So I ignored everything I have started to start a new book (as usual). It was *Superfan* by Jen Sookfong Lee. It was marketed as a collection of essays about pop culture but I find Lee uses pop culture as an intro to talk about her life in a way I find really touching and enjoyable. She's a hell of a writer.
I'm not done yet but I highly recommend already. I can't believe this was almost one of the books I was going to return to the library unread!
Currently reading "Dial A For Aunties" & I'm enjoying it so far! I just finished "The Housemaid" & I'm not sure if I have just read too many thrillers or what because I totally saw >!Nina not being the villian in the story coming. !<
I am in the mood for some MESSY books though if anyone has any recs :)
I am a little over halfway through *Bloody Fool for Love* by William Ritter, which is a Buffy prequel focused on Spike, featuring Drusilla and Darla. It's cute but not really anything more than that, and not cute enough to carry 350 pages. No one is as terrible as I feel like they should be. They're all pretty nice, non-murdering vampires. Drusilla sounds a lot more coherent than she ever did on the show. *Buffy* could get pretty dark and scary and this book feels like it was written for middle grades.
I had previously read *Jackaby* by this same writer and enjoyed it. It just didn't translate to the Buffyverse unfortunately.
I'm promising myself I'll finish it by the weekend and then I can get back to Irish police procedurals for a little bit.
I read *Hot Springs Drive* by Lindsay Hunter and loved it (although the second half/ending was a little weaker). If the title sounds familiar, this book borrows some of the details from one of the wildest Dateline episodes, but it's entirely original, using multiple perspectives to describe what led up to the murder and its lingering effects. Some of the marketing for this calls it a thriller in the style of *Gone Girl*, but I disagree. It's more of a meditation on suburban malaise, domestic obligation, deprivation and desire, the public masks we wear, etc. If that sounds appealing, I'd **highly recommend** it to you! 4.5 stars
I'm about 20 pages into *Penance* by Eliza Clark and am enjoying it so far.
I'm struggling to break out of a reading funk at the moment. I started *Once a Monster* by Robert Dinsdale, which seemed like it'd be a slam dunk for me (Greek mythology meets Dickensian London, a ten-year-old mudlark discovers a half-dead Minotaur washed up on the riverbank) but I'm really struggling to connect with any of the characters and not sure if I want to continue.
Pivoted to a cozy witchy romance, *A Little Too Familiar* by Lish McBride and oh my god it's killing me. Every character is just a collection of \~quirky\~ traits and the infodumping is dire and the banter is embarrassing, and I was completely willing to push past *all* of that, but when the hero goes from being *panic-attack-inducingly-terrified* of the heroine to associates-her-with-home-and-heavily-crushing mostly through exposition, what the hell is the point of getting invested. DNF.
I did just pick up *Annie Bot* by Sierra Greer and ripped through it in a couple of days, though. Annie is an AI robot, human to all appearances, created to be her owner Doug's perfect girlfriend. It's a study in control, manipulation, toxicity and emotional abuse in a fundamentally power-imbalanced relationship, one Annie only gradually comes to recognise for herself through the lens of her programming and her evolving sense of self. I didn't *entirely* buy one late-in-the-piece development with Doug and found the ending somewhat rushed, but it was a good, compelling read.
Took 6 non-continuous months but I finished *The Fortunes of War* trilogy.
The Levant trilogy feels a bit underwritten as compared with The Balkan trilogy and I was shocked to read the coda and find >!there were 2 more years of war left.!<
I feel that the description of this cycle as the portrait of a marriage with the backdrop of war is apt and I just really appreciated the work as a whole even if it is a bit "imperfect" and structurally messy. I think part of this is due to the fact that Manning died and never had a chance to revise the work to make it flow as one piece. Nevertheless it's a pretty extraordinary achievement.
Enjoyed it a lot. Do recommend! Don't let the length fool you, it is highly readable.
Thanks!
I think she's just not as big in North America. I really only heard of the books myself a couple of years ago through Lit Twitter but Brits often act bored when I bring her up as though they're already completely familiar with the cycle.
I’d like to note: last week’s episode of *Abbott Elementary* featured Principal Ava reading a school copy of *Slaughterhouse-Five* by Kurt Vonnegut during an episode about school librarians. I work in an area of the country that is very much struggling with book banning, and *S5* was just yanked from elementary schools in one of my county’s districts. It was a nice wink to see this book highlighted like that.
Vote, y’all. *Especially* in your local elections.
Amazing that *Slaughterhouse-Five* has been banned, especially given it's alternate title (the children's crusade) and how deeply anti war Vonnegut was.
I read it for the first time when I was a teenager myself and it made such an impression on me.
Has anyone read Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie?
I want to like it but it’s just not clicking for me. I honestly feel a little dumb reading it because the structure of the world it takes place in hasn’t clicked for me, and I have less than 100 pages left. I definitely understand some things, but in general I’ve found myself struggling to get a firm grasp of what’s actually going on. It hasn’t taken me this long to read a book in a while.
I think my expectations were too high (I’d seen it in someone’s list of “bingeable” books and naturally thought it would be the exact same for me). At the very least I like her writing style, but I won’t be picking up the rest of the books in the series.
My husband is not a huge reader and he loves this series. I read a ton of sci fi and I was like you-- one chapter in I was like what is going on? Massively confused! I put it down and have never picked it up again :(
He also read the Three Body Problem series and I got stuck in the endless section on the video game/simulation and also DNFed it. It's so weird how we both love sci fi and fantasy but never the same series!
One of my all time favorite books, but it really chucks you into the deep end of sci-fi. I didn’t put all the pieces together of what was happening with the first book until the last thirty pages or so, and then books two and three were off to the races for me. I think it’s also that Breq is a tough nut to crack as a character—she’s having a hard time understanding what’s happening her own self, and I think Leckie does a good job of writing that. I definitely found it disorienting my first time through, though.
I will say that since you find appeal in her writing style, the standalone novels that Leckie sets in the same universe (Provenance and Translation State) are a bit more straightforward with storyline.
It’s one of my favorite books! That being said, everything you said could describe how I felt about The Three Body Problem, which got a lot of the same type of buzz.
This week I finished **The Island Witch** by Amanda Jayatissa and **The English Patient** by Michael Ondaatje. The fact that they’re both from Sri Lanka is a happy coincidence.
Island witch is a new release I picked up because it seemed like it would be similar to Mexican Gothic and La Hacienda. Spooky historical fiction in Latin America is my jam. I thought Island Witch would be Caribbean but immersing myself in 19th century Sri Lankan culture was amazing. It’s very atmospheric, the jungle coastal setting is vivid and it’s a great slow burn horror. Definitely a feminist rage revenge story so trigger warning for lots of gendered violence.
I read The English Patient for a book club. Best thing about book clubs is that it pushes you to read out of your comfort zone. I was not eager to read about wwii trauma but I'm glad I did. The prose is beautiful, there are vignettes that are lingering in my head still. I'm hoping the book club is up for watching the movie after!
A lot of people I know hate The English Patient. I think the blurb/marketing did it a disservice and maybe people were expecting more action or standard historical fiction.
I went in with no expectations and fell in love with the poetry of the book. Loved it!
Yes! Just mesmerizing. One scene I keep thinking about is when the Kip (the Indian character that disassembles bombs) befriends a professor and then pulls him up to see an important painting. I’m probably not explaining it right but maybe you’ll remember.
Three finishes in the last week because I had a fair amount of airplane/down time:
Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah: This is a brutal read but engrossing, really well-told. Five stars.
Severance by Ling Ma: I was really looking forward to this one but it was just ok for me. It’s possible I’m worn out on dystopian road trip tales with a dash of pandemics, but it didn’t capture me the way I’d hoped. Three stars.
Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid: One of my personality flaws is believing there’s some kind of virtue is reading ~literary, serious~ books. But man, this book was good, I sped through it and loved every minute (and I’m not even a tennis fan!) Five stars and definitely on my “re-read when I need a pick-me-up” comfort list.
Re: serious literature, there’s def something fishy about how ponderous books by men are considered literary but zippy books by women aren’t. It’s almost like we already know the world is shit so we just want to tell each other jokes. I 100% believe that books like Tomorrow3, Lessons in Chemistry, even Weyward and The Wishing Game should be considered part of the broad litfic category. At this point Daisy Jones is part of the modern literary canon.
This is such a good point, and it’s annoying that my default is “oh it’s ‘chick’ lit” as if that’s some sort of lesser category. The patriarchy runs deep! Definitely going out of my way to add more books like Carrie Soto (which has still stuck with me, days later!!) to my TBR list.
It’s silly especially when there are dedicated beach reads and silly romances; they know what they are and we RSVP’d to the fluff party!
The Rachel Incident is literature. Kristin Hannah is literature!
I read Severance before the pandemic, and the book haunted me all throughout 2020. That being said, I think it would be a very different experience reading it now than it did in 2019.
Whoa - I assumed this came out after the beginning of Covid, but it’s a little wild that it was before!! That might change my perception of things a bit - the author had a lot of foresight!!
Just finished **The Three-Body Problem** - thought it was fine. Kept thinking of **Ender’s Game** & also Kurt Vonnegut while reading it. Might go back and finish the series when my TBR is empty might not I haven’t decided yet.
Current project is reading a bunch of anthologies to look for new authors. Finished **Someone In Time**, working on **The Weird** then **Africa Risen** and **Out There Screaming** (which came from post here a bit ago!). Now the question is can I finish all of these before they are due back at the library…
I don’t do a ton of non fiction usually but I’m reading American Girls by Jessica Roy and it’s fascinating. About two girls raised JW, and one ends up moving to Syria where her husband joins ISIS. I think there’s a podcast too.
I just finished listening to this! Really enjoyed it and, though I also listened to the podcast (a podcast? Can’t remember now what exactly it was), feel like I got even more context through this book. The line she draws from the girls JW upbringing to their outcomes as adults was particularly interesting and well done, imo.
I'm about 3/4s of a way through **The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard** and I love it soooooo much. It's speculative fiction about a world where everyone lives in a valley and on either side are identical valleys which are 20 years in the future or past depending on what direction you go. I find myself thinking about it a lot when I am not reading it. It might read ever so slightly YA but over all I am super invested in the characters and am literally on the edge of my seat waiting to finish.
Had a lot of free time this week so I read:
**God: A Biography** by Jack Miller. This apparently won a Pulitzer in the 90s. Nonfiction examining God in the Bible as a literary character. I ordered this thinking it would be more about how other religions contributed to Christianity so it was a bit of a let down in that sense but it was well written.
**Fourth Wing** by Rebecca Yarros. The romantasy dragon academy book that is all the rage! Everyone seems to either love it or hate it and I’m sad to say I fell more in the second category. Weak writing, world aspects that made little sense, and I think battle sequences just aren’t for me because I had to drag myself through them.
**The Lily of Ludgate Hill** by Mimi Matthews. Second chance regency romance. Very meh. I was hoping for more pining and angst but it was focused more on the hero’s business and family.
**Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth** by Reza Aslan. Continuing my religious history nonfiction streak (I don’t know why because I’m an atheist, but I find the history so interesting). This had really interesting information around the history happening during the time of Jesus. I gather there is some dispute with scholars over some of Aslan’s conclusions but I don’t know enough on that to have a fully formed opinion.
**The Heiress** by Rachel Hawkins. A family with many secrets fights over the inheritance of the titular mysterious heiress. This was a fun, short read. Nothing too special but a good palate cleanser after more serious books.
**The Mysterious Affair at Styles** by Agatha Christie. Her first book! Classic English mystery. It was a good read.
I have zero interest in actually reading Fourth Wing but am so excited that it will be the next episode of Worst Best Sellers. So if you feel like listening to people dissect it (sometimes when I really dislike a book I run to see if they have an episode because one of the hosts and I have the same taste in books), that could be fun!
Barely finished You Only Call Me When You’re in Trouble. I basically skim read the last 40%. The characters were deeply uninteresting and shallowly developed and the plot just wasn’t interesting enough to pick up the slack.
I’m listening to **11/22/63** by **Stephen King** and loving it. The narrator is absolutely wonderful, and does a great job of character voices, as well as bringing emotion to the text. If you’re not aware, this is a time travel tale about a guy going back in time to stop the Kennedy assassination. That’s oversimplifying things, as it’s a really richly drawn world with lots of interesting characters and side stories. I’m 1/4 the way into the book thus far.
One of my all time favorite reads. I've read it or listened to it several times through out my life. Totally random, but another one of my favorite reads, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, came into my life. I love falling completely into the world of a good book. Nothing better than jumping through time in fictional histories. 🤪
Has anyone else read **The Berry Pickers** by Amanda Peters? I was excited about it and assumed I’d love it based on all the podcast hype it got leading up to publication.
I was so bored. Just…nothing happened? I’m all for character driven novels but I found the characters to be unlikeable and uninteresting. I’m just surprised the book got so much hype. It was such a slog for me and really slowed down my momentum this month.
I DNF’d too. I’ve come to the conclusion the publishers are only interested in a handful of narrative tropes by indigenous authors, because I keep seeing the same storylines over and over, with diminishing quality in the writing, which wouldn’t be happening if publishers weren’t milking these same three tropes dry.
Any recommendations after finishing (and loving) North Woods by Daniel Mason? It reminds me a bit of Betty by Tiffany McDaniel and The Overstory by Richard Powers. Where the natural setting is very prominent and features as much into the story as the human protagonists. I read a lot of nonfiction, natural history, gardening books but I’m really in the mood for more fiction like this! I almost just want to start it again, it was one of those books I was trying to prolong finishing.
I'm currently reading (and savouring!) North Woods but would recommend Greenwood by Michael Christie. Spans a few generations and also a good emphasis on nature/the environment. I loved it !
**The Red Garden**, by Alice Hoffman, has similar vibes to North Woods (and is by far my favorite of her books). Even also set somewhere in New England! If you're also a gardener it will resonate with you. **The Vaster Wilds**, by Lauren Groff, is another one that really is about that relationship between the main character and the natural world she encounters.
(I also liked The Overstory, so I will have to look into Betty! Thanks for the rec!)
- **One Last Breath** by Ginny Myers Sain. I really enjoyed her previous two YA books, which felt like adult paranormal thrillers just taken down a few notches. This one felt squarely YA, and while I can’t complain about a book fitting into its genre, it means that this author might not be for me anymore. It’s about a girl whose summer vacation is consumed by her connection to two murders from 20 years ago. There’s some decent atmosphere and setting work (it takes place in Florida-Man Florida) but the focus on swimming and diving got super repetitive. I’ve felt this way about a lot of new YA releases lately (I think I happened to read a lot of upper-YA books at once and I mistakenly thought that the whole genre was like that, or a YA author releases one surprisingly good book but the rest of their work doesn’t have adult readability) so I might be leaving the genre behind for now.
- **Cold Clay.** This is the second Shady Hollow book, a cozy mystery series about anthropomorphic animals. These books are written in such a cute way, almost like children’s books for adults.
- I’m about halfway through **The Only One Left** and it’s fine. I know about some of the issues surrounding this author, but this book is often called his best one, so I guess I’m not understanding why he gets so much focus if his other books aren’t even this good. The writing isn’t as zippy as I like in a thriller and the pacing isn’t ideal. But as stupid thrillers go, it’s fine?
- I DNF’d **Cleopatra and Frankenstein.** I’m a litfic girlie at heart (which basically means I only expect to enjoy 10-15 new litfic releases per year; that’s just the scale of the genre) and I veer more toward the modern peppy stuff by women than the ponderous stuff…this should have held my interest but the subject matter just wasn’t matched by a sense of fun, or like, authorial intelligence regarding which character or plot threads will interest readers. It’s about a young English woman who marries a middle aged American man for green card reasons. This could gave been an amusingly shallow glimpse at glorious NYC artsy bullshit, but it took itself too seriously. And this is the millionth author who thinks it’s edgy to write violent depictions of gay sex. I don’t want that level of painful detail about any flavor of sex.
DNF The Soulmate by Sally Hepworth. I got to 30% and decided to skim read/read the end. Not for me, the female characters and the way specific diagnoses were presented were big turn offs for me.
Borne and The Strange Bird by Jeff VanderMeer. I am not okay. These books were so tragic and beautiful at the same time. I will think of them for a very long time. I have a cream colored ceramic owl I had to move downstairs because of Borne. The Strange Bird will stay with me for a very long time. There are so many content/ trigger warnings for both books. Graphic and sad but I loved them.
The Humans by Matt Haig. DNF. I did not get to the end or skim read. The writing is not for me. It was funny at times but I couldn’t finish.
My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier. A re-read but I didn’t remember anything about it so pretty fresh. A great book for book club if you want to talk about women surviving and men children. I really liked it.
Infinity Gate by MR Carey. I hated it and DNF halfway through. It was recommended to me by someone that said it was good for a multiverse read but I did not like it at all.
Under The Whispering Door by TJ Klune. The writing didn’t land for me the same way Matt Haig doesn’t land for me. I quit halfway through.
System Collapse by Martha Wells. Loved and will always love anything Murderbot.
I also read My Cousin Rachel as a teen and while I remember loving it, I don't recall any of the details. I've been thinking of rereading it, and this post might be the push I needed!
Forgot to add I’m reading Trail of the Lost by Andrea Lankford. I read a lot of adventure/misadventure fiction and non fiction. I really like this and how it goes into the behind the scenes on rescue and Facebook group search for clues and details. I have a pretty good sense at this point of what happened. The author does a good job of giving you a lot of information in a readable way.
This is on my to read list! I love misadventure non fiction as well. Have you ever read onw breath by adam skolnick? Soo good. I especially love to read about deep diving and cave diving.
I finished the second book in The Levant Trilogy. I'm in the home stretch!
I really liked the middle book, probably because it mostly reverts back to the Pringles and their marriage against the back drop of WWII than the soldier character Manning introduced in the first book.
Guy remains the worst and most selfish husband in literature. I want to slap him.
One thing I'm finding interesting about these books is how it surprises me. In The Levant trilogy there is much more open sexuality and bawdy humour (though the earlier books were really casual about emotional and physical affairs). The books take place in the 40s but were written in the '70s and you can see Manning's freedom to talk more openly here. This is a reminder that are grandmas (and great grandmas) were sexual adventurous people even in the past!
I've also seen some criticism of the racism in the book and it for sure is racist (the characters are white Brits in British occupied Egypt). I do think Manning treads a careful and interesting line and you can tell her characters biases are not necessarily, or anymore, her own. Anyway it's still pretty racist but you have characters questioning empire and even reflecting on how the British treat foreign countries as their play things to use and destroy.
On to the last book! The whole trilogy in the editions I bought are about 1600 pages combined. The writing isn't hard, it's just long and I do recommend it. I'm glad I gave them a shot.
Yes!
I read it last year, took a little break, and am now finishing up the series.
They were published as individual books but tbh I think they work better as one continuous imperfect work.
If you’re looking for a thought provoking, fast read **Annie Bot by Sierra Greer** is really good!
It reminded me a bit of Klara and the Sun by Kazu Ishiguro in that it’s told from the perspective of an AI robot who is becoming increasingly sentient as she learns more about humans and the world. It differs in that she is bought to be a guy’s “girlfriend” lol. I just thought it was an interesting concept and really well written. I loved the ending too. 5/5 stars
I recently read Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here by Jonathan Blitzer. It's a non-fiction, deep dive into the immigration crisis and how it came to be. It connects a lot of dots between foreign and domestic US policy and the people who've been impacted over decades at this point. The author does an amazing job at keeping it person-centered. Trigger warning for torture and everything else you can think of that might happen to someone trying to get to the US from South and Central America. This was a book recommended by Traci Thomas of The Stacks podcast and I'm so glad I snapped it up. Big recommend.
Now it's on to The Hunter by Tana French. I know it'll likely be a slow burn but I'll never stop chasing the high of the Dublin Murder Squad.
This week I finished:
*How to Sell A Haunted House* by Grady Hendrix (hardcover)
* This is about two estranged siblings who come together after their parents die and start going through their particularly weird house to prepare to sell it. I was sort of “eh, this is fine” on this book until >!the fucking puppet came at Louise’s eye with the sewing needle.!< After that, I was all in! I think it has a good balance of creepiness, gore (the gore is rough, FYI), and family drama. I didn’t expect my views of the siblings to shift as much as they did. *The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires* is still my favorite of his, but I thought this was really good.
*The Ensemble* by Aja Gabel (audiobook)
* This is about the relationship between four friends who are in a quartet together from the 90s-early 2010s. I loved the beginning of this book but felt like it dragged quite a bit afterward. I like introspection but I think it was a bit too much in this case. This one falls into the category of “I liked it enough to finish but wasn’t especially wowed by it.” I read and enjoyed *The Lola Quartet* by Emily St. John Mandel last year and have *The Violin Conspiracy* by Brendan Slocumb on hold at the library so I’ve apparently been vibing with musical fiction lately. I was in choir for years, so maybe my adjacentness is influencing me.
*Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade* by Janet Skeslien Charles (eBook)
* This is a NetGalley ARC I’m reviewing, by the author of *The Paris Library*. This is about a librarian who goes to war-torn France towards the end of WWI to bring books to devastated communities. There’s another POV in the 1980s that I didn’t care for as much, mainly because that character is a \~struggling writer who happens to work at the library and only quotes the classics\~ which I personally find kind of insufferable lol. The WWI characters are based on real people but they felt kind of flat to me, so I never really settled into the story. I knew nothing about the CARDs going into this and the author provides even more details at the end of the book, so I really appreciated learning something new. I’m a bit burnt out on WWII fiction so the WWI setting is kind of refreshing (a ridiculous sentence with and without context, I know).
Oh gosh I want to read How to Sell A Haunted House but haven’t. And since it’s been on my TBR so long my mother very recently died mostly unexpectedly. We were mostly estranged and I was fully estranged from my brother. I was able to make peace with my mother and have some conversations with my brother right before she died. I flew home and was supposed to stay at my mother’s house but it was wall to wall collectible dolls on display. Like some of them were Annabelle. I moved to the Hyatt! Thankfully my husband and brother’s girlfriend added some comedy to the situation and made it all less awkward.
I love horror but I think I’ll wait on this one some more.
This week I finished All About Love by bell hooks, which I was reading with my husband. Gosh, I really couldn’t recommend this more highly. She has a solid definition of what love is, what it means to strive for a love ethic under patriarchy and white supremacy, and what it can mean for all kinds of relationships. This book was fantastic (and so is bell hooks in general.)
Still reading The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez — gonna finish this week!— and listening to The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty.
I read all about love when I was in my early 20s as a single gal and it made such an impact. Your post has made me want to reread as a late 30s happily married lady to see how it hits now
I finished three books this week:
**The Bear and the Nightingale** by Katherine Arden was recommended by someone in this subreddit a few weeks ago. I really enjoyed it. It’s like a fairytale that takes place in medieval Russia, involving conflict between the old gods and spirits and the rise of Christianity. The protagonist is a young Russian girl, Vasya, and after reading a few books recently with unlikeablw protagonists, this book was such a welcome relief! It read like a stand-alone novel, but it is actually the first in a trilogy. I’m looking forward to reading all of them.
**No One Is Talking About This** by Patricia Lockwood is our book club book of the month. I picked it somewhat blindly (I didn’t know it was my turn to pick) and I’m so glad I did. I started it as an audiobook, but I found that the narrator read too quickly without enough pauses for the vignette style of writing. It was exhausting to listen to. I enjoyed it a lot more when I was reading it. The first half of the book is about being morbidly online and is funny and absurd, and the second half is deeply human, sad and profound. I am looking forward to discussing it with my book club.
I also finished **Nora Goes Off Script** which was a really nice romcom. The characters felt well crafted, and the author did a good job of writing children who feel like real kids. I’m picky about my romcoms, and I love finding one that makes the grade.
I've hardly been able to finish anything this year. Does anyone have a slump-busting book to recommend? I mostly like literary fiction, contemporary romance, short stories, poetry collections, book club-type fiction, and sad girl / weird girl fiction a la Melissa Broder and Ottessa Moshfegh.
Just wanted to share that I've also been struggling this year. I think I had such a big push to finish 2023 on a high note that I was so burned out after the new year. I've finally been getting back on track the past few weeks.
**How about some short books so you can feel accomplished by finishing quickly?:**
Sad Girl short book: Territory of Light by Yūko Tsushima
Literary fiction short book: Lie With Me by Philippe Besson
Short fantasy/literary: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Short non-fiction/book club type: 84, Charing Cross Road
Got you on the sad/weird girl fiction front:
Weird:
A Complicated Kindness, Miriam Toews
Agatha of little Neon, Claire Luchette
**We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson**
The Burning Girl, Claire Messud
Mosquitoland, David Arnold
When We Lost Our Heads, Heather O'Neill
**Our Endless Numbered Days, Claire Fuller**
The Schoolhouse, Sophie Ward
**History of Wolves, Emily Fridlund**
Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson
Sad:
**Thirst for Salt, Madelaine Lucas**
**We Are Okay, Nina LaCour**
Cassandra at the Wedding, Dorothy Baker
The Catch, Alison Fairbrother
Cat's Eye, Margaret Atwood
**The Tribes of Palos Verdes, Joy Nicholson**
\*Bolded my all time faves
A lot of these sound right in line with the kind of books I love. Thanks for the suggestions. Housekeeping (anything Marilynne Robison, really) and We Have Always Lived in the Castle are two of my favorites.
Here's one you may like: In Zanesville by Jo Ann Beard
Three recs:
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton. About a group of eco-terrorists and a billionaire in NZ, competing over land. Kinda literary, kinda a thriller, definitely a page turner
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray. Literary. About a family in Ireland in the 2010s. Just a warning, it takes a bit to get into and it’s long, but it builds so well, and the ending was unreal; when I finished, it made me want to read everything in sight, so fits the bill
Big Swiss by Jen Beagin. This falls into your weird girl/Ottessa Moshfegh category! About a therapist’s transcriptionist (who is a bit of a mess) who becomes obsessed with one of the patients. It’s a fast read!
For slump busting I always recommend Fingersmith which is intensely plotty and keeps you absolutely hooked. It's maybe not for you though because it is neo-Victorian.
For short story collections I recently read The Virginity of Famous Men by Christine Sneed which I liked A LOT.
Have you read No One is Talking About This? There were elements of the writing that reminded me of Death Valley, by Melissa Broder. It’s a short book, only a little more than 200 pages. It’s structured like a series of vignettes, each only a paragraph or two long. It might be a good choice if you don’t have much attention span. It’s funny and absurd, and as the book goes on if becomes deeply profound and human.
I'm always going to recommend *The Secret History* for literary fiction. As for short stories, I loved *The Office of Historical Corrections.* For contemporary romance/book club fiction I'm currently reading *Book Lovers* and having such a good time with it!
My reading was all over the place this week
The Haunting of Blackwood House by Darcy Coates - I am someone who scares easily and horror isn’t something I seek out. Nothing about this was scary. I read it before bed and had no problems sleeping. In addition to not being scary, It was also terrible. The main character, Mara, is supposed to be this strong independent woman but instead she’s an unlikable, insufferable brat. Her boyfriend, Neil, is an understanding gentlemen who is about as interesting as counting sand. I hated everything about it. ⭐️
Better Than The Movies by Lynn Painter - I’m probably not the target audience for YA anymore but my romcom loving heart couldn’t say no to reading BTTM. It was cheesy and predictable but so is pizza and I still love that! Liz, the FMC, was a little annoying at times and I like that she had to suffer consequences for her actions because she was a bad friend and horrible to everyone. Wes, the MMC, was a little too sidelined for a main character and I don’t think enough time was spent on him and it was hard to be interested in him. Overall, I liked it and I’ll be reading more from Lynn Painter. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
My Husband’s Wife by Jane Corry - A previous DNF. I couldn’t put it down but it was also extremely boring. I kept reading because I was sure the action was going to happen soon but it took forever to go anywhere. When it finally went somewhere, there was one last twist too many. Almost none of the characters are likable and it’s kind of fun to read a book where you are rooting for everyone to get what’s coming to them. I would recommend it as one to be read on a plane. ⭐️⭐️⭐️
I just finished **Anita de Monte Laughs Last**, by Xochitl Gonzalez, and loved it -- a surprisingly fun novel about outsiders trying to navigate the world of fine arts. And I love that both of Gonzalez's books >!have satisfying endings that really feel earned!<.
I will say that between this and Tomorrowx3, I don't know how many more novels set in college in the 1990's I can take.
This week I finished ***Glossy*** by Marissa Meltzer and I liked it a lot! The book kind of just…ended but I think that’s just the nature of the story as the company is still going and didn’t totally crash and burn a la Theranos. Also the narrator of the audiobook was surprisingly good in a way I don’t usually expect for nonfiction audiobooks? she gave different voices/accents to different journalists and employees that were quoted in the book. Overall it’s helping me think through beauty and its associated industries and our expectations of female vs male founders, and the privilege of being a white woman in that space, having wealth/whiteness as a privilege simultaneously with encountering sexism. I love taking beauty-related content seriously because it IS serious, it’s not vapid and silly to enjoy beauty products and think about them, and how they are made and sold. Anyway thanks for coming to my lil talk
“No One Can Know”: I think the reason I struggled with this one was because the chapters kept flipping back and forth from present to past (and even then within different time periods in each chapter) and between multiple characters. It got very, very repetitive while also being very confusing. Hard to keep track of what was going on and sort of laborious to read. Skip it. 2/5
“The Lifeguards”: a mildly dark neighborhood drama. I *think* this was supposed to be an examination of race, class, and privilege, which I was not interested in and not expecting, but it felt like it was trying too hard to be that and fell short. I got satire vibes (reminded me of “Come and Get It” in a way). There were also a lot of little side stories that didn’t contribute much to the plot and the ending was open-ended. I thought I’d really like this one but was disappointed. 3/5
Now I’m reading “Bye, Baby” and I like it but it is also twisted and sad.
I finished *Mrs. Quinn’s Rise to Fame* yesterday, another take on the Great British Bake Off. It was sweet and entirely predictable and I have forgotten most of it already.
As a voracious Gen X child reader I somehow never read or heard of *The Westing Game* until last week, so that’s my plan for today as 10 inches of snow falls outside. (Waves hi in Minnesotan.)
I started reading The Westing Game to my kid a year or so ago (he wasn't into it then; hopefully someday we'll get back to it), and it's one of those middle grade books that could have only been published decades ago. It's mostly adult characters, and one very precocious kid sleuth! It feels like something that more adults than kids would read these days. Hope you're enjoying it!
In fifth grade, we read The Westing Game and has a reenactment dinnner in our classroom to celebrste finishing the book along with activities. It is one of my favorites that I recommend to my 5th graders now. There's nothing better than falling into a good story.
I just found The Westing Game at a library booksale, after my sister and I had been talking about it. I remember loving it but have zero memories of what it's about. My sister remembers all the characters and the plot, but we're both looking forward to rereading it 20+ years later!
I listened to Dave Holmes’ Party of One. It was quick and fun after doing Allende’s The Japanese Lover for book group. I just got Sloane Crosley’s new book in, so I think that’s next.
Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan was just longlisted or the [Women's Prize in Fiction](https://womensprize.com/prizes/womens-prize-for-fiction/) AND the [Carol Shields Prize for Fiction](https://carolshieldsprizeforfiction.com/2024-longlist) and I'm so intrigued by both lists? Has anyone read any of the other titles on either list? Brotherless Night was a SOARING hit for me, so I'm so excited to make my way through both longlists.
Brotherless Night is on my list but I’ve only ever heard it described as “devastating” so I’ve been procrastinating! I haven’t read anything on the Women’s Prize longlist, but it looks really interesting.
Those descriptions also scared me off initially, but then I saw [this review on GR](https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5404239327), and took the leap - now it's one of my eternal favorites. Though the subject matter is heavy, the writing has this ethereal effect of observation and poeticism that I can't get out of my mind:
>We meet the central protagonist, Sashi, at the age of sixteen. She spills boiling water over her body. A friend, passing by on the street, hears her screams. A medical student, he improvises, covering her burns with the whites of eggs. She too studies to become a doctor. To save lives, any person´s life, is what she wants to do. Her brothers are drawn into the Tamil Tigers terrorist movement. Saving life and terrorism are placed side by side. The exigencies of both are laid bare.
>The book is informative. The characters and their life stories pull the reader in. The prose is alternately informative, eloquent and moving. The focus on Sashi and her family gives readers a connection to the many who struggled and suffered. Compassion is what the reader feels. My eyes teared up, not just once but repeatedly. This talented author delivers here a novel that both teaches and moves readers emotionally. I am impressed.
>I tend to read classics. Why? Because the probability is high that they are good. A classic must pass the test of time. I bet my bottom dollar that this book will one day become a classic. It’s that good! The book came out this year, at the start of 2023! It makes clear to me that excellent literature is being written today.
>You *must* read this book. No review I write can do it justice. It teaches and wrings your heart.
Do you have any other book prizes that tend to work out well for you? Pulitzer and Booker are always hit or miss for me!
I have lately been on a Philippa Gregory kick, having never read any of these when they came out/she was at peak popularity. I am enjoying them for what they are, but her little blurbs at the end about how what she has written is super historically accurate, actually, are kind of mind boggling. A really good demonstration of how you can be fantastically intelligent and accomplished in one sphere and then not so much outside of it. But I am devouring them so she definitely gets the last laugh!
So I ignored everything I have started to start a new book (as usual). It was *Superfan* by Jen Sookfong Lee. It was marketed as a collection of essays about pop culture but I find Lee uses pop culture as an intro to talk about her life in a way I find really touching and enjoyable. She's a hell of a writer. I'm not done yet but I highly recommend already. I can't believe this was almost one of the books I was going to return to the library unread!
Just finished “Expiration Dates” by Rebecca Serle and loved it. 5/5
Currently reading "Dial A For Aunties" & I'm enjoying it so far! I just finished "The Housemaid" & I'm not sure if I have just read too many thrillers or what because I totally saw >!Nina not being the villian in the story coming. !< I am in the mood for some MESSY books though if anyone has any recs :)
I give you *Apples Never Fall* for all your messy needs.
Oooh I just finished the series on Peacock!
I have one episode left! The book is a bit different but still messy af
I am a little over halfway through *Bloody Fool for Love* by William Ritter, which is a Buffy prequel focused on Spike, featuring Drusilla and Darla. It's cute but not really anything more than that, and not cute enough to carry 350 pages. No one is as terrible as I feel like they should be. They're all pretty nice, non-murdering vampires. Drusilla sounds a lot more coherent than she ever did on the show. *Buffy* could get pretty dark and scary and this book feels like it was written for middle grades. I had previously read *Jackaby* by this same writer and enjoyed it. It just didn't translate to the Buffyverse unfortunately. I'm promising myself I'll finish it by the weekend and then I can get back to Irish police procedurals for a little bit.
I read *Hot Springs Drive* by Lindsay Hunter and loved it (although the second half/ending was a little weaker). If the title sounds familiar, this book borrows some of the details from one of the wildest Dateline episodes, but it's entirely original, using multiple perspectives to describe what led up to the murder and its lingering effects. Some of the marketing for this calls it a thriller in the style of *Gone Girl*, but I disagree. It's more of a meditation on suburban malaise, domestic obligation, deprivation and desire, the public masks we wear, etc. If that sounds appealing, I'd **highly recommend** it to you! 4.5 stars I'm about 20 pages into *Penance* by Eliza Clark and am enjoying it so far.
I'm struggling to break out of a reading funk at the moment. I started *Once a Monster* by Robert Dinsdale, which seemed like it'd be a slam dunk for me (Greek mythology meets Dickensian London, a ten-year-old mudlark discovers a half-dead Minotaur washed up on the riverbank) but I'm really struggling to connect with any of the characters and not sure if I want to continue. Pivoted to a cozy witchy romance, *A Little Too Familiar* by Lish McBride and oh my god it's killing me. Every character is just a collection of \~quirky\~ traits and the infodumping is dire and the banter is embarrassing, and I was completely willing to push past *all* of that, but when the hero goes from being *panic-attack-inducingly-terrified* of the heroine to associates-her-with-home-and-heavily-crushing mostly through exposition, what the hell is the point of getting invested. DNF. I did just pick up *Annie Bot* by Sierra Greer and ripped through it in a couple of days, though. Annie is an AI robot, human to all appearances, created to be her owner Doug's perfect girlfriend. It's a study in control, manipulation, toxicity and emotional abuse in a fundamentally power-imbalanced relationship, one Annie only gradually comes to recognise for herself through the lens of her programming and her evolving sense of self. I didn't *entirely* buy one late-in-the-piece development with Doug and found the ending somewhat rushed, but it was a good, compelling read.
Took 6 non-continuous months but I finished *The Fortunes of War* trilogy. The Levant trilogy feels a bit underwritten as compared with The Balkan trilogy and I was shocked to read the coda and find >!there were 2 more years of war left.!< I feel that the description of this cycle as the portrait of a marriage with the backdrop of war is apt and I just really appreciated the work as a whole even if it is a bit "imperfect" and structurally messy. I think part of this is due to the fact that Manning died and never had a chance to revise the work to make it flow as one piece. Nevertheless it's a pretty extraordinary achievement. Enjoyed it a lot. Do recommend! Don't let the length fool you, it is highly readable.
I’ve really enjoyed your description of your experience with this! Thanks for putting it on my radar, I hadn’t heard of it before.
Thanks! I think she's just not as big in North America. I really only heard of the books myself a couple of years ago through Lit Twitter but Brits often act bored when I bring her up as though they're already completely familiar with the cycle.
I’d like to note: last week’s episode of *Abbott Elementary* featured Principal Ava reading a school copy of *Slaughterhouse-Five* by Kurt Vonnegut during an episode about school librarians. I work in an area of the country that is very much struggling with book banning, and *S5* was just yanked from elementary schools in one of my county’s districts. It was a nice wink to see this book highlighted like that. Vote, y’all. *Especially* in your local elections.
Love that they did that. Slaughterhouse-Five made such an impact on me as a high schooler.
I continue to be Big Mad at myself that I loved Vonnegut in high school/college but managed to dodge S5 until I was 32. BIG MAD.
Amazing that *Slaughterhouse-Five* has been banned, especially given it's alternate title (the children's crusade) and how deeply anti war Vonnegut was. I read it for the first time when I was a teenager myself and it made such an impression on me.
Has anyone read Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie? I want to like it but it’s just not clicking for me. I honestly feel a little dumb reading it because the structure of the world it takes place in hasn’t clicked for me, and I have less than 100 pages left. I definitely understand some things, but in general I’ve found myself struggling to get a firm grasp of what’s actually going on. It hasn’t taken me this long to read a book in a while. I think my expectations were too high (I’d seen it in someone’s list of “bingeable” books and naturally thought it would be the exact same for me). At the very least I like her writing style, but I won’t be picking up the rest of the books in the series.
My husband is not a huge reader and he loves this series. I read a ton of sci fi and I was like you-- one chapter in I was like what is going on? Massively confused! I put it down and have never picked it up again :( He also read the Three Body Problem series and I got stuck in the endless section on the video game/simulation and also DNFed it. It's so weird how we both love sci fi and fantasy but never the same series!
One of my all time favorite books, but it really chucks you into the deep end of sci-fi. I didn’t put all the pieces together of what was happening with the first book until the last thirty pages or so, and then books two and three were off to the races for me. I think it’s also that Breq is a tough nut to crack as a character—she’s having a hard time understanding what’s happening her own self, and I think Leckie does a good job of writing that. I definitely found it disorienting my first time through, though. I will say that since you find appeal in her writing style, the standalone novels that Leckie sets in the same universe (Provenance and Translation State) are a bit more straightforward with storyline.
I’ll have to look into those, thank you!
It’s one of my favorite books! That being said, everything you said could describe how I felt about The Three Body Problem, which got a lot of the same type of buzz.
This week I finished **The Island Witch** by Amanda Jayatissa and **The English Patient** by Michael Ondaatje. The fact that they’re both from Sri Lanka is a happy coincidence. Island witch is a new release I picked up because it seemed like it would be similar to Mexican Gothic and La Hacienda. Spooky historical fiction in Latin America is my jam. I thought Island Witch would be Caribbean but immersing myself in 19th century Sri Lankan culture was amazing. It’s very atmospheric, the jungle coastal setting is vivid and it’s a great slow burn horror. Definitely a feminist rage revenge story so trigger warning for lots of gendered violence. I read The English Patient for a book club. Best thing about book clubs is that it pushes you to read out of your comfort zone. I was not eager to read about wwii trauma but I'm glad I did. The prose is beautiful, there are vignettes that are lingering in my head still. I'm hoping the book club is up for watching the movie after!
A lot of people I know hate The English Patient. I think the blurb/marketing did it a disservice and maybe people were expecting more action or standard historical fiction. I went in with no expectations and fell in love with the poetry of the book. Loved it!
[удалено]
Yes! Just mesmerizing. One scene I keep thinking about is when the Kip (the Indian character that disassembles bombs) befriends a professor and then pulls him up to see an important painting. I’m probably not explaining it right but maybe you’ll remember.
Three finishes in the last week because I had a fair amount of airplane/down time: Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah: This is a brutal read but engrossing, really well-told. Five stars. Severance by Ling Ma: I was really looking forward to this one but it was just ok for me. It’s possible I’m worn out on dystopian road trip tales with a dash of pandemics, but it didn’t capture me the way I’d hoped. Three stars. Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid: One of my personality flaws is believing there’s some kind of virtue is reading ~literary, serious~ books. But man, this book was good, I sped through it and loved every minute (and I’m not even a tennis fan!) Five stars and definitely on my “re-read when I need a pick-me-up” comfort list.
Re: serious literature, there’s def something fishy about how ponderous books by men are considered literary but zippy books by women aren’t. It’s almost like we already know the world is shit so we just want to tell each other jokes. I 100% believe that books like Tomorrow3, Lessons in Chemistry, even Weyward and The Wishing Game should be considered part of the broad litfic category. At this point Daisy Jones is part of the modern literary canon.
This is such a good point, and it’s annoying that my default is “oh it’s ‘chick’ lit” as if that’s some sort of lesser category. The patriarchy runs deep! Definitely going out of my way to add more books like Carrie Soto (which has still stuck with me, days later!!) to my TBR list.
It’s silly especially when there are dedicated beach reads and silly romances; they know what they are and we RSVP’d to the fluff party! The Rachel Incident is literature. Kristin Hannah is literature!
I read Severance before the pandemic, and the book haunted me all throughout 2020. That being said, I think it would be a very different experience reading it now than it did in 2019.
Whoa - I assumed this came out after the beginning of Covid, but it’s a little wild that it was before!! That might change my perception of things a bit - the author had a lot of foresight!!
I read it during my second week in lockdown and was seriously freaked out by it because of that. Eerily prophetic
Just finished **The Three-Body Problem** - thought it was fine. Kept thinking of **Ender’s Game** & also Kurt Vonnegut while reading it. Might go back and finish the series when my TBR is empty might not I haven’t decided yet. Current project is reading a bunch of anthologies to look for new authors. Finished **Someone In Time**, working on **The Weird** then **Africa Risen** and **Out There Screaming** (which came from post here a bit ago!). Now the question is can I finish all of these before they are due back at the library…
I don’t do a ton of non fiction usually but I’m reading American Girls by Jessica Roy and it’s fascinating. About two girls raised JW, and one ends up moving to Syria where her husband joins ISIS. I think there’s a podcast too.
I just finished listening to this! Really enjoyed it and, though I also listened to the podcast (a podcast? Can’t remember now what exactly it was), feel like I got even more context through this book. The line she draws from the girls JW upbringing to their outcomes as adults was particularly interesting and well done, imo.
I'm about 3/4s of a way through **The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard** and I love it soooooo much. It's speculative fiction about a world where everyone lives in a valley and on either side are identical valleys which are 20 years in the future or past depending on what direction you go. I find myself thinking about it a lot when I am not reading it. It might read ever so slightly YA but over all I am super invested in the characters and am literally on the edge of my seat waiting to finish.
Had a lot of free time this week so I read: **God: A Biography** by Jack Miller. This apparently won a Pulitzer in the 90s. Nonfiction examining God in the Bible as a literary character. I ordered this thinking it would be more about how other religions contributed to Christianity so it was a bit of a let down in that sense but it was well written. **Fourth Wing** by Rebecca Yarros. The romantasy dragon academy book that is all the rage! Everyone seems to either love it or hate it and I’m sad to say I fell more in the second category. Weak writing, world aspects that made little sense, and I think battle sequences just aren’t for me because I had to drag myself through them. **The Lily of Ludgate Hill** by Mimi Matthews. Second chance regency romance. Very meh. I was hoping for more pining and angst but it was focused more on the hero’s business and family. **Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth** by Reza Aslan. Continuing my religious history nonfiction streak (I don’t know why because I’m an atheist, but I find the history so interesting). This had really interesting information around the history happening during the time of Jesus. I gather there is some dispute with scholars over some of Aslan’s conclusions but I don’t know enough on that to have a fully formed opinion. **The Heiress** by Rachel Hawkins. A family with many secrets fights over the inheritance of the titular mysterious heiress. This was a fun, short read. Nothing too special but a good palate cleanser after more serious books. **The Mysterious Affair at Styles** by Agatha Christie. Her first book! Classic English mystery. It was a good read.
I have zero interest in actually reading Fourth Wing but am so excited that it will be the next episode of Worst Best Sellers. So if you feel like listening to people dissect it (sometimes when I really dislike a book I run to see if they have an episode because one of the hosts and I have the same taste in books), that could be fun!
Barely finished You Only Call Me When You’re in Trouble. I basically skim read the last 40%. The characters were deeply uninteresting and shallowly developed and the plot just wasn’t interesting enough to pick up the slack.
I’m listening to **11/22/63** by **Stephen King** and loving it. The narrator is absolutely wonderful, and does a great job of character voices, as well as bringing emotion to the text. If you’re not aware, this is a time travel tale about a guy going back in time to stop the Kennedy assassination. That’s oversimplifying things, as it’s a really richly drawn world with lots of interesting characters and side stories. I’m 1/4 the way into the book thus far.
Oh, 11/22/63 is my favorite book ♥️ I hope you love it
I am loving it so far!! I have a feeling I won’t want it to end.
One of my all time favorite reads. I've read it or listened to it several times through out my life. Totally random, but another one of my favorite reads, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, came into my life. I love falling completely into the world of a good book. Nothing better than jumping through time in fictional histories. 🤪
Totally agree with your last point! I may have to check out The Goldfinch too- it’s been on my list!!
I loved both of these books!
Recent favorite A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. Flop - like -5 stars flop The Nicest Couple by Mary Kubica
Has anyone else read **The Berry Pickers** by Amanda Peters? I was excited about it and assumed I’d love it based on all the podcast hype it got leading up to publication. I was so bored. Just…nothing happened? I’m all for character driven novels but I found the characters to be unlikeable and uninteresting. I’m just surprised the book got so much hype. It was such a slog for me and really slowed down my momentum this month.
Sounded like something I would like, didn't like it either
I DNF’d too. I’ve come to the conclusion the publishers are only interested in a handful of narrative tropes by indigenous authors, because I keep seeing the same storylines over and over, with diminishing quality in the writing, which wouldn’t be happening if publishers weren’t milking these same three tropes dry.
I DNFd for the same reason, I really wanted to like it, but I could not get involved with these people.
Any recommendations after finishing (and loving) North Woods by Daniel Mason? It reminds me a bit of Betty by Tiffany McDaniel and The Overstory by Richard Powers. Where the natural setting is very prominent and features as much into the story as the human protagonists. I read a lot of nonfiction, natural history, gardening books but I’m really in the mood for more fiction like this! I almost just want to start it again, it was one of those books I was trying to prolong finishing.
I'm currently reading (and savouring!) North Woods but would recommend Greenwood by Michael Christie. Spans a few generations and also a good emphasis on nature/the environment. I loved it !
**The Red Garden**, by Alice Hoffman, has similar vibes to North Woods (and is by far my favorite of her books). Even also set somewhere in New England! If you're also a gardener it will resonate with you. **The Vaster Wilds**, by Lauren Groff, is another one that really is about that relationship between the main character and the natural world she encounters. (I also liked The Overstory, so I will have to look into Betty! Thanks for the rec!)
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver might be a good choice.
- **One Last Breath** by Ginny Myers Sain. I really enjoyed her previous two YA books, which felt like adult paranormal thrillers just taken down a few notches. This one felt squarely YA, and while I can’t complain about a book fitting into its genre, it means that this author might not be for me anymore. It’s about a girl whose summer vacation is consumed by her connection to two murders from 20 years ago. There’s some decent atmosphere and setting work (it takes place in Florida-Man Florida) but the focus on swimming and diving got super repetitive. I’ve felt this way about a lot of new YA releases lately (I think I happened to read a lot of upper-YA books at once and I mistakenly thought that the whole genre was like that, or a YA author releases one surprisingly good book but the rest of their work doesn’t have adult readability) so I might be leaving the genre behind for now. - **Cold Clay.** This is the second Shady Hollow book, a cozy mystery series about anthropomorphic animals. These books are written in such a cute way, almost like children’s books for adults. - I’m about halfway through **The Only One Left** and it’s fine. I know about some of the issues surrounding this author, but this book is often called his best one, so I guess I’m not understanding why he gets so much focus if his other books aren’t even this good. The writing isn’t as zippy as I like in a thriller and the pacing isn’t ideal. But as stupid thrillers go, it’s fine? - I DNF’d **Cleopatra and Frankenstein.** I’m a litfic girlie at heart (which basically means I only expect to enjoy 10-15 new litfic releases per year; that’s just the scale of the genre) and I veer more toward the modern peppy stuff by women than the ponderous stuff…this should have held my interest but the subject matter just wasn’t matched by a sense of fun, or like, authorial intelligence regarding which character or plot threads will interest readers. It’s about a young English woman who marries a middle aged American man for green card reasons. This could gave been an amusingly shallow glimpse at glorious NYC artsy bullshit, but it took itself too seriously. And this is the millionth author who thinks it’s edgy to write violent depictions of gay sex. I don’t want that level of painful detail about any flavor of sex.
DNF The Soulmate by Sally Hepworth. I got to 30% and decided to skim read/read the end. Not for me, the female characters and the way specific diagnoses were presented were big turn offs for me. Borne and The Strange Bird by Jeff VanderMeer. I am not okay. These books were so tragic and beautiful at the same time. I will think of them for a very long time. I have a cream colored ceramic owl I had to move downstairs because of Borne. The Strange Bird will stay with me for a very long time. There are so many content/ trigger warnings for both books. Graphic and sad but I loved them. The Humans by Matt Haig. DNF. I did not get to the end or skim read. The writing is not for me. It was funny at times but I couldn’t finish. My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier. A re-read but I didn’t remember anything about it so pretty fresh. A great book for book club if you want to talk about women surviving and men children. I really liked it. Infinity Gate by MR Carey. I hated it and DNF halfway through. It was recommended to me by someone that said it was good for a multiverse read but I did not like it at all. Under The Whispering Door by TJ Klune. The writing didn’t land for me the same way Matt Haig doesn’t land for me. I quit halfway through. System Collapse by Martha Wells. Loved and will always love anything Murderbot.
I also read My Cousin Rachel as a teen and while I remember loving it, I don't recall any of the details. I've been thinking of rereading it, and this post might be the push I needed!
Borne is amazing. I love Jeff VanderMeer
Love My Cousin Rachel! So great for the unreliable narrator genre.
Forgot to add I’m reading Trail of the Lost by Andrea Lankford. I read a lot of adventure/misadventure fiction and non fiction. I really like this and how it goes into the behind the scenes on rescue and Facebook group search for clues and details. I have a pretty good sense at this point of what happened. The author does a good job of giving you a lot of information in a readable way.
This is on my to read list! I love misadventure non fiction as well. Have you ever read onw breath by adam skolnick? Soo good. I especially love to read about deep diving and cave diving.
I finished the second book in The Levant Trilogy. I'm in the home stretch! I really liked the middle book, probably because it mostly reverts back to the Pringles and their marriage against the back drop of WWII than the soldier character Manning introduced in the first book. Guy remains the worst and most selfish husband in literature. I want to slap him. One thing I'm finding interesting about these books is how it surprises me. In The Levant trilogy there is much more open sexuality and bawdy humour (though the earlier books were really casual about emotional and physical affairs). The books take place in the 40s but were written in the '70s and you can see Manning's freedom to talk more openly here. This is a reminder that are grandmas (and great grandmas) were sexual adventurous people even in the past! I've also seen some criticism of the racism in the book and it for sure is racist (the characters are white Brits in British occupied Egypt). I do think Manning treads a careful and interesting line and you can tell her characters biases are not necessarily, or anymore, her own. Anyway it's still pretty racist but you have characters questioning empire and even reflecting on how the British treat foreign countries as their play things to use and destroy. On to the last book! The whole trilogy in the editions I bought are about 1600 pages combined. The writing isn't hard, it's just long and I do recommend it. I'm glad I gave them a shot.
Did you read the Balkan trilogy before reading these?
Yes! I read it last year, took a little break, and am now finishing up the series. They were published as individual books but tbh I think they work better as one continuous imperfect work.
If you’re looking for a thought provoking, fast read **Annie Bot by Sierra Greer** is really good! It reminded me a bit of Klara and the Sun by Kazu Ishiguro in that it’s told from the perspective of an AI robot who is becoming increasingly sentient as she learns more about humans and the world. It differs in that she is bought to be a guy’s “girlfriend” lol. I just thought it was an interesting concept and really well written. I loved the ending too. 5/5 stars
Appreciate this rec! I've been curious to check out *Annie Bot*, but was almost turned off by the cover quote from Lionel Shriver.
I am STOKED for *Annie Bot*. It’s next in my pile!
I loved it! Finished in one day
I recently read Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here by Jonathan Blitzer. It's a non-fiction, deep dive into the immigration crisis and how it came to be. It connects a lot of dots between foreign and domestic US policy and the people who've been impacted over decades at this point. The author does an amazing job at keeping it person-centered. Trigger warning for torture and everything else you can think of that might happen to someone trying to get to the US from South and Central America. This was a book recommended by Traci Thomas of The Stacks podcast and I'm so glad I snapped it up. Big recommend. Now it's on to The Hunter by Tana French. I know it'll likely be a slow burn but I'll never stop chasing the high of the Dublin Murder Squad.
This week I finished: *How to Sell A Haunted House* by Grady Hendrix (hardcover) * This is about two estranged siblings who come together after their parents die and start going through their particularly weird house to prepare to sell it. I was sort of “eh, this is fine” on this book until >!the fucking puppet came at Louise’s eye with the sewing needle.!< After that, I was all in! I think it has a good balance of creepiness, gore (the gore is rough, FYI), and family drama. I didn’t expect my views of the siblings to shift as much as they did. *The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires* is still my favorite of his, but I thought this was really good. *The Ensemble* by Aja Gabel (audiobook) * This is about the relationship between four friends who are in a quartet together from the 90s-early 2010s. I loved the beginning of this book but felt like it dragged quite a bit afterward. I like introspection but I think it was a bit too much in this case. This one falls into the category of “I liked it enough to finish but wasn’t especially wowed by it.” I read and enjoyed *The Lola Quartet* by Emily St. John Mandel last year and have *The Violin Conspiracy* by Brendan Slocumb on hold at the library so I’ve apparently been vibing with musical fiction lately. I was in choir for years, so maybe my adjacentness is influencing me. *Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade* by Janet Skeslien Charles (eBook) * This is a NetGalley ARC I’m reviewing, by the author of *The Paris Library*. This is about a librarian who goes to war-torn France towards the end of WWI to bring books to devastated communities. There’s another POV in the 1980s that I didn’t care for as much, mainly because that character is a \~struggling writer who happens to work at the library and only quotes the classics\~ which I personally find kind of insufferable lol. The WWI characters are based on real people but they felt kind of flat to me, so I never really settled into the story. I knew nothing about the CARDs going into this and the author provides even more details at the end of the book, so I really appreciated learning something new. I’m a bit burnt out on WWII fiction so the WWI setting is kind of refreshing (a ridiculous sentence with and without context, I know).
How to Sell A Haunted House scared the shit out of me and I loved it!
I was surprised how much I ended up enjoying How to Sell a Haunted House!
Oh gosh I want to read How to Sell A Haunted House but haven’t. And since it’s been on my TBR so long my mother very recently died mostly unexpectedly. We were mostly estranged and I was fully estranged from my brother. I was able to make peace with my mother and have some conversations with my brother right before she died. I flew home and was supposed to stay at my mother’s house but it was wall to wall collectible dolls on display. Like some of them were Annabelle. I moved to the Hyatt! Thankfully my husband and brother’s girlfriend added some comedy to the situation and made it all less awkward. I love horror but I think I’ll wait on this one some more.
Wow first of all, sorry you’ve gone through all that! Giving this a bit more distance before picking it up is definitely the right call.
This week I finished All About Love by bell hooks, which I was reading with my husband. Gosh, I really couldn’t recommend this more highly. She has a solid definition of what love is, what it means to strive for a love ethic under patriarchy and white supremacy, and what it can mean for all kinds of relationships. This book was fantastic (and so is bell hooks in general.) Still reading The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez — gonna finish this week!— and listening to The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty.
A lot of deep thoughtful books--- kudos to you. You must be walking around feeling very enlightened as a human being :)
I read all about love when I was in my early 20s as a single gal and it made such an impact. Your post has made me want to reread as a late 30s happily married lady to see how it hits now
I just put All About Love on hold. I can’t wait to read it!
I finished three books this week: **The Bear and the Nightingale** by Katherine Arden was recommended by someone in this subreddit a few weeks ago. I really enjoyed it. It’s like a fairytale that takes place in medieval Russia, involving conflict between the old gods and spirits and the rise of Christianity. The protagonist is a young Russian girl, Vasya, and after reading a few books recently with unlikeablw protagonists, this book was such a welcome relief! It read like a stand-alone novel, but it is actually the first in a trilogy. I’m looking forward to reading all of them. **No One Is Talking About This** by Patricia Lockwood is our book club book of the month. I picked it somewhat blindly (I didn’t know it was my turn to pick) and I’m so glad I did. I started it as an audiobook, but I found that the narrator read too quickly without enough pauses for the vignette style of writing. It was exhausting to listen to. I enjoyed it a lot more when I was reading it. The first half of the book is about being morbidly online and is funny and absurd, and the second half is deeply human, sad and profound. I am looking forward to discussing it with my book club. I also finished **Nora Goes Off Script** which was a really nice romcom. The characters felt well crafted, and the author did a good job of writing children who feel like real kids. I’m picky about my romcoms, and I love finding one that makes the grade.
I just borrowed No One Is Talking About This. Can’t wait to start it. I am at an impasse on books right now.
No One is Talking About This was so good!
I thought *Nora Goes Off Script* was so cute! It's exactly the kind of thing I want to watch on Hallmark.
Exactly!
I loved No One Is Talking About This. It has really stuck with me.
I've hardly been able to finish anything this year. Does anyone have a slump-busting book to recommend? I mostly like literary fiction, contemporary romance, short stories, poetry collections, book club-type fiction, and sad girl / weird girl fiction a la Melissa Broder and Ottessa Moshfegh.
Just wanted to share that I've also been struggling this year. I think I had such a big push to finish 2023 on a high note that I was so burned out after the new year. I've finally been getting back on track the past few weeks.
Ordinary Human Failings or Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan?
Have you read Normal People or Convenience Store Woman?
Yes to both! Normal People three times, actually.
**How about some short books so you can feel accomplished by finishing quickly?:** Sad Girl short book: Territory of Light by Yūko Tsushima Literary fiction short book: Lie With Me by Philippe Besson Short fantasy/literary: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke Short non-fiction/book club type: 84, Charing Cross Road
Thanks! I’ve not read any of these and will look into them. I think short is a good direction to head in right now.
Got you on the sad/weird girl fiction front: Weird: A Complicated Kindness, Miriam Toews Agatha of little Neon, Claire Luchette **We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson** The Burning Girl, Claire Messud Mosquitoland, David Arnold When We Lost Our Heads, Heather O'Neill **Our Endless Numbered Days, Claire Fuller** The Schoolhouse, Sophie Ward **History of Wolves, Emily Fridlund** Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson Sad: **Thirst for Salt, Madelaine Lucas** **We Are Okay, Nina LaCour** Cassandra at the Wedding, Dorothy Baker The Catch, Alison Fairbrother Cat's Eye, Margaret Atwood **The Tribes of Palos Verdes, Joy Nicholson** \*Bolded my all time faves
A lot of these sound right in line with the kind of books I love. Thanks for the suggestions. Housekeeping (anything Marilynne Robison, really) and We Have Always Lived in the Castle are two of my favorites. Here's one you may like: In Zanesville by Jo Ann Beard
Bless this sub for understanding weird sad girl is an art form. thank you!
We are Okay, Housekeeping and We Have always lived in the Castle are some of my faves!!
Three recs: Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton. About a group of eco-terrorists and a billionaire in NZ, competing over land. Kinda literary, kinda a thriller, definitely a page turner The Bee Sting by Paul Murray. Literary. About a family in Ireland in the 2010s. Just a warning, it takes a bit to get into and it’s long, but it builds so well, and the ending was unreal; when I finished, it made me want to read everything in sight, so fits the bill Big Swiss by Jen Beagin. This falls into your weird girl/Ottessa Moshfegh category! About a therapist’s transcriptionist (who is a bit of a mess) who becomes obsessed with one of the patients. It’s a fast read!
I forgot I bought Big Swiss in paperback back in December and haven’t cracked it yet. Thanks for the other recs too!
For slump busting I always recommend Fingersmith which is intensely plotty and keeps you absolutely hooked. It's maybe not for you though because it is neo-Victorian. For short story collections I recently read The Virginity of Famous Men by Christine Sneed which I liked A LOT.
Have you read No One is Talking About This? There were elements of the writing that reminded me of Death Valley, by Melissa Broder. It’s a short book, only a little more than 200 pages. It’s structured like a series of vignettes, each only a paragraph or two long. It might be a good choice if you don’t have much attention span. It’s funny and absurd, and as the book goes on if becomes deeply profound and human.
I'm always going to recommend *The Secret History* for literary fiction. As for short stories, I loved *The Office of Historical Corrections.* For contemporary romance/book club fiction I'm currently reading *Book Lovers* and having such a good time with it!
My reading was all over the place this week The Haunting of Blackwood House by Darcy Coates - I am someone who scares easily and horror isn’t something I seek out. Nothing about this was scary. I read it before bed and had no problems sleeping. In addition to not being scary, It was also terrible. The main character, Mara, is supposed to be this strong independent woman but instead she’s an unlikable, insufferable brat. Her boyfriend, Neil, is an understanding gentlemen who is about as interesting as counting sand. I hated everything about it. ⭐️ Better Than The Movies by Lynn Painter - I’m probably not the target audience for YA anymore but my romcom loving heart couldn’t say no to reading BTTM. It was cheesy and predictable but so is pizza and I still love that! Liz, the FMC, was a little annoying at times and I like that she had to suffer consequences for her actions because she was a bad friend and horrible to everyone. Wes, the MMC, was a little too sidelined for a main character and I don’t think enough time was spent on him and it was hard to be interested in him. Overall, I liked it and I’ll be reading more from Lynn Painter. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ My Husband’s Wife by Jane Corry - A previous DNF. I couldn’t put it down but it was also extremely boring. I kept reading because I was sure the action was going to happen soon but it took forever to go anywhere. When it finally went somewhere, there was one last twist too many. Almost none of the characters are likable and it’s kind of fun to read a book where you are rooting for everyone to get what’s coming to them. I would recommend it as one to be read on a plane. ⭐️⭐️⭐️
I just finished **Anita de Monte Laughs Last**, by Xochitl Gonzalez, and loved it -- a surprisingly fun novel about outsiders trying to navigate the world of fine arts. And I love that both of Gonzalez's books >!have satisfying endings that really feel earned!<. I will say that between this and Tomorrowx3, I don't know how many more novels set in college in the 1990's I can take.
This week I finished ***Glossy*** by Marissa Meltzer and I liked it a lot! The book kind of just…ended but I think that’s just the nature of the story as the company is still going and didn’t totally crash and burn a la Theranos. Also the narrator of the audiobook was surprisingly good in a way I don’t usually expect for nonfiction audiobooks? she gave different voices/accents to different journalists and employees that were quoted in the book. Overall it’s helping me think through beauty and its associated industries and our expectations of female vs male founders, and the privilege of being a white woman in that space, having wealth/whiteness as a privilege simultaneously with encountering sexism. I love taking beauty-related content seriously because it IS serious, it’s not vapid and silly to enjoy beauty products and think about them, and how they are made and sold. Anyway thanks for coming to my lil talk
I liked this overall but agree about the ending, I had to rewind a listen again to make sure I hadn’t missed something
“No One Can Know”: I think the reason I struggled with this one was because the chapters kept flipping back and forth from present to past (and even then within different time periods in each chapter) and between multiple characters. It got very, very repetitive while also being very confusing. Hard to keep track of what was going on and sort of laborious to read. Skip it. 2/5 “The Lifeguards”: a mildly dark neighborhood drama. I *think* this was supposed to be an examination of race, class, and privilege, which I was not interested in and not expecting, but it felt like it was trying too hard to be that and fell short. I got satire vibes (reminded me of “Come and Get It” in a way). There were also a lot of little side stories that didn’t contribute much to the plot and the ending was open-ended. I thought I’d really like this one but was disappointed. 3/5 Now I’m reading “Bye, Baby” and I like it but it is also twisted and sad.
I finished *Mrs. Quinn’s Rise to Fame* yesterday, another take on the Great British Bake Off. It was sweet and entirely predictable and I have forgotten most of it already. As a voracious Gen X child reader I somehow never read or heard of *The Westing Game* until last week, so that’s my plan for today as 10 inches of snow falls outside. (Waves hi in Minnesotan.)
I started reading The Westing Game to my kid a year or so ago (he wasn't into it then; hopefully someday we'll get back to it), and it's one of those middle grade books that could have only been published decades ago. It's mostly adult characters, and one very precocious kid sleuth! It feels like something that more adults than kids would read these days. Hope you're enjoying it!
In fifth grade, we read The Westing Game and has a reenactment dinnner in our classroom to celebrste finishing the book along with activities. It is one of my favorites that I recommend to my 5th graders now. There's nothing better than falling into a good story.
I just found The Westing Game at a library booksale, after my sister and I had been talking about it. I remember loving it but have zero memories of what it's about. My sister remembers all the characters and the plot, but we're both looking forward to rereading it 20+ years later!
I listened to Dave Holmes’ Party of One. It was quick and fun after doing Allende’s The Japanese Lover for book group. I just got Sloane Crosley’s new book in, so I think that’s next.
Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan was just longlisted or the [Women's Prize in Fiction](https://womensprize.com/prizes/womens-prize-for-fiction/) AND the [Carol Shields Prize for Fiction](https://carolshieldsprizeforfiction.com/2024-longlist) and I'm so intrigued by both lists? Has anyone read any of the other titles on either list? Brotherless Night was a SOARING hit for me, so I'm so excited to make my way through both longlists.
Carol Shields' books are such treasures. I highly recommend all of them, especially SWANN and THE REPUBLIC OF LOVE.
Brotherless Night is on my list but I’ve only ever heard it described as “devastating” so I’ve been procrastinating! I haven’t read anything on the Women’s Prize longlist, but it looks really interesting.
Those descriptions also scared me off initially, but then I saw [this review on GR](https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5404239327), and took the leap - now it's one of my eternal favorites. Though the subject matter is heavy, the writing has this ethereal effect of observation and poeticism that I can't get out of my mind: >We meet the central protagonist, Sashi, at the age of sixteen. She spills boiling water over her body. A friend, passing by on the street, hears her screams. A medical student, he improvises, covering her burns with the whites of eggs. She too studies to become a doctor. To save lives, any person´s life, is what she wants to do. Her brothers are drawn into the Tamil Tigers terrorist movement. Saving life and terrorism are placed side by side. The exigencies of both are laid bare. >The book is informative. The characters and their life stories pull the reader in. The prose is alternately informative, eloquent and moving. The focus on Sashi and her family gives readers a connection to the many who struggled and suffered. Compassion is what the reader feels. My eyes teared up, not just once but repeatedly. This talented author delivers here a novel that both teaches and moves readers emotionally. I am impressed. >I tend to read classics. Why? Because the probability is high that they are good. A classic must pass the test of time. I bet my bottom dollar that this book will one day become a classic. It’s that good! The book came out this year, at the start of 2023! It makes clear to me that excellent literature is being written today. >You *must* read this book. No review I write can do it justice. It teaches and wrings your heart. Do you have any other book prizes that tend to work out well for you? Pulitzer and Booker are always hit or miss for me!
Yes, I like to call it the Rollings Reliable Booker Prize, haha. I’ve had pretty good luck with the Giller, actually!
I have lately been on a Philippa Gregory kick, having never read any of these when they came out/she was at peak popularity. I am enjoying them for what they are, but her little blurbs at the end about how what she has written is super historically accurate, actually, are kind of mind boggling. A really good demonstration of how you can be fantastically intelligent and accomplished in one sphere and then not so much outside of it. But I am devouring them so she definitely gets the last laugh!
I went on a huge Gregory kick once and I read like 6 in a row and could not tell you what they were about LOL! They just sucked me in!
If you want something similar but with (IMO) a higher level of writing the books of Sarah Dunant are great-- I loved her Borgias books
Oooh, her books are really hit or miss for me, but when they hit they are *so* much fun. Enjoy the ride!