Interrupting Soliloquy

Until a few years ago, I had a very specific idea of what "loving the English language" meant. It meant that there was a holy "Good English" to which I ascribed, and though I loved to play with words, "can" and "may" were different, "who" and "whom" differentiated the knowledgeable from the chaff (though I've always had a hard time knowing when it was the right time to use it). People who used "Good English" were smart, and I wanted to be as smart as possible. Most people do.

A few years ago, I realized how incredibly, utterly, pointlessly stupid I was being by trying to be "smart". The tide changed; I became exhausted of people persnicking about apostrophes, jabbing about figuratively vs literally, etc etc. Maybe this was all particularly hurtful because I was forced to look at how horrible I was being when I was on the other side of the conversation. To try and feel smarter, it involved a lot of time putting other people down, through simple mistakes I could hardly deny I was above or beyond. As I grew and my tastes and interests changed, I became less interested in the Godlike Perfect English that didn't exist, but Mankind's Fluid English that was always changing, and that none of us has a real claim to. What importance is "can" or "may" when I know what a person means by the statement? Why are my parents' heavily accented English put to disregard when they had spent longer than my entire life in this country, but made the apparently selfish decision to not grow up with the language. In contrast, I spent all of my middle school years using the word "random" to mean anything from the typical definition to "a thing that is cool"?

I love English - Stamper does too, and it's nice to read a book that loves words from an expert background, and a background that says it's okay that words change, that you're not better OR WORSE for using "literally" in a figurative sense, especially when there are at least a dozen words that meant the opposite of what they meant at inception (and we also spent an entire year using "-ception" as a way of saying "a thing inside a thing" and everyone knew what we meant). And she does it in a way that exhibits her own love of language, playing with it in a frothy light way that highlights the random (literally [actually]) changing rules we use with it. I love love love it. It acknowledges our linguistic faults as not necessarily being faults, our dialects making us unique, and that language can be what we make it. Specifying a right way vs a wrong way to use a word often comes months or years after that word is already being used that way. Anyway, did you know that David Foster Wallace, general dick about using English the "right" way used "literally" in a figurative sense?

Lexicographers are merely the ones who watch us and try to help us navigate waters if we're unfamiliar with them. They're meticulous when they can be, broad when they're forced to be. If anything, it reminds us that we're all human, and that we're the ones who created English, and if to err is human, then... well... Lexicography doesn't come off as a rip-roaringly wild kind of profession, but its charm is the dedication everyone you bump into through the course of the books pours into their work. A month spend revising the word "take"? Christ. That is dedication. It's sad then, that it has to end on such a bittersweet note: a reminder of the intense changes the internet and technology has brought to the world, and that information has become increasingly seen as free, for better or for worse, which results in lower profits.

But this book has brought a new delight and window to my life to the world of the English language, and a deep appreciation for the people who devote their lives to it. I love love loved it.

Literally.

A friendly introduction to the world of coding, laced with encouragement, broad thinking, and people calling to you from the finish line, waving at you to join them.

Bleh. I don't hate it. In fact, as an activist starter pack, I think it's perfect.

Mostly I felt frustrated at certain limitations she didn't talk about. Oftentimes when I read Solnit, I'll start getting a little worked up under what I perceive to be her own "privelobliviousness", and then she'll turn around and show me that she was thinking about that too. I didn't necessarily feel that with this one.

Is it weird that she takes a close-minded stance on the middle ground? I rarely felt like she was opening her arms to people in despair, who, yes, sometimes ARE the people who insulate themselves with downer attitude to seem more intelligent or to avoid responsibility as she rightfully condemns - but also are often people so downtrodden by systems that they simply don't see a way out. People who turn to more drastic measures to improve their situation because in the current time, there IS no way out for them. To these people she gives little comfort, other than maybe a "sometimes it works out in weird ways!" ... Thanks????? I get her point, pointless cynicism is about as unhelpful as blind optimism, but she seems to mix up that cynicism with actual despair, and it feels like she has little to offer for the immediate moment - everything needs to be big perspective, which is a privilege to be able to consider when homelessness is NOW, hunger and scraps and survival are NOW and TOMORROW and not SOMEDAY IN THE FUTURE. There is painfully little understanding of that, I feel, when these are the people most in danger.

I also felt largely uncomfortable with her extollment of nonviolent protests - almost implying that most protests aren't nonviolent at their inception, that they aren't escalated by police intensity and the resulting perception that groups (particularly of people of color) are there to be violent, which then becomes its own self-fulfilling prophecy. It was a very "isn't it so great that the Women's March was so peaceful" type of mindset, ignoring that yes, the great MLK marched peacefully - and then proceeded to be ripped apart by police and was assassinated in the end. But it makes a great story, so................

Yes, as long as you are poem that inspires Dante, it's okay. Ignoring stories that go untold, ignoring stories that are vilified in current media, ignoring that yes, perhaps her more recent marches have not had a visible leader doesn't mean that there aren't people who organize the whole damn thing and that those people tend to be underscored in comparison to people who just needed to show up nowadays. Not that those people aren't valuable, but there is a certain element of delusion I feel like is happening here. If leaders are groups, then LEADERS ARE GROUPS. At the center of a huge Black Lives Matter movement, there is an actual group of people in the middle who stand for it and organize it. Those are leaders, even if they don't isolate it to a single face of a movement.

I do love and agree with her on certain concepts, such as the very true perception that a "victory" is the end of a story, and that real life continues long after a "victory". However, on the same hand she criticizes people who don't take partial victories as victories, insisting on an all universal utopia as the only victory that can exist. All I could think about here is the gap between white women and women of color. The insistence that a win for white women is a win for all women - which it rarely ever is, but the rest of us should be content in this "victory" and not disparage it anyway. I don't feel like this is presented as "it is a victory but the larger victory would be for ALL WOMEN", it largely felt like "just because the victory doesn't include you, person who must still deal with all these side effects, doesn't mean that it isn't a victory". I get the point, I just felt like it was more critical of the continually disadvantaged than it had to be. Going back to the despair thing - how are people not supposed to feel despair when victories consistently don't include them? The fact that "well, wage discrepancy was even lower than 70 cents to a dollar before, isn't that a victory" is framed to be "the man has a point" as opposed to "are you kidding me" was infuriating as hell.

I felt like Solnit was trying to be expansive, but in the weirdest way I felt like she was being incredibly single-minded about being in the middle. Normally I feel like she makes large concessions to her own privilege and the possibility that she isn't the final word and the all seeing perspective on things, but I did NOT feel that here.

This comic is beautiful, sweet, and abhorrently terrifying. And the reason I can't give it 5 stars is that it's TOO DARN SHORT.

The fact that this comic is gorgeous cannot be denied. When Sandy's dream world opens, you are overwhelmed with color and vibrancy that threatens to rip itself from the page. When the story takes dark and ominous turns that will remind you of [book:Anya's Ghost|9615347], everything takes a ghostly pallor filled with myriad eyes - which is just great because did I mention I have a huge phobia with eyes.

I love the plot. I love the idea of monsters NEEDING a girl's creative imagination to consume and thrive, which is in turn one of the few ways that Sandy feels validation in doing what she does.

The unavoidable, unfair, UNDENIABLE frustration is how short and rushed the comic feels overall. There is so much great stuff here. I LOVE the idea of monsters feeding on artwork, and also the implication that they are the only ones that can give her art validation in a world where her creativity is being suppressed. I thought it was sweet and subtle how Sandy DID pick up something in her math class which she uses against the monsters. It's just that it goes too fast. Especially as far as pacing goes I didn't feel like the twist of the girl turning out to be a demon was extended enough. With a couple of more pages we could have used some well deserved development between the two, to establish that losing validation, which is the monsters' main hold over Sandy, would be a big deal. But it hurries you along like a frustrated nanny clapping her hands together and pointing at the door. Because the comic is unable to establish a normality, the twists can't feel like they're NOT normality. The final pages lack resonance because the story as a whole wasn't able to pepper its message throughout and even if it did it was too fast to take tempered beats of it.

There is quite literally nothing wrong with this comic other than its length, in my opinion. Maybe one day it can branch out to being something more expansive. Also I am definitely buying a hard copy when it comes out for real.

God only knows why this book is an incredibly dry read, but it really, really was. In comparison to another book about female mathematicians and scientists, [b:Hidden Figures|25953369|Hidden Figures The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race|Margot Lee Shetterly|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1481844518s/25953369.jpg|45855800], this book both dragged and didn't drag enough. It throws people and lives at you in fast motion, leaving you unable to settle or focus on anyone except Pickering and arguably Draper to some extent. I can pick out some other names, such as Maury, Cannon and so on, but ask me about anecdotes about them specifically or their daily lives and I come up flat. Other than that they were prodigious minds of their generation and field it's hard to remember them as personal figures, which makes them hard to keep track of.

That's the main problem - when it talks about the glass, a lack of visual assistance makes it difficult to keep interested. When it talks about people, people are introduced, married, ignored, forgotten, reintroduced with such speed that it's hard to tell what's going on and who we're focusing on in the current moment. This may not be a problem for some people, but I found myself drifting off and having to reread pages over and over again. This book would have taken me half the time if I had been able to focus on it, but it did almost everything it could to make it impossible. I felt like I could replace names with variables like in algebra and it would have made MORE sense, and I don't feel like I need a backstory to x, y, and z to appreciate their importance.

Hidden Figures fixates on three particular people, and in doing so manages to weave in everyone's lives. Glass Universe, in whatever way, made it difficult for me to keep track of what had happened. Considering the several deaths that happen in the book - that I had to go back and reread because I was a paragraph into mourning and didn't notice that Pickering's wife had passed away, for example? This was one of the most damning realizations - that the book hadn't kept me focused enough to notice that people had died. I had a hard time visualizing or feeling any interactions - they were merely things that happened. And one thing just happens after another and another - one could argue, I suppose, that this is all history is, but it lacked any dimension, and the connections would stray so far from the central point that it would all seem a little pointless.

The chapter titles seem loose and broad, making the book seem even more scattered than it was. There were huge portions of chapters that I didn't feel were focused to the title at all, diverging so much that I would just stare at the top of the page wondering what was happening and if this had anything to do with anything.

A fascinating topic, to be sure, and this isn't to say there wasn't stuff about it was interesting. I retained a lot more than I initially thought I did, but I felt like I was reading this book in a stupor, like I was going in and out of sleep even while I stared directly at the page.

I guess the big way to discover your identity right now in middle grade fiction is to be in a play. I don't know if I'd like this trend to go beyond this book - like, I understand the reasoning, but having read both [b:George|24612624|George|Alex Gino|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1423358952s/24612624.jpg|44165520] AND [b:Gracefully Grayson|20873172|Gracefully Grayson|Ami Polonsky|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1413143765s/20873172.jpg|40211796] last year, I guess I'm hoping that this isn't the only way we're ever going to talk about LGBTQ themes to the point of stereotyping.

That said, I'm really very glad this book was written. The thing about reading both George and Grayson last year (along with the publications of [b:The Other Boy|28371999|The Other Boy|M.G. Hennessey|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1457115294s/28371999.jpg|48451903] and [b:Lily and Dunkin|23203257|Lily and Dunkin|Donna Gephart|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1453060643s/23203257.jpg|42747317], is that middle grade fiction was finally starting to be more open about gender identity. In contrast, however, I was still seeing a lot of holes in gay representation. (Also, I mean, the trans thing rarely gets put in books as part of the world and not the main focus of the story but that's a rant for another day.) I can guess that this is for a lot of reasons. Trans is about identity; who you are. Being gay is about ~*~*~CRUSHESSSSS~*~*~*~ AND~*~*~KISSING~*~*~ AND ~*~*~*~SEX~*~*~. I mean who would have guessed, right? We call it sexuality. I could go into how most Disney films end with a man and a woman kissing, how awful can it be when it's two girls, and how one is a-ok and one is PROMOTING GAYNESS but I'm sure you're all getting my point here, it's just a long rant I've had since I discovered I probably wasn't totally straight.

And the book is really sweet. Not only is the romance itself really sweet, the book itself makes a lot of points about romance, and on some level even dismantles the Romeo and Juliet narrative, even while loving and more or less staying true to it. No one is "stupid" in the book, everyone has their reasons. Even the person who initially comes off as the jock idiot says some of the most insightful stuff about how narrow-minded the play is. And not all of it is even thrown away with a "BUT IT'S LOOOOVE" argument! Though Willow and her crew more or less stay one-dimensional, I can't say I minded. A lot of the book toed around my "I don't know whether I hate this because I remember what it's like to be 13 and now I have HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE PERSPECTIVE or a character is GENUINELY IRRITATING" lines, but it never crossed firmly enough to be actually irritating. Tessa especially bordered; the worst part being that I could totally imagine myself acting that way. But I didn't hate Tessa. She was annoying but never to a point of hatred - a balance not often achieved in children's books.

I also appreciated the book's depiction of different families. Mattie herself has a close relationship with her half-sister Cara, who isn't even called a "half-sister". Tessa's mother is divorced, if I remember correctly? And so it seems, is Gemma's family, if they're not just living separately for financial job reasons. None of it is treated in the book like "THE DIVORCED FAMILY" or anything, which was refreshing.

I was kind of holding out for Elijah to be gay for Liam, but I guess we can't have everything.

I think it'll be an important book. Maybe one day we'll get an interracial gay love drama in middle grade and showing it *gasp* ON THE COVER. Both racial diversity AND LGBT diversity????? WHAT'S NEXT, DISABILITY REPRESENTATION?????? MAYBE IN A BOOK THAT ISN'T ABOUT SOMEONE DEALING WITH THEIR MINORITY STATUS???????????????????????

I mean, yes, I'm bitter and I will always, unashamedly push for more and better, but the book was cute and it depicted its message really well.

I'll admit, the book hangs out on the lower eschelons of my 4 star, but I don't dislike it enough for a mere "it was alright". It was a good book, containing things that I look for in most modern fiction - diversity on just about every level, lack of needless rape scenes, etc.

Initially what threw me was the creation of Amberlough itself. I think what knocked me a little off kilter was the fact that it's not a particularly fantastical world - in fact it's not at all. There's no magic or scifi or anything especially out of the norm for the 1920s. So I was confused as to why Amberlough had to exist at all - why not just make a period piece? Almost all of the more "alternative" aspects of the piece, the fact that non-straight people EXIST, goodness, could have been excused as the seedy underbellies. As the book continued to coalesce Amberlough, however, I did begin to realize how impossible it was. Amberlough's political shifts and disputes are unique to Amberlough. Other than making up a fictional European country for no reason, it's hard to affix the schemes of Amberlough to any country. Oh sure, there are parallels, the obvious being the Ospies, but the mixture that Donnelly has got going in Amberlough is unique. So Amberlough is a blanket covering the early 20th century, enough to see it through the folds, affixed to place by Donnelly's sharp and clever use of colloquialisms that are used in plain context so well that they never need definition.

However, because of Amberlough's introduction I'll admit to being a little befuddled for nearly the first quarter of the book before I got into the swing of things. Things were just slightly off to be frustrating, machinations already deep in the works when the story starts. But! As I got used to it, I began to appreciate it.

I desperately hope there's a sequel. I'm feeling a little Empire Strikes Back at it, except I don't know that a follow up is on the horizon. There are difficult decisions made, desperations exploited, stances taken. If that isn't the perfect way to start what is undoubtedly going to be an awesome sequel, I dunno what is.

McGuire is truly skilled at the pacing for a novella. Admittedly, novellas are all I've read of hers, but they're always the perfect length, not drawing too long, and not giving me not enough.

I will say that in comparison to Every Heart a Doorway, I did feel that the exposition in the book felt a little more exposit-y, being that she devotes paragraphs to it not exactly subtly. Some of it is more well integrated with Jenna being a relatively younger ghost, but there are significant swathes that explain more than show. This isn't to say that there's a proper solution for this, because this problem plagues most writers, good and bad (and McGuire is definitely good), but I felt like it was worth mentioning because it was more obvious to me in comparison to Every Heart a Doorway.

I also think I shouldn't forgo the fact that I think this is the first book that encapsulated unrules really well. So it's obvious that ghosts and witches and so on and so forth have their rules, but 4D (which is what I've decided just now to call it) did "well also those rules might not matter because well, ghosts and magic and whatever, so who knows what's the deal here." I'm sure that for some this comes off as a bit of a cop out, but I felt it was executed really well.

All in all, just another reason to check out this person's other works!

I dunno. This book is such a complicated morass of internalized racism, straight up racism, and deep insights on racism. I read this book because I've been a long time fan of Dumas, having read Three Musketeers when I was but a tot and being a huge fan of Count of Monte Cristo when I got older. One of the things that I never knew until much after I read Monte Cristo was that Dumas was a mixed race man, who had a badass as hell mixed race father (whose life chronicle is amazingly documented in [b: The Black Count|13330922|The Black Count Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo|Tom Reiss|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1337693786s/13330922.jpg|18538602]) and suffered the prejudice and racism of his own time period. It is interesting to me, then, that this person wrote such intense books about revenge, chivalry, loyalty, betrayal, and really never about race.

So when I heard about a book where he had focused on it as a core of the plot, even, I jumped at the chance to read it.

The book is immensely complicated, and I have immensely complicated feelings about it. For every insightful, meaningful thing Dumas manages to manifest on his commentary of Georges vs Henri, I feel bombarded by awkwardly horrible presumptions made of the few Asians on the island (I mean, Miko-Miko is referred to as "the Jew of the island" which is SUCH a terrible sentence in SO MANY WAYS, not to mention how Antonio is explicitly described by comparing him to an orangutan). It's as if in the discussion of white vs black, the floodgates to talk about all races is opened, and that bushel of apples is a complicated one.

I wouldn't edit them out - it reflects obviously how complicated race can be, and certainly Dumas doesn't shy away from terrible stuff to say about other black people - there is a clear delineation of the elite, educated, and awesome mixed race people (the Muniers) and the general black populations, who are mostly slaves. Dumas still depicts them more or less as savages, intermittently referring to their simple nature, and even making their propensity for drink a plot point in the book. White people, on the other hand, are not nearly as vilified or even condescended. So Henri and his dad are idiot racists, but they're the straw-villains; I don't care. And god knows it's nice enough that the straw-villains are white people and we're actually, for real, talking about race, and not prejudices people compare to racism, because that doesn't always happen. But otherwise, Henrietta or Sara are not discussed of having feeble minds - nor, actually, is Henri. Most of Georges' closer friends and companions are white; Laiza, in contrast, serves more as a devotee and servant. It's pretty damn clear that Monseiur Dumas has got a couple of things to work out with himself. I don't know if he did, because he really never gets into it, from other books I've read of his, but man, it's complicated.

Henri doesn't even die in the book! Yes, it reminds me of Danglars walking happy at the end of Cristo, and I didn't like it there either. In both there are characters that did comparatively little versus the main villains (Cristo has Villefort, Georges has Lord William) that get harsher punishments, while the person who you're wanting to see hang waltzes away. I suppose it could reflect Dumas' need to show that we don't get everything we want, but hell, at least Danglars repents! Henri I wanted to see at least even more humiliated, though a stabbing would have sufficed.

Georges also suffers Dumas' brand of borderline Mary Sue badassitry. Speaking of Monte Cristo, it's basically Edmond, for both Edmond and Georges suffer only the difficulties of being so ding dang awesome at everything (in Edmond's case, also several years of unfair and hideous treatment in prison). Which, I guess now that I'm older, I have less patience for. In Georges, I did feel somewhat more justified in being okay with it, however, being that it Georges is not typically the type of character I'm used to reading about. Well, okay, a dude who's awesome at everything is something that I'm more than used to, but a minority being that person is a rarity even today. Not to mention that it was nice to see Georges confronted with his pride and arrogance, though his time of mulling about it is pretty brief.

The unfortunate thing is the fact that I do have a lot to love about this book. Even Dumas' introductory descriptions, the way the describes the continent as being able to see all around you, the fact that Sara actually isn't a terribly written character, the moments of sharp clarity Dumas does have about race, these would be enough to recommend this book, and make it difficult to hate. Bits like when Jacques comes back, and Dumas describes the Muniers as one who suffered prejudice, one who exploits prejudice, and one who would fight to the death to destroy it?

DAMN. DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN.

Dumas is a great wordsmith - that is evident even in translation.

And the action-y parts are super fun! I wish more of it was the revolt, as opposed to saving the cool action scene for the finale, which also kind of stutters to a halt. I got to the notes on my copy and I was like "I'm sorry, what? Why is this next chapter all notes- oh."

So, as I said: I dunno. I'm glad I read this book, and to edit the unseemly bits out would be to do it a discredit, both to the book and the complications of race both outside and within Dumas. But does that make any of the terrible depictions and descriptions any more bearable? I would say not really.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK SOOONNNNN THIS BOOK WAS SO DAAAAAANGGGG GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODDDD

Normally, I'm a little more eloquent than this so imagine HOW GOOD THIS BOOK IS THAT I'M JUST A FLOPPING FISH OF HOPELESS EXCITEMENT AND AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

It is really hard to sum up the Fifth Season, or just the whole series, in a couple of sentences. From my perspective, the little blurb on the back does not do these books a modicum of justice (and at least for book 1, I felt like I had no idea what the book was about going into it), but who can blame them? These novels are scifi AND fantasy, ancient AND futuristic, Harry Potter growing up into 1984. (Except without all the terrible shit in Harry Potter.)

All tied together in unstoppably readable writing. Not even necessarily the plot, which is amazing, had me flipping pages, it was the writing. There is no resistance to reading this book, the writing is beautiful but so readable. I twitched with the urge to pick it up when I wasn't reading because I wanted to know what happened next, which was plot. But the fact that I couldn't lift my eyes up from the page because I could barely perceive an end to one sentence before starting another was all on the amazing writing. A stream of consciousness inner monologue that never seeps into the too nonsensical, but never really formalizes to be separating.

Do yourself a goddamned favor and read this series. Goddamn.

I don't have much in the way of criticisms about this book. I think the art is really cute, I love the message, the characters, etc etc.

Its only major flaw is that it's just too dang short. Which is fine when it's a small little comic I found when I was scrolling through on tumblr, but as a longer story it just doesn't have the heft, which is a darned shame because it affects everything else about it. Though the characters are undeniably cool and have the possibility of depth, it's just hard to do that in less than 56 pages for each of them, and I can't help but feel that it comes off as insubstantial.

Do I still love it? Yes. There needs to be more stuff like this. So much more.

If you were anything like me post-Sleeping Giants and felt like "eh, that was alright. Like, it was a decent enough story, though nothing was quite gripping enough to throw me along, mostly it was written in a format that was easy to digest and didn't ask too much of me." If you ended it not knowing if you'd pick up the second, I would actually recommend picking up this sequel.

I had no real objections to Sleeping Giants, really. But it felt a little rough and even by the end of the story I didn't feel any real investment in the characters. There was too much a level of detachment; even when Rose died all I could mentally muster was a shrug.

I don't know why there was so much more attachment I felt to the characters in this book. Perhaps Rose's inner conflicts in this book just made her more interesting. I like that the author acknowledges how different people can be in the space of 4 years; Rose is essentially an entirely new character in this book and though I'm half-tempted to be a little "she's totally unrecognizable", there's a part of me that really liked that she was very different. Whatever confidence and impulse she gained in those 4 years was gone. It was like if my teenager self suddenly popped into my current life, post the trials and tribulations of the past couple of years. Whatever the case, I found Rose to be a much more evocative character in the book, even as her role evolves wildly and changes, or perhaps because of it.

Kara and Vincent's conflicts were interesting, but their plot didn't quite get me the way that Rose's did. Perhaps it's because, like many authors, the kids are written with dialogue not that different from adults. The only real indication that they're a kid is the physical description and just the information that they are one. They certainly aren't a kid in personality, even considering the amount of trauma that they go through.

So this year I tried to be reading most Native American books this month. Unfortunately, after the first week, I felt depressed enough about my country that I felt that I didn't want to read anything that would make that feeling worse.

This isn't to say that this book makes me feel great about this country - it doesn't. The most engaging parts of the book to me were actually how the author is able to portray a painfully changing world of Susan's people, the Omaha. A painful and incredibly unfair one. Despite how hard she works to do things the right way, to appeal to the government, to make it official law as opposed to an unwritten one, Native Americans (Omaha and others) are hounded by the apathy or straight up manipulation of white people around nearly every corner. The nuance of how some aspects of white culture are beneficial, but huge swaths of it are outright harmful, of how they needed to assimilate, but at the cost of certain aspects of culture, how Susan occasionally feeds into the public mindset of Native people once having been "savages" - these are all difficult, complicated things that are properly given their difficult, complicated due. But most importantly, it never shies away from the damning that America deserves. It's complicated, but it's not excusable.

On top of this, the subject of the book is one of the most intensely amazing people I've had the pleasure to read about. It would be a simplification to say that the doctor had no faults, but everything she did she did with the passionate fervor and a deep understanding of people. The type of person who you'd try to dig into her past to slander and find nothing but an insect she harmed inadvertently and still feels guilty about. To say she gave her life for the benefit of her people would be a painfully quick way to sum it up, but it's true. The wholesome admiration I felt for this woman, whose kindness compelled her to not only medical practice, but for lobbying and missionary work can't be understated. She was an amazing person, and there is a passion to the way that the book is written that makes you wholly believe it.

The writing is readable. I don't have complaints about the simplicity - the author having been a reporter likely means that their style is used to being read by a varied audience, as newspaper articles are supposed to be. But the fact that it isn't didactic or overwritten shouldn't mean that it's for a younger audience, and its accessibility is a nice feature, especially for a historical figure otherwise unknown. I have more problems with books that are dense and are trying to convolute things with long words that don't need it. The story is plenty complex for the complex lives and people in it. This book was not difficult to gobble up, but that was to its benefit.

A worthy, worthy read about a worthy, worthy human.

I'm of various minds about this book. I definitely liked it, but I definitely didn't LOVE it. The latter might in large part be due to the fact that I just finished a book that I loved the way that I love my cats. I just want my face to be buried in it 24/7. So admittedly every time I thought "eh" during this book, I also thought "okay but you just came off a book that made your heart grow three sizes and also made you cry for a good five minutes". It's a hard thing to live up to.

The good parts of the book mainly involve the two main characters. I liked Ada and Corinne a lot, and their friendship as an unbreakable aspect of the book make the story... well... iron cast. I felt a little confused about Ada's shift in personality from being in Haversham to out of it, as she comes off as a little more of a spitfire and Corinne a little more prim - I really felt like that was entirely 180'd post the first couple of chapters. Perhaps this was for a reason, I'm sure I could come up with some. Ada is a little more stand-her-ground when Corinne is there to back her up, she knows that Corinne won't bite back the way that others will, there are plenty of explanations, but none that I feel were well represented in the text. I did find Ada's story to be a little more interesting, but I was also expecting the book to focus more on her, especially considering the cover. And speaking frankly I find the "upper class white girl trying to get away from it all" story a little bit tiring, and I felt that the politics of Corinne's family and relationship started to overwhelm Ada, who, at the start the book, essentially is already in a stable relationship with complicated family feelings, sure, but not a lot of conflict. And because she doesn't go through such a complicated morass of conflict, it takes the focus off of her, just a little bit. But the relationship between the two are a strong enough core, and it absolutely refuses to shake from that.

Did I kind of hope that they'd end up together? Yes. I'm tired of reading YA about REALLY REALLY REALLY CLOSE GAL PALS. Especially when a boy/girl are REALLY REALLY REALLY CLOSE they're a couple by the end of most YA (or really any genre or level of reading), it was just a little disappointing. I didn't feel the disappointment quite as much as, say, Uprooted by Naomi Novik, but it was there. The haphazard "by the by Saint is gay" actually only accentuated my disappointment in the area. That little thing comes like a quarter from the end of the book, at which point I was already coming to the conclusion there wouldn't BE gay characters AT ALL. The fact that Saint is confirmed in such a quick, throwaway manner was almost more insulting, like it was remembered last minute. I caught some of the hints here and there, sure, but with heteronormativity such a clear standard, what was there to gain from it? Other people can be gay. Not main characters. That doesn't say much more to me than lack of representation period, sorry. Also, to me, a little uncomfortable that Ada is dating a black guy and Corinne is dating a white guy? It's very subtle, I suppose, but it still stood out to me that relationships were kind of uncrossed in this manner.

But hey, at the very least there wasn't any "He looked at me the way the MAN looks at a WOMAN" which is a sentence structure I'd like to purge from literature in every goddamn way.

I did think that the story took a little bit to get started, but when it did there were some plot twists that I was wholly unprepared for. Not mentioning them for spoilers, but even with an attuned sense of tropes, there were a handful of twists that caught me off guard, and there's an admiration to be gained from that. I did think that some of the plot was kind of padded with fluff scenes I didn't really care about, but I'm willing to concede that might be because they were mostly Corinne's family scenes.

The book tries to evoke Boston, but as someone who's lived in Boston, I didn't feel it? The only reason I actually remember it takes place in Boston is because I remember a few times when it mentioned it and I thought "oh, I forgot this is Boston." When I do that like three times, I feel like that should say something. Not that it has to be all Red Sox, clam chowder, and accents, but there was nothing in the book that I felt defined it as Boston, and therefore any setting atmosphere it's trying to evoke by locating it there was lost on me.

All in all, I liked the book. I liked Ada, I generally liked Corinne. The writing was fine, the plot twists were well done. But it lacked an oomph to me, but I'll keep an eye out for this author, because maybe her next book will have it.

I. Cannot. Stress. Enough. How much I love this author. If this author showed up on my doorstep tomorrow in some fluke of life and asked me to marry her I wouldn't even hesitate half a fucking moment.

A Closed and Common Orbit is a different book from its predecessor, sure. Its tone and its scope, unlike the first book, is limited to two very specific characters who are very similar and also nothing alike. But it left me with the same feelings that the first one did, full of unbroken hope and good feeling, of triumphs that could not have happened alone and happy endings fiercely, but worthily earned.

Look I don't want to give it away, but do yourself a favor and start reading Becky Chambers. Her world building is OUTTA THIS WORLD, her characters are flawed but always growing, her stories make you believe that anything can be accomplished together. Nothing makes me want to scream at miserable hopeless sci-fi than a book like this. Not that I don't like miserable hopeless sci-fi but it's not edgy. Chambers manages to push boundaries in a beautiful, meaningful way, and with a light at the end of the tunnel.

If in a couple of decades I'm not seeing her name (along with Leckie and Jemisin and the lot) as among the best scifi writers I will throw a goddamn fit.

I. Cannot. Stress. Enough. How much I love this author. If this author showed up on my doorstep tomorrow in some fluke of life and asked me to marry her I wouldn't even hesitate half a fucking moment.

A Closed and Common Orbit is a different book from its predecessor, sure. Its tone and its scope, unlike the first book, is limited to two very specific characters who are very similar and also nothing alike. But it left me with the same feelings that the first one did, full of unbroken hope and good feeling, of triumphs that could not have happened alone and happy endings fiercely, but worthily earned.

Look I don't want to give it away, but do yourself a favor and start reading Becky Chambers. Her world building is OUTTA THIS WORLD, her characters are flawed but always growing, her stories make you believe that anything can be accomplished together. Nothing makes me want to scream at miserable hopeless sci-fi than a book like this. Not that I don't like miserable hopeless sci-fi but it's not edgy. Chambers manages to push boundaries in a beautiful, meaningful way, and with a light at the end of the tunnel.

If in a couple of decades I'm not seeing her name (along with Leckie and Jemisin and the lot) as among the best scifi writers I will throw a goddamn fit.