Tag: GoodReads

Books, Fiction

The Garden Party by Grace Dane Mazur

RaeAnna

Read No
Length 219
Quick Review All the makings of an incredible novel, but instead it is forgettable even as you’re reading it.

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Reading The Garden Party by Grace Dane Mazur in Vizcaya’s Gardens in Miami.

The Garden Party by Grace Dane Mazur is a novel I tried very hard to like. Unfortunately, it just didn’t come together in a memorable way. It’s not a bad book. It’s not a bad story. On paper, the novel should be incredibly interesting and compelling. It just doesn’t manifest as such.

So here’s the story. There are two families coming together for a rehearsal dinner. Each family doesn’t much like the other because they’re vastly different. It takes place in the garden of one family. There are several generations present. Each person has their own inner dialogue and issues they are dealing with at the party. Including but not limited to: a love affair with a priest, a secret marriage ceremony, an old lady reminiscing on her lesbian tennis match, pretentious in-laws, idiosyncrasies, and so much more.

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The cover of The Garden Party by Grace Dane Mazur.

The action takes place in the span of one evening. It’s a snapshot of lives being lived. The plot isn’t based in actions but the inner dialogues of the characters themselves. It is an exploration of human emotions, which is neither comprehensive nor enthralling. The narrative is also interesting because the story is told from every character’s perspective. I love this take. Unfortunately Mazur crammed The Garden Party’s pages with so many points-of-view, it became confusing. At times, there were up to four perspectives in the span of one page. Too much. Too many.

Very few of the characters felt compelling or even realistic. They seemed like caricatures of stereotypes of people we are all familiar with. The children speak like snobbish middle aged men. Not like the small children they are. It just wasn’t believable. There’s also some plot holes. I’m sure Mazur wanted them there to emphasize the fact that life is never visible and people have their own individual journeys.

It should be a family drama packed little novel. In fact it is a clever little novel full of insight and uniqueness. It just isn’t one of those books you’ll return to or ever think of again, except if you see the cover because it’s quite pretty. Even as I was reading the story, I was forgetting who people were.

Buy on Amazon | Buy on Book Depository

Memorable Quotes
“…that women were really dressing for other women.”
“…it was women who understood what other women wore, while men simply reacted.”

Title: The Garden Party
Author: Grace Dane Mazur
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 9780399179723

Books, NonFiction

You Are A Mogul by Tiffany Pham

RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 224
Quick Review The Founder of Mogul, Tiffany Pham, compiles her knowledge, experience, and desire to change the world in You Are A Mogul; it will leave you motivated and confident. The perfect book for every female entrepreneur finding her way!

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Reading You Are A Mogul by Tiffany Pham || My friend has the cutest dog!!!

At the age of 27 (what am I doing with my life), Tiffany Pham had already graduated from Yale AND Harvard Business School, been a producer on movies, been on Forbes 30 under 30 list, worked in finance, a whole bunch of other stuff, and then launched a website, which she coded herself, that would become one of the most successful and influential communities of women. Yikes. She sets the bar so high! In her book You Are A Mogul, she talks about her life and all the hard work, time, and determination it took to become the mogul she is today.

Pham writes a book which cannot be described as self-help or memoir; it’s a combination. She uses her life as a basis to inform and help lift up other women. Her life and tips for success intertwine to create a portrait of who she is. She comes across as a beautiful, kind, hardworking soul. Honestly, as I read her book, I really want to be friends with her. The biggest pieces of her advice in succeeding in business and in life are incredibly similar to what I tell people. You’ll believe her more because she’s, well, successful, and I’m … working on it! The three things you should take from You Are A Mogul: 1) Be authentically you, always. 2) Don’t just make connections, create relationships. 3) Work as hard as you can on everything you do.  

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Cover of You Are A Mogul by Tiffany Pham.

I want you to read this book. Not because it’s groundbreaking information. It’s not. All the tips and advice and statistics in the book are not new if you are aware of the world and women’s place in it. What is beautiful about You Are A Mogul is Pham’s ability to seem like she’s chatting with a friend. So many women mention their accomplishments with humility if at all. Other’s go overboard trying to prove they are competent. Pham has confidence in who she is and what she created. She shares her accomplishments with a sense of pride, while also giving credit to everyone who helped her achieve her goals. More women need to have confidence and take pride in their accomplishments. She is an amazing role model.

At the end of every chapter, another female mogul write a one to three page blurb giving her own advice and story. Even though women are vastly under represented as moguls, they do exist. It’s important to hear their stories and know their faces.

Pham writes You Are A Mogul for women. Her business is for women. It’s an important book to read as a female entrepreneur, if for no other reason than to support one another. Though, I think it is probably more important for men to read this book and ones like it. They need to see and understand the difficulties women face in the business world. More importantly, they need to see women killing it. When women win, men win.

Tiffany Pham, if you’re reading this, I would love to be friends! You’re amazing.     

Click to buy on Amazon! Buy on Book Depository.

Memorable Quotes
“Be flexible but strategic.”
“True failing is not doing, not trying.”
“Always trust that you have the willingness to learn.”

Title: You Are A Mogul; How to Do the Impossible, Do It Yourself, & Do It Now
Author: Tiffany Pham
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 978150119855

Books, NonFiction

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 400
Quick Review Harari looks into the future that could be with the evolution of technology.

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Reading 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari in the Heights. 

Yuval Noah Harari is the #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of Sapiens, he returns with his latest work 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. The future is an unknown, but Harari uses his knowledge of history to look into the possibilities of tomorrow.

I am a person who is always on the brink of an existential crisis. This was a hard book to read because so much of it ran along the lines of humans may become irrelevant. Among all the other topics Harari discusses, there was a lot of pausing of the reading to collect my thoughts, have a cup of tea, and remind myself anarchy would be worse… probably.

 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a really interesting read. I can’t speak on the accuracy of everything because, well, I was battling my existential tendencies too much to research the things I don’t know. Technology, biotech, and the foundations of our society are the main concepts the book revolves around. Through these, Harari explores the meaning of how we as a civilization functions today, and how that will change as technology evolves and becomes ever more important in our daily lives, careers, medicine, government, and more.

Harari discusses everything from the job crisis to the algorithm taking over free will to the importance of AI and so much more. He uses historical references from many different cultures and times to support his opinion. Irrelevance and inequality kept cropping up throughout the text. The writing is very engaging and interesting. He writes clearly. Many books by scholars can get muddled with complicated text and references. Harari doesn’t fall into that trap. His writing appeals to the masses with a strong voice, clear message, and enough backstory to his references that they make sense.

There is a sense of humor to Harari’s writing. It usually has a dark twist, which I personally appreciate. The book is split into five parts with several chapters each. The chapters have several sections. I really enjoyed the names of these sections; they were quippy like “Germans and Gorillas” and “Artificial Intelligence and Natural Stupidity.”

I have a feeling this is going to be another highly talked about book, when 21 Lessons for the 21st Century comes out on September 4, 2018. You should definitely check it out, unless you’re hyper prone to existential crisis, then limit yourself to a few pages a day.

Buy on Amazon.com

Memorable Quotes
“It is much harder to struggle against irrelevance than against exploitation.”

Title: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
Author: Yuval Noah Harari
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau (Random House)
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 9780525512172

Books

The Caregiver by Samuel Park

RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 288
Quick Review A novel about the desire to understand people and situations. The desire is rarely satisfied, but you don’t have to understand to connect and care.

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The Caregiver by Samuel Park was published posthumously. He passed away from stomach cancer at the age of 41. It is hard to read this novel without seeing it as being written out of a place of hope and sadness.

Mara Alencar is a young woman living in the United States sans documents after a childhood watching atrocities in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She is the caretaker to a woman dying from cancer. She reminisces about her childhood home and her mother, Ana. Mara is both caretaker and child to her mother. Like most children there is a duality to her. She understands more than the adults around her realize, but she also is only able to accept the world as it appears to her without perceiving the nuance, complexity, and difficulty that is being human.

The writing style is very beautiful. Park allows Mara to witness situations as a child she cannot understand, but the reader, with adult experiences, sees what she cannot. Lacing the present with the past, brings a fullness to Mara’s adulthood that would otherwise result in a flat character. Park uses lexical foreshadowing to create emotional space between characters without giving away any events to come. The use of Portuguese words brings the reader closer to Mara’s cultural heritage.  

Park captures the experience of trying to understand a situation from the outside. There is a yearning for understanding in Mara, which comes to fruition through her connecting with those around her.  

Title: The Caregiver
Author: Samuel Park
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 9781501182426
Books

Putney

RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 384
Quick Review A novel that will stay with you as it explores the intricacies of sexual assault from several points of view.

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I’m not going to review this book like I normally would. In my teen and adult years, I was raped. For me, this book struck some nerves hitting close to home because there were several similarities between my story and this one. I will be doing two reviews as an unbiased reviewer and a personal review.

Unbiased
Putney by Sofka Zinovieff is an incredibly interesting look into the psyches and motivations behind predators, victims, and observers in cases of sexual abuse. Dividing the book into three perspectives brings the reader into the complexities of these situations because they are never cut-and-dry.

Ralph is a young, up-and-coming composer in London in the mid-1970’s when he enters the Greenslay and meets the seven year old daughter, Daphne. He is immediately taken by her, but not in a pedophile way. He loves her. Beginning a secret friendship with her, it evolves over time until one day, when she’s thirteen: a young woman. Daphne is now a grown woman with a twelve year old daughter when she returns to London. She reconnects with her childhood friend, Jane. Daphne had been through a marriage, drugs, loss, and more in her time away, but her life is better, and she begins reflecting on her love affair with Ralph. Jane is sickened by her friend’s remembrances, and pushes Daphne to see what obviously happened in the past. The three embark on personal journeys of discovery, healing, and more on their own and together.

Zinovieff does a remarkable job writing a compelling story from all sides. Although, I don’t really like any of the characters, they are rounded, complex, and interesting. Ralph, though a disgusting old pedophile, is presented as captivating character, which makes the story far more realistic. Daphne is a mess with a whole bunch of inner turmoil. Honestly, I hated Jane from the get-go, but her character fulfills a needed role within the plot.

The writing is wonderful. It feels like an accessible Lolita, which I enjoyed very much. The book utilizes British spelling instead of American, which matches the content nicely. Putney is difficult to put down once you start reading.  

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Personal
I don’t have any problem reading books about rape. It’s not a trigger for me. I spent too much of my life having it be a part of my norm, and – in a fucked up way – reading about it is incredibly cathartic.

So much of Putney irritated me. Ralph is an asshole. I very much appreciated his misogynistic, arrogant, egotistical ways. I wish all rapists were so dislikable. Jane pissed me off the more I knew of her story. For as much as she researches sexual abuse, she handles it all wrong. She is the exact opposite of what Daphne needs; she puts her own needs ahead of the “victims.” Daphne was not exactly my favorite, but I could understand her journey.

There were a lot of really well done things about the novel. Although, I found a lot of the parts including the police completely idealistic. I don’t know anyone who has ever involved the police to have had such an easy and non traumatic experience. The healing journey was ridiculously easy in comparison to reality.

I appreciated the ending, but I didn’t love it. The ending isn’t happy, but it’s much happier and wraps up nicely. It kind of feels like Zinovieff wraps it all up with a nice bow to make an uncomfortable topic palatable.     

Memorable Quotes
“I wasn’t some Humbert Humbert obsessed with nymphets.”
“Now the trauma was not only hers.”

Title: Putney
Author: Sofka Zinovieff
Publisher: Harper
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 9780062847577