Tonya's Book Blog: March and April Pandemic Reading

Hi friends,

It’s been a while. I didn’t write a post for March because I only read one book in March because our lives were insane and I couldn’t find the mental space or time to devote to reading. I’m sure you can all figure out why…. In addition to the worldwide pandemic impacting nearly every aspect of our daily lives, Dan was also finishing his dissertation and defending it in March, which as any of you have ever experienced, or maybe supported someone who has experienced, is a completely all-encompassing task for everyone involved. After school’s closed on March 13, Dan still had to defend his thesis by March 31, and I still had to work full-time in addition to now providing childcare for our 3 and 1 year-old who are also with us full-time. As you can imagine, that last half of March was fairly hellish. The good news for us though, is that Dan passed his thesis defense! He actually defended on Zoom, the first person in his college to do so, and it went really well. But that’s his story to tell.

After the craziness of the thesis defense was over, we started splitting the work day a little more equally with me working 6:00-12:00 and him working 12:00-5:30 and each of us sneaking a little more time during the baby’s naps. Chloe is watching a lot more TV every day, and we are “making it work.” Most days.

Anyway, April was much better, and I was able to catch up on reading including some books that were recommended by my friends Natalie Ormsby and Logan, and also, one of my favorite authors, John Green. As always, please let me know what you think of these books and other suggestions are always welcome. You might notice an increase in the number of novels I’ve been reading. This is directly related to my need to escape the craziness that is our pandemic-struck world right now. I highly recommend this coping mechanism.

Hang in there,

Tonya

Age of Myth: Legends of the First Empire by Michael J. Sullivan

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes, for anyone who enjoys fantasy, fiction, or stories with awesome female leads

Review: I read the first 5 books in Sullivan’s prequel series set 3,000 years prior to his Riyria Revelations series, which I reviewed previously. To be honest, this series has been on the whole a lot better than that one, especially the first two books. In this first book, Sullivan introduces us to a new cast of characters that, unlike in the first series, he does a good job of developing right off the bat. In this first installment, we meet my favorite character, Persephone. She’s a natural leader, but as is often the case still to this day with female leaders, the men around her initially take most of the credit for her ideas and leadership, and Persephone has to work twice as hard to prove that she’s a better leader than literally every other person in the story. The book is a self-contained story and has its own arc with powerful and intense action moments throughout the story. It also sets the scene for the second book and beyond.

Age of Swords: Legends of the First Empire by Michael J. Sullivan

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes, same as above

Review: This book sees our cast of characters from the first book uprooted from their homes and lives and forced to seek refuge with the other less-than-friendly human clans as the war between human and frey begins. Faced with an insurmountable enemy that they have no chance of defeating, all of the male human chieftains decide to sit around and argue about who should be in charge while Persephone acts to get them the weapons that they need to possibly have a chance of beating the frey. Whereas in the first book all the action took place at home, in this one, our heroes go journeying as Persephone leads a ragtag band of misfit women to secure needed weapons and assistance from the nearby dwarven nation. As you can imagine, things don’t go exactly to plan, and our heroes are faced with betrayal; mighty, magical, monsters; and a trip deep underground. This was probably my favorite installment so far in this series as this small group of underestimated women overcome their own fears and shortcomings while being the unlikely force that saves the day. Spoilers, sorry.

Age of War: Legends of the First Empire by Michael J. Sullivan

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes, same as above

Review: Sullivan wrote the Legends of the First Empire series in two three-book arcs, and this one is the end of the first arc. As such, it wraps up many of the plot lines from the first two. Finally, the war with the arrogant frey has arrived. Persephone has taken her place as the leader of humans and mankind prepares for the war that threatens to wipe them from existence. This book is filled with triumph and tragedy as each character sacrifices what is most precious to them to save mankind. It’s tragic and epic.

Age of Legend: Legends of the First Empire by Michael J. Sullivan

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes, same as above

Review: In the second part of the Legends series, Sullivan takes the story in a completely new and unexpected way. I liked this installment the least of this series because it felt like the whole book was just setting up the next one. I kept waiting for the action to climax and for the characters to overcome the obstacles before them, but instead I got a cliffhanger ending as our heroes embarked on a Dante-esque journey through the afterlife of Elan, the mythical world the story is set in. This series focuses less on the old cast of characters from the first three and more on younger characters as the story leaps five years into the future as the war between human and frey has come to a stalemate.

Age of Death: Legends of the First Empire by Michael J. Sullivan

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: yes, same as above

Review: After reading 10 other books by Sullivan, I thought I knew what to expect from his storytelling, but this book was weird. Some good weird and some just weird-weird. As noted above, the previous installment ends in a cliffhanger with our heroes beginning their journey into the underworld. This whole second-half of the Legends series has kind of felt like an excuse for Sullivan to go into a very in-depth explanation of the back story and religion behind the world he has created, which is interesting, but generally not the focus of most epic fantasy books as those things generally dictate the setting and flavor of the book. In any case, he does a pretty good job of making his origin-story engaging and definitely keeps us on the edge of our seats as he leaves us with yet another cliffhanger ending. Luckily the 6^th and last book of the series comes out on May 5, so you can guess what I’ll be reviewing next month.

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Diaz Perez

Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Recommendation: A must read for all people everywhere

Review: This was one of those books that I made my husband read too, after he finished his dissertation. This book focuses on the immense gender data gap that exists in our increasingly data-driven world. Perez repeatedly shows how our world is built around the male-as-default and female as fringe, despite females representing half of all humans in the world. She shows how this male-as-default thinking is, in some cases, literally killing women. For example, crash test dummies used in vehicle safety testing are based on the “average male.” When cars were tested with dummies representing females, their safety ratings literally crashed. Perhaps this explains why women are more likely to be seriously injured and die in car crashes. Further examples abound including how women aren’t included in drug trials because our hormonal fluctuations are hard to account for during testing, which leads to incorrect dosage prescriptions because in real life women take drugs while our hormones fluctuate (shocking!!); to my personal favorite: how there’s an abundance of research on erectile dysfunction and hair loss but little to no research on what drugs women can take when pregnant or nursing; to how smartphones are too big for women’s hands – and pockets—as they are designed predominantly by men, who have larger hands on average. The book makes the point that this enormous oversight isn’t malicious; it’s just the effect of not intentionally correcting for male bias in policy, medicine, tech development, and safety standards. While the book was well researched and definitely made its point, at times it felt like I was reading the same statistics over and over but within different contexts, and it got a little hard to absorb as the book went on. Regardless, this is a must-read for all genders, and I highly recommend it.

Dept of Speculation by Jenny Offill

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: maybe…

Review: This is a short and sweet read telling of one woman’s experience discovering and dealing with the fallout of her husband’s affair. I’m not going to lie, it was hard for me to read and made me uncomfortable, which I think is exactly what the author was going for as discovering that your husband is cheating on you would be really uncomfortable and hard to deal with to say the least. The book used several different prose styles that were somewhat over my head, but I did enjoy how she changed the narrator’s point of view to accentuate narrative points, first referring to herself and her husband as we, then herself as “the wife” when she discovers the affair, and finally back to “we” as the story resolves.

A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: sure

Review: This is one of those somewhat epic historical fiction novels that traces the entire lives of the protagonists and their posterity. In this case I got a lesson on the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s and the military coup in Chile in the 1970s because these unfortunate characters experienced both first as refugees from General Franco's defeat of the Nationalist forces for control of Spain that are fortunate enough to receive refugee in Chile; and then again as refugees from the military coup in Chile that flee to friends in Venezuela after being held as political prisoners in a concentration camp. Yeah, rough luck, right? Since my U.S.-centric education and further lack of effort to educate myself omitted both of these historic events and the U.S’s role in both of them from my education, it was interesting to learn about them while also following these compelling characters. The story centers on a couple that didn’t marry for love but gradually fall in love over the course of their lives together, but to be honest, I didn’t find their passion extremely convincing as they both cheated on each other at different points. It was still a good and informative read anyway.

I Am Still Alive by Kate Alice Marshall

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recommendation: Yes, but slightly graphic and intense

Review: This book was a recommendation from one of my favorite novelists, John Green, who recommended it as a great pandemic read. As it’s a survival story, that was definitely appropriate. The book focuses on a 16 year-old girl recovering from a car accident that killed her mother and left her handicapped. She has to go live with her estranged father in the wilderness somewhere along the Alaska-Canada border. Things go very poorly and she’s left to survive alone. Well, not entirely alone, there’s a great dog named Bo, who was also my favorite character and the best part of the book. I won’t spoil what happens to the dog at the end, but if your familiar with any other good dog story, then you can probably guess… In any case, it was definitely different than the other things I’ve been reading, and while it had intense and graphic moments, it also had a great character development arc for the girl and the dog.

The Hundred Foot Journey by Richard C. Morais

Rating: 3 of 5 stars

Recommendation: Meh…

Review: I saw the movie based on this book before I read the book and decided to read the book because I felt like there were some plot holes in the movie that I wanted the answer to. However, this is one of the very rare cases where I definitely liked the movie better. Blasphemous, I know, but it does happen. In this case, I greatly preferred the ending to the movie to the last third of this book and its own meandering conclusion. I felt like the protagonist never really matured or learned anything at the end, and I prefer the movie ending where he realizes the value of the relationships and place that he left behind.

Mommy Corner

Maya loves boxes.

Sometimes Chloe insists on getting in on the box action too.

I celebrated my birthday while physically distancing. This cake, made by our friend Sara Jacobsen, was the best part.

Dan virtually defended his dissertation on Maya's first birthday. I didn't get a picture of the defense, but Maya enjoyed the cupcake.

We celebrated Easter while physically distancing, which was weird, but there you go. Due to the lack of people to take our picture, my phone is balanced on the hood of our car. I discovered a new photographic effect!