Category Archives: NetGalley Reviews

NetGalley Review: Climate by Whitney Hanson

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Whitney Hanson is an author I keep returning to. Her poetry is thoughtful and invites introspection. While her work doesn’t inspire a deep, soul-searching response in me, I do find myself pausing to consider what I read, often rereading and highlighting as I go. She makes me think about my own thoughts from a different angle, sometimes answering long-held questions. I recognize some of my own feelings in her work as well. As a person living with major depressive disorder, I empathized with her statement that “the worst part about having a sickness that/ exists only within my head isn’t that no/ one else can see it. it’s that i can’t see it/ either.”
I am reminded that I am deserving of self-love when Hanson writes “the circle will only cease when i learn to/ forgive myself, when i can accept that i will/ never be perfect when i surrender in a war/ where the enemy is me;” and she gives everyone the valuable advice that “maybe getting better isn’t a cosmic shift it’s/ just waking up every day and trying.”
I also relate to her thoughts about writing: “ […] i transform feeling/ into words i make my agony two/ dimensional so that it doesn’t hurt. it’s my/ magic.” I find catharsis in writing, as I am sure so many other writers do. Reading Whitney Hanson’s writing is like meeting a friend for coffee and a long heart to heart: comforting, safe, inviting you to unburden yourself without fear of judgement or abandonment. I have recommended her books to friends that don’t read poetry, because I knew they needed to hear what she had to say to them.

NetGalley Review: A Rebellion of Care

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(This is also a book on my Summer Reading List, so you’re getting a 2 for 1 update!) David Gate’s essay and poetry collection “A Rebellion of Care” is beautiful. Gate writes from the heart, giving readers pieces of himself as he contemplates his life and loves. He reminds us that “joy is an act of rebellion/against the established order,” and urges his readers to “Make art & music/ because music & art/ are love letters to the living/ addressed to us all.”
I printed his poem “Stardust” to hang over my desk to remind myself to sparkle each day, and Part 5 of his collection, titled “I Pour Out the Contents of my Notes App in an Attempt to Create Connection” is wildly creative (and I admit I want to try a similar form myself).
Gate tells us that laughing with old friends is living in the truest sense. Perhaps the most profound takeaway I took from his book (besides “Stardust”) is this reminder: “You may not be responsible/ for the source of your pain/ but you are responsible/ for everywhere it goes.” As someone with childhood trauma, I want to keep this reminder close to me. I don’t want others to feel my pain and anger; I want them to sparkle as I am learning to.
I urge people to read this beautiful book. It will touch your heart. You may cry, you may become angry, or you may pause in your reading to ask yourself what care you need to give yourself. Listen to what your heart says.

NetGalley Review: The Real Jaws

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I was quite disappointed in this book. I love sharks, I think they are beautiful and fascinating creatures. I doubt we will ever fully understand their behaviors, so when a book like this comes along I am interested to see what has been learned. This book doesn’t really offer any insight. It reads like someone sharing a report based on papers they have read without fully understanding the original source. The writing style also lacks the crisp definition that one usually find in history and science books.

NetGalley Review: Salt & Ashes

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I absolutely loved Thanh Dinh’s “The Smallest God Who Ever Lived,” so I was very excited to read “Salt & Ashes.” Unfortunately, this book didn’t resonate with me the way “Smallest God” did. I will not say I didn’t like “Salt & Ashes,” there were some beautiful lines and truly moving thoughts. One line I have already returned to several times says “Remember that only in the aftermath of the quake,/ You can feel the Earth move”

“Salt & Ashes” tells a different story from Dinh’s other book, coming from different experiences. I believe it is a deeply personal narrative from Dinh, and I appreciate her honesty and vulnerability. She reminds readers that sometimes we have no choice but to accept what life hands us: “And there comes a time when people learn/How futile living on pure imagination can be–” The truth is often painful to hear, but if we want to fully experience our lives, we have to listen.

NetGalley Review: Penelope’s Bones

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Emily Hauser’s brilliant book “Penelope’s Bones” has a place of note on the shelf beside my copies of Natalie Haynes’ “Pandora’s Jar” and Divine Might.” Hauser has presented her readers with a detailed study of figures from Homer’s works that hover in the background of his heroes’ lives: the women of legend. The women not deemed important enough to have their own epics, the women that worked so the men could ride to glory, the women that were captured, enslaved, crowned, and killed.
This book is engaging and informative, offering different theories about women’s roles in ancient Greece thank ones that have been accepted as fact for centuries. Hauser supports her theories with archaeological studies that suggest what we have been taught to believe may not have been so. One thing that I appreciate about this book is that Hauser examines women from the mythos as living women from historical records. She doesn’t portray Briseis just as “Achilles’ slave” but considers what the background of a woman in her position might have been, what her life might have been like before her enslavement, and what happened after.
“Penelope’s Bones” is a fascinating way of reexamining the Iliad and the Odyssey, allowing readers to look into the lives of women from a long-distant past.

NetGalley Review: Shadow Work by Emily Hodgson Anderson

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As a writer and book lover, I was very excited to read Emily Hodgson Anderson’s “Shadow Work: Loneliness and the Literary Life.” While I thought this book was very good and definitely worth reading–especially for writers–I didn’t love it. Some sections failed to hold my interest; however, other sections had me pausing, considering, rereading, and highlighting. I read this as an e-book, and despite my somewhat flat rating, I will probably pick it up as a paperback because I feel that much of her commentary is very thought-provoking.

NetGalley Review: The Bronte Family

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Jane Eyre is my absolute favorite book. I admire the work of all of the Brontes, and I often wonder what else they might have produced had they not died so young. This book is packed with information, some of it new to me and presented from a viewpoint I hadn’t considered previously. The only drawback to this book is that it reads very much like a dissertation. It is interesting, but not particularly engaging (unless you are a Bronte fan, and most readers of this book will be Bronte fans, I expect). I enjoyed this book overall, but it is not one I will read again.

Review: The body is where it all begins

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Poetry is an art form that is personal to both the writer and the reader; each has their own interpretation of the words and thoughts that are written. As a poet, I understand that readers may not necessarily relate to my words in the same manner that I do. That being said, I believe that readers of poetry should take something away from the poet’s words. Unfortunately, “The body is where it all begins” didn’t resonate with me at all. I can’t say that it is not well-written, and other readers might relate to Marcy Rae Henry’s work, but it was not for me.

NetGalley Review: Lizzie: A Novel

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Gruesome as it may sound, I love the Borden mystery (and I wholly believe that Lizzie did, in fact, murder her father and stepmother.) I was really looking forward to this book; unfortunately it didn’t really convey any emotion or suspense. The writing is very stilted, and the characters very flat. I have no doubt Fanning did her research, there are plenty of confirmed references to the case included in the book, but it didn’t hold my interest at all.

NetGalley Review: On (Pantry) Stock & (Kitchen) Timers

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Jen Schneider’s On (Pantry) Stock & (Kitchen) Timers is a unique collection of a stream-of-consciousness essays and poems that you wouldn’t think would work but does in an enchanting, eye-catching, made-you-look kind of way. Schneider’s words are a collage of thought that walks readers through a maze of sensation/emotion/confusion/questing. This collection deserves a re-read to fully take in what Schneider says, but even after a second reading I found myself pausing, starting a page over, considering what Schneider wrote, how to interpret her idea. Read this book and experience Schneider’s creative art for yourself.