If you have followed along with any of my travel posts in the past two years, you will know that I have been having issues with my Kobo – which was a Christmas gift less than five years ago. Here’s the thing: I love my Kobo in theory, because I can “pack” many books for the long days of travel, but in practice, the glitching and lagging and sudden, unprompted rebooting over and over and over has been incredibly frustrating. I am not a violent person, but when I’m invested in a story and the Kobo suddenly freezes and the screen goes blank, I feel like going Office Space printer on it.
PC LOAD LETTER? WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN?
Over the last year my husband has been suggesting – less and less gently as time goes on – that I buy a new one, but then, it would suddenly start working just fine, and I would think that all was now well, and my Kobo and I could live happily ever after.
I knew that we had a lot of transit time for our trip to Spain; not only did we have long flights and connections, but we also had many train journeys. I didn’t think I – and, possibly, my marriage – could survive another Kobo-related breakdown, so I purchased a bare-bones Kobo that supposedly is less likely to malfunction. I linked it to my Okanagan library account, and took along my old Kobo as well, which is attached to my old Calgary account. If anyone knows how to link two library cards to one Kobo, please let me know!
In any case, I read a lot of books on this trip, and my old Kobo malfunctioned several times along the way, so I’m glad I took both. I had quite the varied reading, as you shall see.
Vladimir. I think this is a first for me: I watched this Netflix series months ago and loved it, and then learned that it was based on a book. And let me tell you, if I loved the series, I LOVED this book, which is the story of a late-fifties English professor who develops an obsession with a younger colleague at the same time that her husband, the department chair, is going through a dismissal hearing due to his many affairs with students in earlier years. The unnamed narrator is flawed and unreliable, but also in many ways very relatable. This is a statement and a manifesto about feminism, aging, motherhood, marriage, the patriarchy, and the creative process, but it never FEELS like a manifesto. Every sentence is so smart and perfectly crafted, and packs a punch. It’s rife with symbolism but it gently pokes fun at symbolism. It’s such a brilliant book and I am in awe of this writer.
Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. I loved Textbook so much that I immediately downloaded this book, which is exactly as it sounds – a memoir, in encyclopedia form, of the ordinary life of a thirtysomething mother and writer in the early 2000s. I did enjoy it, and there was some nice nostalgia there, but it wasn’t as meaningful or resonant as Textbook. Perhaps it’s my age, perhaps I shouldn’t do nearly back-to-back reads of memoirs from the same author. All the same, it was an enjoyable read with a lot of relatable moments.
Main Characters. There are 82 POV in this single book about the relationship between two people – but those two people’s POV is never shown. It’s an interesting conceit: we are the main characters in our own lives, but what do others think about us, even passing strangers? So it’s a story comprised of essentially a 3rd person omniscient, and I will say that for the first third of the book it really worked for me. It’s set in London with a jaunt to Rome, so I loved the name check of places I’ve seen. But then…I started to really dislike both characters and to not care about them at all. It was diverting enough for a long plane journey but I didn’t love it.
Mad Mabel. This was a fun book about an 81 year old woman accused of murder. It’s a sweet story about friendship, found family, and revenge! I really enjoyed it.
Transformations and Tenderness. I read the first half of this book by my dear friend Maya (HI MAYA) MONTHS ago, but then I had a library book flood and set it aside. I finished it on this trip and it’s a very well-researched, intelligent, and compassionate book about supporting transgender youth in the US. Maya’s beautiful heart and voice shine through, and I felt close to her while reading it.
Truly Madly Guilty. I read this book in 2017 and usually, when I reread, I remember most of the story. Not so this time! I didn’t recall a single thing and so it was like reading a brand new book! It’s excellent, nice and twisty, although there are some very heavy themes that might be tough for some readers. I loved it, though. I think I loved it the first time too! Ha! Maybe I’ll reread it again in 8 or 9 years for a totally new experience.
Dandelion. Canadian author alert! Also super specific local author alert! Much of this book takes place in the 80s in Sparwood BC, with trips to Calgary, so I enjoyed name checks of places I know very well – the lions on Centre Street Bridge and Chinatown, for example. The story is of a girl/ woman whose mother suddenly leaves, and she is left to deal with the loss and feelings of unknownness about her culture. There are interesting themes, but truthfully I found the dialogue very stilted and unnatural, with excessive unrealistic explanations, as well as a lot of repetitiveness. This style of writing really detracted from the reading experience for me so I didn’t love it. I felt it could have used better editing, because the story itself has a lot of merit.
Snap. Another Canadian author alert! This one was a YA author AND she got her start on Degrassi Junior High! If you know, you know. This was a fun and heart warming story about three very different people who end up in the same anger management course – and who end up being found family. A very sweet and lovely book!
The Book Swap. This is a book about two people – once friends, now enemies – who, unknowingly, fall in love over writing in margins in books from a little free library. I liked that part, but much of the book was about mental illness and bullying, which made it a bit hard to read at times. I didn’t love it, as the characters were very difficult to like and to cheer for, which isn’t what I’m looking for in a light romance.
Someday, Maybe. Imagine finding the gory, bloody, dead body of your husband who died by suicide, and you had no idea that he was suffering in any way. That’s the premise of this book about deep, complicated, abiding grief. Trigger warnings ahoy! I actually felt it was too much until the big reveal at the 30% mark kept me curious enough to read. And…I don’t know, friends. The villainous mother-in-law was so incredibly one-dimensional until there was finally some character development at the 90% mark, that I found it distracting. Maybe it’s because I’m closer in age to the evil MIL than the widowed main character, but I thought it was pretty heavy-handed. The title comes from an exchange about the widow’s family wanting her to heal and be happy, to which she responds “maybe, someday” when really she does not want to. She wants to hold onto her grief which I think it realistic. But it’s a hard book to read, content wise, and I’m not sure why I did. It felt a bit like trauma porn, so that’s on me for choosing to read this.
The Guest. I had all these podcasts downloaded for the flights home, but I could not put this down. It’s WILD. How to describe this in my flight-exhausted state…it’s about a young woman whose much older boyfriend breaks up with her, but she has nowhere to go. She pins her hopes on a reconciliation at his Labour Day party, if she can make it that long. I loved this! It is exactly the kind of book I love, with lots of character development and allusions, and the reader left to draw conclusions.
After I finished The Guest, I was so overwhelmed by the incredible writing and the crazy story that I abandoned my Kobos and watched six back-to-back episodes of the Scrubs reboot and the last Downton Abbey movie. Alas, I fell asleep during the last part of the latter, so I will never know if Lady Mary’s divorce had farther-reaching social effects than one might anticipate. One might think that I could just rewatch the end, but we all know that I’m never going to do that while not on a plane. I have the fourth season of The Gilded Age to start, The Pitt is returning soon, and there are only so many hours in a day. Have you read anything good lately? xo
