Book Reviews: Adina Bernstein’s + Mine + Podcast

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1bKmdGi98yHTSe70pLcbyf?si=45df07edfe094b1b

Subscribe, listen to, and share Happiness Between Tails Podcast on most any platform; from Spotify and Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts and Breaker, to Pocket Casts and RadioPublic and Castbox, plus many more and an RSS feed. The full list of 50+ places is H-E-R-E.

Ever ponder what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes? Raise your hand if you’re even remotely creative and wonder whether you’re making good use of your creativity. My hand is definitely up on both counts, as I work to become more compassionate and seek representation for my novels. Luckily, there are books for both topics. Before I share about my latest reading…

Hurrah! It’s National Novel Writing Month! Check out the Los Angeles County Library system’s website to see how its celebrating indy authors and books. They’ve got gobs of resources, including contests, classes, and formatting software.

Now for my book reviews for Goodreads and Amazon…

Surely Elliot Page’s print version of his autobiographical “Pageboy” is riveting, but he does such a completely amazing job reading it aloud that I can’t imagine it any other way. His account about how, from early on, he felt more male than female, is as personal as one might imagine. His lessons about gender, however, are universal.

It took navigating childhood, parents, celebrity, and life in general to arrive where he could fully embrace his genuine self. He describes how we’re conditioned from the time we’re born. The same as out and out aggression hurts us, micro-agressions work so subliminally that they can be impossible to see and to overcome.

As a cisgender heterosexual woman, Elliot’s experiences brought to mind conversations I’ve had with my husband. If someone were to attack my honey or any of his loved ones, he’d have absolutely no problem with lashing out to the extent of murder. That’s how he was raised. Because I was raised to be “nice” above all else, I seriously doubt I’d be able to do anything better than run. That’s if I didn’t simply freeze. And that’s with me fully aware that I should fight.

Before I married, the men I dated were chosen foremost by whether they might harm me. Especially during my 20s, I found that if I didn’t have a boyfriend, quite a few men regarded me as an open target, one who they had no problem needling regardless of how obnoxious they became. Sadly, movies portray men who persist as love-struck, rather than as the stalkers they often are. I could go on and on about the many ways society is shaped by our early gender messages.

Elliot helps us regard others and ourselves with more compassion, something the world needs more of.

“And Then We Grew Up: On Creativity, Potential, and the Imperfect Art of Adulthood” is Rachel Friedman’s meditation on creativity, equal parts her own experiences, those of others, and society’s evolving relationship to it.

Key take aways for me were that creative careers are better regarded as checker boards than ladders and that happy creatives honor their own needs.

This isn’t a self-help book, though it did help me see creativity more sanely. Jennifer Rubins provides a great audiobook narration.

Writer/blogger Adina Bernstein is a native New Yorker whose work is featured at Medium, MovieBabble, Reedsy, and more. Describing her passion for writing, she quotes Charlotte Bronte; “I write because I can’t help it.”

For more of her writing and to contact her, check out her blog and her portfolio.

Here what Adina’s reading…

A Hundred Other Girls: Book Review by Adina Bernstein

It has been said that you should never meet your heroes. They will likely disappoint you.

Iman Hariri-Kia’s debut novel, A Hundred Other Girls, was published last year. Noora is a twenty something freelance writer who lives in New York City, sleeps on her sister’s couch and earns her keep by tutoring the children of the 1%. Her bible for the last ten years or so is the fashion magazine Vinyl. When Noora is hired as the assistant to the magazine’s legendary editor in chief, Loretta James, she thinks that she has won the employment jackpot.

As awe inspiring as she is by reputation, Loretta is entirely different in person. She is unpredictable, well behind the times when it comes to technology, and trying desperately to hold onto the media as she knew it to be. The line between Noora’s work/life balance is blurred, and she is often tasked trying to impede the goals of Jade Aki, Vinyl’s prodigy digital director. 

Her work life becomes even more messy with a crush on the IT guy and internal war between the print and digital team, whose attempt to be woke is failing miserably. Caught in the middle of this hurricane, Noora is being pulled in all directions and must decide where she wants her career to go.

I truly enjoyed this book. It is best described as the Gen Z version of The Devil Wear Prada. Though Loretta is not exactly Miranda Priestly and Noora is not exactly Andy Sachs, the parallels (and the meta joke in the text itself) are hard to ignore. Noora is a great protagonist, her arc over the course of the story was easy to get into. The author weaves Noora’s Iranian American heritage into the character, giving her literary flavors that Andy Sachs did not have. 

Do I recommend it?

Absolutely.

What are you reading?