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Curious, Healing

Curious, Healing

Books about healing, business, and fun

  • About Sonia Connolly

fiction

“North to Freedom” by Anne Holm

January 21, 2022 by Sonia Connolly 2 Comments

book cover

This is one of the books I’ve carried from place to place since I was a kid. I took it down from the shelf to see if it was time to pass it along, and ended up reading the whole thing. I didn’t remember much about the plot, but a few fragmentary scenes had stayed with me. It was published in 1963 in Danish, and translated into English in 1965.

A twelve-year-old child named David has been raised in a concentration camp, escapes with the puzzling help of the Commandant, and is now crossing Europe alone to get to Denmark. He is sturdy, quick-witted, and speaks several languages, having learned them from various fellow prisoners.

The writing is emotionally authentic without trying to terrify the reader. David talks about his fear, and also how he has learned to calm himself. He passes through hope and despair. He learns to be more present in his body, and connects passionately to the beauty of the land around him. He also connects tentatively, warily, with other humans.

People see him with compassion and help him on his way, and also see the strangeness in him. With his mix of social ignorance and calm self-possession, it’s obvious he hasn’t had a normal childhood.

In passing, David is noted as a rare name, which was surprising since it has been in the top 35 names since 1880 in the US, and was ranked first in 1960. I have been in a mid-size software engineering organization that literally had more Davids than women. Apparently it was less popular in Denmark in the 1960s.

When I last read the book, I was around David’s age, and simply accepted the plot. Now I see the underlying social and religious messages (added with a light hand), and the overall metaphor for healing from abuse and reconnecting with people.

David values intelligence and devalues people for being “stupid.” I could see a twelve-year-old boy having that attitude, and I wish the author had made it clear that intellectual ability does not correlate with intrinsic moral value. There is also some borderline fat-judgment. David tends to see people as all bad or all good. The plot does engage with the ambiguity of people who are both.

Highly recommended, despite those caveats.

Available at Powell’s Books.

Filed Under: fiction Tagged With: childhood abuse, survival story, trauma, young adult

“Witches of Brooklyn: What the Hex?!” by Sophie Escabasse

December 5, 2021 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

book cover

Recommended to me by: Soph

A playful graphic novel about witches in Brooklyn with an underlying message about building friendship through patience and conversation. The cast of characters is delightfully multi-racial, as is fitting for New York, and young Effie’s grandmothers are more notable for being witches than for being a couple. In fact their relationship is left a little vague, but they’re probably not just housemates.

The drawings of people are expressive and funny and the backgrounds are full of Brooklyn details.

I was just going to look at the first few pages, and got pulled into reading the whole thing. Recommended!

Available at Amazon.

Filed Under: art, fiction Tagged With: fun, illustrated, lgbt, relationship, young adult

“The Magic Fish” by Trung Le Nguyen

December 5, 2021 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

book cover

Recommended to me by: Soph

What a lovely, powerful graphic novel. Tien is growing up in the US with Vietnamese immigrant parents. He speaks mostly English, and they speak mostly Vietnamese. It’s a close, loving family and they read fairy tales together when they have time. The graphic novel interweaves slant-wise takes on three familiar fairy tales with Tien’s adventures in high school and as he struggles to communicate important truths about himself to his parents.

The art is gorgeous. Fairy tale dresses are especially elaborate, and the end of the book contains notes on the time periods the dresses are drawn from. The one thing I found confusing is that something about the proportions of the characters made them look younger to me. Tien looked like a much younger child, and his mom looked like his teen older sister, even though the story communicates that Tien is in high school and his mom is in her 30s.

The love in the book makes me cry, along with the difficult times around immigration and grief, conveyed with kindness. Highly recommended!

Content notes: brief homophobia, not endorsed by the author, and fairy tale violence.

Available at Powell’s Books.

Filed Under: art, fiction Tagged With: childrens, fun, healing, illustrated, lgbt, relationship, young adult

“The Wood Wife” by Terri Windling

October 26, 2021 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

book cover

Recommended to me by: Tor.com

I read this book many years ago, and remember being disappointed, because it wasn’t the kind of lyrical fantasy I was used to. Reading it again now that I’m older than the protagonist, I can see how skillfully relationships between the characters are portrayed. It’s beautifully written and lovingly portrays the Sonoran desert.

And it’s still not my type of book. It uses death and domestic violence as intensifiers, and the mystery is tied up neatly at the end, along with the characters’ lives. While I agree with the author’s message about the need to protect the natural world from endless cookie cutter suburban development, the lectures fall heavily from the characters’ mouths.

This book is part of a four-book series inspired by Brian Froud faery paintings. “Something Rich and Strange” by Patricia McKillip also had an author’s message that weighed heavily on the book. I’ve read the third book, “The Wild Wood” by Charles de Lint, but hadn’t heard of the fourth book from the series, “Hannah’s Garden” by Midori Snyder.

Available at Powell’s Books.

Filed Under: fiction Tagged With: fun, natural world, relationship

“Pahua and the Soul Stealer” by Lori M. Lee

September 19, 2021 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

book cover

Recommended to me by: Marissa Lingen

A delightful adventure story based on Hmong legends and spirituality with two eleven-year-old Hmong girls as the heroes, Pahua and Zhong. Pahua can see all spirits, which is unusual even for shamans (does the Hmong culture use the word shaman?) and has a companion spirit in the shape of a black kitten, named Miv, which means cat. Zhong is on assignment from her shaman school. There are battles, but no lives tossed away casually. Compassion and successful negotiation get them further than fighting.

The glossary at the end includes pronunciation of Hmong terms used in the story, and the afterword shares Lori Lee’s history as a Hmong refugee who resettled in the US and struggled to fit in, as Pahua does.

Highly recommended.

Available at Powell’s Books.

Filed Under: fiction Tagged With: anti-racism, childrens, fun

“Knit One Girl Two and other stories” by Shira Glassman

August 21, 2021 by Sonia Connolly Leave a Comment

book cover

Subtitle: Women Reconnecting with Love, Art, Music, and Inspiration

Recommended to me by: Shira Glassman’s tumblr post

A collection of three delightful stories. The first one is summarized as “lighthearted Jewish f/f romance about an indie dyer who falls for the wildlife painter whose art inspired her latest round of sock club.” It’s great to read about women being happily inspired by their surroundings and each other. The story settings are richly detailed, and the emotional connections are kind and warm.

Recommended as a great antidote to reading the news.

Available at Amazon and Shira Glassman’s Gumroad.

Filed Under: fiction Tagged With: fun, lgbt

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