Katie's Books

This book is delightful-- it's fast, it's funny, and delicious in both words and imagined recipes. I attempted a recipe (I made October's Cream Fritters) and it was a disaster, hence I recommend only imagining the recipes.  Maybe Mexican eggs at the time were different or maybe the recipes are intended to be like the rest of the story: rooted in some reality but embellished with broad strokes of magical realism. Years ago, sister Gertrudis ran off with a general in the army in a particularly unexpected and visually memorable spectacle. Cream fritters were here favorite so when she brings all the troops back home, cream fritters get served. Each food has a story, each story has some unexpected twists, and each character fits an archetype that makes them both easily understood and surprising all at once.  "Like Water For Chocolate" is a reference to a hot chocolate recipe. The water should boil then be taken off the heat so it comes very close to boiling over, but d...

Some time ago, I read a review in the NYT of a memoir written by a woman who went off all her psychiatric medications, and she'd been on a lot of them for a very long time so this was significant. I couldn't remember the author's name, the book's title, nor could I re-find the review after searching in the app. I bought "Strangers to Ourselves" hoping it might be the book I read about in the review and while it wasn't, it does feature the story of Laura Delano (author of the book I was trying to find) and is an insightful, moving book I'm grateful to have bought (sort of) by mistake. "Strangers to Ourselves" includes stories of the author and five others who faced life-altering mental health diagnoses. Some recovered, some did not. Some sought care in traditional psychiatric facilities and leaned on evidenced-based modalities and some did not. "Strangers to Ourselves" demonstrates that a diagnosis is really just a story, perhaps ev...

This book is awful. I once bought my mom a "Book of the Month" gift certificate and she didn't use it so she gave it to me. This was the only book I chose (gift certificate was for three months, I believe) and the old adage "food me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" keeps me from trying another. The main character in "Again and Again" is Eugene, a man who has lived many lives; he remembers his life in present day California, as a young may caught up in conquest in 700s Spain, and, in a completely unnecessary show of the author's self indulgence, as Oscar Wilde's cat. Through these thousand plus years, he's had one love and longs to find her again. This could be a sweeping, moving story of love that transcends time but it's not. "Again and Again" is filled with gratuitous flourishes in phrasing; if an undergrad wrote this Josh would tell them to use plain language and just focus on the story. Eugene proves an unre...

Sam Bush gave me this book for Christmas-- I believe it was a blind recommendation from a bookstore employee-- and I'm grateful to them both for a memorable read. Written by a doctor, this book pieces together the story of a heart transplant from one child to another. It introduces readers to the families, the tragedies, the hospital stays, the medical challenges, and the sweeping developments in medicine that culminated in a few tense hours in an operating room, saving one life by sharing another.  While parts of this book are all history and do well explaining complex medical procedures in lay person's terms, the heart of this book is very human. Clarke always brings us back to the two kids involved, one donor and one recipient. She includes their parents and siblings and the very hard truth at the heart of transplant medicine; part of one person's body goes into another and in a heart transplant, this means one person is dead. When both the donor and the recipient are ch...

Barb and Kooch gave this book to Josh and I for Christmas because we love dogs now. Dogland is less about dogs in general and more about the very specific dog-centered world of dog shows. It's accessible, funny, does not take itself too seriously, and a fun read. It's also meaningful because it affirmed to me one of the things I work hard to hold true as I continue with my dog-loving life: there are many ways to love a dog and a good life for a dog can mean many different things and look many different ways.  Tomlinson is an outsider to dog shows and writes the book for an audience of other outsiders: we get a history, vocabulary 101, and some of the more outrageous (for an outsider) aspects of dog shows (like sperm collection) are described with humor and lightheartedness. There are plenty of serious moments, too, and the passages that stick with me include Tomlinson reminiscing about late nights with his own beloved dog, his critique of "breed standards" that dock a...

 I read this whole book in one weekend which should be a testament to it's captivating plot and easy to care about characters. The story alternates from different characters' points of view and every character is one to root for. With a few minor exceptions, each character presents their best self to the reader, leaving the reader unclear who is right and wrong and unsure what should or will happen next. This, of course, is the point: life is messy and so is this story.  I've heard criticism of this book that it skips over too much; the story does take place over many years and there are important events we only learn about when the characters refer back to them. This was not a flaw in my experience of reading it. Instead, I read it as a sign of a talented writer. We move effortlessly through different tenses, points of view, and time frames. We sit with characters in real time and also listen as they reminisce.  A compelling story deserves skillful writing and this is to...