What I'm Reading August 18, 2022

Finished Jess Walter's The Angel of Rome and Other Stories. He's one of those writers that makes beautiful writing look effortless. 

Next up was Scattered All Over the Earth, by Yoko Tawada. In the near future, Japan is gone, fallen (sunken?) to climate change, along with most of its citizens. Hiruko now lives in Denmark, seeking anyone who speaks her first language, while she communicates in Panska, a pidgin Scandinavian language she created. She gathers a motley crew and travels around Europe. As she weaves stories for immigrant children out of her memories of Japanese fairy tales, she pulls from universal folklore to fill in the blanks of her memories. Really creative, and I look forward to the next two books in the trilogy.

I followed this up with a binge read of Denise Mina's Garnethill trilogy. Set in the underbelly of Glasgow, I found myself rooting for Maureen, even though I usually hate characters that constantly get in their own way. Very satisfying ending for me!

A nonfiction break with 52 Ways to Walk by Annabel Streets. A nice supplement to The Age Well Project, and a few good ideas for future walks (once it cools off!)

A memoir by Raynor Winn, The Salt Path left me wanting to shake the author at times. A couple loses their family farm just as the husband is diagnosed with a terminal disease. Somehow she decides walking the the South West Coast Path in England is the best way to stretch their dole payment. I kept thinking there should have been someone they could have stayed with, but then there would have been no book. An interesting if disquieting cautionary tale.

The Marlow Murder Club, by Robert Thorogood. A variation on Strangers on a Train, set in a Thames-side village. Very little character development and not a series I'll continue.

Another first in a series English mystery, The Body in the Garden, by Katherine Schellman, was a bit better. Schellman left room for her main characters to grow, and the London setting was a plus. 

I downloaded The Christie Affair, by Nina de Gramont on audio for my visits to Jean, thinking I'd finish it in five days of driving. Instead, Jean got Covid, and I listened around the house. Great narrator, and I figured I knew what was coming, so I wasn't too upset when my loan ended while I still had an hour or so left in the book. Because it was a 7 day hold, I got an instant notification that I could borrow it again, so I finished, and I'm glad it did, because de Gramont added a great plot twist that tied some things up most satisfactorily! 

The Doylestown Library purchased two gardening books I'd requested based on reviews in The New York Times: You Grow, Gurl, by Christoper Griffin and Becoming a Gardener, by Catie Marron. The former was an introduction to houseplants, covering what and where to buy plants, how to place them in your home, and how to pot and care for them. The author is a self-described Plant Kween, and the book is a chatty version of his Instagram, and was a quick and fun read. I'd love to see Griffin and Marron have cocktails together! Marron worked in finance, as an editor at Vogue, and is the widow of a very, very rich man. Her book is gorgeous, sprinkled with watercolor illustrations, paintings (some from their art collection) and photography of her garden. It reads more like a long essay, and reminded me of Dominque Browning, who oddly doesn't get mentioned in the extensive bibliography (and I just went down a Google rabbit hole to be reminded that it was Browning who wrote the reviews of these gardening books!) 

And this morning, I finished Nuclear Family, by Joseph Han, about a Korean family living in Honolulu. I was so close to DNFing this in the middle and am very glad I didn't. The family runs a few Korean lunch plate restaurants, with sporadic help from their two children. Jacob, who knows his family won't accept him being gay, travels to Seoul to teach English. His grandfather, who wanders Seoul as a ghost, trying to return to the north to reunite with his first family, finds Jacob and possesses him. Jacob then attempts to cross the DMZ, failing and bringing massive negative attention to his family in Hawaii. His sister is self medicating her depression with pot, and is never without a bong, a vape pen, or edibles. It was unremittingly bleak, but Han pulls out a hopeful ending. Another reminder that telling a hyper-specific story well always tells the universal story, too: Always connect.

What I'm Reading July 25 ,2022

I had a spate of holds arrive at once, and they got better as I read:) First up, and least favorite, was The Men, by Sandra Newman. The premise of a planet without men was intriguing, but the plot was non-existent. Characters appeared to be integral to the story, then disappeared. I sped through the last hundred pages just to see if she could pull something out of it, but unfortunately no.

Next was The Premonitions Bureau, by Sam Knight. This would have been a great long form piece in The New Yorker or The Atlantic. There just wasn't enough material for the book, so he padded it with some tangents that I felt weakened the book.

I always look forward to a book by Ruth Ware, and The It Girl  didn't disappoint. It also didn't wow me like The Death of Mrs. Westaway did. I knew who the murderer was at least halfway through the book:/ But Ware does suspense so well, I was still quite anxious reading the last fifty or so pages. 

I put The Kingdom of Sand  by Andrew Holleran on hold based on one sentence quoted in the review in The New York Times:

"Using a two-lane highway presumes that everyone coming toward you wants to live as much as you do..."

A book that epitomizes what fiction does, because reading it gave me insight I could never have into the lives of older single gay men living semi-closeted in central Florida. Another beautiful quote:

"...when people express tenderness and kindness to someone it's often because of someone else. Love and kindness have a lineage their recipients know nothing about."

I've been waiting for Isaac Fitzgerald's memoir, Dirtbag, Massachusetts since I stumbled upon his newsletter. Finally one that lived up to the hype! A few of my favorite lines:

"Even before I learned how to read I learned to respect books as a second religion."

And,

"My mother gave me my first Saint Jude medal [patron saint of impossible causes] when I was twelve, which could have felt like calling it a little early."

Finally, I read a few essays from Rogues,  by Patrick Radden Keefe. The one about Anthony Bourdain was so bittersweet.

Right now I'm reading Jess Walter's short story collection, The Angel of Rome,  and am loving it.

What I'm Reading July 14, 2022

A few that got hyped so much my expectations were too high and a few solid picks from The New York Times  book review.

First up, Ordinary Monsters  by J.M. Miro. Vibes of Harry Potter and The Mysterious Benedict Society, only more gory. Started out great, dragged on way too long (which is why I thought of J.K. Rowling!) I believe it's the first in a series, but I won't read the rest.

Sorrow and Bliss, by Meg Mason. A surprise, as I thought it was more of a beach read from the cover. Generational mental illness that no one talks about destroys a marriage. I'm a sucker for smart conversations between sisters. Well-written, and I'll enjoy reading her backlist titles. 

A mystery set in LA in the early 60s, One Shot Harry,  by Gary Phillips took me a while to get into. The heavy expository dialogue didn't do it for me, but I get why he included it--the 60s are ancient history for some readers! Great characters, and I look forward to the next book in the series.

Girls They Write Songs About, by Carlene Bauer was another victim of hype. My expectations were too high, and I doubt I'm the audience for this book. But I did enjoy the brief glimpses of New York.

The Shore, by Katie Runde. Seaside Heights summer, with a family roiled by the father's imminent death from a glioblastoma. Beautifully written, especially the teen daughters. 

Search,  by Michelle Huneven. One year and a few months of a search for a new minister at a Universalist Unitarian church. Phew, these characters were so unlikeable. I also found the dialogue of the younger people so stilted that none of it felt believeable. Disappointing.

Hurricane Girl,  by Marcy Dermansky. Now this one was surprising in a good way! A young woman leaves LA and buys a beach house in North Carolina, only to lose it to a hurricane 10 days later. A brilliant first person narrative of a woman suffering from a brain injury; I felt her struggling to make sense of the world. I read it in one night, and am still thinking about it.

The Recruit,  by Alan Drew. I read Shadow Man,  the first book in this series, a few weeks ago, after reading a review of The Recruit in the Times. It was good enough for me to read the second, which is much better! They're set in a fictional Rancho Santa Elena (which sounds like Rancho Santa Margarita) and the second book deals with white supremacy groups there. It was definitely a page turner, and I'm sorry I'll have to wait at least a year for the next one.

Finally, I read--in print!--The Empathy Diaries, by Sherry Turkle. The first part about her early life and education had me underlining and researching, but when she got to MIT, I felt the book flatten. Or rather, it turned into a book about Seymour Papert, and not her!

What I'm Reading June 27, 2022

First up, Companion Piece, by Ali Smith. Another author who could write an advertising jingle and I'd read it. Did I get the whole curlew/curfew thing? Probably not. Did I love the sheer enjoyment she had playing with language? Absolutely. A quote:
"No, I meant why are books important, she said. Apart that they're a pleasure? I said. Because, uh, because they're one of the ways we can imagine ourselves otherwise."
And another (perhaps the last lines of the book? I don't have it in front of me to check.):
"Every hello, like every voice - in all the possible languages, and human voice is the least of it - holds its story ready, waiting. That's pretty much all the story there is."
Happy-Go-Lucky, by David Sedaris. My least favorite of his books by a mile. Did the pandemic make him cranky or is it age? Or am I the cranky one?

And back to a mystery with The Dark Remains, by William MacIllvanney and Ian Rankin. A prequel to MacIllvanney's series, written by Rankin. 1970s Glasgow, a dark and depressing city with dark and depressing cops and mobsters. Now I'll have to find the MacIllvanney books and see if Jack Laidlaw remains a philosopher cop or not. 

The Willpower Instinct, by Kelly McGonigal. This was a re-read, mainly to see what I could use for my ReLearn program. It's loaded with research, but written in a breezy way so you don't feel loaded with research. Very helpful summaries, and lots of things to share with my class. I have her new book The Joy of Movement from the library but I think I got the gist of it from a New York Times article. 

The Foundling, by Ann Leary. Based on a true story about a home for "feeble-minded women" in the late 1920s. It could have used a bit more "show, don't tell" as we learned about these homes and the eugenics movement, and it really lost me at the tidy ending.

Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? by Seamus O'Reilly. At times I was laughing so hard I was afraid I'd wake Kevin up. Other times had me tearing up. A great memoir set in Northern Ireland.

What I'm Reading June 14 2022--Not Mysteries

A book I really didn't enjoy, nor do I think I was meant to: Very Cold People,  by Sarah Manguso. Evidently her childhood was very similar to the one described in this book, so I'm glad she was able to overcome it and write about it. It was just so depressing:/

When Women Were Dragons, by  Kelly Barnhill. Her first adult novel, still leaning heavily into the fantasy/fairy tale realm. I liked the story, but felt it was a little too didactic for an adult novel. But that dragon world sounds like paradise!

The Puzzler,  by J.A. Jacobs. Not my favorite of his books, but I will still read whatever he publishes.I love his deep dives into topics that I wouldn't expect to enjoy. 

This Time Tomorrow, by Emma Straub. One of my favorites of the month, involving life on the Upper West Side, friendship, and mortality. Her dad and best friend are two of my favorite recent characters. Some quotes:

Maybe that was the trick to life: to notice all the tiny moments in the day when everything else fell away, and, for a split second, or maybe even a few seconds, you had no worries, only pleasure, only appreciation of what was right in front of you.
...but that was New York, watching every place you'd kissed or cried, every place you love, turn into something else.
Happy endings were too much for some people, false and cheap, but hope--hope was honest. Hope was good. 
We Don't Know Ourselves, by Fintan O'Toole. This took me so long to read! I think I checked it out three times from three different libraries. O'Toole wrote a history of modern Ireland, modern in his definition starting with 1958, the year he was born. I learned so much about the dark side of the church's role in Irish government (spoiler: it was all dark.) His premise is that the Irish exist by dodging reality--about the abuse of children by priests, about abortion, about government corruption--and anyone who confronts others with that reality is breaking the code that keeps the country together. Great quote (among many) toward the end of the book: "What is possible now, and was entirely impossible when I was born, is this: to accept the unknown without being so terrified of it that you have to take refuge in fabrications of absolute conviction." (Sounds like a description of a Trump supporter, now that I read it again.)

Bloomsbury Girls, by Natalie Jenner. A semi-sequel to The Jane Austen Society, which I think I started and didn't like. This one was enjoyable, a bit predictable, but it's London and bookstores. so I lapped it up anyway.

What I'm Reading June 14, 2022

OK, I need to find a better way to do this! 15 more books to add, some of which I've forgotten. 

First up, mysteries:

Death at Greenway,  by Lori Rader-Day. Beware when our publisher describes your book as a new Christie. It was well written, but the mystery just faded away.

Something to Hide, by Elizabeth George. One of the best of her recent Inspector Lynley books. Tough subject matter of female genital mutilation, but overall, the great characters I expect from her.

The Long Weekend by Gilly Macmillan. Please let me remember not to read any more of her books!

Observations by Gaslight, by Lyndsay Faye. Short stories told from the POV of other characters in the Holmes universe. Each one was absolute perfection!

Give Unto Others by Donna Leon. I admit, I only read these now for the descriptions of Venice. Very much meh.

All the Queen's Men,  by S.J. Bennett. The first book in this series was good, this one dragged. Not a series I'll continue.

Overboard,  by Sara Paretsky. Another one that didn't spark my interest. I like the series, but the last few have made me question if I want to keep reading.

Two for Sorrow,  by Nicola Upson. The third in her Josephine Tey series. I like all the secondary characters, but not Josephine. This one was clever, but not my favorite. 

Rotten to the Core, by T.E. Kinsey. I do love Flo and Lady Hardcastle, but damn, they're running out of people in the village to murder! These are worth reading just for the repartee between these two characters. Definitely a palate cleanser of a book.

What I'm Reading May 23, 2022

Again, such a gap in posting these that I can't even remember some of them!

Eighteen books that I recall something about:

Groundskeeping by Lee Cole. I think it suffered from all the hype. Just a bit meh for me, but then again, I doubt I was the intended audience.

Left on Tenth, by Delia Ephron. Her year of magical thinking is exactly what you'd expect of a rom com writer. Her husband and sister die of cancer, she meets (again) a lovely man on the opposite coast, they fall in love, she's diagnosed with the same cancer that killed her sister. Her new husband sounds too good to be true, and she sounds like someone I'd love to be friends with. A quick and enjoyable book, even if about half of it is about her cancer treatment.

Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers. I think I smiled through the entire book. This is the first in a new series by Chambers, and I hope they write fast. The description of the monk's tea wagon makes me wonder if Chambers sketched it before she wrote, as it was so completely perfect. And the nonbinary monk being addressed as Sibling, instead of Brother or Sister? Just a beautiful detail. The robot's tale of growing in the wild, and the monk's amazement (and consternation) about how the robots thrive and regenerate was deep and beautiful.

Pure Colour  by Sheila Heti. Started out so promising, then just fell apart after the first third. Looking back, I highlighted so many beautiful lines that it was worth finishing, just to see if she came back to the promise of the first part. She didn't, but some very thoughtful writing nonetheless.

Ten Steps to Nanette, by Hannah Gadsby was as brilliant as her show. She's a philosopher comedian.

Mecca, by Susan Straight. She does such a great job capturing the melting pot of the Inland Empire. I really savored this book. 

Sunlit Weapon, by Jacqueline Winspear. I love returning to this series and seeing where she takes Maisie Dobbs. This one did not disappoint.

Beauty of Dusk, by Frank Bruni. I liked when he wrote about his own adaptation to going blind, but the parts about other people overcoming their loss of sight or other disability seemed a bit trite. I mean, I'm glad he provides roadmaps for others dealing with this, but it just seemed I'd read this is so many other books on overcoming adversity.

Spring Cannot Be Cancelled,  by Martin Gayford. Long interviews with David Hockney, with paintings he did at his home in Normandy during Covid lockdown. Just a beautiful book about art, creativity, aging with positivity. Very much enjoyed this one!

Lessons in Chemistry, by Bonnie Garmus. Another book that will become popular because of librarians, booksellers, and bloggers. A female chemist in the 1960s, denied a job because of her gender, creates a feminist cooking show that awakens the housewives of America.

A Great Unrecorded History, by Wendy Moffat. One of those titles that I came across on Instagram, found on Overdrive, checked out and started reading. A biography of E.M. Forster, which sympathetically looks at how his suppressed sexuality impacted his life and writing.

What I'm Reading April 14, 2022

First up is Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park, about a young gay man and his search for love on Tinder and in the nightclubs of Seoul. Ennui in a book is not my thing, but I certainly saw a side of life in Seoul I would never have encountered outside of this book.

I finally finished Go Back to Where You Came From by Wajahat Ali. I only know him from Twitter, and damn, what a life he's had! A great example of how we never know what trauma someone might be living with, and why we should treat each other gently. 

Staying with that theme, I also read Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad. Shortly after graduating from Princeton and moving to Paris, she discovers she has AML, and moves home to go through the brutal treatments needed to kill the cancer. When she's semi-recovered, she takes to the road on a 100 day trip across the country and back, visiting with people who wrote her while she was in the hospital. Some of the quotes I highlighted:

"That is what literature offers--a language powerful enough to say how it is, " Jeanette Winterson wrote. "It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place."

They taught me that, when life brings you to the floor, there is a choice. You can allow the worst things that's ever happened to you to hijack your remaining days, or you can claw your way back into motion.

A quote from Stanley Kunitz's poem, The Layers:

I have walked through many lives

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was

though some principle of being abides, 

from which I struggle not to stray.

And finally The Good Wife of Bath, by Karen Brooks, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Medieval history fiction with a feminist twist? Yes, please. There were plenty of similarities offered between our years of Covid and a world in which the plague had wiped out so many people that the world must change to function: lack of low wage employees meant better living conditions for serfs being one.

I also read A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson. I liked it a lot, but struggle to see how it is considered Booker Prize worthy. But I thought the same thing about Coda winning the Oscar for Best Picture, so maybe it's an ingrained prejudice against domestic stories? (Trying to be generous here!)

What I'm Reading April 3, 2022

I need to update more regularly, or end up with a monster list like this one. I read Four Letters of Love by Niall Williams and can't remember a thing about it. One I do remember is Mercy Street by Jennifer Haigh. Excellent novel about a woman who works in a women's health clinic which is targeted by anti-abortion protestors. 

Yet another Covid book, this one a short novel, The Fell, by Sarah Moss. Stream of consciousness with four characters alternating first person chapters. It was very good, and the older neighbor was so insightfully written, if a little too close to home. 

Finally read Richard Powers' Bewilderment. Brilliant start, but it bogged down for me in the middle. I'd still read whatever he writes, but not one of my favorites.

Big disappointment: The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd. Maps! The New York Public Library! And just a very blah novel filled with two dimensional characters. 

Two five star books: The Sentence by Louise Erdich and French Braid by Anne Tyler. I think this was the first Erdich book I read, too. Hard to believe Anne Tyler is 83 and can make her writing look so simple that she still gets shunted into "women's fiction." 

I also read Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head by Warsan Shire. The best poem in it was the one about being a refugee, which I've read many times. 

The latest in the Veronica Speedwell series, An Impossible Imposter, by Deanna Raybourn was a good palate cleanser. Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri was a bit confusing, as I thought I checked out a book of essays by her! It's a short novel she wrote in Italian, then translated into English. Interesting premise. I wonder if the limited descriptive language was intentional, or a result of writing in her second language?

Finally, I read my first Lisa Scottoline. What Happened to the Bennetts? is a thriller set around Philadelphia. I think she'd be a great airplane read. I plowed through it in about 5 hours, really wanted to see what came next, even if I had to suspend disbelief from about the third or fourth chapter.

What I'm Reading March 7, 2022

Lots of books, mostly from the library. 
Books I had on hold for ages that finally came  in: The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka. Such a tough book to describe. Written in three sections, two that focus on the pool, written in first person plural? The last section, about Alice, the swimmer with dementia, was a gut punch. Also, Life Without Children by Roddy Doyle. Short stories about life in Ireland at the beginning of Covid. I wonder if we'll ever understand the elasticity of time during Covid, as this seems so long ago, yet reading the book made it feel immediate. 
Book I gave up and ordered from England: The Locked Room, by Elly Griffiths. I don't love the characters like I do in Deborah Crombie's series, but I'm always going to want to read more about Ruth Galloway and Nelson. Another book set in the early days of Covid. My only quibble was knowing she'd never kill off the character with Covid, so there was no suspense about it.
Serendipitous picks:
Eat a Peach by David Chang. Just OK. I have a hard time with someone claiming he started from nothing when his father gave him $100,000 in start-up money! And the best find of all: Infused by Henrietta Lovell, founder of The Rare Tea Company. I'd wanted to read this, but hesitated to spend $35 for a book I'd read once, or even ask the library to buy it, knowing it was such a niche book. But last week when I went to Warminster to pick up a David Culp gardening book, I spent time reshelving some books I found while browsing. When I put the misplaced cookbook on the shelf, I slid it in right next to Infused! I couldn't believe they had it! As I suspected, it was purchased in October 2019, and I was clearly the first person to open it, but hurray for the Bucks County Free Library and whichever librarian felt it was worth buying. A very fun book to read, as Henrietta shares stories about her travels on the hunt for new teas.

What I'm Reading February 16th

 I spent most of a week reading Little Thieves by Margaret Owen. It's a YA fantasy, but I really enjoyed the feisty girls. The dedication was my favorite quote: 

To the gremlin girls, I would like to tell you something inspiring, but the truth is, when life closes a door for us, it doesn't always open a window. The good news is: That's what bricks are for.

I also read The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2021. Library book, great to have in the kitchen while eating lunch.

 

What I'm Reading February 7, 2022

We had a blustery snow day last week, which felt like the perfect day for lots of tea and a re-read of A Wrinkle in Time. Then I read Anatomy by Dana Schwartz, a YA Gothic novel about a young woman in Edinburgh studying to become a doctor. Also plowed through A Game of Fear by Charles Todd, another Ian Rutledge mystery. I don't know why I keep reading them--they always feel a bit dull to me, but there's still the pull of a series that keeps me coming back.

Finally, I read Free Love by Tessa Hadley. Didn't love it as much as Late in the Day, but it was still beautifully written and a wonderful perspective of the upheaval of the 60s in London.