romance novels – Life Off Headset

Books Read- March 2024

It’s almost June, but here’s what I read in March. I didn’t plan it this way, but March was a very romance heavy month.

The Marquis Who Musn’t by Courtney Milan – This is the second book in Milan’s Wedgeford Trials book that centers on a 19th century village in England with a huge Asian immigrant population. Naomi Kwan wants to take ambulance classes and learn first aid, but as a single woman, is constantly told she couldn’t. She enters into a fake engagement with the handsome new in town Liu Ji Kai in order to register for classes as an engaged woman. But Kai has other motives for being in town. Warm friendship ensues. Not my favorite Milan – her plotting is a little clunky, but I can always count on her for smart characters, fascinating and well researched historical settings, and good writing with some spot on sentiments. Sentiments like this:
“Is that why she hasn’t yelled at me anymore about the ambulance class?”
Her aunt simply shook her head. “Since when does my older sister yell?”
Naomi felt her nose wrinkle. “Technically correct. Emotionally false.”
Or this one:
“Let me teach you a trick,” Mr. Liu said. “You seem to need some way to fend off questions, and this works for about everything… Go ahead. Repeat the question you just asked me.”
“Who are you?”
He gave her a cutting look – a sweep of his eyes from head to toe as if he were a scythe, slashing her down. “My private situation is none of your business.”
She staggered back. He radiated triumph. “See? Easy enough.”
“Easy for you,” She muttered. “How do you expect me to use that at home? Have you no parents?”
Even in 19th century England, Milan has captured the angst I often feel as an Asian daughter.

Ten Things that Never Happened by Alexis Hall, read by Will Watt – Amnesia plots are absolutely not my thing, but this book kind of turns that trope on its head. Sam runs a bed and bath store and thinks his jerk CEO/boss Jonathan is going to fire him, endangering the jobs of all his employees, so when Sam has an accident while talking to Jonathan, he fakes amnesia to buy himself time. Of course uneasy friendship, respect, understanding, and love ensues. Along with a pretty terrific cat. I really enjoyed this book- it was laugh out loud funny in places, and beautifully touching in others. I loved the narrator- he made this book the audio equivalent of all my favorite Bdritish rom coms rolled into one, with a colourful and hilarious cast of characters.

Brazen and the Beast by Sarah MacLean – second novel in the Bareknuckle Bastards series. I really like Sarah MacLean- her novels are really well written, her heroines are smart and independent and there are always finely detailed secondary characters. This novel involves Hattie, who wants to run her father’s shipping business, and Beast who is… actually I’m a little foggy on the twists and turns of the plot points and how Hattie and Beast got involved. I think that bit was a little thin. It involves a long held grudge and a smuggling ring. Hattie and Beast were great characters. The plot was… incidental.

The Lover’s Dictionary by David Levithan – slight and pithy. To be honest, I don’t remember much of it, though my notes seem to indicate that I found a lot of it worth highlighting. It’s the story of a romance where each chapter is based on a letter of the alphabet.

The L section, is Latitude – “ What a strange phrase- not seeing other people. As if it’s been constructed to be a lie. We see people all the time, the question is what we do about it.”
Isn’t that always the question?

S for scapegoat – “I think our top two are: not enough coffee. Too much coffee.”
Also so true.

X for ..x – “Doesn’t it strike you as strange that we have a letter in the alphabet that nobody uses? It represents one-twenty-sixth of the possibility of our language, and we let it languish. If you and I really, truly wanted to change the world, we’d invent more words that started with x.”

Daring and the Duke by Sarah MacLean– this was the final book in her Bare Knuckle Bastard series. After I read Brazen and the Beast, I figured I might as well finish the series. I enjoyed it, but not as much as Brazen and the Beast. I really wanted this book to be an epic saga in the vein of Gone With The Wind or Thorn Birds. The heroine Grace is a fascinating character and I wanted to read about how she ran away from her childhood home and built her empire, but the story starts after she’s already become a powerful figure in the underworld. Ewan is fine, complicated and kind of puzzling to me, and he’s the least interesting part of Grace’s story. Also- massive overuse of the word “lush”.

The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillroy– this book was on a San Francisco reading list and since we were about to go to San Francisco, I put it on my Libby holds. Then a few days before we were going to leave for the Bay Area, I saw a copy of it in the Little Free Library in front of our piano teacher’s house. How fortuitous! Anyhow- this book was fine. It features a meet cute in an elevator in Sam Francisco, an impromptu wedding date and then dating life. It was pleasant enough but there was a certain lack of tension in the relationship- the book features two smart independent people who clearly like each other- they just have to figure out the logistics. The things that could have made the book interesting – namely, she’a Black and he’s White- gets mentioned and then dropped and never really addressed.

On my proverbial Night stand:

The Brontes: Wild Genius on the Moors- so close to finishing this one. Charlotte is getting married!!!!!

My Fair Brady- YA book set in the world of the high school musical.

Sourdough by Robin Sloan – audiobook that I picked because it was on the shorter side and I knew I could get through it before my commutes got shorter. It’s about a woman working in tech who inherits a sourdough starter and it changes her life. Makes me want to revive those starters in my fridge.

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi – middle aged female pirate, leaves her ten year old daughter at home to carry our one last, hopefully lucrative, assignment. It is proving delightful so far. I’m laughing a lot.

Books Read November and December 2023

I feel like for being so busy in November and December, I got more reading done than I thought I would. Thank you, audiobooks and commuting! I finished the year having read 51 books – which is fewer than last year, but I also had a lot less time off from work this year than last year. The past two months have been mostly lighter books.

Thank You for Listening written and narrated by Julia Whelan – Novel about an audiobook narrator finding her way in life. I loved this book. I had debated between reading it and listening to it on audio, and Engie had such good things to say about the audio that I went with that version and do not regret that choice. I want more books read by Julia Whelan now. And the book itself was also pretty great – I laughed out loud many times while listening. I see this book billed as a Romance, and while there is a great love story, I think there is so much more going on in this book for Sewanee, the protagonist, than just finding love. The book abounds with complex and loving relationships, the details about life as an audiobook narrator are fascinating to me, the Italian audio engineer is indelible in my mind. This book was just so satisfying.

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer – It took me two years, but I finally finished this book. I had first heard of Robin Wall Kimmerer when she was a guest on the podcast On Being. This is a pretty dense book. Not dense as in thick and tome-like, but dense in that every essay in this book required so much concentration from me. I would finish one essay and then feel like I couldn’t really digest another one. So I would say this is a book to be read slowly, one essay at a time. (Or go find her interview on On Being, if you don’t feel up for reading this book…) There are so many threads in this book, but a lot it ties back to the idea of nature and the natural world and learning from a world that gives and gives. And how humans take and take, but we don’t remember to listen to the earth or to give back to it. This book really impacted how I talk about nature to my children, though. I mean, I don’t think I used to talk about nature too much to my kids, but after reading this book, I’ve come to feel that it is important to point out the beauty and brilliance and benefits of nature to my kids so that they also foster an appreciation for the natural worlds and don’t take it for granted.
Some quotes I highlighted:
“Maybe we’ve all been banished to lonely corners by our obsession with private property. We’ve accepted banishment even from ourselves when we spend our beautiful, utterly singular lives on making more money, to buy more things that feed buy never satisfy. It is the Windigo way that tricks us into believing that belongings will fill our hunger when it is belonging that we crave.”
Yes, do I really need more things? I wrote in my notes, after reading this passage, “Now I feel guilty about wanting that dress.” I don’t think the point is to make people feel guilty for their consumerism, but rather for them to think about what “need” really means and what “wants” really are.

“If all the word is a commodity how poor we grow. When all the world is a gift in motion, how wealthy we become.” – from the essay The Gift of Strawberries – a reminder to not take the earth for granted and to treat natural resources as a gift. There is a lot of railing against capitalism in this book. As is probably to be expected.

“Our toddlers speak of plants and animals as if they were people, extending to them self and intention and compassion – until we teach the not to. We quickly retrain them and make them forget. When we tell them that the tree is not a who, but an it, we make that maple an object. […] If an a maple is an it, we can take up the chain saw. If a maple is a her, we think twice.” What do we teach our children about the world we live in?

I Should Have Honor written and read by Khalida Brohi – Brohi is a Pakistani activist who advocates for women’s rights and speaks out against honor killings in Pakistan. Her message and mission is an important one and there are parts of her book that were so sad and horrifying. I think, though, I kind of wanted less of her personal story and more about the history and impetus for honor killings. Granted this is her memoir, so the book is of course mostly about her journey – and it is really an incredibly brave one – but I think I wanted more of an insight into the country and culture she was from.

All The Right Notes by Dominic Lim – This book was about Quinto a piano player and composer in New York whose music teacher father wants him to come home to put on a show to raise money for his high school music program. And his father wants Quinto to convince Emmett Aoki, a famous movie star and his child hood friend/crush, to perform. Reconnecting with Emmett sends Quinto’s world into a tailspin. I’m always intrigued by romance novels (well, really any novel) set in the theatre world and with Asian characters. Not all books get theatre life right (or right compared the my reality, which is, admittedly just one perspective), so sometimes I just find them annoying, but I like to read them anyway. I thought this book was fine. The writing is funny in parts, awkward in others. The description of Filipino food made me want to look it all up and then order some. Overall though, the book wasn’t terribly memorable for me.

The Chiffon Trenches written and read by Andre Leon Tally – Tally was a fashion journalist and Anna Wintour’s right hand man at Vogue. Reading this in conjunction with Braiding Sweetgrass was interesting, because fashion is such a material industry. This book is full of juicy inside stories of the fashion world. Tally’s descriptions of clothes were so vivid and several times I looked images up because I just had to to see for myself the ensembles of which he wrote. This book made me want to be stylish, yet also made me realize how even though fashion can be a lot of fun and a great form of self expression, at the same time it must be a huge mental load to be so put together. There is a lot of this book that feels completely not relevant to my life, but I enjoyed hearing about nonetheless. There are also a lot of sad and vulnerable moments in this memoir. Tally, who passed away in early 2023, says a lot about being a Black man in a predominantly white industry, and makes many points that I had never thought about before.

The Takedown by Lily Chu, read by Phillipa Soo – I really enjoyed Chu’s book The Stand-In, and I’m a sucker for audiobooks narrated by Hamilton cast members, so of course I picked this book up. The novel centers around Dee Kwan a (borderline toxically) positive person who works in diversity consulting. She gets assigned to work a case at a major fashion house and hijinks and drama and self awareness ensue. I thought this was a charming book. There are some awesome – yet complicated – female friendships, some thoughtful handling of issues of race, a nice guy that is a little too perfect, and a chinchilla. I thought the ending was a little too pat, but there’s your romance happily ever after for you. Chu’s books are labelled as romance, but I feel like the romance is the least interesting parts of her books, to be honest. This book was an interesting listen to follow The Chiffon Trenches.

And Elderly Lady Is Up To No Good by Helene Tursten, translated by Marlaine Delargy -Another Engie recommendation, which I picked up after I read Killers of a Certain Age and wanted more stories of women who are no longer in the first (or second or third) bloom of youth. These series of short stories of an 88 year old Swedish woman who lives alone and likes it that way, to the extent that she’s willing to do anything to keep things going the way she wants. It’s a little dark and very funny. It’s a good palate cleanser read, I think – short, smart, and unlike anything else I’ve been reading. I already have the sequel in my TBR pile.

Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change by Angela Garbes – This book is a collection of essays that looks at caregiving in America and how this essential act is greatly undervalued, probably because it is considered the domain of women. She has one really great essay that points out how our society values inventors and not maintenance workers – and what are caregivers but the maintenance workers of people’s bodies? I really liked Garbes’ previous book Like a Mother, which looked at pregnancy and childbirth today. Essential Labor, I felt, was a more personal book. I think I wanted something a little more scholarly, though, and with a little more focus. While there are so many thoughtful and interesting points in this book and a lot of personal narrative, Garbes also recaps a lot of other people’s writings and part of me just wanted to read all the articles listed in her bibliography rather than just her interpretation of them.

Business or Pleasure by Rachel Lynn Solomon – This novel was in the New York Times’ list of favorite romance novels of 2023, and sounded interesting. Chandler, a ghost writer, feeling slightly disillusioned about her career has a one night stand with a cute guy. The next day, she is hired to ghost write the memoir of a former teen heartthrob who turns out to be… one night stand guy. This book features one of the funniest and most honest bad sex scenes I’ve ever read – Chandler and Finn’s one night stand is incredibly disappointing for her, and you know what? It’s probably one of the most true to life things I’ve ever read in a romance novel. Sex is always amazing in romance novels, but is it always that in real life? Anyhow, I expected the rest of the book to be about how Chandler and Finn grow to like each other as they work on the book, but it turns out to be so much more (and so much more open door) than just working on the book. There are a lot of details I liked about the book – I particularly appreciated how Chandler and Finn bonded over being Jewish because you don’t often find those cultural details as such a casual key characteristic in romance novels. I thought this was a fun read all in all – not terribly memorable on a whole but some really great moments. I’m a little burnt out on first person narrative contemporary romance novels, though. Why doesn’t anyone write romance novels in the omniscient voice?

Murder in Mesopotamia by Agatha Christie – I’ve read a lot of Agatha Christie, but hadn’t read this one yet. I think I saw this on a list of really good Agatha Christie novels that people don’t generally talk about. This was a Poirot mystery set in Mesopotamia, so all the expected cringe-y colonial undertones are there. The mystery itself was quite clever. I try not to guess “whodunnit” when I read mystery novels because I think it takes the fun out of the big reveal for me. I am probably in the minority here, but I actually prefer Miss Marple to Hercule Poirot mysteries. Poirot can be a little smug for my tastes. Nonetheless a nice comfort read for the end of the year.

Well that wraps up 2023 reading. I’ll have a post with my favorite books and reading experiences from the year later on. I hope.

On my proverbial bedside table:

Wild Genius on the Moors – Still reading about the Brontës. Everyone is dead almost. Charlotte doesn’t like to leave home.

Girlfriend on Mars by Deborah Willis – Amber is competing on a reality show for a chance to go to Mars. Boyfriend Kevin is back home in Vancouver, trying to live life. So far, funny and wry.

Untangled by Lisa Damour – it has the very cringe-y subtitle of “Guiding Teenage Girls through The Seven Transitions into Adulthood.” The content is better than that subtitle.

The Monsters We Defy (audiobook) by Lisa Penelope read by Shayna Small -Part heist novel, part historical fantasy, set in the Washington DC’s Black Broadway of 1925. This is proving very entertaining.

Mad, Bad, And Dangerous to Know by Samira Ahmed – Mother Daughter Book club read. Muslim American Teenager in Paris for the Summer on a mission to solve a historical question with a very cute descendant of Alexander Dumas in tow.

Books Read – July 2023

Already September and just now getting around to the July books. I thought about doing August and July books together, but this post was already half written, so here you are…

Ballad of Love and Glory by Reyna Grande: This novel was set during the Mexican-American War, a historical event which I didn’t know anything about. It is based on the true story of Irish immigrants who join the American army then defect to the Mexican side and were given their own artillery unit. I really loved the historical aspect of this book and learning about a new slice of history. The writing is so descriptive and vivid. At the same time, I thought the narrative arc lacked momentum. And maybe that’s just the nature of war – people die, things just plod on and on. I felt invested in the story, though, because I really liked the two main characters – John Riley who lead the artillery unit and Ximena Solome a Mexican army nurse – and I was really rooting for their relationship.

The Year of Miracles by Ella Risbridger – I don’t usually put cookbooks in my “Books Read” list, but this one was so beautifully written – part memoir, part cookbook. I had read her first book Midnight Chicken and felt similarly entranced by it. A Year of Miracles takes place during the pandemic as Risbridger is mourning the death of her long time partner. It is an account of finding joy in the simplest of things but also for allowing yourself to grieve and to feel. It’s a testament to good friends and simple food. I love this book so much because she writes things like:
I’ve been grieving now for years, and grief sets “missing” as your default state. I’m always missing someone; and I’ve learned to live along the line of something being lost. I’ve learned to cultivate happiness in absence, and to love an empty space where something used to be in the quiet hope that it won’t be wasted: something always turns up to be loved, a fox, a star, a courgette. At cat. A home. A person.

And then she writes recipe instructions like:
Stir to coat everything in the lovely scented oil. You might have to turn the heat up here, but not too high. A medium flame, let’s say, at most. I trust you. If it seems like anything is catching, turn it down. Just watch it, and it will be ok.

Her writing and her recipes are like a warm, soothing hug from a good friend.

Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn – This novel is about the escapades of a group of female assassins, which immediately piqued my interest. They have been in the assassin business for a 30+ years, but somebody is suddenly out to extinguish them and they have to go rogue to figure out who that is. I thought this novel was a lot of fun. 60-something year old female assassins who are smart, cunning, witty and can kick ass — well that’s definitely refreshing to read about. And their friendships – I like reading about female friendships and these ones are certainly complicated yet comforting. I’ve read Raybourn’s historical mysteries, but this has a certain fresh humour about it that is different. I wonder if she will write more?

After Dark with the Duke by Julie Anne Long – The next novel in the Palace of Rogue series. I really loved this novel – the heroine is an opera singer, so automatically that piques my interest. She is fleeing from scandal, having been the impetus for a duel, and comes to the Grand Palace on the Thames to escape and figure out what to do next. Having no money she agrees to put on a concert to raise funds for the boarding house. The hero is a celebrated war hero who has taken rooms in the Grand Palace on the Thames to write his memoirs but he’s a little stuck. He insults her (a little bit on purpose) and to make up for it he teaches her how to speak Italian and over the course of their Italian lessons they learn about each other and fall in love. But of course she’s an opera singer and he’s a noble lord. This is just a very nice romance novel about two very mature people trying to do the right thing, when the right thing they want to do is not necessarily the right thing society would have them do. There is a bit of an age difference between the two of them (20 years) that I found not really warranted, but that’s a minor quibble.

A Heart that Works by Rob Delany – A sad, wistful, and angry book about Delany’s two year old son’s battle with brain cancer. Losing a child just seems like such a horrific and heart-wrenching experience. I think it must be one of the worst things that a person can face. Delaney writes with such honesty and with surprising humour about what he and his family went through. It’s a book that made me want to hug my children closer

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Anne Schaffer and Annie Barrows, narrated by Paul Boehmer, Susan Duerden, Rosalyn Landor, John Lee, Juliet Mills – I feel like I’m the last person to read this novel, set in 1946 about a writer who strikes up a correspondence with a man on the Island of Guernsey. Epistolatory novels are my cat nip and I heard that this one was charming on audio, and indeed it was. Some of the plotting was a little awkward and unsubtle – there are limits to the epistolatory novel, of course, but over all this novel was perfect for my long commute home – sweet and undemanding and full of fun characters.

The Secrets of Happy Families by Bruce Feiler – Feiler is a New York Times journalist who in the book explores frameworks for creating a thriving family life. He does talk to scientists and researchers, but also talks to business experts, coaches, and military professionals to figure out what makes families stronger. It’s kind of family through a team building lens. Each chapter tackles a different subject – things like allowance, activities, travel, making decisions, discipline, having a family mission statement, how to talk about sexuality, etc. A lot of it is common sense and just good reminders of how we need to invest time in our families for them to thrive. Like any parenting book, I think one can take what is useful and leave the rest- “Good for you, not for me.” Some of his strategies to build relationship through createing competition between his kids rubbed me the wrong way – it is very counter what “Siblings without Rivalry” advocates. But that’s just another example about how there is no one parenting style that will work for all the variations of parents and children in the world. I did make a lot of highlights in this book, though. I think the parts that really resonated with me are the chapters about how to create stronger bonds in your family through shared experiences, rituals, histories, and values. Some of my highlights:
“… The more kids remember about their own families, the more self-esteem and confidence they exhibit. With the at in mind, devote a night to having kids tell stories from their own past… the day they scored two goals at soccer, the night their mother made those awesome chocolate chip cookies. This game would work particularly well the night before a big test or game, as scientist have found recalling high points form their own lives boosts children’s self confidence.”
The book talks a lot about how important it is for kids to feel like they have a family history – how knowing where they come from gives them confidence and roots for becoming adults.

“A key gift of the family meeting was to give us a designate space each week to overcome … differences. It was a safe zone where everybody was on equal footing, and no one could leave until a resolution was forged.”
I like the idea of regular family meetings and a family mission statement – this idea that a family was a unit lead by the parents, but not dictated by the parents. This is very different from how I grew up and I chafed at that.

“I told my dad, ‘I promise not to do anything big and stupid sexually if you promise not to yell at me for doing something small and stupid.'”
I need to learn this, to accept that kids will do dumb things and if I can be gentle with the small mistakes then hopefully my kids will not be afraid to come to me if they make big mistakes.

“The purpose of youth sports, Thompson says, is to create better competitors and to create better people. He often asks parents who they think has the job of accomplishing the first goal. “They get it right way,” he said. “Coaches and kids.” Parents have a more important job, he tells them.” You focus on the second goal, helping your kids take what they learn from sports into the rest of their lives.” Let’s say your kids strikes out, and his team loses the game. “You can have a first-goal conversation about bailing out of the batter’s box, keeping your eye on the ball, etc. Or you can have a second-goal conversation about resilience, character, and perseverance.”
I think this is so important to remember as my kids start activities. There are coaches and teachers to tell them how to play the sports. My role is to help the kids see the intangible benefits of what they are doing.

“Honey, what you are saying makes a lot of sense.”
Another phrase I need to learn to use more – to validate other people.

Reading with the kids – some of our/my recent favorites (I mean the kids also love those early readers that feature Peppa Pig or the Avengers, but I’m going to be a bit of a snob and list the ones that I like reading to them.):

The Legend of Rock Paper Scissors by Drew Daywalt and Adam Rex – I got this as a Vox book and it’s hilarious to my kids who love to settle things by playing Rock-Paper-Scissors. (Though they don’t always like the results.)

L’Ecole de Barbarpapa by Annette Tisson and Talus Taylor – okay this book is one I like to read. At the end of the school year, the 6 year old’s school gives everyone books to take home. Because he is in a French immersion program, they try to give him French books. When I saw this book, I was immediately taken back to my childhood – The Barbapapa books were very popular where I was growing up in Canada. It’s about a charming family of amorphous beings who shape shift as necessary. In this book, they open up a school.

I’m a Unicorn by Helen Yoon – This is a rather silly book about a cow that thinks they’re a unicorn because they have one horn. There are poop jokes, which always makes for a winner. Yoon also wrote the work from home book “Off-Limits” that we love.

Working Boats by Tom Crestodina – A beautifully illustrated book that looks at cross sections of various boats. Not a bedtime book, but a slowly pore and explore book with so many fascinating facts.

On my proverbial night stand:

Wild Genius on the Moors – still plugging through the Bronte biography. Charlotte has writer’s block.

Braiding Sweetgrass – I had put this aside for a while, but now I’m about 20 pages to the end, so I really want to finish it.

Stranger in a Shogun’s City – Non fiction about a woman in nineteenth century Japan who, after suffering three failed marriages, leaves her rural village for the big city of Edo. Such fascinating period details.

The Number One Chinese Restaurant – novel set in Rockville, near where I live and where, indeed, all the good Chinese restaurants are.

Tree Grows in Brooklyn – for Engie’s book club. What a lot of suffering is going on in these chapters.

Unwind – Dystopian YA novel about a world where adults can choose to have children “unwound” – basically their body parts are taken and given to other people- if they don’t show any promise between the ages of 13-18. It is rather grim reading. Next book in our Mother Daughter book club. We might need something more cheerful next.

Books Read – June 2023

Nothing like the first of the month to recap the books I read two months ago… I read more books than normal in June- thanks partly to my solo week at home! These past few months I’ve been really enjoying reading hard copy books. I read a lot via Libby on my phone, but there is something glorious to be about sitting with a book and turning the pages and flipping back and forth. I think the family being away really upped my “read in bed” lounge-y time.

The Chuckling Finger by Mabel Seeley – I was unfamiliar with Seeley, but I guess this American writer was hugely popular in the late 30s and 40s. She wrote mystery and crime novels. I picked up this book because I saw it recommended in The Week – can’t remember by whom. It’s like an Agatha Christie mystery with a touch more gothic in it. The story centers around Ann Gray, who has come to visit her cousin at her house on the lake. Mysterious accidents and eventually bodies ensue. It’s not the most well plotted of mysteries, but the heroine is plucky and smart and quite daring. Good if you’ve exhausted Agatha Christie and looking for something similar.

Scarborough by Catherine Hernandez – This 2017 novel by Canadian writer Hernandez centers around three children whose lives intertwine at a literacy center for low income families in a suburb outside of Toronto. Such a well crafted book, with story lines and characters flowing parallel and then intersecting in heart-wrenching ways. I think this novel really showed how hard it is to be a good parents when your basic needs are not being met – it’s Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in novel form. Another central theme in this book is how children can simultaneously be so vulnerable yet so resilient. Even when their lives are hard, the characters manage to find friends and moments of joy. Reading about children who are abused or mistreated is always hard for me, yet Hernandez manages to treat all her characters with empathy and compassion, even when they are making really bad decisions.
Quotes I highlighted:
– “He lay his daughter on the bed face up, which made her snore so perfectly. She was the most beautiful sack of potatoes he ever did see.”
Yep, I’ve been there.
-“Sylvie’s dad was on that couch for months. Jonathon, like many here, was a sad combination of bad cards dealt and bad choices made.”
-“When you’re dead, you can’t tell someone, “You will change your ways,” because their ways won’t continue ever again.”

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman – full cast audio production – I listened to this book on my commute and loved it. It was clever, funny, deeply human and vastly entertaining. I laughed out loud many many times. In this novel, as the world hurtles towards Armageddon an Angel and a Demon contemplate life and how much the actually enjoy Earth and don’t want it to end. I don’t always like full cast audio productions, but I found this one to be pretty great.

When a Rogue Meets his Match by Elizabeth Hoyt – This is the second book of Hoyt’s Greycourt series. It was … fine. Not particularly memorable – I just had to google the book to remind myself of the plot – it involves a forced marriage and then BIG SECRETS and then bad people. In my notes, I wrote, “The chemistry between the main characters was hot. Plotting was kind of awkward. I’m not sure I understand the motivation for all the intrigue.”

Night of the Scoundrel by Kelly Bowen – So I got to the end of When a Rogue Meets his Match and… there was another book appended to the back. I figured, may as well read it too. This novella is pretty much a vengeance plot. Guy says, “Help me get revenge.” Girl says, “What will you give me?” He says, “Whatever you want.” And they fall in the love in the meantime. Kelly Bowen is new to me. I thought her writing was very good, but I thought that the trauma and backstory of the mysterious hero was overwrought. I don’t mean to say trauma can’t be… well, traumatic, but just there was something almost sadistic about the amount of suffering he was made to go through here.

Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez: This novel is set at Tawawa House, a holiday resort in Ohio where white men would bring their enslaved Black mistresses. I was fascinated by this little slice of history – about what would motivate a man to bring his enslaved mistress to a resort and what it was like for the women to leave the plantation. The novel centers around a group of six slaves who meet at Tawawa House and the friendships they form and how their lives shift as they return to the resort year after year. Not going lie – this book was a challenging and gut-wrenching read, as one would expect of a book centered around the lives of a group of slaves. There is a lot of brutal sexual assault depicted as well as the mental and emotional and physical cruelty of slavery. Even still, I found this book gripping, as it followed the main character and her conflicted relationship with her master.

Index, A History of the by Dennis Duncan – The title pretty much says it all. I found this book fascinating. Duncan delves into the history of how we categorize, track and find information in the books that we read. The book is a little dry, very witty and definitely nerdy. I mean there is a whole chapter about page numbers. I take page numbers for granted, but Duncan points out that page numbers were kind of useless before the printing press was invented then goes into the history of page numbers including what is one of the earliest surviving page numbers. Also, apparently indexes were controversial when they first became a thing because people thought that scholars would just read indexes rather than the real text. Also – did you know there was a society of professional indexers? I guess someone has to create an index, but it had never occurred to me before that that could be a profession. And in our world of AI and Google and e-book search functions – are professional indexers going to be obsolete? Duncan does provide an example of a computer generated index and a human generated index of this book, and one can certainly tell the difference. Indeed, the human generated index is one of the most amusingly tongue in cheek things I’ve read in a while. Definitely don’t skip reading the index of this book if you read it.

Unshuttered: Poems by Patricia Smith – Smith collects nineteenth century photographs of Black people and this volume of poetry was inspired by those photographs. Photographs of Black people of the time are very rare as Black people did not often have the money or freedom to have their portraits taken. For each photograph in this volume of poetry, Smith has written a poem that speculates as to whom the subject is. Both the pictures and the poems are haunting.

Slay by Brittney Morris – YA novel, our Mother Daughter book club book this month. I heard about this book on the podcast What Should I Read Next and immediately put it on my holds list from the library. This novel centers around 17 year old Kiera who has developed a video game that only Black people can play – the worlds and characters and superpowers were all created with the Black experience in mind. No one knows that she is behind this hugely popular game and when a teenager is killed over the game, Kiera has to decide how to handle the public scrutiny and accusations of “anti-white discrimination” that the game starts to get all while. I thought this was a very thought provoking book – Morris speaks more eloquently about the need for safe spaces and for the difficulty of being unable to assert your own racial identity than any piece of non-fiction I’ve read. At the same time, the book isn’t preachy or didactic – all these thorny issues are wrapped up in a well plotted novel that moves with momentum. I really enjoyed this book. The 11 year old did as well.

On my proverbial night stand:
Wild Genius of the Moors – Still reading about the Brontes. The past couple chapters have had so. much. death. Sad sad times.

Keeper of the Lost Cities by Sharon Messenger: Mother daughter book club book. My daughter suggested this one. She is obsessed with this series about a girl who discovers she has magical powers and leaves her known family and earth.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – as part of Engie’s blogger book club. I’ve never read this book before and am finding it beautiful in its details of time, place, and character.

My Darkest Prayer by S.A. Cosby – I loved his novel Razorblade Tears. This is one of his first efforts and while it is a little rough around the edges, I’m enjoying the prose very much.

What are you reading?

Books Read – February 2023

Random book habit though this month: After I finish a book, I will go back and re-read the first two or three chapters again. I find by the time I get to the end of a book, I often don’t remember the first few chapters, and I like to remind myself how the story starts; there are often details that pop out at me that I hadn’t noticed before, but which feel richer having read the whole book. Often the characters have changed or grown, so it’s fun to see what they were like at the beginning. I very rarely re-read entire books, though. What about you?

Would Like To Meet by Rachel Winters– This was a cute but ridiculous romance-ish novel that the I picked up because the 11 year old found it at the Little Free Library at the pool, and I jokingly said, “We should have a book club!” So she read it and then handed it to me. The premise: Evie works as an assistant to an agent whose major (only) client is an Oscar winning screenwriter who is behind on delivering a script for a rom com. The screenwriter has writer’s block because he thinks romantic comedies are unbelievable, so Evie decides to show him that the “meet cute” really does exist by attempting to have a “meet cute.” Hijinks ensue. This is a decidedly mediocre yet amusing romance novel. Evie is a bit too much of a door mat for my liking, but her friends are fun and the meet cutes that she engineers have their own charm.

Dante and Aristotle Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz, read by Lin Manuel Miranda – Truth, I chose this audio book because it was narrated by Lin Manuel Miranda. This YA novel tells the story about Ari, who can’t swim, and Dante whom he meets at a pool, and who offers to teach him. Over the course of a summer and the following school years, the two Mexican-American teenagers develop a deep friendship that grows into more. It’s the kind of book that meanders along, much like life, until something really dramatic happens, then people pick up the pieces and try to keep moving forward. I thought it really captured the inertia of the teen years – the way that things often seem like they won’t ever change then life turns a corner and suddenly things will never be the same. There were some pacing issues with the book, but I did love all the characters, especially Dante who was kind of quirky and unselfconsciously so.

I’m only Wicked with You by Julie Ann Long – I really enjoyed Long’s Pennyroyal Green series. This is the latest in her Palace of Rogues series. I thought the ending had everything I love in a romance novel ending, but the rest of the book took a looooong time to get there. Forced marriage isn’t my favorite romance novel trope and when two characters spend too much time not liking each other, I get impatient. I mean I like witty banter as much as the next person, but a lot of the banter in the first part of the book was just caustic and mean. Once the two main characters started getting along and liking each other, I really started to enjoy this book.

My Plain Jane By Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows, and Cynthia Hand– I picked this up because I found the first book of this series, My Lady Jane, really charming and was eager for more of the same. Like My Lady Jane, My Plain Jane is a retelling of a known story (Jane Eyre) with some twists, turns, and magical elements. This novel features Charlotte Bronte and her good friend Jane Eyre as ghost hunters, and the plot revolves around the secret society they come to work for. I thought the book was really clever; the authors did not shy away from the problematic issues of the original source material; explaining the whole “How does the 19 year old fall in love with a manipulative man twice her age, and who is that in the attic?” is actually the backbone of the story. Even still, this book was very chaotic with huge plot holes and coincidences galore that I just found ridiculous after a while. Reading this book made me realize that one thing I loved about My Lady Jane was the audio book narrator – I just didn’t have the right dry witty tone in my head when I read My Plain Jane to myself.

Mercy Street by Jennifer Haigh – Surprisingly funny book about lives that intersect, either directly or indirectly, around a Boston abortion clinic. I thought the character portraits of people on both side of the abortion debate were really shrewdly drawn, and I was really sucked into the lives of these character who all were just trying to do the right thing. The anti-abortion protesters seemed like caricatures in their dogmatic beliefs, almost to the point where I felt like that portrait was perhaps a little unfair. The book is not an unbiased view, of course. The main character, Claudia, has worked in the abortion clinic for years and even as she is worn down by the job, she still does it because she believes it’s essential work in a world that is stacked against women. At one point, one character says, that he has no problem with abortion, “as long as there’s a good reason.” And Claudia replies, “There’s always a good reason.”

I have two little things that bothered me about the book – one is that the book felt like a very white telling of the abortion debate – totally understandable because Haigh is a white author, so I don’t know that I should have expected otherwise. I just felt like there was a whole side and demographic missing from how abortion services are vital in this country. The other tick was a stylistic quirk where characters often loose track of time and it would repeatedly be, “months or days”, “after an hour or a month…” etc. Those are the only two I highlighted, but it recurred many times to the point of irking me.

Anyhow, some other passages of note:

“Bring in your pelvis for its twelve-month check up. Failure to perform scheduled maintenance may void warranty.” – made me laugh out loud. Yeah, I feel like that some days. Like the body is a machine and I’m not following the manual correctly.

“Baby Doe had been a person, a little girl who felt love ad joy, who delighted in her pink leggings and giggled when her toenails were painted and who, in the end, felt shock and fear and betrayal and pain. As a fetus she’d been protected by Massachusetts law, the twenty-four week cutoff. As a person she was utterly dependent on a woman who couldn’t raise her and didn’t want to. Once she became and actual person, by Doe was on her own.” I think this is one of the things that frustrates me so much about the abortion debate- people need to be cared for throughout life, yet the resources just aren’t there.

“Deb raised other people’s kids because it was one of only a few things she could earn money doing. The world was full of discarded people, sickly old ones and damaged young ones, and she was a paid caretaker. It said something about the world that this was the worst-paying job around.” – yeah this goes hand in hand with the quote above.

“Married life was like walking around in shoes that almost fit. She wore them every day for two years, and still they gave her blisters. Like most shoes designed for women, they were not foot-shaped.” So when married life gives you blisters – do you get new shoes or just put on some moleskin?

Some picture books that we enjoyed this month (inspired by how Lisa always includes picture books in her reading recaps!) :

Off Limits by Helen Yoon – this was a re-read about working from home. It’s cute and a lot of fun and the kids (and I) totally relate to it, particularly the scene where the child strews Post-It notes alllllll over the room.

The Barnabus Project by the Fan Brothers – This book is about a bunch of misfit toys that escape their confines. It’s a gripping adventure story, and I wish I could find more picture books that had this kind of large scale adventure element to them.

Otis and the Scarecrow by Loren Long – We are new to the Otis the Tractor series – where have we been this whole time? This book had a charming relaxed feel, and I really liked the message about accepting people in all their moods.

Over and Under the Canyon by Kate Messner, art by Christopher Silas Neal – We love this whole series of books – each book takes a deep look at one habitat in nature. The prose is calm and soothing, just like a nature ramble should be. The first one was Up in the Garden, Down the the Dirt, is still probably our favorite.

On my (Proverbial) Night Stand – for some reason I have a lot of books in progress right now, though three of those are ongoing reading projects.

The Brontes – Still plugging away. The drama and understatement of village life is riveting.

Braiding Sweetgrass – The next chapter is quite long so I’m saving it for when I can sit and read it in one go.

Interior Chinatown by Charles Wu – novel set in Hollywood about a struggling Taiwanese actor. It feels especially relevant when Everything Everywhere All at Once swept the Oscars.

Fencing with the King by Diana Abu-Jabar – Amani, a divorced poet, accompanies her father to his homeland of Jordan. So far it’s family secrets and some beautifully descriptive writing about life in Jordan.

What the Fresh Hell Is This by Heather Corinna – still working my way through this book on perimenopause too.

Stay True by Hua Hsu – Memoir about growing up as Asian Americans in America. My father recommended this book to me, and then I heard Hsu give an interview on Fresh Air and thought he said some very thoughtful things.

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine – the next “book club” book with the 11 year old.

Books Read January 2023

Okay, I literally wrote “January 2022” at the top of this post. When does it sink in? I once read a trick of pre-writing the new year on the first ten checks in your check book – I thought that was a pretty neat hack.

The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman – I’m not sure what Chuck Klosterman is. I mean googling him, he is defined as a “writer and essayist”. I think of him as a cultural critic, though I’m not sure what the qualifications are for that. Anyhow, this book is a collection of essays dissecting the 1990s from a cultural standpoint. I picked it up because I’m always interested in what people say about the times I’ve experienced. Klosterman looks at the decade through the lens of media, the internet, politics, sports, film and other things that were in the public conversation at the time. Klosterman is a cis-gender white male, and that was definitely in the back of my mind as I read the book; while there were some really keen observations in the book, I couldn’t help but to think that there were huge swaths of the American experience in the 1990s that was missing from the book. To be fair, he does acknowledge that his viewpoint is rather specific (as would anyone’s viewpoint be.). There is also a huge amount of snobbery in this book – for example, he skewers Titanic as a movie without merit, which dismisses the pleasure of watching a popcorn movie for the thrill of the moment. (He writes, “Yet the single most interesting thing about Titanic is its total commitment to expressing nothing that could be construed as interesting, now or then.” I mean I think a huge ocean liner sinking is pretty fascinating myself). All that notwithstanding, I thought there were some really thoughtful things going on in this book about how we (or at least the “we” that have the luxury of an examined life) live and think about our place in the world.
Some food for thought:
Most of the time, the skewed recollections [of our conversations] dwell on pop cultural ephemera – the precise spellings of minor consumer products, iconic lines of dialogues that are both famous and incorrect, and the popularity of a children’s movie staring the comedian Sindbad that does not exits. The most unhinged explanation for this phenomenon involves quantum mechanics and the possibility of alternative realities; the most rational explanation is that most of these memories were generated by people of the early nineties, a period when the obsession with popular culture exponentially increased without the aid of a mechanism that remembered everything automatically.
One of Klosterman’s points in the book is about how the 90s was the last decade when it was okay not to know something, to live with the uncertainty since we couldn’t immediately fact check everything. Once we could easily Google things on our phone, being correct became much more standard and expected. This thought made me think about the benefits of living in uncertainty – of being okay with knowing that you don’t really know if something is 100% correct. It seems like it would be hard and freeing at the same time.

In the nineties, when a semi-educated young person was asked to identify the root cause of most American problems, the probably answer would not have been capitalism. The more likely response would have been commercialism. … The problem of commercialism is the motive, and that can be recognized in how the thing is packaged. This differs from a hatred of capitalism, where the problem is the thing.
I thought this an interesting point. He explains that it’s the difference between hating Christmas and hating Christmas Carols played before Thanksgiving. But again, also his elitism is showing because what does “semi-educated” mean anyway?

The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi – Set in present day Nigeria, this novel is centered around Vivek Oji, who he was, how he died and the community surrounding him. I wasn’t expecting a mystery novel when I picked it up, but that’s what it evolved to be. I think the relationships of the people in this novel was my favorite part. Vivek was part of a large, loving, and complicated community and I loved how everyone loved Vivek in their own way. His mother, in particular, in her tenacity to find out the truth of her son’s death, was heartbreaking. The writing is beautiful, almost poetic, and so immersive. I went into the book not having read the “back” so it took me a while to see where the story was going. The chapters alternate viewpoints, some told in first person and some in third person and there were so many characters it was hard for me to follow the narrative thread. I think I would have liked this book much better if I could have sat down and read it all in one sitting because reading it a little at a time over several weeks just made it feel really disjointed.

The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun – Romance novel set in the world of a Bachelor-type reality show. Charlie, an awkward tech wizard whose career is in flames agrees to be the latest Prince Charming in order to rehab his reputation. Dev, one of the show’s producers is assigned to be Charlie’s handler. As Dev helps Charlie navigate the women vying for his hand, the two become close. I have to admit, I didn’t completely buy that Dev and Charlie could get so close (physically and emotionally) without *anyone* on the show figuring it out and calling them on it. (Well, no one did until about 3/4 of the way through the book.) Or that it took them so long to figure out their feelings for each other. But maybe that’s just a testament to how messed up it is to be on a reality tv show? The other thing I didn’t love was the way the women on the show were portrayed, at least initially. I get that when you have thirty women trying to win the same guy there are going to be some stereotypical girl fighting and cattiness, but all the contestants felt really two dimensional until it was down to the last few and even still, now I can’t remember a thing about them. Despite all that, I did enjoy this book a lot because of the romantic leads and the peek inside making a reality television show. Dev and Charlie were both really nice and sweet guys with believable emotional baggage to figure out, there was a good amount of tension and chemistry between them.

Any Other Family by Eleanor Brown – I felt like this book was similar to This is How it Always Is in that it’s a parenting fable disguised as a novel. It’s the story of three mothers linked by the fact that their adopted children all have the same birth mother. The families have gathered for a vacation and get the news that the birth mother is pregnant again, bringing up questions of if they should adopt the new child or find a new family. A lot of the book is about how people create their idea of family. Each chapter alternates being told from a different woman’s point of view, which really highlights how one’s outward appearance can belie that doubts and anxieties within. I really liked that aspect of the book – the person who seems to all have it together in one chapter is seen to be barely holding on inside in the next, and how no one sees one’s flaws as deeply as oneself. Even still, I feel like between this book and This Is How It Always Is and The School For Good Mothers, I’m a little tapped out on “the difficulties of mothering” novels for a while. It was well written and very readable, but I just need a break from tales of exhausted mothers.

Lots of passages of note:
Violet wakes up. Elizabeth closes her eyes to pray for strength, then open them and forces a smile onto her face. “Hello, sweet girl,’ she says, pretending to be the cheerful mother she knows she ought to be, and the the withered thirty-something husk of a woman who hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in far too long. Violet begins to wail. You can’t bullshit a bullshitter.
Yup.

“Look. Things change. This is a fact of life. But you have survived one hundred percent of the changes in your life so far, which means the odds are high you’re going to survive whatever comes next, even if you don’t know what it is right now.”
One character says this to her rising middle-schooler. I need to file this away to say to my kids some day.

“The thing is, you’re going to be a lot of different mothers over the course of Violet’s life. It could be that you don’t like being this mother this infant mother, and no one would blame you for that, not a bit. it’s really hard. They’re energy vampire, and they take so much and give so little. But it won’t always be this way. She’ll be Tate and Taylor’s age and Phoebe’s age, and you’ll be the mom she needs then, and you’ll like some of those stages a whole lot more, and some of them probably less. None of this is written in stone. There’s no finish line in parenting, no end to it. We just have to be in it with them the whole time.”
It’s stuff like this that makes this book feel like a parenting manifesto disguised as a novel. There is a lot of wisdom to it, though.

On My Proverbial Night Stand Currently…

The Brontes – Still. Charlotte Bronte is now in her late teens. I had a moment of pause when I realized that she is already halfway through her short life.

My Plain Jane – A twist on Jane Eyre written by the team that wrote My Lady Jane. Amusing so far, though a little chaotic. Fun to read in conjunction with the Bronte biography.

Braiding Sweetgrass – Reading a little bit at a time. This week, I highlighted this passage: “The marvel of a basket is in its transformation, its journey from wholeness as a living plant to fragmented strands and back to wholeness again as a basket. A basket knows the dual powers of destruction and creation that shape the world. Strands once separated are rewoven into a new whole. The journey of a basket is also the journey of a people.”

What the Fresh Hell Is This? Perimenopause, Menopause, other Indignities, and You – Because I turned 40 and then thought… gosh I wonder what’s next. (I did read, and didn’t love, The Menopause Manifesto, so I’m interested if this take on the issue will resonate with me any more…)

I’m Only Wicked With You – Romance novel by Julie Anne Long, part of her Palace of Rogues series. Not loving it as much as the first two books in the series but not hating it enough to quit quite yet.

Books Read – December 2022

The last Books Read for 2022!

Husband Material by Alexis Hall – This was the sequel to Boyfriend Material, which I had read earlier this fall and adored. In this book, the main characters Luc and Oliver, contemplate getting married as it seems like everyone around them does. (I think it was in no small part inspired by Four Weddings and a Funeral. Also – incidentally, I was poking around Alexis Hall’s blog and he has a series of posts dedicated to watching every single movie that Hugh Grant ever made, which makes for delightful reading.) I didn’t feel like Husband Material was quite as good as Boyfriend Material – there were too many silly side plots – but I still really enjoyed this book; it was fun, funny, cute, had a big heart, and explored some nice themes about what commitment looks like. I love the idea of a romance novel sequel and seeing how characters continue to grow – life doesn’t end after “happily ever after” and this book felt like there was some really credible personal growth going on. Oliver continues to be swoony and regimented, Luc continues to be an adorable mess.

Joan is Okay by Weike Wang – I almost didn’t read this because I didn’t care for Wang’s first book Chemistry. I’m glad I gave this book a chance because I ended up liking it so much better than Chemistry. The main character, Joan, is a Chinese American ICU doctor and in this novel, she is grappling with the death of her father in China and her mother’s subsequent move back to the the US from China, while trying to figure out how to just go back to life as usual when life keeps changing. A lot of the questions Joan asks herself about being the child of immigrants felt like questions that I have wondered myself. I liked this better than Chemistry because Joan was actually contemplating these questions, whereas the main character in Chemistry just sort of drifted through life without a lot of self awareness. Some highlights I made:

You made zong zi? I asked, the entire breakfast table covered in food. I had to, she [Joan’s mother] said. Yesterday I was so bored, and this was the most time-consuming thing I could think of to do.
This made me laugh because my mother also makes zong zi – sticky rice filled with meat and peanuts and then wrapped in bamboo leaves and steamed. I love zongzi, but yes, they do take a lot of work to make – it’s a multi day process.

Director, the first time I put on my white coat, it felt like home. From having moved around so much and with no childhood or ancestral home to return to, I didn’t think myself capable. I didn’t prioritize home or comfort, because if everyone did, then immigrants like my parents, brother, and sister-in-law couldn’t exist. Home was not a viable concept for them until later, and it wasn’t a concept for me until the day I put on that coat, this coat. I pulled at my white lapel to show him. From then on, I knew that my occupation would become my home. To have a home is a luxury, but now I understand why people attach great value to it and are loyal to defend it. Home is where you fit in and take up space.
This exchange with her boss – I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of people leaving their home to make a life in a new country and how these immigrants contribute to their new country. What were the forces that pull someone away from the place they were born? I think maybe not all people give home the same weight in the calculus of life choices.

The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish – I picked up this book for two reasons: 1) I wanted a lengthy tome to read this winter, and this one clocked in at 592 pages, and 2) the blurb compared it to Possession, which is a book I loved. This novel tells two intertwined stories, both set in England, separated by 400+ years; in the present day, two scholars try to unravel a historical mystery centered around Jewish theology, and in the 1660s we follow the story of Ester Velasquez a young Jewish immigrant from Amsterdam, who is at the center of that mystery. This book didn’t have the same romantic sweep of Possession, but it did have a similar complex, intertwined onion-like layers of plot. I thought this book was so well researched and well crafted and I loved all the details. Reading, I realized that sometimes the difference between a lengthy book and a shorter one is the amount of ink devoted the descriptive details of things, from the smell of the ancient manuscripts in the research library, to the sounds of a seventeenth century theatre… Kadish’s writing is immersive and specific. I’m pretty sure I didn’t understand all the historical points in this book – I had to Google many things – and I think that if I had understood all the history of philosophy or the migratory patterns of Jews in early modern Europe, I may have liked the book more. But as it is, though slow to start and with some awkward info dump narrative devices, this book proved to be a pretty satisfying to sink into. I liked how nuanced the three main characters were. Ester, in particular, is one of my favorite heroines I’ve read in a while – she’s smart and bold to the point of subversive, and doesn’t ever fall into self-pity – I like that in a character. I loved this observation she makes:

“You asked once,” Ester said, “What my mother counseled me about love. But it was her life rather than her words that gave the plainest counsel. My mother was so angered by love’ failures, Mary, that she navigated with spite as her compass. But if you’d seen her, though she was beautiful, you’d have understood how easily the blade of spite turns in one’s hands, and cuts one’s own palms. So that one can grasp nothin, Mary. So that life is … no longer life.”

Also this realization from the scholar Aaron about the uptight reference librarians (both named Patricia), gatekeepers to precious manuscripts:

“… she was among those whose worry took the form of anger at the world for its failure to remain safe.
‘I haven’t seen her in days,” Patricia said, and as if his own troubles had given him new ears, Aaron understood that her terseness was love, that all of it was love: The Patricias’ world of meticulous conservation and whispering vigilance and endless policing over fucking pencils.”

This is How it Always Is by Laurie Frankel – This beautiful book struck me as actually being a parenting fable masquerading as a novel. It’s the story of a family whose youngest son at a very young age decides he is a girl and how the family handles and supports that change. There was so much in this book that I really related to – this line, “Bedtime was a study in chaos theory … Three of his four children were naked, which, while one step closer to pajamas, was still a long way off from bed,” was spot on. And also there was so much of this book that I wanted to hold close to my heart and remember, particularly the theme that hard things are necessary in life. The parents in the book try to make it easy for their child to transition to being a girl, and at one point they are told that just because they made it easy when she is young doesn’t mean they are making the hard part disappear. There will always be something hard and it’s just a question of when their child would have to face it. At one point the husband says, “Easy is nice, but it’s not as good getting to be who you are or stand up up for what you believe in… Not much of what I value in our lives is easy.”

Currently Reading…
The Brontes, Wild Genius on the Moors: The Story of Three Sisters by Juliet Barker – a door stop of a biography on the Bronte sisters. The everyday happenings of a small English town is proving surprisingly fascinating. I don’t imagine I’ll finish it before Spring.

The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi – Someone had listed this as one of their three favorite books, the other two being The Great Believers and The Nickel Boys. These latter two books are two of my favorite reads too, so I thought I’d give this book a try. I started reading it without reading the blurb on the back, so I’m not quite sure where the story is going. (Anyone else dive into books without reading the “back”? I like to do it once in a while with fiction, just to come into a story with fewer expectations.)

The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun – Romance novel set against a Bachelor-like reality dating show. I don’t watch reality dating shows, but I love them as a backdrop for books. I’m so fascinated by how manufactured everything is. A fun romance novel is always a nice way to start the New Year, and this is proving to be just that.

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer – I’ve been slowly working my way through this book for over a year now. The essays are not to be rushed because there is a lot of digest in them, but I’m trying to make the time this year to sit and read savoringly.

And some other books that I’ve started a page or two of, but I’m not sure they will stick.

What’s on your (proverbial or literal?) night stand?

Books Read July – September 2022

I feel like I got a lot of good reading in this summer, though September itself was not a big reading month because of work. I’m now filling my book queue with some books that I hope will be page turners, so I’ll be encouraged to read even when I’m having long days at work. But these past few months:

The Deep by Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes, read by Daveed Diggs. This sci-fi novella centers around a group of water-breathing people who were descended from pregnant African slaves thrown overboard from slave ships as they crossed the Atlantic. It’s inspired by a song produced by the group Clipping for an episode of This American Life called We are the Future, which in the aftermath of George Floyd explored the concept of Afrofuturism. The Deep is a beautiful, raw, and evocative story which centers on Yetu whose role in her community is to hold the collective memory of her people since it is too painful for them all to remember themselves. She eventually leaves her people in order not to carry this burden. The way the novel’s water dwellers have created a world that is very different from the world we inhabit on land, I thought was a really thought provoking lens through which to think about things like race, gender, and collective history. Also Daveed Diggs of Hamilton! Apparently I will listen to any audiobook narrated by Hamilton cast members

Paperback Crush by Gabrielle Moss – This is a non-fiction book about the YA fiction genre of the 80s and 90s -Sweet Valley High, Babysitter’s Club, The Sunfire Series – pretty much the books I grew up reading. This book was a pure nostalgia trip! There were also some great interviews and details with the people who wrote these books and also an interview with an artist who did some of the cover art. That inside peek at how formulaic these books were was fascinating to me. The book does end somewhat abruptly, but before then it brought back so many memories of some of my formative reading years. Also, I definitely made notes of some books that seemed really interesting that I never read when I was a tween and which I might be interested in picking up now.

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell – Novel that imagines the life of Shakespeare’s wife and children during the plague of 1596. I loved so much about this book – the elegant precision of the writing, the details of life in the 1600s, the way the characters were so fully drawn, the relationships, the Shakespeare references (even though he is never mentioned by name and indeed was a somewhat shadowing figure on the sidelines throughout), the exquisite sadness of the book. The ending – the beautiful, cathartic ending. I’m not a book crier, but this book brought a lump to my throat.

The Love of My Life by Rosie Walsh, read by Imogen Church and Theo Soloman – Domestic suspense novel of the “Woman in Peril” genre. This book was not what I expected, and in a good way. Without giving away anything, I’ll just say that I really liked how this book explored how love can be so complicated and so simple at the same time.

The Splendid and the Vile by Eric Larson – Larson recounts the first year of Winston Churchill’s term as Prime Minister of Great Britain and the beginning of WWII. This book looks at that time not only through the political and military lens, but also through the domestic and personal one. The book reminds me of the Virginia Woolf quote, “This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing room.” Larson shows that war and drawing room feelings are both equally important – even against the backdrop of war, people still continued to live their lives, fall in love, have affairs, worry about their children. Even as history is being made, lives continued to be lived. I also felt there was a certain similarity between Londoners living through the Blitz and us living through COVID – the unrelenting tension of living life in a constant state of caution.

The Great Green Room by Amy Cary – I heard this biography recommended on the podcast What Should I Read Next. This is a book about Margaret Wise Brown, who wrote, among other things, the classic Good Night, Moon. I thought the book itself rather methodical and workman like in its prose, but the details of Brown’s life were interesting, particularly her ideas of what would appeal to children – insights that were I think notable given that she didn’t have children. Or maybe it’s because she didn’t have children that she was able to have such a unique perspective on what would interest them in a book.

Well Met by Jen DeLuca – This past summer, I read this blog post that broke down Goodread’s list of most popular romance novels of the past three years. Anyhow, I thought it was a hilarious analysis of the titles included in the list – most of which I haven’t read because I tend to read historical romance, and most of the titles were contemporary romances. But only three titles on the Goodread list made her “Loved” list. One of them was Bringing Down the Duke by Evie Dunmore, which I also loved, so I figured the other two books would be worth checking out. This was one of them. It did not disappoint. Well Met is set against the backdrop of a Renaissance Festival – so already it is sprinkled with my catnip. Anyhow this is a charming and sweet and funny book. I don’t always love first person narrative – which is probably why I don’t read a whole lot of contemporary romance – but the heroine in this book had such a hilarious personality that I didn’t mind much.

News of the World by Paulette Jiles – Spare yet perfectly pitched novella about Captain Jefferson Kydd, an elderly widower who makes a living going from town to town reading the news to people in the American Frontier in post Civil War America. He takes on the task of bringing a girl, Johanna, back to her relatives. Johanna’s parents had been killed by Kiowa raiders and she has been living with the Kiowa for the past four years and life with them was the only thing she has known. The journey Kydd and Johanna take is dangerous and without comfort, but along the way Kydd and Johanna, form a special bond even as they struggle to understand each other. Jile’s prose is so very good. The end left me a little teary eyed. One of my favorite passages:
“No, my dear, he said. He put his hand over hers, once again placed the fork correctly, and once again lifted it to her mouth. Then he sat on his own side of the wagon and saw her struggling with the fork, the knife, the stupidity of it, the unknown reasons that human being would approach food in this manner, reasons incomprehensible, inexplicable, for which they had not common language. She tried again, and then turned and threw the fork into a box stall.”

How to Keep House while Drowning by K.C. Davis – My house feels like a constant state of mess, so of course this book was appealing. Davis, who is a licensed profession therapist, approaches keeping house from a mental health standpoint and there were so may wise and gentle ideas in her book. My two main takeaways:
– “Care tasks are morally neutral.” I really needed to hear this because often I think of my inability to keep things clean and tidy as a failure of some sort. And, I admit, I feel like I pass that feeling on to my kids. We are raised on the “Cleanliness next to Godliness” adage, but Davis reminds us:
“You can be a fully functioning, fully successful, happy, kind, generous adult and never be good at cleaning.” Taking away the feeling of guilt and shame associated with keeping a clean house helps me focus on the why I want to keep my house clean and how to achieve that goal, rather than wallowing in the parts of cleaning I find hard.
-Think about what it takes to make things functional, and start with that as your baseline. She also re-frames cleaning as “re-setting”. In thinking about how to reset my space every evening so that future me can function in the morning proves a really helpful framework for when things are overwhelming. So, for example, the dining room floor might not get swept, but the kitchen counter is clean so that I can make breakfast in the morning.
“Cleaning is endless. Resetting space has a goal.”
Even aside from the deep thoughts about cleaning and how to organize your life, Davis also has some really practical tips and strategies that I like. I found this book really helpful.

Broken Horses by Brandi Carlile, read by Brandi Carlile – When the Husband and I were first dating, he would listen to Brandi Carlile’s self titled debut album every single morning. We called it breakfast music. I thought Carlile’s memoir was a really great read/listen- she has a straightforward easy style of writing as one would expect from her music, and I really enjoyed hearing about her life. I was also really struck by how humble and hard-working she was. She doesn’t hide the hustle nor her good luck. An added bonus of the audiobook is that between chapters, she performs songs that she talks about in the previous chapter – it adds so much depths to hear Carlile sing a song after finding out what it meant to her.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro – I usually really like Ishiguro, but this book took me a while to get into and I still don’t think I fully understand it. Ishiguro’s rather detached and naive prose style is probably quite suited for a story told through the eyes of an Klara, an Artificial Friend – an AI creation who goes to live with Josie, a very sick girl. Like most Ishiguro novels, the narrator doesn’t quite understand the whole picture and I actually found it frustrating in parts. I understand the narrative device as a means of exploring the idea of humanity, but the book just didn’t mesh for me like a lot of Ishiguro’s other books.

When We Lost Our Heads by Heather O’Neill – I picked up this book because it is set in Montreal and I like to read books set in my destination city when I’m travelling. This book was certainly well written – smart and satirical with characters all slightly off kilter. Set in late 19th century Montreal, it tells the story of two girls, Marie Antoinette and Sadie, who come from different backgrounds but both live in a wealthy section of Montreal. They become friends but then are separated after a tragic incident. They both grow up to tackle ideas of feminism in very different ways. This book really skewers men and the way they take women for granted and underestimate them. I thought the book very clever, but overall the style was a little heavy handed and stilted and I didn’t love it. A notable quote, though:
“The truth was, she had always liked being alone. Women never got to be alone. That was too much of a luxury. Women always had someone to take care of. She had o one to take care of. She got to really do what she pleased. She left her clothes on the side of the bed. There was no one who would yell at her for leaving them.”

Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall – This was the other book on NGS’s list of “loved” romance novels from the Goodreads list. I, too, loved this book. It was funny and swoony and heartfelt. It tells the story of screw up tangentially famous Luc O’Donnell who needs a fake boyfriend to save his career so his friend sets him up with the unimpeachable and slightly uptight barrister Oliver Blackwood. Slightly uptight and unimpeachable heroes are kind of my romance novel catnip so I enjoyed that aspect very much. But even aside from that this book balanced humour and sincere emotion perfectly. Such a good read.

Lovely War by Julie Berry narrated by Jayne Entwistle, Allan Corduner, Julie Berry, Dion Graham, Fiona Hardingham, John Lee, Nathanial Parker, Steve West – This novel had quite a clever framework – two intertwined love stories set against the back drop of WWI, told by Aphrodite. Yes, that Aphrodite. The Goddess of Love has been caught in an affair with the God of War and she must argue her case. Other also gods drop in to help tell the stories of love in time of war. The premise of the novel is quite clever, but the heart of the story lies in the journeys of hope and resilience the pair of lovers take – I thought it a really touching and engaging story. The audio version had different actors voice the different gods’ contribution, and I really enjoyed how each person brought a unique voice to each god.