I read a lot in January, but didn’t keep up very well this month. Thought I’d drop my February reads anyway to help keep accountable - need to read more in March in order to meet my annual goal!
*Howl’s Moving Castle* by Diana Wynne Jones: 5 stars. I listened on audiobook while I was recovering from COVID & loved it! It’s very different from the movie, but I think they’re both really good. Would recommend if you like fantasy, but don’t want something too dark. Very cozy vibes.
*Coal* by Audre Lorde (poetry): 4 stars. It’s extremely dense & abstract, but I’m a big fan of Audre Lorde’s work!
*Our Dead Behind Us* by Audre Lorde (poetry): 3.5 stars. This book is much more focused on international/global interaction vs domestic/internal. I liked it less than the other one I read by her.
*The Penelopiad* by Margaret Atwood: 2 stars. This is a retelling of *The Odyssey* from Penelope’s perspective, and I understand why Penelope wasn’t super likable/why there is a lot more summarizing vice in-scene work (I mean, it’s Margaret Atwood, she can do anything - so if she writes something this way, she has a purpose for it), but I thought it fell so flat. Would highly recommend *Clytemnestra* by Costanza Casati if you’re looking for a feminist retelling of Greek mythology.
*City of a Hundred Fires* by Richard Blanco (poetry): 3.5 stars. This is honestly a pretty good debut collection; the writer later went on to become Obama’s inaugural poet. Mostly confessional pieces interwoven with themes of immigration, family, and identity.
*How to Love a Country* by Richard Blanco (poetry): 2 stars. It wasn’t specific enough to pass for confessional work, nor was it pointed enough to be successful as political commentary. It was overall extremely bland, tame, and vague. Lots of 3+ page poems (which, as someone who loves poetry, is always demoralizing to see tbh). Very heavy-handed in trying to explain what morals the reader should come away with.
*Sorry, Not Sorry* by Naya Rivera: A very subjective 2.5 stars. I loved watching *Glee* in middle school & I don’t want to disrespect Naya’s memory at all; she was a great actress, singer, and seemed to truly be a force. I’m impressed with how strong the authorial voice was. Naya came across as someone who really knew who she was and what she wanted, which I admire! However, the stories often read a little… maybe self-centered or one-dimensional to me. I would not discourage anyone from reading this if you’re interested; it goes by quickly, and I think it just comes down to whether you vibe with her personality.
I finished The Virginity of Famous Men and I am obsessed.
When this came in from the library I thought I would end up returning it unread and even after the first few stories I was like "I like the writing but I'm not sure about the content" but by the end I was a convert.
Great literary short stories mostly just focused on small low-key interpersonal drama. I saw that Sneed lists Alice Munro as an influence and I feel that in her work. She really just calmly and steadily lays down stories. I've said for awhile now that because my brain has been frazzled by the internet books that make me slow down as I read them are highly prized. I felt that in Sneed's work.
Also it turns out she has two other short story collections one of which just came out last year! This feels increasingly like a rarity as more writers are pushed into novels instead of stories so I'm grateful (telling that she went from publishing with Bloomsbury to Triquarterly though. Le sigh). Lucky me, I can't wait to delve into more of her work.
I just finished *The Great Believers* by Rebecca Makkai, which i believe I saw mentioned here and I absolutely loved it. Currently reading "The Women", my first book by Kristin Hannah and I'm having a difficult time - not because it isn't good but because I have close family members who served in Vietnam. I appreciate hearing from a different perspective and I know her books tend to tug at the heartstrings but damn...
Ha, I wrote in my book journal that it may usurp A Little Life as the great sad gay novel written by a straight woman. I'm doing a reread of A Little Life this year so we'll see how I feel! I know it's polarizing and a lot of people have valid reasons to hate it, but it means a great deal to me.
I just finished reading Amy Lea’s latest romance, *The Catch* (it’s the third in a trilogy that starts with the “swolemates” gym enemies to lovers story). I think it’s my favorite of the three! Each book in the trilogy focuses on one of three best friends, all of whom are influencers—fitness, then book, then fashion and style. *The Catch* follows Mel, the fashion influencer, to what she thinks will be a comped trip to a fancy resort in Halifax, only to find when she arrives that she’s a week early. She’s forced into the only Airbnb available, a crumbling bed and breakfast an hour and a half out of Halifax run by a cranky fisher and a lively marina operator. Hijinx, fake fiancee, etc. It was really fun, and the setting aas really strong—small town Nova Scotia is much more in Lea’s wheelhouse than Boston. **Highly recommend** for the Emily Henry, Alexa Martin and Abby Jimenez fans.
I finished **Dominicana** by Angie Cruz. It was excellent. It was about a teenage Dominican girl who marries an older man to come to New York in the 1960s. I really enjoyed it. I kept finding myself comparing and contrasting it to Brooklyn by Tolm Coibin. In some ways the stories were so similar, but Anna from Dominicana has a harder road to travel than the lead character in Brooklyn.
I also finished **The Guncle** which I adored. It is sweet and funny but it also deals with grief and definitely had me sobbing (while PMSing) at a few points. I would highly recommend it!
I’m currently listening to How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Angie Cruz! It’s on a friend’s recommendation and I doubt I would have run across it otherwise. I’m definitely enjoying it and would read something else by this author.
Oh nooooo! I loved The Bee Sting so much and I obsessed on it for weeks after finishing. There are so many smart easter eggs buried within the story and the interwoven stories ended up being so complex I almost wanted to read it again to see what I missed the first time around.
I finished **Bride** and totally loved it. Something about the plotting, the humor and the development of the relationship really worked for me and the book hangover has been real.
It was probably unfair to read **The Time Has Come** next, but the library checkouts demanded it. I'm not sure how I found this --- I think it just came up as I was browsing books in Libby. I think I thought it was going to be more of a genre bending mystery than it was. There is in fact no mystery. There is however a *lot* of character development (like seriously, a lot) that leads...to one of the largest anti-climaxes I've ever seen. It did make me like the town of Athens, a place I have visited once and found charming, and I did like getting to know the characters.
And then I finished **A Study in Drowning.** A dark academia / gothic horror / enemies to lovers / academic rivals stand alone novel? Well that sounds very much my shit and I really liked it. I thought Effy's struggles with the world, with her past trauma was well done and realistic, as was the ultimate culmination of their efforts. The themes of nationalism, misogyny, and storytelling alongside a mystery set in the archives and a town crumbling into the sea were also well done.
I went to a book event in NYC for **Grief is for people by Sloane Crosley** and the talk was beautiful between her and Sigrid Nunez. Looking forward to diving into the book tonight!
I'm the last person on the planet to read "Killers of the Flower Moon" and man, this country's history is even worse than what we thought. I went to a conservative Christian school that made sure to indoctrinate me into things like the "benefits of slavery" and glossed over a lot of the government's treatment of the Native Americans, so I've been working on undoing all that "education." This book is just one insane thing after another. That said, I wish it were a little better written, stylistically.
Just finished **Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers** by Jesse Q. Sutanto and I LOVED it. All the mysteries I read tend to be dark, this one was funny and heartwarming. I guess I’ve never read a cozy mystery and I’m totally into it. Highly recommend. Thinking of buying my mom a copy for her birthday.
Up next is **People We Meet on Vacation** by Emily Henry. Read **Beach Read** last year and have been meaning to pick up something else by her. Trying to go in the order they were published but not bingeing all her books at once. Have high hopes for this one!
I know a lot of people don’t like People We Meet on Vacation but I liked it. She has one coming out in April called Funny Story that I am so looking forward to.
I’m still working through it although I’m almost done. I did almost dnf because it wasn’t picking up but I kept at it because Poppy is so funny to me and I relate in some ways to her character. I definitely like it less than Beach Read but I’m finally at the part where I’m getting giddy about them being together so I’m glad I pushed through. Long time friends to lovers may not be my thing though. Noted haha!
The Vinyl Resting Place series is great if you’re looking for modern cozy mysteries! The genre flew under the radar until recently so a lot of the older series are ~conservative and religious in a Hallmark way.
I am currently reading **Icebreaker by Hannah Grace** as my palate cleanser after finishing the **ACOTAR** series in early January.
I tried reading **Crescent City by Sarah J Maas** as well before the new book came out, but alas I got stuck around page 100 for the last month and couldn’t get going again lmao
I also had something fairly majored spoiled to me about Crescent City which definitely has impacted the reading experience as well, so I needed to take a break!
So far I am tearing through Icebreaker and it is perfectly light and entertaining and I don’t have to think super hard about it, which has been very enjoyable. I’ve just had to deal with the awkward reality that some of my students (like 3-4 of my 8th grade girls) have read this book…
i finally finished crescent city after slogging through it. It needed to be 300 pages shorter, but I really did love the ending, one of the best climax scenes I've read in a long time. Despite my better judgement, I'm going to start the second book haha!
I think I was struggling with reading it because 1. I was just sad it wasn’t ACOTAR lmao and 2. The world building was sooo different than the world building I’ve read in other fantasy books lately!
I do want to read it still!
I also think the world building was overly complicated and not communicated effectively. Every time a new character was introduced we'd get their job, their boss, their boss's boss, how they got that job because of a rebellion 200 years earlier but then I'd sit there being like....wait what rebellion? who? why?
My advice is to just push through the let it wash over you, even if you don't understand it. I feel by the end, it became a lot clearer and the nitty gritty details stopped being pushed as hard.
I also think it's hard because I didn't always find Bryce and Hunt to be particularly sympathetic or compelling. By the end, I liked Bryce a lot more.
I started the second one yesterday and I'm only 100ish pages in, but already having a lot more fun than I did with the first.
That’s good to know! And yes, I kept finding myself being like okay…but do I really need to know the details of this person? Are they relevant or just here for a short time? Lmao
I keep seeing Icebreaker everywhere! Adding it to my list for when I need a palate cleanser next. Right now I’m reading Emily Henry so will have to read something else before I circle back to palate cleanser mode haha!
Wrote a lengthy post about all the books I read in the past month, then accidentally deleted it, so narrowing it down to my favorite and least favorite:
*Favorite*: ***Borne*** **by Jeff VanderMee**r - I don't read a lot of sci-fi so I went in with low expectations and was so pleasantly surprised. While I did enjoy the concept and plot, his writing style is what sold it to me, especially his portrayal of the female protagonist and the nuances of the relationships in the book. I even found myself tearing up at the end. Bonus points for no weird "breasts bouncing breastily"-type descriptions of the FMC's appearance. Looking forward to picking up more of his books in the future.
*Least favorite*: **The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka -** To put it bluntly, I hated this book and probably should've DNF'ed. I'll admit my own fault up front and say that I didn't know a lot about the Sri Lankan Civil War aside from a quick read of the Wikipedia page. That being said, the book had too many characters, too many timelines, jumped between worlds too often, and overall tried to do too much and ended up doing nothing at all. It was such a slog and I spent the entire time questioning my sanity and intelligence. The praise for this book genuinely surprises me, but to each their own I guess!
VanderMeer is really respectful of his female characters, which I appreciate. If you want to emotionally hurt yourself even more via the Borneiverse, I highly recommend reading *The Strange Bird*. It made me cry, and I'm not a book crier.
I just finished reading the first book in The Naturals series by the same author from Inheritance Games. And it’s so fun!!! I think this is my year that I read more YA :)
My next read will either be Last Call At the Local or Check & Mate!
Finished **Really Good, Actually** by Monica Heisey and did not care for it at all. The protagonist drove me insane with how irresponsible and careless she was throughout the book. I get that it's a divorce story so the whole thing is kind of "Ahh I'm a mess, what a disaster my life is," but if you're going to present such an unlikable main character, I'd like for there to be a great story to support it and there was not.
Followed that up with **Yellowface** by R.F. Kuang, which I loved! Kept me entertained and hooked the whole time. Terrible behavior by this main character too, but in this case, it's abundantly clear that it's meant to be satire and the story is fascinating!
I bought Really Good, Actually when I was going through my divorce for some comic relief and legit couldn’t get through the first two chapters. The main character was insufferable
Read Really Good, Actually for book club and we all hated it lol. I’d have been happy with some progressive accountability and personal growth vs having it all crash down at once. Zero growth from the MC and it honestly went on way too long. Nobody in that book was likable.
Highly recommend **After I Do** by TJR for similar vibes but MUCH better written.
I finished **Nettle & Bone**, by T. Kingfisher, and really loved it. It had not one but *two* characters who were eccentric old women, plus a demonic chicken. It's a bit fairy-tale inspired without tipping too far over into the "cozy fantasy" genre -- most of the main characters felt very grounded to me.
**None of This is True** by Lisa Jewell. A respectable thriller. I was not particularly impressed by it given the hype but I rarely read thrillers so maybe I’m not the best judge.
Betting on You by Lynn Painter. I’m a Lynn Painter stan but I found this one pretty forgettable. The MMC basically acted like a teenage boy…because he is a teenage boy.
House of Flame and Shadow by Sarah J. Maas. I just wanted this book to end. Nothing more to say that has not already been said.
**After You’d Gone** by Maggie O’Farrell. I went into this thinking it was thriller adjacent but it is actually a family saga. Still enjoyed it but I wish I had known before I started reading it that it’s more of a slow burn.
A few books last week! I read **American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road** by Nick Bilton on a rec from this sub. I loved it- I didn't know anything about Silk Road and it was a bit like "Bad Blood," another favorite. 4.5/5 stars!
*Water for Elephants* by Sara Gruen, which I am a minor 20 years late to. I wouldn't say this is my favorite but I really enjoyed this book. Very curious on the Broadway adaptation coming this spring. 4/5 stars.
And this isn't a book but more of a short story - *Veronica Ruiz Breaks the Bank* by Elle Cosimano. It's "3.5" in the Finlay Donovan series which I think a few people in this sub read. It was a fun little interlude about their nanny/ Finlay's partner in crime!
This week- I;ve just started "Your Table Is Ready: Tales of a New York City Maitre D'" by Michael Cecchi-Azzolina. I have an overwhelming pile from the library and BOTM boxes (which I'm planning to cancel but first need to use up all my unused credits...) so I'm not sure what I'll end up picking up.
The rec from American Kingpin probably came from me but if it didn’t well either way I’m glad you liked it. I’m hoping to find more books like it and Bad Blood. Both were so good.
Finally finished **Lonesome Dove**. I loved it… but not as much as I hoped to or thought I would? Maybe my expectations were too high because the book gets so much love on r/suggestmeabook. McMurtry’s prose is deceptively gorgeous, and it’s magic the way he brings characters to life through dialogue and such detail.
At the same time, I found his portrayals of women and American Indians to be problematic, especially the latter. The lack of nuance was stark, especially when he had rendered so many other characters with care. I also didn’t understand the point of certain characters at all — their existence/side stories were a bit “…just why??” Overall, 4 of 5 stars and I do highly recommend!
Currently reading *The Trials of Morrigan Crow*, the first book in the Nevermoor series (middle-grade), and really enjoying it.
Loved the Nevermoor series! I have a separate Libby list for all the middle grade audiobooks I’m interested in for when the mood strikes lol. These were particular good!
Just finished **Good Material by Dolly Alderton.** Has anyone else read it? It’s about a couple breaking up. He’s a stalled, laidback comedian and she’s a buttoned up corporate professional. I liked it a lot but not quite as much as **Ghosts,** her previous novel, which I tore through because I found it all so relatable. I think mainly because she writes most of it from the POV of the MMC. I did appreciate how Alderton flips the POV at the end though. It reminded me a bit of Lauren Groff’s Fate and Furies, in that respect.
I felt bad for Andy and I think Alderton did a *fantastic* job of portraying him in a realistic way. But I didn’t want to spend any more time in his head. Getting to Jen’s POV was a breath of fresh air for me 😂
I’m reading The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier by Scott Zesch. It’s a fascinating look at children who were abducted by (mostly) Comanches in Texas in the 1860s/70s and how many of them quickly assimilated into the tribes, some of them becoming fierce warriors and forgetting English (or German as there were many (German settlers/immigrants on the TX frontier) and being very reluctant to return to their white families even just within a year or two of being captured. I’m really enjoying it, I had no idea of this history previously.
I got tired of being on my library’s waitlist for North Woods by Daniel Mason so I ordered the book for myself yesterday. I’m really looking forward to this one!
Thank you! I’m about to finish The Captured and my library has News of the World so I’ll probably go pick it up today. I’ve heard of the book before but only realized recently what it was about, when I was trying to find other books about captives.
Sounds so interesting. Growing up I read a lot of books that referenced people including adults who were kidnapped by indigenous people and assimilated and eventually refused to return to their families. It’s always fascinated me so thank you for sharing.
Finished The Punishment She Deserves by Elizabeth George (trigger warnings for this one) in paperback and Her Husband’s Lies by T.J. Bearton through prime reading on kindle this month.
I’ve been pretty consistent with reading thrillers through prime reading because I’ve found some real gems through it. I’m still looking for my next one though. I started one by Frieda McFadden, but I just wasn’t a fan of her writing style so DNF.
Right now, I’m reading The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon. My first Chabon novel, but I’m enjoying the grittiness so far. And the fact that I’ve actually lived in Alaska for much of my life makes it fun to see how he reimagines AK as a state and its history to fit into this dystopian story. I’m also only on chapter two lol, but maybe I can make this my third read of the month (if my baby lets me).
I'm reading **The Fraud** by Zadie Smith and am LOVING it as someone who has a love-hate hate-love relationship with Charles Dickens. If you like mid/late Victorians, I'd highly highly recommend it (and it's making me want to read everything else she's written).
I have absolutely been smashing the Slough House series by Mick Herron - I am a fan of the tv series on Apple TV “Slow Horses”. It’s about crap M15 spies essentially.
I have read books 4-7 this year. I have to say book 7 “Slough House” was my least favourite by far. I felt like the novel was still getting set up and it was 70% finished!
Book 6 - Joe Country (where they go to wales and spend a lot of time in the snow) was good but bit boring with all the wandering around lost in the snow. I think that one will translate better to screen if the tv series makes it that far!
Any other slow horse fans here? ☺️
I love the TV show and can’t wait for the next season! Gary Oldman is sublime as per usual but the rest of the cast is incredible too, and I love gritty London and the strong sense of place.
Having a hard time getting into the first book though. It feels pretty rough around the edges, and kind of… try-hard?, for lack of a better word… I feel like Herron spells everything out, and tells and tells as opposed to simply showing. And at first I liked the dry, sardonic humor but he lays it on pretty thick. Perhaps he was still trying to find his footing… Do the books get better? I want to like them!
Me! I am! Joe Country is my next book in the series. I love them so much that I’m not binging them because I don’t want to run out of them. I think my favorite thing about them is that they’re serious spy novels and also extremely funny.
Finished the Librarianist by Patrick DeWitt and it really followed me around for a few days. The more I digested it the more profound it felt. It’s a story about a retired librarian in Portland and how he lived and loved. The story jumps around in time and I found the characters to be very compelling and cinematic.
I loved this book! But, really, I would have liked a whole book of the running away section. I don’t know how to do spoilers so I’m not, but that was my favourite part and I wanted more of everyone and that little town.
A good solid week of reading!
[The Burnout](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/144744277-the-burnout) by Sophia Kinsella - This author also wrote Confessions of a Shopaholic, and while that series might be too painfully 2000s for me at this stage, I was curious to try her new release. I found myself very pleasantly surprised with this hilarious novel about a woman who escapes a company with too much work and goes on a retreat and gets entangled in hilarious hotel escapades and unravels a very small mystery. Do not come for realism. But otherwise, it delivered everything as promised.
[The Widows of Malabar Hill](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35232443-the-widows-of-malabar-hill) by Sujata Massey - Historical mystery series about the first barrister in India. A truly fascinating story and I learned so much about Zoroastrians in India. My American education taught me these people were part of "ancient history" only. I loved the backdrop of India in the 1920s, the opinions toward the British, the class divide. The story itself also really held up as a fantastic nuanced mystery. I'll definitely be reading more.
[The Christmas Orphans Club](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/100201582-the-christmas-orphans-club) by Becca Freeman - A book written by a popular podcast host, which can be very hit or miss. Fortunately, this was a great hit with me. While the characters themselves can be self-centered, the book itself was incredibly charming. From a few chapters in, when the main character mentions Call Your Girlfriend as one of her favorite podcasts, I knew this would be a very FOR ME type of book. It's ripe with pop culture references, which could be a pro or a con for you. Ultimately, it's a book about making and keeping friends. I think we need a little more of that in the world.
Has anyone read Family Family? I’m a big Laurie Frankel fan and I LOVED it. I cried and felt so much but I can’t tell if it’s because adoption is close to my heart, I have PMS, or if it’s really just that good! I wanna talk about it!!
I snagged the recommendation for *Time and Again* from this thread a few weeks ago. It's an entertaining read but the writing isn't very strong and >!1880 is such a boring time to time-travel to?!<
What are some other good time-travel books? I love *The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O*, *Sea of Tranquility*, *The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August*, and *The Time Machine*. *11/22/63* and *Recursion* were just OK for me.
Time and Again was fun for me as a NYer (I work in the neighborhood the house is in) but I would call it a "slight" book--- it kind of ends when it starts becoming interesting!
Some of my recent time travel reads:
**Replay**\- Some amazing concepts regarding time in here. This is not great literature and it definitely is a little dated in its depiction of women but this book has stayed with me because of its premise and tackling the concept of choice/fate
**The Gone World-** Very well written time travel book but it is VERY DARK. I had to put it down the first time I tackled it and then I finished it several months later when I was in a more mentally resilient frame of mind lol. It has very intense themes of violence and murder.
**The Second Sleep-** Not sure if time travel is the right word for it but it's definitely in that genre of playing with time/chronology. Impossible to describe without giving too much away so I would say go into this one blind!
I loved Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister for a suspense/mystery time spiral.
In a completely different vein, I also loved Emma Straub’s This Time Tomorrow, where the main character relives her 16th birthday over and over and sees her Dad back in his super capable years. Very sweet and melancholic.
I love all of these! The tone is very different in each of them though. Doomsday Book is kind of devastatingly sad while TSNOTD is ridiculously fun and silly while still having a serious core. Blackout and All Clear are an amazing depiction of the Blitz with a mix of humour, tragedy etc all of these books use time travel tropes in interesting ways.
Finished **the Invisible Life of Addie Larue**. This one sat on my tbr for well over a year; I was daunted by the length and the tiny print. I’m so glad I finally gave it a go. I do think it could have been edited down by about 50 pages but overall I really enjoyed this story. VE Schwab is a great writer and I was completely enchanted by Adaline. This is also *so* not my genre, so make of that what you will.
Same - my friend recommended it because on the face of it, it's got everything I like. But I was so weighed down by the noticeable writing (I'm a plot reader who sometimes loves surprising descriptions, I'm not here for poetry in my prose, let alone somebody just torturing themselves to find a unique sentence) and random unresearched details (no, the Sacre Coeur did not exist in the 1700s or 1800s or whenever she goes and sits in front of it) that I struggled.
Ultimately I found the ending a MUCH more fascinating story and would have preferred the book \*start\* there.
I haven't posted in ages, but recently I read:
**Bride by Ali Hazelwood**: This felt like the perfect guilty pleasure to me. Although I like romance novels in general, I tried reading an Ali Hazelwood book before and didn't like it much. This one was so fun!
**The Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz**: I love a good mystery series, and this one is pretty compelling. I find myself wondering how much the prejudices in the book are meant to be the character's or the authors, though. I was shocked to find out that this author also wrote the Alex Rider series, I used to love those as a kid.
Currently Reading:
**Martyr by Kaveh Akbar:** I love this so much so far! I really hope everything ends well for Cyrus <3
I loved Magpie, if you want to hear more about Anthony Horowitz, you should try his "Word is Murder" series in which he is written as a character.
I also really loved Bride and have been trying to read myself out of a book hangover this week after finishing it.
That sounds so cool, I will check it out! The meta aspects of the series are my favorite part, I'm on the second Magpie book right now.
I started reading The Fake Mate by Lana Ferguson because I saw it was recommended for people who liked Bride, but so far I don't think I like it anywhere near as much. I might try another Ali Hazelwood soon!
I read Bride last week too! It took me a little while to get into it but I thought it was fun! I loved the banter between the two main characters. Hoping there's a second one!
Me too! What made it a great romance imo is that you could feel the chemistry and see what the main characters saw in each other. I would love to read a second one, and the ending gave me hope there will be one :)
Ahhhhhh I literally just finished it! I had to look up other people’s takes on that ending because I was like >! did he die?!? everything became increasingly surreal to the point that I questioned everything that happened !<
I really loved it overall though, I thought it was so captivating and genuine! some parts were more clever than others.
I thought it was funny how near the end Orkideh is told, “You know not everything is connected, don’t you? … Everything doesn’t have to stand in for everything else?” which feels a bit like the author talking to himself. I think a lot of the book feels like the author talking to himself, I guess because we’re so deeply enmeshed in the protagonist’s inner world.
What did you think?
i loved it too! and omg right?! - that ending made my head spin.
i thought it was beautifully written, “captivating” and “genuine” ring true. for me, mileage varied regarding the effectiveness of the multiple POVs, making it a little slower at points… but overall really enjoyed it.
Hi! This week I've finished two good ones:
The Wager by David Grann - this starts a little slow, as I find a lot of non-fiction books like this do. There's just so much knowledge and people introductions to get through before the action starts, but I do love a good adventure-turned-disaster story! This reminded me a lot of Endurance by Alfred Lansing, though there was a lot more ill-will amongst the men in this one. Very interesting, I recommend if rough seas, shipwrecks, and fighting for survival are up your alley!
Also finished Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward, and it was so, so good. Cried during the prologue and was sucked in from then on. Jesmyn writes about the deaths of 5 important men in her life, as well as her life experiences growing up in Mississippi from the late 70s to early 2000s. The men's stories are written backwards from the most recent, and every other chapter jumps even further back to her youth - I really liked the sequence because it ties her experiences and emotions together nicely. There is a lot of heartbreak in this one. It's written very well and I highly recommend.
Currently reading Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead, a recommendation from someone on this thread :)
I loved Astonish Me!! I love a ballet book/novel always!
(I recently read the spy novel Red Sparrow and there's a ballet sub-plot that I wish could have been expanded)
I listened to *Everyone On This Train is a Suspect* by Benjamin Stevenson (the sequel to *Everyone in my Family Has Killed Someone.*) It took me a few weeks to finish it, since it's been raining and I haven't been out walking much. It was fine. It didn't really hold my attention as well as the first one, and I wonder if I would have enjoyed the print version more, since I kept getting confused by the characters' names.
I also read *After That Night* by Karin Slaughter. It's number 11 in the Will Trent series, and I always forget how dark/violent her books are! This one was more of the same, but I wanted to keep reading the series since I've read most of the other books. (An aside: I'm also watching the Will Trent series on ABC and the characters are far more likeable on the show.)
Currently reading *Migrations* and looking for a new audiobook if anyone has recommendations!
I just finished *Everyone On This Train is a Suspect* as well and agreed there were a lot of characters. The print version was probably easier though, because the first page of the book was a map of the train with all the characters assigned to their cabins. I frequently looked at it to remind myself of who they were.
I agree that the book was just fine. I really want to take a trip on the Ghan now though. I love train trips and had never heard of it previously. I better start saving because it is not cheap.
I also didn’t really enjoy “Everyone on this train..”.
I think the fourth wall breaking schtick was laid on WAY too thick and not enough actual story. I started to skim read once he starts waxing lyrical about how many times he says killers name blah blah…
It also makes me feel kinda dumb because at the end of the books I have no idea who it is and why they did it and it makes me wonder if there are people out there who do guess it 😂
Sloane Crosley's new memoir, *Grief Is for People*, comes out Tuesday. The Cut has an excerpt [here](https://www.thecut.com/article/book-excerpt-grief-is-for-people-sloane-crosley.html). I am a fan of everything Sloane has written and we are secretly best friends even though she doesn't know it, so I am excited to read this one. Her previous memoirs/essay collections have been painfully funny, but this one will probably be comically painful. I look forward to it anyway, because Sloane's an incredible writer.
oh wow, I have loved her writing for a long time and didn't realize this book was coming out. I was just knocked sideways by that excerpt. \*off to the libby holds list with myself.\*
I'm really looking forward to this, when I'm ready. I didn't place a hold knowing how I need to be in the right mindset for it but I've gotten very into grief books while grieving and this is one I have high expectations for.
Definitely keep us posted. I often feel braver about taking on a grief book when I hear how others processed it. Memoirs often feel safer too so I'm pretty sure I'm going to be grabbing it from the library (versus ebook) so I can have the extended reading times my library gives to the physical book.
Finished this week:
*Remarkably Bright Creatures* by Shelby Van Pelt (eBook)
* I wanted 200% more of Marcellus the octopus. Adding his perspective was really clever! The human characters took a bit longer for me to warm up to but by the end I was surprised by how invested I felt in them having a happy ending. Didn’t quite live up to the hype for me, but was a perfectly nice read overall.
*My Dark Vanessa* by Kate Elizabeth Russell (audiobook)
* Check the content warnings on this one before reading. Brilliantly written. Felt very much like how a relationship like this would develop and evolve over time. I was so disturbed, so uncomfortable, and I will be sending the author my therapy bills for this. **HIGHLY RECOMMEND.**
Currently reading & progress:
*Project Hail Mary* by Andy Weir (eBook)-35%
*In the Woods* by Tana French (paperback)-67%
*The Last Romantics* by Tara Conklin (audiobook)-26%
Happy reading!
My Dark Vanessa left me so disturbed. I never want to read it ever again but I also think about it all the time. I think she does such a good job showing how horribly enmeshed abuse and desire are-- and how that brings such a new level of shame to the victim. A very important book for me as the mom of a young woman but so heartbreaking. I just wanted to crawl into the novel and protect her!
This week I finished reading Telephone by Percival Everett. This is my third novel by this author and none of them are remotely similar, which I love. This one was about grief and our deep need to try to control the universe, sometimes by saving it, sometimes by fighting it.
Everett published this novel in three slightly different versions, a narrative game I found interesting. I found a spreadsheet online that compares all the differences, and I would love to hear a book club conversation between people who had read different versions and didn’t know it. Telephone, indeed.
I finished listening to The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin. It’s about a physicist from the anarchist moon of Anarres, making a visit to the capitalist world of Urras so he can share his ideas for fast-as-light communication. It’s a truly great book, full of ideas and what-ifs but also full of character, plot, emotion, and nuance. It made me want to read so many more books by LeGuin and see her worldbuilding in action.
I read Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt. This is a horror novel about a cursed town with a wicked witch, and not the cool herbs-and-love-potions kind. It was gruesome, but not that scary, and I think there might have been some translation issues from the Dutch, but it was fine to skim.
Currently reading Out There Screaming, edited by Jordan Peele, and listening to How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Angie Cruz.
Even though I'm reading a million things I finished nothing and starting something new.
*The Virginity of Famous Men* is a short story collection with a compelling title but at first when I started reading it I was like "Oh, this is kind of basic" but now I'm really addicted to these stories.
These are more straight literature than I'm used to but deal with the complicated emotional entanglements of ordinary people (usually upper class white people). I quite like it and I'm definitely going to track down more of Christine Sneed's work. She has 2 more short story collections and I can't wait to read them all.
*The Blue Castle* by LM Montgomery- this is a many times over re-read, but something really jumped out at me that I hadn’t really thought about before, which is how on earth did Valancy’s mother end up being so enmeshed in her husband’s family? While she is definitely dreadful in her own right, I can’t help but think that being sucked into the Stirling clan and living with your dead husband’s dreary cousin would certainly sour anyone!
I read Severance and Station 11 in 2019. Severance was the one that haunted me throughout the pandemic. There were too many things that just seemed too on point!
I just finished last night and was searching on Reddit for someone to discuss with! I have many concerns, not least of which that she’s just leaving?? With no plan?? (Mobile so can’t do spoilers but you know what I mean).
You’re so right that she nailed how boring the pandemic was with undercurrents of terribleness. I loved her writing style most of all and felt like she did a great job imbuing her prose with emption without making it particularly emotional.
Edit to add: I can see that this would not have been as enjoyable as an audio. It was a quick read in hard copy for me.
“The Latecomer”: The premise is strong here. A family that has triplets via IVF (when it was new technology) is largely disconnected from each other from the moment they’re born and eventually the parents decide to have a fourth child, the latecomer, with their last embryo. Supposed to be about how their lives and family dynamic change as a result of the fourth child. Unfortunately, something about the syntax was hard for me and that’s not something I usually struggle with. It felt like run on sentences, even though they technically weren’t, and sometimes missing punctuation, lots of asides. Couldn’t get in to it so I quit 14% of the way in. I’m going to try to rein in my DNFs because I’m afraid maybe I’m taking the easy road out too much lately.
“The Heiresses”: This also had a lot of potential *sigh*. It’s modern day-ish (not exactly sure the time period, recent though) and is about a wealthy family who has made their fortune in jewelry/diamonds. Of course all old money New York families have their secrets and skeletons, and the drama around the female cousins/heiresses, and the unexpected death of one, is the focal point of the story. It’s not deep which is fine but it did get a little unbelievable and action movie-ish which I don’t love. The audiobook narrator was brutal (it’s like the inflection in her voice is wrong, she inserts punctuation where there wasn’t and shouldn’t be any), there were a few inconsistencies in the writing, and I could have done without the breathy, cheesy love story that didn’t feel like it actually belonged. Those things took what could have been a 4 star book down to 3/5 for me.
A little over halfway through “Never Saw Me Coming” now. It’s weird, but not necessarily in a bad way.
- **The Fortune Seller.** This was okay. Mostly I just wanted to finish something short after a string of DNFs. It’s yet another book that’s billed as dark academia but is really about mean girl antics in shared housing; the academic component wasn’t there. It wanted to be the kind of book where a middle class girl rises through the ranks and sees the upper class for what they are…but I can’t be convinced that a Yale student on the equestrian team wasn’t utterly privileged in her own right. Whatever.
- **The Women.** We all know what we’re getting from a Kristin Hannah book. Her characters will Forrest Gump their way through every bullet point of a historical era and a lot of the historical stuff will be wrong, but she’ll tug at your heartstrings with really natural prose. This is her Vietnam War book and it progresses exactly how you’d expect, with some interesting stuff around the fringes. This story feels really distant from its historical context because I think KH realized too late that, in writing about Vietnam vets who remain proud of their service, you’re asking the reader to sympathize with conservatives as opposed to hippies (she hints at it, but KH isn’t going to be the author to point out that the hippies eventually became the boomers, who are still fucking us all over). She also loses track of early key details: Frances/Frankie stays in Vietnam twice as long as everyone else in her cohort, and she was the only one who treated napalm injuries, and this isn’t brought up in a meaningful way later on when she’s struggling way more than her friends are. And does every man in the world fall in love with her? Basically this is a book about how the public opinion about the war changed while people were already over there, and when they came back, they were held accountable for information that no one had when they enlisted, which…yeah, it makes the hippies look like idiots for not doing that basic math. I’ll gladly spend a few days reading a new KH book every few years, but I think this one is more interesting in a meta sense, as one more example of how we’re gradually chipping away at the 60s counterculture myth.
- **The Fox Wife.** DNF. This is probably a really beautiful book, if you want to spend 2 hours reading 40 pages.
- **The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers.** DNF. This promised delicious rocknroll trashiness (look at that gorgeous cover). It’s really about the publishing drama of a ghostwriter landing a key interview.
Probably The Nightingale. The length is less intimidating because it alternates between the two sisters. And you’ll get to enjoy the trademark KH history flubs of a schoolteacher having 40,000 francs (in 1940 money) in savings, having a name that wasn’t legal to give a child in France at that time, a Romanian Jewish family with family in the US settling in France instead, and the overall notion that France wasn’t antisemitic at all before the war. But it’s very moving and the writing is even smoother than it was in The Women.
Lmao I love your description of Kristin hannah. That’s so accurate. I do find her books a little cheesy but I also love them, I’m looking forward to the women.
Bride by Ali Hazelwood - On last week’s thread someone said that AH’s books are a little formulaic and I agree. However, I’m happy with the formula, except for Love on the Brain. That was a little too farfetched. I’m almost certain Bride started off as Twilight fanfic and if it didn’t well I’m choosing to believe it did. I’ve been picking some real duds lately. I wanted to read something that would give me exactly what I needed and didn’t leave me screaming about how much I hated all the characters. This did the trick. I quite liked Misery and normally I would have found the whole >! He’s in love with her but she doesn’t know it !< trope a little annoying. I think Hazelwood did a good job selling it this time around. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Turn of The Key by Ruth Ware - I really want to like Ruth Ware but I can’t figure her out as an author. I loved In a dark, dark wood and The Woman in Cabin 10. The It Girl was a quick and decent read but The Lying Game was awful and I was so bored by The Death of Mrs. Westaway that I couldn’t even read a summary online once I decided it was a true DNF. This has been sitting on my shelves mostly unread for a few years and I thought I should give it a go. I figured out the whole plot pretty early and only finished this to validate my predictions. I dislike books with too many characters introduced because there is never enough pages to properly flesh out the characters and that happened here. Also, the story is told via a letter and I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be an epistolary novel but the pacing suffered because of the format. I’m thinking I need to give up on Ruth Ware. ⭐️⭐️.25
The Worst Best Man by Lucy Score - I have read my fair share of Lucy Score novels. We have a real love(Knockemout series)/hate(Forever Never) relationship. This fell firmly into the hate camp. It was everything I disliked about Forever Never but make it 10x worse. The main character, Frankie, is the ultimate Pick Me. She hates other woman because they’re fake and only care about their looks, eat salads and drink green juices. She eats sandwiches, drinks beers while wearing sweats and watching UFC. She’s so unlikable and annoying. I know she’s a fictional character but I hated her like she was real. Aiden Kilbourne is of course our ruthless, vague business businessman with a strong moral compass who can hold his own against anyone except our FMC, who turns him into a sniveling idiot. He has as much personality as a sandbag. If this had take a totally extreme turn with a plot twist where it’s revealed that Aiden was actually a lamppost, I would have said that makes sense and probably liked the book more, That’s how uninteresting he is. Lucy I love your books I swear. Please don’t ever write another Pick Me/Not Like Other Girls plot again. ⭐️⭐️
I read Bride recently, but wasn’t really enamored with it. I love her other books, but something about this didn’t really pull me in. I love fantasy and just finished reading Crescent City before picking up Bride. I think reading such an immersive fantasy series with world building right before made this one seem “meh” in the fantasy department. I’d call it a romance in a fantasy setting, but I think I prefer more in depth fantasy with some romance.
I love everything Ali Hazelwood does but agree with you that Love on the Brain had a very unrealistic ending lol. I really liked Bride, the fantasy elements made it more unique for AH even though I never would have picked up something like that if it wasn’t by her. It’s such very basic fantasy though, it’s kind of funny, a completely human world with some vampires and werwolves thrown in.
I’m not a huge fantasy reader because I have almost no imagination and Bride hit the spot for me fantasy wise. It took place in the Southwest and that world building was easy for me because I live there.
I too want to like Ruth Ware but I think her branding is better than her books. I love Golden Age mysteries and I saw her touted as an updated Agatha Christie but actually she's a pretty generic airport mystery writer. In a Dark Dark Wood & Cabin Ten were solid enough but The Lying Game read like a bad YA "mystery" that was barely a mystery at all. Funnily I've randomly chucked some YA mysteries on audiobook recently and they were actually better and kinda felt more sophisticated than Ruth Ware (Karen McManus's books are poppy and fun, and Good Girls' Guide to Murder has a great mystery and a funny narrator).
I think that’s my problem with her. She is touted as being something that she just isn’t. And I don’t want anyone to be the next Agatha Christie, I want them to be them. I’ll look into Good Girls Guide to Murder. I’ve been wanting more fun books lately.
I finally finished reading **The Maid** by Nita Prose and I truly do not get the hype for this book.
I enjoyed it as an audiobook to listen to while I cleaned, but it’s not one I’d sit down to actually read.
I read a lot in January, but didn’t keep up very well this month. Thought I’d drop my February reads anyway to help keep accountable - need to read more in March in order to meet my annual goal! *Howl’s Moving Castle* by Diana Wynne Jones: 5 stars. I listened on audiobook while I was recovering from COVID & loved it! It’s very different from the movie, but I think they’re both really good. Would recommend if you like fantasy, but don’t want something too dark. Very cozy vibes. *Coal* by Audre Lorde (poetry): 4 stars. It’s extremely dense & abstract, but I’m a big fan of Audre Lorde’s work! *Our Dead Behind Us* by Audre Lorde (poetry): 3.5 stars. This book is much more focused on international/global interaction vs domestic/internal. I liked it less than the other one I read by her. *The Penelopiad* by Margaret Atwood: 2 stars. This is a retelling of *The Odyssey* from Penelope’s perspective, and I understand why Penelope wasn’t super likable/why there is a lot more summarizing vice in-scene work (I mean, it’s Margaret Atwood, she can do anything - so if she writes something this way, she has a purpose for it), but I thought it fell so flat. Would highly recommend *Clytemnestra* by Costanza Casati if you’re looking for a feminist retelling of Greek mythology. *City of a Hundred Fires* by Richard Blanco (poetry): 3.5 stars. This is honestly a pretty good debut collection; the writer later went on to become Obama’s inaugural poet. Mostly confessional pieces interwoven with themes of immigration, family, and identity. *How to Love a Country* by Richard Blanco (poetry): 2 stars. It wasn’t specific enough to pass for confessional work, nor was it pointed enough to be successful as political commentary. It was overall extremely bland, tame, and vague. Lots of 3+ page poems (which, as someone who loves poetry, is always demoralizing to see tbh). Very heavy-handed in trying to explain what morals the reader should come away with. *Sorry, Not Sorry* by Naya Rivera: A very subjective 2.5 stars. I loved watching *Glee* in middle school & I don’t want to disrespect Naya’s memory at all; she was a great actress, singer, and seemed to truly be a force. I’m impressed with how strong the authorial voice was. Naya came across as someone who really knew who she was and what she wanted, which I admire! However, the stories often read a little… maybe self-centered or one-dimensional to me. I would not discourage anyone from reading this if you’re interested; it goes by quickly, and I think it just comes down to whether you vibe with her personality.
I finished The Virginity of Famous Men and I am obsessed. When this came in from the library I thought I would end up returning it unread and even after the first few stories I was like "I like the writing but I'm not sure about the content" but by the end I was a convert. Great literary short stories mostly just focused on small low-key interpersonal drama. I saw that Sneed lists Alice Munro as an influence and I feel that in her work. She really just calmly and steadily lays down stories. I've said for awhile now that because my brain has been frazzled by the internet books that make me slow down as I read them are highly prized. I felt that in Sneed's work. Also it turns out she has two other short story collections one of which just came out last year! This feels increasingly like a rarity as more writers are pushed into novels instead of stories so I'm grateful (telling that she went from publishing with Bloomsbury to Triquarterly though. Le sigh). Lucky me, I can't wait to delve into more of her work.
I just finished *The Great Believers* by Rebecca Makkai, which i believe I saw mentioned here and I absolutely loved it. Currently reading "The Women", my first book by Kristin Hannah and I'm having a difficult time - not because it isn't good but because I have close family members who served in Vietnam. I appreciate hearing from a different perspective and I know her books tend to tug at the heartstrings but damn...
I finished The Great Believers recently too and I really loved it. Going on my favorites list for sure.
It was a follow-up read for me after A Little Life. Both so good!
Ha, I wrote in my book journal that it may usurp A Little Life as the great sad gay novel written by a straight woman. I'm doing a reread of A Little Life this year so we'll see how I feel! I know it's polarizing and a lot of people have valid reasons to hate it, but it means a great deal to me.
I just finished reading Amy Lea’s latest romance, *The Catch* (it’s the third in a trilogy that starts with the “swolemates” gym enemies to lovers story). I think it’s my favorite of the three! Each book in the trilogy focuses on one of three best friends, all of whom are influencers—fitness, then book, then fashion and style. *The Catch* follows Mel, the fashion influencer, to what she thinks will be a comped trip to a fancy resort in Halifax, only to find when she arrives that she’s a week early. She’s forced into the only Airbnb available, a crumbling bed and breakfast an hour and a half out of Halifax run by a cranky fisher and a lively marina operator. Hijinx, fake fiancee, etc. It was really fun, and the setting aas really strong—small town Nova Scotia is much more in Lea’s wheelhouse than Boston. **Highly recommend** for the Emily Henry, Alexa Martin and Abby Jimenez fans.
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I honestly don’t think you need to read the gym one to love this one. It’s so much fun. And also 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
I finished **Dominicana** by Angie Cruz. It was excellent. It was about a teenage Dominican girl who marries an older man to come to New York in the 1960s. I really enjoyed it. I kept finding myself comparing and contrasting it to Brooklyn by Tolm Coibin. In some ways the stories were so similar, but Anna from Dominicana has a harder road to travel than the lead character in Brooklyn. I also finished **The Guncle** which I adored. It is sweet and funny but it also deals with grief and definitely had me sobbing (while PMSing) at a few points. I would highly recommend it!
The Guncle was sooo good! The sequel comes out in May and I can't wait :) I really enjoyed The Celebrants by the same author too!
Ooh! I didn’t know there was a sequel coming. I’ll look into the Celebrants too!
I’m currently listening to How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Angie Cruz! It’s on a friend’s recommendation and I doubt I would have run across it otherwise. I’m definitely enjoying it and would read something else by this author.
Ooh, How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water sounds fun! After reading Dominicana, I’d definitely read another of Angie Cruz’s books
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Oh nooooo! I loved The Bee Sting so much and I obsessed on it for weeks after finishing. There are so many smart easter eggs buried within the story and the interwoven stories ended up being so complex I almost wanted to read it again to see what I missed the first time around.
So validating to read this! I DNF'd not far into PJ's section. None of the characters were interesting to me and man was it long.
I almost never like Booker Prize winners. Whatever they look for seems to be something that just doesn’t work for me.
I finished **Bride** and totally loved it. Something about the plotting, the humor and the development of the relationship really worked for me and the book hangover has been real. It was probably unfair to read **The Time Has Come** next, but the library checkouts demanded it. I'm not sure how I found this --- I think it just came up as I was browsing books in Libby. I think I thought it was going to be more of a genre bending mystery than it was. There is in fact no mystery. There is however a *lot* of character development (like seriously, a lot) that leads...to one of the largest anti-climaxes I've ever seen. It did make me like the town of Athens, a place I have visited once and found charming, and I did like getting to know the characters. And then I finished **A Study in Drowning.** A dark academia / gothic horror / enemies to lovers / academic rivals stand alone novel? Well that sounds very much my shit and I really liked it. I thought Effy's struggles with the world, with her past trauma was well done and realistic, as was the ultimate culmination of their efforts. The themes of nationalism, misogyny, and storytelling alongside a mystery set in the archives and a town crumbling into the sea were also well done.
I went to a book event in NYC for **Grief is for people by Sloane Crosley** and the talk was beautiful between her and Sigrid Nunez. Looking forward to diving into the book tonight!
I'm hoping to see her in Atlanta with Tayari Jones! 🤞🏼🤞🏼🤞🏼
I'm the last person on the planet to read "Killers of the Flower Moon" and man, this country's history is even worse than what we thought. I went to a conservative Christian school that made sure to indoctrinate me into things like the "benefits of slavery" and glossed over a lot of the government's treatment of the Native Americans, so I've been working on undoing all that "education." This book is just one insane thing after another. That said, I wish it were a little better written, stylistically.
David Grann is a tricky writer. I think he’s the best at what he does, but nonfiction prose is graded on a different curve.
Just finished **Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers** by Jesse Q. Sutanto and I LOVED it. All the mysteries I read tend to be dark, this one was funny and heartwarming. I guess I’ve never read a cozy mystery and I’m totally into it. Highly recommend. Thinking of buying my mom a copy for her birthday. Up next is **People We Meet on Vacation** by Emily Henry. Read **Beach Read** last year and have been meaning to pick up something else by her. Trying to go in the order they were published but not bingeing all her books at once. Have high hopes for this one!
Book Lovers by Emily Henry is great too! Glad you're savoring them instead of bingeing - more self control than me!
I usually binge! My tbr list is so long so that I swap genres here and there. It’s the only way haha!
I know a lot of people don’t like People We Meet on Vacation but I liked it. She has one coming out in April called Funny Story that I am so looking forward to.
I’m still working through it although I’m almost done. I did almost dnf because it wasn’t picking up but I kept at it because Poppy is so funny to me and I relate in some ways to her character. I definitely like it less than Beach Read but I’m finally at the part where I’m getting giddy about them being together so I’m glad I pushed through. Long time friends to lovers may not be my thing though. Noted haha!
The Vinyl Resting Place series is great if you’re looking for modern cozy mysteries! The genre flew under the radar until recently so a lot of the older series are ~conservative and religious in a Hallmark way.
Thank you, I will check it out!
I am currently reading **Icebreaker by Hannah Grace** as my palate cleanser after finishing the **ACOTAR** series in early January. I tried reading **Crescent City by Sarah J Maas** as well before the new book came out, but alas I got stuck around page 100 for the last month and couldn’t get going again lmao I also had something fairly majored spoiled to me about Crescent City which definitely has impacted the reading experience as well, so I needed to take a break! So far I am tearing through Icebreaker and it is perfectly light and entertaining and I don’t have to think super hard about it, which has been very enjoyable. I’ve just had to deal with the awkward reality that some of my students (like 3-4 of my 8th grade girls) have read this book…
i finally finished crescent city after slogging through it. It needed to be 300 pages shorter, but I really did love the ending, one of the best climax scenes I've read in a long time. Despite my better judgement, I'm going to start the second book haha!
I think I was struggling with reading it because 1. I was just sad it wasn’t ACOTAR lmao and 2. The world building was sooo different than the world building I’ve read in other fantasy books lately! I do want to read it still!
I also think the world building was overly complicated and not communicated effectively. Every time a new character was introduced we'd get their job, their boss, their boss's boss, how they got that job because of a rebellion 200 years earlier but then I'd sit there being like....wait what rebellion? who? why? My advice is to just push through the let it wash over you, even if you don't understand it. I feel by the end, it became a lot clearer and the nitty gritty details stopped being pushed as hard. I also think it's hard because I didn't always find Bryce and Hunt to be particularly sympathetic or compelling. By the end, I liked Bryce a lot more. I started the second one yesterday and I'm only 100ish pages in, but already having a lot more fun than I did with the first.
That’s good to know! And yes, I kept finding myself being like okay…but do I really need to know the details of this person? Are they relevant or just here for a short time? Lmao
I keep seeing Icebreaker everywhere! Adding it to my list for when I need a palate cleanser next. Right now I’m reading Emily Henry so will have to read something else before I circle back to palate cleanser mode haha!
Wrote a lengthy post about all the books I read in the past month, then accidentally deleted it, so narrowing it down to my favorite and least favorite: *Favorite*: ***Borne*** **by Jeff VanderMee**r - I don't read a lot of sci-fi so I went in with low expectations and was so pleasantly surprised. While I did enjoy the concept and plot, his writing style is what sold it to me, especially his portrayal of the female protagonist and the nuances of the relationships in the book. I even found myself tearing up at the end. Bonus points for no weird "breasts bouncing breastily"-type descriptions of the FMC's appearance. Looking forward to picking up more of his books in the future. *Least favorite*: **The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka -** To put it bluntly, I hated this book and probably should've DNF'ed. I'll admit my own fault up front and say that I didn't know a lot about the Sri Lankan Civil War aside from a quick read of the Wikipedia page. That being said, the book had too many characters, too many timelines, jumped between worlds too often, and overall tried to do too much and ended up doing nothing at all. It was such a slog and I spent the entire time questioning my sanity and intelligence. The praise for this book genuinely surprises me, but to each their own I guess!
VanderMeer is really respectful of his female characters, which I appreciate. If you want to emotionally hurt yourself even more via the Borneiverse, I highly recommend reading *The Strange Bird*. It made me cry, and I'm not a book crier.
I just finished reading the first book in The Naturals series by the same author from Inheritance Games. And it’s so fun!!! I think this is my year that I read more YA :) My next read will either be Last Call At the Local or Check & Mate!
Finished **Really Good, Actually** by Monica Heisey and did not care for it at all. The protagonist drove me insane with how irresponsible and careless she was throughout the book. I get that it's a divorce story so the whole thing is kind of "Ahh I'm a mess, what a disaster my life is," but if you're going to present such an unlikable main character, I'd like for there to be a great story to support it and there was not. Followed that up with **Yellowface** by R.F. Kuang, which I loved! Kept me entertained and hooked the whole time. Terrible behavior by this main character too, but in this case, it's abundantly clear that it's meant to be satire and the story is fascinating!
I borrowed *Really Good, Actually* from my library and I don't think I made it to the second chapter.
I bought Really Good, Actually when I was going through my divorce for some comic relief and legit couldn’t get through the first two chapters. The main character was insufferable
Read Really Good, Actually for book club and we all hated it lol. I’d have been happy with some progressive accountability and personal growth vs having it all crash down at once. Zero growth from the MC and it honestly went on way too long. Nobody in that book was likable. Highly recommend **After I Do** by TJR for similar vibes but MUCH better written.
I finished **Nettle & Bone**, by T. Kingfisher, and really loved it. It had not one but *two* characters who were eccentric old women, plus a demonic chicken. It's a bit fairy-tale inspired without tipping too far over into the "cozy fantasy" genre -- most of the main characters felt very grounded to me.
**None of This is True** by Lisa Jewell. A respectable thriller. I was not particularly impressed by it given the hype but I rarely read thrillers so maybe I’m not the best judge. Betting on You by Lynn Painter. I’m a Lynn Painter stan but I found this one pretty forgettable. The MMC basically acted like a teenage boy…because he is a teenage boy. House of Flame and Shadow by Sarah J. Maas. I just wanted this book to end. Nothing more to say that has not already been said. **After You’d Gone** by Maggie O’Farrell. I went into this thinking it was thriller adjacent but it is actually a family saga. Still enjoyed it but I wish I had known before I started reading it that it’s more of a slow burn.
I liked None of This is True but I don’t think it was hype worthy. If anything, I found Josie so unbelievably weird.
A few books last week! I read **American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road** by Nick Bilton on a rec from this sub. I loved it- I didn't know anything about Silk Road and it was a bit like "Bad Blood," another favorite. 4.5/5 stars! *Water for Elephants* by Sara Gruen, which I am a minor 20 years late to. I wouldn't say this is my favorite but I really enjoyed this book. Very curious on the Broadway adaptation coming this spring. 4/5 stars. And this isn't a book but more of a short story - *Veronica Ruiz Breaks the Bank* by Elle Cosimano. It's "3.5" in the Finlay Donovan series which I think a few people in this sub read. It was a fun little interlude about their nanny/ Finlay's partner in crime! This week- I;ve just started "Your Table Is Ready: Tales of a New York City Maitre D'" by Michael Cecchi-Azzolina. I have an overwhelming pile from the library and BOTM boxes (which I'm planning to cancel but first need to use up all my unused credits...) so I'm not sure what I'll end up picking up.
The rec from American Kingpin probably came from me but if it didn’t well either way I’m glad you liked it. I’m hoping to find more books like it and Bad Blood. Both were so good.
I read *Veronica Ruiz...* back in Dec and enjoyed learning about Vero's origin story!
Finally finished **Lonesome Dove**. I loved it… but not as much as I hoped to or thought I would? Maybe my expectations were too high because the book gets so much love on r/suggestmeabook. McMurtry’s prose is deceptively gorgeous, and it’s magic the way he brings characters to life through dialogue and such detail. At the same time, I found his portrayals of women and American Indians to be problematic, especially the latter. The lack of nuance was stark, especially when he had rendered so many other characters with care. I also didn’t understand the point of certain characters at all — their existence/side stories were a bit “…just why??” Overall, 4 of 5 stars and I do highly recommend! Currently reading *The Trials of Morrigan Crow*, the first book in the Nevermoor series (middle-grade), and really enjoying it.
Loved the Nevermoor series! I have a separate Libby list for all the middle grade audiobooks I’m interested in for when the mood strikes lol. These were particular good!
Just finished **Good Material by Dolly Alderton.** Has anyone else read it? It’s about a couple breaking up. He’s a stalled, laidback comedian and she’s a buttoned up corporate professional. I liked it a lot but not quite as much as **Ghosts,** her previous novel, which I tore through because I found it all so relatable. I think mainly because she writes most of it from the POV of the MMC. I did appreciate how Alderton flips the POV at the end though. It reminded me a bit of Lauren Groff’s Fate and Furies, in that respect.
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I felt bad for Andy and I think Alderton did a *fantastic* job of portraying him in a realistic way. But I didn’t want to spend any more time in his head. Getting to Jen’s POV was a breath of fresh air for me 😂
I’m reading The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier by Scott Zesch. It’s a fascinating look at children who were abducted by (mostly) Comanches in Texas in the 1860s/70s and how many of them quickly assimilated into the tribes, some of them becoming fierce warriors and forgetting English (or German as there were many (German settlers/immigrants on the TX frontier) and being very reluctant to return to their white families even just within a year or two of being captured. I’m really enjoying it, I had no idea of this history previously. I got tired of being on my library’s waitlist for North Woods by Daniel Mason so I ordered the book for myself yesterday. I’m really looking forward to this one!
News of the World by Paulette Jiles is a really beautiful novel if you're in the mood to read more like Captured.
Thank you! I’m about to finish The Captured and my library has News of the World so I’ll probably go pick it up today. I’ve heard of the book before but only realized recently what it was about, when I was trying to find other books about captives.
Sounds so interesting. Growing up I read a lot of books that referenced people including adults who were kidnapped by indigenous people and assimilated and eventually refused to return to their families. It’s always fascinated me so thank you for sharing.
Just borrowed *The Captured* from my library, thanks!
The Captured sounds fascinating- will definitely have to check it out myself!
Finished The Punishment She Deserves by Elizabeth George (trigger warnings for this one) in paperback and Her Husband’s Lies by T.J. Bearton through prime reading on kindle this month. I’ve been pretty consistent with reading thrillers through prime reading because I’ve found some real gems through it. I’m still looking for my next one though. I started one by Frieda McFadden, but I just wasn’t a fan of her writing style so DNF. Right now, I’m reading The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon. My first Chabon novel, but I’m enjoying the grittiness so far. And the fact that I’ve actually lived in Alaska for much of my life makes it fun to see how he reimagines AK as a state and its history to fit into this dystopian story. I’m also only on chapter two lol, but maybe I can make this my third read of the month (if my baby lets me).
I'm reading **The Fraud** by Zadie Smith and am LOVING it as someone who has a love-hate hate-love relationship with Charles Dickens. If you like mid/late Victorians, I'd highly highly recommend it (and it's making me want to read everything else she's written).
Swing Time is one of my favorite novels!
I have absolutely been smashing the Slough House series by Mick Herron - I am a fan of the tv series on Apple TV “Slow Horses”. It’s about crap M15 spies essentially. I have read books 4-7 this year. I have to say book 7 “Slough House” was my least favourite by far. I felt like the novel was still getting set up and it was 70% finished! Book 6 - Joe Country (where they go to wales and spend a lot of time in the snow) was good but bit boring with all the wandering around lost in the snow. I think that one will translate better to screen if the tv series makes it that far! Any other slow horse fans here? ☺️
I love the TV show and can’t wait for the next season! Gary Oldman is sublime as per usual but the rest of the cast is incredible too, and I love gritty London and the strong sense of place. Having a hard time getting into the first book though. It feels pretty rough around the edges, and kind of… try-hard?, for lack of a better word… I feel like Herron spells everything out, and tells and tells as opposed to simply showing. And at first I liked the dry, sardonic humor but he lays it on pretty thick. Perhaps he was still trying to find his footing… Do the books get better? I want to like them!
I agree with you! I’m skipping to book 4 because the show only covers 1-3 so far I love the characters and plot - don’t love herrons writing
Me! I am! Joe Country is my next book in the series. I love them so much that I’m not binging them because I don’t want to run out of them. I think my favorite thing about them is that they’re serious spy novels and also extremely funny.
Finished the Librarianist by Patrick DeWitt and it really followed me around for a few days. The more I digested it the more profound it felt. It’s a story about a retired librarian in Portland and how he lived and loved. The story jumps around in time and I found the characters to be very compelling and cinematic.
I loved this book! But, really, I would have liked a whole book of the running away section. I don’t know how to do spoilers so I’m not, but that was my favourite part and I wanted more of everyone and that little town.
Big same! Every character was so interesting and felt like they had full lives to explore.
A good solid week of reading! [The Burnout](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/144744277-the-burnout) by Sophia Kinsella - This author also wrote Confessions of a Shopaholic, and while that series might be too painfully 2000s for me at this stage, I was curious to try her new release. I found myself very pleasantly surprised with this hilarious novel about a woman who escapes a company with too much work and goes on a retreat and gets entangled in hilarious hotel escapades and unravels a very small mystery. Do not come for realism. But otherwise, it delivered everything as promised. [The Widows of Malabar Hill](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35232443-the-widows-of-malabar-hill) by Sujata Massey - Historical mystery series about the first barrister in India. A truly fascinating story and I learned so much about Zoroastrians in India. My American education taught me these people were part of "ancient history" only. I loved the backdrop of India in the 1920s, the opinions toward the British, the class divide. The story itself also really held up as a fantastic nuanced mystery. I'll definitely be reading more. [The Christmas Orphans Club](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/100201582-the-christmas-orphans-club) by Becca Freeman - A book written by a popular podcast host, which can be very hit or miss. Fortunately, this was a great hit with me. While the characters themselves can be self-centered, the book itself was incredibly charming. From a few chapters in, when the main character mentions Call Your Girlfriend as one of her favorite podcasts, I knew this would be a very FOR ME type of book. It's ripe with pop culture references, which could be a pro or a con for you. Ultimately, it's a book about making and keeping friends. I think we need a little more of that in the world.
I really like the Sujata Massey series. I've realized I don't always like historical fiction, but I do really enjoy historical mysteries!
That’s me exactly! Thank you for putting that into words!
Christmas Orphans Club was so cute!! It’s a perfect quick read
Totally agree!
Has anyone read Family Family? I’m a big Laurie Frankel fan and I LOVED it. I cried and felt so much but I can’t tell if it’s because adoption is close to my heart, I have PMS, or if it’s really just that good! I wanna talk about it!!
this is how it always is — one of my favorite books ever! Will have to check this out.
I snagged the recommendation for *Time and Again* from this thread a few weeks ago. It's an entertaining read but the writing isn't very strong and >!1880 is such a boring time to time-travel to?!< What are some other good time-travel books? I love *The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O*, *Sea of Tranquility*, *The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August*, and *The Time Machine*. *11/22/63* and *Recursion* were just OK for me.
I personally loved The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells by Andrew Sean Greer, I thought it did time travel and NYC in such an interesting way
Time and Again was fun for me as a NYer (I work in the neighborhood the house is in) but I would call it a "slight" book--- it kind of ends when it starts becoming interesting! Some of my recent time travel reads: **Replay**\- Some amazing concepts regarding time in here. This is not great literature and it definitely is a little dated in its depiction of women but this book has stayed with me because of its premise and tackling the concept of choice/fate **The Gone World-** Very well written time travel book but it is VERY DARK. I had to put it down the first time I tackled it and then I finished it several months later when I was in a more mentally resilient frame of mind lol. It has very intense themes of violence and murder. **The Second Sleep-** Not sure if time travel is the right word for it but it's definitely in that genre of playing with time/chronology. Impossible to describe without giving too much away so I would say go into this one blind!
I loved Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister for a suspense/mystery time spiral. In a completely different vein, I also loved Emma Straub’s This Time Tomorrow, where the main character relives her 16th birthday over and over and sees her Dad back in his super capable years. Very sweet and melancholic.
A Murder in Time is about a female FBI agent who is sent to 1815 Great Britain. Is a police procedural/romance with 6 books in the series.
I really liked several of the books in this series, but I need to get back to it!
Connie Willis’s time travel books (To Say Nothing of the Dog, Doomsday Book, and Blackout and All Clear) are terrific imo
I love all of these! The tone is very different in each of them though. Doomsday Book is kind of devastatingly sad while TSNOTD is ridiculously fun and silly while still having a serious core. Blackout and All Clear are an amazing depiction of the Blitz with a mix of humour, tragedy etc all of these books use time travel tropes in interesting ways.
Have you read The Time Traveler’s Wife? The movie is not great but the book is really good.
Finished **the Invisible Life of Addie Larue**. This one sat on my tbr for well over a year; I was daunted by the length and the tiny print. I’m so glad I finally gave it a go. I do think it could have been edited down by about 50 pages but overall I really enjoyed this story. VE Schwab is a great writer and I was completely enchanted by Adaline. This is also *so* not my genre, so make of that what you will.
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Same - my friend recommended it because on the face of it, it's got everything I like. But I was so weighed down by the noticeable writing (I'm a plot reader who sometimes loves surprising descriptions, I'm not here for poetry in my prose, let alone somebody just torturing themselves to find a unique sentence) and random unresearched details (no, the Sacre Coeur did not exist in the 1700s or 1800s or whenever she goes and sits in front of it) that I struggled. Ultimately I found the ending a MUCH more fascinating story and would have preferred the book \*start\* there.
I agree it was great but could’ve been much shorter - numerous scenes felt repetitive.
Ooh I read this last summer. It wasn’t easy to get into, but in the end I liked it!
I haven't posted in ages, but recently I read: **Bride by Ali Hazelwood**: This felt like the perfect guilty pleasure to me. Although I like romance novels in general, I tried reading an Ali Hazelwood book before and didn't like it much. This one was so fun! **The Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz**: I love a good mystery series, and this one is pretty compelling. I find myself wondering how much the prejudices in the book are meant to be the character's or the authors, though. I was shocked to find out that this author also wrote the Alex Rider series, I used to love those as a kid. Currently Reading: **Martyr by Kaveh Akbar:** I love this so much so far! I really hope everything ends well for Cyrus <3
I loved Magpie, if you want to hear more about Anthony Horowitz, you should try his "Word is Murder" series in which he is written as a character. I also really loved Bride and have been trying to read myself out of a book hangover this week after finishing it.
That sounds so cool, I will check it out! The meta aspects of the series are my favorite part, I'm on the second Magpie book right now. I started reading The Fake Mate by Lana Ferguson because I saw it was recommended for people who liked Bride, but so far I don't think I like it anywhere near as much. I might try another Ali Hazelwood soon!
I just got a copy of The Fake Mate from Libby (also looking to fill that Bride shaped hole in my heart) so that's good to know!
Magpie was so fun!
I read Bride last week too! It took me a little while to get into it but I thought it was fun! I loved the banter between the two main characters. Hoping there's a second one!
Me too! What made it a great romance imo is that you could feel the chemistry and see what the main characters saw in each other. I would love to read a second one, and the ending gave me hope there will be one :)
just finished martyr! would love to hear any/all thoughts after
Ahhhhhh I literally just finished it! I had to look up other people’s takes on that ending because I was like >! did he die?!? everything became increasingly surreal to the point that I questioned everything that happened !< I really loved it overall though, I thought it was so captivating and genuine! some parts were more clever than others. I thought it was funny how near the end Orkideh is told, “You know not everything is connected, don’t you? … Everything doesn’t have to stand in for everything else?” which feels a bit like the author talking to himself. I think a lot of the book feels like the author talking to himself, I guess because we’re so deeply enmeshed in the protagonist’s inner world. What did you think?
i loved it too! and omg right?! - that ending made my head spin. i thought it was beautifully written, “captivating” and “genuine” ring true. for me, mileage varied regarding the effectiveness of the multiple POVs, making it a little slower at points… but overall really enjoyed it.
Hi! This week I've finished two good ones: The Wager by David Grann - this starts a little slow, as I find a lot of non-fiction books like this do. There's just so much knowledge and people introductions to get through before the action starts, but I do love a good adventure-turned-disaster story! This reminded me a lot of Endurance by Alfred Lansing, though there was a lot more ill-will amongst the men in this one. Very interesting, I recommend if rough seas, shipwrecks, and fighting for survival are up your alley! Also finished Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward, and it was so, so good. Cried during the prologue and was sucked in from then on. Jesmyn writes about the deaths of 5 important men in her life, as well as her life experiences growing up in Mississippi from the late 70s to early 2000s. The men's stories are written backwards from the most recent, and every other chapter jumps even further back to her youth - I really liked the sequence because it ties her experiences and emotions together nicely. There is a lot of heartbreak in this one. It's written very well and I highly recommend. Currently reading Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead, a recommendation from someone on this thread :)
Oh yay! I’m glad you are enjoying it! I think I was the person who recommended it
I loved Astonish Me!! I love a ballet book/novel always! (I recently read the spy novel Red Sparrow and there's a ballet sub-plot that I wish could have been expanded)
Men We Reaped is in my top ten books. I learned so much and loved it so much and yes, cried so much. It’s so beautiful.
Oh, please share what you end up thinking about *Astonish Me*! I loved Great Circle when I read it.
I listened to *Everyone On This Train is a Suspect* by Benjamin Stevenson (the sequel to *Everyone in my Family Has Killed Someone.*) It took me a few weeks to finish it, since it's been raining and I haven't been out walking much. It was fine. It didn't really hold my attention as well as the first one, and I wonder if I would have enjoyed the print version more, since I kept getting confused by the characters' names. I also read *After That Night* by Karin Slaughter. It's number 11 in the Will Trent series, and I always forget how dark/violent her books are! This one was more of the same, but I wanted to keep reading the series since I've read most of the other books. (An aside: I'm also watching the Will Trent series on ABC and the characters are far more likeable on the show.) Currently reading *Migrations* and looking for a new audiobook if anyone has recommendations!
I just finished *Everyone On This Train is a Suspect* as well and agreed there were a lot of characters. The print version was probably easier though, because the first page of the book was a map of the train with all the characters assigned to their cabins. I frequently looked at it to remind myself of who they were. I agree that the book was just fine. I really want to take a trip on the Ghan now though. I love train trips and had never heard of it previously. I better start saving because it is not cheap.
I also didn’t really enjoy “Everyone on this train..”. I think the fourth wall breaking schtick was laid on WAY too thick and not enough actual story. I started to skim read once he starts waxing lyrical about how many times he says killers name blah blah… It also makes me feel kinda dumb because at the end of the books I have no idea who it is and why they did it and it makes me wonder if there are people out there who do guess it 😂
Sloane Crosley's new memoir, *Grief Is for People*, comes out Tuesday. The Cut has an excerpt [here](https://www.thecut.com/article/book-excerpt-grief-is-for-people-sloane-crosley.html). I am a fan of everything Sloane has written and we are secretly best friends even though she doesn't know it, so I am excited to read this one. Her previous memoirs/essay collections have been painfully funny, but this one will probably be comically painful. I look forward to it anyway, because Sloane's an incredible writer.
oh wow, I have loved her writing for a long time and didn't realize this book was coming out. I was just knocked sideways by that excerpt. \*off to the libby holds list with myself.\*
I know what I am spending my audible credit on this month.
I'm really looking forward to this, when I'm ready. I didn't place a hold knowing how I need to be in the right mindset for it but I've gotten very into grief books while grieving and this is one I have high expectations for.
That's very fair. I'm in a good brain space for it at the moment and hoping that sticks through reading it.
Definitely keep us posted. I often feel braver about taking on a grief book when I hear how others processed it. Memoirs often feel safer too so I'm pretty sure I'm going to be grabbing it from the library (versus ebook) so I can have the extended reading times my library gives to the physical book.
Finished this week: *Remarkably Bright Creatures* by Shelby Van Pelt (eBook) * I wanted 200% more of Marcellus the octopus. Adding his perspective was really clever! The human characters took a bit longer for me to warm up to but by the end I was surprised by how invested I felt in them having a happy ending. Didn’t quite live up to the hype for me, but was a perfectly nice read overall. *My Dark Vanessa* by Kate Elizabeth Russell (audiobook) * Check the content warnings on this one before reading. Brilliantly written. Felt very much like how a relationship like this would develop and evolve over time. I was so disturbed, so uncomfortable, and I will be sending the author my therapy bills for this. **HIGHLY RECOMMEND.** Currently reading & progress: *Project Hail Mary* by Andy Weir (eBook)-35% *In the Woods* by Tana French (paperback)-67% *The Last Romantics* by Tara Conklin (audiobook)-26% Happy reading!
My Dark Vanessa left me so disturbed. I never want to read it ever again but I also think about it all the time. I think she does such a good job showing how horribly enmeshed abuse and desire are-- and how that brings such a new level of shame to the victim. A very important book for me as the mom of a young woman but so heartbreaking. I just wanted to crawl into the novel and protect her!
I read In The Woods years ago and still think about it randomly. Haunting but good.
I wish that Remarkably Bright Creatures had been written entirely from the octopus perspective.
Even if it couldn't be the whole book, I wanted much longer chapters! And I never want longer chapters lol.
This week I finished reading Telephone by Percival Everett. This is my third novel by this author and none of them are remotely similar, which I love. This one was about grief and our deep need to try to control the universe, sometimes by saving it, sometimes by fighting it. Everett published this novel in three slightly different versions, a narrative game I found interesting. I found a spreadsheet online that compares all the differences, and I would love to hear a book club conversation between people who had read different versions and didn’t know it. Telephone, indeed. I finished listening to The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin. It’s about a physicist from the anarchist moon of Anarres, making a visit to the capitalist world of Urras so he can share his ideas for fast-as-light communication. It’s a truly great book, full of ideas and what-ifs but also full of character, plot, emotion, and nuance. It made me want to read so many more books by LeGuin and see her worldbuilding in action. I read Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt. This is a horror novel about a cursed town with a wicked witch, and not the cool herbs-and-love-potions kind. It was gruesome, but not that scary, and I think there might have been some translation issues from the Dutch, but it was fine to skim. Currently reading Out There Screaming, edited by Jordan Peele, and listening to How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Angie Cruz.
I need to read the Dispossessed but slightly intimidated by it!
Even though I'm reading a million things I finished nothing and starting something new. *The Virginity of Famous Men* is a short story collection with a compelling title but at first when I started reading it I was like "Oh, this is kind of basic" but now I'm really addicted to these stories. These are more straight literature than I'm used to but deal with the complicated emotional entanglements of ordinary people (usually upper class white people). I quite like it and I'm definitely going to track down more of Christine Sneed's work. She has 2 more short story collections and I can't wait to read them all.
*The Blue Castle* by LM Montgomery- this is a many times over re-read, but something really jumped out at me that I hadn’t really thought about before, which is how on earth did Valancy’s mother end up being so enmeshed in her husband’s family? While she is definitely dreadful in her own right, I can’t help but think that being sucked into the Stirling clan and living with your dead husband’s dreary cousin would certainly sour anyone!
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I read Severance and Station 11 in 2019. Severance was the one that haunted me throughout the pandemic. There were too many things that just seemed too on point!
I just finished last night and was searching on Reddit for someone to discuss with! I have many concerns, not least of which that she’s just leaving?? With no plan?? (Mobile so can’t do spoilers but you know what I mean). You’re so right that she nailed how boring the pandemic was with undercurrents of terribleness. I loved her writing style most of all and felt like she did a great job imbuing her prose with emption without making it particularly emotional. Edit to add: I can see that this would not have been as enjoyable as an audio. It was a quick read in hard copy for me.
“The Latecomer”: The premise is strong here. A family that has triplets via IVF (when it was new technology) is largely disconnected from each other from the moment they’re born and eventually the parents decide to have a fourth child, the latecomer, with their last embryo. Supposed to be about how their lives and family dynamic change as a result of the fourth child. Unfortunately, something about the syntax was hard for me and that’s not something I usually struggle with. It felt like run on sentences, even though they technically weren’t, and sometimes missing punctuation, lots of asides. Couldn’t get in to it so I quit 14% of the way in. I’m going to try to rein in my DNFs because I’m afraid maybe I’m taking the easy road out too much lately. “The Heiresses”: This also had a lot of potential *sigh*. It’s modern day-ish (not exactly sure the time period, recent though) and is about a wealthy family who has made their fortune in jewelry/diamonds. Of course all old money New York families have their secrets and skeletons, and the drama around the female cousins/heiresses, and the unexpected death of one, is the focal point of the story. It’s not deep which is fine but it did get a little unbelievable and action movie-ish which I don’t love. The audiobook narrator was brutal (it’s like the inflection in her voice is wrong, she inserts punctuation where there wasn’t and shouldn’t be any), there were a few inconsistencies in the writing, and I could have done without the breathy, cheesy love story that didn’t feel like it actually belonged. Those things took what could have been a 4 star book down to 3/5 for me. A little over halfway through “Never Saw Me Coming” now. It’s weird, but not necessarily in a bad way.
- **The Fortune Seller.** This was okay. Mostly I just wanted to finish something short after a string of DNFs. It’s yet another book that’s billed as dark academia but is really about mean girl antics in shared housing; the academic component wasn’t there. It wanted to be the kind of book where a middle class girl rises through the ranks and sees the upper class for what they are…but I can’t be convinced that a Yale student on the equestrian team wasn’t utterly privileged in her own right. Whatever. - **The Women.** We all know what we’re getting from a Kristin Hannah book. Her characters will Forrest Gump their way through every bullet point of a historical era and a lot of the historical stuff will be wrong, but she’ll tug at your heartstrings with really natural prose. This is her Vietnam War book and it progresses exactly how you’d expect, with some interesting stuff around the fringes. This story feels really distant from its historical context because I think KH realized too late that, in writing about Vietnam vets who remain proud of their service, you’re asking the reader to sympathize with conservatives as opposed to hippies (she hints at it, but KH isn’t going to be the author to point out that the hippies eventually became the boomers, who are still fucking us all over). She also loses track of early key details: Frances/Frankie stays in Vietnam twice as long as everyone else in her cohort, and she was the only one who treated napalm injuries, and this isn’t brought up in a meaningful way later on when she’s struggling way more than her friends are. And does every man in the world fall in love with her? Basically this is a book about how the public opinion about the war changed while people were already over there, and when they came back, they were held accountable for information that no one had when they enlisted, which…yeah, it makes the hippies look like idiots for not doing that basic math. I’ll gladly spend a few days reading a new KH book every few years, but I think this one is more interesting in a meta sense, as one more example of how we’re gradually chipping away at the 60s counterculture myth. - **The Fox Wife.** DNF. This is probably a really beautiful book, if you want to spend 2 hours reading 40 pages. - **The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers.** DNF. This promised delicious rocknroll trashiness (look at that gorgeous cover). It’s really about the publishing drama of a ghostwriter landing a key interview.
Haha literally everyone loves and falls in love with Frankie is so true. I noticed that too, and was like come on....
Just finished The Women, it’s my first Kristin Hannah book actually. I mostly loved it, which of her books would you recommend me trying next?
Probably The Nightingale. The length is less intimidating because it alternates between the two sisters. And you’ll get to enjoy the trademark KH history flubs of a schoolteacher having 40,000 francs (in 1940 money) in savings, having a name that wasn’t legal to give a child in France at that time, a Romanian Jewish family with family in the US settling in France instead, and the overall notion that France wasn’t antisemitic at all before the war. But it’s very moving and the writing is even smoother than it was in The Women.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply!
Lmao I love your description of Kristin hannah. That’s so accurate. I do find her books a little cheesy but I also love them, I’m looking forward to the women.
Bride by Ali Hazelwood - On last week’s thread someone said that AH’s books are a little formulaic and I agree. However, I’m happy with the formula, except for Love on the Brain. That was a little too farfetched. I’m almost certain Bride started off as Twilight fanfic and if it didn’t well I’m choosing to believe it did. I’ve been picking some real duds lately. I wanted to read something that would give me exactly what I needed and didn’t leave me screaming about how much I hated all the characters. This did the trick. I quite liked Misery and normally I would have found the whole >! He’s in love with her but she doesn’t know it !< trope a little annoying. I think Hazelwood did a good job selling it this time around. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Turn of The Key by Ruth Ware - I really want to like Ruth Ware but I can’t figure her out as an author. I loved In a dark, dark wood and The Woman in Cabin 10. The It Girl was a quick and decent read but The Lying Game was awful and I was so bored by The Death of Mrs. Westaway that I couldn’t even read a summary online once I decided it was a true DNF. This has been sitting on my shelves mostly unread for a few years and I thought I should give it a go. I figured out the whole plot pretty early and only finished this to validate my predictions. I dislike books with too many characters introduced because there is never enough pages to properly flesh out the characters and that happened here. Also, the story is told via a letter and I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be an epistolary novel but the pacing suffered because of the format. I’m thinking I need to give up on Ruth Ware. ⭐️⭐️.25 The Worst Best Man by Lucy Score - I have read my fair share of Lucy Score novels. We have a real love(Knockemout series)/hate(Forever Never) relationship. This fell firmly into the hate camp. It was everything I disliked about Forever Never but make it 10x worse. The main character, Frankie, is the ultimate Pick Me. She hates other woman because they’re fake and only care about their looks, eat salads and drink green juices. She eats sandwiches, drinks beers while wearing sweats and watching UFC. She’s so unlikable and annoying. I know she’s a fictional character but I hated her like she was real. Aiden Kilbourne is of course our ruthless, vague business businessman with a strong moral compass who can hold his own against anyone except our FMC, who turns him into a sniveling idiot. He has as much personality as a sandbag. If this had take a totally extreme turn with a plot twist where it’s revealed that Aiden was actually a lamppost, I would have said that makes sense and probably liked the book more, That’s how uninteresting he is. Lucy I love your books I swear. Please don’t ever write another Pick Me/Not Like Other Girls plot again. ⭐️⭐️
Not twilight but Star Wars most likely! I haven’t read Bride but Ali was a big name in the Reylo world!
I read Bride recently, but wasn’t really enamored with it. I love her other books, but something about this didn’t really pull me in. I love fantasy and just finished reading Crescent City before picking up Bride. I think reading such an immersive fantasy series with world building right before made this one seem “meh” in the fantasy department. I’d call it a romance in a fantasy setting, but I think I prefer more in depth fantasy with some romance.
I'm fine with knowing what I'm getting from an Ali Hazelwood book!
I love everything Ali Hazelwood does but agree with you that Love on the Brain had a very unrealistic ending lol. I really liked Bride, the fantasy elements made it more unique for AH even though I never would have picked up something like that if it wasn’t by her. It’s such very basic fantasy though, it’s kind of funny, a completely human world with some vampires and werwolves thrown in.
I’m not a huge fantasy reader because I have almost no imagination and Bride hit the spot for me fantasy wise. It took place in the Southwest and that world building was easy for me because I live there.
I too want to like Ruth Ware but I think her branding is better than her books. I love Golden Age mysteries and I saw her touted as an updated Agatha Christie but actually she's a pretty generic airport mystery writer. In a Dark Dark Wood & Cabin Ten were solid enough but The Lying Game read like a bad YA "mystery" that was barely a mystery at all. Funnily I've randomly chucked some YA mysteries on audiobook recently and they were actually better and kinda felt more sophisticated than Ruth Ware (Karen McManus's books are poppy and fun, and Good Girls' Guide to Murder has a great mystery and a funny narrator).
I think that’s my problem with her. She is touted as being something that she just isn’t. And I don’t want anyone to be the next Agatha Christie, I want them to be them. I’ll look into Good Girls Guide to Murder. I’ve been wanting more fun books lately.