Published by Random House on 07 Aug 2018
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This moving debut novel is a profoundly American story. Set in a circa-1960s rural South Dakota--a hardscrabble place of cattle buyers, homegrown ballet studios, casual drug abuse, and unmitigated pressure to conform, all amid the great natural beauty of the region--the book portrays a loving but struggling young family in turmoil, and two siblings, René and Leon, who opt for different but equally extreme means of escaping the burdens of home. By turns funny and tragic, lyrical and terse, Paula Saunders' debut examines the classic American questions: What is to become of the vulnerable in a culture of striving and power? And what is the effect of this striving and power on both those who dominate and those who are overrun? It is an affecting novel, in which the author's compassionate narration allows us to sympathise, in turn, with everyone involved.

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This is a midwestern family saga that starts off as a regular small town story.

I was immediately taken by the oldest child Leon, a sweet spirit, and by the second child René, a wild spirit. They are very much opposites, but they have love for each other. However, their childhood is far from charmed.

What was she supposed to do? Cut her hair because theirs wasn't as long? Keep herself to a single spin on the bars because the best of them could manage only two? Misspell all the spelling words on purpose? Just how self-annihilating did she have to be to avoid crushing these delicate prairie flowers?

Their father Al, who is away more often than not, can hardly stand Leon but has a soft spot for René, whereas their mother Eve is protective over Leon and has little patience for René; Al and Eve are constantly at odds with one another.

She couldn't help but wonder where all the hurt and anger went after something like that. Did it just disappear as a person grew older, dissolving in a mist of resignation and forgetfulness? Or did it crystallize, so that you carried it with you, building layer upon layer as the years went by, each incident adding to a more solid core of pain, until you came to face the world more rock than flesh?

As we follow this family, we see how parents shape who their children become. Every once in awhile, the story flashes forward and we see how different Leon's and René's lives turn out. The contrast between present and future, particularly of Leon's present and future, kept me increasingly intrigued throughout the book, wondering what in their lives could have brought about such a change.

Just like there was a whole world from her side, there was a whole world from his side; but somehow, at the beginning and end of it all, the two of them were the same: just flesh and blood and feelings.

However, I didn't grow to understand the characters as much as I would have liked. It was as if I got the beginning and end of the lives of these characters, but not the middle part to connect the two. The anticipation of the beginning and end meeting with a rich middle kept me excited about the story. But when I got to the end, I was still waiting for that connection to happen. Without a rich middle or something deeper to define the individual stories, the paths of these characters seemed too cliche--tumultuous for sure, but cliche. Rather, the middle was seemingly filled with a repeat of the same fights in different situations with nothing new learned.

The repetition is why I knocked my rating down to 3 stars, but otherwise, I was along for the ride, rooting for Leon and René, feeling warm at the tender moments, and feeling sad when they were misunderstood. I just wished for a deeper understanding of the motivations beneath the surface-level events (for all the characters, not just Leon and René. Oh yeah, they also have a youngest sister Jayne who's as overlooked in the story as she was in this review oops).

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Published by Little, Brown and Company on 14 Aug 2012
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Bernadette Fox has vanished.

When her daughter Bee claims a family trip to Antarctica as a reward for perfect grades, Bernadette, a fiercely intelligent shut-in, throws herself into preparations for the trip. But worn down by years of trying to live the Seattle life she never wanted, Ms. Fox is on the brink of a meltdown. And after a school fundraiser goes disastrously awry at her hands, she disappears, leaving her family to pick up the pieces--which is exactly what Bee does, weaving together an elaborate web of emails, invoices, and school memos that reveals a secret past Bernadette has been hiding for decades. Where'd You Go Bernadette is an ingenious and unabashedly entertaining novel about a family coming to terms with who they are and the power of a daughter's love for her mother.

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I thought that this story would begin with the disappearance of Bernadette Fox and then follow Bee as she gathered a paper trail and worked backwards to find her mother. But in fact, this book is the paper trail, and reading this book was almost like reading a primary source -- a collection of emails, invoices, and school memos, with Bee's commentary throughout bringing it all together.

People like you must create. If you don't create, Bernadette, you will become a menace to society.

As we follow the paper trail from the beginning, we learn about the cumulation of events that led up to Bernadette's eventual meltdown and disappearance. It starts with suburban drama between private school moms, but rapidly escalates and keeps you on your toes with excitement and absurdity.

That's right. You're bored. And I'm going to let you in on a little secret about life. You think it's boring now? Well, it only gets more boring. The sooner you learn it's on you to make life interesting, the better off you'll be.

I loved Bernadette. Can I just say to the judgmental private school moms, poor ol' Bernadette was just trying to mind her own business! Maybe she doesn't like people and she's a bit of a recluse, but so what? #Relatable!! Let her live!

She and Bee made a great duo. I loved how the two of them understood each other -- quirks and all, of which they both had many -- and how they always stood up for and believed in each other.

I can pinpoint that as the single happiest moment of my life, because I realized then that Mom would always have my back. It made me feel giant. I raced back down the concrete ramp, faster than I ever had before, so fast I should have fallen, but I didn't fall, because Mom was in the world.

My only qualms were a rushed ending (though the whole story was a rollercoaster so maybe a rushed ending was only consistent with the pace of the rest of the story, but even rollercoasters slow to an end), and Bernadette's husband Elgin was questionable (but in terms of his character, not in terms of how he was written).

Overall, a fun and heartwarming read with mental health themes and satirical notes on private schools and the tech industry (Elgin is a Microsoft Research Group Manager).

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Published by HarperCollins on 16 Oct 2018
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Relax, unwind and soak up the wisdom of the sloth with the slowest page turner you’ll ever read.

From tidying and Hygge, to living Lagom, the endless pressure to be happier, live better, sleep soundly, and eat mindfully can be exhausting. But this year’s lifestyle trend finally delivers the perfect antidote – welcome to the year of the sloth.

Sloths are mindfulness in action. Contemplative, deliberate, relaxed, and focused. They resist the rat race, the incessant pressures from society to be more productive, and they don’t care how many steps they’ve logged on their fitness tracker. Long-limbed, a little bit shaggy, and a lot wide-eyed, they’re wonderful creatures, not to mention completely adorable.

Here you can enjoy take-it-slow wisdom inspired by sloths; including advice on sleep (more restorative than a 6am run), eating and ‘exercise’ (sloths are the original pioneers of slow food and yoga after all), work (did you know that lazy people have higher IQs?), family life, and love.

Dispelling over-complicated myths about productivity, this brilliant book confirms that it really is OK to be a sloth.

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Embrace the art of slow reading: ...But we're not encouraged to read slowly. We're urged to consume micro-news every other minute in order to stay informed. We learn to skim headlines, instead of reading whole articles. We're challenged to read 100 books a year and keep track of our success in this endeavour online. We're obsessed with productivity at the expense of our reading enjoyment. The careless way we read both online and off has become an epidemic, according to some worried scientists. But there is a cure: slow reading.

I received this book as a gag gift from a friend over the holidays, had a good laugh about the title, ooh-ed and ahh-ed over the cute cover, and tucked it on my windowsill to sit pretty... until I remembered earlier this week that I never actually got around to reading the book.

Upon reading the inside flap with the blurb, I realised that this book wasn't just a cutesy little thing, but was actually pretty deep if you thought about it.

The sloth philosophy is all about mindfulness and reclaiming the word "lazy."

For example, think about being "lazy" as being efficient. I have a super smart friend who never took notes in class. Some might call her lazy, but what was really going was that she was listening actively without the distraction of keeping up with note-taking, and thus retained information better than many others in class, who would have to spend extra time reviewing and making sense of their notes. I'm not saying that we should all stop taking notes in class, but I'm showing that she did what worked for her, not what worked for other people.

The sloth philosophy is about being intentional with your time, taking the time you need, and doing what works for you, even when it doesn't make sense to other people. My most important takeaway, personally, was the suggestion to ask yourself, "What's the rush?"

Sloths spend most of their time in trees. They really prefer nature to people. And that's part of the reason they're so relaxed, probably.

Now, I warn you not to take all the advice in this book at face value, but to also think about the intention behind the advice, as sometimes the intention can be hidden behind the humour. Or, just enjoy it.

While I wouldn't necessarily buy this book for myself (unless you're looking for an aesthetic millennial pink book to add to your interior), this book would make a wonderful gift, gag or otherwise.

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Published by Walker Books on 27 Sep 2011
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At seven minutes past midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his bedroom window. But it isn't the monster Conor's been expecting. He's been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he's had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments. The monster in his backyard is different. It's ancient. And wild. And it wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous. It wants the truth.

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The monster that appeared was not the monster Conor expected. Throughout the book, Conor tries to understand why the monster is here and battles with his own truth.

The answer is that it does not matter what you think, because your mind will contradict itself a hundred times each day... Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both.

I found myself in Conor's shoes, confused in this tumultuous time in his life, wondering what the monster wanted, what the monster was, what Conor's truth was, and what he was afraid of. Although this book dealt with heavy topics like cancer and grief, it was easy to read (and illustrated! if you get that version of the book) -- the beautiful storytelling leading me on a quest, taking me straight along this child's adventure.

Stories are wild creatures. When you let them loose, who knows what havoc they might wreak?

This story didn't hit me as hard as it hit most people, but keep a tissue box around for yourself just in case!

To anyone who needs to hear it: There is no one right way to grieve or feel. The only thing you can do is speak your truth.

A story for all ages.

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Girl, Wash Your Face published by Thomas Nelson on 06 Feb 2018
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Founder of the lifestyle website TheChicSite.com and CEO of her own media company, Chic Media, Rachel Hollis has created an online fan base of hundreds of thousands of fans by sharing tips for living a better life while fearlessly revealing the messiness of her own. Now comes her highly anticipated first book featuring her signature combination of honesty, humor, and direct, no-nonsense advice.

Each chapter of Girl, Wash Your Face begins with a specific lie Hollis once believed that left her feeling overwhelmed, unworthy, or ready to give up. As a working mother, a former foster parent, and a woman who has dealt with insecurities about her body and relationships, she speaks with the insight and kindness of a BFF, helping women unpack the limiting mind-sets that destroy their self-confidence and keep them from moving forward.

From her temporary obsession with marrying Matt Damon to a daydream involving hypnotic iguanas to her son's request that she buy a necklace to "be like the other moms," Hollis holds nothing back. With unflinching faith and tenacity, Hollis spurs other women to live with passion and hustle and to awaken their slumbering goals.

Girl, Stop Apologizing published by HarperCollins Leadership on 05 Mar 2019
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Rachel Hollis has seen it too often: women not living into their full potential. They feel a tugging on their hearts for something more, but they’re afraid of embarrassment, of falling short of perfection, of not being enough.

In Girl, Stop Apologizing, #1 New York Times bestselling author and founder of a multimillion-dollar media company, Rachel Hollis sounds a wake-up call. She knows that many women have been taught to define themselves in light of other people—whether as wife, mother, daughter, or employee—instead of learning how to own who they are and what they want. With a challenge to women everywhere to stop talking themselves out of their dreams, Hollis identifies the excuses to let go of, the behaviors to adopt, and the skills to acquire on the path to growth, confidence, and believing in yourself.

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Both of these books were recommended to me by my mother. She had attended a conference where Rachel Hollis was a guest speaker, and subsequently bought both her books, then recommended me to read them before reading them herself, give her a review, and let her know whether they were worth reading and which one she should start with. So this one's for you, Mom!

I hadn't heard of Hollis or her blog before my mom pushed these books on me, so I was curious to know more about where Hollis was coming from, and Girl, Wash Your Face gave that. It's supposed to be a self-help book, but as someone who is already familiar with self-help content, I found her anecdotes more interesting than her tips were enlightening, so I appreciated her book more as a memoir. (Boiled down, her message was just to work hard and have a good attitude.)

Use the no you hear as an indication that you should try an alternative route.

When it came to tips, I kept thinking, "I know." It felt like this book was always taking a step backward before going forward, and was content calling that improvement. But that only ends with meeting me where I already am, instead of beginning with where I am, and then taking a step forward toward real improvement.

To be fair, the structure of this book is that every chapter starts with a lie Hollis once believed about herself, and follows with an explanation for why she doesn't believe it anymore, but the thing is, I never believed those lies in the first place.

What I found more interesting were the anecdotes that came from her growing out of those lies, and learning about her untraditional career path, which led to her position today as founder of her own media company. These anecdotes helped open my mind and understand that however I felt about her advice, this was her truth, and I suppose that's all we can ask of anyone to share.

I think that if you approach Girl, Wash Your Face as a memoir, you'll enjoy it more than as a self-help book. If you're hoping for self-help content, this book might be more relevant for new moms who are struggling with feeling like they aren't doing it right or feeling like they've lost their identity, particularly if the mother is a working mother or mother who wants to be working.

I stopped comparing myself to other people, and I also stopped comparing myself to whomever I thought I was supposed to be.

Girl, Stop Apologizing is a little more targeted with its advice and aims to help women who are trying to make their dreams happen. If you're looking for a self-help book to help discover your passion, this isn't the book for you. If you're looking for a self-help book to help you find the confidence to voice your passion and pursue it, this might be the book for you.

There's a big difference between faking something that you have no idea how to do and having the confidence to step into a role that you don't have full training for yet.

Once again, I didn't find the advice revelational personally, but I loved what Hollis said about making time and putting time into your dream. I can't tell you how many times friends have told me that they don't have time to read, time to pursue some other passion, or time to get lunch together even just once a month (or maybe they just don't want to get lunch with me, yikes). To me, it's not a matter of time but a matter of how much you value something to spend time on it. I've lost patience for "I don't have time" as an excuse and just let that statement fade away whenever it comes up in conversation. Luckily for you, Hollis is more enthusiastic than I am. Not gonna lie, I totally pictured a peppy white suburban mother with inspirational quotes and scripture tacked around the house yelling at me.

You're right. I don't know you. But what I do know is that if you can't find a single hour for yourself in a twenty-four-hour period, you need to look at your priorities. You need to ask yourself what you are doing with your time.

If you're trying to gauge whether either of these books might be relevant to you, just have a flip through their table of contents -- yes, a table of contents! What I do have to praise about both books is how organised they are. Girl, Wash Your Face is composed of 20 chapters, each headed by a lie to shoot down. Girl, Stop Apologizing is composed of 3 parts -- excuses to let go of, behaviours to adopt, and skills to acquire; the first part on excuses to let go of was reminiscent of the structure of Girl, Wash Your Face.

These two books were very similar. I read each in a day, one right after the other, and cannot clearly say which tips I got from which book. I don't think you have to read one before reading the other, and in fact you could probably even read the chapters out of order, but personally I'm a stickler for reading things in order.

These are not must-reads, but I do think that there's a little something to learn from everything, or at least you might find a well-timed reminder of something you already know. There were points in the books that were questionable, but I always read self-help books with a grain of salt, so nothing bothered me too much, though I've read some aggressive reviews about these books being tone-deaf, which, not wrong (~white feminist~). Again, flip through the table of contents and judge for yourself whether any part of it resonates with you enough to read more about.

To my mom, I say that I think you would enjoy the peppy tone of these books. Flip through the contents of both books and choose which chapters seem more interesting to you. Although I enjoyed Girl, Wash Your Face more as I was more interested in the anecdotes than self-help tips, I think the last two parts of Girl, Stop Apologizing would probably be most relevant for you.

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Published by Scribner on 05 Sep 2017
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Jesmyn Ward brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. An intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle, Sing, Unburied, Sing journeys through Mississippi’s past and present, examining the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power—and limitations—of family bonds.

Jojo is thirteen years old and trying to understand what it means to be a man. He doesn’t lack in fathers to study, chief among them his Black grandfather, Pop. But there are other men who complicate his understanding: his absent White father, Michael, who is being released from prison; his absent White grandfather, Big Joseph, who won’t acknowledge his existence; and the memories of his dead uncle, Given, who died as a teenager.

His mother, Leonie, is an inconsistent presence in his and his toddler sister’s lives. She is an imperfect mother in constant conflict with herself and those around her. She is Black and her children’s father is White. She wants to be a better mother but can’t put her children above her own needs, especially her drug use. Simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she’s high, Leonie is embattled in ways that reflect the brutal reality of her circumstances.

When the children’s father is released from prison, Leonie packs her kids and a friend into her car and drives north to the heart of Mississippi and Parchman Farm, the State Penitentiary. At Parchman, there is another thirteen-year-old boy, the ghost of a dead inmate who carries all of the ugly history of the South with him in his wandering. He too has something to teach Jojo about fathers and sons, about legacies, about violence, about love.

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If you’re into magical realism and southern gothic, this is the book for you. Unfortunately those aren’t the genres for me, but I still gave this book a shot because of its important themes of racism, poverty, and drug addiction.

In the end, this felt like the kind of book I’d be assigned for English class. I identified a ton of literary devices, particularly flashbacks and metaphors, but I wasn't invested enough to further explore how those devices were probably supposed to enrich the characters. I felt like this story was living in the past, and I didn't perceive any character development. And this being a character-driven novel, I had no plot to fall back on to keep me immersed.

I'm trying to pinpoint why I wasn't invested in the characters. Perhaps I found the character voices incongruent with who I thought they were, given their thoughts and actions (chapters are written in different point-of-views).

However, this is a highly acclaimed novel, so I can't help but feel like I'm missing something. I don't think there was anything to miss in the plot, so perhaps my boredom from the lack of character development was an oversight of the character building/describing that other readers found so poignant.

I attribute my disconnect to this story to a mismatch of writing style and my personal taste, so if you're interested in this story from the blurb, and you're into magical realism and southern gothic, I highly recommend you giving this book a try, as my opinion is definitely in the minority!

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Published by Simon & Schuster on 15 Apr 2014
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When someone’s been gone a long time, at first you save up all the things you want to tell them. You try to keep track of everything in your head. But it’s like trying to hold on to a fistful of sand: all the little bits slip out of your hands, and then you’re just clutching air and grit. That’s why you can’t save it all up like that. Because by the time you finally see each other, you’re catching up only on the big things, because it’s too much bother to tell about the little things. But the little things are what make up life.

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