What Am I Reading – Chapter Seventeen

Hi Everybody!!

As promised from last time, I have a nearly new batch of titles that I can’t wait to show you, so let’s get started!

I Owe You One by Sophie Kinsella is about a woman with a complicated family, a handsome guy, and an IOU that changes everything. Fixie Farr likes to fix things. That’s her nature, even if it means picking up the slack from her siblings instead of striking out on her own when running the family housewares store. Then one day at a coffee shop, a handsome stranger asks her to watch his laptop. Not only does she agree, but she also saves it from certain disaster. It turns out that the stranger – Sebastian – is an investment manager. He scribbles an IOU on a coffee sleeve and attaches his business card. Fixie would never claim that. Would she? And then, her childhood crush Ryan comes back in her life, and she tries to convince Sebastian to give him a job. As a result, Fixie and Sebastian pass a series of IOUs to each other. It gets to the point where she is torn between her family and the life she wants to live. Will she take a stand and grab the life and love she really wants?

Before going into this novel, the only thing that I knew was that the author Sophie Kinsella had written Confessions of a Shopaholic. I never read that book, but from what I’m reading so far, I get the feeling that she likes to write quirky female protagonists with a “fatal” flaw. There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s only something that I’ve noticed.

In fact, I’m enjoying the light read so far. I like Fixie and her OCD-like tendency to fix everything in sight even though she’s a hot mess. I want her to think of herself more, especially when other people like her self-centered siblings Jake and Nicole walk all over her. It feels like a Cinderella story, but with a less than perfect main character. But then again, one can say that a lot of romance and chick-lit are basically Cinderella tales. I look forward to seeing if Fixie gets to live the life and have the love that she really wants.

Now let’s go a little darker for our second title…

The Suspect by Fiona Barton is the third installment of the Kate Waters series. After two teenagers disappear during their gap year in Thailand, their families are thrown into the international spotlight. As a reporter, Kate Waters tries to get to the story first. As she digs into it more, the more she thinks of her son who’s been traveling for the last two years. All will soon discover that no matter how far away they are, danger can lie closer to home than one might think.

Those who’ve followed this website long enough will be familiar with the running gag of me making fun of Fiona Barton’s titles to her novel. This is no exception as this one is the most basic. However, the more I read it, the more clear it is of who the suspect is, so I’ll give credit to her for making the title personal as well as more specific than I initially thought.

I’ve also mentioned how predictable Barton’s work has been in the past, and this novel is no different. I figured out who the suspect was within the first audiobook disc.

Speaking of the audiobook, I’m listening to that right now. Susan Duerden – an actress who’s best known for playing Carole Littleton on Lost and has recorded many books on tape – plays Waters. Mandy Williams previously narrated as her, so I’m confused as to why the role was recast. She did a great job portraying her with determination and empathy in The Widow and The Child, whereas Duerden feels little more tired, but maybe that’s to signify how much Kate has aged. I really don’t know.

Fiona Hardingham takes on the role of Alex – one of the missing teenagers. She had previously acted in roles such as a News Anchor in Godzilla: King of the Monsters and an Arrival Video Narrator in Pokemon Detective Pikachu as well as narrated several other audiobooks. I like how she strikes a balance between a juvenile and a mature voice for a teenager who plans so much in advance, and yet everything goes wrong the moment she and her friend land in Thailand. Too bad there’s not a whole lot for Hardingham to do beside read Alex’s Facebook posts.

Katharine Lee McEwan is back and plays Leslie – Alex’s mother. She’s fine, but it’s similar role to Angela in The Child. To be fair, Leslie and Angela are similar characters as both are heartbroken for their missing children.

Another actor who’s back is Nicholas Guy Smith, and he voices Detective Bob Sparkes. It’s nice to hear Smith inject frustration and sadness into Sparkes since that character hasn’t been really been present since The Widow. In this book, Sparkes’s wife is going through chemotherapy while he helps Kate with the investigation whenever he can. I hope he has more to do, so I can listen to Smith’s voice more.

And now, let’s go to the third and final book of this latest installment…

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim follows a murder trial after a hyperbaric chamber in a small town in Virginia explodes and kills two people including an autistic child. A showdown unfolds among various characters who may or may not be keeping secrets in regards to what happened.

I just started this novel a few days ago, and it got me hooked right from the start. The moment where the author describes the explosion and how the characters Young Yoo and her daughter Mary witness it shook me. I’m looking forward to seeing how the rest of the trial pans out and who the culprit is.

We have now come to the end of the seventeenth chapter of “What Am I Reading?”

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Where the Crawdads Sing Book Review

I did it! After nearly two years of putting it aside, I finally read Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens!!!! The book had been on the New York Times Best Sellers list for over 100 weeks! Yes, you heard right, OVER 100 WEEKS! It’s like “Old Town Road” but in book form because of how long it’s been on the charts. Enough of that digression, people who view this website will probably want to know if the novel was worth the hype. Well readers, it was to a certain degree.

Now, I know that a lot of readers have already checked out this book, so I will give a very brief summary of it. Here it goes: a woman named Kya who lives alone in the marsh in mid-twentieth century North Carolina becomes a suspect in a murder case, but she is not what the villagers say.

To understand the hype around this novel, one must have at least some understanding of why it became and remained popular. Regular readers as well as the New York Times have articulated that it appeals to a whole range of people. For those who like murder-mysteries, there’s that as the main story. For those who love nature, Owens – a retired biologist – provides exquisite descriptions of the marsh and the surrounding area that makes one feel that they are right there with Kya. There’s also romance, for Kya has relationships with two boys from the nearby village. And so and so forth. 

I would also like to add that us readers like checking  out books that involve girls and women in awful situations and seeing how they get out of them. Some of the bestsellers within the last 10 years have titles like The Girl on the Train and The Woman in the Window. We even read these kinds of stories in fairy tales. But at the end of the day, it’s a coming of age story that a lot of people like me identify with, specifically how an “outsider” comes to understand the world around them. 

In other words, I find the hype more fascinating than the book itself, BUT that doesn’t mean I disliked the book. I liked it actually. I enjoyed witnessing Kya’s journey to how she learns to understand the world around her with all of its ups and downs. I also found her to be believable in what she does even if I didn’t always agree with them. In addition, I liked how the novel is more focused on how Kya handles situations as opposed to simply saying, “Poor Kya” (though it gets dangerously close when it discusses her time at school). 

And let’s talk about that ending. I know some readers didn’t see it coming, but I sadly knew ahead of time that others were disappointed by it. I found it sort of predictable because of how Kya watches the female fireflies and how she reacts when the police initially come to arrest her.

Cassandra Campbell reads Where the Crawdads Sing. As I was doing research for this review, I realized that she narrated two books that I enjoyed and also dealt with women being in horrible situations. They were Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult and Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly. In the former, she voices Kennedy McQuarrie – the protagonist’s public defender – with a Julia Roberts-playing-Erin-Brockovich flair, which was perfect for that story. With the latter, I discussed her very good vocal performance on this website. Also, Campbell has narrated a wide variety of books from The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks to the Llama Llama series. She’s like the Renaissance woman of audiobooks. This is all a long way to say that her performance was mostly positive for me. She does a great job bringing the descriptions, especially of the marsh, to life, and I felt a lot of emotions while listening to Kya’s journey. However, most of the men and women sounded very similar with the same vague Southern accent. It also didn’t help that Campbell makes Kya sound too juvenile once the protagonist evolves into an adult. While it was a good performance, I was a little disappointed once I discovered the narrator’s credentials.

All in all, even though I’m more fascinated with the hype surrounding Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, I still like the book. It certainly grabbed my attention with wonderful nature descriptions and an interesting journey for Kya that allows readers to see what she is going to do. I’m sure that people who read these reviews have already read this novel, but if one hasn’t, I would recommend it for all of the reasons listed.

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What Am I Reading – Chapter Sixteen

Hi Everybody,

I hope all of my American readers had a great 4th of July! I know I did with some water sliding, fireworks, and three rounds of desserts!

Since the last chapter, I actually finished two books – the ones from Chapter 14. I will also be done with Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison and Rolls-Royce Motor Cars: Making a Legend by Simon Van Booy and Harvey Briggs very very soon.

By the next chapter of this series, I will have a nearly new batch of titles including this one:

Love, Pride, Virtue, and Fate by Bharat Krishnan is a collection of 25 tales in Hindu mythology that explores the traits mentioned in the title.

The author strives to make connections between these stories to those in other mythologies. For example, much like the Greek gods taking sides in the Trojan War in “The Iliad,” the Hindu ones fought alongside both the Pandavas and Kauravas during the Kurukshetra War in the epic poem “Mahabharata.”

As someone who knows very little about Hinduism, I find the book very accessible so far. Most of the tales are no more than 5 pages long, and the language feels elevated while also believable, as in anyone from the present day would say them, hence making them timeless. Each of the stories always end with Krishnan explaining why he included it in the collection. This is easily my favorite part because of not only how he connects these to those in other mythologies, especially the Christian one, but also because he thoughtfully explains how each of them reflect a part of the Hinduism mentality and its values.

My favorite tale so far is the one that involves Shiva – the Hindu god of destruction – cutting off the head of his son Ganesha after the latter prevents entry to the former. It didn’t help that the former didn’t know that he had a son. As a result, his wife the goddess Parvathi refuses to speak to him until he finds their son. Luckily, Shiva is able to find an elephant and place that on Ganesha’s head, and makes him the remover of obstacles.

Occasionally, Krishnan will mention some thing politics-related due to his experiences in that field, but he does it in a way that doesn’t distract the reader from the overall themes.

I look forward to reading more of this title!

We have now come to the end of the sixteenth chapter of “What Am I Reading?”

For any Hindu readers out there, have fun with Puri Ratha Yatra and Guru Purnima!!

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The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper Book Review

For nearly two years, I’ve read a few curmudgeon novels, and they tend to follow similar patterns. They’re usually about a stubborn person who has a certain way of living. Then, they go on a journey (physically and emotionally) to discover more about themselves and that they grow to appreciate the people around them, thus resulting in them opening up. The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick fits into this category like a bracelet on a wrist. Despite some flaws, it stands out in a couple of ways.

In The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper, the 69-year-old title character has a strict routine, which involves getting up at 7:30am, wearing the same pair of pants and vest, watering his plant named Frederica, and gardening. On the one-year anniversary of Miriam’s – his wife – death, he discovers a charm bracelet that he’s never seen before. Each of the charms tells a different story of her life before she met him. To feed his curiosity, Arthur goes on a journey to various places like London, Paris, and even India to find out his wife’s past life, and in the process, he discovers hope, healing, and more about himself.

The other curmudgeon novels that I’ve read in the past were A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman and Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. At first, I wondered how The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper was going to stand out. Luckily, unlike the titular characters of those two books, Arthur is a parent who spent a lot of time traveling for work. This made him emotionally distant from his two now adult children and not being attentive to his wife’s needs. I like how the novel shows the consequences of behaving this way and how it affects his kids, especially his daughter Lucy. 

Another thing that makes Arthur Pepper stand out from this bunch is the lighter tone. While both A Man Called Ove and Eleanor Oliphant can be quirky and fun at times, they are both balanced by a consistent dark tone. In the example of the former, Ove’s tragic backstory is revealed through stream-of-consciousness and how it resulted in him not trusting people. He also tries to end his own life multiple times. In the case of the latter, Eleanor struggles to come to terms with what happened during her childhood. Besides one scene where the main character tries to take his own life, Arthur Pepper is much peppier because he doesn’t have as much baggage as the other curmudgeons. This is good for readers who want something light.

Also, some of the characters that Arthur meets along the way are pretty colorful. These include his seemingly obnoxious, but caring neighbor Bernadette, the tiger loving Lord Graystock, and Mike – a caring homeless man. While these characters were memorable, they all seem to follow a pattern. Arthur meets or stumbles upon them, and they reveal their backstories before telling him how they know of the charm that he has questions about. After a while, it starts to get predictable, and don’t get me started on how inconceivable some of these situations are and how willing these people are to tell their stories. For example, when trying to get into Lord Graystock’s house, Arthur climbs over the fence and almost gets mauled by a tiger. If someone did that onto my property, I would be more likely to call the cops then tell them my backstory. The only time that someone was reluctant to tell Arthur their story about one of the charms was when Sonny Yardley initially refused to speak about Miriam, even when he came to the college that she worked at. She was this way because of a family tragedy that involved Miriam decades ago, and this was the only part that truly stuck with me because of this conflict.

I’m also convinced that Patrick was watching the Nudge, Nudge sketch from Monty Python when she was writing the scene, in which a random guy approaches Arthur in a café to discuss which girl he should marry. I couldn’t take this scene as seriously as the author wanted me to because I added “Nudge, nudge” every time the stranger talked. After the coyness went away and the man explained his dilemma, it began to feel realistic again. This was when I was pulled back into the story.

I listened to the audiobook, which is narrated by James Langton. I understand that readers who listened to the audiobook loved his narrations, and I can see why. He has a refined English voice that definitely carries the story. Since the book mostly takes place in York, England, he does a good Yorkshire accent for the male characters with enough differences to make each character distinct. However, the flaw with his voicing is with most of the female characters. They all sound dangerously close to Eric Idle impersonating a Yorkshire grandmother. I tolerated this when Langton voiced older women like Bernadette, but not younger ones like Lucy, even when he delivers the right emotions for them. And I can’t quite put my finger on it, but his French accent for Sylvie was off. I really want to enjoy his performance, but how he voiced most of the women really threw me off.

All in all, The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick is a light curmudgeon novel that stands out from the other titles in that category. Along with the tone, the main character is a parent, which adds a dimension to this subgenre. Yes, it does have its issues, but if readers are willing to suspend their disbelief, they’ll enjoy it more. I recommend this book to those who like this particular type of novel, those who enjoy reading about self-discovery, and those who simply want a light read. It’s available in regular and large print and as an audiobook; one can also find it on Hoopla and Overdrive/Libby.

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What Am I Reading – Chapter Fifteen

Hello Everybody!!!

I hope everybody had great Flag and Juneteenth Days! I sure did!

I’m currently reading four titles right now – the two I introduced in Chapter 14 as well as Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison and Rolls-Royce Motor Cars: Making a Legend by Simon Van Booy and Harvey Briggs. So the most logical thing to do was add another book to that list.

And, here it is!

Confessions of a Bad, Ugly Singer by Collette McLafferty details a two-year period, in which the author had to go through the legal system. In April 2014, McLafferty was playing a P!NK cover band when she found herself named in a 112-page complaint. The person who sued was a personal injury lawyer, played drums for Michael Bolton, and had a dispute with the band leader claiming he stole the lawyer’s idea to form the first P!NK cover band in Long Island. Oh, and he was suing them for $10,000,000. Knowing that she was going to be involved for years to come, she took her case to the press. She made a call to The New York Post in hopes of leaving a message. However, she later discovered the headline “Singer Sued for Being Too Old and Too Ugly for P!NK Cover band” in the paper. he sensationalized headline told a story of a singer who was so “old, ugly and untalented” that her one-night performance prompted the lawyer to sue. This version of the events went viral worldwide and threatened to put an end to her 20-year professional history in the music business. The headlines alleged she “ruined” the P!NK cover band with her inferior looks and singing, triggering a deep depression. Determined to find justice, McLafferty fought the case and eventually introduced “Collette’s Law” with the help of The Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York and Assemblyman Luis Sepulveda.

Much like everyone else reading this, I was shocked to learn that this actually happened. All of what went down felt too strange to be true, but as the saying goes, truth is stranger than fiction.

What makes the book interesting so far is that McLafferty writes what occurred several years after the fact. This allows her to process all of the events in the most objective way possible. Heck, she makes jokes about certain people and moments. That’s how one knows someone has moved from a tragedy. I can’t wait to read more of it!

We have now come to the end of the fifteenth chapter of “What Am I Reading?”

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A Polar Bear in Love Manga Series Review

As a person who has watched anime in the past, it never occurred to me to read a manga, especially since a lot of those shows are based off of those Japanese graphic novels. Recently, I read my very first manga series, A Polar Bear in Love by Koromo, and it’s a cute story that’s great for beginner readers, but it’s best to take it with a grain of salt.

A Polar Bear in Love manga series is about Seal – a lost baby harp seal – who finds himself in the company of Polar Bear. Instead of eating it (like most polar bears would), the latter falls madly in love with the former. However, the fearful seal constantly misinterprets the polar bear’s romantic advances as a strong desire to eat him. 

This is the main premise and the story for the first volume. The second one deals with them encountering rivals to each other’s affections like another polar bear and an adult female harp seal. The third introduces Kathy the penguin, who counsels Polar Bear and Seal on their relationship, and her “boyfriend” Orca. In the fourth and so far last one, Seal finally learns how to swim, but Polar Bear isn’t ready to say good-bye to him just yet. Orca also tells Polar Bear his own love story.

All of the volumes are a super quick read with super cute visual moments like when Polar Bear encounters Seal for the first time and the latter rapping about his gender (I know that’s weird, but in the world of cartoons, it could be more off-kilter). The black and white designs are very simple, but so expressive like all the times Polar Bear having a blank stare on his face and Seal fearing for his life. The only complaint is that there are times, in which I could not figure out who was talking, because I wasn’t sure where the bubble was pointing at. Nevertheless, the series is a great comforting contrast to something dark like Vita Nostra. 

Another thing that I like about this manga is that the main romance is between two different species of the same gender. At first, Seal is concerned about this, but Polar Bear doesn’t mind because love is love regardless of whom one falls in love with. This is a very positive message, especially for those who are still exploring who they are and who they love.

Apart from the main characters, the supporting ones stand out too. Kathy the penguin, who is actually male, acts as a romance counselor for Polar Bear and Seal. She is head over heels for her “boyfriend” Orca, whom she calls sweetie. I only put boyfriend in quotation marks because he doesn’t feel the same way about her. He’s like Squidward, for he can be grumpy and relatable.

After I read the first volume, I looked at the reviews, and two common themes emerged: how creepy Polar Bear was in trying to get Seal to love him back and how the former didn’t understand how terrified the latter was. The whole series is about a predator falling in love with its prey, so understandably, Seal is terrified.

I’m going to be honest and say that I really didn’t pick up on the problematic elements of the plot when reading the first volume because I was so infatuated with its cuteness. Knowing this now, yes, I can see where people are coming from. During the first volume, Seal struggles to voice his concerns against Polar Bear. Luckily, during the second one, Seal speaks up more, and Polar Bear gets the hints more as they encounter rivals to each other’s affections. In the following volumes, Seal continues to speak up, but it seems like no one’s listening to him. Even in the fourth one, Orca asks Polar Bear if he has ever considered Seal’s feelings. But because the former is depicted as a grouch for a good chunk of it, it seems that readers are supposed to root for the latter.

The best way that I can describe this is like the song Boy in Luv by BTS, which is about a teenage boy falling in love externally (especially in the music video, in which the members show their affections towards a girl in forceful manners). If English readers are able to read Volume 5, I hope that Polar Bear considers Seal’s feelings more, and maybe his love for him would become more internal like how BTS’s Boy With Luv is. In a way, the series wants readers to think that his love is internal, but he fell in love with Seal after he spotted his white baby fur. I hope that Polar Bear will still be able to love Seal when the latter sheds his baby fur. In other words, the title may be A Polar Bear in Love, but the series would be more worth it if it evolved into A Polar Bear With Love.

All in all, A Polar Bear in Love by Koromo is a cute shoujo manga series (ones that aim at young female teens) that explores how love is love is love. The characters are memorable, and the designs are simple and effective while telling the story. It’s best to take the plot with a grain of salt as it’s still a continuing series. I hope the fifth volume comes out soon, but I’m not sure when that will happen. If one feels highly uncomfortable with it, then they have every right not to read it. For those who want to, I recommend it to those who love shoujo mangas and arctic/antarctic animals as well as those looking to get into the genre. It’s great for beginner manga readers.

What Am I Reading – Chapter Fourteen

Hi Everybody!

We’re halfway done with this year! Can you believe it?

I finally finished all four volumes of A Polar Bear in Love recently. I’m also currently reading Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison and Rolls-Royce Motor Cars: Making a Legend by Simon Van Booy and Harvey Briggs. And today, I have two new titles to show you!

One of them is…

Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron with Bret Witter is about Dewey Readmore Books – the library cat of Spencer, Iowa. At a few weeks old, he was stuffed into a return slot at the Spencer Public Library. He was found the next day by the library director Vicki Myron, who had struggles of her own. Dewey won her and the staff over by nudging each of hem in a gesture of thanks and love. For the next 19 years, he charmed the people of Spencer with his enthusiasm, warmth, humility (for a cat), and his sixth sense about who needed him the most. As his fame grew locally, then statewide, and then internationally, Dewey became a source of pride in the Heartland farming town pulling its way slowly back from the greatest crisis in its long history.

I’ve been needing a cat fix for awhile ever since the one that I knew passed away recently. This is a very good substitute so far. I’m only less than 10 chapters in, and Dewey has already charmed me with his lovability and determination to get attention at almost any cost. I mean, look at that face! Don’t you want to hold him in your arms after looking at him? (Hey, if you’re allergic, I totally get it.)

Of course, Myron makes it clear that it wasn’t all a walk in the park. She hilariously recounts the times where she had give Dewey a bath with mostly disastrous results. He apparently also had a habit of chewing on rubber bands and possessed a sixth sense of where to find them even in closed drawers.

I look forward to reading about Dewey’s rise in fame and his overall impact on the people of Spencer, Iowa.

Now, let’s move onto the second and final book of this latest installment…

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates is about a slave named Hiram Walker. When he was a boy, his mother was sold away, and he was robbed of all memory of her. However, he was gifted with a mysterious power. That same power saves his life years later when he almost drowns in a river. This brush with death empowers him to perform a daring scheme: to run away from the only home he’s ever known. Hiram goes on an unexpected journey that takes him far and wide. Even as he’s enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram’s resolve to rescue the family he left behind endures.

I started this yesterday, and this is very compelling so far. The story immediately begins with the near-drowning episode, and then, it dives into (no pun intended) Hiram’s backstory growing up on a Virginia plantation called Lockless as the black son of the plantation’s owner. Even though I need more time to process my thoughts on it, it’s got me hooked right now.

Part of this is because of the audiobook narration done by Joe Morton. Morton has appeared in movies like Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Speed. He even won an Emmy for his role as Eli Pope – Olivia’s father – on Scandal. He is no stranger to audiobooks as he has recorded over 20 of them, including that of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. His narration on this novel is pretty good so far. He makes clear distinctions among various black and white characters. Also, when he has to sing as Hiram, he gives his all like his life depended on it, and it helps that he has a beautiful singing voice. I’m looking forward to listening to more of this book.

We now have come to the end of the fourteenth chapter of “What Am I Reading?”

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Inside the O’Briens Book Review

Anybody who knows the name Lisa Genova will be familiar with the book Still Alice, which deals with a woman experiencing an early onset of Alzheimer’s. The novel was so successful that it was turned into an award-winning movie. Since then, Genova has written other titles in what one reviewer called the “neurotypical fiction” genre. This category involves stories about people dealing with neurotypical ailments. One of these includes our subject for this review Inside the O’Briens, which is very informative about Huntington’s Disease and honest about how people – those inflicted with and not – handle it.

Inside the O’Briens revolves around Joe O’Brien – a 44-year-old police officer, husband, and father of four adult children from the Irish Catholic neighborhood of Charlestown, Massachusetts. After experiencing bouts of disorganized thinking, uncharacteristic temper outbursts, and involuntary movements, Joe goes to a neurologist and gets diagnosed with Huntington’s Disease (HD). Sadly, the disease has no treatment nor a cure. What’s worse is that each of the children has a 50% chance of inheriting it, and a simple blood test could seal their fate. The youngest – 21-year-old Katie – struggles with whether or not she wants to know. As his symptoms get worse, Joe loses his job and battles to maintain hope and a sense of purpose. In the meantime, Katie and her siblings must find the courage to live their lives “at risk” or take the test and learn their fate.

Before I actually review Inside the O’Briens, I want to be clear that I’ve not read Still Alice. As a result, I refuse to compare it with the former because it isn’t fair for the time being. The reason that I brought up Still Alice was that everytime I see Genova’s name in some book, that title is always mentioned. I have a feeling that Still Alice is going to haunt her for the rest of her life. Someday, I hope to read it and watch the movie. Now on with the review!

I went into Inside the O’Briens knowing very little about HD. The only thing I could recall about it was that Woody Guthie inherited that disorder from his mother, and some of his children got it from him. If one is wondering, Arlo didn’t inherit the HD gene. Luckily, the book helped me to understand more about the disease in more ways than one. For instance, I liked that Rosie – Joe’s wife – noticed his HD symptoms 6-7 years before he did. Once it became obvious that something was wrong with him, Joe tries to give excuses for his more unusual behavior like stress on the job. He even doubts them at the same time, thinking that it could be something worse (a mentality he has undoubtedly developed while working as a police officer). When he gets the official diagnosis, the neurologist explains that it would take about 10-20 years to worsen.

The reason why I was able to understand HD more was that Genova framed the disorder around a family and explored a lot of the questions surrounding it. For example, the subplot of this story involves Katie debating whether or not to take the test. She gets so obsessed with this question and with imagining the future with a positive or negative HD gene that she closes herself off from her family and her boyfriend Felix. In the end, she realizes that whatever happens, she knows that she should enjoy her life and take risks and that she has her family and Felix to turn to no matter what.

I also want to point out that not much happens in the novel. Yet, when events occur, they are immediately put into the HD context. When word gets out that the son Patrick impregnated a girl out of wedlock and doesn’t want to marry her, the family reacts in a way that an Irish Catholic one would, but HD makes it worse. Another event that illustrates this well is that at one point, Joe and Rosie get a divorce not because they don’t love each other, but to give Rosie financial stability. Again, this would alarm a normal Catholic family, yet keeping HD in mind reevaluates the situation. 

Now this may seem like a whole lot of melodrama, but I assure readers that Genova peppers humor in the right places. I giggled everytime the book mentions Joe’s love for the Red Sox, especially the passing mentions of his attempts to convert Felix – a Yankees fan – into one.

If I have to nitpick, it would be Felix’s character. He basically comes off as a manic pixie dream boy (*cough Jesse from Pitch Perfect and Pitch Perfect 2). He has very little inner life, and a lot of his dialogue focuses on Katie. However, the more I thought about this, the more I realized that maybe Felix was intentionally written that way for two reasons. One was probably to show that he’s basically perfect for Katie despite him being a Yankees fan, a Baptist, and black in a Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner manner. The other reason was likely to display how Katie had been so consumed by her thoughts on taking the test that she doesn’t consider how he and her family have been feeling. 

I listened to the audiobook, and it’s narrated by Skipp Sudduth – an actor best known for his role as Sully in the series Third Watch. He gives a Bostonian vibe to the main character that doesn’t come off as a caricature. This makes sense since he was born in Warham, Massachusetts near Plymouth. In addition, he gives off similar auras to the other characters, even the female ones. Normally, I would nitpick on how he had all of the female characters sound the same. But in this case, I surprisingly didn’t care. Sudduth probably knew he couldn’t pull off female voices, so he gave them their own Bostonian touches. Honestly, if he did, then I would’ve complained.

Overall, Inside the O’Briens by Lisa Genova is a well-done novel that explores Huntington’s Disease and how a family deals with it in realistic manners. There’s plenty of humor to balance out the melodramatic aspects. I would recommend it to those who want to know more about HD in the non-medical sense and those who like reading books about people battling diseases. If Genova continues to write books in the “neurotypical fiction” genre, I wouldn’t mind at all, for she pens them so well.

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What Am I Reading – Chapter Thirteen

Hi Everybody!

Since the last time I posted what I was reading, I finished Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante, and another volume of A Polar Bear in Love by Koromo.

Before I get started with the latest book that I’m reading right now, I want to address something that I came across in the A Polar Bear in Love manga series.

After I read the first volume, I looked at the reviews, and two common themes emerged: how creepy the polar bear was in trying to get the seal to love him back and how the former didn’t understand how terrified the latter was. The whole series is about a polar bear falling in love with a seal – the usual prey for that animal, so understandably, the seal is terrified.

I’m going to be honest and say that I really didn’t pick up on the problematic elements of the plot when reading the first volume because I was so infatuated with its cuteness. Knowing this now, yes, I can see where people are coming from. During the first volume, the seal struggles to voice his concerns against the polar bear. Luckily, during the second one, seal speaks up more, the polar bear gets the hints more as they encounter rivals to each other’s affections. I’m on the third volume now, and there’s one more in the manga, so I’ll have my full thoughts once I finished with the series altogether.

Now, let’s look at a book unrelated to anything else that I’ve read.

Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison is three stories in one. The titular novella is about three brothers and their lives of passion, madness, exploration and danger at the beginning of the Great War. The other two are Revenge, which shows how love causes a man’s life to be altered in drastic ways, and The Man Who Gave up his Name, which deals with another man who’s unable to give up his obsessions with women, dancing, and food.

I started this “novel” not too long ago, and it’s off to a slow start. Nothing wrong with that now, but I hope it picks up. I’m in the middle of Revenge, and I like reading the part that details what led up to the man being beaten and tossed at the side of the road. We’ll see how I feel about the other novellas.

We now have come to the end of the thirteenth chapter of “What Am I Reading?”

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Around the World in 80 Days With Michael Palin Book Review

One of the first things that I’m going to do once this pandemic is over is travel. I’m not talking about going on a day trip, but traveling out of state to somewhere that I’ve never been before. I’ve been fantasizing about this for a while, and I blame this on two things. One is on the honeymoon I’ll take next year. The other is on reading Around the World in 80 Days with Michael Palin by Sir Michael Palin – a wonderful travelogue written by a member of Monty Python in 1988.

Around the World in Eighty Days with Michael Palin is the book companion to the 1989 BBC series of the same name. In the show, the comedian-turned traveler circumnavigates the globe in the same amount of time as Phileas Fogg – the protagonist of the famous Jules Verne novel of the same name – and using the same modes of transportation that were available in Fogg’s time. Along the way, he describes his joyous and sometimes chaotic experiences.

Pandemic or no pandemic, seeing pictures of places like Venice, Cairo, Shanghai, and Aspen, Colorado make me want to travel even though they were taken over 30 years ago. Palin offers hilarious insights into them. For example, in Venice, a photo depicts an older man face down, and he muses that he was a possible Mafia victim.

I also like how every page indicates which part of the world Palin and his Passepartouts (the film crew) are in. For instance, on one page, it lists Day 5: Corinth Canal in Greece as the author talks about going through it. On the next page, it lists Day 5: Athens as he talks about his experiences in that city. It’s good to know that Palin wants readers to know where he’s at all times (in the book of course). This also makes sense as Phileas Fogg too had to keep track of the amount of days spent traveling to ensure he circumnavigates the globe in precisely 80 days.

Speaking of Fogg, Palin makes a lot of references to the famous Jules Verne novel when prompted. At one point, as he’s crossing the Atlantic Ocean, he talks about how in the book, Fogg and Passepartout burn the wood parts of a boat in order to get to Liverpool on time. This shocked me because I’ve never read the novel even though I’m familiar with the story through the Three Stooges and Looney Tunes adaptations. Another thing that I have to mention is that Palin gets to do the one thing that is commonly associated with, yet never done in the book: traveling via hot air balloon while he’s in Aspen. 

Since he’s also a member of Monty Python, he alludes to the comedy team when appropriate. One of those references (and easily a high point for me) occurs when he encounters a cockatoo in Hong Kong, who ends up doing some damage on his pants (I mean trousers). In the photo caption, he claims that the bird had mistaken him for John Cleese. He also jokes about teaching one of the birds in the Bird Market to say “John Cleese is rubbish” (p. 133-135).

The travelogue makes me want to watch the 7-part BBC series, which is available in its entirety on Amazon Prime. However, I’m aware that the book offers more details of the journey than the show does.

Much as I enjoy reading this travelogue, there are two things that need to be acknowledged. The first is that this book was clearly written by a Westerner with a lot of resources. This is not an insult. It’s something that some reviewers noticed while reading it, and I happen to agree. At one point, he calls someone an Oriental. While I was disappointed with that, I was delighted in reading the sections, in which he mingles with the locals and getting to know them. This is especially true when he bonds with the crew of the dhow that takes him from Madras, India to Singapore. This became something that Palin would do in future travel documentaries and books, so the positives outweigh the negatives. In addition, what would have happened if Palin didn’t have the backing of the BBC? I don’t know if he would’ve traveled the world in 80 days, considering the delays he encountered.

The second thing is that the book is a time capsule for 1988. The clearest examples of these are the talks about how China will regain control of Hong Kong in nine years, glasnost, the press for the film A Fish Called Wanda, and the acknowledgement that George H. W. Bush just won the American presidency.

All in all, Around the World in 80 Days with Michael Palin by Sir Michael Palin is a great travelogue that marked the beginning of the author’s second career as a travel host. His observations are pretty funny and sincere, and he genuinely wants to get to know the people that he encounters on his travels. Although the book does scream 1988 at some points, it still remains pretty timeless. I would recommend this travelogue to not only Monty Python fans, but also to travelers itching to go on vacation. As for me, I’m going to watch the BBC series to continue fulfilling my travel wishes for the time being. Thank you Sir Michael!

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