The Unapologetic Fat Girl's Guide to Exercise and Other Incendiary Acts by Hanne Blank

The Unapologetic Fat Girl's Guide to Exercise and Other Incendiary Acts by Hanne Blank
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Hanne Blank is someone whose writing I have enjoyed for almost a decade now. She appeared with some regularity on the LiveJournal blogs of other authors I read regularly, and her confidence and intellect were readily apparent. I started following her there at the mostly-defunct LJ, and I have made it a point to read her books at they come out.

This book was one in which I was particularly interested, since Blank's blog entry from back-in-the-day about being a fat girl on a bicycle was particularly helpful. Her tone is both informative and protective throughout this novel, encouraging the new fat-lady exerciser to take that same approach to her body-practice. Have the facts, and never apologize for the way you have a body in this moment. You might lose weight. You might not. Your body might change shape in ways you don't like, but the practice itself is still a net-good because it will improve your health.

There's information in here that's helpful for the never-active and for the newly active, as well as for people who have already made meaningful movement a part of their lives. You don't even have to be overweight to find this warm, cheery book a good resource, but overweight people will find it especially informative. The Resource section in the back of the book alone is worth the cover price!

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Keeping the Castle

Keeping the Castle by Patrice Kindl
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Think of this book as Jane Austen-training wheels. It's similar, both thematically and storywise, with slightly less demanding language than the classics.

I heard about this on NPR, and their review captures it better than I ever could:

"Patrice Kindl ... has made her name writing for teens," Pearl says, "but this is the kind of book that has great crossover appeal to adults — especially adults who love Jane Austen. This is a young woman who is ... holding her family together. She has two stepsisters who are kind of wicked, her mother is pretty ineffectual, and they live in a very crumbling castle. ... And the next castle over, a new family comes to live there, and they have two non-married young men of just the right age. And, of course, one is dashing and funny and handsome, and the other is a little bit snarky and not someone you would want to be interested in....

"[Jane Austen] made it look so easy, and it's very hard to get that exact wryness and humor and these little tart observations that she makes in Pride and Prejudice. ... It isn't Jane Austen, but it's one of the closest things to Jane Austen that I've read."

I really, really enjoyed it: by the last fifty pages, I was very reluctant to put it down. I'm wavering between an four and a five for this. It skillfully combines little homages to lots of different books (Austen, I Capture the Castle) into one sweet confection of a story.

ETA: A friend asked me if I really thought that Austen's language is demanding, and so I should clarify that I think Austen is pretty accessible, as classics go, but Keeping the Castle is written in a much more modern vernacular, comparatively.

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"American Savage" by Dan Savage

American Savage: Insights, Slights, and Fights on Faith, Sex, Love, and Politics by Dan Savage
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Worth the read just for Bigot Christmas, though that's not the only good essay in this collection. Dan Savage is not without his flaws, but being boring certainly isn't one of them.


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 One of the most amazing things about Savage as a writer is that he can be as crude as can be in one essay, then leave you wondering where you left the damn tissues in the next one. Savage brought me to tears several times in the essay about his mother, and as a long-time reader of his column and podcast subscriber, I knew most of these stories already. The love and grief when he writes about her death are real, and I think it's unlikely that most people could keep a dry eye. I've read most of his books, and they are alternately inspiring, educational, filthy, and hilarious. Not bad at all, for your time.