Books read- August, September, and October 2023

September and October were not great months for reading- I started many books, but many had to be returned before I could finish them. So it’s felt very scattered. I have many books started, many narrative threads open, but very few concluded.

I also have a ridiculous number of books out from the library. One day I had to clear them out of the living room and so I stacked them in my bedroom and they made a pile two feet high. Very aspirational. Our library now lets you check books back in yourself, so sometimes I will check an overdue book back in just to check it back out again and put it back on by TBR pile. That pile needs some realistic taming, for sure.

Anyhow, on to the books:

A Very Typical Family by Sierra Godfrey – A novel about estranged siblings, a family ripped asunder and slowly stitching itself back together. This is a novel for people who like novels about family drama. It’s not a book that was terribly memorable for me; it was the first book I read in August and I had to go back and look up a plot description to remind myself what this book was about. I think it was on a library book club list. I’m just not a fan of books about people who wallow in their problems and can’t just talk to people to fix those problems. The main character often conveniently either a) accidentally left her cell phone at home, or b) talked herself out of communicating with other people. There was a nice cat in the novel, though.

My Darkest Prayer by S.A. Cosby – I had listened to Cosby’s Razorblade Tears earlier this year and was really enthralled by it, even though crime/thriller isn’t a genre I’m usually drawn to. My Darkest Prayer is one of Cosby’s first attempts at a novel and it certainly isn’t as polished or tightly crafted as Razorblade Tears. The story centers around a Nathan Waymaker, a former Marine who now works for an undertaker. When a beloved preacher dies, Waymaker is hired by the preacher’s parishioners to find out what really happened. Though Cosby is heavy on the metaphors and some of the plotlines don’t resolve as neatly as I want, I thought this book really gripping and am eager to read more of his books.

Keeper of the Lost Cities by Sharon Messenger – I read this as part of my “book club” with my 11 year old. She loooooves this series. I thought it was fine. It’s about a girl who discovers that she is really an elf and is then spirited away to another world to go to school and learn to use her powers. I don’t really go for stories of magical children and since this book was the first of a very long series, I felt like there was a lot of set up and not a whole lot of plot. My daughter assures me the series gets better as it goes along and there is a pretty juicy love triangle that evolves.

The Appeal by Janice Hallett – This book was recommended on the website Ask A Manager. I don’t always like the books that are recommended there – they tend towards rich family dramas – but this one had a lot of my literary cat nips – it’s an epistolatory murder mystery novel set against the backdrop of a community theatre. I thought this novel was a lot of fun. Though the mystery itself was rather disappointing, the style was breezy and clever, which I enjoyed. I hear there is a sequel, which is definitely going on my list.

Admission by Jean Hanff Koreltz – One of my favorite novels I’ve read this year. Portia Nathan is a Princeton admissions officer who starts to really question the ethics of her job when she makes a school visit to an ultra-alternative high school. As the things that she’s built her life on slowly unravel, she is forced to face choices that she made herself as a young college student. I loved so much about this book – Portia is such a complex, brave, and capable protagonist, all the characters are so full of life, and the book, while hilarious in parts, asks some really hard questions about the whole admissions process and who “deserves” an Ivy League education and what exactly is “achievement”. As someone who has very mixed feelings about my own Ivy League education and my own place on that campus, this book really spoke to all the insecurities that Princeton fostered, and still fosters, in me. Also – it is so very well written. Like this stellar bit of writing:

“And besides, there wasn’t much to be proud of in the scene she currently set: woman alone, in the middle of her bed, in the middle of the day, in the middle of her life.” – I mean that perfectly captures the days of malaise I feel when life is just overwhelming and I feel like I haven’t lived up to my life’s potentials.

And this quote quite sums up a lot of my feelings while at college:
“Inside every one of her fellow students, she understood now, was a person who didn’t live up to his or her own expectations, a person too fat, too slow, whose hair wouldn’t hold a curl, who had no gift for languages, who lacked the gene for math. They were convinced they were not all they’d been cracked up to be: the track star, classicist, valedictorian, perennial leading lady, campus fixer, or teacher’s favorite. The driven ones she’d known in college feared they weren’t driven enough, and the slackers were sure they’d find out how deficient they were if the ever did apply themselves.” Yep – I was definitely one of those slackers that was afraid to find out they weren’t smart. I really loved this book. Also – there is a movie somewhat based on this book starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd. That pairing alone is enough to get me to watch the movie. It’s a cute movie, but nothing at all like the book, except for broad plot points.

Unwind by Neil Shusterman – A dystopian YA novel about a world in which, as a compromise on the abortion issue, life is considered sacred until the age of 13, after which parents are allowed to have their kids be “unwound”, sending their kids to government institutions to have their body parts harvested and transplanted to other people. I can’t remember where I first heard about this book, but I thought it might make a good mother daughter “book club” book. This book centers around a trio of teenagers who have been sent to be unwound, but escape on the way there. It’s pretty dark. The more YA novels I read, the more I’m realizing that parents don’t really come off very well in these books – which I guess is understandable of the genre read by people who are of an age to push back against the grown ups in their world. This book was really intense – I stayed up late to finish it because I just had to know how things turned out. The 11 year old really liked it too, said it was one of her favorite books she read this year.

Sadie by Courtney Summers, read by Rebecca Soler, Dan Bittner, Gabra Zackman, and a full cast – I thought this book would make an interesting audiobook because it is supposed to be partly told in the form of a podcast. It tells the story of Sadie, a teenager who has gone missing after her sister is found dead, and the podcaster who is trying to find her. To be honest, women in peril stories aren’t really my thing, and the amount of cruelty and abuse in this book just made for unpleasant listening. Also, even though the novel is supposed to be told in the form of a podcast, I found the actual podcast segments kind of stilted.

Promise Boys by Nick Brooks, read by Renier Cortes, Hannah Church, Anthony Lopez, Alfred Vines, Xenia Willacey, Jamie Lincoln Smith, Henriette Zoutomou, Maria Liatis, Suehyla El-Attar, Eliana Marianes, Brad Sanders, Christopher Hampton – Continuing on my YA streak, this novel tells the story of three students at Urban Promise Prep School in DC who come under suspicion when their strict, no-nonsense principal is murdered. I thought this book was an interesting spin on the prep school mystery genre. Unlike most prep school novels, these kids are not white, do not come from families of money or privilege. They are kids who have to hustle and work hard to have dreams for their future, and I thought that Brooks really was able to convey how high the stakes were for these kids to prove themselves. I don’t always love full cast audio books – they always seem disjointed to me, but I thought that approach worked really well for this book – the multiple points of view as key to how each characted was slowly revealed and preconceptions were unravelled.

Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson – I picked up this novel as I was browsing the library because on one of the first pages, it had a list of “rules” for mystery novels, and there was a note in the top right corner that said, “Fold this corner over” so that the reader could refer back to this list throughout the novel. That kind of self-referential humour always gets me. This novel is one of those “Family stuck in a ski lodge with their secrets” kind of mystery and proved to be a lot of fun – I laughed out loud a few times. I do wish I had read it more quickly – the actual reveal of the murderer and motive was a little unsatisfying to me because I read the book over such a long period of time that I couldn’t remember the details enough to piece together the solution to the mystery. This is one of those mystery novels where the clues are right there so it would have been more fun if I could have kept track of details better.

Number One Chinese Restaurant by Lillian Li– This book is set in Rockville, a suburb of DC near where I live and where the best Chinese food in the county is. The novel tells the story of relationships of the staff and owners of The Beijing Duck House. There are many narrative threads in this novel – family conflicts, romantic relationships, career ambitions, as well as the intense drama of trying to just get through the mundane things in life. Overall, I was kind of “meh” about this book. I thought the writing was very good, particularly the description of life in a restaurant and the details way Li describes food. Ultimately, though I think because the book is so sprawling with so many characters, I didn’t feel like the plotlines gelled cohesively for me. The whole thing felt quite episodic and lacked momentum.

The Change by Kirsten Miller – If you like books about angry middle aged women taking charge of things and confronting the casual misogyny of life, here is a book for you. This novel tells the story of three women in their 40s and 50s who, upon discovering the body of a dead teenage girl in their Long Island oceanfront community, decide to take matters into their own hands when the police dismiss the case as just another drug addicted sex-worker. Also – all three women have strange and magical powers – which, I’m not usually into strange and magical powers, but when coupled with menopausal rage, it is kind of fun. I mean this passage:
So much fury had built up inside Jo. But at last she’d identified the true enemy. She’d been waging war with herself since she was fourteen year old. But the problem wasn’t her body. The problem was the companies that sold shitty sanitary pads. Otherwise reasonable adult who believed tampons stole a girls’ virginity. Doctors who didn’t bother to solve common problems. Birth control that could kill you. Boys who were told that they couldn’t control themselves. A society that couldn’t handle the fact that roughly half of all humans mensurate at some point in their lives.
This book is angry and funny and suspenseful and sweet all at the same time. I guess one could say the men in this novel are kind of undeveloped, but I don’t imagine that they are any more undeveloped than women have been in media for years. This book was highly enjoyable for me. I stayed up until 2am to finish it.

Currently on my metaphorical bedside table:
Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change by Angela Garbes. I really liked Garbes’ book Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy – highly recommend as an alternative to Emily Oster’s Expecting Better. Essential Labor, written during the pandemic, seeks to look at the history of caregiving and how it is so central yet so undervalued.

All the Right Notes by Dominic Lim – Romance novel about a piano player/composer who has dreams of Broadway and the boy he met in high school, who is now a famous Hollywood star. I’m a sucker for novels set in the theatre or music worlds. Also romance novels with Asian leads. I started some other books this month, but I’m finding that when I’m in a super busy period at work, I need light happy books to read.

I Should Have Honor by Khalida Brohi (audiobook)- Brohi is a Pakastani activist who as a teenager, prompted by the honor killing of her cousin, started to speak out against honor crimes and advocate for the education and empowerment of women in Pakistan. This memoir was written in 2018. I’m only half way through and while I find the subject matter important, the memoir itself is a little dry.

The Takedown by Lily Chu (audiobook, narrated by Phillipa Soo) – Chu wrote The Stand-In which I really enjoyed, so when looking for an audiobook to listen to as I made scones one night, I started this one. It’s much the same humor and tone.