Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear

 Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear by Seanan McGuire, 160 pages.

Although it can be a hard life, Nadya is content to stay in the Russian orphanage she has lived in since she was born. She's never been bothered by the arm she was born without, but it seems that the well-meaning American couple that adopts her is very concerned about it, and insists on getting her a prosthetic she does not want and didn't ask for. Leaving adopted parents who don't understand or listen to her, she falls through a portal in a turtle pond and into a drowned world of water. This new world, Belyyreka, is a fascinating place made up many layers of different kinds of water, all within a lake the size of a world. Ships dive deep beneath the rivers and giant turtles serve as companions to the people. Nadya is finally home.

This is book 10 in the Wayward Children series, but as a portal world book it could be read as a standalone without any issues. That being said, I'm afraid I wouldn't call this book the strongest in the series. Beyyreka was a very interesting setting, but the very short book spent a lot of time on Earth. Also unfortunately, I found this book a little heavy-handed compared to others in the series, and I feel like there was a lot of looking directly into the camera to deliver social justice messages, rather than integrating them more smoothly. I still enjoyed this book! I find the prose in this series lovely, and there is the normal amount of comfort to be found in a series all about finding a place to belong and be known. I'm just a little disappointed that this one didn't quite reach the heights of previous books in the series. 

The Breach

The Breach: The Untold Story of the Investigation into January 6th by Denver Riggleman with Hunter Walker (2022) 268 pages

Denver Riggleman is a former military intelligence officer and former Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives who was called to help investigate the January 6th Insurrection. He was senior technical advisor to the January 6th Select Committee.

This book goes into the nuts and bolts about using cellphone data to pinpoint locations and interactions between the White House and the rioters outside the Capitol. The Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, and QAnon are mentioned in some detail. The book also has a large number of texts sent to and from Donald Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, in the weeks between the 2020 election and January 6th. We also get a sense about what was going on behind the scenes in some of the subcommittees of the Select Committee. And I learned new information about Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Fast, fascinating read that I wish more people knew about prior to the 2024 election.

Red Side Story

Red Side Story by Jasper Fforde, 438 pages

Picking up immediately after the events of Shades of Grey, this book finds Eddie and Jane trying to navigate the tricky insane politics and regulations of East Carmine, and quickly, as they're both accused of murdering a high-ranking official-to-be. As they attempt to escape justice (they did kinda kill the guy, after all, though he had it coming), they're also investigating the unexplained (and getting themselves in more trouble, of course), and preparing for the upcoming Jollity Fair.

This is such a strange strange world that Fforde has created, and reading Shades of Grey first is a must. Even reading them back-to-back, however, doesn't really make anything make any more sense, though I suppose that's kinda the point of the books. They're fun and odd and if a third book comes out in 15 years (which is the timespan between these two), I'll happily read that one too.

Estate Planning Basics

Estate Planning Basics: What you need to know about wills, trusts, & avoiding probate (2024) 228 pages

This estate planning guide is from Nolo, the group that offers all kinds of legal help in books and software, as well as online. I found it clear, with thirteen chapters filled with good information and examples, along with a thorough index and helpful appendix. I found it a good prelude to a visit to an attorney's office, but the book can also be used to determine whether one can make one's own estate plans without using an attorney.

The Shaadi Set-Up

The Shaadi Set-Up by Lillie Vale (2024) 352 pages

Rita is a 26-year-old woman who's just getting by financially. She also has a boyfriend, Neil, who is a nice guy, but he is a bit prissy and he also has long phone calls with his mother every morning. Rita can't envision a future with him, but likes to have him around for now. Her parents don't know about him, even after three months dating, because she doesn't think they'll accept him. She considers the possibility of her and Neil matching up on Shaadi, an online Indian-matching site that's meant to find spouses. If they matched up on Shaadi, Rita thinks that maybe her parents would accept Neil as a boyfriend.

Meanwhile, Rita's mother tries to get her to help her old boyfriend Milan, who broke her heart 6 years ago, by decorating a house that Milan, a realtor, has not been able to sell. Rita makes her living buying furniture in thrift shops, then restoring and selling it. Rita reluctantly decides to work with Milan while she and Neil are tweaking their online profiles, trying to get a match with each other.

This novel brings together a mix of humor, cringy-ness and realism. 

Biography of X

 Biography of X by Catherine Lacey, 416 pages.

X was a polarizing artist in varied mediums, a divisive critic and, above all else, a mystery. After she drops dead in her office, her widow CM throws herself wholly into writing her biography, despite her late wife's wishes. She is driven not only by the need to disprove an unauthorized biography that misunderstood her late wife, but by the need to finally understand the woman she deified after she was gone. Her research takes her through an alternate America that is recently reunified following the reabsorption of the Southern Territory, a fascist theocracy whose history CM finds herself deeply immersed in. Soon she finds, buried deep in a web of betrayals and lies, that her wife was both more and less than she ever could have believed.

I was totally engaged in this book the whole time I was reading it. It is an interesting case where many of the facts of the novel feel implausible, but also where it feels like that fact has absolutely no bearing on how well the novel accomplished what it was trying to do. I found this novel to be profound, with just enough plot outside of the prose and meditations to keep things a little exciting. I am also always a fan of a fictional novel that is committed to presenting itself as an in-universe piece of nonfiction, which I think this book pulls of quite well. I found this book in an Atlantic article of contenders for the title of the great American novel, and I would say this book deserves it's place on that list. 

Get Me Through the Next Five Minutes

 Get Me Through the Next Five Minutes: Odes to Being Alive by James Parker, 240 pages.

This book collects the "odes" which James Parker wrote for the Atlantic as their unofficial "gratitude correspondent." These odes are mostly for small and specific things, such as taking naps and running in movies, with the purpose of trying to appreciate the small things in life and (as the title suggests) get through the next five minutes. 

I feel like the first thing I need to address is that these don't seem much like odes to me in either the traditional or colloquial sense. Almost every ode is a prose essay, which eliminates the traditional "lyric poem" definition. I would also say that most of these odes don't seem to particularly like the experiences they describe. Parker observes the subjects in close detail, but often with as much or more complaining than praise. I went into this expecting something in the same spirit as Ross Gay's Book of Delights, and found myself disappointed by how much Get Me Through the Next Five Minutes seemed to fail to live up to it's own premise. I'm afraid I can't recommend this one, and if the premise sounds interesting I would recommend checking out Gay's book instead. 

Musicophilia

 Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks, c. 2007, 425 pgs.

This was our first book of 2025 for the Rhythm n' Books music club. I'd read this before a long time ago--I don't usually read a title more than once--but a lot more seemed to stand out to me here. Book discussion was good overall, most were kind of 'eh' on the book as a whole. I thought they might like it more than the Levitin book we read because that book focused more on the science and this was written very down-to-earth. The entire book is a collection of Sacks' encounters with neurologically induced, music-related maladies, some minor, some life-altering. Brain worms that never go away, pianists who suffer from dystonia in the hands (a muscle disorder), musical hallucinations, aphasia (loss of speech by brain damage) and more. All of these case studies are tragic in their own ways, but in his observations, Sacks sees the plasticity of the brain adapt to this challenges. I love the way he kicks it off with a man who survives being struck by lightening--only to awaken with an intense, inescapable newfound passion: to learn how to play piano. Overall, the message is that the science and understanding of music as a working treatment for many ailments in life deserves much more study. There was a recent documentary at Sundance called Alive Inside that talks more about these treatments and even features interviews of Sacks before his death in 2016. 

Shades of Grey

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde, 390 pages

Eddie Russett lives in purposefully antiquated caste-based world where your position depends solely on which color (yes, singular) you can see, with Purples riding high and mighty at the top. As a Red, Eddie is just a step above the drudge-working Greys, and when his innovations in queuing dare to challenge the infallible Rules, he is given a humility inducing task (chair census) and is sent to the rural East Carmine as punishment. However, once he arrives, Eddie's natural curiosity starts getting him noticed (and not necessarily in a good way) by the local prefects, as he finds more and more things that make him question the Rules.

This is a ridiculously difficult book to explain, and the paragraph above only captures a tiny sliver of the absurdity of this novel. Eddie's world is also full of references to deadly swan attacks and ball lightning, a distinct lack of spoons, and regular Leapbacks, which are governmental mandates to destroy anything too modern or technological. Like all of Fforde's books, this one is silly, smart, and too creative to be believed. It's also one of my favorites, and I was well overdue for a reread, especially since the long-awaited sequel came out last year and I have yet to read it. But guess what's up next!

A selection of January graphic novels

 Battlefields: The Night Witches by Garth Ennis with art by Russ Braun (2009) 79 pages

It is fascinating that Russia did have women pilots in their air force during WWII. Half the story is following a German squad pushing into Russian territory with one conscientious young man as our narrator. The other half focuses on just a couple of the women pilots who fly night missions dropping bombs. One in particular, Nadia Anna, achieves the rank of Captain and is a survivor despite a brief romance with heartbreak and her plane going down. The story succeeds in showing the horrific tragedy of war. The art work is a bit cartoon-y, but not far-off in portraying the gritty realism.

Hokusai: A Graphic Biography by Giuseppe Latanza and Francesco Matteuzzi (2021) 128 pages

I really enjoyed the art and the biographical story. Like Hokusai making woodblocks to stamp multiple prints of his art, some of the graphic novel's images are repeated. In between the story of his life there are full pages of text with historical background about Japanese art, or explaining terms and historical periods. Some of this felt repetitive, unfortunately, like a different author had lost track of what had previously been explained. However, this did not drastically lessen my enjoyment. I thought the book was aimed at teens at first, but it does mention and show a bit of the erotic art that Hokusai made during one part of his life.

The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel (2021) 240 pages

I loved this even more than Fun Home. Bechdel is even more revealing about herself, and explores engrossing related topics. Exercise trends through the second half of the 20th century, Romantic poets, Transcendentalists, Kerouac, Zen Buddhism are all connected. She explores mountains as a symbol for human achievement. The aphorism "it is about the journey, not the destination" comes across.

Will Eisner's New York: Life in the Big City by Will Eisner (2006) 421 pages

I've read a couple of his other realistic graphic novels and highly recommend this one as well. "New York: The Big City" consists of short vignettes. "The Building" tells the backstory of four ghosts who hang around a particular intersection where a historic building has been torn down and a new one constructed in its place. These stories reveal the tragicomic world Eisner is drawn to portray. "City People" is filled with more observations in mostly one or two page vignettes. A longer tragic story is told in Collisions. "Invisible People" contains three longer stories. Sanctum tells the sad story of Pincus Pleatnik. The Power tells a symbolic story of a healer named Morris. Eisner says of Mortal Combat, "In relating the story of Herman, who became the unwilling prize in a clash of wills, I hoped to evoke the helplessness of a person caught in an intersection of the traffic of life."

Past Tense: Facing Family Secrets and Finding Myself in Therapy by Sacha Mardou (2024) 336 pages

A courageous memoir. I picked it up at my new comic shop because it is by a local St. Louis author. Her journey to overcome her anxiety and unpack her childhood trauma is fascinating. She specifically delves into a therapy model called Internal Family Systems (IFS) because she finds it helpful after some initial skepticism. Mardou's art style is a bit loose, but expressive. Freeing herself from generational trauma reveals truly healthy outcomes.