Blue sky, green trees.

Overall I think this book was great. I really liked how the author discussed the history of American prisons, and how they form the latest link in a chain that includes segregation and Jim Crow laws, the Black Codes of the South, and ultimately slavery. Her point about how people of power - white people - could not imagine a different system for dealing with crime/”crime” than what was in place during their lives, and how these systems did ultimately change, is useful to keep in mind when thinking about prisons and crime in America.

However, I have a major problem with this book.

The author never gives adequate answers to the question of what to do when someone commits a crime. Throughout the book she discusses how we as a society need to become less racist, less sexist, and less discriminatory against poor people, and that this will prevent crime. The final chapter is titled 'Abolitionist Alternatives', and where one imagines she will finally elaborate on true ideas for prison alternatives. But no - in fact she chastises the reader for thinking that there should be a punishment when a crime is committed. The author then goes on to rehash her opinions that better education and job opportunities will make prisons obsolete, and then offers the well-worn ideas that making drug and prostitution legal will also make prisons obsolete. What about those crimes that are truly crimes, like murder? She suggests that we enact some sort of reparative or restorative justice. Her example of this is of a murder in South Africa of a white American woman (an anti-apartheid activist) by a crowd of black South Africans. Her convicted murderers said they were sorry during the Peace and Reconciliation Commissions, and were eventually given cushy instructor/administrative jobs. That's all that happened when these people took away a person's life, and the author would like America to emulate this setup. I cannot agree with her because I think that we owe more to the victims and the victims' loved ones than a simple sorry.

So aside from my major problem with this book, I feel like this is an excellent read.

I thought the premise had real promise, but it turned out to be pretty hokey. The future Graces weren't really developed at all, which was a shame since there was a lot of potential there. I also thought that Lily should have been discussed for more than 2 pages, given that she is in the title.

On the plus side, I loved the illustrations.

The most common accusations against this book are: 1. It's too wordy; 2. It's racist.

Yes, it is wordy. It's a Michael Chabon book, so there's no chance that it will NOT be wordy. However, I like words, and he uses enough active verbs to keep me interested.

“It's racist” - hmmm. I don't know that I agree. Books that paint any ethnicity as flawless are boring and hollow and false, and I have little patience for them. Having characters that are complicated, that are nice people but who not infrequently do stupid or annoying or self-centered things, well it rings true. I think that the negativity comes from the fact that the author is white, and that most of the characters are black, and so readers feel like he is being disrespectful to the black community when he creates flaws in his black characters; if Chabon was black not one person would call this book racist.

The American rebels' victory over Britain seems so inevitable now, 200+ years in the future and after years of mildly patriotic schooling. This book makes it brutally clear that not only was the American victory NOT inevitable, it in fact was a goddamn miracle that the cause lasted beyond the first year.

I LOVED this book. It shows us the lives of these anonymous women starting off from one similar point - mail order brides on a boat from Japan to America in the early 1900s - and how each experience could go lots of ways and they all are just one tiny thread in the tapestry of life. Here is an example:

“Some of us worked quickly to impress them. Some of us worked quickly just to show them that we could pick plums and top beets and sack onions and crate berries just as quickly if not more quickly than the men. Some of us worked quickly because we had spent our entire childhoods bent over barefoot in the rice paddies and already knew what to do. Some of us worked quickly because our husbands had warned us that if we did not they would send us home on the very next boat. I asked for a wife who was able and strong. Some of us came from the city, and worked slowly, because we had never before held a hoe. “Easiest job in America,” we were told. Some of us had been sickly and weak all our lives but after one week in the lemon groves of Riverside we felt stronger than oxen. One of us collapsed before she had even finished weeding her first row.”

A subtle book, with flashes of sadness and flashes of goodness, all building to a quiet intensity of emotion. By the end of the book I felt my heart racing because it felt like I had truly seen how life goes, the good and bad and the sheer blind chance of it all.

Gorgeous photos of nests. The accompanying texts are interesting and informative, although they give a little stab in the heart since most of them end with a comment on the perilous loss of habitat due to human expansion. My favorite nests came from the Spotted Nightingale-Thrush, Anna's Hummingbird, Pine Siskin, and the Green Heron (whose pile of twigs made me smile as I recognized an all-thumbs/no thumbs kindred spirit).

Good plot, sloppy writing. All sorts of extra information, conversational asides, and insights into other characters that are unhelpful and distracting. The style is intended to feel casual and buddy-buddy, but it comes off like a first draft that badly needs an editor. An author should examine every sentence to see if it needs to be there, and if it's not necessary then CUT IT. This book could lose a good 50 pages of useless asides and other filler and be better for it.

The story of Helen of Troy is one of those tales that everyone sort of knows generally without actually reading or watching it first-hand, as if we've taken it in via cultural osmosis (I've found the same to be true with the Star Wars movies and Moby Dick). We all somehow know that Helen was a pretty lady whose “face launched a thousand ships”, and she caused a huge war involving some trickery called the Trojan horse. Pretty basic, but isn't it cool that a myth that built up around real events and real people who lived 3000+ years ago, on a totally different continent, is still in our cultural consciousness? The answer is f yes.

What I liked best about the book was how it completely drew me into its world. The amount of detail in describing the places, the people, and their actions created a convincing reality for the story, and it felt good to just let go and lose myself in it. I've been reading a lot of non-fiction lately, so this was a good book for getting outside that mindset and do some reading just for the pure pleasure of a story.

Another thing I really liked about this story was finding out how many famous myths and heroes are connected to it, and through it to each other. It was like all these other myths were half of a puzzle's pieces, and the story of Helen of Troy is the other half that helps bind them all together into one.

The thing that drove me nuts about this book was the abundance of prophesies, and the fact that people would seem to fear them and yet act surprised when they came to pass. If they go to the trouble of seeking out prophesies, then why don't they believe them and accept that their actions can't alter anything? Also, way too many people in the book had prophetic powers, it sort of kills the magic of second sight if most people have it.

Second read: Downgrading from 5 to 3 stars. Some important stuff doesn't make sense upon a second reading.

First read: Wooo, what a ride! Up late every night reading, up well past midnight last night to finish. This is my type of fantasy book: grounded in the real world with magic and/or magical beings layered on top, and British humor veined throughout. Bonus points for the historical bits.

I picked up this book thinking that it would be a glorification of California, something to match my enthusiasm for my adopted state (5 years and counting). Instead I found all of our sins laid out bare on the page. All the ugliness, all the disillusion, all the mean and hard and crazy. Looking now at all the quotes on the covers of the book, I have no idea where I got this notion of glorification. Probably I looked no further than that fantastic Teddy Roosevelt quote and plunked down my cash.

What I got from this book was the opposite of what I expected, and I loved every page of it. It was real, and it was riveting. Now I just have to find out who this Saroyan person is that the author keeps name-dropping.

This book looks at rodeo queens of the rural American West and their changing role over the decades. Starting off as a hard-working and hard-riding lady of the ring, who's skills with a horse were all-important, the rodeo queen has devolved into a gaudy show pony who's main qualification is her ability to sell sell sell. I liked this book, but it made me sad.

This book has the feel of a grandfather telling the youngsters about his glory days. Some parts came off as very boastful and far-fetched, e.g. being coerced into having sex with many, many women of a remote Mexican-Indian tribe because they prized his white skin. The parts that described his time in the ring were really cool, and inspired me to read more about this semi-controversial sport. Overall very interesting.