The heart wants what the heart wants, and our hearts want books.

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We aren’t always super feminist all the time, but somedays, like this one, we are, mostly on accident.  Dear readers, please consider this your official invitation to join us for another Virtual Book Club on Friday, September 17 at 7:30 p.m. CST to discuss Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale  (currently available for FREE through KindleUnlimited) and its follow up The Testaments.  We aren’t planning to get into the show, even though Ashley is caught up, so don’t feel like you need to watch that too, just read the books, and prepare to get more in touch with your inner feminist.

Sarah Smarsh is a journalist by trade and education. She has been published in such periodicals as The New York Times, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Harper’s among numerous others.  Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth, her first book, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2018. She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2020. In previous iterations of Sarah’s career, she was a Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and former writing professor. She frequently speaks and commentates on economic inequality while she lives and writes in Kansas. 

Smarsh is, undeniably, a woman I would consider my people. This was the first bit of her writing that I read, but I heard her speak on Dolly Parton’s America Podcast when I listened to it as it was released in late 2019. When I saw that Smarsh was releasing her 2017 series of articles about Dolly Parton which were first published in No Depression magazine I…had to wait for the dang book to cycle through a bajillion other people’s holds so that I could finally read it – because I hadn’t recommended it in time to beat the holds line. A line from the foreword really explains the cultural zeitgeist of the time in which they were written: “The moment in which the writing emerged – outlined just before the first Women’s March, completed just before the mainstream explosion of the #MeToo movement- is palpable in these pages.” It’s 205 quick pages of nonfiction about everyone’s favorite Tennessean. If you don’t think that Dolly Parton is EVERYONE’S favorite Tennessean, I don’t know if we’re living on the same planet. I just fell in love with Dolly a little bit more with every word I read.

She Come By It Natural is a tale of working class women’s feminism, even if they don’t call it that. “There is, then, intellectual knowledge—the stuff of research studies and think pieces—and there is experiential knowing. Both are important, and women from all backgrounds might possess both. But we rarely exalt the knowing, which is the only kind of feminism many working women have.” I have 45 more highlights just like this where Smarsh cuts me to the core of my college-educated, white woman’s privilege. Some of them make me laugh, some make me cry tears of rage, and others had me pumping my fist in the air in solidarity with both Parton’s life story and Smarsh’s commentary upon it. 

I think She Come By It Natural should be required reading for anyone wanting to participate in any cultural and political discussions about feminism in America. Any reader can learn new ways to understand how feminism has changed – and changed during – the career of such a household name as Dolly Parton. It’s a five star read for fabulous non-fiction writing that kept me engaged and wanting more. Smarsh will remain on my radar for a long time to come, and I’ll probably go deep dive more of Dolly’s life and music in the near future. Dolly is the kind of godmother I want to be to my niece as she has been to Miley Cyrus, loving and supportive and accepting in everything she does.

Dolly for President.

~Ashley

I love it when a plan comes together.  Not my week, but Heart.Wants.Books plan of reading and discussing She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs by Sarah Smarsh.  As a Nashville native, I grew up visiting my Nashville native grandparents and watching, not Porter Wagoner’s show, but Lawrence Welk’s, on reruns of course, but watching nonetheless.  We also went to Opryland regularly, and my mom and grandparents even have a couple of stories of interacting with Carl and Dolly they like to tell, so I was very excited to read this take on Dolly and her life and inspiration, and to learn more than I’ve ever known about how she got her start.  

Oh dear readers, I’m not even sure what I expected from this book, but Smarsh hit it out of the park with She Come By It Natural.  It is a discussion of why country music is still a staple in the American music scene and should be even bigger than it is.  But it is also an ode to Dolly Parton as a storyteller, a philanthropist, and a genuinely amazing human being.  Smarsh clearly shows how Dolly is one of the few that made it out – out of poverty, out of the small town, and out of the shadow of men.  Others didn’t make it all the way out, but Dolly’s songs are an inspiration and an example.  I didn’t realize how dark 9 to 5 was when I first saw it as a child, but Smarsh is right, it is.  However, as a child, it was an inspiration to fight to be treated like a person, regardless of my position and what others thought of me and the place they thought was mine.  

If you don’t understand why Dolly Parton is everyone’s favorite Tennessean, Smarsh explains that too, but there’s more!  In this book, Smarsh talks about the Smoky Mountains burning and people commenting that Dolly would save the region.  If you weren’t in Tennessee when that happened, maybe you don’t believe that really happened, but it did, both people saying that and her coming to the rescue.  Dolly Parton created Dollywood to bring jobs and tourists to Sevier County, her home, and it is still a destination with even more jobs and tourist opportunities built around it.  Dolly developed the now international Imagination Library with the goal of putting age-appropriate books in the hands of pre-school children in Sevier County (however, the funding has become complex for this, and I’m happy to chat if you’re interested – DM me).  And yes friends, when the pandemic hit, she gave generously to support Vanderbilt University’s vaccine research.  I wish I could find it now, but a year or so ago, the vaccine efforts were listed as sponsored by a handful of giant companies, and one Dolly Parton.  

So yes friends, if Dolly Parton runs for president, governor, or just about anything on my ballot, she’s VERY likely to get my vote, and I’ll most definitely support her if she gets elected.  I would probably even use my college-educated, white woman’s privilege to work for her campaign, and gladly do so in honor of the women who don’t share in that privilege and rely on others like Queen Dolly to inspire them to keep putting one foot in front of the other.  

In case it isn’t clear, I also give Sarah Smarsh’s She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs an emphatic five stars.  I’m super interested in her first book, Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth and also Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business and Dolly Parton, Songwriter, Storyteller: My Life in Lyrics both by Dolly Parton.  I knew I loved Dolly, but now I have many more reasons, and I’m guessing each subsequent book will lead to many, many more.

What non-political person would you hands-down support in a bid for public office, and why?

~Nikki

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Welcome to confession time dear readers, this may be yet another month that I don’t finish my book for Virtual Book Club.  But does it count if it’s the second time this year that I’m reading  A Court of Silver Flames?  I say no!  Finish, don’t finish, it’s all good as long as you’re open for spoilers AND  SIGN UP HERE to join us on Friday, July 16 at 7:30 pm CST for More Maas at virtual book club when we’ll discuss all things Nesta and Cassian!

I think I first heard of Tristan Strong when one of my people picked up one of the series off the new books shelf in our local library.  I saw the “Rick Riordan Presents” and immediately knew it would be a quality read and then did not concern myself until it was time to go to the library again and Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia was deemed “done” and the bookmark (aptly called, in this case, a quitter strip) was removed.  I remember wondering why anything Rick Riordan was presenting was returned DNF instead of well-loved, and reading the jacket copy and wondering some more.  Like AA (Aunt Ashley), my people LOVE mythology.  They have consumed their older cousin’s handed down copies of many a Rick Riordan book, they have gotten the subsequent titles from the library, they love their dad’s old copy of Favorite Greek Myths retold by Mary Pope Osborne, and they’ve even gotten into such series as The Goddess Girls.  So, I say with confidence, they will be revisiting Tristan and his story, and I will use their granny’s (iron) bottle tree (whose “purpose” I did know, but history I did not) to my advantage.

Tristan Strong is a boy from Chicago, who is going to spend the summer on his fraternal grandparents’ farm in Alabama.  He’s going to work to distract himself from losing his first boxing match a few days ago, and his best friend in a bus crash during the winter.  He has one item of his best friend’s – his journal where they wrote stories together – and on Tristan’s first night in Alabama, Gum Baby (yes, that Gum Baby) comes to steal it from Tristan.  Chaos, drama, action, and a generally wild ride ensue.  We meet an assortment of characters from African and African American mythology including John Henry, Brer Fox, Brer Rabbit, Anansi, High John, and more as Tristan and Gum Baby travel through their mythological world on a quest to save us all.  

Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky has action, adventure, mystery, and character development, and I’m really interested to know what happens in the next installment of Tristan’s story.  While some of the characters and their stories were familiar to me, High John’s was not, and there were some other characters whose stories I will be researching more on my own.  Just as with Riordan’s books based on Egytptian and Norse mythology, I’m not as familiar with the inspiration for Kwame Mbalia’s debut middle-grade novel and it was a joy to learn from him through his lyrical prose.  Mbalia also peppers in wisdom, like a subtle mic drop such as:

“Everybody has a story, Nana used to say when I was younger. Listen to it, and they’ll be friendly. Engage with it, and they’ll be your friend.” 

And

“it was my job to carry the stories of the land to its people. All the stories. If we ignored the past, how would we learn from it?”  

Would that we could all internalize these ideas, and how special that there is an action series, based in African and Black mythology, written by a Black man, with a Black boy as the titular character!  We have made it no secret that Ashley and I tend to read white women authors and we are trying to include more men and Black, Indiginous, and People of Color in the authors who speak into our lives.  Mbalia is a new and welcome voice, and I’m very interested in what else he has to say.

While I am giving Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky what feels like only three stars, I’m hesitant to do so and want to explain.  This book is written for middle graders, and while I enjoyed it, I found the action a lot for me, for now.  I think a reader who likes more action will love this book, and I think I’d have enjoyed it more another time.  Finding the right book at the right time is a very real thing and has definitely contributed to my love of some of my all-time favorites.  If you feel like this book is potentially for you or your people and my rating is giving you pause, don’t let it.  It’s definitely me, not the book, and I’ve already put the rest of the series on my TBR and am anxiously awaiting Tristan Strong Keeps Punching (#3) which is due out in October.  I may wait until then to put the series back in front of my people, because I think they will love them, and learn a lot of things from Tristan and Mbalia.

What have you read, paused, and loved later because the timing wasn’t right?

~Nikki 

I think Kwame Mbalia and I could be friends In Real Life. Why? Because his personal bio ends with this stellar closing statement: “A Howard University graduate and a Midwesterner now in North Carolina, he survives on Dad jokes and Cheezits.” I, and the cats at my house, love some CheezIts. I also love a good pun and if it’s so terribly corny to be considered a Dad Joke that’s a-ok with me. Even better than his closing sentence is the opener: “Kwame is a husband, father, writer, a New York Times bestselling author, and a former pharmaceutical metrologist in that order.” His published works include the Tristan Strong series, Last Gate of the Emperor co-written with Prince Joel Makonnen, and the anthology he edited and which releases in August, Black Boy Joy. I am excited about this title for several reasons, most of which are found in this part of the marketing copy: “From seventeen acclaimed Black male and non-binary authors comes a vibrant collection of stories, comics, and poems about the power of joy and the wonders of Black boyhood.” This is why Nikki and I read books about and books by authors who are different than we are, to understand all the ways humanity can feel joy and wonder at the world we live in. The part that excites me about this title that isn’t included in that sentence is the list of authors which includes Kwame Mbalia and Lamar Giles whose book Not So Pure and Simple we discussed in February for Black History Month.

Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky is a rollicking non-stop adventure and I truly enjoyed the mixture of page turning action with short pauses for character development. Tristan has to handle lots of heavy emotions that adults have trouble working through, especially regarding the memory of his best friend Eddie. Tristan brings up the way his therapist helped him discuss Eddie’s death (not a spoiler, it’s in the first chapter!) which helps normalize the fact that all people need help working through their own emotions to better themselves and their mental health. Tristan spends the whole book trying to figure out how to  balance doing what is expected of him, doing what he feels he wants or needs to do, and doing what he physically and emotionally CAN do. It’s not stated in the book in this way, but you can feel his internal struggle. That’s what makes a great, relatable character. Additionally, I related to Tristan’s need to punch things to work out his inner struggles. I’m a big fan of punching a bag for stress relief (and so are Nesta and Cassian so we’ll definitely be discussing this concept TOMORROW at Virtual Book Club!).

I, like Nikki, am going to give Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky three stars, It should probably be 3.5, I’m having trouble justifying the rounding up to 4 stars as is my usual MO. My biggest struggle, and the reason I read books like this, is I didn’t come into the book with a solid knowledge base of the mythology. The following books in the series will be an easier read for me because I’ll have the knowledge gained after reading the first book! I definitely want to see where Tristan’s adventures take him.

Is there a character you relate to based on the way they work out their emotions while they workout?

~Ashley

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What pairs well with a Little Women retelling?  A calm tale of a Christmas after the war, and the story of a passionate woman finding her own path amidst all the pressures of family!  Am I talking about Meg & Jo and Beth & Amy or A Court of Frost and Starlight and A Court of Silver Flames?  Both /and, except if it’s the former two, we’ll need a different retelling to pair with them.  Keep reading to enjoy our review of Beth and Amy, and SIGN UP HERE to join us on Friday, July 16 at 7:30 pm CST for More Maas at virtual book club when we’ll discuss all things Nesta and Cassian!

Again, Virginia Kantra, RITA Award Winning Author of more than 30 novels, has forced me to lack respect for tomorrow. This girl, she read the entire book in one day, really one sitting, but who’s marking my time card except for me? No one. I’m my own boss except when it comes to my Reading Life and these authors, well, they are demanding bosses. If you want to know more about Kantra, please click over to our December 2020 post about Meg & Jo where you can get all the important deets about the demanding boss who kept me up until 2:30am on Monday. Thank goodness I was on vacation.

You know what happened in Beth & Amy? WE GOT WHAT WE ASKED FOR IN THE Meg & Jo POST!

That’s an entire paragraph by itself because, dearest readers, Nikki and I were both so excited about this book and had some pretty high expectations stated in the December post. We wanted: 1) More Marmee 2) Aunt Phee backstory 3) laugh out loud moments and 4) solid, growth-oriented male characters. Ask and ye shall receive! But, before I discuss the highlights of these four points, I want to mention that just as Meg & Jo is set during the holidays and reading the book in the winter is appropriate and comforting, Beth & Amy is set in the spring and summer approximately 2.5 years after the events in Meg & Jo. It’s just so good to read books set in the same season that you as the reader are experiencing. A summer read can be many things, but set in summer is one of the best things in my opinion.

I love Amy as a character more and more with every retelling I watch and read. She was the star of this book, trying to figure out her future, both of her blossoming handbag business and her relationship with Trey – Theodore James Laurence III, while being true to herself. She stood up for herself, asked for what she needed, both from Aunt Phee and Trey, and supported her family members and childhood friends with kindness, love, and sass. So much sass. We reconnect with the sisters at Jo and Eric’s wedding and Amy is determined not to be a cliche and engage in Drunken Wedding Sex. The amount of times I read that phrase was truly miraculous, especially when it was applied to Marmee (and her separated husband, Ashton!) the morning after the wedding. She gets to be the young, cool aunt to all her niblings, especially Eric’s middle son Alec who spent a lot of time with Amy helping Aunt Phee downsize from the big house to the carriage house. During that process, we find out who took Aunt Phee to prom with a pink corsage! Quelle Surprise!

Now, let’s discuss those solid, growth-oriented males for a minute. My favorite one, oh that’s gotta be Dan, Marmee’s hired hand on the goat farm. He’s a quiet, bearded veteran who listens and pays attention to Beth as she figures out her life and problems, both personal and professional. My second favorite male was Ashton, because not only does he try to reconnect with his estranged wife, he also steps up in his relationship with Beth. I’m always, always here for Eric and John, but they’re only mentioned a few times as supporting characters in this book. Trey, he grows as a character and in my heart, too. It’s not my favorite growth process, but he figures out, with SO MUCH help from Amy, who he needs to be professionally and in his personal relationships, bless his heart. Kantra gave me a favorite moment of the book with the men at the wedding that I could just see as if it was happening:  

John and Trey exchanged glances. No one would ever mistake them for brothers. But something in the way they stood, assessing the newcomer [Beth’s boyfriend Colt], linked them together and marked them as family. The artist in me admired the picture they made: Eric, big and dark, bearded and tattooed; Trey, lean and golden, elegant in Armani; solid John, with his blond cowlick and appealing dad bod.

I have been having an excellent Summer Reading Life this year. Beth & Amy is another five-star book filled with the types of people you want to fill your reading life and real life. I have been waiting to read it since my pre-ordered kindle copy automatically downloaded in May, but I was patient for Nikki to get it from the library. I’m glad I waited. It was just what I needed.

~Ashley

Ashley talked about loving Amy more with every new movie and retelling and I co-sign that.  When we had our Heart.Wants.Books outing to see the new Little Women movie way back in February 2020 (you know, in the before times), I LOVED the way Amy’s character was FINALLY dimensional.  It was such a delight to watch Meg be the flat character instead (yes, I said it).  I’ve since listened to a couple of podcasts talk about this film adaptation and we are all in agreement – Amy’s character isn’t really developed in the book, but Flo Pugh + Greta Gerwig and, separately, Virginia Kantra make her come alive (more Virginia Kantra, but you’ll almost always find me on team books are superior to movies). 

All this is to be expected because in Meg & Jo we had the elder two sisters in alternating POV, and in Beth & Amy we have the younger two.  We get a glimpse at just how much these two (perhaps in contrast, or perhaps not with Alcott’s sisters) have grown up in their sisters’ shadows and have struggled to be their own people in the midst of that.  And really, how could they not?  Meg and Jo grew up in Marmee and Ashton’s shadow, then Beth and Amy grew up in the shadows of them all.  All the daughters, and Ashton, go away to find themselves, and then, end up coming home to finish the work.  It seems like a cliché Hallmark movie, but there’s some truth in it too for a lot of people.  Some of us have to come to grips with our monsters in order to more fully be our authentic selves, and for many those monsters were a big part of growing up, so it makes sense that we have to face them at home, and also that we’re more prepared to do so among the people who push us and support us. 

Like several other fantastic books I adore, Beth & Amy gives you a glorious story on the surface, but there are so many layers to dig into if the reader is interested, or just can’t look away.  There’s family of origin issues, the trauma of war, the trauma of being left behind, struggles to fit in, and the more serious issues of eating disorders and how to acknowledge and address privilege gained from the enslaved labor of others. This isn’t a book of social justice issues though, it’s a book of life, family, and coming of age times two. 

I’m giving Beth & Amy an emphatic four stars for this warm hug of a book (legit what I texted Ashley when I finished).  I’m not scoring it higher because it needs more epilogue because I need more of Dan’s story. [Ashley here: I concur, we need more Dan.]  He doesn’t have a counterpart in the original, but I’m here for him and what he’s got going on in this title.  He’s quietly doing his work, supporting others in doing theirs by just being present and holding space, and that is the best gift of all! 

What is a layered book that you adore?

~Nikki

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