Books Read – June 2024

Two interesting book-related links to share first –

This article: “The Joy of Reading Books You Don’t Entirely Understand.” The author makes a case for reading deeply and challenging yourself. For not letting a difficult book, or a book in which you have no context intimidate you into not reading it. I makes me think about how Engie writes in her book recaps about things she’s had to look up. I think there are two things, though – there are books that are set in a world that I know nothing about, and then there are books where I feel like I ought to understand what is happening, but for reasons of writing or plot or what not (or even my own headspace at the time), I just can’t wrap my head around what is going on. I just quit an audiobook last week that I couldn’t make heads or tails out of. I couldn’t tell where the story was going or what it was doing. Am I missing out by abandoning this book? Am I under-estimating the joy I could have from just reading as a meditative exercise? Though, when I want that kind of immersive, dense kind of reading experience, I turn to poetry. Reading a book I don’t understand has not yet gotten me to a nirvana state yet. What am I missing here?

The New York Times released a list of “Best” books of the 21st Century. It’s an interesting endeavor. Of course it’s completely subjective and leans heavily towards books originally written in the English language, and what I think of as “prestige” reading. There is a distinct lack of genre fiction. Of the 100, I’ve only read 11. There are several books on the list that I would be interested in reading, mostly the non-fiction choices. But honestly there are a lot of books that I’m not interested in reading. Life is too short, you know… And reading is such a subjective thing. Reading through the list, I had a few thoughts –
– there is something that takes all the joy out of reading when it is turned into a competitive sport – check the boxes for the books you’ve read!!! I don’t want to feel bad about not reading something on the list, but there is a sense of “Oh, I’m not well-read…”
-The part that I found the most fascinating was the individual author’s list of their top 10 picks. Sarah MacLean has a list!
-Maybe I’m not the target audience for a list like this. There are a lot of books I enjoyed reading more than My Brilliant Friend. But then, I go back to the article I mentioned at the top of this post – Was I expecting to understand more of the book than I needed to?
-As always, the comment section is gold. Tons more book recs to be found there.
-I’ve probably spent more time reading about this list of 100 books than I have actually reading a book this past 24 hours.

Anyhow – on to the books I read in June. A lighter month. Not quite sure why.

Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon – Historical novel about a midwife in revolutionary war Maine. I enjoyed reading this book- the protagonist, Martha Ballard, was a pretty great character and really liked the relationship with her husband and children all the details of her life as a midwife. The author’s notes at the end were fascinating. In my head, though, I kept comparing it to another book I read years ago – Hearts and Bones by Margaret Lawrence – also about a mid-wife in eighteenth century Maine solving a mystery. I LOVED Heart and Bones. If you find a copy, you should read it. It’s a very different book from Frozen River – the story is a lot darker, the ending not as satisfying, but in a good way. The writing… the writing is SO GOOD, a little dense, but the kind of book that completely transported me. I need to find a copy of Hearts and Bones and re-read it. But -okay I was talking originally about Frozen River – I thought it was a pretty good historical mystery novel, though I felt like the “mystery” was maybe the weakest part of the story and the plot veered towards “woman in peril” thriller at the end. Everything up until that part, though, I really liked.

The Comeback by Lily Chu, read by Philippa Soo – This book, about a woman who inadvertently starts dating a K-pop star, was the 12 year old and my Mother-daughter book club book – we listened to it together when running errands or hanging out. We both really liked this book, and laughed quite a bit. I’ve read/listened to all three of Chu’s books, and while they get billed as romance novels, I’m here for the strong women, their friendships, and the voyage of self discovery. The romantic interests are always dreamy and cute, but also kind of… rote. I think The Stand In is still my favorite of the three, but this one was great too. And I’ve been listening to some K-pop to go along with this book, which is a genre I know nothing about. “It’s like American pop songs, but I can’t understand the words they are singing,” I said to the 12 year old. “Yeah…” she replied in that, “I know, isn’t it great?!?” Kind of tone.

Wash Day Diaries by Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith – Mid month, when I was kind of in a reading slump, I borrowed a bunch of graphic novels, and Wash Day Diaries was one of them. This book features five interconnected stories about a group of friends in the Bronx who go about the ordinary business and ordinary drama of their days. It’s nice to see a book centered on strong female friendships. Also – as someone with pretty low maintenance hair, seeing hair washing as a ritual event, was really fascinating. (Side note – I was reading about graphic novels in audio form and decided to listen to a sample of one – it was kind of like listening to a radio play. When I’m done my current audiobook, I might explore a graphic novel on audio.)

My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout – I picked up this book from a Little Free Library a while ago, and it has just been languishing on my bookshelf. When I did a huge re-organization of the bookshelf a while back I pulled this as one to read since it was a slim volume and I thought I could read it quickly. I did not read it quickly – not through any fault of the book, but I just kept misplacing the book and then it would fall off my radar for a while. I thought this book was really well written, but – you know that thing where you read a book blurb, but don’t really read it quite correctly, and then the book ends up not being what you were lead to believe? I, for some reason, thought Lucy Barton was 90 years old on her death bed and I spend the first little bit thinking that her mother was a ghost. And as I read further, it quickly became clear that that wasn’t what was going on. So then I spent the rest of the book feeling a little lost. Anyhow, there are a lot of sad things in this book. A lot of beautifully written realizations in this book. But it was such an internal book, I didn’t get a sense of who Lucy really was – she spends so much time talking about the past that I didn’t know who present day Lucy was. And maybe that’s the point? That we can’t encapsulate who we are, that we contain many facets, even to ourselves? I finished the book feeling like there must be more in Lucy’s story.

Landslide by Susan Conley – I read this book while in Maine, one of the suggestions from a Maine reading list. This novel is about a documentary filmmaker living on the coast of Maine, and how her life with her two teenage sons is upended when her fisherman husband is involved in an accident while fishing off the coast of Nova Scotia. I really loved this book, and how the struggles and joys of living in a community with a dying industry figure prominently. Reading this book as we drove up the coast of Maine, really made me think about how these coastal towns are having a hard time surviving, yet how the people who live there have such a strong sense of place. I love how Conley also writes about the ironies and triumphs and angst and confusion that comes with raising teenagers, particularly teenage boys. I knew I wanted to read more of this book, when I read this on the very first page:
I tell myself it’s a beautiful face. It’s important to tell myself that many things about teenage boys are beautiful so I don’t panic.
or this:
“I’m trying to adhere to the say-very-little strategy, but when Sam [oldest son] gets to me I can’t help myself.”

Or this:

“I’ve started keeping a running list in my mind of things I need to do for the wolves[her sons] On bad days I call this the List of Resent ments. I try not to think about the list. But my brain would have worked differently without the boys. I think it would have stayed more open, and that I would be making more films and not a List of Resentments.”

It’s not all about the narrator’s feelings on the complexities of motherhood, though. This book is just felt real and honest about the good and bad things in life, and how hard it is to hold yourself together and be an adult when life isn’t going very well.

On my proverbial Night Stand. I am 3/4 of the way through many books, and barely into a few others. I don’t know how I got to the point of having so many books going at once. Hopefully we’ll finish them in July?

The Brontes: Wild Genius on the Moors: – I haven’t made much progress in this book this month. Charlotte is dead, a biography has been commissioned, but there is some drama with that.

Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Tatly- Another book from the Maine reading list – this one is a group of short stories centering around two men who live on the same reservation. Tatly has a new book out and I want to finish this book before I pick up his new one.

Blankets by Craig Thompson – graphic novel memoir about Thompson’s childhood and young adulthood as he grapples with the conflict between his first relationship and his faith. I had left this book out and both the 12 year old and the 7 year old started reading it because, you know, it’s got pictures! Must be appropriate. It was for sure not 100% appropriate for the 7 year old.

Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty – Middle aged female pirate on one last mission. I had started this, got sucked in, then had to return it to the library and it took months for it to come off the Libby holds list. BUT I then found it on Hoopla, where everything is always available immediately. So now I can jump right back in. Can’t wait to see how things turnout.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk – Picked this up from a Little Free Library – it’s my current poolside read because I actually own this book so I don’t have to worry about library fine in case it accidentally drops in the water.

Life is Hard by Kieran Setiya – Still plugging away at this. I’m on the chapter on Injustice. The last chapter was on Failure.

The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White – read aloud to the kids at bedtime

The Turnout by Megan Abbott – Thriller set in the world of a ballet studio during Nutcracker season.

What have you read lately? Do you ever read books you don’t understand?