Speak, Okinawa: A Memoir

Like last month, I'm pretty sure that my New Jersey book club will go back to holding outdoor meetings and my time zooming with them has probably come to a close. But I decided to read their May pick, Speak Okinawa, Elizabeth Miki Brina's memoir, anyway. It sounded interesting enough.

Before I even write my impressions, I realized almost immediately that I knew almost nothing about Okinawa. I was marginally familiar with the Battle of Okinawa, but that was about it. I guess I thought it was an island of Japan. Even after finishing this memoir, I can't claim to know much about the very interesting history of Okinawa. It makes me wonder how we know so little about so much of the world.

As Speak, Okinawa begins, I thought that this was going to be story much like Crying in H Mart. A young woman of mixed race, with an Asian mother and an American father. But while I related to much of Crying in H Mart, that wasn't true about Speak, Okinawa.

In addition to this being the story about Elizabeth and her mother, it was about so much more. It gave a bit of history of Okinawa through the centuries. It touched upon World War II and the Vietnam War. It focused on being clearly in the racial minority growing up in Rochester, New York. It was the story of someone trying to fit in.

It was the sad story of Elizabeth's mother and her family on Okinawa. It was part of her father's story and about the way Elizabeth's relationship with him changed with him as she got older and became more aware.

I liked this book but didn't love it. However, I think it will encourage a riveting book club discussion.
 

French Braid

In the past, I've really enjoyed the "ordinariness" of Anne Tyler's novels. Stories about ordinary people doing ordinary things. The characters she weaves stories about are so relatable. Sadly, her latest, French Braid, just didn't cut it for me. 

This is the story about the Garrett family. The mom, Mercy, the dad, Robin, the sisters, Alice and Lily, and younget brother, David. They come together, they drift apart, and they try to figure out the places the family has in their individual lives.

This could have been better, but I found there were too many little plot lines that didn't combine to make anything really cohesive. Or... maybe complete is the better word. It just didn't feel like a complete story.

I listened to French Braid since this is the type of novel  I love listening to. The reader was fine... except during dialog when the accents she used for each of the characters just seemed plain wrong! (There was also mention of 'her narrator said' or some reference of other to the narrator - three times- and I wondered if that was part of  the novel or just notes for the reader of the text and should not have been recorded.)

Unless you absolutely love Anne Tyler and read everything she writes, I can't really recommend this one.
 

The Push

Ashley Audrain's novel, The Push, was not what I was expecting. At all. I'd heard that it was disturbing, but a worthwhile read. I'm not sure why I avoided reading any summaries or blurbs before I picked it up. But there you go.

Blythe comes from a long line of bad mothers. After marrying her college sweetheart and starting a family, things start to unravel. Being a mother doesn't come naturally to Blythe nor does she find mothering easy. While adjusting to her new role, she's overwhelmed and exhausted. Things don't get easier. She wonders if there is something wrong with her daughter, is it in her head, or is there something wrong with Blythe. Her husband and her mother-in-law tell her it's all in her head.

Blythe and her husband, Fox, plod along and decide that they'd like a second child. Blythe's experience with her second, a son, is so completely different from her experience with her older daughter. That further convinces her that the problems with her daughter are her daughter, not herself.

In an instant, life changes for the family. Roles are redefined. New friendships are formed. Personal history is remembered. 

A real page turner. Not for the faint at heart since some of the scenes where motherhood is its worst are a little difficult to read.

 

Yearbook

Why is changing devices so difficult for an old gal like me? Got a new iPad in anticipation of a bunch of travel this summer and I can't get it to do what my PC can do. So please bear with me. Mostly especially in updating my reading log.

Not sure who the intended audience is for Seth Rogen's memoir, Yearbook. And I'm also not sure how I got this book on my radar. Some of it was funny, some of it was so current and a bit unsettling, and some of it was just TMI. I mean, he's the age of my kids, and I don't like imagining them doing some of the things that he was up to in his life. Some sex and lots of drugs. I'm no prude, but like I said, I read those parts as a mom. Hmm, I wonder what Seth's mom thinks about his book.

The Midnight Library

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig is the selection for Books & Beer Club this month. I'd heard some buzz about the novel (as well as some very mixed reviews) so even though I won't be able to attend the meeting this month, I figured I'd pick up the book.

What would life by like if you could go back, examine your regrets and then experience what life would have been like had you made a different choice at any moment in time? Like... what if you said yes when a guy asked you on a date. Or you agreed to tag along with your best friend on a trip to Australia? Or you pursued your father's dream to become an Olympic swimmer?

Nora Seed, at the point when she decides to end her life, finds herself in a library with the opportunity to experience all those lives that she didn't live. It gave her a choice to examine her regrets, the roads not taken.

I loved the concept of the book. It was a quick, fun, read. It was just okay. Sometimes the writing got a bit too philosophical for me. But it did prod me to think about my life's regrets. The discussion of the novel will probably be an interesting one.
 

Exile Music

What a beautiful, multi-faceted novel. To call Jennifer Steil's Exile Music a Holocaust novel doesn't even hint at the richness of the story or the language. It's a Holocaust novel but so much more.

Exile Music is the story of Viennese Orly. She is a young teen when  Hitler moves in. She and her parents must get out of Austria. They flee to Bolivia, the only country that will take them. Her brother had already escaped to Switzerland. Orly is leaving behind everything she knows as well as her best friend, Anneliese. 

In Vienna, Orly's family's lives revolve around music. Her father is a viola player and her mother is an opera singer. Once they are in La Paz, her mother has no more music left in her. Her father continues to play his viola and eventually Orly learns how to play an Indian instrument.

This is a Holocaust novel. Yes. But it's also a novel about Orly's adjustment to Bolivia, both physically (that thin air!) and emotionally. She begins to make friends with all sorts of people. She learns Spanish. At first she must work. Eventually, she returns to school. We learn about the waves of refugees. Those that came during the war, like Orly and her family, as well as those arrived after the war. We learn about the political turmoil in Bolivia as well as the racial intolerance native Indians experienced. There's so much more.

Because I listened to the novel, I wasn't able to highlight lines in the book that could have been written to describe the situation in Ukraine - and in Europe - today. But many times, I thought about timeless authoritarianism and intolerance is. Sadly.

I highly recommend Exile Music.
 

The Kew Gardens Girls

How sad is it when you finish a novel on Friday, go to write the review on Monday and can't remember very much about it? That's the case with Posy Lovell's The Kew Garden Girls.

I read much more about World War II than about World War I so that part was refreshing. I'm not sure what it was that I didn't love about the novel. Perhaps because I found it predictable and wish the characters had been developed a little bit more than they were. I wish there had been a little bit more about the interaction of all the women working in the gardens and not just the three who were the main characters of the story.

I was interesting in reading about the treatment of conscientious objectors during World War I in England. I was disheartened to learn about the women's fight for equal wages, a fight that continues even now, over 100 years later. How terrible is that?

I there was a little more history of this historical fiction. It was a quick, easy, enjoyable enough read, but I wanted more!

 

Enough Already: Learning to Love the Way I Am Today

 

I was a huge fan of Valerie Bertinelli back in the day when she was on "One Day at a Time" and I am really enjoying her now on "The Kids Baking Championship" on the Food Network now. I'm pretty sure I read her first memoir, Losing It, about 12 years ago, after she'd lost a lot of weight as the Jenny Craig spokesperson. I don't really remember anything about that book, but was curious enough to read this current one.

Bertinelli and I are of similar ages although our life experiences have obviously been quite different. And we've both gained and lost weight and gained and lost weight and gained. (In my case now, lost, too.) And we're both looking at a lot less life ahead of us as opposed to what is behind us. I was interested in finding out how Bertinelli has come to the place where she is today, in her early 60s, being comfortable in her own skin.

This book started so slowly for me and I almost didn't stick with it. There was just too much focus on "losing those last ten pounds" for me. The further along I read, even though she brought that up far more times than I thought might be necessary, I was able to tune that part of her story out and get to the rest of it. Even though she's a celebrity, her first husband was a celebrity, her son is on his way to being a celebrity, other than having the means to live in lovely homes that she is able to completely redo as soon as she gets herself going, her concerns are regular concerns. Those of a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, an ex-wife and a friend. I really embraced the passages about her relationship with her mother, mostly at the mother's end of life. And I did not think her horrible at all for stating that the death of Eddie Van Halen, her first husband, was a much more difficult one than the death of her parents. I totally get that.

Pre-pandemic I enjoyed food TV a lot more than I do now. "The Kids Baking Championship" is my favorite show on Food Network. I wish she'd talked a little bit more about that than about her cooking show, "Valerie's Home Cooking," which I've only seen a few times. But her cooking show plays into her acceptance of herself, of her love of food, of the satisfaction she gets from feeding people whereas the kids' show is something more for fun. I read about Sicilian Love Cake while scrolling through something late one night. When she described the cake, I decided that the next time I need to bring a cake somewhere, that's the cake I am going to bring. I quickly copied down the recipe. Her upside-down citrus cake also whet my whistle. Another recipe I copied down. She included several of her favorite recipes which were a bonus.

I'm not sure I can apply some of the life lessons she has learned recently... and I wonder how fully she has embraced them, but there was comfort in reading about the struggles she has, like anyone else, learning to love oneself. I'm not sure if you have to have weight issues to really connect with this book. Even though I thought she overdid it on the "last 10 pounds," I felt sort of connected to her in that regard. She says she doesn't weigh herself (ever? regularly?) but what did I do as soon as I finished the book. My morning routine of teeth, face, and weight. And while I'm not the weight where I'd ideally love to be, I'm happy with the weight I am now, and at least for now, the scale doesn't stress me out at all.

Unthinkable

Congressman Jamie Raskin's commentary, Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy wasn't as easy audiobook to listen to. On days with what I was reading was similar to current news stories (nearly 15 months after events unfolded), it was extremely difficult to listen to either the audiobook - or - the news! But at the end of the day, I'm very glad that I did listen to this one.

First, I wish I had a Representative like Jamie Raskin whose values seem to line up with mine and whose ideas of family align with mine as well. Raskin's perfect day would be spent in the company of all 3 of his children, doing something pleasant. I feel exactly the same.

Second of all, I cannot imagine the loss that the close-knit Raskin family is feeling over the loss of Tommy. Just hearing about him, I wish I had known him.

Raskin's book primarily deals with the suicide death of his son, Tommy, in conjunction with the horrors of January 6th and Raskin's role as lead impeachment manager of the second impeachment trial of our past president. He talks about his upbringing (making me think I should read one of the novels written by his mother, Barbara Raskin) and about his rise in politics. It's had me investigating Democracy Summer and wishing I was younger and could make real difference. (I really should be looking at ways that a 60-something can get involved in volunteering to hopefully facilitate some changes.)

If you are like-minded, I'd highly recommend this one, on audio, read by the author.
 

The Seven Year Dress

It's April again. This year, Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, is on April 27th. The synagogue book club reads their one Holocaust novel in conjunction with Yom HaShoah observance. I'd gotten a list of lots of novels and memoirs. Restricting myself to novels, I selected a few that were considered more uplifting than completely distressing and this was high on the list. The group voted and selected The Seven Year Dress by Paulette Mahurin.

I'm curious to learn if others in the group felt this was uplifting. The Tattooist of Auschwitz was a Holocaust novel that I considered uplifting. This one, not so much so.

What would have really made this book would have been if Mahurin had given some information about how much of this story was based on the actual experience of someone she knows or why she was inspired to write this novel. I'll do some research before the book club meeting, but it would have been nice to have that information as part of the experience of reading the novel.

Helen's story of the 7 years that she was either in hiding or as a prisoner in a concentration camp was slightly different than others that I've read. So there should be something to discuss her. But the novel didn't live up to the slight hype that it received. I hope the group won't be angry at me for suggesting this one. They weren't thrilled about Color Me In. Thinking someone else should make the book recommendations for awhile.