19)

My two alternates:

1. The Wolves of Winter by Tyrell Johnson (finished 8/24/19)
2. My One and Only by Kristan Higgins (finished 7/4/19)

This is a very different list from last year. For one thing, I've only got three nonfiction books on the list, and one of those is a memoir. Two of them are fairly short, though Prairie Fires is apparently over 600 pages. Yikes. The only other books over 400 pages are Pachinko, Red Sister, and Version Control and I'm not super worried about them because they're all fiction and still under 500 pages.

I am most excited about Pachinko and Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, because I've heard so much about them! And most intimidated by Prairie Fires, now that I realize how long it is. I'm so interested in Laura Ingalls Wilder though. As you can see I've also got another book about that family on the list - the novel, Caroline: Little House Revisited.

As usual, as I complete and post about the books on the list I'll update the list above with links to the reviews. Wish me luck!