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Dorothy is here tonight with a set of reviews for another 3 book categories. Welcome Dorothy! I will be sorry when we get to the end of these!
YA Fiction, Debut Novel & Nonfiction
by Dorothy A. Winsor
This is the fourth of five posts reviewing books I read as part of my project to read a book from each of the fifteen categories Goodreads uses in its Best Book of the Year contest. The categories this time are YA Fiction, Debut Novel, and Nonfiction.
YA Fiction
Amazon.com: Check & Mate eBook : Hazelwood, Ali: Kindle Store
Embarrassingly enough, in this category, I chose Check & Mate by Ali Hazelwood because I already had it on my kindle. I accidentally downloaded it when I read the adult book Love, Theoretically (reviewed in the romance category). So, I chose Check & Mate accidentally but fortuitously because it won in this category.
I enjoyed this book. The central character is 18-year-old Mallory, who’s decided not to go to college because she’s working to support her ailing mother and two younger sisters. Until five years ago, Mallory was a competitive chess player, natural since her now deceased father had been an internationally ranked Grand Master. In this book, she’s drawn back into the chess world. We see her training (which I didn’t know you did in chess) and playing in various tournaments. She’s so talented that the reigning World Champion wants to play her, and a romance develops between them.
I haven’t done a study, but I think many YA characters are older than they used to be. So you see an 18-year-old as the central character in this book. Sex is treated more frankly, too. Generally, YA books are the equivalent of PG13 movies. Characters can have sex, but it’s of the fade-to-black variety. This book is sex-positive, with Mallory having casual but responsible sex.
Debut Novel
In the Debut Novel category, I chose I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself by Marisa Crane. The book is part dystopia, part queer romance, and part account of grief. It opens with Kris in shock over the death of her wife in childbirth and the subsequent need to care for their daughter on her own. She lives in a surveillance society, with cameras watching her even inside her own bathroom.
The story is told in a series of short bits, like diary entries, addressed by Kris to her dead wife. She speaks mainly about their daughter, who’s wonderfully rebellious. Over the course of ten years, we see Kris gradually healing. In doing so, she talks about exoskeletons, hard structures on the outside of animals like snails. She herself has a figurative shell that protects her from future grief but also limits her growth.
So, the book is mainly about dealing with grief. The conflict, then, comes from the surveillance society that threatens Kris and her daughter.
It took me a while to get into this book. The structure is unconventional, organized not only in short entries, but also by chronology (structured by time) rather than plot (structured by cause and effect). I’ve blogged about the difference before. In a plot, everything is connected and makes sense. That contrasts to real life, where what I’m doing right now has no connection to what I did this morning. That’s one of the reasons fiction is more satisfying that life.
In this book, I missed the comfort of plot. On the other hand, what we see here is probably more realistic. I did eventually become engrossed in the book. It just took time. I admire the kind of originality it took to write this story.
Nonfiction
In the Nonfiction Category, I chose Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond. It’s a very BJ kind of book.
Desmond begins by detailing the extent of poverty in the US, which is wider and deeper than most people realize. This whole book is very data-driven. He brings the numbers for how many people live in poverty and how low their incomes are. One of his points is that the US is a wealthy nation, yet poverty persists to an extent greater than in other developed countries.
He goes through various possible causes, showing that they don’t account for the situation. Government spending on poverty has actually increased (though much of that money is now administered through the states and doesn’t get to poor families). Areas with larger numbers of immigrants don’t have more poverty. Single parent families don’t necessarily account for it either.
His conclusion is: “Poverty persists because some wish and will it to.”
We should, Desmond says, be asking who benefits from the existence of large numbers of poor people. One easy answer is that cheap workers subsidize the purchases the rest of us make. Every time we patronize a fast-food restaurant paying minimum wage, we save on our French fries. Some businesses also make money from poverty. Payday lenders make huge profits off of loans.
The tax code gives multiple breaks to the well-off. We’ve all seen the comparisons between the percentage of income paid in taxes by the rich and poor.
Desmond quotes sociologist C. Wright Mills in saying that we participate in “structural immorality.” Of course, people whose major investment is their house oppose anything that would drag its value down. Of course, old people who live on their IRAs want the stock market to go up, even if that means workers suffer.
He closes with some proposals for what to do, that are too extensive for this review. The book is a sober but enlightening read.
Comments? What have you been reading? Do any of the books here appeal to you?
The Dog Lanterns’ Pet Portraits!
WaterGirl
Welcome Dorothy! I have missed all the threads today, but I am hoping that Mr. DAW is doing well and back home with you.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Hello, people! It’s been a week, but Mr DAW is home and happily watching a NASCAR race he has recorded. I’m eating chocolate chip cookies and happy to be here.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
👍
WaterGirl
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Oh, yay, that’s great news! You deserve some butter, chocolate and sugar, baked into pure comfort.
VFX Lurker
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
❤️❤️❤️
MattF
Sort of a debut novel, although… not.
Just finished Kelly Link’s The Book of Love. Her previous fiction has all been fantasy/surreal short stories. This is her first novel, and it’s a doozie— breaks many novelistic rules and conventions. For example, there’s no protagonist— there are four teenagers who have four different ways of being unreliable. It’s beautifully written, and I’m still thinking about it. Definitely in the Magical Fantasy genre.
Yutsano
I’m just looking at your synopsis Dorothy, and people who enjoy Check and Mate would more than likely enjoy the anime Your Lie in April, which has similar themes although in the scene of competitive piano playing. It’s ultimately a romance anime although it does have a sad ending. It’s not typical of what people think anime is so I put it up as an exception to what most people stereotype anime.*
I can’t reword that last sentence to anything sounding natural so I’m leaving it be.
Also, too: FYWP.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@MattF: I’ve seen other people talk about Link’s book, too, and all of them have been enthusiastic. I’ll add it to my to-be-read list. Thanks!
tommyspoon
I just finished one of the best horror novels I’ve read in a long time: “Fever House” by Keith Rosson. Set in my home city of Portland, Oregon, it is the story of low-level criminals, a pair of hapless government black-op agents, an aging rock star and her son, and other outrageous characters all chasing after (or running like hell from) a severed human hand. It’s, literally, a helluva ride!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Yutsano: Competitive piano playing is another world I never even thought about. I’ll look for the anime.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@tommyspoon: Holy cow. That sounds, um, creative! I like stuff like that. It’s good when writers can cut loose.
TBone
Your description of the grief part of Exoskeletons has piqued my interest. Seems like a pretty true-to-life piece of fiction, my favorite lit (not the dystopian part). Everything is connected only when you pull back far enough, if that makes any sense. Thanks, I’ll be looking for this book.
eclare
So glad Mr. DAW is home!
I’m sure Poverty, by America, is an eye-opening book, with lots of detail, but I’m not sure that I have the mental bandwidth for something like that right now. I read Nickel and Dimed years ago, which touches on the same topics, and at times it was a very, very frustrating read. The book goes into detail about how if you fall into poverty, it is incredibly difficult to claw your way out due to all sorts of roadblocks.
I am several books behind in Michael Connelly’s series about Harry Bosch, and I think I’ll check those out next. He is one of my favorite mystery writers, and I can easily lose myself for several hours reading his books.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@TBone: I thought the dystopia part of Exoskeletons felt out of place for the kind of emotional book it was. It’s not really the center of the book. It took me a while to get into the book because of the short bits in which it’s written, but when I did, I was absorbed.
@eclare: Poverty, by America is so full of data that it’s difficult to read. I like mysteries. At one time, I was hitting those shelves at the library and reading two or three mysteries a week. It’s comforting to solve a mystery and see order restored.
I’ve never read a Bosch book, just seen the TV show.
ETA: Also, I mean to say that I think it was Connelly a friend heard speak and he told this story about being on a train, talking on the phone to his agent about ways to kill a characters. One of the other passengers was so alarmed that they called the police, and the cops were waiting at the next train stop. :-)
Xavier
End Times: Elites, Counterelites, and the Path of Political Disintegration by Peter Turchin is a very clarifying read on our times. Turchin shows through history how a wealth pump to elites and immiseration of the masses leads to political disintegration.
eclare
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Ha! I’m the opposite, never seen the show but I have read all of the books except for the last two or three. I can’t remember which service that it’s on, but whichever one it is, I don’t have it.
If you ever take the plunge, it is pretty important to read them chronologically, as characters and plot lines are woven throughout. If I had to pick just one as a favorite, it would be Angels Flight.
Eta> That’s hilarious!
frosty
I have one of those, it’s an app called Reading List. I started it in 2019, consolidating all the scraps of paper etc. I ended up with 134 books to read. I’ve now read 208 of them and have a list of 160 to-be-read!!
The last two I read were High Steel, about the ironworkers who built the bridges and skyscapers of New York City in the 20s, 30s, and 40s. The other one was Rose Code by Kate Quinn. She writes WWII fiction that rivals Alan Furst. The main characters were the women of Bletchley Park who decoded the German ENIGMA traffic. Great characters and plot, and realistic, based on all the codebreaking books I’ve read.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Xavier: That sounds plausible. Also scary.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@frosty: I’ve read a couple of Kate Quinn books, though I can’t remember which off-hand. At least one of them was for my book club. I’ve sworn off WWII books for the moment. There’ve been so many of them recently that I’m tired of them
frosty
@eclare: My favorite Connelly books are his latest ones with detective Renee Ballard who was busted down to the night shift, starting with The Late Show.
@eclare: This series is my favorite. I’ve read everything but I have to say the Lincoln Lawyer books never really grabbed me.
eclare
@eclare:
Per Google, season four of Bosch was based on Angels Flight.
eclare
@frosty:
Yes, that was very good. I had doubt about how Connelly would weave those two together, but it works.
Ohio Mom
I’ve always thought “the system” (or whatever you want to call it) needs poor people to keep us middle class ones in line. We cling to our status and are careful not to be too rebellious, lest we fall in poverty like those other people.
I missed the thread where Mr. DAW started his health crisis. Glad he’s home. I feel like I’ve peaked at the last chapter of a book. Don’t know what happened in all the previous pages but I like the ending.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Ohio Mom: I find it uncomfortable to read about how my actions might be keeping someone in poverty. With the best will in the world, it can be hard not to profit from others’ immiseration.
Mr DAW had a small heart attack on Thursday. He was in a pilates class here and had chest constriction and breathlessness. The instructor called the building’s wellness center and a nurse came and advised going to the ER. They called an ambulance and I met them at the hospital. The next couple of days, he mostly sat around in the cardiac unit waiting for things to happen. He’s finally home with new meds. He feels pretty good. Also btw, the hospital people were all impressed that he took pilates.
Baud
We need poverty so we don’t have to deal with right wingers posting misleading receipts for food on social media.
Heidi Mom
@eclare: On the theme of clawing your way out of poverty, nothing that I’ve ever read offers a better illustration than Barbara Kingsolver’s recent novel Demon Copperhead. It’s meant to echo David Copperfield, but in present-day Appalachia. When you have absolutely no margin of error, as is the case for Kingsolver’s characters, any minor event can become the proverbial last straw that crushes your last vestige of hope. (Eclare, I recognize that you’re not asking for recommendations for soul-crushing novels, I just wanted to express my great admiration for this one.)
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Heidi Mom: I think of Demon Copperhead frequently when I hear about poverty or addiction. It’s horrifying
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: I always wonder who believes these bills. They must go to restaurants themselves sometimes. They know what it costs. Same with the gas prices Trump cites.
CaseyL
It’s great to hear Mr. Windsor is home and recovering well! I think cookies are an excellent decompression tool :)
I think “poverty fatigue” is a real thing, and I’ve felt it myself. The US is not the only industrialized country that has had multi-decades of anti-poverty programs and intractable poverty. It may just be that, absent something like a UBI, there will always be people who just can’t get out of poverty, for a variety of reasons, some of which are not society’s fault. Yes, there are structural problems; yes, there are interest groups that benefit from having an underclass… but after a while, after poverty just keep on keeping on, I wonder just how much society can do about it without shortchanging other problems which are more amenable to concerted social program response. (Such as, for example, anti-discrimination laws that demonstrably help people improve their lives and stay that way.)
JPL
@Dorothy A. Winsor: That must have been so hard on you, so please take care.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@CaseyL: Poverty, by America does suggest some things that work better than others against poverty. UBI was one of them, as I recall.
@JPL: Thank you. This whole thing is exhausting for both of us.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Has any country implemented UBI on a broad scale? I’m not sure how one can assert that works better than other programs, if it’s not been tested in the real world.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: The closest I’ve seen is a small scale experiment in Stockton CA. As I recall, people got a fairly small stipend ($500/mo maybe?). Among other things, it increased their employment. I don’t remember the details, but I remember that because critics claim people would be less likely to work.
Wapiti
In the last week I read Fourth Wing, by Rebecca Yarrow, and attempted to read Tress of the Emerald Sea, by Brandon Sanderson. You had reviewed both of these maybe a month back. I liked Fourth Wing, though I find Sith-like situations where a military is eating their own as horribly implausible. I couldn’t get into Tress at all; the writer spends a lot of time breaking the fourth wall and I’m not reading to be impressed with his asides every couple of pages.
TBone
@Dorothy A. Winsor: grief itself is dystopian, so I kinda get why it’s there but will have to see for myself (your further description made me even more interested 😊). I’m hoping to find the book soon!
TBone
@Heidi Mom: I love her books, now that’s 2 on my to-read list. Animal Dreams hooked me.
Steeplejack
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Possible edit needed: there is no link at “blogged about the difference” in the original post.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
People are unreasonably uptight about people not working. I get that you can’t create a program where most people don’t work, but we could make a lot of society better off if people could accept that a small percentage of people might end up not working.
JPL
@tommyspoon: I put it on my list. During the trump years, horror kept me sane. It sounds odd but I discovered that I wasn’t alone.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Wapiti: It took me a while to get into Tress, but I eventually did. I reacted the same way you did to Fourth Wing.
@TBone: My library had the book. As I’ve occasionally mentioned, my building is next door to the library. It was a big plus when we were choosing where to live.
Another Scott
@Baud:
Made me look…
This map says there have been 153 UBI experiments in the USA and 65 are active (some are private). There’s a little more information available via clicking on the dots.
It’s expensive to be poor in America. :-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Steeplejack: Oops. Here’s the link:
https://dawinsor.com/2017/12/18/plot-vs-chronology-whats-the-difference/
Ohio Mom
@Baud: I sometimes joke that Ohio Family receives UBI — our Social Security checks.
That’s not to say there aren’t strings attached. Until Ohio Dad reached his full retirement age, there was a limit on how much he could earn from his side gig. And there are strict limits on how much Ohio Son can earn and keep his SSDI (and Medicaid).
TBone
@Dorothy A. Winsor: good to know, and I’m glad to hear your library is so close! Also glad you and yours are well and safe. Libraries were wonderful escape hatches for me throughout the thick and thin times. Ours here is very nice, with great people and local artists’ displays, lots of events, etc.
dnfree
I’ve been reading “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store” by James McBride. I resisted it because it sounded trite to me (even the name of the grocery store), but when I saw it on Obama’s recommended list I gave in. So far my initial impression has been confirmed and I’m disappointed. The characters are mostly one-dimensional. Saintly; evil; loyal; inept but well-meaning; the occasional slightly miraculous event. The setting is a mixed community of blacks, Jews, and other poor people in a town that’s mostly white middle-class. I’m going to finish it just to see how the various plot points resolve but I’m resenting the time it’s taking.
JPL
@dnfree: I’m only 20 percent in, but so far I’m not impressed.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@dnfree: I got that for Christmas and read it. Once it settles on the deaf boy’s story it picked up for me.
Kristine
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Glad Mr DAW is home and doing well. Enjoy those cookies
I have The Book of Love—I should dig in
dnfree
@JPL: I’m about 45% done. One of my arithmetic-related habits is to look at the number on the last page of a book (not counting either acknowledgments at the end or introductions with lower-case Roman numerals) when I start reading it. Then when I put the book down, I look at the page number I’m on and calculate my percentage complete.
dnfree
@Dorothy A. Winsor: That’s about where I am so I’ll hope it gets better.
Steeplejack
@eclare:
Bosch is on Amazon Prime.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@dnfree: I mostly read on kindle these days, and it displays the percent finished.
Baud
@dnfree:
“I blame Obama” is finally an accurate statement.
JPL
After Michael Crichton came out against global warming, I didn’t buy another book of his. I will admit that I love watching the Bosch series on Amazon.
may he rip btw
dnfree
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Well….then what would I do to keep my mind sharp?
(I tend to make almost everything into a story problem. I have been interested in recent years to find that two of my three brothers do the same thing, I was telling one of them that when I’m ironing, I like it when there are for instance 12 garments, because after each garment I might be 25% done, 33-1/3% done, etc. My brother said he would prefer 11 garments, for instance, to make the calculation more challenging. Either way, when I’m done I calculate average time per garment.)
Dorothy A. Winsor
@dnfree: Holy cow. I can’t imagine.
Baud
@JPL:
Do we libs support global warming now? I didn’t get the memo.
Steeplejack
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Thanks. I like reading your stuff.
JPL
@Baud: HA HA poor guy died before the term was changed to climate change. Okay, he was definitely not poor.
JPL
Lessons in Chemistry was a good read that would appeal to alot of people.
dnfree
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yeah, not everyone’s husband is probably accustomed to being informed that ironing took 7.5 minutes per garment this month when I’m done. He also has to hear what percentage I saved at the grocery store or CVS.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@JPL: I liked Lessons in Chemistry. It’s a good read.
Yutsano
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I forgot to mention it’s only 22 episodes, so it’s not a long slog like a lot of anime can be. It’s a really enjoyable story plus the animation is wonderful. I hope you enjoy it! It’s available on Crunchyroll but you might need premium for the dub (which is really good!) so if you can handle subtitles it will still be good.
Steeplejack
@dnfree:
That percentage calculation is done for you automatically on the Kindle.
Currently at 57% in The Saint of Bright Doors, by Vaira Chandrasekera. It has been a bit of a slog, but I haven’t given up yet.
Steeplejack
@dnfree:
Eleven garments is easy: each one is 9%—9.1% if you’re super anal.
JPL
@Steeplejack: omg I thought that watching my neighbor use scissors on his lawn was bad, but this is a step to far.
Steeplejack
@JPL:
Michael Connelly writes the Harry Bosch books, not Michael Crichton.
Steeplejack
@JPL:
Inorite.
JPL
@Steeplejack: yup you’re right. I didn’t read them though. Chrichton is the Jurassic Park guy
Earlier I blamed the wrong union for supporting repubs, and now I’m blaming hte wrong Michael as being a climate change denier. I’m going to hang my head in shame.
eclare
@Heidi Mom:
I appreciate the recommendation! That book is definitely on my list. I need to check back with the library, earlier there was a massive wait list.
stinger
Glad to hear about your husband, Dorothy!
My last trip to the library resulted in:
Just starting Madeline Martin’s The Librarian Spy; I too have been experiencing WWII fatigue, but so far, so good–it helps that at least the opening chapter was set in the Library of Congress! When checking the books out, I slid that one across the counter last and said, “Now I’m going to find out what you ladies are really up to back there.” There was a staffer a little farther back from the counter who looked surprised, until the librarian helping me held up the book so the other could see the title. They both laughed. I imagine the entire staff has read it!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@stinger: I liked The Lost Apothecary. I think Winter’s Bone became a movie, which was, indeed, dark.
You probably know that jackal Paul Wartenberg is a librarian. He recently published a short story collection (Funny Locations) in which librarians play a heroic role. :-)
eclare
@stinger:
OMG if you haven’t seen the movie Winter’s Bone, watch it once you have finished the book. Jennifer Lawrence is amazing in it. The whole film nails the setting, the attitudes, the lives everyone leads. I will never watch it again, but damn, I was mesmerized.
billcinsd
@Dorothy A. Winsor: If you don’t count Social Security for seniors. That is essentially a UBI
Dorothy A. Winsor
@billcinsd: And it is excellent.
Chris
@Baud:
My general view on this;
1) There are things that society should guarantee to anyone with basically no questions asked – food, shelter, and health care probably being the three big ones.
2) This would not actually disrupt the economy nearly as much as people claim, because people want more than just food, shelter, and health care. They’re still going to want to buy that video game or take their girlfriend out on that date or whatever, which costs money. This means you’re still going to have the same basic dynamic that the economy has now – people doing jobs that they may or may not like because that’s how they get the money to buy the things they want. Providing the baseline needs simply eliminates the most exploitative parts of that relationship (employees needn’t fear that they’ll literally be jobless or homeless if their job is abusive or toxic), and offers some protection from things like recessions or pandemics.
3) There will, almost certainly, still be people in a system like that who can’t hold a job and basically spend their entire life at the public housing/cafeteria thing. 3a) This will be an extreme minority and nothing like the “half the nation going on the dole!” fantasies the right loves. People like to buy things. Everything about our society is proof positive of that. 3b) A sizable share of these will be people with genuine psychological issues, who have trouble holding down a job for the same reason they have trouble functioning in society in general; something that needs treatment, not tough love. 3c) For the remainder, that special little sliver of people who are genuinely too lazy to work and yet comfortable to accept subsistence living and nothing else… Do you want these people in the workforce in the first place? Do you want them taking jobs because it’s that or starve and then fucking up your workplace until they have to be fired and then the whole process starts again? Just take the hit of housing, feeding, and medicating them; it’s a very minor and more than affordable hit.
Chris
@JPL:
It’s funny, Jurassic Park has a side rant from Ian Malcolm late in the novel on the topic of why “destroy the planet” is something only idiots and egomaniacs care about, because “the planet” can survive anything we can throw at it, we don’t have anything like the power to “destroy the planet,” it’s just we humans that might not survive ourselves.
It comes out of absolutely nowhere and is transparently Crichton taking a shit on the “save the planet” types based on nothing but wordplay to such a degree that it’s really hard to credit him with good faith. (Literally no one thinks “the planet” is in danger in some Alderaan sense of being blasted to pieces. It’s always been a perfectly well understood figure of speech for “the world as we know it.” And you know that, Mike, you pompous fucking windbag).
Let’s just say I was utterly unsurprised when he turned out to be a global warming denier.
stinger
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yes! I have Paul Wartenberg’s book!
eclare
@Chris:
Very good points. I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
tommyspoon
@JPL: My WIP is a political/action thriller that is my cathartic reaction to our current political climate. With a smidge of horror thrown in, because reasons.
;-)