Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson {audiobook}

Title: Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
Author: James Weldon Johns
Narrator: Richard Allen
Length: 6 hours
Published in: 1912
Genre: fiction
ISBN: 9781624061912
Source: public library
Reason for Reading: Title and cover intrigued me
Rating: 4/5

SUMMARY (Goodreads):

James Weldon Johnson’s emotionally gripping novel is a landmark in black literary history and, more than eighty years after its original anonymous publication, a classic of American fiction. The first fictional memoir ever written by a black, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man influenced a generation of writers during the Harlem Renaissance and served as eloquent inspiration for Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Wright. In the 1920s and since, it has also given white readers a startling new perspective on their own culture, revealing to many the double standard of racial identity imposed on black Americans.
Narrated by a mulatto man whose light skin allows him to “pass” for white, the novel describes a pilgrimage through America’s color lines at the turn of the century–from a black college in Jacksonville to an elite New York nightclub, from the rural South to the white suburbs of the Northeast. This is a powerful, unsentimental examination of race in America, a hymn to the anguish of forging an identity in a nation obsessed with color. And, as Arna Bontemps pointed out decades ago, “the problems of the artist [as presented here] seem as contemporary as if the book had been written this year.”

My Thoughts: As a history-lover, I really found this story intriguing. The time of the story–early 1900s–is a really complex time in America and to read such a one-of-a-kind narrative, however fictional it may be, only piqued my interest all the more.

Farewell, Dorothy Parker by Ellen Meister {audiobook}

Title: Farewell, Dorothy Parker
Author: Ellen Meister
Narrator: Angela Brazil
Length: 10 hours
Published in: 2012
Genre: fiction
ISBN: 9781620647073
Source: public library
Reason for Reading: Thought a book about Dorothy Parker would be interesting
Rating: 5/5

Summary (from Goodreads):

When it comes to movie critics Violet Epps is a powerhouse voice. Equally unafraid of big Hollywood names and public opinion, her biting reviews are widely quoted.  But when it comes to her own life, Violet finds herself unable to speak up—paralyzed by crippling social anxiety. When a chance encounter at the famous Algonquin Hotel unleashes the feisty spirit of the long–dead Dorothy Parker, the famous literary critic of the 1920’s, Violet thinks she is going crazy. But as the rematerialized Mrs. Parker helps her face her fears, Violet realizes how much she has been missing by keeping quiet. It turns out though, that the shade has problems of her own, not the least of which include equal portions of narcissism and pessimism and the inability to move on to her afterlife.

My Thoughts: I rather enjoyed this story. I admit I was a little skeptical about the whole ghost idea. But it wasn’t terribly “out there.” Not that I’d expect to ever have a similar encounter, but it was “believable” in a sense. Some parts of the story were a little predictable, but nothing too cliche.

Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger

Title: Etiquette and Espionage
Author: Gail Carriger
Length: 307 pages
Published in: 2013
Genre: sci-fi/fantasy (alternative historical fiction)
ISBN: 9780316190084
Source: public library
Reason for Reading: Gail Carriger wrote the Parasol Protectorate quintet, which I loved, and this is the first in her new series, Finishing School
Rating: 5/5

Summary (from Goodreads):

Fourteen-year-old Sophronia is a great trial to her poor mother. Sophronia is more interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than proper manners–and the family can only hope that company never sees her atrocious curtsy. Mrs. Temminnick is desperate for her daughter to become a proper lady. So she enrolls Sophronia in Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality.

But Sophronia soon realizes the school is not quite what her mother might have hoped. At Mademoiselle Geraldine’s, young ladies learn to finish…everything. Certainly, they learn the fine arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but the also learn to deal out death, diversion, and espionage–in the politest possible ways, of course. Sophronia and her friends are in for a rousing first year’s education. Set in the same world as the Parasol Protectorate, this YA series debut is filled with all the saucy adventure and droll humor Gail’s legions of fans have come to adore

.

My Thoughts: I’m really happy that Carriger is coming out with a new series. I thought this book was funny and delightful. I was especially glad to see a character from her Parasol Protectorate series, Sidheag Maccon. I’m hoping this means she will somehow connect the two. I wanted so much to know if Sidheag’s special talent would come out and how it would affect the story. But I guess Tgat@p for another book.

Mrs. Queen Takes the Train by William Kuhn {audiobook}

Title: Mrs. Queen Takes the Train
Author: William Kuhn
Narrator: Simon Prebble
Length: 9.5 hours
Published in: 2012
Genre: fiction
ISBN: 9781624060519
Source: public library
Reason for Reading: Sounded fun
Rating: 5/5

Summary (from Amazon):

After decades of service and years of watching her family’s troubles splashed across the tabloids, Queen Elizabeth needs some proper cheering up. An impromptu visit to the place that holds her happiest memories-the former royal yacht, Britannia, moored in Leith, Scotland-is just the cure she needs. Hidden beneath a skull-emblazoned hoodie, the limber Elizabeth (thank goodness for yoga) walks out of Buckingham Palace, into the freedom of a rainy London day to catch the train to Scotland at King’s Cross. But an unlikely sextet of royal attendants-a lady-in-waiting, a butler, an equerry, a mistress of the Mews, a dresser, and a clerk from the shop that serves the queen’s cheese-join together to find their missing monarch and bring her back before her absence sets off a national scandal.

My Thoughts: I found this book quite delightful. It was funny and light and simple. I don’t really have a whole lot to say about it because it’s so straightforward. But I did get excited to drive to work so I could listen to it some more

The Thursday War by Karen Traviss {audio}

Title: The Thursday War
Author: Karen Traviss
Narrator: Euan Morton
Length: 15 hours
Published in: 2012
Genre: science fiction
ISBN: 9781427226242
Source: public library
Reason for Reading: Nick plays Halo and I saw this on the recent releases for audiobooks at the library. I thought it couldn’t really hurt to try something completely different from what I’m normally reading.
Rating: 3/5

Summary (from Amazon):

Welcome to humanity’s new war: silent, high stakes, and unseen. This is a life-or-death mission for ONI’s black-ops team, Kilo-Five, which is tasked with preventing the ruthless Elites, once the military leaders of the Covenant, from regrouping and threatening humankind again. What began as a routine dirty-tricks operation―keeping the Elites busy with their own insurrection―turns into a desperate bid to extract one member of Kilo-Five from the seething heart of an alien civil war. But troubles never come singly for Kilo-Five. Colonial terrorism is once again surfacing on one of the worlds that survived the war against the Covenant, and the man behind it is much more than just a name to Spartan-010. Meanwhile, the treasure trove of Forerunner technology recovered from the shield world of Onyx is being put to work while a kidnapped Elite plots vengeance on the humans he fears will bring his people to the brink of destruction.

My Thoughts: I don’t have many thoughts on this book because I really didn’t understand much of it. I mean, in the larger picture, this wasn’t a standalone novel. So the backstory, which I didn’t know, would’ve made a difference as far as my rating of the book goes. From what I read, it was okay. On its own, I didn’t find it all that interesting. But I wouldn’t mind a similar book that was a standalone or the beginning of a series at least.

Shades of Earth by Beth Revis

Title: Shades of Earth
Author: Beth Revis
Length: 369 pages
Published in: 2013
Genre: post-apocalyptic world/dystopic
ISBN: 9781595143990
Source: public library
Reason for Reading: This is the third in a trilogy by Beth Revis and it has been one of my favorite series to follow. (I’m very sad it’s all over!)
Rating: 5/5

Summary (from Goodreads):

Amy and Elder have finally left the oppressive walls of the spaceshipGodspeed behind. They’re ready to start life afresh–to build a home–on Centauri-Earth, the planet that Amy has traveled 25 trillion miles across the universe to experience.

But this new Earth isn’t the paradise Amy had been hoping for. There are giant pterodactyl-like birds, purple flowers with mind-numbing toxins, and mysterious, unexplained ruins that hold more secrets than their stone walls first let on. The biggest secret of all? Godspeed‘s former passengers aren’t alone on this planet. And if they’re going to stay, they’ll have to fight.

Amy and Elder must race to discover who–or what–else is out there if they are to have any hope of saving their struggling colony and building a future together. They will have to look inward to the very core of what makes them human on this, their most harrowing journey yet. Because if the colony collapses? Then everything they have sacrificed–friends, family, life on Earth–will have been for nothing.

My Thoughts: This was a wonderful end to a story I love. While I was sad to see it end, I found it to be just the kind of end I liked.

There is a lot going on in this book. The population of humans from Sol-Earth have been unfrozen and the shipborn people fear them. Despite the differences between them, both groups go to Centauri-Earth. There they are forced to work together to survive some intelligent alien life forms that populate the planet. I’ll admit that I managed to work out, for the most part, what that alien life form was before it was revealed without much thought on my part. But that doesn’t change how excited I can get about how the story leads up to that moment of revelation. And there was a certain character who those who have read the story will know of–who wasn’t all they appeared to be. I hadn’t pinpointed how different this person was, but I knew there was something wrong about them. That should’ve been pretty obvious, considering I’d figured out the other mystery.

Anyways, Revis hardly “ended” the story at the close of this book. The story has barely begun and she left the story open. There are some stories with which I’d like to be told the definite end for the characters and have some nice closure. But considering how much of this story was left to the imagination, I think it was a great choice on her part to let her readers imagine for themselves how the story goes on, or ends if you choose.

I’m sad the story has “ended” but I anxiously await any new worlds Revis might create for me to travel to.

Dreams of Joy by Lisa See

Title: Dreams of Joy
Author: Lisa See
Length: 353 pages
Published in: 2011
Genre: historical fiction (communist China)
ISBN: 9781400067121
Source: personal collection
Reason for Reading: I love Lisa See, especially Shanghai Girls, which was a prequel to this book.
Rating: 5/5

Summary (from Goodreads):

Reeling from newly uncovered family secrets, and anger at her mother and aunt for keeping them from her, Joy runs away to Shanghai in early 1957 to find her birth father—the artist Z.G. Li, with whom both May and Pearl were once in love. Dazzled by him, and blinded by idealism and defiance, Joy throws herself into the New Society of Red China, heedless of the dangers in the communist regime.

Devastated by Joy’s flight and terrified for her safety, Pearl is determined to save her daughter, no matter the personal cost. From the crowded city to remote villages, Pearl confronts old demons and almost insurmountable challenges as she follows Joy, hoping for reconciliation. Yet even as Joy’s and Pearl’s separate journeys converge, one of the most tragic episodes in China’s history threatens their very lives.

My Thoughts: I found this a little slow-moving towards the beginning, like I did with Peony in Love, but it turned around and got quite interesting. I’ve never read much about what life was like in communist China, and while this is fiction, I know See is pretty good at her historical fiction As usual with her writing, I was easily able to picture life in Shanghai and in the countryside. And the characters’ emotions were so well described that I was excited, anxious, happy, mad, and disheartened throughout the story.

The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis {audiobook}

Title: The Twelve Tribes of Hattie
Author: Ayana Mathis
Narrators: Adenrele Ojo, Bahni Turpin, Adam Lazarre-White
Length: 10.5 hours
Published in: 2012
Genre: fiction
ISBN: 9780804127011
Source: borrowed from library
Reason for Reading: Title sounded intriguing as I browsed through the newly released audiobooks.
Rating: 5/5

Summary (from cover):

In 1923, fifteen-year-old Hattie Shepherd flees Georgia and settles in Philadelphia, hoping for a chance at a better life. Instead, she marries a man who will bring her nothing but disappointment and watches helplessly as her firstborn twins succumb to an illness a few pennies could have prevented. Hattie gives birth to nine more children whom she raises with grit and mettle and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave. She vows to prepare them for the calamitous difficulty they are sure to face in their later lives, to meet a world that will not love them, a world that will not be kind. Captured here in twelve luminous narrative threads, their lives tell the story of a mother’s monumental courage and the journey of a nation.

My Thoughts: I really loved this book. Each of Hattie’s children had such a different life from the others, I hardly knew what to think. Plus, Hattie had children spanning a 30-year period. And in the US, there was quite a lot of change between the Great Depression and the 1980s. One of the things I liked the most about the story were the children’s names: Philadelphia (boy) and Jubilee (girl) were the first two, the twins. Then there were, in no particular order, Floyd, Bell, Six, Billups, Ella, Ruthie, Cassie, Franklin, and Alice. One child was a schizophrenic; one child, a homosexual musician; another was born of a different father; one given away to family to ease the family’s hardships; another became a Bible-beating reverand living a life of sin; one was a soldier in Vietnam; and another was molested by a neighbor as a second was locked out and never said a word. It is a shame that most of the children did indeed have hardships to suffer through. Some where able to bear their challenges, some weren’t.

As I listened to this story, it reminded me a lot of The Color Purple by Alice Walker, which I listened to about a year ago. Both stories were very different, but the overall feeling while reading them was very similar. I recommend both

Have You Seen Marie? by Sandra Cisneros {audiobook}

Title: Have You Seen Marie?
Author: Sandra Cisneros
Length: 30 minutes
Published in: 2012
Genre: fiction (short story)
ISBN: 9781611209952
Source: public library
Reason for Reading: found it on the new releases shelf at the library
Rating: 2/5

Summary (from book cover):

The internationally acclaimed author of The House on Mango Street gives us a deeply moving tale of loss, grief, and healing. The word ‘orphan’ might not seem to apply to a fifty-three-year-old woman. Yet this is exactly how Sandra feels as she finds herself motherless, alone like ‘a glove left behind at the bus station.’ What just might save her is her search for someone else gone missing: Marie, the black-and-white cat of her friend, Roz, who ran off the day they arrived from Tacoma. As Sandra and Roz scour the streets of San Antonio, posting flyers and asking everywhere, ‘Have you seen Marie?’ the pursuit of this one small creature takes on unexpected urgency and meaning.

My Thoughts: I have to admit that had I realized the book was so short when I found it on the shelf, I probably wouldn’t have even bothered with it. The time listed on the back was misleading–an hour long book didn’t seem too short. But I failed to realized that that time included the reading in English and in Spanish. I could hardly even consider this a book–it is a short story. I don’t think it’s really all that possible to rate or review the story, having been so short. I admit, though, that the telling of the story was beautiful and the language was very lyrical. I feel bad because I know the story was supposed to be very moving and semi-autobiographical for Cisneros, but I just didn’t really take anything away from it.

Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth

Title: Castle Rackrent
Author: Maria Edgeworth
Length: 85 pages
Published in: 1800
Genre: fiction (satire)
ISBN: 9780486440927
Source: personal collection
Reason for Reading: Years of Books Goal, to fill the year 1800
Rating: 1/5

Summary (from back of book):

An Irish writer who lived most of her life on her father’s estate, Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849) brought humor, realism, and a freshness of style to her works. Castle Rackrent, published anonymously in 1800, was the first of her popular novels on country life. A delightful satire on Anglo-Irish landlords, the work is purportedly the Rackrent family’s memoirs, written by Thady Quirk, a long-time family servant.

“Honest” Thady’s vivd–but questionably accurate–narrative of life on the decaying Rackrent estate details the lives of family members whom he has long served. The result is a stylishly entertaining exploration of relations between England and Ireland in a time of historical crisis.

My Thoughts: I didn’t have much to think about this book because it is a satire about a time and place that I don’t have much background with. I’m sure more of the satirical nature would have meant more to me had I learned about tensions between England and Ireland at the turn of the 19th century. But my history education, having grown up in the US, focuses more on the Revolutionary War than England and Ireland at that particular time of history. Regardless of the satire, I didn’t think much of the story. The characters weren’t to my liking. The most interesting thing I found about this book were some of the character’s names. Never would I have thought that Judy and Jason were names from over 200 years ago–they sound much more contemporary (Jason, especially).