The East Indian by Brinda Charry

Thursday, July 27, 2023--San Antonio

The East Indian by Brinda Charry is a novel about the first man from East India to arrive in Colonial America--at Jamestown, VA, in the 1600s.  It is not a long novel, only about 270-280 pages.  It is fiction, but the author built the story from researching multiple references of East Indians in Colonial America along with references about life in Colonial America before the slave trade started (due to the number of people coming from England being too small to meet the demands of the land owners and because slaves were harder workers than white men and were owned for the rest of their lives which made having them so much better for the landowners than having to give up the rights to indentured men and women after 7 years).  Life seems to always, no matter when in time, be about men with money trying to take advantage of men without money.  The book made me think of the factory workers of the late 1800s/early 1900s,  sharecroppers of the mid-1900s (whose lives were much like those of the the indentured men in the 1600s in this novel--designed to keep them down and bound), as well as the workers today for companies such as Starbucks, Amazon, cleaning service contractors, airport wheelchair and luggage handlers, etc., who are expected to do demanding jobs at wages that are not enough to support life.  (I've recently been explaining slow service in luggage getting to carousels at our airport this way:  When you only pay a person $11-13 per hour and expect them to handle luggage outdoors in 104 degrees every day in a state that just passed legislation that employers are not required to give water breaks, is it any wonder that they might just not show up?)  Anyway, this novel starts in India and follows the life of an East Indian male who doesn't know his father and whose mother is a "kept woman" by English colonial occupiers.  His life is ruled by circumstances.  He finds himself shipped to England.  Then he is kidnapped and put on a ship to America where he is the first East Indian to arrive there.  He is regularly misidentified as a Moor, a Turk, a Mohammedan, etc., and called such--too black to be white and not black enough to be an African.  He sold into indentured service where life is miserable.  The book continues to follow his story through various changes in life.  It's an interesting book which the BBC called one of the 16 best of the first half of 2023.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

Leg: The Story of the Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It by Greg Marshall

 Sunday, July 23, 2023--San Antonio

Leg:  The Story of the Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It by Greg Marshall is a memoir.  I had almost given up on memoirs because of how uninteresting the last 3 or 4 of them I started reading were.  The reviews for this one were so great, that I gave it a chance.  I'm so glad I did.  It is so often hilarious that I enjoyed guffawing frequently!  The reason that "Limb" is in the title is because the protagonist has born prematurely with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck resulting in him having cerebral palsy.  But his family never told him that was why his right leg was shorter and less muscular than his left one; they just told him he had tight tendons.  Therefore, Greg grew up limping but not aware of the cause of his handicap.  His outlook on life was mostly positive even if he was shy.  The best parts of the book are the first third or so of it when he is still a boy growing up in Utah in a non-Mormon family and the last fifth of it when he is trying to find love while being handicapped in two ways. (Keep reading to learn how.) But there are other complications in his life:  His mother develops lymphoma and spends decades fighting it.  His father develops Lou Gehrig's disease and dies at 55.  Added to that, as Greg goes through puberty, he comes to realize that he is gay and that his penis is affected by the CP disease causing him to suffer from partial erectile dysfunction.  His mother, although ill with cancer, is a force to be reckoned with.  His father, is like a saint in the way he protects his son and accepts him with his handicap and his being gay.  And Greg, who has to figure out on his own what having "tight tendons" truly means medically as a young adult, has to, once he is an adult, come out TWICE (as having cerebral palsy and as being gay) to everyone in his life.  Throughout it all, he is delightfully funny.  I gave the book 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

Best Laid Plans by Roan Parrish

Thursday, July 20, 2023

Best Laid Plans by Roan Parrish is the second book in a series of four.  I enjoyed the first book, but was not overly impressed by it.  But this one had better reviews, so I decided to give it a chance.  It is better.  It's not a great book, but it is a good read and has fewer weaknesses than the first one.  I did think one "twist" in the story was a bit unreasonable and a weak choice--the whole plan (not just related to the building's use) for what to eventually do with the home the main character had inherited from his grandfather and was remodeling.  It's a niche series, and I would not recommend it for everyone.  But this story was better than the first--enough for me to give it 4 stars out of 5.

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue

Thursday, July 13, 2023--San Antonio

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue is an Irish novel ranging over time from the 1980s until the near present.  Rachel is a student getting a degree in English at regional university in Cork while worrying about current expenses and future job prospects.  She is working part-time at a bookstore where she eventually meets James who becomes employed there and becomes her best friend.  Although James appears to be gay, he is not "out."  That appeals to Rachel because he becomes a non-threatening escort to events and eventually a trustworthy, yet intimate, flatmate for a very basic rental in a poor part of the city so that they can each live away from their parents.  James is not a student, but he is intelligent and witty and is much more comfortable in social situations than Rachel is.  Unfortunately, the timing for them is such that book sales are dropping due to the Kindle and a recession, so both worry keeping their part-time jobs and about their future job prospects.  Rachel is also quite immature and easily makes bad life decisions due to that and/or because she is a millennial who "wants it all." She doesn't have the reasoning ability to sometimes judge between what can be expected and what actions aren't appropriate.  (She cannot resist going through an employer's purse or bathroom and taking what she feels she deserves to have for herself!)  The other main characters are:  1) "Carey"is a sexually exciting partner for Rachel in a relationship that is on-and-off through much of the book because of her immaturity and tendency not to communicate about plans or problems.   2) Her major professor with whom, also due to her immaturity, she fantasizes (even though he isn't that attractive) about their developing a sexual relationship since she knows he is married to a former student.  Her major professor's wife who is a book editor who, upon her husband's recommendation (which is being made due to a form of blackmail by Rachael), hires her for an internship for a summer.  It's a story of miscommunications, misconceptions, and poorly managed lives.  For the most part, it is also a very entertaining story.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe + Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World by Benjamin Alire Saenz

Saturday, July 8, 2023--San Antonio 

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe and Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World are a 2-part series of young adult fiction novels authored by Benjamin Alire Saenz.  Set in El Paso, the main characters are two somewhat misfit, loner-type boys who attend separate high schools (one at a public school and the other at a catholic school) who meet during the summer break between their freshmen and sophomore years at a local public swimming pool when Dante, the more outgoing of the two and an accomplished swimmer, notices Aristotle cannot swim and offers to teach him if he would like to learn.  They quickly become friends and begin the process of coming out of their self-imposed isolation in life.  It's obvious that the books are written not just to entertain the reader, but to try to teach adolescents how to think and reason, be tolerant, reconsider their relationships with their parents, appreciate life lessons and grow from them, etc.  The characters are charming and intelligent.  And over time, the story broadens to include other characters who become a group of friends.  The series covers topics such as love, loss, discrimination, angst, general relationship change over time, love and the fact it may not last over time, etc.  These books are among the ones that many conservatives in the USA are trying to ban from school and public libraries because Aristotle discovers he is gay over time and he and Dante, who already knew he was gay, fall in love with each other.  The closest the either book comes to describing them having sex is a simple sentence.  "We had sex."  There is nothing explicit.  I found the characters to be very interesting and funny.  I felt that the books suffered mainly because an over-abundance of both using the word "universe" and referencing cartography as an analogy for mapping out the development over time of a relationship.  I think an open-minded young adult would be think the books are wonderful.  I gave the first book 3 1/2 stars out of 5 and the second book 4 stars out of 5.