Edinburg by Alexander Chee
CBR15: Sex
True fact, when someone British asked me what I was reading I pronounced this “Edin-BERG” and to their credit they didn’t laugh but instead asked, with some horrified sincerity, if that’s how Americans say it. It’s not! At least, not on purpose. It’s just how can the English language claim to have been invented in a country that seems to not have grasped even a shred of understanding of how the various letters in it work? I digress.
This is a dark book, without much need for a trigger warning because it’s right there in the blurb: sexual assault of minors, talked about much later in life as our main character attempts to come to terms with what happened to him. Chee thanked Hanya Yanagihara in his authors notes for this novel, and although A Little Life a) came out many years later and b) I have not read it, hearsay suggests that there are similar themes in both. How sad do you want to be? How much do you want to rage against a system that fails the most vulnerable while simultaneously protecting those who need it the least? Well no worries, it’ll be all here waiting for you when you work up the courage to read it.
Usually I find these books “saved” by virtue of their writing and prose, i.e. you can force yourself to slog through them because the world being woven is a beautiful one. I’m not entirely certain that I felt that in this novel, with some of the sentences aiming for literary writing as a style as opposed to being literary, if that makes sense. It’s been a while since I’ve read it, though, and it’s not a very long book so might pick it up to peruse one more.
The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen
CB15 Bingo: On the Road (immigration and searching for sure)
I found The Sympathizer amazing and bright and vivid, with a framing mechanism that works amazingly well. The action might be frenetic, but there’s a thread holding it all together and a surprisingly subversive lesson about colonialism and American capitalism-driven “aid” on the world stage. This book, however, was a bit more of all of the former (it verges almost on slapstick, as the antics of our still unnamed Narrator on the streets of Paris read new heights) with a much more obvious latter (with much tonal whiplash, our characters sit around and talk about Marxist and Maoist and Socialist concepts along with a veritable who’s who of philosophy that left me feeling utterly lost) (perhaps they were as well).
Someone call this the book equivalent of Pulp Fiction, and if so understandable why not my favorite ha.
But all that aside, any book that walks that confusing line of being “na ghar ka na ghat ka” (not of the house, not of the riverbank–basically, those of us who don’t really belong anywhere) will have some part of my heart. The Narrator is perhaps even more waffle-y than anyone else we meet, because he’s really of nowhere. The Communist Vietnam he left behind is years away from being the idealist socialist utopia that he spied for. Plus going there means giving up his friendships with his blood brother Bon, who remains fervently anti-communist. He’s clearly not French, but that he speaks French and was from a former French colony. He could set up a life in the US, that home of the weak huddled masses but it’s again asking him to start over from scratch. And in that, the book definitely captures that sense of “too much manic energy in his life” to really come up with a answer that’ll give him any peace.
Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld
CBR15: Adulthood, or a romance novel in which we take on more of real things that happen when you are an adult (although, given that this is Romancelandia, it doesn’t need to be resolved the way it is when you are an adult)
Oh Sittenfeld, is it you or is it the fact that you had a poor time at your prep school and I feel (conflictedly, guiltily) protective of my own experience? I haven’t read all of her books–I don’t think I’ll ever be able to pick up Rodham, even though I am SO curious to see how it is–but there’s something off in how she describes human emotion and relationships that gives me pause.
This time around, however, there’s much less existential ennui for any of our main characters to wade through. Honestly? Throw a slightly different cartoon cut out paper character-y type cover on this and I’d believe this was the new Emily Henry novel. For the avoidance of doubt this is NOT a dig at romance novels, but it is true that relative to other novels by Sittenfeld there are fewer Large Issues at play here. Two attractive people–one just much, much more attractive than the other–want to get together. There are reasons why they can’t. Will they overcome them? If you are betting they won’t, you have missed the thread.
To get it out of the way, I think that the loss of the fourth star comes from the third arc BREAKUP and how flimsy it has to be to keep apart a person who has a steady albeit flexible job and a person with enough money to fly private. When one person is Rich, there are not that many reasons why things can go south. So the reasons have to be Over the Top. This one, I think, fails the “why don’t we just call each other” test, but then again I have not done that many a time glass houses etc.
That being said, I very much enjoyed the poking fun of the Pete DavidsonColin JostDanny Horst Rule, which can be more generally extrapolated into “why do heterosexual relationships always end up with a more [ ] woman dating a less [ ] man?” It’s something about how women are meant to see the BEAUTY WITHIN and men are CAVEMEN or some nonsense. The fact that Sally wears leggings multiple times feels very on point, even if I personally do not condone the wear of stretchy clothes. I don’t think she felt particularly complex, but I do feel like she was realistic. I’m glad she got her unrealistic man.
Kindred by Octavia E Butler
Passport Challenge: New to Me! (don’t throw rocks)
CB15 Book Bing: History, for sure, I cannot imagine that this book wasn’t banned at some point or might be banned at some point because of how it dares to show the realities of chattel slavery.
So yes, as noted above this is an author who is new to me and that’s really a travesty. But one that is being rectified, so all’s well that ends well no? Where better to start than with Octavia Butler’s most well known work? Butler herself called this a “kind of grim fantasy,” and I can agree–while her work is generally considered sci-fi, this book doesn’t quite fit into that narrative.
But boy, what a narrative it does have. Dana, a modern Black woman living in the US finds herself suddenly thrust back into the antebellum South, a poetic way of saying she’s suddenly in the middle of human slavery, forced to save the life of a white future-slave-owning kid who will one day rape a slave he owns who will be one of Dana’s ancestors. It’s enough to turn anyone’s stomach, but Butler doesn’t shy away from showing exactly how Dana’s life is upturned by this inconvenient bond. Doesn’t help that she can only return if her own life is in real, true danger–not so dangerous that she herself can die, though.
If we set aside the historical veracity of this book–and make no mistake, this is a difficult book to get through–I appreciate how Butler takes the rules of this world to their logical extreme. When Dana comes back, she’s not always conveniently sitting on her bed. There are a hundred different ways people died in the times before antibiotics and medicine, and that’s before you count for the ways that people can die from neglect and abuse. You know, on some level, that Dana has to make it because she still exists, but the lengths to which she will go to ensure that she has a future to return to make for truly harrowing reading, some 50 years later.
Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky
CBR15 Bingo: Strange Worlds — hard to imagine a stranger world than the one inhabited by these post-Earth characters
While I enjoy these novels quite a bit, I think as Tchaikovsky’s world and scope expands the things I liked best about it have shrunk. The story of the Portiids and their slow evolutionary climb (heh) towards sentience and ownership of their planet and world was fascinating. Seeing them come into contact with the octopi and the Borg Bacteria also very cool. Now that we have all of those species (and Humans, sure) (and Avarna Kern, whatever she/it is at this point), I understand that they’re going to take their relentless curiosity across the known universe, but on some level I really just want to see them interact and conflict in endless permutations and solve problems using Science!
Instead, this book follows a roughly similar trajectory to the books prior, in which our intrepid adventurers stumble upon a new world touched by another spaceship-arc of humans and have to deal with what the humans have left behind and/or uncovered. The same question is asked and answered in its own way: what is intelligence? What is evolution? What is sentience? What do we make of “intelligences” that are so different to our own so as to be incomprehensible?
The main gripe with this novel is that, contrary to the others, we don’t see the full scope of the conflict until much too late, such that we don’t really have full empathy and awareness of what we’re looking at. Much like the [redacted] that our main characters encounter, it’s unclear whether what is going on is germane to the ultimate conflict, or whether there is a conflict? I’d rather enjoy the time seeing how two well thought out sides come to a conclusion than wonder what exactly I’m meant to be seeing. As it stands, the sides and parameters and solution are made clear almost in a exposition dump. While clever, it saps some of the joy because we couldn’t be clever alongside the main characters who by this point have essentially become friends
The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story by Edwinge Danticat
CB15 Bingo: Relation”ship” — beautiful, literary nerdy work on the relationship between the author and her mother
This is a gorgeous, heart breaking book that serves as a nice little primer for a number of Serious Literary Works that maybe you haven’t gotten around to reading (I’ll raise my hand, I know there are others of you out there). In that sense, it’s less a meditative memoir-esque novel. It almost reads like Danticat is trying to make sense of what is happening to her mother in the best way she knows how–by escaping to literature and the words of great authors who have described the same.
I understand very acutely what Danticat is doing, I suppose, because when things are difficult I, too, retreat into my hideaway: that of facts, and science, and published research, and I offer up my attempts at salving my pain to others who might not get it. Reviews that talk about the literary analysis as being distracting make me smile, because if you don’t process this way then it wouldn’t make sense to you at all, of course.
As with all good literary works, this book has renewed my determination to read some of these great works of literature and see for myself what Danticat is explaining. This is part of an anthology of sorts–“Art of…”–but I can’t say that I’m very keen on continuing onto the other entries. As a standalone, gleaned from an author interview in the NYT that was full of books I’d never even heard of, it works perfectly.
Hinumegin er mars by Sólrun Michelsen
CB15 Bingo: Europe — this is not just written by an European author, it’s (one of the?) first Faroese Island authors to be translated into English. As I learnt at a delightful reading, the Faroe Islands have a thriving literary scene as yet untapped by the broader non-Faroese Island speaking world.
Ah, this is the first book by a Faroese female author to be published in English. Moving on!
It became a bit of a double header of books about dying or otherwise incapacitated mothers, and I definitely called my (healthy and thriving) mother the day after to bank the memories. I found the story around the novel (e.g., the translation, the work by this tiny press to bring authors not usually translated into English to an English audience) more enthralling than the book itself, which had a tendency to drag a bit at times and be a bit too dreary for my tastes. And I say this as someone who usually is completely bawled over by books about mother/daughter relationships.
Trust by Hernan Diaz
This was a recommendation by my good friend Lydia, with whom I share a remarkably harmonious taste in all things consumable (media, politics, theater) and therefore someone whose recommendations usually zoom to the top of my TBR list. I think she rec’d this as “interesting, I wonder if you’d like it?” and as it turns out I did! What I remember at least…
A series of novels within novels, all with narrators unreliable in their own ways, but which I was predisposed to like because it’s all about the various travails of a finance-y family. As it stands, it made me think of the play The Lehman Trilogy, which I also saw sometime in 2023, but cannot keep track of timelines anymore and so can’t tell if it was before or after. The story of a great family’s rise and fall, and the issues that led them there? Sign me up.
How Westminster Works . . . and Why It Doesn’t by Ian Dunt
As it’s not a surprise now, as I sit here on December 30th frantically trying to catch up on almost eight months of reviews, that I’ll be moving to London very shortly herein starts the intermittent novels one might characterize as “I attempt to cram x years of generalized political knowledge into my brain, so as to be as astute and witty politically in the UK as I am in the US.” The latter I think is largely true! Even if the only beneficiaries are like, two of my friends with whom I share 90% political views and therefore trust to kvetch and celebrate in turn.
That being said, this book truly is great. I took copious notes, the vast majority of which were lost when Apple Notes decided my note was getting too long, and yet have barely referred to them while maintaining some awareness of what I read. Which is rare for me!
Dunt is a frequent (or, was a frequent) contributor/guest on a podcast that I picked up for the same reason (Oh God What Next, formerly Remainiacs and about the movement to re-vote Brexit), and so the book was entirely a purchase driven by hearing him speak about his expertise and what he wanted the book to be. It’s less negative than you might think, in that it’s a pretty good objective primer into why politics in the UK is so messed up (if I had to summarize…there’s both too much and not enough structure, and everyone is by design not a specialist in their assigned fields). I’d say the parts at the end, where Dunt talks about what can be done to fix some of these issues, was the least compelling for me because I’m by design a bit removed from participation in British politics as a voter. But ofc ymmv!
Happy Place by Emily Henry
I was recently listening to an end-of-year podcast that lamented the lack of marquee novelists in the present day, and then started listing the stars of the 80s “heydays” like [insert list of male authors most of whom I’ve read and found interminable now that I no longer believe [white] men when they tell me what’s Real Literature.] Now, they were talking about British authors so perhaps I shouldn’t be so harsh (HAH) but also they were being so very white dude.
Emily Henry’s novels, as I think the NYT wrote, are one of those events that everyone gathers around for and waits. To get to the point—no, I don’t think this novel is as good as her prior ones, and honestly it’s been a minute so I don’t really recall what happened in this one.
I will say that my usual commentary for Henry vis-à-vis the romance is that she does a really great job in describing kisses. They happen a lot in Romancelandia, and there’s usually a handful of tropes/words that authors default to…whereas I feel like Henry has a real eye for adding in some details that make you go huh, that’s a new one! Here, for the first(?) time we have a genuine spicy scene, and I…did not want that, no thank you. I’m not saying that Henry’s novels exist in a sort of PG-13 land but actually no, I am saying that and maybe it’s a bit judgey but not everyone can be all things.
At the end of the day second chance romances are one of my favorites (long term F2L or E2L is my first) so it’s hard to make me meh about yours. I didn’t feel like our leads had the necessary build up nor the necessary conflict to be invested in their fake relationship trope. And their friend dynamic fell a bit short as well.
Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones
SO we have here ourselves a “NYT journalist interviews a Real American in a bar in the Middle America,” but it’s a British author journalist historian (I don’t have time to do copious research here) who writes about the Real UKers who live anywhere that isn’t central London, as far as I can tell. Perhaps this is all very trite and boring to UK literary types, the way the Real American trope is a massive eye roll to me these days. But as noted, I am in my phase of LEARN ALL THE THINGS AND ASSIMILATE INTO THE LAND OF MY COLONIZERS (side note there are likely some conflicting feelings I’ll have to deal with later, keep calm and carry on for now). And so this novel was quite interesting not so much for what was preached on the cover as for the underlying history that you must understand to understand the Real UK and why they’re in the doldrums.
The answer is Margaret Thatcher, if you’re curious. Or, to expound a bit, the death of unions and the swing towards rapacious capitalism and privatization that prioritized near-term massive gains for a few at the expense of longer-term, moderate gains for the many. You’d be cutesy in trying to make a 1:1 comparison to the US, but in reality the situations are starkly different…you’re talking on one hand about a rocket ship of immigration and natural resources (go USA USA) and the other on a dying empire HQ trying to figure out what to do now that “stealing from the colored people” isn’t a viable economic strategy.
Sidenote: yeah, some real cognitive dissonance I’ll be dealing with.
In any case, quite appealing and definitely recommend! H/T to the employee at Hatchards who helped me with my ask for “some readable book with a progressive lens that goes through British political history of the last 50 years please.”
The Establishment: And How They Get Away With It by Owen Jones
I’d say that maybe doing three of these in rapid succession might have been too many, because by this point even I with my desire to jump start my camouflage was feeling a bit peaky (is that a Britishism? Is it working?). More to the point, none of what I read here was particularly shocking. I’m curious, actually, if anyone in the general audience for this book would find it shocking?
You’re telling me that the same tiny pool of elite schools produces the vast majority of our career politician class? That money can buy influence and votes? That the humdum work of researching policy positions has been outsourced to think tanks funded by billionaires with agendas? I am shocked, SHOCKED I tell you to find out that the same nonsense is going on in the country that spawned our own.
Some of the ennui I felt is inevitably due to the fact that to me, someone who is rather aware of how US politics works, the UK feels amongst quaint in their issues. A scandal is that UK medical students graduate with an average debt of £53,000. No, there’s not a 0 missing there. The increase in wealth due to the UK’s version of QE post-crisis leads to a £322,000 jump in assets for the top 10%. These are tiny play money figures, from a government that managed to censure and drum out of politics their floppy blond haired dangerous ignoramus.
So perhaps the takeaway from this series is that it’s broken, but not as badly as it could be? Progress!
In the Beginning was the Sea by Tomás González
There’s a strong current in the books I’ve been reading recently that we’ve got people on a political extreme with a heart of gold and then everything goes wrong. I unfortunately don’t remember much about this book, except that it’s a vague novel version of one my favorite movies Jean de Florette (now ruined, like about 80% of French cinema, by more proof that Gerald Depardieu is a full on creep) (but seriously, how did we not know this) (seriously, like, his mug is even on the cover my two volumes of Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, one of my favorite books).
Basically two lefty hippie communist-types decide to try and leave their tired urban lives to run a InnTok or some sort of Hygge TikTok account before any of that was a thing. They’ve got some money (never enough), some knowledge of how to build things (definitely not enough), and some rapport with the locals (heavens knows not enough by far). Things will go south, and your malicious glee / sinking horror at the situation basically comes down to how likeable the protagonists are meant to be. Jean? Over the top sweetheart, by design. Our leads here? Less so, so sit back and enjoy the gothic horror of this all.
Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson
Original review: Can the man do no wrong?
Fleshed out review: Yes, YES I know I need to read the Cosmere novels, I am AWARE that they are magnificent and I’d love to reward a reader’s author like Sanderson whose choice of relaxation away from writing is…more writing, but of a different nature. I AM AWARE. Thank you. Narfna’s mere existence serves as a daily guilt trip that I have yet to do so.
And yet AND YET even with only the briefest shards (HA) of awareness of what the Cosmere is, gleaned from the cracks in Mistborn #1-7, this novel is endlessly entertaining and has more world building and unbelievably imaginative situations than probably 80% of fantasy out there. 90%? Wouldn’t disagree.
Billed as “what if Princess Bride, but make Buttercup the hero,” as always you wouldn’t expect a white Mormon man to be one of the best writers of engaging female leads out there. But after proving his chops in Mistbown #1-3 (and then #4-7, #SterisisLife), I’m no longer shocked. Tress is no GirlBoss, she’s just a girl faced with a challenge who decides that she’s the only one who’s going to take it on. And from there we’ve got a world run by Non Newtonian Fluids and pirates and so much more. My only regret is that I read this solely on my Kindle and so didn’t get the full splendor of the associated artwork.
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
Kuang is a great example of why you should give authors a second chance when they try new genres. While many people love The Poppy Wars series, I found it to be too YA for me (I have unfortunately grown disenchanted with the travails of people under the age of 25 trying to solve giant world-affecting problems, please stay in school and don’t become child soldiers). But I absolutely adored Babel and similarly found Yellowface delightful.
The thought that comes to mind, actually, is that this book might be a corollary to The Plot and what that book was trying to do? I certainly found this one way more tense and thriller-y re: whether our main character was going to be caught.
In a nutshell, two friend/authors have a semi contentious relationship because the Asian one is successful and the white but potentially Asian passing one is not. When the Asian one (Athena) dies in a freak accident leaving behind a genius manuscript that no one knows about, June (who happens to be there that night, but genuinely isn’t implicated in the death in any way) takes the work, publishes it as “Juniper Song,” and hopes that no one will ever notice.
Except that’s not what happens, and honestly there’s a reason the blurb for this book is so short—the less you know, the more you can be surprised. Even I (who reads a lot) was taken for a spin as to where the story would go. If you find yourself angry with this book, perhaps for similar reasons you were angry at Babel…maybe check that out?
The Secret of the Old Clock by Carolyn Keene
True story I didn’t realize that all of these books were ghostwritten—I always thought that the first x were written by this Carolyn Keene person, and then since then a plethora of writers have taken over the mantle and continued the journey. Surprise surprise!
In any case, I had a strong hankering to read one of these again, after not having picked one up basically since elementary school when I’d devour them one after another (I’m pretty sure I’ve read all the OG set a few times over). It’s funny to see what holds up and what doesn’t, and I’d be interested to read an oral history or history of the Nancy Drew series. For example, was it really necessary to have such a strongly coded lesbian one in the group? What’s up with that?
All of these novels follow a pretty normal pattern—Nancy, who is rich and has resources at her disposal, comes across a mystery. There is usually a MacGuffin of some sort she needs to find or locate or open up in some way to answer the question, but it’ll take her a little while to get there. She is likely to be kidnapped once every few novels to give her drip of a boyfriend, Ned, something to do that’s strong and manly, because honestly Nancy is doing just fine on her own with her gal pals Beth and George (who are cousins, so don’t go getting any ideas okay).
Passable, but no desire to read additional ones!
Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood
Man, I don’t know with Hazelwood! And it’s got nothing to do with anti-Reylo bias, I love reading me some trope-y Reylo fanfic whenever I’m in the mood (which has been less so these days, but mainly out of laziness). It’s more that I find myself distracted all the time by logical inconsistencies in her setting of “science, but make someone very junior” especially because she’s got a science background!!
This might very much be a me thing (it is).
To be clear, I’m all for novels about female scientists and I might be the only one who didn’t groan at the hashtag STEMinist series that she started out with. Normalize more friendships amongst female scientists (and yes, across disciplines because there probably aren’t enough in your own). I didn’t even care that many of the earlier works were straight copies of some of her successful fanfic. All the better!
While the last of these novels I felt had just TOO many plotlines, this one had fewer, which, good! Very manageable. Although the main one (fake girlfriend) necessarily needs to be dealt with earlier on so that our main leads can have their UST without a heaping side dose of “uh this is a creepy guy creeping on his brother’s girlfriend.”
But yet again we have a romance between an uber-established (male) scientist and an adjunt(!) who wants a job in the department of the male professor and I just CANNOT with the giant power dynamic differential. A tenured track professor job is hard enough to get for women and nb scientists without the spectre of “and she’s sleeping with the head of the department.”
Clearly I have personal opinions that are getting in the way of my objective review. YMMV, this book infuriated me.
The City & the City by China Miéville
A highly interesting recommendation by a friend of a friend, which then turned into a way to connect with a new friend. So all in all, I’ve got some warm feelings towards this book.
This book takes place in a Kafka-meets-1984-meets-dystopian/noir??? type genre vibe, and as a result the set up itself provides endless food for thought and fodder. In some ways I think this is the benefit of alternative history type novels, especially those that have a strong basis in what’s different (see: Nazis won!, ad infinite). Here, we’ve got two vaguely Turkish cities, Beszel and Ul Qoman, which exist next to and sometimes on top of one another, with a completely separate set of customs, dress, colors, etc. More to the point, though, is that acknowledgement of one city by denizens of the other is absolutely verboten, to the point where natives/locals have perfected the art of seeing their city while ignoring the other city, even if it’s literally the next street over. So far so good, and not fantasy at all, except that the penalty for accidentally seeing the other city is highly fantasy and carried out by a shadowy memory-wiping-type squad that you don’t want to get on the wrong side of.
So all that aside—which is a gross oversimplification, it’s fascinating and every time Miéville drops a random nugget as to how this weird contradiction works you go back and re-read it before getting on with the plot—there’s also a noir murder mystery to solve which requires two detectives to purposefully cross (with permission) and get a chance to see the way the other half lives.
That’s really only the surface, but I would highly recommend checking it out, especially for fans of A Dead Djinn in Cairo.
A History of Burning by Janika Oza
I really want to read a history of the multiple generations of multigenerational novels, because I genuinely feel like I’d never really read any and now there’s like a race to write one (especially the first one) about any number of ethnic groups that have suffered trauma across the years. Bonus points if they’re also immigrants, because then the intergenerational inescapable nature of it all can be really hammered home.
This makes it seem like I’m not a fan—couldn’t be further from the truth! I like reading these novels, and I find them a great way to get a quick crash course in an entire subculture that probably has a whole literary history behind them. In this case, Ugandan Indians, which I knew pretty much nothing about except for the one fact that they are the single more successful minority group in the UK (where a number of them resettled after Idi Amin kicked them all out in 1972) (was going to say 1953 but that was way off).
Aka, for those of you who don’t know, there was a substantial, successful population of Indian Ugandan (Ugandan Indians?) who were summarily kicked out by Idi Amin in 1972, aka pick up whatever you can carry and head out because as of x date you will be rendered stateless. How the community first was established there (trickery and lies) and what they did afterwards (suffer but thrive) is the main gist of the novel, and done via the usual jump ahead method that prevents you from getting very deep into any one character but lets you get a sense for scope.
Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert
Read for Cannonball read book club, Banned books (?) (maybe?) (how could this have been banned? I think I’m getting two different book clubs mixed up. I think this was the one with multiple genres, and I read this one because I was running very late and this was what my local library had available.
Side note: of course this could be banned, anything can be banned, we live in the darkest timeline.
This book is unfairly cute, so much so that even I was mildly won over by the antics of Celine and Bradley. I’ve enjoyed Hibbert’s works in the past, but at the end of the day I’m just not a YA person anymore—no shade on the genre, but I find myself less inclined to understand the trials and tribulations of high schoolers. Probably because it’s now been a while since I’ve been one but don’t have any either of my own or to Auntie for. I also think the entire set up for this novel, with the very overwrought outdoor survival course as a test for a scholarship (?) or internship (?) was a bit much to swallow.
Africa Is Not a Country: Notes on a Bright Continent by Dipo Faloyin
Well, after reading both of Adébáyọ̀’s latest novels I did say I needed to read about African history, didn’t I? Recommended by my daring Broomstick, by the sound of her hearty chuckles, I was glad to find this available at my local library and very much enjoyed this whistle stop tour.
There’s parts of this novel that perhaps aren’t entirely necessary for the average reading picking up a book about the entire African continent but boy are they hilarious. Faloyin skewers all the best hackneyed plots and African stereotypes peddled by Hollywood to this day, in what’s probably the most accessible and laugh out loud funny parts of this book.
Once he gets into the clear eyed, non-defensive but also non-submissive overviews of the political history, though, the humor fades a bit and is replaced by a sardonic wit that’s both loving and exasperated. As an Indian American myself, I understand the frustration you can have with the way in which governments are run outside of the Western world but also the desire not to paint everything “Third World” with a giant brush. After all, as my copious reading binge earlier this year demonstrates, corruption is everywhere, even in countries that exported away all the natural resources that could have been used by these nations to kickstart their own countries.
Passion Simple by Annie Ernaux
Original quick takeaway: It stings to be called out so haha.
Fleshed out take: I named this one of my favorite books of the year, and I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s because the book itself is phenomenal (for one, I have Les années waiting to be picked up, and I think that’s meant to be her best work) but for what it meant to me: a novel, in French, that I was able to read and laugh at and feel targeted by and send snippets to friends from.
I’m also super ticketed that Ernaux decided to do what so many male authors have done throughout history, namely write about her life as if she’s a star worthy of extended memoirs that are essentially just about…being? She made herself the star by writing herself into a starring role, and that’s rather awesome (especially given the time period and the fact that she is French).
In this snippet of a longer life, Ernaux is having an affair with an étranger who pops up into her life every so often, pre-the days of cell phones and so both less intrusive and much more so at the same time. She finds herself subtly rearranging her social plans to ensure that she’s home should her amour call (a landline) and say he’s free that evening. She’s convinced she’s over him, but then he appears and she’s back to feeling warm all over. She’s disgusted by his clear lack of commitment (he has a wife, and maybe a child(ren) so not entirely surprising) but more disgusted by what she finds pathetic in her behavior. But above all she’s happy, for now, and honestly writes about how this period of her life felt from a position of having actually, finally, getting some space.
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
I have been trying to read this novel for a very long time, and amusingly I think it’s almost like a snippet from a longer generational novel about this shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves family. I enjoyed it, but not enough to give it more than three stars—which I think is a measure of how much more interested I was in the family and their fall than in what they did after the fall.
That being said, this book is told almost entirely from the future after Danny and Maeve have been kicked out of the house they grew up in by their stepmother after the death of their father. It’s all got very Cinderella vibes, except no one’s scrubbing and being a maid and it’s really an advertisement for a proper will and testament when you’ve got multiple heirs with claims on your assets. If you’ve got assets, sir, you need to look after them!
The book is set over fifty years as per the blurb, but in my memory it’s almost entirely set in one summer of Danny and Maeve impotently grumbling about all they lost, sitting in a car and watching the lights turn on and off in their childhood home.
Forget Me Not by Julie Soto
This book was on a number of best of lists, particularly in the romance specific ones, but I find myself confused as to what everyone else saw that I didn’t? Again I’m 90% sure this is a reskinned Reylo fanfic, maybe even one I’ve read (or a variant I’ve read, the Ben Solo as florist with tattoos trope is strong) but at the end of the day the situation just seemed too over the top for me to really get into it. As with Happy Place, second chance romance is one of my favorite jams but in this case it was too much foliage to chop through (my attempt at a floral turn of phrase) to get to the heart of the woods (that’s all, I promise).
Scheming brides who must have this wedding planner and MUST have this specific floral artist? Also, the comical villany of Ama’s boss? I enjoyed this, but not enough to remember bits and definitely not enough to recommend as a best of 2023. Personally speaking!
Hotel of Secrets by Diana Biller
I’m such a sucker for these sorts of novels, which frankly strain what I think are the bounds of historical accuracy to give us some anachronistically feminist heroines in crinoline and corsets (yes, I know the first isn’t probably at play here but go with the flow okay).
That being said, I’m very much loving the historical romances but with sources trend, and I think this is one as well. After all, everyone knows that an innkeeper is nothing but a tart with a ballgown and a veneer of respectability, right?
The interplay between the rebuilding of the inn (and the real struggles that entails), the romance between our experienced madame and our virginal but researched American spy, the political ~intrigue~ and a minor whodunit makes for a really satisfying read. The natural forces pulling our leads apart felt earnt, even though yes there’s a HEA (as if I’d recommend anything else without a clear and present warning).
The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain by Brett Christophers
Original take: A fascinating book bogged down in some bad copyediting.
Full length take: after a bit of a pause, clearly we went straight back to reading some dense wordy British stuff, this time on a topic that I’m sure most people know nothing about (and, as such, a more fruitful line of study I think—nothing better to show off your edumacated chops than pontificating on a niche area and subtly suggesting that you also happen to know about all the other, more quotidian affairs).
The main gist of this book, as the subtitle suggests, is an exhaustively researched history of how public land has been steadily chipped away and sold to the highest bidder over time. That makes for some dry reading, I will say, even with the addition of the thrust of the book, which is that This is Bad. You might think, “well of course it’s bad to sell off beautiful green land owned by the National Parks Service (or whatever the equivalent is)” but that’s not the point here, and some of my frustration with this book comes with how buried this point is.
To be honest, I’m not sure I’m even capable of summarizing the evidence behind the point but trust me when I say that Christophers make a compelling case for why the land underneath our feet, even in urban areas, represents a far greater value than the buildings on top of it (which, as per my property tax records even, is seen as the driver of value for my flat). And as such, the paltry ownership of land by public sources in the UK is partially responsible for the decline of the once great empire economy.
If you can get on board with that idea—and again, this book could really have used a copyeditor used to dealing with academics (why, oh why do we hear about land parcels in any one of sixteen different units, none of which are readily imaginable by the lay reader)—then the rest of the novel, which lays out the means by which various public trusts have been stripped of their holdings by a series of Labour and Tory governments, should appeal without being too shocking.
The Late Mrs. Willoughby by Claudia Gray
I really love this series, even though I can’t say I remembered much of the first novel (The Murder of Mr. Wickham) other than similar delight. Once again, we’re in the Austenverse, where there’s connections between all of the characters you know and love so well from various Austen works. Darcy and Knightley are friends, for example, because they’re both rich landowners in England? So and so are distant in-laws or cousins, or friends from the first novel, etc, such that there’s reason to have everyone come together and discuss.
Our cipher into this world is once again Juliet Tilney, daughter of Catherine and Henry Tilney of Northanger Abbey, whose parents are less than delighted when yet another murder presents itself to their precocious daughter. She, however, is thrilled to spend more time with the loyal Jonathan Darcy, who’s obviously neurodivergent by modern definitions but just “odd” in this era. Mrs. Willoughby, the fortune married by the rakish Mr. Willoughby, dies at her welcome party and all suspicion is on poor Marianne who just wants to chill and be read some novels by Colonel Brandon.
These novels have a very similar vibe to the Lady Sherlock series, and I’m sure any number of other slow burning historical worlds. While it ends on a personal cliffhanger of sorts, it can be thought of as complete without massive diminishment of enjoyment if that’s of worry 😊
Business or Pleasure by Rachel Lynn Solomon
I genuinely cannot remember but I am 99% positive that the lead(s) in this story are Jewish professionals from the Pacific Northwest, although the plot contrivance (a tour) probably takes them away from that happy, misty place.
Such is the world of Rachel Lynn Solomon, and it’s always a delight to be back in it.
This is actually surprisingly close in tone (but modernized a bunch obviously) from Hotel of Secrets, with an sexperienced lady and a handsome dud in bed who just wants to learn, you know? It’s a pretty cheeky set up but one that works somehow (more so, I think, than Weather Girl). This book is a lot spicier than Solomon’s previous outings, but unlike Henry she manages it with aplomb. Now I want to find a naif and have steamy education sessions, never thought that could be a turn on (after all, even our heroine finds it a real turn off in the first few scenes).
Also kudos to a novel that’s normalizes older characters as its leads and also doesn’t have everyone be an immediate stud in bed the first time around!
A Tempest at Sea by Sherry Thomas
Okay, I’ll be honest I don’t really remember anything that went on this novel, nor do I really remember half of what’s gone on in Lady Sherlock novels #1-6 other than Charlotte has FINALLY gotten together with Lord Ingram (sort of) (it wouldn’t be our Charlotte otherwise). But after what felt like a bit of a dip due to the world getting too complicated (last minute It Was Moriarty All Along fakeouts that mitigated all the sleuthing you’d been doing before), Thomas has gotten the series back on track with the right mix of interpersonal dynamics, danger, and derring-do by our intrepid female detective.
This time around we have a locked train (boat) mystery, where the murderer must be on board because everyone’s at sea, and Charlotte is required to be disguised the entire way so as to avoid detection by the agents of Moriarty (who, if I remember correctly, think she is dead) (a situation that I’m sure will rectify itself shortly, there’s only so much comedy and drama one can milk from that situation). Our favorites are all also on the boat—don’t think about it too much, it would be sad if they weren’t.
I’m going to appreciate finding a Reddit summary thread for this series pretty soon…
Politics On the Edge: A Memoir From Within by Rory Stewart
Original take: Will say that while this book has its flaws I enjoyed it quite a bit. I am perhaps biased, as I listen to Rory Stewart twice a week pontificate about all sorts of things. But the truth is you already know if you’ll like this before picking it up.
Additional views: the tilting at windmills of Stewart is widely covered, but a friend summarized it best that at his core, Stewart believes himself a capable administrator never once given a real crack at ministering/administering his way to greatness. But if this book shows anything, it’s that Stewart’s greatest weakness is that he doesn’t really get along with anyone other than a few oddballs (drink every time Stewart brings up David Gauke on The Rest is Politics). And you can’t be an administrator if you don’t get along with people.
Otherwise, though, this is both a fun look at the inner life of a consummate gentleman amateur of the British government, forever shunted away from departments where he has some legitimate expertise (for one, I think he might be fluent in a number of MENA languages) towards areas where people think he’ll do the least damage (not that anyone given a <2 year remit could really do much). There are entire sections that could have come directly from Yes, Minister (or go into a reboot of the same). The bizarre, week-by-week or even day-by-day/hour-by-hour recounting of Stewart’s failed bid to be Tory party leader (which…never going to happen) is a particular brand of British cringe I would like to not experience again.
Rivals by Katherine McGee
Royals by Katherine McGee
Imagine my surprise when these two books took a flailing series and genuinely turned them around? In a nutshell this is an alternative world in which Washington decided to become King of America post-Independence and so we have a constitutional monarchy (?) basically where there are senators who are lords/ladies/aristocrats and also a monarch who takes sole responsibility. And by the start of these novels the old King has died leaving Queen Beatrice the first women on the throne.
The issue with the prior novels is that they maneuvered the main characters (a series of Gossip-Girl-esque young aristocrats + socailites + deserving poors) into situations that required a deus ex machina or uncomfortable consequences to get back out of, and we all know what’s usually the go to (hint: there’s always a MacGuffin in the works). Given the import of decisions made by the Queen of America, quick solutions seemed like cheating.
But imagine my surprise when a) this series, which I think was supposed to be only a duology, became a quadriology and b) characters actually started taking the hard way out? Which isn’t way out at all, but in some cases a doubling down of consequences?
Let this be a lesson to all other YA authors that your audience is strong enough to see their faves go through some difficulties and perhaps even—gasp—not get perfect, unrealistic HEAs if they’ve done things that will truly mess with their lives. In a world where we’re still under the rule of the descendants of a dude who was chill 400 years ago, actions clearly matter.
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
I was really excited to watch the Apple TV adaptation of this novel, one of my favorite recommended reads of 2022, but after hearing about the show from a number of people I decided I’d rather just re-read the original and content myself with that (and hope that it held up).
Verdict? By and large yes. This is a work of sheer escapism, and yes it does go a bit too far in that direction (escaping right over the Civil Rights movement, an oversight that I believe the show tried to rectify). But if you’re in the mood to read a book about white lady feminism in the 1960s where everyone evil is punished, the precocious child + dog aren’t too on the nose, and slow and steady wins the race, then this is the book for you. Turns out it’s a book for me! I even went on the erg today and thought of Elizabeth Zott from minutes 2 through 30.
Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
Another re-read, because I was thinking of Constance Wu. Also because I always come across clips from this movie on YouTube but they’re never the exact snippet I want to rewatch, so I end up wanting to read the section from the book (which is, also, usually more satisfying). My one real takeaway though? Kwan is not a good writer, but would make an excellent gossip columnist.
The Iliad by Homer, Emily Wilson
While I loved Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey, much to my surprise (fully admit that I checked that book out solely for some literary cred), I found the Iliad less compelling…but probably because the story itself is less compelling. And to her credit, I think Wilson knows this. This time around, her foreword is as much a passionate defense of the work as valuable as it’s a treatise on how she went about translating the work.
So, ymmv depending on your patience for lists of war things. Like, how many soldiers from a set of unpronounceable Greek cities are waiting to storm Troy on the command of any one of a series of disposable Greek heroes with absolutely zero plot armor (for what it’s worth, the only person I was certain survived all of this was Helen of Troy herself and Odysseus, of the aforementioned Odyssey). The sheer number of times in which a soldier, carefully introduced with at least four generations of lineage and a note as to his special skill, turns around and is immediately and violently gored through some part of his body and dies ignominiously in a no-name battle should give you a sense of which historical peoples you’re dealing with (the Greeks, and their no-nonsense, petty AF gods).
It takes too long to get to Achilles being super sad about his guy pal Patroclus, and then he’s like REALLY sad and no why would you suggest that they’re just SUPER GOOD GUY PALS. But that’s an issue with the Iliad, not with Wilson’s translation (which is, unsurprisingly, great).
Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot
Original review: (Latter half of) this book was what I began reading on Saraswati Pooja Reading Day, i.e., the day after Saraswati Pooja, i.e., the day when all little nerdy kids in a Hindu household live in terror of accidentally reading something and getting BAD GRADES for a year. It’s definitely not a bad place to go to educate yourself in a new reading/education year.
I should and will (yes! I will! I WILL) write a more fulsome review but I will say this book is infuriating in the best way. I, someone who has luckily and actively put herself in the way of the history recounted here, learnt multiple things and have facts with numbers to support some contentions that I previously sort of knew. Less one star because it’s written almost too colloquially, which makes the information harder to sink in–the written word, especially in non-fiction, benefits from structure that is unwieldy when spoken aloud. I’m not saying this read like an audiobook/podcast made flesh, but it definitely veered in that direction every so often.
Fleshed out: yeah, no, no time.
The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff
What an interesting book to read after Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America, not that it’s about Black Americans but it’s the story of a not-oft named colonist in the Americas, and I definitely was wincing about the inevitable Dickon Amongst the Lenape plot twist that…(view spoiler)
Not as good as Matrix although more in line with that than with Fates and Furies. Is this basically “The Revenant” but in book format? It is really tiring and twee to see our unnamed main character get sicker and sicker and just stay a hairsbredth away from death the entire time. Especially because you know somewhere just around the corner is an entire thriving Indigenous American community capable of living off the land and uninterested in helping even one sad scrawny girl colonist survive. To be clear I don’t think they should have! I am both beneficiary of the colonists surviving and full of liberal guilt that they did. It’s a typically confusing place. Grab a copy of this book and join me!
10 Things that Never Happened by Alexis Hall
There is just TOO MUCH here to overcome, and as is Hall writes romance novels on the longer side so I’m not entirely certain what else there is to do. It occurred to me entirely too belatedly that this is an Oliver Lucien redux, except with less charming friends (who aren’t as involved) (because they are all employees) (they are all EMPLOYEES of our ROMANTIC LEAD and how was this not flagged MULTIPLE TIMES as difficult to do??? Have we learnt nothing since Jane Eyre??) (I suppose Jonathan could have lost an arm and an eye while rescuing customers perusing a Deluxe Extra Squishy Foam Bathmatomatic 2000)
But +1 for delightful location details that add a touch of cultural verisimilitude to the setting (something very funny about me treating the UK as a setting the way that many western critics treat, say, Lagos). Perhaps -0.5 for use of “yez,” it’s not necessary to hammer home the point that Sam is from a real place up North and Jonathan has covered up his shameful rustic roots and become a posh South London millionaire (he does live in Croydon) (I really wish I had a better instinctive sense of what that mean, though).
The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer
Re-re-read in light of the controversy around removing some of Heyer’s antisemitism from the books: yes, I mean, please do remove it but also don’t hide it? Why are you so close and yet so far, publishers of these books? I would have bought them anew if you’d done it right! And now I won’t, because I don’t agree that people are incapable of holding two thoughts in their head (this author is antisemetic, also this book is pretty great).
Because again UGH so useless the moneylender bit. The layered jokes DO benefit from multiple re-reads! How many books can say that??
The Fraud by Zadie Smith
You know how before I said when authors (R.F. Kuang) tried new genres we should support them? Voila, Smith taking a minor step away from her bread and butter of modern day Black British lives to talk about ye old British lives, some white and some Black!
This is a quirky little book though, much shorter than her other work and as such easier to slip between other reads. It’s one of those based on the true story books, but then with a plot and internality extravagantly spun on top of what’s a pretty sparse fame. In this case, a man popped up claiming to the be lost-at-sea heir to a large fortune, and managed to swindle many thousands of pounds out of common men to mount a series of every more absurd defenses as to why he was actually the Duke or Lord or whatever. Surrounded by this are a series of other characters, including sanctimonious suffragettes and abolitionists, and everything comes to head at roughly the same time in a stroke of genius by Smith, who has had much experience with plot threads.
ZADIE SMITH jeez Rory Stewart and Allistar Campbell really never do read works by female novelists, do they.
A Dangerous Kind of Lady by Mia Vincy
I maintain that this book has a lot of unnecessary chaff that hides a really nice dynamic between our main leads. A few props for depiction of what I think is meant to be neurodivergence.
A Little Life by Hanya Yanigihara
Also my selection for worst novel! But it’s not necessarily bad!
Soap opera or prestige drama? I find myself uncertain as to which I just read. I’m also VERY curious to see if this, seemingly the only book I’ve ever stumbled across to center cisgender male friendships the way any number of novels center cisgender female friendships (e.g., all million, equally emotionally wrenching pages of the Neopolitan novels) has resonance with any men of the same. Do men do this? Or is Yanagihara just creating a fiction of fiction, pretending like there is emotional resonance in male friendships?
I jest but also???
Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher
Unfortunately Toadling was a bit too hand wringy for my exasperation meter. I did envision Ballister Boldheart from the Nimona movie as the knight, that was fun!
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins
Checked out in lieu of watching the movie in theaters, which I knew I wasn’t going to do and voila turns out I did not.
This book reminded me so strongly of Hunger Games the original, and not necessarily in a good way? I think the book touches on some really relevant and powerful messages but the writing remains somewhat hard to read and choppy, requiring the reader to add some emotional filler to create that heft that Collins wants us to feel (I think).
Nick and Charlie by Alice Oseman
My original take: I think perhaps I am getting too cynical for these, which are lovely but also very teenage boy-y.
Fleshed out a bit: well, I don’t know if that’s entirely true, as I liked the #5 graphic novel, but I do think these are kids who need to be focused on kids things and not their relationships nearly as much.
Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree
I wish I remembered if the prior (but sequentially post) novel (Legends & Lattes) included references to Musk and Viv’s time there! I just remember the ~vibes~ of that book, and this book definitely doubles down on those but adds in a bit more tension insofar as you can have tension in a book like this where the point isn’t the Big Bad but how many times one can referenced lassy buns without it being weird.
The Starting Over Game by girl_with_kaleidoscope_eyes
Ran into this while trying to calm down ahead of an interview, and it truly does read as an in-author-voice sequel! Appreciated the fleshing out of the various characters, and the fact that there’s ups and downs. Mostly, I like that we’re talking about a substantial length of time vis-a-vis a relationship instead of like, it was a week (which I understand was a week at the end of a long hating relationship, but still not the same!)
Also then watched bits and pieces of the The Hating Game movie, which I have saved as a downloaded file, which always cheers me up 😊 that book is so excellent, and this year 2023 is the first in which I finally got my (Australian) friend Neha to read it after literally years of her trying to find a copy!!