Review: Partita

Partita by Barbara Kingsolver
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have enjoyed previous books by Barbara Kingsolver, usually I enjoy her books, but this one didn't capture me the way her other books have. It was around the half-way point in the book I started to feel invested in the story.

The story is about Livia, grew up on a farm but playing the piano was her life. She managed to get to college despite being very discouraged by her mother, who was quite mean. Livia was tremendously disadvantaged compared to others at college. Her father seems to be a shadow, barely mentioned.

The book follows two timelines, currently she is married to Charlie and back in the small town where she grew up. Livia had been contacted by her old boyfriend from college out of the blue, the catalyst for the book. Most of the timeline is in this past during the college days of her and Sigrid. He was a union organizer and did not attend the college.

The last portion of the book, when certain aspects are revealed, helped me to like this book more. Although I thoroughly disliked how the book ended, felt somewhat abrupt, just a little more was needed.

Music, or more precisely, piano is deeply embedded in this book. In the author’s note we find out that Kingsolver has the love of playing the piano. I listened to the audiobook and there were bits of music between the chapters and a longer piece of work at the end. This added to the book immensely.

Book rating: 3.75 stars


Thanks to Harper and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book, and also thanks to HarperAudio Adult for the advanced audio copy.



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Review: Henry Clay: America's Greatest Statesman

Henry Clay: America's Greatest Statesman by Harlow Giles Unger
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Feels like I’ve been behind in writing and posting notes on my completed books for months. I will get there, I hope!

For this book, it was another for this year’s reading project of American history and trying to focus on books I already owned. This book as a biography of Henry Clay did not impress me as much as other biographies I have recently read. The material did cover his life, mostly politically, and did include some of his home life, but the depth was just not here, it was more cursory. Despite that, I did learn more about the man than I knew before.

Clay lived from 1777 – 1852, came from Kentucky and trained as a lawyer. He ended up serving in several presidential administrations, and running for president himself three times, but was never elected. He was part of the Whig party before it dissolved.

Clay was another one of those southern politicians who claimed to abhor slavery and yet owned slaves himself. He did free some of his slaves, but not all. Clay was advocated for removing former slaves to their own country in Africa. Clay was President of the American Colonization Society from 1836 to 1849, believing it would benefit former slaves and Africa if they returned to their original home.

What Clay may be best known for is how he helped to keep the states united prior to the civil war. The debates about slavery were fierce and he was vital to several compromises that held the union together for a little while longer.
One note on the book – it was full of images which was a nice surprise.

Book rating: 3.5 stars


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Review: Concrete

Concrete by Stephen Parnell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This small book is another installment in the Object Lessons series by the publisher Bloomsbury Academic. Each book is focused on one specific subject, in this case concrete. The author Parnell does a great job of sticking to the subject (I’ve read a few where the subject was more of a jumping off point). It starts generally with a brief introduction to Parnell’s experience with concrete. He started with summer jobs working with a concrete contractor testing the concrete pours for strength, as well as checking if the dry/wet mix they were pouring was the right consistency. Later, Parnell became an architect, and writer, uses his experience in this book. He seems like the perfect author.

The book does indeed contain a lot about architecture, as that is one of the primary uses of concrete, and the art of it as well. Many concrete buildings are labeled as “Brutalism” where even that is not quite the case. Parnell writes about buildings that have their own artistic nature that is not brutal.

Going further into the artist side Parnell dives into how people, artists usually, takeover some of these concrete spaces, either abandoned buildings or projects, and envelops them into the community. This may be with skateboarders, parkour, or graffiti artists who claim these spaces.

There is so much more, a brief look at what the word means. Often something hard, but in Nigeria it means love. A couple may exchange a small amount of concrete to “cement” their love for each other. A concrete man is someone who will build a house for his woman.

Parnell does not complete the book without mentioning some of the downsides of concrete, such as the environmental impact worldwide, which is very significant. It felt very little and late in the book, but at least it was included.
It took me a very long time to read this book for the length of it. Some parts I did find interesting, but others were a bit of a slog for me. There were some photos, but the book could have used many more.

Book rating: 3.5 stars

Thanks to Bloomsbury Academic and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.


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Review: Alluvial

Alluvial by Katherine Soniat
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book has been sitting around my bookshelves for many years. The book is not long, it’s a book of poetry, and honesty do not understand myself and why I waited so long to read it. But I did last week. Perhaps it was better to have waited.

This book is divided into three sections. The first section had a theme that I found easily enough, being about Jamestown, the first colony that remained in the New World with English settlers. The poems were historical, yet lyrical. Some of my reading earlier this year has enabled me to understand this section better than if I had read it before this year, so perhaps the timing was fortuitous.

The other two sections I was not able to discern a theme or any reason why those were organized into one section or the other. The other poems dealt with various subjects that changed poem by poem. Overall, they were written well enough, but some I did struggle with understanding the references that seemed to be there. So, the first section was my favorite in this book.

As typical with most poetry books I find this one hard to rate and landed at 3.75 stars.


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Review: America's First Daughter

America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dray
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This historical fiction book is also a biography of Thomas Jefferson's surviving daughter Martha "Patsy" Jefferson. He did have other children as well, with Sally Hemmings, but they were not the main focus here. Since Martha kept by her father's side since the passing of her mother when she was young, the book is also a biography of Thomas Jefferson. But there is much here that is fiction as well, and a lot about Patsy's relationship with William Short (perhaps invented) and her husband Thomas Randolph. The book highlights letters and how Martha curated those from Jefferson and so shaped what is left of her father's legacy. The book is fairly well done.

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