State of the Union: Ten Weeks Out

Including today and Election Day, I have exactly ten weeks left to complete this challenge. The good news is that I have read 72 books so far! The slightly less good news is that I still have 60 books to go, or six books per week, which would require me to double my current reading pace. That's...not great.

However! There are a couple of factors in my favor. One of the biggest is the fact that I have completed the Lymond Chronicles. All six of those books required much more reading time per book than the vast majority of the other books I read. While I have other dense books remaining on my to-be-read list, I don't expect any of them to be as time-consuming (in part because I don't think that any of them will emotionally destroy me in the same way). In addition, for six weeks this summer I was very busy in my leisure time with watching the Euros and the Olympics, so fitting in enough reading time was even more difficult. While I have no doubt that this fall will be busy, there's no big event like either of those tournaments that should disrupt my reading schedule in that way. Also, the closer I get to actually meeting my goal, the more motivated I will be to keep reading!

My plan at this point is to obviously read an average of six books a week. What that actually looks like is that I have 14 books which I expect to take me a week of reading a bit every day, 30 books I expect to be able to read over two days (while also reading some of the weekly books), and 16 books I expect to be able to read in one day (while also reading some of the weekly books, but not while reading any of the two day books). In terms of hours, I figure I'll have to read about 3-4 hours every day to have a shot at making this happen. My slamdunk goal is to hit 100 books by the election, which would be at the same pace I've been reading all year so far. If I can get to 120, I should be able to complete this challenge by the beginning of December, at least. And if everything goes right, maybe just maybe I'll actually be able to read sixty books in 70 days. LET'S GO. 

Book 72: Our Endangered Values by Jimmy Carter

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter wrote this book in 2005 in response to the Religious Right and neoconservatives taking over the government post-9/11 and destroying our moral standing in the world, both home and abroad. It was a fascinating book to read right now, because it's easy in 2016 to think of Donald Trump as being a nightmare unlike any we've ever faced before. While I do think that's true, it's not like GWB and Cheney were good guys, and we shouldn't forget that fact.

It was also really interesting because Carter and I have similar views on most major issues, but we approach them from different angles. A lot of this book deals with how his religious beliefs as a born again Evangelical Christian inform and shape his political views, and it's a remarkably sharp retort to all those who insist that deeply held religious faith is incompatible with liberal politics. If anything, he makes a compelling argument that liberal policies are the natural result of religious moral values, with the emphasis on helping the poor and caring for our earth. His path to those political views doesn't match mine, but it's still instructive to see how different people can arrive at the same conclusion for different reasons.

The other thing that this book reminded me of is why it has taken so much work and effort to repair what was damaged during the GWB years, and exactly why it's so important to keep pressing forward and to do what we can to ensure that government is actually functional and works for people and their lives. I'm happy to have read this book now rather than back in 2005, but I'm also incredibly aware that we're at another huge juncture in our country's history.

Grade: A

Book 71: Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

I keep waiting to read the Southern Gothic urban fantasy YA novel that's going to really knock my socks off. I thought that maybe it would be this one! But nope.

It starts off well enough: Lena is the new girl in Gatlin, South Carolina, and the niece of the notorious recluse - the town's very own Boo Radley. Ethan, a basketball player who's desperate to escape this town after graduation, is immediately drawn to her. Weird stuff keeps happening around Lena: massive thunderstorms out of nowhere, shattered windows, and then it becomes clear that Lena is the same girl he's been seeing in a reoccurring dream for ages and also they can hear each other in their minds. Obviously, it's love.

There's a lot of stuff here that I like, mostly related to the two of them attempting to figure out what their connection is and piecing together their families' histories. Lena's uncle has lots of secrets, as does Ethan's grandmother and great-aunts. I was bored by a lot of the high school drama though, and much of the suspense of the book came from characters deliberately keeping information from each other, and while that was always for Reasons I was frequently unconvinced by them. And then we got to the final climax, and I found it both underwhelming and also frustrating, because of course this was another first book to a series, rather than a complete story. I get why people want to read series of books, and why they're so common in YA in particular. But sometimes I just wish that a story could be done in one book.

Grade: C

Book 70: The Stepsister Scheme by Jim C. Hines

I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did.

It feels like it should be right up my alley: a story about Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White working together to thwart evil and rescue Cinderella's prince. But for whatever reason the writing never grabbed me, and the characters felt flat. I'm not sure if this is an example of a YA novel that just really isn't for me; it's totally possible that I would have loved it if I had read it when I was thirteen. But unfortunately it didn't leave an impression on me as an adult.

Grade: C

Book 69: The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer

What a delightful book.

Somehow I made it to this point in my life without reading any Heyer, and it was clearly time to remedy that. I went into this book knowing that it was a foundational text in terms of regency romance tropes and plots and characters, and it was so lovely reading it and seeing exactly how and why it works so well, now and then.

The titular Sophy returns to England from many years on the Continent to stay with her aunt's family while her father travels to Brazil. Her mother died many years ago and she had been on her own, more or less, from a young age, and has the desire to break lots of rules and the charm and intelligence to pull it off. She completely takes over the household and manages to break some engagements and create others, and by the end of the book everyone is happier and better off for it. She is a truly wonderful character.

The one caveat about this book is that it was written in 1950 and is set during 1816, and it includes a plot point involving a Jewish moneylender which is historically accurate in terms of characters' views at the time but which also took me aback. I wouldn't recommend not reading it because of it, but there is definitely no softening or omission of antisemitism in England during the Regency in this book. Even with that plot point, I enjoyed this book immensely though. It was the perfect vacation read.

Grade: A 

Book 68: Cycler by Lauren McLaughlin

I have no idea what this book is trying to be, or what story it thinks it's telling, but what I do know is that it didn't work for me at all.

Our protagonist is a sixteen-year-old girl named Jill, who basically turns into a werewolf for four days every month right before her period, only instead of becoming a beast she becomes a boy named Jack. At first the transformation was only physical, but over time Jack develops his own agency and cognitive individuality. So of course what Jill and her mom (and, to a lesser extend, her dad who lives a secret weirdo life in their basement) decide to do is lock Jill up when she becomes Jack and then hypnotize herself when she becomes Jill again so she doesn't remember being Jack at all. "Problem" solved!

In case it's not clear from the above, the gender identity politics and concepts of this story are a fucking mess. What I could never really tell is whether the book is away of this fact, and is planning on addressing them and delivering some message about all of us being a combination of male and female identities and so forth. It became even less clear to me when Jill's crush turns out to be bi, and she flips out about it, and also Jack is obsessed with Jill's best friend and actually seduces and sleeps with her without her knowing that Jack is also Jill. As if all of this wasn't questionable enough, the book is of course the first of two, so while by the end of the book Jill's boyfriend and best friend both know that Jill has a secret, it's totally up in the air about whether the author will stick the landing, or even what landing that would be. And I'm certainly not going to waste my time reading the next book just to find out.

Grade: D

Book 67: Almost a Scandal by Elizabeth Essex

Man, this book is basically everything I want from a regency romance, start to finish.

Sally Kent is the only daughter in a family of naval officers who grew up on her father's ship. When her younger brother Richard refuses to report as a midshipman and runs away to be a pastor, she impersonates him and joins the crew herself. Her plans to remain on the ship and serve as a midshipman undetected are complicated by the presence of one of the lieutenants on the ship, Mr. Colyear, who is a dear friend of her older brothers and seems quite suspicious of 'Richard Kent.'

The setup is fantastic and would always draw me in, but the development of the story and the characters are absolutely wonderful. Sally is an incredible heroine, and the progression of her relationship with Col is pitch perfect. There's a depth to the depiction of life on a ship during the height of England's naval powers that made it easy to be swept away by the story. And characters, both major and minor, are much smarter and more perceptive than they can be in stories involving cross-dressing and deception, and as a result the entire plot feels much more realistic and satisfying than it might otherwise. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and will definitely be reading more by this author in the future.

Grade: A

Book 66: The Cowboy's Christmas by Carolyn Brown

I finally hit a book I would not finish! I bought this last fall because any romance novel that involves a secret baby and an internet romance finally becoming real life and Christmas is going to be worth a shot for me. Cowboy romance isn't a surefire trope for me, but I like it well enough. However, none of the conflict made any sense, I didn't really like any of the characters, and overall it just didn't work for me. And then the main character was gross about what would be appropriate for her baby boy to do when he was nine or ten years old (certainly not write in a journal, since that's just for girls!) and I was done. I'm sure there's an audience for this book, but I am not it. 

Grade: DNF

Book 65: Cut & Run by Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux

After finishing the Lymond Chronicles, I needed to read something completely different. A contemporary m/m romance between FBI agents who get thrown together to catch a serial killer and hate each other while also feeling an uncontrollable attraction fit the bill nicely.

This was the sort of romance that was almost comforting in its predictability. There's the one agent who seems super uptight and like he would never break rules, but he has a secret tragic past! And the other agent is unpredictable and blase, but actually he's great at his job! The case itself is both hopelessly convoluted and also incredibly obvious; while I don't mind being able to solve a mystery in a book long before the characters do, it makes it a bit harder to believe that they're actually competent at all. There's a bunch of hurt/comfort and the sex is fine, but the POV shifts mid-chapter happened a bit too frequently and without any real pattern, and the entire thing could have been tightened up and shortened without losing anything. Nothing to write home about, but fine for what it is.

Grade: C

Book 64: Checkmate by Dorothy Dunnett

Before I started reading this book, my friend who's responsible for me reading this entire series told me that Checkmate reads like Part 4 of The Game of Kings, i.e., the final free fall on a massive roller coaster of emotions. I thought I was prepared for this experience; I was not.

Checkmate was an absolute marvel of tropes and plotting and payoff; there were so many revelations and confrontations and plot twists and acts of noble self-sacrifice and decisions that would have been unforgivably cruel and awful if they hadn't been chosen out of the deepest love. I (and a couple of other friends) have attempted to explain the plots of the first three books in the series to a good friend who will never actually read them, but when I attempt to imagine doing that for Checkmate my brain breaks a little. There's so much that happens, but even more than that, I am still overwhelmed by my feelings about this book, and I finished reading it almost two weeks ago. The delay in writing this post is mostly due to having gone on vacation almost immediately after finishing it, but it was also caused by a near inability to express how I feel about this book.

Part of that is because so many of the events of the book could be absolutely wretched and unforgivable if handled by a lesser writer. Dunnett never shied away from writing about terrible, emotionally gutting things earlier in this series, of course, but in Checkmate she really went all out, and committed to both the tropes of high romance and also the logical and devastating endpoints of plot threads she had put in place three or four or sometimes five books prior. And yet there's so much power and beauty and understanding and love in how she captured everything that all I was left with was a sense of wonder that it was possible to tell a story like this the way she did. She managed to write a novel that makes the characters and also the reader work for every victory, and forces the reader to truly feel every single setback and tragedy, while also giving both the characters and the reader enough time and space for those moments to land. Everything happens at a breakneck pace, and yet nothing happens before it's the right moment. It feels like a weird thing to say, but I spent so much of this series genuinely angry at her brilliance, at her craft and her talent and above all else the joy with which she told this story. She wrote the book she wanted to be able to read, and that comes across in every word of the story.

It isn't just that she told a difficult story well, though. It's that the writing in this book, and in particular its depiction of many different kinds of love, is so heartwrenchingly beautiful it would often make it hard for me to breathe. In general, I don't read books first and foremost for the beauty or poetry of language; I often prefer the simple facts stated plainly. But with Dunnett, it's impossible to separate the two. It's her use of language and her mastery of so many different kinds of storytelling techniques that enabled her to tell such a difficult story and make it all seem inevitable. This is a book that seems headed for disaster and like there's no escape route possible (or at least visible to the reader), until at the very last second when we all discover it was on a road we hadn't known existed in the first place.

I have never been so grateful and relieved to finish a book and so utterly bereft by the realization that I'll never read it for the first time again. It was everything I had hoped it would be, and more.

Grade: A    

Book 63: The Ringed Castle by Dorothy Dunnett

Once again I can't actually write anything about this book that isn't in some way a spoiler, so under the cut it all goes!

Book 62: Secrets of a Summer Night by Lisa Kleypas

The setup for this romance novel set in Victorian England is pretty standard: a beautiful woman from a good family watches her marriage prospects disappear after her father dies and their wealth vanishes. Annabelle is a very likable protagonist, especially since she makes friends with three other women who also can't catch a husband, and their friendship is delightful. The four of them make a pact to work together during Annabelle's last season to make an advantageous match and help her snag the peer she's always wanted. If she doesn't, she will be forced to become a rich man's mistress, something that has already happened to her mother, who would do anything to save her daughter from that same indignity.

Annabelle finds the right sort of peer to trap into marriage, but she's draw to Simon, the son of a butcher who's made a fortune in the financial markets. Will her attraction to this gorgeous specimen of a man overrule her desire for a better social standing? I think it shall.

I found this book very readable, but it's not exactly my kind of romance novel; I spent a lot of it just feeling very frustrated with how dumb the class system was, given that Simon's wealth would secure Annabelle's future and the future of her mother and younger brother as well. He was also supposed to be unsuitable by virtue of being a scoundrel, but he wasn't particularly convincing in that role, and it was impossible to imagine that he was ever going to seriously try to sell Annabelle on being his mistress rather than just proposing to her. I really liked the dynamic between Simon and Annabelle, but I never really believed in the social constraints keeping them apart.

Grade: B

Book 61: Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson

This is a biography of Shakespeare that was written as part of a collection of short biographies of historical figures--it is just under two hundred pages long. It might seem odd that such a short work about the most famous playwright in the world could be satisfying or even remotely complete, but of course what we don't know about Shakespeare's life far outweighs what we actually do.

As a result, this book is as much a history of the time period Shakespeare lived during, the methods various historians have used to discover and verify what we do know about Shakespeare the man (and the methods many frauds used), and the history of theatres in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Bill Bryson is a writer ideally suited to this kind of work; he brings the same wit and clarity and beautiful turn of phrase ("Faced with a wealth of text but a poverty of context": I don't know if I've ever read a better summation of what we know and don't know about Shakespeare) to Shakespeare that he's brought to travel and science in his other books. This manages to be a book that would be incredibly readable and informative for someone who doesn't know much about Shakespeare while also being immensely satisfying for someone with a deeper knowledge of his background and works.

This was just one of those books that I enjoyed reading so much, from beginning to end, and it's another one of those books that I've owned for so long I don't even remember when or how I acquired it. I'm so glad I finally got around to reading it now as a result of this challenge. Also, it was pretty interesting to read it while in the middle of reading the Lymond Chronicles, since those are set about ten or twenty years before Shakespeare was born. Having a lot of unexpected feelings about the 16th Century right now.

Grade: A

Book 60: Listen to the Moon by Rose Lerner

This is the third book in Lerner's Lively St. Lemeston, and it's the first one that focuses mostly on what happens in a couple's relationship after they get married. Sukey Grimes and John Toogood are both servants whose livelihoods are affected when Phoebe, Sukey's former mistress, and Nick Dymond, John's former master, get married and no longer have the means to keep them on. John had been happy with his life as a valet, but when a position as a butler for a local vicar is suddenly available for only a married man, he decides to take a chance on their chemistry and asks Sukey to marry him.

I enjoyed a lot of aspects of this book, especially the focus on the working class (although it suffered a bit through no fault of its own in comparison with KJ Charles's excellent book featuring a valet finding love). I especially liked seeing how John and Sukey grew to love each other in a marriage borne out of necessity and a desire for a good living rather than an immediate love match. A bit too much of the conflict or tension in the book could have been resolved much faster if either one of them were actually able to communication with (or listen) to the other; I know that development is part of how their relationship is supposed to grow, but I didn't see enough change, and by the end of the book I felt like they were rehashing the same arguments over and over again, even with the happy ending. I liked both of them, but I wanted to feel more confident in their marriage than I did.

Grade: B 

Book 59: True Pretenses by Rose Lerner

My suspicions were correct: I did in fact enjoy this book much more than the first one in the series.

A large reason why is that the tropes in this one are like catnip for me. Two orphan brothers who have stuck together and survived in the world by running cons? Check. A dark secret from their past that threatens to tear them apart? Check. One last con involving a young woman with a fortune who's in the market to pull her own con of sorts? CHECK.

And on top of that, the specifics of the brothers' background are also really interesting, since they're two Jewish men in a very unwelcoming early 19th century England. Ash, the older brother who's been responsible for his brother Rafe since Ash was 9, originally views Lydia Reeve as a perfect mark for his brother to marry, thereby finally gaining a respectable life. But Rafe doesn't actually want that life, and Ash finds himself draw to Lydia. Meanwhile, after her father's death, Lydia has no access to her fortune until she marries, and when Rafe confesses their plans she finds herself more intrigued than horrified--especially if she can marry Ash instead of Rafe. And from there we have a wonderful marriage of convenience, with both parties denying that there's anything more than that brewing under the surface, and I just liked all of these characters and their imperfections so much. The final conflict and resolution didn't quite land the way I wanted it to, but on the whole I really liked this book.

Grade: B

Project Update: What to do When You’re Not Reading

I created this blog and this project because I wanted something concrete and completely unrelated to national politics to focus on in the ramp up to the election in November, something that I was in control of and had a direct say over. But in 100 days, the U.S. will have either chosen Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump as President, and there are some simple, straightforward steps I wanted to lay out that we can each take to ensure that we elect Hillary Clinton.

1. Register to Vote.

This is the “make sure you put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others” step. Now is the time to either register to vote or to check that you are registered to vote at your current address, and to confirm your polling location. If you may not be in your city or town on Election Day, take a look at what your state’s requirements are for voting by absentee ballot if your state doesn’t allow early voting for everyone. Have a plan for when you’ll vote on Election Day (before/after work or school), and check to see if you live in a state with new voting restrictions in place—17 states have new restrictions that were not in place in 2012, and while we’ve been fighting back against them in many states, being informed about possible changes now will help you be prepared to exercise your right to vote.

2. Donate your time or money (or both!) to the Clinton Campaign.

Once you’ve double-checked that you’re registered to vote for Clinton in November, the next step is donating to the campaign. If you can afford to donate money, that is obviously incredibly helpful and important, because running an effective Get Out The Vote (GOTV) organization in fifty states isn’t cheap. But not everyone can afford to do that, and many people who are able to donate money also want to volunteer their time. And here’s one of the secrets about volunteering your time for a campaign: not only are you directly helping to elect your candidate, it’s also much harder to get lost in the anxiety about an election when you’re out there doing the work. It takes you out of the echo chamber of the media’s horse race and puts you in touch with the nuts and bolts of the organization’s work. Plus, once we hit the fall, the main focus of the GOTV drive is to get in touch with voters who are democrats and therefore likely voters to support them in getting to the polls. This means you’ll get to have conversations with people who are already on our team, rather than attempting to convince swing voters or people who have previously voted Republican. It’s you doing your part to help everyone we can check off Step 1 of this post so they can go out and vote in November.

3. Have conversations with the people in your life who aren’t firm Clinton supporters.

Does having conversations with people who supported Sanders in the primaries and aren’t fully on board yet, or Republicans and Independents who don’t like Trump but aren’t sure if they can vote for Clinton, sound like fun to you? Great! This is also an extremely important step, in both swing states and in safe blue states, because the margins of her victory also matter (especially when it comes to down ballot races—more on that in a bit). I confess that this particular point is one I don’t have a ton of experience with, because I live in a very blue state and my family is full of Democrats. But having in-person conversations with people you love about why it matters beyond Democrats vs. Republicans that we not elect Donald Trump is incredibly important. I would recommend looking at President Obama’s speech at the DNC to get a sense of how to frame a conversation like this: it’s not about the differences between the parties, it’s about competing visions of who we are and what we want this country to be. And frankly, this weekend Trump has done an exceptional job of making that difference as stark as possible.

4. Support Democrats in down ballot races.

There are two levels of victory we can achieve this fall. The first is to elect Hillary Clinton as president, which will protect us from a Donald Trump presidency and strengthen the progressive wing of the Supreme Court. That is vital, but as an isolated achievement it’s also a fairly defensive-minded victory: it protects the advancements of President Obama’s administration and prevents the damage of a Trump presidency, but that’s not all we’re fighting for. And in order for Hillary Clinton to be able to put her plans into action, we need to take back the Senate and increase our numbers in the House.

One of the most satisfying things about supporting either Senate or House candidates is that a little goes a long way, especially in comparison with Presidential campaigns. One great resource for identifying candidates you want to support is Emily’s List, which works to get pro-choice Democratic women elected to office. Electing women candidates changes the composition and functioning of government in many ways, not least of which by making a representative government truly more representative of the country it serves. And you can get even more bang for your buck by supporting women candidates for office in swing states, because they will support and coordinate with Clinton’s campaign in winning the state up and down the ballot.

5. Do the work you can, and otherwise focus on your own life.

This piece of advice will probably come as no surprise, given that it’s the basis of this blog, but there is a very big difference between doing something about this election, and simply worrying about it. I am as guilty as anyone of going down a politics spiral, but unless you work in politics or are volunteering full-time for a campaign, compartmentalize your engagement in this election as much as you can. Give it your full attention when you are volunteering for a campaign or researching which down ballot candidates you wish to give money to or engaging in a good faith conversation with someone you know about voting for Clinton. But try to minimize the amount of time you spend following what shameful thing Trump has said or done on any given day, or chasing new poll numbers for swing states. No matter how much the media wants you to follow the election minute by minute, you don’t need to spend your time doing that, and it won’t change the result of the election if you follow every twist and turn. Take action in the ways that you can, and otherwise shut it off. I recommend reading a book (or 132 of them). Trump is a nightmare, but you don’t owe it to anyone to let him increase your anxiety or stress, beyond doing what you can to elect Clinton and defeat him.

Okay, enough with the politics! Time for me to get reading :)