This Is How You Vagina: All About Your Vajayjay and Why You Probably Shouldn't Call It That

This Is How You Vagina: All About Your Vajayjay and Why You Probably Shouldn't Call It That

By Nicole E. Williams

The good things: packed with information but easy to read. Pretty much everything you'd want to know about why your vagina does what it does. 

--There are diagrams and lists.  Dr. Williams (no relation) answers questions ranging from silly to very serious.  You'll learn about the historic origins of some ideas we still have.  Turns out Gwyneth Paltrow and her vagina steaming would have been a big hit in ancient Egypt.  The blending of clinical and popular information is great.

--The author gives easy tips for a happy, healthy vagina.  These include ditching thongs and any cleansers other than gentle soap and water.  Did you know Lysol used to be recommended for women to freshen up their vaginas?  Yep.  Eww.

The bad things: it bothers me when people anthropomorphize vaginas ad nauseum.  Throughout the entire book we are told about what "she" likes and doesn't like.  Who is "she"?  Why, your vagina, of course.  Weird.

--Dr. Williams misuses a few words but nothing outrageous and it's probably not even something most people would notice.

--The one thing that made me stop and question my sanity was her statement that Uncle Tom's Cabin is "a book on the defense of slavery."  And she doesn't mean it contains characters who defend slavery, which is certainly true because the book presents the full spectrum of human feeling on slavery.  She apparently means that Uncle Tom's Cabin--you know, the book many people credit with showing thousands of white Americans the evils of slavery and catalyzing abolition--defends slavery.

So read this book to learn about vaginas but maybe not to learn about literature.  You'll have to read TIHYV to find out why it even came up in the first place.

I got my ebook free from Netgalley.

Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage

Have you ever thought, "I'm just too comfortable around children.  I want to feel a healthy dose of fear when a six-year-old grabs my hand or a toddler smiles at me.  What if my instinct was instead to lock them outside and call the police?"  Buddy, have I got a book for you.

If the effect of the twins in The Shining is just starting to wear off, you need to read Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage.  Hanna is of great concern to her mother, Suzette.  Hanna does not talk.  She occasionally growls...or barks...or causes problems so major she gets expelled from school.  But actual conversation, not so much.  Don't worry, Hanna has no problem getting her point across.

Suzette, who has suffered with health problems all her life, wants nothing more than for her daughter to grow up healthy and happy.  But as Hanna's frightening and uncontrollable behavior escalates, Suzette realizes she wants those things less for Hanna's good than for her own sanity.  The gulf between mother and daughter widens as Hanna displays a new facet to her personality--possibly a new personality altogether.

And where is daddy dearest during all this distress?  He's often at work and only sees Hanna at her cheeriest, which is clearly intentional on her part.  She's a daddy's girl and as we find out during Hanna's chapters, her fondest wish is for it to be just the two of them with no pesky mommy to get in the way.  But how can she achieve this end?

I had absolutely no idea where this story would take me as Suzette's life spiraled out of control and Hanna's wicked little plans took shape but it was quite a ride.  The ending?  Simultaneously satisfying and anxiety-inducing.

I got a free advance ebook of Baby Teeth from NetGalley for review purposes.

The Nesting by C. J. Cooke

 You had me at *nanny in a remote, creepy house with a mysterious employer*

3/5 stars

The Nesting has some weaknesses of logic and plot, but it thoroughly makes up for it in atmosphere. There are multiple red herrings and I'm not sure how I feel about them.  They might also just be sidelines that fizzled out a bit.

This book is a solid 3 stars for sheer creepiness and entertainment value.  The Norwegian setting is a huge bonus for me because Scandinavia ups the atmospheric score quite a bit.  If I can know without the book even telling me that it is already dark outside at 3pm, I'm all about it.

We get an unreliable narrator, but for most of the book we can't be quite sure if she's imagining some or all of what is happening.  Other characters certainly seem to be having odd experiences too.  Do we have unreliable secondary characters as well?  Or do we have an ancient Norwegian spirit haunting the premises?  Or the ghost of a dead wife?  Lexi finds herself surrounded by people who teem with secrets, some well hidden and others poorly so.  Is a human being responsible for those bumps in the night?  Better read it and find out.

I got my ebook for free from NetGalley for review purposes.

Barbara Ehrenreich: Natural Causes

You should probably not read this book if you are a hypochondriac or get nervous learning unfortunate medical facts. Ehrenreich shares some alarming information in Natural Causes. Information like: at any moment macrophages, a vital part of the intricate and bizarre system within you which is supposed to keep you healthy may instead decide to betray you and actively encourage the growth of cancer.

You may remember Ehrenreich for Nickel and Dimed, a book from several years ago which detailed her reasons why no one can survive on minimum wage.

But back to your body trying to kill you.

The book is full of truly unsettling statistics and pronouncements. We learn that many doctors only give you an annual physical because you would be outraged if they told you such exams are pointless. We learn that some experts believe that current medical technology is so highly sensitive that we are detecting and surgically removing, or treating with dangerous chemicals, growths that are either entirely benign or would have gone away on their own. Fun, right?

Never believe 100% of what someone tells you without checking into it a bit first. And I'm not referring to the medical industry right now, I'm referring to the author. I would have had a lot more faith in her view if she hadn't said right off the bat that despite being a breast cancer survivor, she has now given up mammograms because she would rather not experience the stress of false positives. She is now in her upper 70s and I get it, that's not young. But to say that you are more comfortable with dying from a treatable disease than undergoing uncomfortable and potentially stressful tests every now and then is a bit worrisome. So while a lot of what she has to say is perfectly accurate and definitely food for thought for anyone who wants to keep themselves healthy, don't let her talk you into skipping your checkups without considering what that could mean for you.

In addition to the sometimes questionable view of medicine, the book ends up jumping around to a few different topics. By the end of the book, it's become about the "self" and whether or not humans have a spirit separate from their bodies. One of the things that bothers me the most when reading is to come across someone who has decided they are too smart for religion. Ehrenreich tells us that the Bible never mentions an immortal soul. And sure, she's not the only person to smugly point this out. But if such stubborn literalism is all you can scrape up to say on the matter of Christianity vs. atheism/agnosticism/science/blahblahblah, then you are simply choosing to ignore the entire message of the New Testament. Or are you maybe just not that smart after all? This is like saying Louisa May Alcott didn't care about the rights of women because she never used the word "Feminist" in Little Women. Go ahead, I have a bridge to sell you.

And let's not forget the fact that Ehrenreich thinks there is no reason doctors should be forced to learn how DNA and human cells work. Call me crazy, but that's something I don't really mind my doctor understanding. Otherwise it seems like a slippery slope to him telling me my humors are misaligned and I need a good leech treatment. What next, my mechanic will tell me to get an oil change or else the gnomes that make my engine work will be unhappy?

But at the end of the day, the premise of this book is not wrong. You can eat a vegan diet, exercise 6 days a week, and still drop dead of a heart attack or get cancer or get hit by a bus. And then there are people like George Burns, a man you can't even picture without his famous cigar, who lived to be 100. Guess he had good macrophages.

I received my copy through NetGalley.

Rating out of 5 stars: A surprisingly high 3 1/2

The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

The official description of this book is meant to be mysterious and intriguing. Instead, it helped me figure out "the big twist" when I was about 2% of the way into the story.

From Goodreads.com:

"When you read this book, you will make many assumptions.

You will assume you are reading about a jealous wife and her obsession with her replacement.

You will assume you are reading about a woman about to enter a new marriage with the man she loves.

You will assume the first wife was a disaster and that the husband was well rid of her.

You will assume you know the motives, the history, the anatomy of the relationships.

Assume nothing."

So I spent the majority of the book nodding to myself as the evidence mounted up that I was, in fact, correct. True, there were a few more twists toward the end, but I was absolutely correct when I guessed what the big secret was.

You would think that this would ruin the book for me, but it didn't. I actually really enjoyed reading it, perhaps partly because I wanted to vindicate my surmise, but also because it was just plain good.

Honestly, I don't know how anyone would NOT figure this out after reading the description, so I think the publisher should have gone with something else. But judging from the reviews I've seen, an awful lot of people didn't figure it out and were thoroughly shocked.

I found myself telling everyone I knew about this book. I gave multiple recommendations to women who had read The Girl on the Train and/or Gone Girl and liked them. Because that's the genre this falls into. I call it The Girl Who genre. You know what I'm talking about. And it's a genre I like a lot, so it was a relief that this book was so good, despite its transparent plot.

Rating out of 5 stars: 4

I received an advance copy of this book through NetGalley.

We'll Be the Last Ones to Let You Down

We'll Be the Last Ones to Let You Down: Memoir of a Gravedigger's Daughter

This is the kind of title that gets my attention. The funeral industry is a passion of mine. My grandparents owned and lived in a funeral home until I was about 12 and so visiting them meant hanging out a few dozen yards from a room full of casket samples and a body prep room. When I tell people this, a light of understanding shines in their eye. Ah, so that's why you're like this.

Rachael Hanel's memoir is nothing unusual. We hear about her family tragedy and vivid memories of growing up in a small Minnesota town. We hear about family stories from before she was born. Stories that are sometimes remarkable, but not so different in theme and outcome from stories most of us have. (And yes, her father was a gravedigger. Hanel spent many of her early years in cemeteries as her father went about his work.)

It is the tone of this book that has stayed with me for years. It is truthful and touching without breaking your heart. The story of a family as told by someone who can see the story for what it is: sad and happy and frustrating and hopeful. Hanel understands that our pasts make us who we are and perhaps even more than that; our family's past shapes us in ways we can never fully grasp and never, never escape.

I received a digital copy for review through NetGalley.