Mrs. Everything (2019) by Jennifer Weiner is a fictional story about two sisters who couldn’t be any more different as they navigate a changing America. Born in the 1940s to a loving family, sisters Bethie and Jo find themselves growing apart and coming of age during the women’s liberation movement. Sacrificing self-identity is at the heart. This book will make you angry. But sometimes that’s just the kind of mood you’re looking for.
fiction
Male rage on the debate team
Cleverly written (so much that I think the author knows it), The Topeka School [2019] explores themes including toxic masculinity and male rage, white boy rap, and white vs. blue collar tensions. Jumping back and forth in timeline, the story follows a white collar family - a son, who is a sharp high school debate champion who is consumed by rhetoric, his mother, a famous feminist author who constantly receives death threats, and her father, a psychologist at a Foundation that seems questionable - and then a blue collar kid who runs into trouble. To be honest, this one went over my head but Obama recommended it. Please read it and then explain it to me.
If Black Mirror was charming
in books, short stories, fiction
Exhalation (2019) is a collection of wildly imaginative, inquisitive, and delightful short stories. Each one looks at humanity’s questions in varying science fiction context. Ted Chiang asks what is love if not effort in the form of adopting digital animals. He looks at the pros and cons of memory documentation and how it messes with our truths in the form. He searches for human’s purpose on earth through the lens of archeology and astrology. And he makes it completely enjoyable to read. If you’re going to read any book this year, make it this one.
Sister goes missing and grandma might have answers
In the aptly named Searching for Sylvie Lee (2019) by Jean Kwok, Sylvie disappears and her younger sister on the case. Her mom and dad are kind of weird about it (oh, those Chinese family secrets!). Come for the mystery, stay for the wtf ending. I flipped through this suspenseful “missing person” drama in one boozy day on the beach in Tulum. It’s a great one if you’re trying to get back into reading and need a softball.