Having known nothing about Herbie Hancock other than the heavily electronic version of Rock It from my childhood, I was surprised by a lot of this memoir and I can image that for someone interested in jazz, jazz fusion, and the evolution of electronic music and particularly synthesizers, that this book would be fascinating.  I learned a lot about these topics, despite what might be surprised as a lack of general interest in them, which is one of the great things about reading in general.  Hancock's background in engineering, touring with Miles Davis, and general likeability made for good storytelling, even if it sometimes fell into the name-dropping trap that I often find so irritating in these types of memoirs. 

I will say that I found his lack of political engagement to be disappointing, especially considering the opportunities and relationships that he had connection to. The parts of the book where he wrote about his struggles with addition to crack cocaine were probably the most moving, but his repeated discussion of his Buddhist chanting practices reminded me of Tina Turner's memoirs (My Love Story and Happiness Becomes You) in terms of leaving me with a sense of superficiality.

I am definitely see what others love about this book, but I think I expect more emotionality from a memoir like this unless I have an independent interest in the historical topic.

Not recommended--unless you are a music or jazz lover, then I would recommend it for you.

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This has been an eclectic year of recommendations, with more horror than I have ever read, but also more really sweet novels that are just heart warming, lovely, light reads.  This is one of the latter. Even the book cover reflect the soft care that I felt when reading it.

A group of intertwining stories set in Japan in which people unhappy with their lives find themselves at the library getting lists of books from the quirk, eccentric librarian, who also felts small knickknacks that she gives away.  The book lists always include a recommendation that seems unrelated to the inquiry, but ends up being part of the recipe people need to transform their lives. 

It is a fun and delightful concept book. I found it to be slightly longer than was necessary to make and develop the project, such that I finished the book a little bit bored in a way that I wasn't through most of it. Like binge watching a good show that has a simplistic formula, if I had read it more slowly, I might have found this to be an endearing and comforting quality.

Not not recommended.

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Louise Erdrich does not disappoint in this sweet novel about a book lover with complex relationships, searching for family, while being haunted by her past and the past of others. It is complex, but I was easily drawn into the layers of stories.

And what booklover does love a book that talks about books and drops the names of titles like they are celebrities? Set in a bookstore to a large extend, I particularly loved that this was perhaps the first novel to incorporate the pandemic into its storyline and it was done exquisitely, with such emotional detail. 
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I just really loved this story.

Highly recommend.

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For a highly hyped book with rave reviews, I was shocked by how little I enjoyed this read.  I even went back and re-read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn thinking maybe I needed a more recent read of that book in order to appreciate it, but even after that, I was at a complete loss as to why this book is so popular.  The premise of the book is fine--the reimaging of the Huckleberry Finn story from the perspective of Jim.  But the execution of the story is confusing.  The plotting is problematic, the character development bland, and the writing style gimmicky. 

Just as a starting place, it is unclear whether this is supposed to be historical fiction or historical fantasy.  Most of the time, it seems like the author is genuinely trying to present an imagined history in which a slave could be exceptionally well educated entirely in secret and able to move between a facade of being uneducated in front of white people, but then seamlessly shifting to talking like an educated white person when no white people were around. While this seems like it might be an empowering retelling of history, I was just baffled because in other places the story was so far fetched, especially at the end, that it was more like historical fantasy.  And there was no way for me to see that ending as empowering, knowing the impact that outcome would have had in actual history for the slaves involved.

While this might just be my inability to suspend disbelief in order to enjoy a book and revel in an alternative narrative that could be seen as having a happy ending (and I will accept that this is perhaps a flaw in my reader skillset in general), this wasn't even what bothered me the most in this story.  What bothered me the very most was the portrayal of women and girls in this story.  Jim is supposed to be entirely driven by his adoration of his wife and daughter, but the Big Reveal at the end of the book  MAKES NO SENSE on the surface and was never explored in any depth.  SPOILER ALERT: In the telling of this story, he is actually Huck's biological father because he had a relationship with his mother, whom he grew up with, and which was always kept secret. Despite allusion to this by one random character earlier in the book, it is ignored until the very end and then never explained.  Was the wife that Jim was so committed to freeing aware he had a clandestine affair with his childhood friend, who was also his owner's wife? If his daughter was 9 and Huck was 13 and Huck remembers the fighting in the household when his mother died, was Jim in a relationship with both mother's at the same time? Obviously possible, but why is this never addressed? 

I have so many questions that are completely ignored because the sole purpose of women characters in this book is to be introduced in the context of their rapes.  Jim's reaction to Sammy's disclosure that she was being raped by her owner only makes sense in a modern context.  It is impossible for me to believe that Jim would have been shocked to hear that slave owners raped their slaves and his huge reaction to this revelation, resulting in reckless behavior that put at risk his ability to free his own wife and daughter, whom he was afraid were being raped, just didn't make sense. Could it have made sense?  Yes, it is possible, but it was never explored.  All the women were introduced in the context of their rapes (or sexual relationship with Jim, such as his wife and Huck's mother) and then written out of the story before anything of interest was said.

Do not recommend.
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This book is supposedly shelved as a YA book, but I found it to be much more sophisticated than that with layers to the story that could hold multiples truths at the same time. It is a harsh depiction of white feminism that is also able to appreciate the complexity of the criticism. To be able to honor the work without shying away from its imperfections, shortcomings, and both subtle and overt racism is not easy, yet here is done exquisitely.  

The book reads like a memoir and follows the growth of a starstruck college student from The Bronx as she moves in with a feminist Queer icon in Portland for a summer. On one level, it is a coming of age story, but it is just so much more than that.

Any white woman trying to be a supportive mentor to women and girls of color should make time to read this wonderfully nuanced and beautifully written book about the complexity of these relationships and how the insidiousness of racism and privilege are pervasive, even when white people are trying to do better.  I loved the layered relationships, the hard work reflected in the characters who were trying to hold people accountable and the ones trying to be held accountable, even when their failures were cringeworthy.

Set in Portland in 2003, the author's description of the quirkiness and cringy-ness of the city and its inhabitants conveyed the love-hate relationship that so many people have with the sometimes performative, sometimes genuine progressive and woo-woo culture there. From the public reading at Powell Books, to the hangouts in Pioneer Courthouse Square, to navigating the neighborhoods on foot and by public transit, it is fun to read a book about a city you know well.

Highly recommend.
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This book has a combination of things I usually do not like. 
 
First, I am not a fan at all of the social media influencer memoir.  I think somewhere fairly early in the pandemic, I overdosed on crappy ones that I got for free or that were recommended to me and I have not gotten over that.  They tend to have a number of features I do not like, such as referring back to what they posted, quoting those posts, and bragging about how early an adopter they were of a specific platform and how the fame they got and the money they made from said platform saved or ruined (or both) their lives. Many of these books are often compilations of blog posts that do not transcend mediums well when they get put into a book without a good editor. They are often repetitive in a way that reminds me of people who just tell the same few stories over and over again. 
 
Second, I tend not to love the writings of standup comics, especially ones who have a chaotic style of raunchy standup. I can take that in very small doses, but an entire 8 hour book is just too much.  The writing here felt a bit like Jenny Lawson (Let's Pretend This Never Happened), which I kind of just despised. 
 
Third, I usually do not like books read by the author. I often think they should have hired a professional with a voice I actually want to listen to, which I know might sound harsh, but I really love a good narrator and one way to tell a really good narrator is when you speed it up (which I virtually always do), you can still understand them clearly and their voice still conveys the emotion. This is not true of mediocre narrators and author are usually mediocre or worse, in my opinion.
 
While there were spots where she fell into the annoying "this is what I posted when I was an early adopter of instagram" context, it was short-lived.  She definitely had places that were slightly repetitive and other places where she went on too long about details that felt show-off-y to me without advancing the story which caused the narrative to lag a little. It felt like she really needed a more heavy handed editor.
 
That said, this book was, for the most part, an outlier on all fronts. It is very difficult to write trauma comedy, either for stand-up or in book form, and this is really trauma comedy at its best.  The places where she veers away from the style are the places that should have been cut. I particularly loved how she situated her complex relationship between humor and tragedy in the context of her cultural and familiar history. The intergenerational way in which her family used humor and laughter to survivor horrible things was so richly described here. She didn't have to directly talk about "rape jokes" to be talking about rape jokes told by survivors in her family.  It wasn't just that she decided one day to make comedy about trauma, she explains how this was passed down as a way to survive. I found it insightful, poignant, and (yes, even) funny. Through the bets parts, I found myself on the verge of both laughing and crying and in a place of acceptance that this was ok and maybe could even be healing  It reminded me of Hannah Gadsby in this respect.
 
Recommend. But maybe skim through the parts in the middle about buying the expensive purses and the celebrity name dropping parts.
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I am so enthralled with the very concept of this book in which the author uses her obsession with sea creatures as the basis of these fabulous life stories that use the sea creatures as complex allegories for her life. Even the title, referring to the point in an ocean where the light can no longer penetrate, relates to moments in her life.  As a memoir, it is insightful and tells the story of a unique life of Queerness and mixed-race identity.

I particularly appreciated how the author's experience of trauma and sexual assault were presented in such an unusual and poignant way.  All of this was done in the midst of providing rich details about marine ecosystems and creatures, some of which (like the octopus), we often hear about in other contexts, but some  of which I knew nothing about and found fascinating.  This is just such an unusual set-up and read. 

I highly recommend it.

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I didn't even know there was a genre of hockey romances and I certainly did not know that it was going to end up being a book genre that I would end up liking, but here we are.  This is, I think, the third book in the last few months that I am recommending in which there is a romance and there are hockey players.  And truly, who knew there was an entire genre of hockey romance in which consent and health reciprocal relationships was front and center?  This one also weaves in themes of the pull between traditional families with modern kids struggling to find a balance between the two, sexism in sports, and figuring out how to manage competing career tracks in relationships.  It was just a really unexpectedly fun, light romance.  Perfect bedtime or beach reading.

Recommend.
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It is sometimes hard not to romanticize groups of people I have little contact with.  Seeing Rastafarians while I travel or from a distance and reading some of the more popular writings, the combination of political and spiritual philosophy is alluring in what might helpful an inappropriate exoticism.  This book, though, is a reminder that dysfunctional fanaticism exists everywhere.  Here, amidst a philosophical framework that is essentially pacifist and equalitarian, the rigid sexist code of the author's father leads to abuse and control that mirrors what is found in so many other religious communities.  

This memoir of childhood abuse, multigenerational abuse and neglect, and isolation is a powerful reminder that there isn't a single path to healing.  Reminiscent of  Educated, I loved the arc here, at once critical of the abuse and showing compassion for the pain of the abuser's abuse as a child and young adult.  With such a different setting, though, this book had something new to offer and I appreciated the reminder that extremism in all its forms is problematic.

Moreover, this is a lyrical book, written by a true writer.  Every word seems carefully selected, every thought part of bouquet of thoughts, placed together is just the right way to convey the complexity of a life.  I am often turned off by this highly curated type of poetic writing, but not this one.  The wording was just joyfully crafted, even at the most heartbreaking moments of narration.  

​Recommend.

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I absolutely loved this quirky, unique, and entirely unexpected murder mystery with a twist--the twist being whether it was even a murder at all.  A classic whodunit, but with nothing classic about it.  The hero is simultaneously sympathetic and yet not, an unreliable narrator and yet earnest, unbelievable and yet not.  As she insists on investigating an unexplained death in her tea shop, her distrust of law enforcement and her deep desire for love, connection, and meaning drives to sometimes humorous, sometimes shocking, and always unexpected lengths.  Without giving anything away, I am just going to recommend it and tell you to go read it! 
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Highly recommend. 
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