Book Blog #261: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Title: Middlesex
Author: Jeffrey Eugenides
# of Pages: 529 (paperback)
Genre: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Contemporary
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Synopsis: Middlesex tells the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides, and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family, who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City and the race riots of 1967 before moving out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret, and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction.
Review: This book took me an abnormally long time to finish. It has almost been two months! I had to check this book out at two different libraries because I wasn't able to renew at the first one.

Usually, when books take me this long to read, it's because I don't like them. However, this is not the case for Middlesex. This book was recommended to me by someone who knew I enjoyed books like Pachinko and A Thousand Splendid Suns. Middlesex spans multiple generations and "peels the onion" of Cal's life as a hermaphrodite. It's an interesting story for sure, but for some reason I was having issues staying awake long enough to make significant progress per reading period.

Something that did bother me about this book was how much the narration skipped around the timeline. I enjoyed the story when it was told chronologically, but since Cal is the narrator, he would skip to present day occasionally to give the reader an update on what is going on in his current life. This is a stylist choice, but it is one I didn't enjoy.

If it didn't have the magical power of putting me to sleep after only reading a handful of pages, I would have given it 4 stars. However, usually books that take me a long time to read indicate that I am not hooked by the story, which is why I docked a star off the rating. However, if the synopsis sounds interesting to you, I would recommend reading it. Although I wish it didn't take me as long as it did to read it, I do not regret reading it in the slightest.

Book Blog #260: Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur

Title: Milk and Honey
Author: Rupi Kaur
# of Pages: 204 (paperback)
Genre: Nonfiction, Poetry, Feminism
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Synopsis: Milk and honey' is a collection of poetry and prose about survival. About the experience of violence, abuse, love, loss, and femininity. It is split into four chapters, and each chapter serves a different purpose. Deals with a different pain. Heals a different heartache. 'milk and honey' takes readers through a journey of the most bitter moments in life and finds sweetness in them because there is sweetness everywhere if you are just willing to look.
Review: You can tell from the cover that this book is (supposed to be) filled with poetry.

I'm not a huge fan of poetry, so I decided to read this book on a bit of a whim. I knew poetry is usually written in short chunks, and the book wasn't very thick at all, so I was confident I could finish in a relatively short period of time.

I was surprised by how moved I was for some of the poems. The way she defines love and describes how she her life reflects how she has been affected by others in the past is beautiful. However, the reason why I enjoyed it so much is because it felt more like Rupi was talking vaguely about these topics rather than portraying these ideas through traditional(?) poetic means.

TLDR: I believe I liked this book because it didn't really read like poetry.

It's a quick read; if you're interested, go for it!