Book Blog #282: Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

 

Title: Fun Home

Author: Alison Bechdel

# of Pages: 232 (paperback)

Genre: Graphic Novels, Autobiography, LGBT

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Synopsis: Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the Fun Home. It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve.

Review: I only read this because someone had it lying around, and I was able to borrow their physical copy. I ended up wavering between 3 and 4 stars but decided on 3 because I became less engaged as I got further along in the book.

Fun Home is a graphic novel, but unlike other comics (i.e. the manga that I read), it contains the story of the author's life; an autobiography through comics that she drew herself. It is a standalone book (if it had many like a manga or was a Marvel comic, I wouldn't be writing a review for it). 

I love this unique way of story telling; it examines Bechdel's relationship with her father and how the characters grappled with being LGBTQ+. This story could have been easily told in a traditional novel format (no pictures), but Bechdel's comics add such a nice personal twist to the story. I enjoyed being able to read her story but easier see each point of her life she describes the way that she experience it. 

Classic literature is an important part of her life,  thus she makes many references to the books she's read. This was tolerable at first but if you haven't read the same books, some of the references to the characters might be lost. She also goes back and forth through her life's timeline which can be a bit confusing as far as remembering the chronological ordering of her major life events. 

Overall, a good and quick read. I would recommend this book if you have an opportunity to read it but only if it is convenient. 

Book Blog #281: Fifty Shades Darker by E.L. James

Title: Fifty Shades Darker

Author: E.L. James

# of Pages: 532 (ebook)

Genre: Adult, Romance, Contemporary

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

Synopsis: Daunted by the singular tastes and dark secrets of the beautiful, tormented young entrepreneur Christian Grey, Anastasia Steele has broken off their relationship to start a new career with a Seattle publishing house. But desire for Christian still dominates her every waking thought, and when he proposes a new arrangement, Anastasia cannot resist. They rekindle their searing sensual affair, and Anastasia learns more about the harrowing past of her damaged, driven and demanding Fifty Shades. While Christian wrestles with his inner demons, Anastasia must confront the anger and envy of the women who came before her, and make the most important decision of her life.

Review: I never planned to read the second book, but I thought it would be an easy read to knock out for my yearly reading challenge.

Boy, was I wrong. 

All the annoyance that I was expecting to feel when reading Fifty Shades of Grey finally came out while reading this book. James's writing style hasn't improved, and the most interesting part - Christian's mysterious past - is not interesting as I initially thought (nothing that wasn't already said/inferred from the first book was revealed in this book). 

The plot is unrealistic, and their relationship is too fast paced for me to feel happy about the "progress" Christian and Ana made in their relationship. There wasn't much of a plot either; it reads like a really bad slice-of-life. As I read through sex scene after sex scene I wondered; where exactly are they going with this? I'm assuming the main problem is suppose to be Christian dealing with his baggage, but it seems way too drawn out across the 500+ pages that makes up this book. 

Ana is extremely unlikeable. She's insecure and is not strong and independent as she likes to think she is.

Christian has stalker tendencies (this is even stated in the book). It's not attractive; it's toxic. 

Reading nothing would have been better than reading this. I would not recommend. 

Book Blog #280: The Girl with The Louding Voice by Abi Daré

Title: The Girl with The Louding Voice

Author: Abi Daré

# of Pages: 366 (hardback)

Genre: Adult, Contemporary

Rating: ★★★★☆

Synopsis: Despite the seemingly insurmountable obstacles in her path, Adunni never loses sight of her goal of escaping the life of poverty she was born into so that she can build the future she chooses for herself - and help other girls like her do the same. Her spirited determination to find joy and hope in even the most difficult circumstances imaginable will “break your heart and then put it back together again” (Jenna Bush Hager on The Today Show) even as Adunni shows us how one courageous young girl can inspire us all to reach for our dreams...and maybe even change the world.

Review: I wavered between 4 and 5 stars for a bit.

I read beforehand that this book was written with a dialect and was nervous about the flow of the writing, but it was actually no issue at all. Daré did a great job at capturing the voice of a 15 year old Nigerian girl with limited education's perspective on the world. I really enjoyed the beginning of the book when she is living in the her village, but the book lost a bit of its charm in the latter half of the book. This is partially due to how the meaningful messages on gender inequality and racial inequality were not as naturally blended into the story as they could have been.

Additionally, the second half of the story takes Adunni's journey to finding her "louding voice" into a direction I wasn't expecting. It's as if the first and second halves of the book should have been split into two different books. However, Adunni is a very likable protagonist, and the heart-wrenching events that occur moved me emotionally, so overall it was a very gripping read.

I would recommend this book! 

Book Blog #279: Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Title: Exit West

Author: Mohsin Hamid

# of Pages: 213 (ebook)

Genre: Adult, Contemporary, Romance

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Synopsis: In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet—sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors—doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through.

Review: "[He] advocated a banding together of migrants along religious principles, cutting across divisions of race or language or nation, for what did those divisions matter now in a world full of doors, the only divisions that mattered now were between those who sought the right of passage and those who would deny them passage" (155).

I had relatively high expectations for this book (as it was recommended to me and was a nominee for a Goodreads Choice Award), which may explain why it just did not hit the mark for me. The concept of the story was interesting for sure; star-crossed lovers find their relationship challenged by living a migrant, in which migration is made easier through randomly appearing doors. 

What I did enjoy about the book was the thought experiment on what the world would be like if the only limitation to migration was whether the home country or the destination country imposed restrictions; in this story, migration itself is made out to be as simple as finding and stepping through a door. It makes you think; although it may not address these issues explicitly, this book closely ties to many relevant issues today related to migrants: refugees, open borders, etc. 

What really killed it for me was the writing style. Hamid would jump between the third person narration of the main characters, Nadia and Saeed, to a brief narration of some other random people in various parts of the world. While this was interesting at times to see how migration via doors is affecting people across this futuristic(?) world, it mostly disrupts the flow of the story.

Secondly, Hamid employs analogies GENEROUSLY. He seems to only be satisfied in describing something if at least one (often long) analogy is used. Some examples:

"Saeed partly resisted the pull of his phone. He found the antenna too powerful, the magic it summoned too mesmerizing, as though he were eating a banquet of limitless food, stuffing himself, until he felt dazed and sick, and so he removed or hidden or restricted all but a few applications" (39).

"...his quiet grunts like those of a man exercising, or having sex" (104).

Finally, Hamid writes so many run on sentences. An artistic choice, I'm sure, but there's a reason why most things don't employ that sort of style; it's hard to follow and stay engaged. All of these things made me struggle to get through the book, despite it being relatively short. I was considering giving it three stars initially, but the writing style wore me down so much that I became annoyed, which is why it's getting a low rating.

I would not recommend this book.