February romance reading

I got the idea that February should be a break in the heavy nonfiction I’ve been reading lately. I decided to only read quick reads that could be entirely classified as chick lit. Then I came to my senses.

I can honestly say that it was fun at first… but I may never do this again.  Lol. By February 9, I was desperate for a book that made me think, not just swoon.  I’ve put all the mindless romances at the end in their own section. 🙂

Perhaps in rebellion to the silly love stories, there are some pretty serious reads below…

Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own by Kate Bolick

What if a girl grew up like a boy, with marriage an abstract, someday thought, a thing to think about when she became an adult, a thing she could do, or not do, depending? What would that look and feel like?

This insightful reflection on the rights and choices of women tells the true story of a real-life happily unmarried woman.  As her identity is shaped and changes, she finds that it is refreshing to choose to be single, finding pleasure in supporting herself and being alone without the restrictions of a wife and/or mother. Using her own experiences as a starting point, journalist Kate Bolick invites us to consider five women whose journeys influenced her own: Edna Millay, essayist Maeve Brennan, columnist Neith Boyce, novelist Edith Wharton, and social visionary Charlotte Perkins Gilman. She considers them her “awakeners.”

Being single is like being an artist, not because creating a functional single life is an art form, but because it requires the same close attention to one’s singular needs, as well as the will and focus to fulfill them. Just as the artist arranges her life around her creativity, sacrificing conventional comforts and even social acceptance, sleeping and eating according to her own rhythms, so that her talent thrives above all else, nurtured the way a child might be, so a single person has to think hard to decipher what makes her happiest and most fulfilled.

Today, of course, women don’t need to be married to have sex, or to buy a house, or to pass down an inheritance. Marriage is a constantly evolving idea and practice that will, likely, continue to change. But in the meantime, it remains our culture’s definition of the highest form of interpersonal commitment, and because of that we’ll keep on doing it for as long as we fall in love. It’s important to remember, however, that the widespread practice of marrying for love—not responsibility to family and community—is only about two hundred years old. Women have been pursuing professional careers for half that time, but in significant numbers only over the past forty years. In many ways, the decision of whether and whom and when to marry is more complex than ever.

Favorite line: If you’re lucky, home is not only a place you leave, but also a place where you someday arrive.

All Who Go Do Not Return: A Memoir by Shulem Deen

“When everything you’ve ever known is suddenly up for question, what are the values you retain and what do you discard?”  This is a striking memoir about leaving the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic world of the Skverers in New Square, New York.  Shulem gradually begins to doubt everything he was taught to believe and ultimately is labeled a heretic and forced to leave his community.  The most heart-wrenching was reading his reactions when his wife of 15 years decided to return to the community with their 5 children. He eventually loses all contact with his kids.

Many tribes of Hasidism have distinct language and dress and keep their interactions with outsiders to a minimum in order to maintain separation from outside influences.  Media is banned, as are secular books and ideas.  I enjoyed reading about the Torah learning and the way of life of Shulem and his family.  His natural curiosity of modern culture and his interest in science and other religions seemed to be difficult for him to fight – and why should he? Ultimately, as he lost his faith, he grew to feel more and more deceptive and like he was hiding his true identity, so it was probably right that he had to leave.

“Losing your faith is not like realizing that you got an arithmetic problem wrong. It is more like discovering your entire mathematical system is flawed, that every calculation you’ve ever made was incorrect. Your bank balance is off, your life savings might be gone, your business could be in the red when you’ve imagined it to be flourishing. Except you seem to be the only one who realizes it, and how is that possible? Is everyone crazy? Could you really be the only sane one? And if the entire world goes by a flawed system, doesn’t it, in some odd way, make the wrong way right? Or at least, there is consistency; they’re in sync, zigzagging together, while you walk the straight line all alone. And yet, you know, you know that you are right and they are wrong, and that you can demonstrate it if given the chance, but they won’t give you the chance. You cannot speak of it because if you do, you will be like the lunatic who prophesies end-of-times doom and gloom, or like the one heralding some New Age brand of salvation and redemption.”

An Undisturbed Peace: A Novel by Mary Glickman

Protagonist Abe Sassaporta, an immigrant Jew from London, is a wagon driver and shopkeeper in nineteenth-century Cherokee North Carolina.  The story describes his interactions with a Cherokee woman, a black slave, and how their stories intersect.  The background of this story is the Trail of Tears, the forced displacement of 5 Native American tribes.

O’Hanlon sighed. It was a dark and mournful sound. He sat back in his chair, took yet another drink, and let tears fall down his cheeks, one by one. “I was never a great friend to the Injuns, Abe. But I was never their enemy either. My heart has been turned now. I’ll do those people a good turn whenever I can from now on. It was a terrible dishonor to be part of such events. Neither I nor what’s left of me men and me beasts will ever forget it. I believe I will hear the weak little bleats of the dyin’ babies and the mournful chants of their mothers for the rest of me life, awake and asleep. God help America on the day comin’ when she must pay for her sins.”

The character evolution of Abe is impressive.  And I love historical fiction for teaching pieces of history while telling the story of 3 characters’ harsh lives in the 1820s.  Glickman’s 4th book explores injustice done to a different minority group, which must be why I read about it in a Jewish women’s magazine.  Recommend, but know that it’s got some disturbing parts.

Hands Free Life: Nine Habits for Overcoming Distraction, Living Better, and Loving More by Rachel Macy Stafford

It is a conscious decision to focus on what really matters.  Stafford tells of her journey with her two girls to let go of distraction, perfection, and societal pressures to grasp what really matters, I have discovered nine intentional habits of a Hands Free Life. These practices make up the nine chapters of this book, each exploring one habit of a “Hands Free Life.”

Dismiss the drill sergeant, the perfectionist, the control freak, and the frantic rusher — those whose relentless demands sabotage any chance of meaningful connection in the blur of a frenzied day. Life is meant to be lived not managed, not controlled, not screamed, not stressed, not hurried, not guilt-ridden, not regretted, not scripted, not consumed by distractions, big or small, obvious or subtle.

But there are moments in between life’s obligations when we are in the presence of our loved ones that can be made sacred.

There is a much bigger plan than we could ever imagine for ourself, our family, and our life’s work that can only be seen when we stand back and behold the beautifully lopsided results of life being lived.

Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva by Rosemary Sullivan

For the Soviets, Svetlana was the most significant defector ever to leave the USSR.  This biography of Svetlana Stalin immediately grabbed me.  I found her story and her persona in general to be admirable and interesting.

Svetlana called her childhood normal, full of loving relatives, friends, holidays, pleasure. She even claimed that it was modest, and for the child of a head of state, perhaps it was, though the millions of Russians who were starving and displaced would have been outraged.

* * * * *

Effortless With You by Lizzy Charles

This is probably a young adult book and a great one to read at the beach. The main character has a tense relationship with her parents and a bias against the good-looking guy, but there is substance here: there are dips into topics like depression, bullying, cheating, love, true friendship, and believing in yourself.  It surprised me in that I really felt invested in how things turned out.

Harvard Hottie by Annabelle Costa

Nerdy Ellie Jenson meets rich, handsome Luke Thayer at Harvard freshman year and she immediately hates him and his entitled attitude.  15 years later, Luke is suddenly her boss, paralyzed, and down-to-earth.  You can probably guess the rest.  I’d say it’s a good story and a fast read.  Free on Kindle.

Just One Day by Gayle Forman

I’d had this one on my kindle for awhile and began reading it one evening, only to be immediately caught up in its story.  The main character, Alyson, seems to have had a similar upbringing to me where she met everyone’s expectations, excelled in school, etc.  On a graduation trip in Europe, she does something so unlike her usual self… goes to Paris for one day with a guy she met who calls her LuLu.  They have a very strong connection, have a memorable time, and then they are apart.  The rest of the book is about how her identity shifts in the year after this happens, all while incorporating a healthy dose of Shakespeare.  It’s a novel about putting yourself out there and having new experiences because anything could happen.

My favorite take-away from this story comes from a friend of Alyson:  “I’ve seen you do Rosalind. And you spent a day playing Lulu, and you’re currently masquerading as a pre-med student to your parents.” I look down, pick at my nail. “That just makes me a liar.” “No it doesn’t. You’re just trying on different identities, like everyone in those Shakespeare plays. And the people we pretend at, they’re already in us. That’s why we pretend them in the first place.

That makes me feel a whole lot better about my Gemini-ness! There’s another aspect of the story too… descriptions that are really well written about how different people bring out different aspects of ourselves, especially our parents.  This was a fun read (except for the tears).

“…that whole day, being with Willem, being Lulu, it made me realize that all my life I’ve been living in a small, square room, with no windows and no doors. And I was fine. I was happy, even. I thought. Then someone came along and showed me there was a door in the room. One that I’d never even seen before. Then he opened it for me. Held my hand as I walked through it. And for one perfect day, I was on the other side. I was somewhere else. Someone else. And then he was gone, and I was thrown back into my little room. And now, no matter what I do, I can’t seem to find that door.”

Just One Year (Just One Day Book 2) by Gayle Forman

This is a mirror of the first book, told from Willem’s point of view. Much of this trilogy is obvious and trite, but there were so many sentences that I loved.  And this one has more Shakespeare, this time from an inside view of performing with a stage company.

It was like she gave me her whole self, and somehow as a result, I gave her more of myself than I even realized there was to give. But then she was gone. And only after I’d been filled up by her, by that day, did I understand how empty I really was.

Just One Night (Book 2.5) by Gayle Forman

This is a $.99 ebook that wraps up Allyson and Willem’s love story. They find each other and all ends happily.  It was a satisfying, if predictable, ending that wraps up their two individual experiences and brings them together with their friends and families as well.  Cheesy but fun.

The Wedding Dress by Rachel Hauck

the story of a hundred-year-old gown and four special brides.Old trunk, purple man, magic gold gown.What can you do to speak against true injustice? Emily wore the first wedding dress in the south made by a black designer.

When she looked at Taffy, listened to her talk, Emily felt a kinship with the older colored woman. More than just a common faith in Jesus, but a sense of feeling . . . trapped. Locked in by society, expectation, and the wants of others.

Winter’s Gift (Bistro La Bohème Series) by Alix Nichols

Anton is rich and successful with trust issues; Anna needs money to pay for her mother’s medical bills so she moonlights as an elite escort.  For such a shallow plot, the characters are surprisingly well-drawn and I found that I cared about them very much.  A simple and fun romance.  Free on Kindle.

Life and Other Near-Death Experiences by Camille Pagán

The thing about life is, you think it’s going to go on forever, that there couldn’t possibly be an end to your story, at least not in the foreseeable future. But then around the time you—and by you, I mean me—should be having the stirrings of a midlife crisis, a stranger in a white coat tells you that you are no longer a member of the general population and do not have another forty-five-and-a-half years to warm up to the idea of dying.

I read this one in a day and was impressed with the depth of emotion it brought out in me. The main character is thrown two huge curveballs at once, a cancer diagnosis and a marriage ending, yet the way she reacts seems true-to-life and courageous at the same time.  Entirely predictable yet still worth the read.  Free on Kindle.