Banned Book: FLAMER

Today is the last day of Banned Books Week 2025 so I made it just under the wire with this review. 

Flamer by Mike Curato is a graphic novel based on some experiences from the author's life. It was the 10th most banned book in 2024.

It is the summer before high school. Aiden is fourteen, a boy on the cusp of manhood. He still has not has his growth spurt so he is short and pudgy for his age. He is constantly teased for his physique and bullied because he doesn't act like other boys think he should. Now at Boy Scout camp for the summer, Aiden finds that bullying hasn't stopped at the school doors. He has made some friends at camp, including his tent mate, Elias. In fact, he keeps having dreams about Elias.

Boys keep calling Aiden "gay" but it can't be true. "I know I’m not gay. Gay boys like other boys. I hate boys. They’re mean, and scary, and they’re always destroying something or saying something dumb or both. I hate that word. Gay. It makes me feel . . . unsafe."

At one point in the book Aiden is so distraught by his attraction toward Elias, the feeling of being abandoned by everyone he cares about, and the near constant bullying that he decides to kill himself.

He makes his way to camp chapel where he ends up wrestling with his soul eventually life winning out over death. The scene was a powerful reminder to any readers that all people are deserving of love and acceptance and joy.

I thought long and hard after I finished the story about how desperate a person must feel to want to end their own life and how importance it is that we accept people for what they are and not try to make everyone conform to some gender standard that is out of reach for most. Then I wondered at the type of person who would want to ban this book, making it not only not available for their child to read, but also so no child could read it.What if that child needed to read this book so they didn't feel alone? Some people are so heartless and thoughtless. I know some people are so frightened that their child might "become" gay by reading a book like this they must do whatever it takes to keep the book away from them. Obviously these people didn't read the book, or they would have seen how agonized Aiden was about his own sexual awareness and identity. This was not a choice for him. He was born this way!

I highly recommend the book. Read it even though Banned Books Week is over.

My rating: 4.75 stars 

-Anne

Review: BROKEN COUNTRY (+Friday56 LinkUp)

Title: Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall

Book Beginning quote:

Friday56 quote:

Summary:

Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident.

As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become (Publisher).

Review: I don't remember how I heard about Broken Country. Maybe it was on a list of possible book club selections or maybe one of you mentioned it on your blog but whatever it was I determined I needed to read it without doing much research. I didn't even know it is a love triangle story until I started it, months after I initially placed a hold on it at the library. I tend to avoid these types of stories because I find myself getting all judgey-judgey and second-guessing all the decisions the characters make. 

Anyway, I started it and was hooked right from the beginning. The setting, a farm community in North Dorset, UK, was so pastoral. The years, 1955 and 1968, made life seem simpler and less chaotic. All of the characters, except for Gabriel's mother, were sympathetic. And the story was completely heartbreaking. I am pretty sure I cried through the last half of it nonstop. So much of the heartbreak hinged on the son, who died tragically. There is even a mystery. Reese Witherspoon, who selected Broken Country for her book club, said, "It is a masterfully crafted mystery that will keep you guessing to the last page. Seriously, that ending! I did not see it coming." There you have it. I dare not say more or I will spoil the book for you.

My rating: 4.5 stars

Sign up for The Friday56 on the Inlinkz below. 

RULES:

*Grab a book, any book

*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your e-reader (If you want to improvise, go ahead!)

*Find a snippet, but no spoilers!

*Post it to your blog and add your url to the Linky below. If you do not add the specific url for your post, we may miss it! 

*Visit other blogs and leave comments about their snippets. Expand the community. Please leave a comment for me, too!  

Also visit Book Beginnings on Friday hosted by Rose City Reader and First Line Friday hosted by Reading is My Super Power to share the beginning quote from your book.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

-Anne

Banned Book: GENDER QUEER

Gender Queer is a graphic memoir written and illustrated by Maia Kobabe. It recounts the author's journey from childhood related to gender identity.

After coming out as nonbinary in 2016, Kobabe, a graduate of the California College of the Arts with an MFA in Comics, began drawing black and white illustrations about gender identity and published them on Instagram. These cartoons became the basis for this book, Gender Queer. Kobabe, who prefers the Spivak pronouns: e/em/eir, stated e was motivated to create something to explain gender to eir parents after coming out.

The book, published in 2019, was met with critical acclaim. 

• In the February 2019 issue of Publisher's Weekly the reviewer said, "this heartfelt graphic memoir relates, with sometimes painful honesty, the experience of growing up non-gender-conforming. [...] This entertaining memoir-as-guide holds crossover appeal for mature teens (with a note there's some sexually explicit content) and is sure to spark valuable discussions at home and in classrooms" (PW). 
• And the reviewer for School Library Journal that same year called it a, "great resource for those who identify as nonbinary or asexual as well as for those who know someone who identifies that way and wish to better understand"(SLJ). 
• In 2022, Sophie Brown commented that  "Gender Queer isn't an especially easy book to read but it is a powerful one. [It] will be a comforting voice from someone who has walked the same paths"(GeekMom).

In 2020 it was awarded an Alex Award, an award given out to adult books with cross-over appeal for teens. It also won the Stonewall Award, for books with a LGBTQIA theme for teens or children. These awards led to the book becoming widely available in high school libraries. 

Gender Queer was the focus of many book challenges and book bans in 2021 and has remained on that list ever since. According to the American Library Association it was the most challenged book of 2021, 2022, and 2023 and the second most challenged book in 2024. Admittedly the book has some sexually explicit drawings and descriptions. A few even made me squirm. But what I appreciated so much about the book was the candidness and the author's honesty about eir own confusions surrounding gender identity. This was clearly not a person who woke up one day and decided to try on being gay or trans or bi or as asexual. This is a person who has struggled a lifetime to accept and embrace eir self. 

Kobabe published an opinion piece in the Washington Post which was partially reprinted on the ALA blog:

“Queer youth are often forced to look outside their own homes, and outside the education system, to find information on who they are. Removing or restricting queer books in libraries and schools is like cutting a lifeline for queer youth, who might not yet even know what terms to ask Google to find out more about their own identities, bodies and health” (Kobabe).

I am so glad I read this book for Banned Books Week 2025, which is happening right now. It opened my eyes and gave me additional empathy about individuals' gender identity issues. It helped cement my feelings that we all need to find ourselves in books, no matter our race, creed, gender, or religion.

My rating: 5 stars.

-Anne

TTT: Book Series I've Never Finished

Top Ten Tuesday: Book Series I've Never Finished.

For some reason I just lost interest (or have been thwarted) and never finished these series:

#1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

There are 25 26 books in this series (1998-2025). I stopped after book four or five. I liked the series very much but felt it was time to read something else.

Beartown by Fredrik Backman

This is a trilogy. I read the first book and stopped. It seemed like a stand-alone to me.

The Flavia de Luce Mystery series by Alan Bradley

I loved the first book, Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, liked the second and third books, and didn't like the fourth book, so I stopped reading. The series has ten books and I've been assured that the fourth book is an outlier so I may give the series another try someday.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

There are five books in this series, six if you count the book by Eoin Colfer. I've read four. Honestly I will likely read the fifth book but it may take me several more years to do so. I do love the slapstick humor.

Discworld series by Terry Pratchett

There are 41 books in this series, divided into five main sub-series. The series is so complex one needs a reading map, see above, to navigate through it. I've read seven or eight books in Discworld and will likely read more, but I know I will never complete all 41 books.

The Kopp Sisters series by Amy Stewart

I've read three of the seven books in this series. I like the stories very much but just got tired of them. Time to read something else, so I stopped.

The Book of Dust series by Philip Pullman

I am a huge fan of this series, a prequel/post series to the His Dark Materials series (Golden Compass) by Pullman. I devoured the first two books of the trilogy and then have been waiting for years for the final installment (six years to be precise.) Later this month I will finally have a chance to finish this series when the Rose Field, #3 is finally published.

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

I read the first book and haven't moved on. Now there are five books in the series. I have good intentions but so far I'm just getting further behind.

The Cemetery of Forgotten Books by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

There are five books in this series. I loved The Shadow of the Wind so much but I have never read on, even though I own the second book, The Angel's Game.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I read the first three books in the original series, then the fourth book, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, but for some reason haven't read the second prequel published this year, Sunrise on the Reaping. I know I will, though, since I bought a copy of it.

Anne of Green Gables series by L.M. Montgomery

I've read the first book, Anne of Green Gables, several times but never read on. I understand that the second book, Anne of Avonlea, is equally good. There are eight books in the series but I am only committed to reading one more then I will reevaluate if I move forward or not.

The Amgash series by Elizabeth Strout

There are five books in this series. Oddly I read four of them but out-of-order: #1, #4, #5. #3. To finish I will need to go way back and read #2,  Anything is Possible. That seems like a good title for my attitude about finishing this series or not.

-Anne

Sunday Salon -- A Little of This and That

I completed a puzzle of banned books, thinking the whole time about why people don't want others to read these excellent books. The Diary of Anne Frank? I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings? The Grapes of Wrath? Honestly, I think people want to ban books so their children won't ever read any books.

Weather: Rainy and overcast. Of course this is good news. Our dry, parched spot on Earth is so thirsty.

Food: I can tell that it is autumn because I feel like cooking and baking again. I didn't make anything earth-shattering, though. Here are a few foods we haven't seen on our table since last fall:

• Baked acorn squash, a family favorite with a bit of butter and brown sugar.
• Homemade Sloppy Joes made from a no-recipe recipe on the NYT. The flavor reminds us of school days and growing up in a different era.
• Pumpkin muffins, made from a copycat recipe of the no-longer-available Starbucks pumpkin muffins with a bit of cream cheese inside.
• Zuppa Toscana, another copycat recipe of my favorite soup at Olive Garden restaurant.
• Today: I haven't decided yet, either Chicken Noodle soup or Chicken Curry with Green Beans. the chicken is thawed so it will be something chicken that gets fixed.

A little of this and that: It was a typical week. I did a few things out of the ordinary though. 

• Our church is sponsoring an event called Faith in Action. A bunch of projects were offered and I signed up for one at the Lutheran church to help tie quilts for their blanket project. It was a fun, easy, sociable event where I met several women from other churches all dedicated to making a difference for underprivileged people. Don signed up for the project to build furniture at a furniture bank, but IKEA didn't supply any rejects this year, so it was canceled.
• Friday afternoon was lovely and we had an audiobook to finish, so Don and I hopped in the truck and drove up the road 30 miles to a restaurant, The Mill Haus Cider Co, which specializes in hard apple cider. Our daughter and one of her sons, who live nearby, joined us for a late afternoon of conversation and antics, enjoying that early fall weather. The layout of this place is perfect for families with young children who can play games on the lawn while adults watch them while sipping their cold beverage. (Click on the link to see a photo of the layout of the place. It is very unique.) Since it was Friday there was live music -- sing along stuff for Don and I like "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". Tee-hee. I hate it when I get that song stuck in my head.
• On Thursday I had a long meeting with a gal who is taking over my duties as a church leader. I've been at it for six years and it is time and necessary to pass on the baton. She will do great, better than me I'm sure, and I look forward to the break.

Mom is moving: We have a date and I and all my sibs will come together in a two weeks to assist her move into a senior independent retirement community. It is hard to make such a big change at her age but we are proud of her for being bold and brave. We'll be down in Eugens quite a few days later this month.

Banned Books Week: Is now -- October 5-11th. Check out this list of challenged or banned books and pick one out to read this week. Tell others why you are doing it! Let's preserve the right to read.

Books, what I've read and what I'm reading:

• Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep. A book club selection. A narrative nonfiction account of a trial in Alabama which caught the attention of Harper Lee. It was her last attempt at writing/publishing anything. Complete, audiobook.
• Gender Queer: a Memoir by Maia Kobabe. This is my Banned Books Week selection. It is a graphic (illustrated) memoir. I found it very helpful in understanding the gender distinctions. Complete, e-book.
• Winter Counts by David Heska Wambli Weiden. This is the book Don and finished up on our trip to the Cider Haus the other day. It is set on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota and is a mystery. Watch for my Audiobooks with Don review this coming week. With its completion I have now finished my year long challenge to read a book set in every state and territory of the US. Complete, audiobook.
• Tilt by Emma Pattee. Set in Portland, a pregnant lady attempts to get home and find her husband after a cataclysmic earthquake. I finished it but didn't care for it. Audiobook.
• I Do Know Some Things by Richard Siken. One of the books nominated for the National Book Award in the poetry category. It is very different since the poems are all in prose. Complete, print.
• The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware. Another book club selection. It is a modern Turn of the Screw tale. Perfect for October and Halloween. Currently reading, 14%, print.
• A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I've never read this first Sherlock Holmes story. Currently reading, 10%. Audiobook.

Blogging this past week:

• TTT: Favorite Books of Summer 2025
• Poetry Review: I Do Know Some Things
• Audiobooks with Don Review: Isola
• Banned Books Week. Are You Ready?
• Review: Small Gods
• Six Degrees of Separation--I Want Everything to The Emperor of Gladness

Jamie is five! That hair!

-Anne

Six Degrees of Separation --- from I WANT EVERYTHING to THE EMPEROR OF GLADNESS

It’s time for #6degrees. Start at the same place as all participants, add six books, and see where we all end up.

Six Degrees of Separation. We begin with

↓

I Want Everything by Dominic Amerena
An acclaimed novelist goes missing after allegations of plagiarism.

↓

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
Two friends, both writers, get together to celebrate the completion of a book by one but the day ends with a tragic accidental death, and the stealing of the manuscript by the other.

↓

Babel by R.F. Kuang
Another book by the same author. This book has a lot of themes but among them is the act of translating words precisely.

↓

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams
Another book about the precise meaning of words, this time for the inclusion in the English language dictionary. At issue, however, is how words thought to be female words are not included. 

↓

James by Percival Everett
A retelling of the Huck Finn story, James teaches his children how to speak 'slave talk' when they are around white people. Because Black, like women, don't have the right words or the correct way of speaking them. This book won the National Book Award last year.

↓

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
Another National Book Award winner. The Asian actors are forced to speak with an "Asian" accent if they want to get a role in Hollywood. The dominant culture will not allow them to assimilate completely.

↓

The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
Second generation immigrant from Vietnam, the main character finds challenges assimilating due to generational trauma from his mother and grandmother.

Here we are -- Plagiarism to generational trauma, both bad.

-Anne

Review: SMALL GODS (+Friday56 LinkUp)

In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was: "Hey, you!"

Title: Small Gods by Terry Pratchett

Book Beginnings quote:

Now consider the tortoise and the eagle.

Friday56 quote (from somewhere in the book):

Belief, he says. Belief shifts. People start out believing in the god and end up believing in the structure.

Summary: Small Gods, the 13th Discworld novel, satirizes religion and philosophy through the story of Om, a small god trapped in the very limited body of a tortoise, and Brutha, his only believer.

Review: I consumed Small Gods in two huge gulps, listening to all 12 hours of the audiobook in just two days. I am so sick of what is happening in our country with a president and his followers doing unthinkable and despicable things in the name of Christianity, it felt good to laugh at a book which makes fun of religion and its followers. Sometimes the only thing that will break through the malise is laughter. Small Gods served up a healthy offering of humor to feast upon. 

Though the summary says Small Gods is the 13th book in the Discworld series, which is Terry Pratchett's magnum opus, it is really a standalone book. One doesn't need to read any other books in the series to appreciate this one. Fortunately just about everything in this book made me laugh. But just to help me make my point, here are a few more quotes:

The trouble was that he was talking in philosophy but they were listening in gibberish.

I've felt that way listening to some know-it-all of some topic of which I know little. I recognize the words but don't understand what they have to do with each other.

Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off.

I concur. Once, while walking the dog, I tripped and went sprawling onto the sidewalk. I wondered, as I laid bleeding on the ground, how I got there so fast.

The trouble with being a god is that you've got no one to pray to.

We all need help sometimes and it is nice to know that that there is a G[g]od that hears us when we call out in prayer. But what happens if you are a small god? Where do you turn for help?

Thoughts always moved slowly through Brutha’s mind, like icebergs. They arrived slowly and left slowly and when they were there they occupied a lot of space, much of it below the surface.

I'll let you think about that.

I don't recall who recommended this book to me, but whoever you are, thank you. I needed it.

My rating: 5 stars.

Sign up for The Friday56 on the Inlinkz below. 

RULES:

*Grab a book, any book

*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your e-reader (If you want to improvise, go ahead!)

*Find a snippet, but no spoilers!

*Post it to your blog and add your url to the Linky below. If you do not add the specific url for your post, we may miss it! 

*Visit other blogs and leave comments about their snippets. Expand the community. Please leave a comment for me, too!  

Also visit Book Beginnings on Friday hosted by Rose City Reader and First Line Friday hosted by Reading is My Super Power to share the beginning quote from your book.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

-Anne

Banned Books Week is coming October 5-11. Are you ready?

Banned Books Week is just a few days away. 

This year's theme is a good one: 

CENSORSHIP IS SO 1984! READ FOR YOUR RIGHTS!

Have you marked your calendars? 

Have you determined what banned book you hope to read during the event? 

What action you plan to take in support of reading and against censorship?

List: Top Ten Most Challenged Books of 2024

Stats:

72% of challenges come from outside pressure groups and government entities. Only 16% of challenges are made by concerned parents, and 12% are other. It is a very small minority of people who are bringing the vast majority of book challenges. "Eleven people were responsible for 60% of challenges to books in 2021 nationwide. ELEVEN!" (Source: NPR)

Frequently challenged books

Book Banning attempts have risen sharply over the past ten years.

Resources:

American Library Association (ALA): Library Bill of Rights

From the Unite Against Book Bans Toolkit
One parent in Wisconsin was responsible to 444 temporary or permanent book bannings in a school district. ONE! (NPR) Why should one parent say what books other kids should not read?

My Plan

1. Highlight a book I think everyone should read:

Banned Together: Our Fight For Readers' Rights edited by Ashley Perez
A collection of essays, illustrations, stories, memoirs, graphic novels about how book banning has impacted these YA authors. I read it a few weeks ago and found it to be tremendously impactful. Check to make sure your high school and public libraries have a copy of it. If not, ask them to buy it/offer to buy it for them. (Click on title to read more.)

2. Read a frequently challenged/banned book:

Gender Queer: a Memoir by Maia Kobabe
This book is one of the top challenged books of 2024. It is a graphic memoir (illustrated.)

3. Create a post (this post!) about Banned Books week and make a plan, which includes checking out the resources. 

If you would like to do the same thing but also want to save time, you can copy the top half of this post and paste it to your blog. Let's get the word out.

4. Place a few banned books on hold at my library. This will help the library administration know to keep buying these types of books due to their increased circulation.

5. Work this puzzle of Banned Books

-Anne

Audiobooks with Don review: ISOLA

Isola by Allegra Goodman is based on a true story. Marguerite de la Rocque de Roberval was a 16th-century French noblewoman who was abandoned on a remote island in the Bay of St. Lawrence off of what is now Canada . Her guardian took Marguerite and her maid along on a voyage to colonize the land for the French crown but when he discovered her secret love affair, he marooned the three, (Marguerite. the maid, and the lover) on the Isle of Demons in 1542. Marguerite was the sole survivor, eventually being rescued by Basque fishermen two years later. The author, Allegra Goodman was able to find two separate 16th century accounts of her tale of resilience, betrayal, and survival, one written by the king's sister, Queen Marguerite de Navarre, and published, along with 72 other stories, in a book titled The Heptaméron.

The story begins at the beginning of Marguerite's life with the death of her mother. Later her father dies in battle, fighting for the crown. Marguerite is assigned a guardian until she can marry and then her estate will become hers. Unfortunately for Marguerite women of the day have very few rights and her guardian sells off her assets to finance his sea explorations. Eventually she has nowhere to live, as her home is sold and now she is totally at the mercy of her guardian's will. She begged to stay in France but he decides to take her with him when he travels to the east coast of North America (New France)  to help him make a name for himself by establishing a colony there.  The author didn't have many details to fill out the story so she took creative licence with it, imagining what life was like for women of the day and what survival required on a remote island with few resources. Selected for the Reese Witherspoon Book Club, Isola is a timeless tale of survival against all odds.

Two years ago I read Maggie O'Farrell's book, The Marriage Portrait. It is also about a real 16th century woman (girl, really), Lucrezia di Cosimo de'Medici. Less is known about this woman than of Marguerite, but it is thought she was poisoned by an unloving, older husband. As I read both books, I seethed with 21st-century indignation that women were treated so poorly by men in that time period and wondered at how noblewomen could stand to put up with the constraints placed on them by society. My thoughts doubled back to the Marriage Portrait as I read Isola. Obviously things have improved for women since that time but even today some men want women to just shut up and go back to what they do best -- having babies -- and leave all the important stuff for men to handle without them. Ugh.

Don and I listened to the audiobook, read by Fiona Hardingham. Both of us were tremendously fascinated by the fictional version of a true-tale. How could someone be so awful as to maroon a woman on a tiny island off the coast of Canada in 1542 with few provisions and no mercy, we both thought? But we became pretty impatient with the story that led up to those events -- Marguerite's life up to that point as a noblewoman living in a corner of her family's castle, under the guardianship of such a tyrant -- and it seemed to drag on and on. Even though we bumped up the listening speed to 1.25, we were still impatient with the story to get on with it. At the point where Don was just about ready to give up on the book, the marooning occured and then the story became fairly interesting as a survival story. Don confessed he liked the book better going forward, ultimately rating it with 3.5 stars. My rating wasn't much better -- 3.75 stars, rounded up to 4 stars. I don't think either of us were upset having listened to the book and it did give us some interesting things to talk about --- Don mentioned religion, customs, and exploration; I was fixated on the poor treatment of women. And now, almost a month after finishing Isola, I realize that the story has stuck with me. I think of it all the time, especially the details of what it was like to be marooned on an island in the middle of big, cold bay. I know, if it had been me, I wouldn't have survived. I guess the women of the 16th-century had that going for them.

-Anne

Poetry review: I DO KNOW SOME THINGS

I Do Know Some Things by Richard Siken is a nominated poetry book for the 2025 National Book Awards. Every year I attempt to read a minimum of the nominated books before the award is announced in November. This year I selected this poetry book by Siken because of the committee's description:

Richard Siken writes his way through the aftermath of a stroke—recovering language, memories, and his sense of self in the process. Through 77 autobiographical prose poems, I Do Know Some Things accepts the limitations of memory and the potential liberation of unreliable narration in rewriting one’s own story (NBA).

Doesn't that sound interesting? I thought so. From the very first prose poem I knew I was in for something unique, too. The thing about prose poems is they often just seem like writing. Where is the poetry, I wondered? In fact at one point I even wondered how the NBA committee selected this as poetry and then I stumbled into "Several Tremendous" which begins with:

---angel of crowning and angel of breaching, angel of leavening, angel of grieving, angel of elbow, angel of bright, angel ot terrible, monster of terrible; music and terrible, a big small music and several terrible tremendous; ... (22).

Ah. I finally recognize the poetry. But honestly I didn't keep reading for the poems, I kept reading for the story. It is the story of Richard Siken's life both before and after the stroke and his childhood trauma, which was still traumatic. His troubles getting help during his stroke and care afterwards. His struggle with language and with his memory. Imagine losing your memory for words and as you regain the meanings behind words, you also regain the memories of your unhappy childhood. How awful.

I've said this before on my blog: I am not a very sophisticated poetry reader. I am used to reading fiction and narrative nonfiction. When I read poetry I always find myself reading the poems as if they are true and I always want to know more about the story the poem is telling. But often the story details are hidden behind metaphors and other literary devices. In I Do Know SomeThings all of that is gone and and the reader comes face to face with the poet himself.  In an interview with the Adroit Journal, Siken says this:

My new book is seventy-seven prose poems. Each page is a small box that tries to hold the content. I also lost my guile and poker face from the stroke. I couldn’t lie and I didn’t have a filter. The artifice was gone. I was saying things without metaphor, which was shocking and uncomfortable. I was speaking in the first-person, not making the reader complicit with the second-person or using the third-person to throw my voice. And most terrifying for me: the content was autobiographical. All of this forced me to lean on new craft strategies. I use associative leaps significantly now, to keep the poems moving and make interesting hinges. All the poems look the same. I needed strategies to make them sound different... I have a rhythm but the music—the lyric—isn’t there in the way it was before (Adroit Journal).

I know most of my readers will gloss over this review since poetry is not your usual genre and this poetry, prose poetry, is even more unusual. But I urge you to take a minute and reconsider. Prose poetry is reading prose and this poet writes with no artifice. It is like really a fascinating, if not heartbreaking, memoir.  I commend the NBA committee for nominating it for their award in poetry and I honestly hope it wins.

My rating: 4.25 stars.

-Anne