Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood
Publisher: Berkley
Publication Date: June 13, 2023
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
The many lives of theoretical physicist Elsie Hannaway have finally caught up with her. By day, she’s an adjunct professor, toiling away at grading labs and teaching thermodynamics in the hopes of landing tenure. By other day, Elsie makes up for her non-existent paycheck by offering her services as a fake girlfriend, tapping into her expertly honed people-pleasing skills to embody whichever version of herself the client needs.
Honestly, it’s a pretty sweet gig—until her carefully constructed Elsie-verse comes crashing down. Because Jack Smith, the annoyingly attractive and arrogant older brother of her favorite client, turns out to be the cold-hearted experimental physicist who ruined her mentor’s career and undermined the reputation of theorists everywhere. And he’s the same Jack Smith who rules over the physics department at MIT, standing right between Elsie and her dream job.
Elsie is prepared for an all-out war of scholarly sabotage but…those long, penetrating looks? Not having to be anything other than her true self when she’s with him? Will falling into an experimentalist’s orbit finally tempt her to put her most guarded theories on love into practice?
Elsie Hannaway is an adjunct physics professor. To supplement her measly income, she moonlights as a fake girlfriend. When she interviews for her dream job at MIT, she discovers that one of the physicists she’ll be interviewing with is the brother of one of her clients. He’s also the person who ruined her mentor’s career. Will being a fake girlfriend ruin her chances of getting the job?
Love, Theoretically was a cute romance. I loved that Elsie is an intelligent, career-driven woman. Ali Hazelwood brings the spice. Parts of it were laugh-out-loud funny too. And Adam and Olive from The Love Hypothesis have a cameo. We get to find out what they’ve been up to since the end of their story!
I’m loving Ali Hazelwood right now. I plan to read all of her books! Highly recommended.
August 10th, 2023 in
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Making a Scene by Constance Wu
Narrator: Constance Wu
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Release Date: October 04, 2022
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Growing up in the friendly suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, Constance Wu was often scolded for having big feelings or strong reactions. “Good girls don’t make scenes,” people warned her. And while she spent most of her childhood suppressing her bold, emotional nature, she found an early outlet in community theater—it was the one place where big feelings were okay—were good, even. Acting became her refuge, and eventually her vocation. At eighteen she moved to New York, where she’d spend the next ten years of her life auditioning, waiting tables, and struggling to make rent before her two big breaks: the TV sitcom Fresh Off the Boat and the hit film Crazy Rich Asians.
Here Constance shares private memories of childhood, young love and heartbreak, sexual assault and harassment, and how she “made it” in Hollywood. Raw, relatable, and enthralling, Making a Scene is an intimate portrait of the pressures and pleasures of existing in today’s world.
I know Constance Wu from her starring role in Crazy Rich Asians. She also starred in the TV series Fresh Off the Boat. I never watched that but I remember there was a big to-do when she tweeted that she was disappointed that the show was NOT canceled. People thought that she was an ungrateful brat and she got a lot of hate for it.
One of the reasons I chose Making a Scene is because I wanted to hear Constance’s side of the story. She does address the tweet towards the end of the book and is very apologetic about it. And her explanation of her feelings at the time makes sense.
The rest of the book kind of feels like an apology tour. Several of the essays are about situations that she wishes she would have handled better and apologizing to the people affected. Conversely, some of the essays are about people who should be apologizing to her, like one of the producers of Fresh Off the Boat who sexually harassed her and a couple of really awful boyfriends.
Speaking of boyfriends, she is very candid and descriptive about her sex life. I didn’t mind but it did take me by surprise for some reason. Maybe because I was assuming she would be more demure like her character in Crazy Rich Asians. I actually love it when celebrities give me the down-and-dirty.
Recommended.
August 7th, 2023 in
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Big Gay Wedding by Byron Lane
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Publication Date: May 30, 2023
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Two grooms. One mother of a problem.
Barnett Durang has a secret. No, not THAT secret. His widowed mother has long known he’s gay. The secret is Barnett is getting married. At his mother’s farm. In their small Louisiana town. She just doesn’t know it yet.
It’ll be an intimate affair. Just two hundred or so of the most fabulous folks Barnett is shipping in from the “heathen coasts,” as Mom likes to call them, turning her quiet rescue farm for misfit animals into a most unlikely wedding venue.
But there are forces, both within this modern new family and in the town itself, that really don’t want to see this handsome couple march down the aisle. It’ll be the biggest, gayest event in the town’s history if they can pull it off, and after a glitter-filled week, nothing will ever be the same. Big Gay Wedding is an uplifting book about the power of family and the unconditional love of a mother for her son.
Barnett’s mother Chrissy runs the Polite Society Ranch. Her husband recently died and she assumed that Barnett would take over the family farm someday so she could retire. When Barnett comes home with his boyfriend and tells her that they are getting married, she knows that her dream of having her son run the farm is over. She also has to come to grips with the fact that Barnett is not going to just outgrow this gay thing like she hoped he would.
Big Gay Wedding has two main plot lines going. One is serious. Chrissy and the rest of the town are having a hard time with a Big Gay Wedding happening on the farm. The other is the planning of the actual wedding. Barnett’s fiancé comes from money and his sister-in-law is planning an extravagant and outlandish wedding. It was just a touch too zany for my taste. I did appreciate how Chrissy’s struggle with Barnett’s sexuality was written. Lane did a good job of portraying her inner turmoil when trying to accept Barnett’s marriage. I liked that there was nuance in her feelings even though I didn’t always agree with them.
Recommended.
I’ve also reviewed Byron Lane’s debut novel A Star is Bored.
August 3rd, 2023 in
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Here for It; Or, How to Save Your Soul in America: Essays by R. Eric Thomas
Publisher: Random House Audio
Release Date: February 18, 2020
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
R. Eric Thomas didn’t know he was different until the world told him so. Everywhere he went – whether it was his rich, mostly white, suburban high school, his conservative Black church, or his Ivy League college in a big city – he found himself on the outside looking in.
In essays by turns hysterical and heartfelt, Thomas reexamines what it means to be an “other” through the lens of his own life experience. He explores the two worlds of his childhood: the barren urban landscape where his parents’ house was an anomalous bright spot, and the Eden-like school they sent him to in white suburbia. He writes about struggling to reconcile his Christian identity with his sexuality, the exhaustion of code-switching in college, accidentally getting famous on the internet (for the wrong reason), and the surreal experience of covering the 2016 election for Elle online, and the seismic changes that came thereafter. Ultimately, Thomas seeks the answer to these ever more relevant questions: Is the future worth it? Why do we bother when everything seems to be getting worse? As the world continues to shift in unpredictable ways, Thomas finds the answers to these questions by reenvisioning what “normal” means and in the powerful alchemy that occurs when you at last place yourself at the center of your own story.
Here for It will resonate deeply and joyfully with everyone who has ever felt pushed to the margins, struggled with self-acceptance, or wished to shine more brightly in a dark world. Stay here for it – the future may surprise you.
Here for It is a collection of essays by writer R. Eric Thomas. Most of them are about his struggle with finding his true identity. He’s Black but he went to an all-white private school. When around a lot of Black people, like at church, or later at college, he never felt like he was Black enough. He’s also gay but didn’t let himself acknowledge that for a long time. Even when having a relationship with a man in college, it was hard for him to accept that he was gay.
Being gay also put him in conflict with his Christianity. He grew up in a Black Baptist church where being gay was so taboo it wasn’t even talked about. There was no need because no one in the congregation would ever be gay.
Even though those sound like heavy topics, this book is mostly hilarious. I’ve actually read it twice. I rarely reread so that’s saying something. The first time I read it in print and it was funny. The next time, I listened to it on audiobook and it was next level. People at the gym probably thought I was a weirdo seeing me laughing to myself while on the treadmill. His voice and comedic timing are perfect.
Highly recommended.
July 31st, 2023 in
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Anti-Racist Ally: An Introduction to Activism and Action by Sophie Williams
Publisher: Amistad
Publication Date: October 15, 2020
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Do you want to be an anti-racist ally?
This punchy, pocket-sized guide shows you how, whether you’re using your voice for the first time, or are looking for ways to keep the momentum and make long lasting change.
Sophie Williams’ no-holds-barred posts about racism and Black Lives Matter on @officialmillennialblack have taken the online world by storm. Sharp, simple and insightful, they get to the heart of anti-racist principles and show us all how to truly be better allies.
Now, in her iconic Instagram style, this pocket-sized primer unpacks complex topics into their most important concepts, and provides a crucial starting block for every anti-racist ally.
Anti-Racist Ally is the perfect book for someone just getting started on their journey to becoming anti-racist. If you’ve been on this path for a while, it’s a great book for a quick refresher and inspiration of why we’re doing this work and why it’s so important to keep going.
It’s a short book – the audio clocks in at around an hour. It’s divided into easily digestible, bite-sized chunks of information. I read the print because I knew I’d want to refer back to it and read it more than once. Even though it’s short, it covers a wide range of topics, including how to be anti-racist in the workplace, online and with your family. I really appreciated the section on overcoming your anxiety that you won’t get something right. My very favorite tip was to avoid burnout by preparing a stock answer for the arguments people come up against time and time again, e.g. “All lives matter” and “What about black-on-black crime?” and “Why isn’t there a white history month?” Ugh. We all know how tiring those discussions can be.
Being a pocket-sized book, it would make a perfect stocking stuffer. It’s never too early to start Christmas shopping! Highly recommended.
No Filter: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful by Paulina Porizkova
Narrator: Paulina Porizkova
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Release Date: November 15, 2022
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Writer and former model Paulina Porizkova pens a series of intimate, introspective, and enlightening essays about the complexities of womanhood at every age, pulling back the glossy magazine cover and writing from the heart.
Born in Cold War Czechoslovakia, Paulina Porizkova rose to prominence as a model, appearing on her first Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover in 1984. As the face of Estée Lauder in 1989, she was one of the highest-paid models in the world. When she was cast in the music video for the song “Drive” by The Cars, it was love at first sight for her and frontman Ric Ocasek. He was forty at the time, and Porizkova was nineteen. The decades to come would bring marriage, motherhood, a budding writing career; and later sadness, loneliness, isolation, and eventually divorce. Following her ex-husband’s death—and the revelation of a deep betrayal—Porizkova stunned fans with her fierce vulnerability and disarming honesty as she let the whole world share in her experience of being a woman who must start over.
This is a wise and compelling exploration of heartbreak, grief, beauty, aging, relationships, re-invention and finding your purpose. In these essays, Porizkova bares her soul and shares the lessons she’s learned—often the hard way. After a lifetime of being looked at, she is ready to be heard.
When I posted that I was listening to Paulina’s memoir on Instagram, she responded herself (!) to tell me that she wouldn’t really call it a memoir. And she’s right – it’s a collection of essays that are meditations on grief, beauty and aging. One of the central themes is grief. When her husband of thirty years, Ric Ocasek, lead singer of the Cars, died unexpectedly in 2019, Paulina discovered he’d written her out of his will. At the time of his death, they were separated but still living together. She still considered him her best friend so she was shocked that he left her out of his will. His will stated that it was due to her abandoning him, which she did not understand. A large portion of the book is her reconciling the fact that she is simultaneously grieving Ric while feeling betrayed by him.
She also writes about transitioning from a young model who was valued mainly for her beauty to an older woman who is finding her voice. She’s candid about her struggles with the process.
I was impressed with how well-written this book was. Since she wrote a novel without a ghostwriter in 2007 (which I’d like to read now), I’m assuming she didn’t use a ghostwriter for this book either. She didn’t graduate high school but educated herself by reading a lot when she started modeling at fifteen. She’s not just a pretty face.
No Filter wasn’t what I expected and got a little repetitive at times but I still enjoyed listening to it.
July 24th, 2023 in
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Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge: Intimate Confessions from a Happy Marriage by Helen Ellis
Narrator: Helen Ellis
Publisher: Random House Audio
Release Date: June 13, 2023
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Welcome to the Coral Lounge, a room in Helen Ellis’s New York City apartment painted such an exuberant shade that a Peeping Tom left a sticky note asking for the color. It is in the Coral Lounge where all the parties happen: A game called “What’s in the box?” makes its uproarious debut, the Puzzle Posse pounces on a 500-piece jigsaw of a beheaded priest, and guests don blindfolds for a raucous bridal shower.
When the pandemic shuts down the city, the Coral Lounge becomes a place of refuge, where Helen and her husband binge-watch Joan Collins’s Dynasty, dote on two spoiled cats, and where Helen discovers that even twenty years into marriage, her husband still makes her heart pitter patter.
Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge is a book of humorous essays written by Helen Ellis about her life with her husband in New York City. Topics range from an email with instructions to the cat sitter, to Helen’s plant addiction, to how they kept themselves entertained during the pandemic. Even though I think I’m the target audience for this book – a middle-aged woman – I just found these essays to be mildly amusing. None of them were laugh-out-loud funny to me. But I am clearly in the minority because I’ve seen a ton of reviews talking about how hilarious it is. She’s been compared to David Sedaris but I got more Erma Bombeck vibes from it. Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge wasn’t my brand of humor but it may be yours – don’t let me stop you from picking it up.
July 20th, 2023 in
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Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
Publisher: William Morrow
Publication Date: May 16, 2023
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena’s a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.
So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I.
So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree.
But June can’t get away from Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.
With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media. R.F. Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.
June and Athena are authors who first became friends at Yale. Athena became the new it girl in publishing with a massive book deal for her debut. June’s first book was a total flop. When Athena dies in a tragic accident, June steals the manuscript for Athena’s next book, The Last Front, and passes it off as her own. The Last Front is a novel about Chinese laborers during World War I. It becomes a huge best-seller, prompting people to ask if June, a white woman, should be profiting off a story about a painful time in Chinese history. Not long after that, June is publically accused of plagiarizing Athena’s work. The lies are spinning out of control, social media has turned against her, and June has deluded herself into thinking she’s more responsible for the success of The Last Front than Athena.
Yellowface is a send-up of systemic racism in the publishing industry. June is completely oblivious to her white privilege in a forehead-smacking way. I was shaking my head at her the whole time. She actually thinks it’s harder for white writers and that Athena’s being Asian played a big part in her success. Kuang does not spare the agents or publishers either. Even though this book is satire, I don’t think it’s too far from the truth.
There is a thriller aspect to Yellowface also. Someone claiming to be Athena is stalking June online and June thinks she’s actually seen Athena at one of her book signings. I found it suspenseful and gripping. I was surprised by the ending which I think was perfection.
Highly recommended.
July 17th, 2023 in
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One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle
Narrator: Lauren Graham
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Release Date: March 01, 2022
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
When Katy’s mother dies, she is left reeling. Carol wasn’t just Katy’s mom, but her best friend and first phone call. She had all the answers and now, when Katy needs her the most, she is gone. To make matters worse, their planned mother-daughter trip of a lifetime looms: to Positano, the magical town where Carol spent the summer right before she met Katy’s father. Katy has been waiting years for Carol to take her, and now she is faced with embarking on the adventure alone.
But as soon as she steps foot on the Amalfi Coast, Katy begins to feel her mother’s spirit. Buoyed by the stunning waters, beautiful cliffsides, delightful residents, and, of course, delectable food, Katy feels herself coming back to life.
And then Carol appears—in the flesh, healthy, sun-tanned, and thirty years old. Katy doesn’t understand what is happening, or how—all she can focus on is that she has somehow, impossibly, gotten her mother back. Over the course of one Italian summer, Katy gets to know Carol, not as her mother, but as the young woman before her. She is not exactly who Katy imagined she might be, however, and soon Katy must reconcile the mother who knew everything with the young woman who does not yet have a clue.
Katy’s mother Carol was her best friend and perfect in her eyes. When she dies, Katy is awash in grief. She decides to leave her husband and take the trip to Positano, Italy that she and her mother had planned. While there, she runs into thirty-year old Carol. How is that possible? She and Carol become friends and Katy learns a lot about Carol’s life that they never talked about when she was alive.
I chose this audiobook simply because Lauren Graham narrates it. I went in blind. I was surprised by the magical realism element but I went with it. It was a clever way for Katy to learn about her mother’s past. I enjoyed the story but the prose got a little repetitive – like every food was described as delicious. Overall, it was an enjoyable listen. I think the narration made me like it more than if I’d read it in print.
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July 13th, 2023 in
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White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better by Regina Jackson
Publisher: Penguin Books
Publication Date: November 1, 2022
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
A no-holds-barred guidebook aimed at white women who want to stop being nice and start dismantling white supremacy from the team behind Race2Dinner and the documentary film, Deconstructing Karen.
It’s no secret that white women are conditioned to be “nice,” but did you know that the desire to be perfect and to avoid conflict at all costs are characteristics of white supremacy culture?
As the founders of Race2Dinner, an organization which facilitates conversations between white women about racism and white supremacy, Regina Jackson and Saira Rao have noticed white women’s tendency to maintain a veneer of niceness, and strive for perfection, even at the expense of anti-racism work.
In this book, Jackson and Rao pose these urgent questions: how has being “nice” helped Black women, Indigenous women and other women of color? How has being “nice” helped you in your quest to end sexism? Has being “nice” earned you economic parity with white men? Beginning with freeing white women from this oppressive need to be nice, they deconstruct and analyze nine aspects of traditional white woman behavior–from tone-policing to weaponizing tears–that uphold white supremacy society, and hurt all of us who are trying to live a freer, more equitable life.
White Women is a call to action to those of you who are looking to take the next steps in dismantling white supremacy. Your white supremacy. If you are in fact doing real anti-racism work, you will find few reasons to be nice, as other white people want to limit your membership in the club. If you are not ticking white people off on a regular basis, you are not doing it right.
I read a lot of anti-racism books and I learn something from every one of them. I’ll never know it all and accepting that is important when doing anti-racism work. I learned a lot from this book. I especially appreciated the section of this book about white feminism and how it is actually holding up white supremacy. That is one topic that I didn’t know much about. There are also sections on micro aggressions, schools, color-blindness and more.
I originally checked this book out from the library but I liked it so much I bought a copy. I know it’s one that I’ll read again and again, taking in more information each time.
Highly, highly recommended for all white women. (If the title makes you uncomfortable, you need to read it for sure.)
July 10th, 2023 in
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