All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Rating: ★★★★

In continuing my reading of short books, I picked up All Systems Red, the first of The Murderbot Diaries. It’s about 90 pages long, and I highly enjoyed it. I want to continue the series right away, which rarely happens for me. Usually I want a break so I don’t get tired of a series and its characters. I know many people can binge things – such as television – but I can only take things in chunks. (Usually.)

The story is from the point-of-view of a “murderbot,” a type of rented android on a mission with some humans in order to protect them. Since the story is so short and things about the murderbot are revealed, I don’t want to say too much. But what happens in the beginning is unexpected, and our murderbot has to work with the humans in ways it didn’t think it would. It’s an unusual situation.

All Systems Red really throws you into its sci-fi world and I did find it a little difficult to orient myself. It wasn’t until maybe a third or even halfway through the book until I started to understand the “feed” system. I still don’t know how it really works. Somehow humans and murderbots all have some neurological link to a feed. They are able to access information and even talk to each other through it. I don’t know how it works. Additionally, it became clearer what exactly a SecUnit/murderbot is as the story progressed, but it wasn’t spelled out.

I can’t say I dislike that. I like stories that don’t just lay everything out in exposition. In my opinion, it’s better to let the reader see how the characters live their lives, and then the reader can make their own conclusions. Perhaps it could have been a little cleaner, though. I wasn’t sure if there were typos, unclear editing, or just poor sentence structure, but sometimes I was a little confused on what was happening.

The action of the story really kept it moving and I could hardly put the book down, which is impressive to me since so few things hold my attention these days. I love the ending of the book, and like I said up top, can’t wait to continue the series.

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

Rating: ★★★★★

[TW: Mention of rape.]

Wow, this book was painful to read. I mean that in a good way. This memoir is amazing. I’ve never read anything like it. I connected to it so strongly, and yet I didn’t because I don’t have the same experiences as Gay. Still I did connect to it because of her raw honesty. That’s what this book is: raw honesty. And because of that, it’s incredibly powerful. Many chapters made me have to stop and take a breather. Gay has such a strong voice. I love this book, but it was painful.

I think there’s the misconception out there that this book really focuses on being a fat woman in the world. Yes, that is a factor. But if there were a title and a subtitle, being a fat woman in the world would be the subtitle. The title would be her rape when she was twelve. That event changed the course of her life. In the book, she says she ate food, making herself fat, to try to protect her body. I have not had this experience. I am a fat woman, but I have been fat as long as I can remember. I am just built this way. It wasn’t a conscious choice. In a way, it may not have been a conscious choice for Gay either.

No matter what, we are similar in that we are fat women trying to move through the world. In the chapters that focus on her experiences as a fat woman trying to move through the world, I could really agree with what she was saying and feel a connection to her. That means something to me. It also means something to me that she is willing to be so open and honest and raw with her truth and her pain. We don’t have to have shared experiences for me to sympathize and empathize and see some of myself in what she has gone through. I loved this book, but it’s not enjoyable. I also fear what some critics might say. I fear they won’t understand, or they will purposefully not want to understand. But I’m happy this book exists.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Rating: ★★★

I can’t really say I enjoyed this story, and that’s for a number of reasons. The plot of this book focuses on Starr, who was with a black boy named Khalil when he is murdered by a white police officer. Throughout the book, she has to deal with the trauma of that and with, basically, living in a racist society and bringing together two different worlds – she goes to a wealthy, all-white school yet lives in an all-black “hood.”

Starr goes through a lot, and it’s tough and dark and unpleasant. She has good times with friends and family, of course, but there’s a lot of darkness here.

I guess I had two main issues with this book. One would be that the darkness, the trauma, is handled almost casually, and when Starr does have outbursts, it feels over-the-top. This book is taking on a very complex issue that is intertwined in our culture in more ways than can be described, and yet there’s little nuance or subtlety reflected in this story. I think the reason for that is due to my second issue with the book: I really disliked the writing. It felt stilted, unedited, shallow, amateur. In creative writing classes I’ve taken, professors would always say, “Show, don’t tell.” All this book does is tell. The language is clunky and unpolished. It was seriously a chore to read this book, and every time I went to pick it up, I was not excited due solely to the poor writing. I feel bad saying this because I think this story is important and should be told and should be published and should be read, but this may be some of the worst writing I’ve encountered.

Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

Rating: ★★★★★

Wow, this book blew me away, and I did not expect that at all. Our main character, 16-year-old Aza, lives with OCD and anxiety. Much of what Aza describes in this book – wanting to get outside of herself, away from her body, away from her thoughts – was extremely relatable for me, and I was on the verge of tears at many different points. I live with my own anxieties and mental health isues that this book excellently described. It’s been a long time since a book made me cry. I can’t tell you how much I loved this book. I recommend this to everyone, but especially those who live with mental illness and those who want to understand what it’s like to live with mental illness.

Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson

Rating: ★★★★

I decided to buy this book on Audible when it was offered during a sale (I think 2 for 1 or something similar). I had heard good things about it and was expecting to be blown away by insightful thoughts about our culture. However, I felt slightly disappointed because many of the things Dyson describes are things I am very aware of since I’m active on Twitter. On those sites, I have a constant feed of political and social issues, and people’s perspectives on them. The people I follow are almost all (very) socially liberal. So nothing in this book shook me or moved me. I feel like I’ve seen it all before.

However, I’m giving it four stars because the thoughts are written clearly, thoroughly, and topically. I want to shove this book into the hands of so many white people I know. This is an important read for people who do not keep up with what is happening, and what has been happening, in America. And even though the book is centered on the race problem in America, we all know there is a race problem in most countries. I feel anybody from anywhere could read this and learn something about themselves.

While I didn’t really learn anything new, Dyson calls out the white people reading the book – addressing them directly throughout the entire thing – by saying they need to step up and educate themselves. I believe in that, but when I heard him saying those words (as the author narrates the audiobook), I realized that I really don’t do enough to learn about the things he suggests – black culture, for example. Music, art, etc. I love books, but I’m not going out of my way to learn about anything else. I need to. Everyone needs to.

I’ll also just quickly add that I thought the part about police close to the end was my favorite part. I thought that was particularly powerful.

The End We Start From by Megan Hunter

Rating: ★★

I received a copy of this book in exchange for a review.

I can’t say much about this book because it’s so short, and therefore I’m not sure what’s a spoiler. But it’s a story about a woman and her baby and how they’re surviving in a dystopian type of future. The writing is good and very descriptive at times, but it surprisingly lacks emotional depth. There’s also no big, overarching plot points or character descriptors. For example, none of the characters have complete names. They’re just referred to as letters – R, Z, O, etc. For the first third of the book, I thought this may be because the author wants the reader to latch onto the emotions of the story, which center around a woman trying to survive with her baby. But without anything of substance to hold onto, the story came off as shallow and underdeveloped. I have a lot of questions that I can’t pose here because they may be spoilerly, and the story just fails to answer any of them. After the first third, I thought the book was hitting its stride, and I was really enjoying it. I read the entire thing in two sittings, which is rare for me. But as I was reaching the end, I realized I wasn’t going to get any answers, and became annoyed and frustrated. I think this is one you can skip.

Difficult Women by Roxane Gay

Rating: ★★★

I won an ARC of this book in a Goodreads giveaway. Opinions are my own.

I never rate things half stars or quarter stars, but I’m going to make an exception for this book: It’s a 3.5 stars from me.

The first third or half of the book I really struggled with and almost DNF’d it because I felt like I was just watching women get beat up. Then, in some stories, it seemed as though the reader was meant to sympathize with the abusers. I was getting rather frustrated. But I kept going, and eventually the stories came around to the emotion and meaning of relationships.

These relationships were mostly romantic ones between men and women. I don’t think there were any queer relationships in the book, and that does annoy me because there was story after story after story that focused on a male/female romantic relationship. Enough seemed like enough.

As you can tell, I have some issues with the book. However, the writing is wonderful and moving and powerful. It pulls you in and makes you really understand what these characters are feeling. My favorite in the collection is “North Country.”

I also wanted to mention the fact that there are a few fantastical stories in this collection, but I think they fit because, on the whole, this collection seems to be about relationships, either good or bad ones. That’s why I’m also annoyed with the title of the book. Yes, we have some “strong” women in here that may make life “difficult” for men, but that doesn’t seem to be the focus here. I’m left wondering why this title was chosen, and part of me believes it’s because Gay is known to be a feminist and a feminist-y title would sell well.