THE HOUSE on MANGO STREET (audiobook) by Sandra Cisneros

Originally Published in 1983.
Read by the author, Sandra Cisneros.
Duration: 2 hours, 18 minutes.
Unabridged

The House on Mango Street is the story of a Hispanic girl named Esperanza who grows up in a little house in a poor neighborhood in Chicago. Her story is told in a series of unrelated vignettes (44 in all) that tell some sort of story about her family life or the neighborhood itself. In some, the main character clearly has no idea of the more adult themes that occur around her, while in others she is very astute and understands the larger implications. 

At first, Esperanza's family intends that the house is going to be a temporary stop on their climb towards economic success in America. But, they never quite are able to move out of this troubled neighborhood and the reader is able to see how the neighborhood affects the lives of everyone around Esperanza as she grows up.

To be fair, the neighborhood is not all bad, but it is a tough place for children to grow up and keep their innocence. Some kids run away, some get married early and try to build some stability (one gets married extremely early.) Esperanza is determined to work her way out of the neighborhood and then come back and help others get out.

I read this book for two reasons:
1) It has a tremendous reputation. 
2) It has been placed on multiple book ban lists and I like to read those books to form my own opinion (unlike a lot of people who ban them.)

My review:

The author, Sandra Cisneros

I found that this book's biggest issue was that it was just boring. It's a 2 hours audiobook and I found myself wanting to listen to anything else at times. I simply could not get into this story. 

I certainly wouldn't ban this book. It has a lot of adult themes, but I think too many sheltered adults don't realize that a lot of kids live very unsheltered lives. This book will come off as very real to a lot of those kids, assuming that they can get past the back that it is a very, very tedious read. This 30+ year teacher would put it in a classroom library or in a school library and support any student wanting to read it. 

Here are two stories about districts that have banned this book - one based in Texas and one based in Florida.

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE HOUSE on MANGO STREET by Sandra Cisneros.

NETWORK of LIES: THE EPIC SAGA of FOX NEWS, DONALD TRUMP, and the BATLLE for AMERICAN DEMOCRACY (audiobook) by Brian Stelter

Published by Simon and Schuster Audio in

November of 2013

Read by the author, Brian Stelter

Duration: 11 hours, 16 minutes.

Unabridged

Brian Stelter is a former CNN commentator. While in college, he started a blog about news commentary shows and the personalities that make them what they are. In a way, he has been working on this book for more than 15 years. 

Stelter pored over the paperwork from the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News to help write this 2020-2023 history of the cable news giant. 

He spends the most amount of time looking at the biggest show with the biggest host on Fox News at the time - Tucker Carlson. He goes over a litany of Tucker's Greatest Hits - the Great Replacement Theory, The January 6 Insurrection was just a tourist event, Ukrainian biolabs, transgender conspiracies, and, of course, the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

He looks at the power dynamics at the top of Fox News, including Rupert Murdoch, the board at Fox News, the advertisers, Murdoch's kids and the various women that Murdoch has been married or engaged to. 

Of course, the most powerful players were not actually present in the room. The most powerful players were (and still are) the viewers. Stelter demonstrates that the viewers were given a steady diet of misinformation and outright lies and, after a few years of this, refused anything but misinformation.

When Fox News tried to back off from the bombastic, crazytown commentary that passed for news after the January 6th Insurrection, viewers fled in droves. Where did they go? They went to the two networks that were even more bombastic and even more crazytown - OAN and NewsMax. Fox News could literally see the data that showed that they lost viewers and OAN and NewsMax gained a big chunk of them.

An actual screen shot from Carlson's
February 1, 2023 broadcast.
Anyone can see they had committed 
themselves to serious journalism.

This caused a reversal of policy and a resumption of the crazytown news. There were open discussions via email and text that showed that everyone knew that the "Stop the Steal" claims were bogus, but they were also hyper-aware that the viewers refused to hear anything of it - they left Fox News to go to the people that told them their comforting stories, whether they were true or not. So, Fox News decided to keep feeding them the equivalent of news garbage in order to keep them watching.

And that led to the lawsuits, the firing of Tucker Carlson, and even more lying to the viewers of Fox News (almost as if losing 3/4 of a billion dollars in a lawsuit is not a good bit of feedback that tells them that they are doing news all wrong.)

Stelter tells a story that would be unbelievable if I hadn't lived through it all and seen the rough outlines of it for myself. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: NETWORK of LIES: THE EPIC SAGA of FOX NEWS, DONALD TRUMP, and the BATLLE for AMERICAN DEMOCRACY by Brian Stelter.

EVERYTHING I LEARNED, I LEARNED in a CHINESE RESTAURANT: A MEMOIR (audiobook) by Curtis Chin

Published in 2023 by Little, Brown, and Company.
Read by the author, Curtis Chin
Duration: 8 hours, 12 minutes.
Unabridged.

Curtis Chin grew up in the 1980s in and around Detroit, Michigan. His immediate family and his extended family shared ownership in a Chinese restaurant in Detroit's Chinatown. Chin spent a considerable chunk of his early life working, eating, and doing homework in the restaurant.

Chin tells about how his family ended up in Detroit, how his parents met and got married, the sometimes uncomfortable extended family dynamic, and the decline of Chung's Cantonese Cuisine's once vibrant neighborhood.

There is also plenty of discussion about school from kindergarten through a four year degree at the University of Michigan. These parts of the story often discussed the racial dynamics of going to school in Detroit's majority minority school system. Later, when the family joined the white flight to the suburbs, there was a new dynamic of going to a school where there were almost no minority students. On top of that, the family was clearly not welcome in the suburbs because they were not white.

As Chin grew older, he had another issue that had his attention more than the ins and outs of the shifting racial currents - his sexual orientation.

Chin starts this part with an amusing story of how he and a cousin snuck out of the restaurant to go into a store near the restaurant that sold porn magazines to take a look. It's an enlightening story for a couple of reasons. It shows how the neighborhood around the restaurant had declined. But, Chin knows something is different when he is more interested in the magazines featuring men than the ones featuring women.

The family restaurant in 1976
Photo from Detroit News archives.

From that point, the book focuses heavily on Chin's struggles with who he can safely come out to and how to meet a man while constantly being surrounded by a very traditional family. Chin often wonders how his family will react when he finally comes out to them.

I have two big criticisms of the book. The first is that we never find out how his family reacts when he comes out to them. He worries about that throughout the second half of the book and he almost tells them at one point at the very end. The second is that considering the title of the book, I found it disappointing that there is no summary at the end of the book that points out the life lessons he learned in a Chinese restaurant.

Not a bad book, but I was disappointed by the two omissions that I mentioned. I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  EVERYTHING I LEARNED, I LEARNED in a CHINESE RESTAURANT: A MEMOIR (audiobook) by Curtis Chin.

HAWKEYE VOLUME 1: MY LIFE as a WEAPON (graphic novel) by Matt Fraction, David Aja, and more

Published in 2013 by
Marvel Worldwide, Inc.

This collection is the inspiration for the Disney+ series "Hawkeye." I really enjoyed this series and thought I'd read the source material. 

Just like in the series, most of Hawkeye's adventures are small time affairs. That's okay by me. Every adventure can't be (and shouldn't be) a "save the world" event.

Fans of Hawkeye in the MCU will be surprised that Hawkeye in the comics is not a family man. He's also a lot more disjointed and unorganized than he is in the movies.

That being said, this was an enjoyable read and this Hawkeye may not have an overwhelming love for his family, but he has a big heart in different ways.

I very much enjoyed the simplified art design and color scheme of most of this graphic novel. It gave it a sense of moodiness. 

I rate this graphic novel 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: HAWKEYE VOLUME 1: MY LIFE as a WEAPON (graphic novel) by Matt Fraction, David Aja, and more.

THE BEST of 2023

 

This is a "best of" list based on the 87 books I read and reviewed in 2023. I do not focus on new books, so there are books on this "best of" ranging from being published in 1939 to being published in December of 2023.

The titles are active links to my reviews.

*** = Best of the best in that category.

HISTORY/MEMOIR/BIOGRAPHY

This was a tough category this year. Every one of these is excellent, but it's almost unfair to compare any book to the Pulitzer Prize winning Maus. Maus practically invented the modern genre of the graphic novel and its iconic images with the Nazis as cats and the Jews as mice are unforgettable. 

***The Complete Maus (graphic novel) by Art Spiegelman

Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Adaptation by Anne Frank, Ari Folman, and David Polonsky.

Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues by Jonathan Kennedy.

Che: A Revolutionary Life (graphic novel) by Jon Lee Anderson and Jose Hernandez.

Magna Carta: The Birth of Liberty by Dan Jones.

Ten Caesars: Roman Emperors from Augustus to Constantine by Barry Strauss.

FICTION

Like the previous category, the winner in this category that stands out in any collection. The Grapes of Wrath won the Pulitzer Prize, The National Book Award and its author won The Nobel Prize. This is a strong category, though. Vonnegut is, well, Vonnegut. He's a name brand author. Not many have sold more than Michael Connelly in the 21st century. Underground Airlines was an unexpected trip into another (unpleasant) world. Nick Petrie shows up 3 times here. I discovered him this year and very much enjoyed his action novels

***The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut

Resurrection Walk by Michael Connelly

The Drifter by Nick Petrie

Tear It Down by Nick Petrie

The Wild One by Nick Petrie

Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters

YOUNG ADULT

Every book I read in this category I read because it showed up on a banned books list created by Moms for Liberty or Purple for Parents or a similar MAGA group. I purposefully read several books this year from various banned books lists (9 in all) and these four were all excellent - and all great choices to put in school libraries.

***You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson

The Girl from the Sea (graphic novel) by Molly Knox Ostertag

Dear Martin by Nic Stone

Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Adaptation by Anne Frank, Ari Folman, and David Polonsky.

NON-FICTION (non-history)

This category is amazingly diverse. Sociology, religion, mental health, politics, economics, linguistics, and race. Ultimately, I decided that Of Boys and Men explained actually laid the foundation for the situations discussed in many of the other books. 

***Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It by Richard V. Reeves

On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living by Alan Noble

Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning by Liz Cheney.

Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond

The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth by Beth Allison Barr. 

The Corruption of Lindsey Graham: A Case Study in the Rise of Authoritarianism by William Saletan

Talking Back, Talking Black: Truths About America's Lingua Franca by John McWhorter

ON GETTING OUT of BED: THE BURDEN and GIFT of LIVING (audiobook) by Alan Noble

 

Published in 2023 by ChristianAudio.con

Read by the author, Alan Noble.
Duration: 2 hours, 18 minutes.
Unabridged.

Alan Noble is a college professor and a Christian writer who writes for Christian and non-Christian publications. 

He also struggles with a mental illness that he does not identify in this short book. On Getting Out of Bed is all about dealing with the depression and struggles that come with mental illness, thus the title.

Noble's powerful description of overwhelming depression demonstrates that he understands the issue and how it effects people well. This is important because it shows that he is coming from a place of understanding and that is vitally important.

His advice is not easy advice, but it is realistic advice. One of my relatives was advised by well-meaning church members that the best way to deal with depression and suicidal ideation was prayer for God to help with these thoughts. I cannot stress enough that this was sincerely intended to be helpful advice, it was taken as, "If you only had enough faith, God would lift this burden from you. But, he has not lifted this burden so you are not worthy."

He acknowledges the struggle and he goes on to offer realistic advice that is not easy.

The author, Alan Noble

The acknowledgement: 

"Each morning you must choose to get out of bed or not. All the medication and cognitive therapy and latest research and self-care in the world can't replace your choice. This decision can be aided by these resources but never replaced by them. Which means that you have to have an answer to a fundamental question: Why get out of bed? Or, more bluntly, why live?"

The advice:

"This is precisely why we must see that each choice to do the next thing is an act of worship, and therefore fundamentally good. Feeding your pets is an act of worship. Brushing your teeth is. Doing the dishes. Getting dressed. Going to work. Insofar as each of these actions assumes that life in this fallen world is good and worth living despite suffering, they are acts of faith in God. Choose to do the next thing before and unto God, take a step toward the block. That is all you must ever do and all you can do. It is your spiritual act of worship."

There is no "fix" for most people, although Noble doesn't discount the possibility of such a thing happening. But, for almost everyone else that suffers from depression, it has to be enough to get out of bed as an act of worship and of faith.

Another quote I really liked:

"We almost never take the witness of our actions seriously enough. I suspect that's because if we did, it would frighten us. It's scary to realize that my every decision communicates to people around me something about the nature of God, the goodness of His creation and laws."

I rate this book 5 stars out of 5 stars. It can be found on Amazon.com here: ON GETTING OUT of BED: THE BURDEN and GIFT of LIVING by Alan Noble.

FINDING GRACE by Alyssa Brugman

Published in 2001 by Delacorte Press

Synopsis: 

Rachel lives in Australia and is a brand new graduate of high school. She is ready to head off to college but she needs a job and a place to live that is close to the university.

She finds both when the enigmatic Mr. Preston offers her a place to live just a few blocks from campus in exchange for watching over a woman named Grace. 

Rachel knows that Grace was brain damaged in some sort of accident, but not much more than that. Grace can walk and feed herself - but that's about all she can do. She cannot talk, she cannot bathe herself, she cannot communicate in any way.

Rachel spends the night with Grace, feeds Grace and watches over her much like a nanny watches a small child. She gets time off for classes, when the nurses come for physical therapy, and when Mr. Preston comes over to spend time with Grace.

My Review:

The author

I expected nothing from this book. Several year ago, I picked it up from a pile of books that were being shipped out of my school building because they weren't part of the curriculum any longer. The book sat in my to-be-read while for so long that I thought (because of the title) I was picking up one of the religious titles I had bought a couple of years ago. 

This wasn't the book that I was expecting, but it was a good book. Not much goes on, but it is a good coming of age book about transitions, love, rivalry, and dedication. 

I rate this book 4 start out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: FINDING GRACE by Alyssa Brugman.