littlemiao's reviews
30 reviews

A Dragon for Hanukkah by Sarah Mlynowski

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funny inspiring lighthearted
  • Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

A charming book. The story is simple, light, and joyous. The art sets the perfect tone, with the adorable dragon Nerry stealing the show. The magic of imagination is more the focus than the traditions of Chanukah, but major aspects of the holiday are included in a lighthearted sort of way. There aren’t that many Chanukah picture books that purely focus on the fun. This is one of them, and it does so delightfully.
Friday the Rabbi Slept Late by Harry Kemelman

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mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes

3.25

Overall I like it, despite the fact that it is very much a reflection of its time in terms of misogyny and gender roles. I like the rabbi and his approach. I wouldn’t mind going to his shul (updated to the Conservative movement of the present day rather than the 1960s). The most entertaining part of the book was the small town shul politics rather than the mystery itself. Unusually for me, I correctly figured out the culprit about halfway through. I don’t know if I just got lucky, or the plot construction lacked subtlety. It’s nice that there is a series of classic-style mysteries featuring a rabbi sleuth.
In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire

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adventurous dark emotional
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No

4.0

This might be my favorite of the Wayward Children books so far. Perhaps I am l getting used to this world and the writing style. Or perhaps it says something about my personality. The portal world seemed the least developed of all - what is there apart from the goblin market and constantly working off or trying to avoid debts? Like, what would be interesting enough to keep someone there? We never really got to see any of it. The narrative cut away from most of the action, and we got very little sense of what life was like for Lundy in that world, apart from the delicate dance of debt. Still, I enjoyed the story more than the others, and I look forward to the rest.
Two Tribes by Emily Bowen Cohen

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hopeful informative inspiring fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

A heartfelt story of a girl’s journey to embrace both her Muscogee and Jewish identity. I thought it was well done, the situations maybe a little contrived to get the message across, but the message is an important one. I don’t appreciate the author referring to the Torah as the “Old Testament” in the note at the end. Also, I wasn’t sure what the purpose was of highlighting the protagonist’s father’s Christian services, and her repeated interest in attending. He puts her off, but leaves it open as a possibility for the future.

I appreciated the portrayal of the adults in the protagonist’s life - being loving doesn’t mean not flawed, and flawed doesn’t mean bad. People own up to their mistakes, and try to do better. All in all, this is a well-crafted book about embracing who you are in its full and beautiful complexity, and not letting anyone, even loved ones, put you in their preassigned boxes. Highly recommended.
Castle in the Air by Diana Wynne Jones

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adventurous funny lighthearted fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

2.75

This book has Diana Wynne Jones’ signature style - witty, lighthearted stories that often turn common fantasy conventions on their head. The one fell a bit flat for me, sadly. The worst part was the fatphobia, which wasn’t just an aside but an elaborated and recurring theme. In general, the portrayal of women was disappointing. Their worth is tied to their looks and desirability or usefulness to men. Diana Wynne Jones should know better. There was also casual mention of cruelty against cats; it is jarring in a story like this. The author obviously loves and knows cats well, and no harm befell any cat in the actual narrative. The book relied on Orientalizing stereotypes from an Aladdin-esque Arabian setting. So far this is my least favorite of her stories.

(Extra points for mention of thatch roofs!)
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Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew by Noa Tishby, Emmanuel Acho

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challenging informative reflective fast-paced

4.0

My primary question for this book is if it is effective. Will anyone read it with an open mind and come away more educated and less bigoted against Jews? The collaborative nature of this book, how Acho took the initiative to reach out to Tishby, and how they worked through difficulties in their collaboration, gives me hope. Acho approaches his questions from a place of empathy and openness, which I found compelling. Tishby, by profession, is an effective communicator and manages to condense a lot of important information into digestible kernels. I cannot read this book with an outsider’s perspective to know if it can accomplish its goals. But it is a much needed project. On the whole, this is a good book to recommend to people who express genuine interest in understanding antisemitism as Jews experience it today. I imagine the book’s success will depend on how deeply ingrained antisemitic thought patterns are in the reader’s mind. I am not optimistic.

A few highlights that I hope more people will think about:

“If you find yourself on the same side of an argument as David Duke, the Iranian government, and ISIS, then I think you ought to reflect on how you got there in the first place.”

“Hamas is not acting as the Palestinian people’s bodyguard. In fact, it is exactly the other way around. Hamas uses the Palestinian people as their bodyguards when they attack Israeli civilians and then embed themselves in the Palestinian civilian population.”

And Tishby has a straightforward guide for people to tell if their criticism of Israel is antisemitic: Is your criticism an indictment of all Jews? Does it capitalize on antisemitic stereotypes? Or does it lay blame for an entire issue solely on Israel?

If the answer to any of those questions is yes, then indeed it is antisemitic. It is, in fact, easy to criticize Israel without being antisemitic. Vast numbers of Jews, including and perhaps especially Israelis, do so all the time.

One thing that the authors don’t confront is how deeply antisemitism is embedded in the Christian hegemonic culture. Things that don’t appear antisemitic are, and impact matters more than intention. But the non-Jewish world is not ready for that conversation, if it ever will be.
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Grannar i döden by Lucy Foley

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

The third book I’ve listened to in Swedish this year. Overall, it was satisfying as a suspense novel. The tension relied almost wholly on unreliable narrators. The twists might have been foreseeable, if I had taken the time to think. I didn’t, though - listening to it at 1.8 x speed in Swedish, I could keep up with it but I didn’t have time for much reflection. Pure escapism. Don’t look to this for anything original or transformative, but it’s a good read if you’re in the mood.

CW: Gore, suicide, human trafficking, homophobia, drug use, alcoholism, murder
Wrath Becomes Her by Aden Polydoros

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challenging dark sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character

3.0

I like the author‘s writing and have read two of their earlier dark fantasies. But I have deep misgivings about this book. People should write about whatever they want regardless of my opinion, obviously. Yet, what is the intended purpose of this book? Is it to entertain readers with a gruesome dark fantasy that happens to be set during the Shoah? Probably not, but many readers will likely take it as such. Is it to work through intergenerational trauma? Is it to counterbalance the horrible, vapid, and demeaning Holocaust stories already on the shelves? Perhaps. Does it achieve that goal? I doubt it.

The Jewish Book Council reviewer said: 

“Wrath Became Her is a nov­el that is sit­u­at­ed square­ly in the Jew­ish gaze, for Jew­ish read­ers. That’s not to say that non-Jew­ish read­ers won’t enjoy it; they will. But it is unapolo­get­i­cal­ly Jew­ish.”

Yes to unapologetically Jewish books. But should we not have a vocabulary other than “enjoyment” for talking about books set during the Shoah?

Whomever this book was written for, it wasn’t written for me.

Vera, the protagonist, is a golem created by a bereaved father using forbidden sorcery and parts of his murdered daughter’s body. She is newly made, yet she has some memories as well as knowledge of several languages and many Jewish texts inscribed into her clay body. Even though she is in the middle of the Nazi conquest of Lithuania, she learns about everything secondhand, and there is a sense of disconnection. She is not part of any community that is being destroyed, she is an outsider looking at their destruction, and deciding how she wants to help, if at all. Her participation in resistance is optional: “I didn’t know what I wanted anymore… he had made it sound so simple, creating my own purpose.” Everyone else is struggling to survive, and she’s having a golem identity crisis. For me, this rang hollow.

“My first and greatest crime was to be brought into this world. The more I thought about it, the angrier I became… I had never asked to be born, but I wasn’t willing to simply crumble back into clay. I didn’t know what I wanted or where my future waited for me. The only thing I could do was keep moving, and maybe someday this world would make sense to me.”

Golem teen angst against the backdrop of mass murder? Not my cup of tea.

There was a lot that didn’t work for me in this book, despite the author’s often poetic writing. The audiobook narrator’s American accent was grating. The recurring refrain “Next year in America” made me cringe. It was meant to be poignant, I think. Her kind-of boyfriend says: “You are a memorial. Our history, our faith, it’s written all over you. As long as you survive, so will we.” Hopeful words, but also hollow. There was no golem to preserve “our history, our faith,” or even a single life. At least 95% of Jews in Lithuania were murdered by Nazis and Lithuanians. Even a novel that tries to portray the Shoah more realistically, like this one, ends up sugarcoating the horrors. “Mir veln zey iberlebn” - but a fictional golem has nothing to do with it.

As for the wrath in the title, who is Vera really angry at? Everyone? Her hatred of her creator, the bereaved father, is unalloyed: “his pain and ignorance did not absolve him.” At the end, she rages against the Jews hiding in the forest when the rabbi doesn’t want to use forbidden sorcery. “No, the abomination is you humans, you petty cruel humans, you are the ones who caused this violence, you bring suffering and pain and then you create creatures like me in order to fix it. It is you humans!” Raging against dispossessed Jews on death’s door is… a choice. Putting the Nazis and their victims on the same plane, as “petty cruel humans… who caused this violence” is a choice.

So yeah, this book did not work for me.
Ett fall på Capri by Anette de la Motte, Anders de la Motte

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informative lighthearted mysterious slow-paced
  • Diverse cast of characters? No

1.5

One of the least effective cozies I have read. The murder doesn’t take place until at least the halfway mark, and there was no successful build up of suspense. It read like a travel brochure. Admittedly, it fulfilled the cozy part of the genre requirements quite well. It’s frustrating that Swedish crime novels are too gory and depressing, but the cozy ones so far are just meh.
Ordinary Monsters by J.M. Miro

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adventurous dark tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.0

I’m not sure what I think of this book. Very gory, haunting, grim, deeply disturbing. I don’t regret reading it, though, and I will read the next book. I chose it because the spine art reminded me of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, but the tone, atmosphere, and writing style of the books couldn’t be more different. Still, a worthwhile read if you are in the mental space to handle the darkness and violence. Also, without spoilers, there is a somewhat feline character who is intriguing.