First up and most anticipated, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin. I don't want to add any spoilers, but one character immediately gave off "too good for this earth" vibes, and... I always feel like I discovered Zevin before anyone else, only because I read her young adult novel Elsewhere when I started working at San Elijo, and it made me realize how much I was going to love choosing books for the library.
Next up was a mystery I waited far too long for. Death and the Conjuror by Tom Mead is a locked room mystery, but the writing just felt stilted. I will give the next book in the series a try when it comes out, but Mead will have to grab me in the first 50 pages!
I checked out a copy of A Place in the World, by Frances Mayes when I saw it on the new book table at the Doylestown Free Library. I've felt she's been riding on the success of Tuscan Sun forever, and this did nothing to change my mind. When I look at the quotes I wrote out, they're all quotes from other authors! Quotes and lots of name dropping made this a meh book for me.
I have mixed feelings about Mohsid Hamid's The Last White Man. A novella, with Hamid's signature lengthy and comma-filled sentences didn't flow right for me. The happy ending seemed pasted on, after the anxiety of whether Anders would survive life as a brown man surrounded by fearful white people. Still, I'm thinking about it over a month after I finished it, which is always a mark of a good book to me. It's just Hamid-lite compared to Exit West.
California Soul, by Keith Corbin was a speed read for me. Corbin grew up in Watts and is now a chef/owner of a restaurant in LA, with stints of drug abuse and prison in between (well, his drug use was concurrent with being a chef.)
Deanna Raybourn switched it up from her historical mysteries with Killers of a Certain Age, about four women who worked as assassins. The Museum, the agency they work for, was established by former CIA/MI6 agents to track down and kill nazis who escaped justice after World War II, but expands to kill others as time and these agents reduce the number of WWII era nazis. The characters are lightly sketched, but the action and dual timelines kept me reading. I hope she'll continue writing about these women and give us more backstory.
All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days, by Rebecca Donner, told a fascinating story of German and American resistance in the early days of WWII. I love narrative nonfiction, but this suffered a bit from a scarcity of information on Mildred Harnack. Still, Donner clearly connects the dots between the nazi regime and the current GOP, including the smug belief on the part of German conservatives that they could keep Hitler in check; the belief by Hitler that any publicity is good; the burning torches and banning of books, the false news narratives; and the relegation of women to strictly the role of child bearers and carers.
Next up: ALL the books! So many authors I love have new books out this fall that I've lost track of those I've ordered and I've hit the limit on holds from the library. It will be a cozy book reading fall, with Grammy's chair to relax in.
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