Books

Sand in My Bra edited by Jennifer L. Leo

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366190Female travelers of the world will love this compilation of travel essays from 28 women headed into hilarious, dangerous, and awkward situations all over the world.  Although some of the essays are generic travel stories, most are distinctly female, and it made me aware of how infrequently I read about women adventurers.  There are stories about accepting imperfect bodies simply by being on a beach overseas, and horror stories of period catastrophes, and a lot of unironic adoration of being female.

I mean, that’s pretty much it.  If you like traveling and you like women, then you will probably like the majority of these essays.  But hey, here’s a quote to entice you just a little bit more:

This is the heart of travel.  This is why we do it.  This is why we are so willing to strap our fragile bodies into metal capsules and fly thousands of miles with hundreds of strangers endlessly exhaling new viruses into our airspace, drink water from dubious sources, eat food virulent with unknown flora and fauna, put up with impossible travel companions, lost luggage, and the legions of mule-like bureaucrats who manage to win positions of petty power in every city and village on earth.  We do it because we love this beautiful dangerous planet and we want to know it personally and, on balance, the pluses far outweigh the minuses, right?

Continue reading →

Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling

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mindy-kaling-why-not-meMindy’s second book is even better than her first!  Why Not Me? is less a memoir and more a series of essays about her life right now.  I’m happy to learn about her past, but I’ll be honest – I’m more interested in her life as a 30-something professional woman stumbling through love and work and being a role model.  And those topics are made infinitely better because of her hilarious sense of humor.

What I love most about Mindy is that she’s honest – she doesn’t try to downplay the perks of being famous (in fact, she revels in them), but she also freely owns up to its downsides.  It is so refreshing to read about how to be beautiful: fake hair, spray tans, tailored clothing, technological gadgets, bra tricks, good lighting, facial masks, and knowing how to pose for pictures with your arms akimbo.  No nonsense about eating right and glowing skin.  Hollywood beauty is all about hard work, and Mindy does wonders for boosting people’s body images by getting honest.

I also loved her candid enjoyment of sex scenes (“You get to crawl around in a bed with another person you either a) already know well or b) are getting to know better in the most cozy and intimate way possible.  Yes, it’s true that an entire room of people is watching you when you shoot a sex scene.  To that, I say: the more, the merrier!  Most of those people are artists whose job it is to make sure your physical imperfections are cloaked in mysterious shadows.  By the end of the shooting day, you’ll wish there were more people there.”) and the essay about her and B.J. Novak being “soup snakes.”  THOSE TWO.  When will they work it out?   Continue reading →

Winter by Marissa Meyer

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Winter-finalOkay, this might be awful, but I wasn’t blown away by Winter, the last installment in The Lunar Chronicles.  I think maybe it was too long?  All the action takes place on Luna, but there’s just so much back and forth and splitting up and reuniting, and…I don’t know!  I liked it, but I wasn’t desperate to read it the way I expected.

The characters remain amazing.  Meyer has found a way to make her heroines and heroes both strong and vulnerable.  The women are especially powerful – the final confrontation between Cinder and Levana was an epic standoff…between two women!  That doesn’t happen nearly enough.  I also really liked Winter, and how her mental breakdowns were viewed as weakness by ignorant bad guys, but as strength by those who know her.  And Thorne remains the dashing snarky hero of my heart.   Continue reading →

Nimona by Noelle Stevenson

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Inimona_final‘ve long been a fan of Gingerhaze (Noelle Stevenson’s online persona), but I didn’t read Nimona when it was a webcomic.  I hate waiting for new updates (which is also why I watch Netflix more than TV).  But now it’s out in book form, and IT IS SO GOOD.

Nimona is clever, gorgeously drawn in a deceptively simplistic animation, and incredibly touching while also being laugh-out-loud funny on multiple occasions.  In the words of Stevenson herself:

Nimona is about a supervillain mad scientist knight and his shapeshifting, trigger-happy girl sidekick, the titular Nimona. Ballister is actually a pretty nice guy, but Nimona just wants to blow stuff up. They go up against Sir Goldenloin, the codpiece-wearing swishy-haired hero, and the duplicitous institution he represents. It all takes place in a medieval-futuristic world.

It’s dedicated “to all the monster girls” and I am in love with the raw emotion behind Nimona’s story.  She’s a shapeshifter, dangerous and angry.  She joins Ballister Blackheart in supervillainy in one of the coolest settings I’ve seen:  there are kings and knights alongside science labs and touch screens.  Teaming up against Goldenloin (who has a secret past with Blackheart) and the good (evil?) Institute, Nimona and Blackheart become good friends…until Nimona’s monstrous side gets out of hand.

nimona3_11

Nimona is every girl who has felt Too Much, who feels used and abused, who knows trusting people is the first step toward being betrayed.  This comic gets deep, y’all.  The fact that she makes jokes about “I’m a shark!” is just icing on top of a really emotional story about beauty and the beast – but genderswapped!  I’m SUCH a fan.

You can read the first three comics on Stevenson’s website HERE.  Though be forewarned, the drawing style matures throughout the story (it was written over the course of a couple years).  It gets SO GOOD.  Now I’m off to dive back into the Internet world of Gingerhaze.


Book Jacket

Nimona is an impulsive shapeshifter with a knack for villainy.  Lord Ballister Blackheart is a villain with a vendetta.

As sidekick and supervillain, Nimona and Lord Blackheart are about to wreak some serious havoc.  Their mission: prove to the kingdom that Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin and his buddies at the Institution of Law Enforcement and Heroics aren’t the heroes everyone thinks they are.

Explosions will be involved.  Science and sharks will be too.

But as small acts of mischief escalate into a vicious battle, Lord Blackheart realizes that Nimona’s powers are as murky and mysterious as her past.  And her unpredictable wild side might be more dangerous than he is willing to admit.

Nemeses!  Dragons!  Science!  Symbolism!

All these and more await in this brilliantly subversive, sharply irreverent epic from Noelle Stevenson, based on her award-winning web comic.

Release Date: May 2015

Girl at the End of the World by Elizabeth Esther

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514iqc7VMnL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_I am often drawn to books about people who grew up in conservative Christian circles who wind up abandoning their faith because of the pain in their past (like Jesus Land).  I want to understand how the faith that so empowers me has hurt other people so badly.  And I want to know how God’s people too often lead others away from God instead of toward him.  Many such spiritual memoirs end with the author swearing off religion, but in Girl at the End of the World, despite a childhood of emotional, spiritual, and physical abuse, Elizabeth finds her way back to faith, not through the fundamentalist religion of her past, but through the mystery-embracing truths of Catholicism.

Then I realize: She isn’t just Jesus’s mother.  She is the mother of our Lord and Savior.  Mary is important.

I touch my tender belly and think of the twins growing inside me.  I’m not just a mother either.  I am important.

The thought breaks over me like the rising dawn of a new day: What if God is pursuing me through the gentle love of His Son’s mother? What if, knowing that all the masculine roads to God are blocked for me, Jesus has sent His mother to lead me back to Him?

The granddaugher of the founders of The Assembly, Elizabeth grew up in a religious cult.  She writes about the pain of her childhood and the intense anxiety it provoked with raw honesty that absolutely draws the reader in.  She isn’t hesitant to expose herself, her family, or her faith, and because of that, her story is a beautiful portrayal of brokenness and hope.   Continue reading →

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

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This was so much fun!!  While also being really dark.  It’s a hard balance tSix-of-Crowso create a criminal group who are…actually criminals.  I love Kaz desperately, but there is no doubt in my mind that dude is bad news.  But the great thing is that as horrible as he is, Inej can totally handle him, so I feel okay wanting them to be in love.  But I’m rambling too quickly without any background.

Set in Bardugo’s world from her Grisha trilogy, we get to explore Ketterdam and Fjerda.  And our cast of six characters are from all over the world – I really appreciate a woman who creates a fictional world and still manages to have racially diverse characters.  I mean, honestly, Bardugo is genius at world building.  She’s created five nations with distinct people, values, languages, and cultures.  Throwing them all together in one criminal gang and watching them hate and love each other is so much fun!   Continue reading →

Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard: The Sword of Summer by Rick Riordan

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A new Rick Riordan series: rejoice!

Seriously, will I ever tire of reading his modern-age mythologies?  I honestly don’t think so, especially when he can get me interested in Norse mythology (of which I know very little other than that I am attracted to Tom Hiddleston’s Loki).  Speaking of which, it was fun to see Loki on the page, as well as Thor, and to see how they compare to their Marvel counterparts.

But Riordan’s talent proves that he didn’t need to lean on the popularity of Marvel’s Norse gods to make a really fun book. I’m still getting the hang of Norse mythology, but I like Freya and her cats, and the Nine Worlds provided a lot of really fun settings for our characters to explore.   Continue reading →

Your Future: Book Tag!

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Kat from Life and Other Disasters tagged me in Your Future Book Tag (after I mentioned how fun it looked), and I highly recommend you check out her life as the books have fated:  it’s pretty amazing!

Pick 5 books of your own choosing and then use 1 book to answer 2 of the given questions!

Let’s do this!  I can’t wait to see what the books have in store for me!

My 5 Books

Book Future Tag

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz
The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien

1. Open book 1 to a random page. Look at the first word on the page. If it’s less than 5 letters, you will go to college. If it’s more than 5 letters, you won’t go to college. (Six of Crows) 

My whole life revolves around school and going back for more degrees.  I don’t know if I want to continue this pattern in a fictional future or break out and try a lack of higher education….here goes.  Okay, my word was “her,” so I guess I’m going to college!  Continue reading →

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

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I’ve JUST finished the book, like two seconds ago, and I LOVED IT.  I expected to like it, an a sort of ironic “Isn’t this odd, reading a pseudo Harry Potter fanfiction that was excerpted in Rowell’s Fangirl?” And for a while, I was mostly interested in assigning every character to their HP equivalent, but that quickly turned into genuine investment.

I LOVE Simon!  I love Baz!  I love Penelope!  I even love Agatha, although for a while she was a useless wet blanket (but then she acknowledges her role as a useless wet blanket, only meant to further someone else’s story, and when she said “peace out!” I adored her for it).  I love the magical world in Carry On, how they have phones and computers and are simply just like Normals, but with magic.  That makes more sense to me than Harry Potter’s culturally-backwards wizarding world.  But!  I’m not comparing!  (Okay, it’s impossible not to compare.)   Continue reading →

And Nothing But the Truthiness by Lisa Rogak

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I am tangentially obsessed with Stephen Colbert.  I’ve never really watched Colbert Report (except for the week he interviewed The Hobbit actors), nor have I read any of his parody books.  But.  I kind of circle his existence, watching a video clip here, noting a passing fact (he teaches Sunday School) there.  He seems like a hilarious and decent human being, which is enough to make me slow down whenever I pass a magazine with him on the cover.

That was a very long introduction to say:  I read Rogak’s biography of Stephen Colbert (the person, but also sometimes the character), and I can feel the obsession deepening.  I mean, why would I spend 260 pages reading about the conception and execution of a show I have never really watched?  Because Stephen Colbert is a fascinating individual who is both pompous and humble, hilarious and sincere, self-obsessed and family-focused.  Of course, this because Stephen Colbert (decent human being) plays Stephen Colbert (patriotic idiot).  I love them both, and all iterations between.

While I enjoyed reading about The Daily Show and Colbert Report, I was much more interested in the earlier chapters, covering his years as a child and teenager.  Once his career overshadowed his family life (in the biography, if not in real life), I found myself wanting more personal information.  I loved reading about his siblings, his amazing parents, his tragedy, his bullied years, his escape into fantasy, and his discovery of humor as a defense mechanism.

Now I need to fill in my Colbert gaps and watch everything he’s ever done.

51RhWuDYBVL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_Book Jacket

No other comedian can generate headlines today the way Stephen Colbert can.  With his appearance at a Congressional hearing, his rally in Washington, D.C., his bestselling book, his creation of the now-accepted word truthiness, and of course his popular TV show, nearly everyone (except the poor Congressional fools who agree to be interviewed on his show) has heard of him.

Yet all these things are part of a character also named Stephen Colbert.  Who is he really?  In And Nothing but the Truthiness, biographer Lisa Rogak examines the man behind the character.  She reveals the roots of his humor, growing up as the youngest of eleven siblings, and the tragedy that forever altered the family.  She charts his early years earning his chops first as a series acting student and later a budding improv comic, especially his close connection with Amy Sedaris, which led to the cult TV show Strangers with Candy.  And Rogak offers a look inside how The Daily Show works, and the exclusive bond that Colbert and Jon Stewart formed that would lead to Colbert’s own rise to celebrity.

A behind-the-scenes look into the world of one of the biggest comedians in America, And Nothing but the Truthiness is an illuminating read for any resident of Colbert Nation.

Release Date:  October 2011