November 2020 books

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Really compelling and engaging!

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Flashes in the Night: The Sinking of the Estonia by Jack A. Nelson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I don't know why this book is one of the only ones ever to be written about the Estonia ferry disaster in English. There should be so many more! So I'm willing to forgive the numerous typos and repetitions in this book because it is doing all the heavy lifting on its own. After a few chapters, I realized the book was more of an oral history than anything else, and from that perspective, it's quite good. I haven't found such thorough accounts of survivors' stories in English anywhere else.

So if you want a shorter but more in-depth analysis of the technical reasons for the sinking interspersed with a few personal accounts, I recommend reading William Langewiesche's excellent article that was published in The Atlantic in 2004 (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...). But if you want to hear the stories of survivors, survivor's loved ones, victims' loved ones, rescuers, and the media, this book has a ton of them!

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Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened by Allie Brosh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There's a chapter in this book about adulting that is so profound that I have thought about it nearly every day since I first read it on the author's blog years ago. And I love her dog stories so much!

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Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A little bit more intense than her first book, but there is more here to think about, too. I loved her take-down of The Ugly Duckling.

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The Satapur Moonstone by Sujata Massey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I liked this book even more than the first one!

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Without a Second Thought: A Memoir of Life in Franco’s Madrid by Diane Lorz Benitez
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I DEVOURED this book. The author is obviously very adventurous and talented but she is also very relatable, which made her experiences so fun to read about. Plus, she has an amazing way of describing food that I really appreciated. I went into this book expecting a romp through Franco's Madrid, and it is that, but it is also a deeply personal memoir of a difficult cross-cultural marriage. I loved it.

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Refugee by Alan Gratz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A quick and engaging read that does a good job telling the stories of three representative refugees (fictional characters but in real-life situations) in the 1940s, 1990s, and 2010s. I will be passing this on to my kids to read!

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Into the Abyss: How a Deadly Plane Crash Changed the Lives of a Pilot, a Politician, a Criminal and a Cop by Carol Shaben
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What an interesting survival story! I liked how the author followed the survivors' lives after the fact. In survival story books, I don't think we usually get to hear so much from the person who caused the disastrous event in the first place, but I'm so glad the author included him as a protagonist here. And it would have been tempting to end the book after the ordeal is over, or maybe after the lawsuits are settled, but instead the author takes a look at how race, class, occupation, and wealth affected how the survivors processed their experiences.

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Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World by Suzy Hansen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I liked this book a lot but I would think twice before recommending it to just anyone. It's insightful and incisive but also maybe pretty divisive, too? There are things about my home country in this book that are very uncomfortable to read, but not a single thing that I haven't already thought before, myself. It's an American-coming-of-age-as-a-foreigner-abroad book that is, frankly, extremely bleak, and reading it took me back to eye-opening conversations I had with Syrians in my 20s.

So I appreciated the author's perspective and screenshotted a bunch of pages to tuck away for further pondering. It's like a younger, female Robert D. Kaplan with a narrower range of sources and a different regional focus...and a much bleaker outlook.

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