We’re nearing the end of the year, and the end of the Read Harder Challenge, but there’s still time to finish, or even start the challenge if you want! In case you missed the beginning of this series, check out my first blog post where I explain what the Read Harder Challenge is, and how it relates to the following books!
Task 9 – Read a book recommended by a librarian
Book Read: “The Unmaking of June Farrow” by Adrienne Young
Even before this book was officially published, my co-worker Kat (many of you probably know her from Read Harder and One Read) was gushing about how much she loved it. Given that our reading tastes align pretty frequently, I knew I had to pick this up as my recommendation from a librarian. Unfortunately, this was one of the times where our reading tastes diverged. If you’ve read and enjoyed any of the following books, “June Farrow” might be right for you: “The Ten Thousand Doors of January,” “The Book of Doors,” “The Ministry of Time,” “The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches.” The majority of which I’ve read, and they just didn’t click for me.
The premise of “The Unmaking of June Farrow” is that the Farrow women are cursed, they eventually lose their minds, and after June’s mother Susanna disappeared, the small town of Jasper is just waiting for the same thing to happen to June. It begins for June when she hears things that aren’t there, sees things out of the corner of her eye, and eventually, a mysterious red door appears which may have the answers to her mother’s disappearance.
Why didn’t it work for me? Honestly, a lot of reasons, but my biggest issue is that for a magical realism book featuring time travel, it does it so poorly. Timelines don’t make sense, character relationships exist primarily because of time travel shenanigans (there’s a romantic relationship after a week??), it just frustrated me. That being said, I’m sure there are aspects to the magical realism and the romance that other readers will enjoy, and have, based on the overall ratings. I will also give props to Young for her descriptions, she does a phenomenal job of making the reader feel like they are in the settings they read about. Personally, I’m going to keep going to the Wayward Children series for adventures about going through mysterious magical doors, and the consequences of doing so.
Task 17 – Read a book about media literacy
Book Read: “Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism” by Safiya Umoja Noble
Typically when I’m picking up something to read, I’m looking for something escapist in nature. Even when I’m reading more general fiction, instead of my usual genre fiction, there’s something about the characters or the plot that has interested me; I tend to be a very narrative focused reader. For that reason, amongst others, it is a rare thing for me to pick up non-fiction. There’s a lot of well-written non-fiction about lots of interesting topics, but just to give you an idea, almost all the non-fiction I’ve read this year has been for the Read Harder challenge. All of which is to say, I’m going to do my best to review what is not only a non-fiction title, but one that is more academic in its scope and writing.
Dr. Noble started her research in 2011 after searching for fun activities to do with her nieces, and the innocuous search terms she used returned graphic and explicit content. From there, Dr. Noble did first-hand research and gathered experiences and testimony from other researchers and online users about how Google specifically fed negative stereotypes about Black people to users. The book covers how Google search results are ranked and displayed, what it means to have so much information readily available to search, some of the history of Google, and why Google as a monopoly is such a problem. As an aside, when the news came out that Google was legally considered a monopoly, I picked this up later the same day to a section heading “A Monopoly on Information”; can’t make this stuff up.
The information presented was interested and laid out well, but Dr. Noble’s research was primarily done from 2011 to 2016, and then the book itself wasn’t published until 2018. The core concepts, such as technology and tech companies having issues with race and racism, amongst so many other -isms, is unfortunately still wildly relevant to today, and having published research and analysis such as this can provide historical context, and also show how much work there still is to do. As someone who works in a library and is interested in library science, specifically how information is organized, I thought the section that discussed metadata and alternate search engines was really interesting, but even within the field of library science, that’s not the most popular topic of discussion. Pick this up if you already have some knowledge about algorithms and how searching is affected by the people organizing the results.
Task 20 – Read a book about books (fiction or nonfiction)
Book Read: “The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
There is a particular kind of reader, maybe you know them, or are one yourself, who loves books so much that the idea of reading a book about books is just such a thrill. I am one such reader, and I had known and heard of “The Shadow of the Wind” for many years, and knew it was a book about books, but had never been in any particular hurry to pick it up. With the year soon coming to a close, this translated historical literary fiction novel from 2001 is easily one of my top books of the year.
The setting: Barcelona, Spain, 1945. Young Daniel is introduced to the Cemetery of Lost Books by his father, and takes into his care “The Shadow of the Wind” by Julián Carax; the title of the real book is based on the title of a book within the novel. Daniel is told that this book is special, because it is one of the only copies of Carax’s work left in existence; the rest have all been destroyed, burned by a mysterious figure who has set out to remove any trace of Carax from the world. In turn, Daniel is intrigued by the book and the story of the author. What unspools is a story of love, revenge, family, hatred and the kind of mystery that only comes with literary fiction.
I must admit, I spent the first 50-60% of the book enjoying the writing, liking the story up to that point, but not quite understanding where it was going to go, what the driving theme was. Then as more information was revealed, and more things happened to characters, it started to all come together, and suddenly I was sprinting to the finish to find out how things would resolve. There is a prequel and two sequels to the novel, which I may consider picking up at some point. Compared to other books about books I’ve read, on the bookish scale, “The Shadow of the Wind” ends up pretty low — there are books, and the story is objectively about a book, but more so about the author, and the coming of age of the protagonist. Even so, this is a phenomenal work, and one that could be used to complete multiple tasks at once.
Task 21 – Read a book that went under the radar in 2023
Book Read: “What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez” by Claire Jiménez
I can speak first hand to how under the radar this title was last year — published in March 2023, this book floated around the New Books section in the Columbia Public Library for months, being put on display, back on the shelf, back on display, never being checked out. It has under 10k ratings on Goodreads, and about 1500 reviews as of time of writing; that may sound like a lot, but for Goodreads it’s definitely on the lower side. Do I feel it should have been on more people’s radars? I’m not sure.
Ruthy Ramirez disappears when she is 13 years old, never coming home after track practice after school one day. Years later, older sister Jessica sees a woman on a reality TV show that she is convinced is Ruthy, now going by Ruby. Jessica ropes in youngest sister Nina to help her investigate, while trying to keep their mother from finding out in case they are wrong. The dust jacket goes on to describe a road trip, wherein Dolores, the matriarch, and her friend Irene join Jessica and Nina to try and find out if this woman is Ruthy. To me, this sounded like a multi-day road trip situation, close quarters where family secrets would come out, people would get closer, there might be some adventure, perhaps. Well, not really. The book is only just over 200 pages, so what I can say is that the road trip, such as it is, only comes in near the end of the book, and it’s a journey that would maybe take five or six hours of driving?
Ultimately, despite the title, the book is really very little about Ruthy Ramirez, and much more about the rest of the family, what the loss of Ruthy meant for them, and their experiences as a Puerto Rican family living and growing up in America in the 2008 recession. If you’re going into this looking for a road trip novel or a mystery, you’ll be underwhelmed, but pick it up for the examination of grief, colonialism, racism and intergenerational trauma. The story that is there is interesting and well told, if a little short, but I can’t say it should have been on more people’s radars.
How is your Read Harder Challenge going? Do any of these titles sound interesting to you? Don’t forget that there are plenty of other books to choose from, both at your library and elsewhere! See you at the next check-in!
