Tonya's Book Blog: Happy Thanksgiving!

Hi friends,

November was a great month for reading books. We enjoyed Thanksgiving with my sister and learned that you have to teach children to throw up in the toilet. This is not an inherent skill. Luckily, the vomiting was brief, only a 24-hour bug, but still more than enough for an of us.

As always, let me know if you have any recommendations or have read any of these books.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Tonya

Mambo in Chinatown by Jean Kwok

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: Yes!

Review: I have now read all of Kwok’s novels, and I liked them all! True to form, this book was about an American Born Chinese (ABC) young women who transitions from washing dishes in a Chinatown noodle restaurant to teaching professional ballroom dance. As you can imagine, this is quite a leap, and Kwok once again explores themes of immigration, class, and race while creating empathetic and endearing characters. This was definitely the lightest of the three novels and I enjoyed learning about ballroom dance and reading about the attractive young student that the main character inevitably falls in love with.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: Yes, if you like dense historical fiction

Review: This book tells the story of the enigmatic Thomas Cromwell, one of Henry VIII’s advisors. Yes, the Henry VIII with six wives who broke with the Catholic church in Rome in part so he could marry the illustrious Anne Boleyn, only to have her beheaded a few years later. This book tells the story of the break with the Catholic Church and the prominent role that Cromwell played in it. While it is fiction, the events happened. Mantel just fills in all the conversations, relationships, and drama, and let me tell you there is no shortage of drama. Cromwell came from humble origins, the son of a blacksmith, who by his own resourcefulness and usefulness is raised up to the second highest position in the land. Super unusual for autocratic, heriditary monarchy that Britain was! Mantel tries to paint a picture of the man behind the great split with Rome and illuminate his mysterious motives and loyalties. It was a fascinating read, but to be honest, I thought it could have been a great deal shorter, but I will give Mantel due credit for beautifully and engagingly showing the pivotal role that Cromwell played during this historic and unprecedented time.

Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society by Nicholas A. Christakis

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: Yes

Review: With all of the doom, gloom, and misery that is so evident in the world and in the news, it’s easy to conclude that humanity is a lost cause, and it might be best to just reboot the universe and start over. But reading books like this one help remind me that humanity is nothing but a bundle of contradictions and for every negative story, characteristic, and emotion, there’s a positive and uplifting one if you only put in the effort to find it. Christakis demonstrates how humanity has evolved a suite of social features that enable us to establish good societies. He argues that even with all the political, racial, religious, and ethnic rifts in the world, we cannot help but create good societies where we selflessly sacrifice to help one another sometimes even to the detriment of our own selves. One of my favorite analogies from the book describes different societies as standing near to the peaks of several mountains and comparing how different the tops of all the mountains they’re standing on are without realizing that the vast majority of the mountains from the peak down that they’re standing on are all the same. It’s easy to notice the differences while ignoring the vast majority of social features -- love, family, altruism, neighborliness -- that unite most human societies. Cheers to humanity!

Evvie Drake Starts Over by Lind Holmes

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: Yes

Review: I thought that this book would be a fairly flighty rom-com as it features a professional baseball player as the love interest. I was pleasantly surprised though to discover some real depth to the story. Evvie Drake is 5 minutes away from leaving her abusive husband when he dies in a tragic car accident. This all happens in the first five pages of the book. The love interest is a washed-up, Yankees player trying to escape the ridicule that goes from being the best in the league to being unable to hit the broadside of the barn as he develops a bad case of the “yips.” They both learn that you’re the only person that can fix you, and that moving on from a bad situation takes time and healing. There’s also some smooching. A good, thought-provoking read.

Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: Yes!! For all women and those who have sex with women

Review: That's right. There's a vagina -- actually, a vulva-- on the cover of this book. I’ve been married for over 5 years and have two kids, and I’m beginning to realize that my sex education had some major holes in it. I’m moving past the blame stage of this realization and am trying to rectify the wrong and educate myself. This book is a great way to do that. Nagoski is a professional sex educator and draws on all the latest research to provide evidence-based explanations how women can have more fulfilling sex lives. Turns out that women and men are different, and as Nagoski explains women’s sexuality is not just men’s sexuality “lite.” Turns out that context matters including a woman’s emotional, physical, and mental state combined with the health of her relationship. Nagoski provides tools to help you understand your own sexuality and what context works best for you to improve your sex life. To be honest, the jury’s still out on whether this will work for me since I’ve been busy working fulltime, being married, and having two kids to try it yet, but spoiler alert – it’s important to understand all that context and how it applies to your sex life! I liked this book so much that I made my husband read it, and he learned a lot too.

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