Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book by an author with the same initials as you
Belabored: A Vindication of the Rights of Pregnant Women, by Lyz Lenz

From the title, I expected the book to be a polemic. And it was, in part, but it was also part memoir, sharing some of her own most vulnerable moments around pregnancy, miscarriage, and motherhood.

The book examines many ways that our culture treats women as if our bodies aren't really ours, starting with the fetishizing of virginity. Lenz had a "purity" ring as a teen, as a reminder that her body was supposed to belong to her future husband. She describes an incident in college when she got drunk at a party, and wasn't sure afterwards if she'd been raped. She didn't tell her future husband about it, guessing (correctly, he made clear) that he wouldn't marry her if she didn't fit the virgin ideal.

We're all used to hearing the cultural message is that a good woman is a mother, but only the "right" kind of mother: married, middle-class, attentive but not a "helicopter parent," etc. The policing is particularly intense during pregnancy: total strangers will accost a pregnant woman if she has a glass of wine or a cigarette, or even just a cup of coffee. After Lenz had a miscarriage, her husband immediately blurted out that he wished she hadn't gone running.

In most cases, it's impossible to know that cause of any particular miscarriage. It's not unusual for a woman to blame herself, or get blamed by others: for exercising too much or not enough, for eating the wrong thing, for staying in a stressful job (even if that's the only way she has to support the coming baby).

Giving birth, too, can mean being denied control over basic things, like whether she gets any pain relief. This is partly tied up with religious views (labor pain as punishments for Eve's sins), and partly with the problem of medical personnel taking pain less seriously when the patient is a woman. 

In a couple of ways, I feel like this book was written too soon. Too soon after what was clearly a painful divorce from the man who told her that her agonizing labor "wasn't that bad." And the book came out in 2020, before the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision made it possible to literally police pregnancies. Right now Alabama is debating a bill that would allow a murder charge for "causing" a miscarriage, including by putting herself "in harm's way" by (for instance) remaining in a relationship with an abusive partner. If there's ever a later edition of this book, there's going to be a lot more to stay.

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book your best friend would like
On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World, by Danya Ruttenberg

Rabbi Ruttenberg takes her framework from the Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides, but her concept of amends doesn’t require a religious viewpoint. It’s flexible enough to apply to individuals, organizations and even nations.

It’s a subject that I’ve been giving some thought, particularly since #MeToo and the immediate backlash against “cancel culture.” Over and over, we heard hand-wringing about “does this person have to be punished forever” when they’d been out of the spotlight for just a few months.

Maimonides proposes five steps:

1. Confession. Accurately naming the harm, and taking responsibility for it. In a world where everyone’s worried about liability, some can’t even get this far.

2. Beginning to change. This might mean anything from therapy to volunteer work, to stepping down from a position of power that the offender has misused. The assumption is that it’s not an overnight transformation, but the start of a good-faith effort, that is expected to continue through the next steps.

3. Restitution. As with the concept of restorative justice (which Ruttenberg also discusses), the victim’s needs must be centered. That might mean financial restitution, paying for their counseling, or agreeing to avoid any location where they’re likely to cross paths.

4. Apology. It’s interesting that Maimonides puts this step after restitution. Ruttenberg suggests that concrete amends are needed to show that the apology is sincere. (And don’t get me started on “sorry if you were offended” weaselpologies.) There’s an obvious caveat: if the victim wants no contact with the offender, that must be respected. And she’s very clear that the victim is never obligated to forgive, even when the apology is sincere.

5. Making different choices. The purpose, ultimately, is to become a person who wouldn’t commit the same harm again.

While Ruttenberg doesn’t make the connection, I noted that the steps have some parallels with the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and similar programs: make a “searching a fearless moral inventory,” be “entirely ready for God to remove these defects,” make direct amends “except when to do so would injure them or others,” and to “have a spiritual awakening.”

She gives examples of individuals (Louis CK made a good start with the confession, then demanded everything go back to the way it was before), institutions (a school that had to face its past of covering for abuse, and making better choices with a new offender), and nations (South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission). She raises the topic of restorative justice, but acknowledges that it’s not appropriate for every situation. The framework she presents is for those who genuinely want to do better.
​
The book is a useful starting point for offender or offended. And, as Ruttenberg points out, we’ve all been both, at one time or another.

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book you bought secondhand
Squeeze Me, by Carl Hiaasen

It's Hiaasen, so you know you're getting Florida hijinks, environmentalism, and just deserts for the characters, good and bad. The recurring character of Skink (an extremely eccentric ex-governor turned eco-terrorist) shows up to add to the mayhem.

The characters include a president and first lady who are never identified by name, but they call his Florida club the "Winter White House" and he uses a tanning bed to achieve a unique shade of orange, so feel free to hazard a guess. There's a vein of pessimism in this book, written during the previous administration, as Skink laments the environmental damage already done to Florida, with more to come. Hiaasen's always been snarky, and this book is very funny, but it has the feel of laughing in the face of despair.

​The heroine, Angie Armstrong, specializes in removal of unwanted wildlife, dead or alive. She's called to an exclusive club to remove a python, one with a lump that shows it's eaten a good-sized creature recently. When a small (and rather awful) woman is reported missing after a fundraiser for the president there, Angie puts two and two together. The club manager, trying to avoid bad publicity, hires a pair of delinquents to steal the snake's body from Angie's cold storage. 

Meanwhile, an undocumented (and extremely unlucky) young man named Diego gets arrested for the missing woman's murder. The president gets his followers worked up into a frothing rage about the supposed invasion of illegal immigrants, with "No more Diegos" becoming his signature catch-phrase. Angie is doing everything in her power to prove Diego's innocence, but how can she get anyone to believe it?

The climax, of course, involves Skink, large snakes, a tanning-bed disaster, and whole lot of Florida being Florida.

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A self-published book
Calico Thunder Rides Again, by T. A. Hernandez

Self-published books often get a bad rep. This one is well written, well edited, and beautifully designed.

Set in the Prohibition era, it's the story of a man trying to save his circus, which is deeply in debt to the mob. But this is a different, magical earth: the circus includes unicorns, griffins, and an aging dragon named Calico Thunder. One of the mob enforcers is a well-dressed ogre named Clarence. And Prohibition includes not only alcohol and drugs, but also certain types of magic.

Jake, the circus owner, retired from dragon riding after an injury. He's in love with Grace, the dragon's trainer (my favorite character). And saving the circus isn't just for the performers' sake: the mob has a sinister purpose in trying to wrest it away from Jake. 

I do feel like the book ended just a smidge too early: I would have liked a glimpse of the characters' futures after the tumultuous events at the end. But I love the way the book takes the magic of the circus, which already feels like its own world, and adds a whole other dimension of magic to it.

Romance is the most popular fiction genre, accounting for about a third of fiction purchases, but I didn’t know much about romance books until the last couple of years. I tried a few as a teenager, back in the era when publishers rigidly demanded that every story be “pushy rich white guy aggressively pursues beautiful white virgin until she surrenders.” (In fairness, my favorite genres — SF and fantasy — also churned out a lot of sexist nonsense in that era.)


I started checking modern romances out recently, partly because of my obsession with the Popsugar Reading Challenge, and partly because of finding some amazing writers on social media. And WOW. Romance books now have people of color, social issues, women with sex lives, explicit consent, condoms, people with ordinary jobs, hybrids with other genres (mystery/suspense/fantasy/etc), and — oh my heart — LGBTQ+ stories.


And in the current era, I completely get the appeal of happy endings, and of stories where the stakes are “will they kiss” and not “will the world be destroyed.” Here are some romances that won my heart.


Casey McQuiston. Each of her novels has a wonderfully over-the-top premise, a bisexual main character, at least one trans or nonbinary side character, and a lot of hilarious banter. My favorite, Red, White, and Royal Blue, is supposed to come out as a movie this year. In an alternate 2020 with no TFG and no COVID, Alex, the son of the first female president, falls for Henry, a closeted British prince. The story is funny, touching, witty, well plotted, and extremely horny.


One Last Stop is a lesbian romance about an accidental time traveler from the 70’s who’s stuck on the subway in NYC. No, seriously, and it totally works. Jane has also lost most of her memory, so August tries to bring it back with familiar music, smells and tastes, etc. And kissing — for, you know, research.


I Kissed Shara Wheeler is a young adult book set at a Christian school where Chloe (from a two-mom family) feels out of place. Shara, the principal’s daughter, is her picture-perfect rival for valedictorian. Shara kisses two guys and Chloe within 24 hours, then disappears, leaving a series of mysterious notes as clues to find her.


Courtney Milan is a fantastic Twitter follow: funny, thoughtful, and knowledgeable. Under her real name, Heidi Bond, she was an attorney who brought down a powerful judge in a harassment scandal. From there she took up writing romances because, she said, she needed stories about women winning.


Trade Me has an appealing premise. Tina, the daughter of struggling Chinese immigrants, is annoyed by an insensitive remark from her wealthy classmate, Blake. She tells him he wouldn’t last a day in her shoes — so he offers to trade homes and lives for a month.


Hold Me uses the “You’ve Got Mail” trope: Maria and Jay are falling for each other online, not realizing they’ve met in person and it didn’t go well. The twist: Maria is transgender, but refreshingly, that’s not the conflict between them — Jay is bi/pan and it’s not an issue to him, though it’s relevant in other parts of Maria’s life.


Talia Hibbert writes Black British heroines and relatable issues. She’s pretty prolific, but so far I’ve only read Get a Life, Chloe Brown. Chloe is a web designer creating a website for Red, an aspiring artist. The setup is familiar: they don’t get along at first, then playful insults turn into friendship and then more. Chloe’s been isolated by her struggle with chronic pain, and has trouble trusting that anyone will be there for her. Red has his own trust issues, having gotten out of a relationship with a woman who abused him (mostly emotionally, but at least once physically as well). Chloe’s sisters Dani and Eve appear in this book, and presumably Chloe returns the favor in their books.
​

Alexis Hall has written a lot of queer romances, and so far I’ve only gotten to one, Boyfriend Material. Luc, the son of a notorious rock star, has the tabloids trying to make a scandal out of anything he does. With his job threatened, he needs a fake boyfriend to make him look stable. Oliver, a respectable barrister, needs a fake boyfriend for his parents’ anniversary party (and I was suspicious of this detail long before Luc was). But will they fake break up before then?

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book with only text n the cover
Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger, by Soraya Chemaly

This book starts with a relatable anecdote: at preschool, Chemaly's daughter liked to build elaborate block towers - and one boy took delight in knocking them down. She tried every "nice" way to protect her creations: asking him politely, moving to another part of the classroom, physically putting herself between him and her tower. Even at that age, she'd internalized that she wasn't supposed to yell, destroy his playthings, or otherwise show anger. His destruction continued, and his parents did nothing to stop him. They apologetically made excuses: he "couldn't help himself" because he was "just such a boy." This continued until Chemaly broke the unwritten rule against disciplining other people's children (and by "disciplining," I mean a stern talking-to). After which, it turned out he could control himself just fine.

We live in a culture where a woman showing anger is is viewed as ridiculous,  a "bitch," or even "crazy." If she's a woman of color, her anger may also be seen as threatening as well. Women are taught from an early age to take care of other people's feelings, to finesse disagreements, to say no in a softened, roundabout way.

Suppressing anger comes at a price: it can lead to physical problems like high blood pressure, and mental health problems like depression and self-harm. As Chemaly details, there's rather a lot to be angry about, from sexual harassment to income inequality to the way men are allowed to interrupt women but not the reverse. And suppressing anger leaves the source of the anger unaddressed. 

In the final chapter, she talks about solutions. While she starts with individual actions (speaking up, letting go of people-pleasing), she doesn't stop there.  She talks about working with others to challenge sexist structures and make real change, at work, at home, and in the community. And then perhaps there will be less to get angry about.

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book about a divorce
A Doll's House, by Henrik Ibsen

The play was written in 1879, but in many ways it wouldn't have seemed out of place a century later. Torvald and Nora have a seemingly happy marriage, though it's a bit of a teeth-grinder how his "praise" of her is so condescending. He can't say enough about how child-like she is.

In fact, Nora is a shrewd businesswoman. When Torvald was ill a few years earlier, he refused to borrow money for an extended stay in a warmer climate, even though his life might be at stake. Nora borrowed the money, pretending it came from her dying father, and has been paying it back with small savings from the housekeeping money, and secretly hiring herself out for jobs such as copying documents. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that with a setup like that, the truth inevitably comes out.

It's a revelation to Torvald that he doesn't know her. And a bigger revelation to Nora that she doesn't know herself, and that they don't have a chance at a marriage until she does. As with Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, the slamming of a door is a sound that changes everything.

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book with a queer lead
Boyfriend Material, by Alexis Hall

This is a fun romance, the classic fake-dating trope with a gay twist. Luc is the estranged son of a notorious rock star, so the tabloids are eager to make a "scandal" out of anything Luc does. When warned that he's in danger of losing his job (at an obscure nonprofit for dung beetles), Luc needs a fake boyfriend to make himself look stable. A friend fixes him up with Oliver, a respectable barrister who needs a fake boyfriend for his parents' anniversary party. (I was suspicious of that last detail, long before Luc was.)

The book is very funny, with a large cast of quirky characters. The romance is a slow burn; it takes quite a while to get to the kissing, much less anything else. There's more than one scene of one or the other of them pleading not to "fake break up."

Luc has a disaster of a flat, zero impulse control, and massive daddy issues coming up when his father abruptly reappears in his life. Oliver has a job that he believes in, an exacting set of ethical standards for himself, and more parental issues than even Luc does.  There's a lot of Luc putting himself down, but I see why it had to be there: loving Oliver teaches Luc to love himself. They're both slow to realize that it works the other way around as well.

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A book about an athlete or sport
Roll Red Roll: Rape, Power and Football in the American Heartland, by Nancy Schwartzman with Nora Zelevansky

Probably not what the Popsugar folks had in mind for this category, but the story of this famous crime is inseparable from football and the way even high school players are treated as celebrities in their communities.

In 2012, a teenage girl either got drunk or was roofied at a party attended by multiple high school football players in Steubenville, Ohio. At least two of the players sexually assaulted the unconscious girl, while others shared photos and videos, and a classmate posted a "comedy routine" about it on YouTube. They gained national notoriety, first because blogger Alex Goddard tracked down their social media posts, and then a hacker from Anonymous published their texts - including ones where they reassured each other that their coach would protect them.

Ma'lik Richmond served a year for the assault; Trent Mays served two, for the assault and distributing the pictures. The other boys avoided prosecution in exchange for their testimony. Several adults were eventually charged: a school employee who'd tampered with evidence, the school superintendent who failed to report, and a principal involved in covering up another possible rape involving Trent Mays. All got charges dropped or trivial sentences: probation, fines, and/or community service at a women's crisis organization. The adult who got the longest sentence (2 years) was the hacker who accessed the perpetrators' texts.

Schwartzman spent 4 years getting to know Steubenville while making a documentary about the crime. In the book, she makes connections with rape culture, how victims are expected to keep quiet about it, and how everyone is against rape until the rapist is their friend, family member, or favorite celebrity. In this economically depressed Midwestern town with little to cheer about, football players were treated as heroes. The fact that so many school employees were willing to cover up sexual assault - for the sake of winning football games - is certainly jarring. A recurring theme in her interviews with Steubenville residents was that they were upset with anyone making Steubenville look bad - anger aimed at the press, and sometimes the victim, but not necessarily at the assailants and their enablers.

Among the most memorable images: a rally where women talked about their own experiences with abuse and sexual assault, some telling their stories for the first time. As with the later #MeToo movement, it raised hopes that societal change was possible. But sexism is so entrenched that even women sometimes overlook it, as when two female journalists at the boys' sentencing empathized with these "promising young men" whose lives were supposedly now ruined. They needn't have worried: Ma'lik Richmond returned to the football team at the same high school after serving his sentence; Trent Mays went on to play football in college. ​

Popsugar Reading Challenge category: A romance with a fat lead
Get a Life, Chloe Brown, by Talia Hibbert

Chloe is a well-off web designer who'd become somewhat isolated because of a painful chronic illness. Red is her building superintendent, with dreams of being an artist. They get off on the wrong foot, but Red needs someone to help him create a website for his paintings, and Chloe needs help with the "get a life" list she made for herself after a near-death experience.

The playful insults and banter are part of what makes the book shine. Hibbert has a real gift for dialogue. The tropes are familiar (enemies to lovers, platonically sharing a bed), but well deployed.  Chloe's fibromyalgia isn't downplayed, and it isn't going to get a miraculous cure; Chloe gets to have a full life, including a satisfying sex life, while managing chronic pain and exhaustion.

I'll admit to a dislike for the trope where someone overhears a partial conversation, misinterprets it, and it leads to an angry breakup. At least in this case, the overreaction makes sense: Red's last relationship was with an abusive woman who constantly belittled him. But I knew what the misinterpretation would be from the moment I saw Chloe's list.

As a teen, I read a few very stereotypical romances, and quickly became bored with stories of domineering men and the passive women who loved them. All these years later, I'm glad I tried romances again, and discovered there's now room for all kinds of love stories, with believable issues, men I'd actually enjoy meeting, and heroines who've learned to get a life.