Top Ten Tuesday: First Ten Books I Reviewed

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! My opinions on books often change over time, so with this week's subject, what I want to do is go back to the first ten books I reviewed on this blog and see how I feel about them a few years later.

Beloved

Rating then: 10/10

Rating now: 10/10

Comments: This book is a masterpiece.

Unbelievable

Rating then: 3/10

Rating now: 2/10

Comments: I stand by my low rating of this book, which I barely remember...in fact, it feels fair to lower my already low rating because I can't remember getting anything at all out of this book.

Reservation Road

Rating then: 3/10

Rating now: 3/10

Comments: This book was very bad and I rated it as such and I stand by that rating.

Gilded

Rating then: 2/10

Rating now: 2/10

Comments: Another one of those that I can barely remember, except that it felt like it threw a bunch of trendy YA concepts into a blender with Korean mythology (the author is white, so it's not even an own voices book). 

Through The Language Glass

Rating then: 9/10

Rating now: 8/10

Comments: I really did enjoy this deep dive into linguistics, but it's very dry and technical and something I'm not super eager to re-read...though I would enjoy reading more along the same lines.

The Nazi Officer's Wife

Rating then: 10/10

Rating now: 9/10

Comments: This is a very, very good memoir, but usually I reserve that 10/10 for something that feels like a masterpiece and with some time in the rearview, this isn't a masterpiece. 

The Masks of God

Rating then: ~5/10 (varying depending on volume)

Rating now: 3/10

Comments: I spent a LOT of time slogging through the four volumes of this psychoanalytic perspective on the history of world mythology. It could have been about 1/3 the length and still would have been dense. I think I rated it higher at the time because I wanted to believe it was better than it was for all the time I invested in it.

Kramer v Kramer

Rating then: 7/10

Rating now: 6/10

Comments: This book is solid, but when I read it I thought it was better than I think it is now. 

All The King's Men

Rating then: 10/10

Rating now: 10/10

Comments: This, on the other hand, is a masterpiece and continues to deserve its rating.

Hood

Rating then: 5/10

Rating now: 4/10

Comments: I don't think this book was bad, there just wasn't much there. Some images from it have stayed with me, but with very few exceptions I remember so little of it I might as well have never read it at all. 

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Top Ten Tuesday: First Ten Books I Reviewed

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books I Enjoyed That Have Under 2000 Ratings On Goodreads

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week's topics are books we liked that have stayed mostly under the radar (i.e. have only a couple thousand ratings on Goodreads). I found this an intriguing topic and I can't wait to see everyone else's lists too...a lot of "hidden gems" lists often feature books that were actually fairly popular at one point or another. These ones are really pretty hidden!



The Anointed One: I can see why this one doesn't have many Goodreads ratings...it's really good, but it's really focused on Nevada politics, and that's a really small world of people. But if you are interested in politics on any level, Jon Ralston tells a fascinating story behind a gubernatorial election and how the sausage is really made!

Welcome To My World: Figure skating is my favorite sport. I'm not, like, good at it at all, but I just love watching it. And Johnny Weir, during his skating career, was one of my favorites (he's still a favorite in his commentating career). He published a memoir and I bought it and I liked it! And when he did a tour to support it and came to the Ann Arbor Borders (RIP), I totally went and got my copy signed, so I've got that on my shelf still.

Kinky: This poetry collection based on Barbie was something I picked up from a high school classmate in AP English (who is completely off social media and I wonder what ever happened to). Denise Duhamel uses America's favorite doll to reflect on social expectations, particularly of women, and it's actually a book I still think about and pick up every so often. I'm not a poetry buff, so that's a big endorsement.

Star Split: I do have a copy of this, although I haven't read it in forever and I'm pretty sure it's out of print now. This genetic-engineering based dystopian young adult book by Katheryn Lasky really got me thinking about those kind of issues, which obviously continue to be relevant, as a teenager and was a good story besides.

Bo's Lasting Lessons: If you know me, you know that I love Michigan football. LOVE Michigan football. I worship at the altar of Bo Schembechler. Popular Michigan professor and writer John U Bacon teamed up with the legendary coach to reminisce about his years as a leader and teacher of young men and how to be fair and decent without being a pushover. This is the closest thing to a motivational book that I own and now that I'm thinking about it I want to go back and re-read it.

The Chaneysville Incident: I honestly can't remember how I came to have this book on my Kindle (I presume it was on sale at some point), but I do remember that it was a bit of a slow start, kind of hard to get into. But once I did connect with David Bradley's story, about an African-American historian who comes back to his hometown to investigate his father's death, I rocketed through it and found it really hard to put down.

Supreme Conflict: I eat up books about the Supreme Court like candy. This one came out around the same time (and tread fairly similar territory) as Jeffrey Toobin's more popular The Nine. Which is a pity, because legal correspondent Jan Crawford Greenberg (who was actually my commencement speaker when I graduated from Alabama Law) wrote a really good book.

Kramer v Kramer: Lots of people are aware of the Meryl Streep-Dennis Hoffman movie about a ferocious custody battle, but most don't know it was actually based on a book. The evolution of Ted Kramer from a self-centered workaholic to a devoted and responsible single father is beautifully written and really affecting.

No Lifeguard On Duty: For a long time, my guilty pleasure TV was America's Next Top Model. And the best part of early ANTM? Supermodel judge Janice Dickinson. She was loud and often crass, argumentative but right more often than not. And her life, which she recounts in this memoir, was some really crazy stuff. Given the title, might I suggest it as a beach read for the fashion-interested crowd?

Letters From A Self-Made Merchant To His Son: I think I actually did find this one on a hidden gems list! It is what it says it is...a series of letters written from a self-made man to his son over the course of his lifetime, from starting out in the workplace to marriage and family. It's full of common sense approaches to issues we still face today.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books I Enjoyed That Have Under 2000 Ratings On Goodreads

Book 8: Kramer v Kramer

"And if they could get this over with soon, in a few years they would be out of infancy and they would have this beautiful family, his beautiful wife, his beautiful children. And so, to be complete in some way, to create a perfect universe with himself in the center, husband, father, his domain- for all the old, buried feelings of not being attractive, for all the times his parents were disapproving, for all the years he struggled to place himself- he would have something special, his beautiful little empire, which he, in his self-delusion, was going to build out of sand from a sandbox."

Dates read: November 9-12, 2015

Rating: 7/10

I feel like I have a unique perspective on stories about divorce and custody. For one thing, I was raised by a single mother and had a relationship with my father only after the time I turned 10. For another, I actually spent about a year and half working as an attorney specializing in post-divorce custody litigation after I graduated from law school. I have a whole rant about how doing that kind of work was a significant factor in driving me out of the practice of law, but that's not what we're here for. We're here to talk about Kramer v. Kramer.

I saw the movie before I read the book and it's one of the more successful literary adaptations I've seen...it might actually be more effective than the source material. Which isn't to say the source material isn't very good in its own right. There's a legal philosophy known as the "tender years doctrine", which basically boils down to the belief that women are presumed to be better parents of very small children. There was a time when it was applied essentially automatically to grant a mother custody of a young child, almost regardless of the circumstances of the situation. This book, and its big-screen adaptation, were a part of helping drive a social shift away from that doctrine, ultimately making a difference in how custody law is determined by the courts.

The story is simple, with a straightforward plot: Ted and Joanna Kramer get married and have a son. Joanna stays home to raise him, but finds herself increasingly unsatisfied by an entirely home-and-child-based existence. Ted is unsympathetic, believing child-rearing to be Joanna's responsibility, particularly while their son is small. So Joanna leaves. Ted is has no choice but to assume full parental duty in her absence. The couple divorces and Joanna signs away her custody rights. After over a year, in which the father and son become extremely close and Ted completely rearranges his life and his thinking to be the father his son deserves, Joanna returns out of the blue, demanding custody. And she gets it, based on the tender years doctrine.

I didn't feel compelled to spoiler alert any of that, because the book and movie have been around so long that the conclusion is no longer a surprise. But also because the power of the book comes not from the outline of the story, but from how it's told. The beginning portions, detailing how Ted and Joanna came to be married, could in large part take place in the present day. They don't end up together because of their undying love, but because they're both bored of the singles scene and the other is good enough. Joanna's frustration at being forced into the primary caregiver role, at the expense of her own desires to be a contributing member of outside society, also feels like it could be written about any number of women today. We watch Ted go from the kind of man who insists that his wife stay home to take care of their son even though she doesn't want to, to the kind of man whose whole world is his son, slowly and organically. It's not forced or rushed or false, which makes the gut punch of Joanna's return that much harder to take. It ends happily enough, with Joanna relinquishing her victory and Ted retaining custody. The novel makes its point without preaching, and is all the more powerful for so doing.

Tell me, blog friends...what do you think of the tender years doctrine?

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Book 8: Kramer v Kramer