1. The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
What a wonderful way to start the reading year. Ann Patchett is just the kind of company that you want to hunker down with on a snowy, icy few days when there's no sign of sun in the sky. I listened to the audiobook which is masterfully read by Tom Hanks. Sometimes a reader who is as well known as Hanks is can muddle up the reception of a book, but this is a perfect pairing. His deep decency and humanity amplifying what is extant in Patchett's prose. I'm so grateful that I had time to spend with this book. I also recommend that if you listen to the audio book, you follow it by reading this piece that Patchett just published in Harper's and which magically came to my attention the day after I finished the novel.
2. Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
Bowing down to the genius of Jacqueline Woodson--this is an exquisite book, from the first word to the last. (The last sentence gave me shivers, it's that good.) So many voices, each so perfectly rendered and not a bit of filler in there. It takes a poet to write such perfect, economical prose. Such a beautiful story of family and life and choices; I feel privileged to have read it.
3. How the Multiverse Got Its Revenge by K. Eason
A fun sequel to "How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse". I'd say 3/4 of this SF novel was greatly entertaining: witty, with great character development and fun plot tangles to unravel. The last 1/4 became a bit of a slog and I wasn't the biggest fan of the narratorial voice interjecting historical perspective which became more apparent and felt like a technique to wrap up a plot that was not moving forward. I'd say tone-wise, K. Eason is in a similar camp as John Scalzi and Martha Wells so if those authors' SF works appeal to you, then this one probably will.
4. A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies
This is a concise, beautifully written exploration of the paired intimate subjects of abortion and parenthood. The title comes from an Anais Nin quote, "Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself" and the book dives deep into the private shames that one couple, and particularly the man, share.
I'm glad this was written for all the people for whom this will be "new" but personally, it was like reading a book about myself (which is not why I read. I've said it before and will say it again, I read to escape myself.) I have lots of parallel experiences from 30+ years of involvement in abortion rights, to parenting a 2e child, to living in the same town as the author and identifying the locations (hello Burns Park Elementary School, Summer's Knoll School and the Planned Parenthood branch that backs up to it. I know the white line that is painted on the sidewalk demarcating the space up to which PP protestors can stand w/out trespassing. I know the university classrooms where the main character teaches.) All of it was way too close for me to "enjoy" this book. I appreciate it and the craft that went into it, but I wish I could have read it as an outsider for whom the main character's struggles didn't reflect my own quite so intimately. That's my problem, not the authors, of course. On a dispassionate craft side, there were a few moments when (if I was his editor) I would have suggested that he stop with the coy references to the question of "how autobiographical is this book" because I think they distract from the central question. And there was the ending of one of the last chapters where the last paragraph should have been cut because it attempts a sort of emotional closure that undermines the rest of the narrative. But these are small complaints.
I think the book will be incredibly revealing to western readers who do not live in the US (or perhaps Northern Ireland where abortion is still illegal.) I have lived in countries where abortion is a medical procedure that hasn't been weaponized by right-wing ideologues and this book gives one of the clearest views of the depths of the damage to our country and to the perceptions of women's bodies as places that everyone, except the actual woman, has a say in and a judgement about the operation of, even in a "safe" liberal college town.
5. The Art of Theft by Sherry Thomas
Sigh. Well, I think that's the last of the Lady Sherlock series I'll read/listen to. It just slogged along, and the interactions between the characters lacked charm or wit. The "mystery" wasn't particularly interesting and the resolution relied on leaps of faith about the ability of the main character to break a 12 digit combination to a safe that was simply implausible, even if you believe in her "genius."
6. The Death of a Gentle Lady by M.C. Beaton
Oh dear lord this was a stupid mystery. Despite being read by one of the best audiobook readers out there (the estimable Graeme Malcolm) this was almost unfinishable. I really thought that after "Death of a Maid" that I'd found a series that I could turn to for distraction but it looks like they are wildly uneven in quality.
7. The Searcher by Tana French
This book cast a spell on me; the precision with which Tana French draws her characters and their environment is simply an amazing example of craftsmanship. It's the kind of book that at times, pushed feelings up under my breast bone, so I had to stop and take some long slow breaths to continue. That's not something I felt with her previous books, which were good reads, but didn't get under my skin. This one did. I don't know that I've ever felt like an author caught the energy of a half-feral kid with such effectiveness and economy than is done here. And the book fights all kind of sentimentality: the scenario of an ex-Chicago cop retiring to a small nothing town in Ireland is ripe for trotting out expected scenarios but those get beaten back, sometimes brutally. I think this one will sit with me for a long time and it might even get a re-read.
8. Death Below Stairs by Jennifer Ashley
A decent genre mystery, set in a Victorian upper-class kitchen with a cook as the main character. I think the appeal of the actual mystery didn't work so well for me because it relies on a romanticization of both the monarchy and the British Empire, both of which are institutions that I sympathize more with those trying to pull them down than with those who are trying to preserve the instruments of power. I might try another one in the series and see if the political undercurrent is less conservative; some of the characters are quite appealing and I'm interested to see if I'm more engaged in the mystery if the political views that are expressed are less opposed to my own.
9. Plain Bad Heroines by Emily Danforth
This was a pretty fun read in a genre I don't usually enjoy: a mash up of metafiction, gothic and horror. The craftsmanship managing the intertwined storylines was impressive. I did get a little tired of some of the descriptions being used over and over--"buzzing," "pus," and "the scent of rotting apples" permeates the book and while this is an effective way of linking atmosphere in the various storylines, I got a little sick of it. And while the little illustrations (like the creepy yellow jackets that occasionally appeared on the pages) were effective, I though the full page illustrations were distracting: they seemed really messy, often had inaccuracies for the scenes they were supposed to show and just didn't fit the atmosphere of the book.
10. Winterkeep by Kristin Cashore
A lovely expansion of Kristin Cashore's Graceling world, this time setting Bitterblue and companions off to a new continent. Shifting points of view show an increased narrative sophistication in Cashore's work and a willingness to take risks that pay off: I loved the sections narrated by the fantasy creatures whether they be the mysterious tentacled "keeper", or the telepathic blue foxes. When it comes to the themes, this book continues to delve into investigating trauma responses in a sensitive way. It's also hopeful (without being naïve or saccharine) in its message: that people are damaged but that they can, with time and effort, learn techniques so that the trauma they have experienced does not control their lives. I also love the nuanced contemplations of the difference between sex and love, the giving of the body and the giving of the mind. Since her work is marketed as YA (though I think it appeals to fantasy genre lovers of any age) I think it is particularly valuable for younger readers who are exploring this idea for the first time to read. I'm glad that this book appears to be the start of a new set of stories--I assume that most of the countries mentioned briefly in this book will be sites for future books. Now I just have to be patient...
11. Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell
Entertaining, if a little predictable, novel from David Mitchel about a short lived band in the 1960's. The story is split up between the three band members who write songs and each chapter is a song title and shows how the song came into existence. The craftsmanship and narrative nimbleness is impressive, and many of these moments are beautifully revealing. There were three things that held me back from really loving the book: first, the aforementioned predictability. All the characters suffered crises that you knew were coming from a mile away. I'm not really a fan of starting a chapter knowing how it will end, no matter how lovely the prose is. The second thing that made me squirm a little--and this may just be me--was the ever increasing number of fictionalizations of real people. It started with a brief David Bowie encounter and then led to an extensive section where Jerry Garcia drops acid with one of the band members in Golden Gate Park that I frankly found totally unbelievable. I kept thinking, "I wonder how people who knew Jerry Garcia feel about him becoming a plot device in this book?" and that nagging thought pulled me out of the immersion that I enjoy in fiction. The last thing was the revisiting of previous David Mitchell books. It was pretty clear that "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet" (which I LOVED: 5 stars all the way) was going to come out since one of the band members has the same surname, but the brief reappearance of some of the characters from The Bone Clocks (another 4 star from me) was a bit of a surprise. The author used the two previous works reappearance as a way to solve the problems of one of the main characters and while it worked, it pulled me into David Mitchell's world and out of the fictional world he had crafted in the novel. It wasn't unpleasant to think about how both of these stories still clearly live on in their creator's brain and demand his attention, even after the publication of full novels, but again, it took me away from Utopia Avenue and made the experience of reading it more referential than I would have liked. I also wonder if the references to the 2 previous works would have made the sections where they appear incomprehensible to people who hadn't read them. I still think that David Mitchell is amazing and I'll keep reading whatever he puts out there, but this probably wouldn't be one of his books I'd press on someone who has never read him before.
12. A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet
Inventive, surprising and insightful, this book was a fast, entertaining read which kept me riveted. I don't want to give away the plot, because watching it unfold and the surprises about where it goes is part of the pleasure of reading it. There are some lovely things to think about in here: what it means to be a parent or a child, our relationship to nature and what, if anything, religion means. It deeply trusts the purity of (most) children and emphasizes the corruption of (most) adults, but nothing is rendered simplistically: there is mystery and beauty and cruelty all bundled up together. Highly recommended.
13. The Price You Pay for College by Ron Lieber
There's some helpful advice in here if you are new to thinking about selecting and paying for college. But I thought the book was a bit of a mess, teetering between policy analysis and self-help/how-to categories and not doing a great job at either (better at how-to than policy though). I kept feeling surprised by how insanely privileged some of the advice is, like how if you don't have enough income to save for your kid, ask your kids' grandparents to save for you! I felt like the author has no idea how people who aren't upper middle class might be approaching the questions that he raises so his advice struck me as simplistic a lot of the time (lots of low-income people have low-income parents!) Also, I was amazed that he devotes a chapter to Smith and women's colleges, but never says anything about HBCUs--I checked the index to see if I had missed something, but nope. Never talks about them even though the policy issues that he brings up in terms of gender and leadership at Smith are analogous to many similar issues in terms of race at HBCUs. I think when it comes to selecting a college, readers could be much better served by reading "Colleges that Change Lives", a book that he never references but clearly has read, rather than his occasional musings on the value of different types of programs. I guess I shouldn't be that surprised that ideas in this book seem underdeveloped: the author is a columnist and most of these chapters read like stand-alone columns, but it's kind of disappointing that when he has the space in a book to go a little deeper, he doesn't do so.
14. Love by Roddy Doyle
This novel is a breathtakingly beautiful meditation on the emotion in all its faceted complexity. Love for partner, friend, child, stranger, the world, a country, a city, a pub, a pint are all touched upon in this novel which follows two old friends through one night's encounter. From the most inconsequential way that we use the word "love" to the most serious, the two characters circle and discuss, fight, make up, get frustrated with and feel profound gratitude towards each other. Doyle's artistry at creating characters that feel fully alive results in a book that is never a lecture about an idea, always an unfolding. Highly recommended.
15. Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong
A beautifully written book about race and anger and navigating the in-between status that Asian Americans have largely been forced into by the dominant cultural narratives. The book had so much range, from deeply personal stories of friendships and family, to more intellectual critiques of literature (her dismissal of Holden Caulfield was just so good), to lots of musings about art, artists and their place in a society that is deeply messed up when it comes to race and gender.
16. Quilting by Lucille Clifton
A really beautiful collection of poems. My favorites were mostly in the "Eight Pointed Star" and "Tree of Life" sections. I particularly loved these lines from the former:
i don't know how to do
what i do in the way
that i do it. it happens
despite me and I pretend
to deserve it.
but i don't know how to do it.
only sometimes when
something is singing
i listen and so far
i hear.
17. Writers & Lovers by Lily King
This book is a love letter to writers, and particularly fiction writers. The protagonist, a 30-ish fiction writer, drowning in debt, is one of the most appealing that I've read in ages. She's messed up and inspired, confused and hopeful, a hard worker and a hard thinker (she thinks hard thoughts. Lots of them. And they are very interesting.) The balance between these facets was beautifully rendered--it's really damn hard to make a character like this not appear so pathetic that you want to turn your eyes away from the train wreck of her life, or so resilient that you feel resentful. And interlaced throughout this moment in her life are lots of meditations on writing: institutions (MFAs, workshops, artist residencies), practices (when you write, how to find readers you trust to give real feedback on a vulnerable first draft, how to find an agent), perceptions of other writers (the hot flood of jealousy being around published authors, the relief of being around other people who haven't made it yet) and, most importantly, why people write fiction anyway. There's a line early on in the book that encapsulates the main character's struggle: her neighbor says, "It's extraordinary that you think you have something to say." And the rest of the book is finding out if she really believes this. I loved this book.
18. Commute: An Illustrated Memoir of Female Shame by Erin Williams
An amazing, wrenching, graphic memoir. One sentence at the end of the book struck me as a perfect summary: "It's the monotonous and mundane tragedy of every woman you know."
19. Maddaddam by Margaret Atwood
A re-read. It hit harder this time, which is not a surprise because reading about her waterless-flood while living through a pandemic is an intensely different position to be in than the last time I read it. Still amazing. And still made me cry at the end.
20. Just Like You by Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby is so good at taking a story that feels small at first but which ends up resonating with big questions. And he's content with posing those questions, not trying to answer all of them. The book is an intimate examination of a May-December relationship between an older white woman and a younger black man. And it brings up all sorts of thoughts about class and race and age and how we define who our group of friends are and how transgressive it is to step outside that boundary. The fact that he focuses on the small moments, like when Joseph goes to his first dinner party with Lucy and wonders about the expected behaviors, or when Lucy meets Joseph's mother who is almost exactly the same age as she is, allows the reader to extrapolate much bigger questions about how we define ourselves and our place in society. The fact that the book is set during the Brexit vote complicates things even more. It's an enjoyable read, with lovely characters who you want to spend time with, and it simultaneously makes you reflect and question your own positions without becoming pedantic or proscriptive; I think it's quite an impressive achievement.
21. A Great Deliverance by Elizabeth Peters
Some mysteries age well and some don't; sadly this one falls in the latter camp. The capable plotting and decent prose keep this from being completely intolerable, but there are so many cringe worthy moments and dated views are just plain tiresome and make an escapist read into a slog.
22. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
A mostly-fun mystery, so long as you can handle the sentimentality. I get the appeal of painting all of the group of characters living in a senior community and solving cold-cases together as likeable, but there are times when it does become a little too sweet for my taste. For example, the only marriages that are mentioned are perfect marriages. Love is boundless and forever and there's never a bit of resentment or irritation even as one character's partner begins to suffer from dementia. It's a shame that relationships are presented in such a one-dimensional fashion, a little grit would have gone a long way, because some of the individual character are wonderful. Elizabeth, a former spy, is a joy to spend time with, as is Ron, a former union organizer who admits that he sometimes goes on a rant in a community meeting just to see if he still can. It does make for an entertaining read, and I'm pretty sure I'll track down the next book in the series; I'll just have to read it when I'm in the mood to tolerate the occasional platitude.
23. Silent Voices by Ann Cleeves
A decent enough mystery with just a little bit of tiresome talk about weight and competitiveness among women that occasionally distracted from the plotting and character. I listened to the audio book which was excellently read by Charlie Hardwick and really, listening to the accent (and remembering my Uncle David) was half the pleasure for me.
24. The Glass Room by Ann Cleeves
This mystery started off well with an engaging atmosphere (the suffocating mash of longing and ego at a writer's workshop and retreat) but devolved into sloppiness in the second half where the author threw in some obvious red-herrings and reckless police procedures that just made me roll my eyes.
25. Snow by John Banville
A deeply atmospheric mystery that shows the dour side of Irish culture to the max. There are lots of evocative descriptions of miserable people wandering around eating disgusting food (mentions of kidneys and tapioca and sickly sweet sherry abound) and suffering from chills and freezing feet. The writing is very, very good and this is less of a whodunit type mystery than an exploration into the culture that makes the murders possible.
26. The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
I loved this quirky, strange Western. The narrator, an alternately tender and violent character, helps to redeem a genre that I have not previously been attracted to. There are hilarious and efficient character sketches throughout and beautiful meditations on what makes life meaningful: money? power? love? a sense of purpose? It's an economical book with prose that spends just enough time to set the scene without wallowing in the (many) potential moments of misery or suffering. It feels odd to describe a book with so much murder and mayhem as having a gentle spirit at heart, but that's how this book felt to me.
27. An Unsuitable Attachment by Barbara Pym
An odd book, beautifully written but I struggled to determine whether the material I found repellant was because the book hadn't aged well (the extremely restricted role of women, the accepted racism of provincial Britain in the 1960s when the book is set) or because the author intended to show a cast of flawed characters: small people living small lives. I mostly enjoyed the effortlessness of the storytelling, but the distasteful bits left me unsettled and feeling a bit smothered. I would say that reading this book serves as an excellent corrective for people who overly romanticize British culture.
28. The Oracle Year by Charles Soule
Entertaining, but kind of thin. The main character's process of self-discovery via receiving an extraordinary gift of 104 prophecies that all come true via a dream was the most interesting aspect of this book: watching someone realize they have power and learn how to use it was done pretty well, but the underlying situations and resolution required a little too much of a "don't think too much about this" attitude which is not really my mindset when I read. I needed a lot more detail and information to find the premise plausible.
29. Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells
I love Murderbot, but this story was pretty thin and doesn't have much to recommend it other than getting to spend a little more time with Murderbot. It felt like maybe the author was just cleaning up their desk (or disc) and found a half written story that they could finish off quickly. Nothing wrong with that, but a little disappointing when it doesn't seem to advance anything in the way of plot or character growth or world building.
30. Beatlebone by Kevin Barry
A strange, beguiling book with some of the most beautiful language I've read in ages. Kevin Barry's turns of phrase took my breath away and helped tide me over in the more challenging parts of the novel. While the book is focused on John Lennon and his sojourn in County Mayo, Ireland, I fell for the fictional character Cornelius, who Barry writes with such creative economy that when he left the narrative for a period of time, I felt bereft at his absence. (I'm curious how this book would read for a real John Lennon fan--I appreciate him, but clearly don't care as much about his internal state and creative process as some people.) I absolutely adored the first 100 pages or so which has John and Cornelius trying to dodge the press corps that are hot on the tip of a John Lennon sighting. After Cornelius leaves John on Achill Island, I read on, but missed Cornelius' presence and was so happy when he rejoined the book about 80 pages later. The section in which the author appears in the narrative to explain his process was interesting and a nice-enough interlude, though a little jarring (I wondered why it wasn't an appendix to the book, except that people often don't read appendixes so maybe interrupting the flow was necessary). Even without my favorite character to guide me, I remained engaged in this shimmering work: time, history, internal and external perceptions are so masterfully explored that even without a consistent narrative line, the book is a masterwork of fiction.
31. Secrets of Happiness by Joan Silber
I love the structure of Joan Silber's books where a minor character in one chapter is the focus of the next chapter. But this book struck me as both sour and bitter: I can't help but wonder if the title was intended ironically? So much of the book is about money, and maybe the implication is that with the stress and worry of not enough money, happiness is elusive. But even the characters with lots of money aren't particularly insightful when it comes to happiness. With a different title (say, "Secrets of Money"?) maybe this focus wouldn't have been such a big deal, but other than one chapter in which a character actually rejects his family's money (and which was a welcome relief), I thought that most of the book was about how how money brings out the worst in us. I think I was supposed to care about the character who begins and ends the book but I simply couldn't after seeing how horribly he treated his father's second family and his half-siblings. So he was unhappy later on in the progress of the story, so what? I guess I felt like maybe a little misery was due to come his way.
32. In Zanesville by Jo Ann Beard
Amazing book, probably the best I've ever read about that moment when childhood falls away and a girl teeters at the precipice of what life and the world will now mean. I loved the main character and her best friend and their ups and downs as they navigate their final year of Jr. High. They are hilarious and wise and clueless and raw. Their families are flawed but the author resists the urge to make any one of many problems into a tragedy: the focus is tight on the main character's feelings and perceptions and awareness of the world and her own shifting place in it. Because that's enough: a girl's feelings and thoughts are enough; they don't have to be heightened by crisis to be important. I loved this book.
33. The Storm Keeper's Island by Catherine Doyle
Decent enough children's book, the first in a series, set on the island of Arranmore. It moved along well enough, but the characters were somewhat wooden and predictable (the sister is horrible, until she's not! the parents are missing, etc.). I think it wants to be a Percy Jackson type series, but I didn't think the ties to Irish mythology were strong enough for it to fulfill that concept.
34. Sweet & Bitter Magic by Adrienne Tooley
This YA fantasy novel started strong but lost steam. The two main character's meeting and journey to the Witchlands was quite fun to read with the POV shifting in alternating chapters. But once they got to the Witchlands it lost steam and the world building deteriorated: there simply wasn't enough about the societal structure, how things worked or even a good sense of what the difference is between acceptable and black magic to make the actions taken by the coven and its leaders understandable or logical. The romance was pretty obvious and really drawn out and the transformation of a bad witch to a non-powered human was instantaneous with no sense of how such a major change would be processed by the character.
35. The Trojan Women: A Comic by Anne Carson and Rosanna Bruno
This collaboration of an economical poetic text by the eminent classics scholar and translator Anne Carson and raw, powerful illustrations by Rosanna Bruno, was an absolute pleasure to read and absorb. The retelling of Euripides play captured the suffering and the absolute surreal existence of those who survive on the losing side of a war. I'm not sure how effective it would be for people unfamiliar with the original play, but if you have a familiarity with the original text and enjoy imagining re-interpretations of old stories, I highly, highly recommend this version: the images and the language will haunt me for a long time. It's simply a beautiful work.
35. A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
A prose narrative that collects the stories from numerous Greek sources to try and paint a collective portrait of the experiences of the women who experienced the Trojan war. I think I've read all the source texts except for the Aeneid and only one story came from that text. It was lovely at times (I particularly enjoyed the insights of the muse Calliope) but uneven. I skimmed the sections that were in Penelope's voice because they were simply an un-interesting summary of Odysseus' adventures with little to no insight to her experience. The most effective stuff seemed to come directly from Euripides The Trojan Women--Hecabe was vividly written--but I kept asking myself what the author was really adding to it. Why read this rather than the original text(s)? I suppose that prose is considered more accessible than a translation of an Ancient Greek play, but I found the experience a little flat. I have no idea what impact the book would have on people who have never read the source material, whether this book would work effectively as a summary or if it requires familiarity to be effective.
36. The Patron Saint of Pregnant Girls by Ursula Hegi
It's an amazing feeling to put yourself into the hands of a master storyteller like Ursula Hegi and to trust that she will take you places that you won't anticipate, but that you will love so much you don't want the story to end. If you lay out the elements of this book, it sounds like it will be a grim story filled with misery and suffering: a Catholic home for pregnant girls and a woman who loses three of her four children to a freak wave while at the beach. But the book overflows with generosity and love; the nuns who run the home care more about art and education than for any shaming or reform of the girls they care for. The mother mourns and grieves for her lost children and also learns to live and love her remaining child. There's also a traveling circus that weaves through the story, bringing magic and whimsy and the occasional zebra to this small island on the Nordsee. A simply wonderful book.
37. Norwegian by Night by Derek B. Miller
A good mystery/thriller with two appealing characters: the elderly American Jewish transplant to Norway, Sheldon Horowitz, and the collected Oslo detective, Sigrid Odegard. It's a little uneven, in that Sheldon steals the show from the detective, but still charming. The villains are a little predictable because we've seen characters that depend on the fall-out from the Bosnian war appear as thugs and drug runners hiding under refugee status before, but I did appreciate the inclusion of some of the cohorts, the people who were sucked into the orbit of the main villain but were pretty fed up with the old grudges and violence.
38. A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
A fantastic sci-fi novel that engages deeply in contemplations of the politics of empire, told from the point of view of the colonized. There's terrific world building and character development and adventure, of course, but I really appreciated the subtlety of the political insights and the perspective of the main character who is an ambassador from one of the colonized worlds, and is both enamored with the culture of the empire, and wary of its seductions and abuses. It makes me happy to see that this is listed at the first in a series (though the book ends satisfyingly; no cliff-hanger or unfinished business, just more storylines that could be explored.)
39. The Post-Script Murders by Elly Griffiths
A decent-enough cozy mystery which is more interested in character than in plot. There are some nice characters in this book and it's clear that the author enjoys writing about them. But the odd thing I found was a wish that the book was about the characters who are murdered, rather than the characters who are left investigating the murder. The book has lots of meta moments since it is set in the world of mystery writers and their publishers. But I found myself wishing I could read the fictional books that are mentioned (especially the one that features a group of pensioners who have fascinating back stories--a woman who was a child assassin in Poland during WWII? Yes please!) rather than the one I was reading.
40. American by Day by Derek B. Miller
An interesting, often entertaining book that takes one of the characters from Norwegian by Night and sends her to America. I didn't think Sigrid was very interesting in the first book, she was so overshadowed by Sheldon Horowitz, so at first I was a bit baffled by the decision to make her the center of a related novel. But her Scandinavian perceptions of American culture are usually pretty interesting and give the book more oomph that I expected: lots of discussion and tinkering about with the conflict of the American cult of the individual and the need for collective good. The book, which is set in the lead up to Obama's election in 2008 and was published in 2018, reads as perhaps a bit naïve after the events of 2020 and the death of George Floyd. Also, the person we are supposed to care about Sigrid saving, her lost brother, is pretty meh.
41. Matrix by Lauran Groff
This isn't my favorite historical fiction about a medieval abbess based on a real historical figure (for that, go read Nicola Griffith's Hild) but it is still an excellent novel with lots of insight into the fascinating culture of a nunnery. There's some beautiful writing about nature and power and how women navigate the world. There were a few things that kept me at a bit of a distance, not sure exactly why--possibly some inconsistencies in the main character's belief system that left me feeling quizzical? possibly the authorial voice being a little too contemporary about predicting the fact that human behaviors will render the planet uninhabitable?--but it was a book I could put down and leave for a bit before coming back to. Still, a very enjoyable and interesting read. I think I'll go re-read Hild now...
42. Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell
An excellent ending to an excellent YA series. What started as a critique of the Chosen One story so often deployed in YA lit (and most memorably in Harry Potter) in the first book, this third book has lots of closure and a good amount of continued interrogation of the magikal world that the author constructed. I appreciated the inclusion of Agatha's journey, a side story that I might have enjoyed a little more of: her fatigue with the role she was forced to play as the Chosen One's girlfriend, her desire to have a life of her own, and the playing against type as the golden girl who wants to be free of the benefits that everyone assumes she enjoys. The Simon/Baz relationship was a little long winded at times, but then, I'm not the teen audience that this was written for so my impatience was probably due to that. And I'd read a whole book about Penelope who is like Hermione on steroids if the author cared to write an off-shoot book.An excellent ending to an excellent YA series. What started as a critique of the Chosen One story so often deployed in YA lit (and most memorably in Harry Potter) in the first book, this third book has lots of closure and a good amount of continued interrogation of the magikal world that the author constructed. I appreciated the inclusion of Agatha's journey, a side story that I might have enjoyed a little more of: her fatigue with the role she was forced to play as the Chosen One's girlfriend, her desire to have a life of her own, and the playing against type as the golden girl who wants to be free of the benefits that everyone assumes she enjoys. The Simon/Baz relationship was a little long winded at times, but then, I'm not the teen audience that this was written for so my impatience was probably due to that. And I'd read a whole book about Penelope who is like Hermione on steroids if the author cared to write an off-shoot book.
43. Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell
Fun science fiction novel: good world building and characters and a decent sense of pacing with adventures and twists. There were a few things that were drawn out a bit long for my taste (the miscommunication between the two main characters felt a little YA in its prolonged time to a resolution) but as regards the plot, the author does a good job of not over-explaining every little thing which can bog down sci fi to the point of tedium. So a little excess of leisure on the interpersonal relationships is a small gripe for a book that moves well on every other front.
44. Skunk and Badger by Amy Timberlake
Absolutely charming children's chapter book with the titular skunk and badger, lots of chickens (who are sheltered from predatory stoats by the main characters), geology, a little revisionist folk tale (chicken little and quantum physics) and lots and lots of wise examples of the challenges and rewards of friendship. So pleased to see this is the first in a series. Will Skunk and Badger be the next Frog and Toad? I don't see why not.
45. Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch
Probably not the fairest thing to read book 2 in a series before reading book 1 and then judging it...but...that's what I did. I caught onto the premise of the two remaining magical cops working alongside London Police (one master, one apprentice) quickly enough and the book is fast and an easy, relatively entertaining read. I can't say the relationships are very rich though and the main character's inability to catch onto some pretty obvious flaws (if you call inadvertently sucking the energy out of jazz musicians until they die a flaw...) in other characters was a bit tedious. I think some of the stuff that I found a bit gratuitous (vicious human animal hybrids) were put in the story as seeds for future books in the series because their appearance here didn't seem to have much purpose other than a sprinkling of horror in amongst the magic and murder. Not sure if I'll read more of the series or not; maybe give book 1 a try and see if it pulls me in?
46. A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett
A re-read of this most wonderful series of books. Really, I can't count how many times I've read it (5 or maybe 6 times? and listened to the excellent audio books at least 2 or 3 times, too ) but Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching series is just what the mental health doctor ordered for me. I love them so much.
47. Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett
I'm re-reading Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching series again because they make me happy and just get better and better. I love them so much.
48. I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett
Is this my favorite of the Tiffany Aching books? Maybe? But really why choose. Just love them all.
49. Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
It kind of kills me not to give this book 5 stars, but when 1 character out of the 5 central figures that the book is centered around is a disappointing stereotype, 4 stars is the best I can do. There are amazing feats of storytelling in this book and plenty of moments of beauty and insight that anyone who has read Doerr's previous books will expect. So why did no one in the (I'm sure) extensive editing process step up and say that making the eco-terrorist character autistic and giving him the "kick-me" name of Seymour was a simplistic shortcut? I felt a gut punch of disappointment when I realized that yes, an author who I previously thought was sensitive to stereotypes like this clearly has a blind spot and that he was indeed going to use autism in this way. I had to set the book aside for about a week before I could come back to it, and every time there was a section that focused on Seymour, I was pulled out of the book. So frustrating. Because there is so much in the other 4 characters' stories to enjoy and admire. The only other thing I would say is that the resolution section of the book felt pretty abrupt: I think another 50 pages (doable in a 622 page book) would have helped ease the narrative to a close with a little more grace.
50. The Beatryce Prophecy by Kate DiCamillo
I like the themes of this book--the power of stories, the importance of love--but unlike some of DiCamillo's most amazing books (Despereaux) this one felt like it was telling me the themes rather than having me discover them through the characters or the plot. I kept waiting for them to come alive because there's certainly potential here, particularly in the stubborn goat, the monk with the wild eye and the king who walked away from ruling, but instead I felt like I just followed them on the journey without really knowing them. And Beatryce remained a character that I only knew I was supposed to love because other people (and animals) loved her, not because of anything she really did or said. It was a strangely neutral story for such a skilled writer to produce. Still a decent book for kids to read, but it doesn't really transcend that category.
51. A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
Very fun revision of the magical school genre, this time with way less charm and way more risk to the students. I liked the premise that the only reason you'd go to a school where you have a high risk of dying is that you have an even higher risk of winding up dead if you don't go. I think this book is more similar to the Hunger Games books than to other magical academy books (like Harry Potter or The Magicians series) due to the fact that all the people inside the system are kept at an intense level of stress and survive via alliances (and their own unique skill sets that they use to craft the alliances). There are privileged students who come from the Enclaves and independent students who have to start from scratch to make their own connections and supports. I enjoyed the angry, fed-up voice of the main character and thought that the author did a great job of gracefully revealing the intricate world through the plot rather than stepping back and explaining. I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the series.
52. One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters
Good god what sentimental clap trap. I won't be reading any more of this series; the only reason I didn't abandon it was I was amazed at how bad it was and wanted to give it a chance to redeem itself, but it was deeply stupid until the bitter end.
53. The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik
Book 2 of this series was just as fun as book one. It follows the first book in feeling like the Hunger Games crossed with school of magic (think The Magicians rather than Harry Potter due to lack of whimsy) and the plot and character development arc is similar (think Catching Fire and Katniss) with the prickly and suspicious main character learning to trust other people and to revise her view of what is possible in the deeply dysfunctional world she inhabits. I'm looking forward to book 3!
54. The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
An entertaining read that moves along quickly and has moments of grace, but I found there was a forced naivete to the narrative that grated on me. All the characters were too good to be true (out of four individuals sent to a juvenile work camp, not one of them did anything reprehensible or bad? It was always just an accident or mistake that they were nobly willing to take the punishment for? It would have been much more interesting if one of them actually had committed a crime but the author clearly prefers this sanitized version) and the precocious little kid, Billy? I guess the author just assumed we'd all be charmed rather than irritated by him. The only slightly complicated character has a really abrupt ending, as though the author wrote himself into a corner and couldn't find any other way out. The one female character is frustratingly underused. And oh god, I lost count of how many references there were to The Odyssey to the point where I just grew pretty sick of them. When Professor Abernathy chucks his life as an author with an office in the Empire State Building to ride the rails with a character named Ulysses I just had to roll my eyes.
55. A Queen in Hiding by Sarah Kozloff
Fun start to a new high fantasy series. Lots of good world building and characters. There are few issues with pacing and some spots that felt a little self-conscious, like the author had been told to incorporate a little GRRM/GofT violence and brutality to appeal to that series' readership, but did it in a half-hearted manner. But these two quibbles didn't derail the rest of the plot, just kept it from moving effortlessly.
56. The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
The Sentence is a strange book, a beguiling book, and at least for me, a somewhat hard book. With a large part of the book set in Minneapolis in 2020, it takes on race and pandemic induced trauma directly, and a lot of this was hard to read, particularly since the pandemic still rages and there is little improvement in policing policy. I had to set aside the craving for resolution because that's not how the world works, even though that is often an expectation in fiction. Intertwined with the events are vivid characters, including a bookstore that is as much a character as any of the humans, with complicated lives. One of the features that I appreciate most about Erdrich is the complexity of her characters' inner lives: one might believe in ghosts and the power of sage smudging to banish them, but have little connection to reservation culture, another might be an urban punk who is brought to tears by the opportunity to wear someone else's jingle dress and dance. Nothing that is meaningful for one person is assumed to be shared by others and each character's relationship with the visible and invisible is completely unique. I didn't always know where the book was going, but I was happy to keep reading and find out.
What a wonderful way to start the reading year. Ann Patchett is just the kind of company that you want to hunker down with on a snowy, icy few days when there's no sign of sun in the sky. I listened to the audiobook which is masterfully read by Tom Hanks. Sometimes a reader who is as well known as Hanks is can muddle up the reception of a book, but this is a perfect pairing. His deep decency and humanity amplifying what is extant in Patchett's prose. I'm so grateful that I had time to spend with this book. I also recommend that if you listen to the audio book, you follow it by reading this piece that Patchett just published in Harper's and which magically came to my attention the day after I finished the novel.
2. Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
Bowing down to the genius of Jacqueline Woodson--this is an exquisite book, from the first word to the last. (The last sentence gave me shivers, it's that good.) So many voices, each so perfectly rendered and not a bit of filler in there. It takes a poet to write such perfect, economical prose. Such a beautiful story of family and life and choices; I feel privileged to have read it.
3. How the Multiverse Got Its Revenge by K. Eason
A fun sequel to "How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse". I'd say 3/4 of this SF novel was greatly entertaining: witty, with great character development and fun plot tangles to unravel. The last 1/4 became a bit of a slog and I wasn't the biggest fan of the narratorial voice interjecting historical perspective which became more apparent and felt like a technique to wrap up a plot that was not moving forward. I'd say tone-wise, K. Eason is in a similar camp as John Scalzi and Martha Wells so if those authors' SF works appeal to you, then this one probably will.
4. A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies
This is a concise, beautifully written exploration of the paired intimate subjects of abortion and parenthood. The title comes from an Anais Nin quote, "Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself" and the book dives deep into the private shames that one couple, and particularly the man, share.
I'm glad this was written for all the people for whom this will be "new" but personally, it was like reading a book about myself (which is not why I read. I've said it before and will say it again, I read to escape myself.) I have lots of parallel experiences from 30+ years of involvement in abortion rights, to parenting a 2e child, to living in the same town as the author and identifying the locations (hello Burns Park Elementary School, Summer's Knoll School and the Planned Parenthood branch that backs up to it. I know the white line that is painted on the sidewalk demarcating the space up to which PP protestors can stand w/out trespassing. I know the university classrooms where the main character teaches.) All of it was way too close for me to "enjoy" this book. I appreciate it and the craft that went into it, but I wish I could have read it as an outsider for whom the main character's struggles didn't reflect my own quite so intimately. That's my problem, not the authors, of course. On a dispassionate craft side, there were a few moments when (if I was his editor) I would have suggested that he stop with the coy references to the question of "how autobiographical is this book" because I think they distract from the central question. And there was the ending of one of the last chapters where the last paragraph should have been cut because it attempts a sort of emotional closure that undermines the rest of the narrative. But these are small complaints.
I think the book will be incredibly revealing to western readers who do not live in the US (or perhaps Northern Ireland where abortion is still illegal.) I have lived in countries where abortion is a medical procedure that hasn't been weaponized by right-wing ideologues and this book gives one of the clearest views of the depths of the damage to our country and to the perceptions of women's bodies as places that everyone, except the actual woman, has a say in and a judgement about the operation of, even in a "safe" liberal college town.
5. The Art of Theft by Sherry Thomas
Sigh. Well, I think that's the last of the Lady Sherlock series I'll read/listen to. It just slogged along, and the interactions between the characters lacked charm or wit. The "mystery" wasn't particularly interesting and the resolution relied on leaps of faith about the ability of the main character to break a 12 digit combination to a safe that was simply implausible, even if you believe in her "genius."
6. The Death of a Gentle Lady by M.C. Beaton
Oh dear lord this was a stupid mystery. Despite being read by one of the best audiobook readers out there (the estimable Graeme Malcolm) this was almost unfinishable. I really thought that after "Death of a Maid" that I'd found a series that I could turn to for distraction but it looks like they are wildly uneven in quality.
7. The Searcher by Tana French
This book cast a spell on me; the precision with which Tana French draws her characters and their environment is simply an amazing example of craftsmanship. It's the kind of book that at times, pushed feelings up under my breast bone, so I had to stop and take some long slow breaths to continue. That's not something I felt with her previous books, which were good reads, but didn't get under my skin. This one did. I don't know that I've ever felt like an author caught the energy of a half-feral kid with such effectiveness and economy than is done here. And the book fights all kind of sentimentality: the scenario of an ex-Chicago cop retiring to a small nothing town in Ireland is ripe for trotting out expected scenarios but those get beaten back, sometimes brutally. I think this one will sit with me for a long time and it might even get a re-read.
8. Death Below Stairs by Jennifer Ashley
A decent genre mystery, set in a Victorian upper-class kitchen with a cook as the main character. I think the appeal of the actual mystery didn't work so well for me because it relies on a romanticization of both the monarchy and the British Empire, both of which are institutions that I sympathize more with those trying to pull them down than with those who are trying to preserve the instruments of power. I might try another one in the series and see if the political undercurrent is less conservative; some of the characters are quite appealing and I'm interested to see if I'm more engaged in the mystery if the political views that are expressed are less opposed to my own.
9. Plain Bad Heroines by Emily Danforth
This was a pretty fun read in a genre I don't usually enjoy: a mash up of metafiction, gothic and horror. The craftsmanship managing the intertwined storylines was impressive. I did get a little tired of some of the descriptions being used over and over--"buzzing," "pus," and "the scent of rotting apples" permeates the book and while this is an effective way of linking atmosphere in the various storylines, I got a little sick of it. And while the little illustrations (like the creepy yellow jackets that occasionally appeared on the pages) were effective, I though the full page illustrations were distracting: they seemed really messy, often had inaccuracies for the scenes they were supposed to show and just didn't fit the atmosphere of the book.
10. Winterkeep by Kristin Cashore
A lovely expansion of Kristin Cashore's Graceling world, this time setting Bitterblue and companions off to a new continent. Shifting points of view show an increased narrative sophistication in Cashore's work and a willingness to take risks that pay off: I loved the sections narrated by the fantasy creatures whether they be the mysterious tentacled "keeper", or the telepathic blue foxes. When it comes to the themes, this book continues to delve into investigating trauma responses in a sensitive way. It's also hopeful (without being naïve or saccharine) in its message: that people are damaged but that they can, with time and effort, learn techniques so that the trauma they have experienced does not control their lives. I also love the nuanced contemplations of the difference between sex and love, the giving of the body and the giving of the mind. Since her work is marketed as YA (though I think it appeals to fantasy genre lovers of any age) I think it is particularly valuable for younger readers who are exploring this idea for the first time to read. I'm glad that this book appears to be the start of a new set of stories--I assume that most of the countries mentioned briefly in this book will be sites for future books. Now I just have to be patient...
11. Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell
Entertaining, if a little predictable, novel from David Mitchel about a short lived band in the 1960's. The story is split up between the three band members who write songs and each chapter is a song title and shows how the song came into existence. The craftsmanship and narrative nimbleness is impressive, and many of these moments are beautifully revealing. There were three things that held me back from really loving the book: first, the aforementioned predictability. All the characters suffered crises that you knew were coming from a mile away. I'm not really a fan of starting a chapter knowing how it will end, no matter how lovely the prose is. The second thing that made me squirm a little--and this may just be me--was the ever increasing number of fictionalizations of real people. It started with a brief David Bowie encounter and then led to an extensive section where Jerry Garcia drops acid with one of the band members in Golden Gate Park that I frankly found totally unbelievable. I kept thinking, "I wonder how people who knew Jerry Garcia feel about him becoming a plot device in this book?" and that nagging thought pulled me out of the immersion that I enjoy in fiction. The last thing was the revisiting of previous David Mitchell books. It was pretty clear that "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet" (which I LOVED: 5 stars all the way) was going to come out since one of the band members has the same surname, but the brief reappearance of some of the characters from The Bone Clocks (another 4 star from me) was a bit of a surprise. The author used the two previous works reappearance as a way to solve the problems of one of the main characters and while it worked, it pulled me into David Mitchell's world and out of the fictional world he had crafted in the novel. It wasn't unpleasant to think about how both of these stories still clearly live on in their creator's brain and demand his attention, even after the publication of full novels, but again, it took me away from Utopia Avenue and made the experience of reading it more referential than I would have liked. I also wonder if the references to the 2 previous works would have made the sections where they appear incomprehensible to people who hadn't read them. I still think that David Mitchell is amazing and I'll keep reading whatever he puts out there, but this probably wouldn't be one of his books I'd press on someone who has never read him before.
12. A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet
Inventive, surprising and insightful, this book was a fast, entertaining read which kept me riveted. I don't want to give away the plot, because watching it unfold and the surprises about where it goes is part of the pleasure of reading it. There are some lovely things to think about in here: what it means to be a parent or a child, our relationship to nature and what, if anything, religion means. It deeply trusts the purity of (most) children and emphasizes the corruption of (most) adults, but nothing is rendered simplistically: there is mystery and beauty and cruelty all bundled up together. Highly recommended.
13. The Price You Pay for College by Ron Lieber
There's some helpful advice in here if you are new to thinking about selecting and paying for college. But I thought the book was a bit of a mess, teetering between policy analysis and self-help/how-to categories and not doing a great job at either (better at how-to than policy though). I kept feeling surprised by how insanely privileged some of the advice is, like how if you don't have enough income to save for your kid, ask your kids' grandparents to save for you! I felt like the author has no idea how people who aren't upper middle class might be approaching the questions that he raises so his advice struck me as simplistic a lot of the time (lots of low-income people have low-income parents!) Also, I was amazed that he devotes a chapter to Smith and women's colleges, but never says anything about HBCUs--I checked the index to see if I had missed something, but nope. Never talks about them even though the policy issues that he brings up in terms of gender and leadership at Smith are analogous to many similar issues in terms of race at HBCUs. I think when it comes to selecting a college, readers could be much better served by reading "Colleges that Change Lives", a book that he never references but clearly has read, rather than his occasional musings on the value of different types of programs. I guess I shouldn't be that surprised that ideas in this book seem underdeveloped: the author is a columnist and most of these chapters read like stand-alone columns, but it's kind of disappointing that when he has the space in a book to go a little deeper, he doesn't do so.
14. Love by Roddy Doyle
This novel is a breathtakingly beautiful meditation on the emotion in all its faceted complexity. Love for partner, friend, child, stranger, the world, a country, a city, a pub, a pint are all touched upon in this novel which follows two old friends through one night's encounter. From the most inconsequential way that we use the word "love" to the most serious, the two characters circle and discuss, fight, make up, get frustrated with and feel profound gratitude towards each other. Doyle's artistry at creating characters that feel fully alive results in a book that is never a lecture about an idea, always an unfolding. Highly recommended.
15. Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong
A beautifully written book about race and anger and navigating the in-between status that Asian Americans have largely been forced into by the dominant cultural narratives. The book had so much range, from deeply personal stories of friendships and family, to more intellectual critiques of literature (her dismissal of Holden Caulfield was just so good), to lots of musings about art, artists and their place in a society that is deeply messed up when it comes to race and gender.
16. Quilting by Lucille Clifton
A really beautiful collection of poems. My favorites were mostly in the "Eight Pointed Star" and "Tree of Life" sections. I particularly loved these lines from the former:
i don't know how to do
what i do in the way
that i do it. it happens
despite me and I pretend
to deserve it.
but i don't know how to do it.
only sometimes when
something is singing
i listen and so far
i hear.
17. Writers & Lovers by Lily King
This book is a love letter to writers, and particularly fiction writers. The protagonist, a 30-ish fiction writer, drowning in debt, is one of the most appealing that I've read in ages. She's messed up and inspired, confused and hopeful, a hard worker and a hard thinker (she thinks hard thoughts. Lots of them. And they are very interesting.) The balance between these facets was beautifully rendered--it's really damn hard to make a character like this not appear so pathetic that you want to turn your eyes away from the train wreck of her life, or so resilient that you feel resentful. And interlaced throughout this moment in her life are lots of meditations on writing: institutions (MFAs, workshops, artist residencies), practices (when you write, how to find readers you trust to give real feedback on a vulnerable first draft, how to find an agent), perceptions of other writers (the hot flood of jealousy being around published authors, the relief of being around other people who haven't made it yet) and, most importantly, why people write fiction anyway. There's a line early on in the book that encapsulates the main character's struggle: her neighbor says, "It's extraordinary that you think you have something to say." And the rest of the book is finding out if she really believes this. I loved this book.
18. Commute: An Illustrated Memoir of Female Shame by Erin Williams
An amazing, wrenching, graphic memoir. One sentence at the end of the book struck me as a perfect summary: "It's the monotonous and mundane tragedy of every woman you know."
19. Maddaddam by Margaret Atwood
A re-read. It hit harder this time, which is not a surprise because reading about her waterless-flood while living through a pandemic is an intensely different position to be in than the last time I read it. Still amazing. And still made me cry at the end.
20. Just Like You by Nick Hornby
Nick Hornby is so good at taking a story that feels small at first but which ends up resonating with big questions. And he's content with posing those questions, not trying to answer all of them. The book is an intimate examination of a May-December relationship between an older white woman and a younger black man. And it brings up all sorts of thoughts about class and race and age and how we define who our group of friends are and how transgressive it is to step outside that boundary. The fact that he focuses on the small moments, like when Joseph goes to his first dinner party with Lucy and wonders about the expected behaviors, or when Lucy meets Joseph's mother who is almost exactly the same age as she is, allows the reader to extrapolate much bigger questions about how we define ourselves and our place in society. The fact that the book is set during the Brexit vote complicates things even more. It's an enjoyable read, with lovely characters who you want to spend time with, and it simultaneously makes you reflect and question your own positions without becoming pedantic or proscriptive; I think it's quite an impressive achievement.
21. A Great Deliverance by Elizabeth Peters
Some mysteries age well and some don't; sadly this one falls in the latter camp. The capable plotting and decent prose keep this from being completely intolerable, but there are so many cringe worthy moments and dated views are just plain tiresome and make an escapist read into a slog.
22. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
A mostly-fun mystery, so long as you can handle the sentimentality. I get the appeal of painting all of the group of characters living in a senior community and solving cold-cases together as likeable, but there are times when it does become a little too sweet for my taste. For example, the only marriages that are mentioned are perfect marriages. Love is boundless and forever and there's never a bit of resentment or irritation even as one character's partner begins to suffer from dementia. It's a shame that relationships are presented in such a one-dimensional fashion, a little grit would have gone a long way, because some of the individual character are wonderful. Elizabeth, a former spy, is a joy to spend time with, as is Ron, a former union organizer who admits that he sometimes goes on a rant in a community meeting just to see if he still can. It does make for an entertaining read, and I'm pretty sure I'll track down the next book in the series; I'll just have to read it when I'm in the mood to tolerate the occasional platitude.
23. Silent Voices by Ann Cleeves
A decent enough mystery with just a little bit of tiresome talk about weight and competitiveness among women that occasionally distracted from the plotting and character. I listened to the audio book which was excellently read by Charlie Hardwick and really, listening to the accent (and remembering my Uncle David) was half the pleasure for me.
24. The Glass Room by Ann Cleeves
This mystery started off well with an engaging atmosphere (the suffocating mash of longing and ego at a writer's workshop and retreat) but devolved into sloppiness in the second half where the author threw in some obvious red-herrings and reckless police procedures that just made me roll my eyes.
25. Snow by John Banville
A deeply atmospheric mystery that shows the dour side of Irish culture to the max. There are lots of evocative descriptions of miserable people wandering around eating disgusting food (mentions of kidneys and tapioca and sickly sweet sherry abound) and suffering from chills and freezing feet. The writing is very, very good and this is less of a whodunit type mystery than an exploration into the culture that makes the murders possible.
26. The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
I loved this quirky, strange Western. The narrator, an alternately tender and violent character, helps to redeem a genre that I have not previously been attracted to. There are hilarious and efficient character sketches throughout and beautiful meditations on what makes life meaningful: money? power? love? a sense of purpose? It's an economical book with prose that spends just enough time to set the scene without wallowing in the (many) potential moments of misery or suffering. It feels odd to describe a book with so much murder and mayhem as having a gentle spirit at heart, but that's how this book felt to me.
27. An Unsuitable Attachment by Barbara Pym
An odd book, beautifully written but I struggled to determine whether the material I found repellant was because the book hadn't aged well (the extremely restricted role of women, the accepted racism of provincial Britain in the 1960s when the book is set) or because the author intended to show a cast of flawed characters: small people living small lives. I mostly enjoyed the effortlessness of the storytelling, but the distasteful bits left me unsettled and feeling a bit smothered. I would say that reading this book serves as an excellent corrective for people who overly romanticize British culture.
28. The Oracle Year by Charles Soule
Entertaining, but kind of thin. The main character's process of self-discovery via receiving an extraordinary gift of 104 prophecies that all come true via a dream was the most interesting aspect of this book: watching someone realize they have power and learn how to use it was done pretty well, but the underlying situations and resolution required a little too much of a "don't think too much about this" attitude which is not really my mindset when I read. I needed a lot more detail and information to find the premise plausible.
29. Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells
I love Murderbot, but this story was pretty thin and doesn't have much to recommend it other than getting to spend a little more time with Murderbot. It felt like maybe the author was just cleaning up their desk (or disc) and found a half written story that they could finish off quickly. Nothing wrong with that, but a little disappointing when it doesn't seem to advance anything in the way of plot or character growth or world building.
30. Beatlebone by Kevin Barry
A strange, beguiling book with some of the most beautiful language I've read in ages. Kevin Barry's turns of phrase took my breath away and helped tide me over in the more challenging parts of the novel. While the book is focused on John Lennon and his sojourn in County Mayo, Ireland, I fell for the fictional character Cornelius, who Barry writes with such creative economy that when he left the narrative for a period of time, I felt bereft at his absence. (I'm curious how this book would read for a real John Lennon fan--I appreciate him, but clearly don't care as much about his internal state and creative process as some people.) I absolutely adored the first 100 pages or so which has John and Cornelius trying to dodge the press corps that are hot on the tip of a John Lennon sighting. After Cornelius leaves John on Achill Island, I read on, but missed Cornelius' presence and was so happy when he rejoined the book about 80 pages later. The section in which the author appears in the narrative to explain his process was interesting and a nice-enough interlude, though a little jarring (I wondered why it wasn't an appendix to the book, except that people often don't read appendixes so maybe interrupting the flow was necessary). Even without my favorite character to guide me, I remained engaged in this shimmering work: time, history, internal and external perceptions are so masterfully explored that even without a consistent narrative line, the book is a masterwork of fiction.
31. Secrets of Happiness by Joan Silber
I love the structure of Joan Silber's books where a minor character in one chapter is the focus of the next chapter. But this book struck me as both sour and bitter: I can't help but wonder if the title was intended ironically? So much of the book is about money, and maybe the implication is that with the stress and worry of not enough money, happiness is elusive. But even the characters with lots of money aren't particularly insightful when it comes to happiness. With a different title (say, "Secrets of Money"?) maybe this focus wouldn't have been such a big deal, but other than one chapter in which a character actually rejects his family's money (and which was a welcome relief), I thought that most of the book was about how how money brings out the worst in us. I think I was supposed to care about the character who begins and ends the book but I simply couldn't after seeing how horribly he treated his father's second family and his half-siblings. So he was unhappy later on in the progress of the story, so what? I guess I felt like maybe a little misery was due to come his way.
32. In Zanesville by Jo Ann Beard
Amazing book, probably the best I've ever read about that moment when childhood falls away and a girl teeters at the precipice of what life and the world will now mean. I loved the main character and her best friend and their ups and downs as they navigate their final year of Jr. High. They are hilarious and wise and clueless and raw. Their families are flawed but the author resists the urge to make any one of many problems into a tragedy: the focus is tight on the main character's feelings and perceptions and awareness of the world and her own shifting place in it. Because that's enough: a girl's feelings and thoughts are enough; they don't have to be heightened by crisis to be important. I loved this book.
33. The Storm Keeper's Island by Catherine Doyle
Decent enough children's book, the first in a series, set on the island of Arranmore. It moved along well enough, but the characters were somewhat wooden and predictable (the sister is horrible, until she's not! the parents are missing, etc.). I think it wants to be a Percy Jackson type series, but I didn't think the ties to Irish mythology were strong enough for it to fulfill that concept.
34. Sweet & Bitter Magic by Adrienne Tooley
This YA fantasy novel started strong but lost steam. The two main character's meeting and journey to the Witchlands was quite fun to read with the POV shifting in alternating chapters. But once they got to the Witchlands it lost steam and the world building deteriorated: there simply wasn't enough about the societal structure, how things worked or even a good sense of what the difference is between acceptable and black magic to make the actions taken by the coven and its leaders understandable or logical. The romance was pretty obvious and really drawn out and the transformation of a bad witch to a non-powered human was instantaneous with no sense of how such a major change would be processed by the character.
35. The Trojan Women: A Comic by Anne Carson and Rosanna Bruno
This collaboration of an economical poetic text by the eminent classics scholar and translator Anne Carson and raw, powerful illustrations by Rosanna Bruno, was an absolute pleasure to read and absorb. The retelling of Euripides play captured the suffering and the absolute surreal existence of those who survive on the losing side of a war. I'm not sure how effective it would be for people unfamiliar with the original play, but if you have a familiarity with the original text and enjoy imagining re-interpretations of old stories, I highly, highly recommend this version: the images and the language will haunt me for a long time. It's simply a beautiful work.
35. A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
A prose narrative that collects the stories from numerous Greek sources to try and paint a collective portrait of the experiences of the women who experienced the Trojan war. I think I've read all the source texts except for the Aeneid and only one story came from that text. It was lovely at times (I particularly enjoyed the insights of the muse Calliope) but uneven. I skimmed the sections that were in Penelope's voice because they were simply an un-interesting summary of Odysseus' adventures with little to no insight to her experience. The most effective stuff seemed to come directly from Euripides The Trojan Women--Hecabe was vividly written--but I kept asking myself what the author was really adding to it. Why read this rather than the original text(s)? I suppose that prose is considered more accessible than a translation of an Ancient Greek play, but I found the experience a little flat. I have no idea what impact the book would have on people who have never read the source material, whether this book would work effectively as a summary or if it requires familiarity to be effective.
36. The Patron Saint of Pregnant Girls by Ursula Hegi
It's an amazing feeling to put yourself into the hands of a master storyteller like Ursula Hegi and to trust that she will take you places that you won't anticipate, but that you will love so much you don't want the story to end. If you lay out the elements of this book, it sounds like it will be a grim story filled with misery and suffering: a Catholic home for pregnant girls and a woman who loses three of her four children to a freak wave while at the beach. But the book overflows with generosity and love; the nuns who run the home care more about art and education than for any shaming or reform of the girls they care for. The mother mourns and grieves for her lost children and also learns to live and love her remaining child. There's also a traveling circus that weaves through the story, bringing magic and whimsy and the occasional zebra to this small island on the Nordsee. A simply wonderful book.
37. Norwegian by Night by Derek B. Miller
A good mystery/thriller with two appealing characters: the elderly American Jewish transplant to Norway, Sheldon Horowitz, and the collected Oslo detective, Sigrid Odegard. It's a little uneven, in that Sheldon steals the show from the detective, but still charming. The villains are a little predictable because we've seen characters that depend on the fall-out from the Bosnian war appear as thugs and drug runners hiding under refugee status before, but I did appreciate the inclusion of some of the cohorts, the people who were sucked into the orbit of the main villain but were pretty fed up with the old grudges and violence.
38. A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
A fantastic sci-fi novel that engages deeply in contemplations of the politics of empire, told from the point of view of the colonized. There's terrific world building and character development and adventure, of course, but I really appreciated the subtlety of the political insights and the perspective of the main character who is an ambassador from one of the colonized worlds, and is both enamored with the culture of the empire, and wary of its seductions and abuses. It makes me happy to see that this is listed at the first in a series (though the book ends satisfyingly; no cliff-hanger or unfinished business, just more storylines that could be explored.)
39. The Post-Script Murders by Elly Griffiths
A decent-enough cozy mystery which is more interested in character than in plot. There are some nice characters in this book and it's clear that the author enjoys writing about them. But the odd thing I found was a wish that the book was about the characters who are murdered, rather than the characters who are left investigating the murder. The book has lots of meta moments since it is set in the world of mystery writers and their publishers. But I found myself wishing I could read the fictional books that are mentioned (especially the one that features a group of pensioners who have fascinating back stories--a woman who was a child assassin in Poland during WWII? Yes please!) rather than the one I was reading.
40. American by Day by Derek B. Miller
An interesting, often entertaining book that takes one of the characters from Norwegian by Night and sends her to America. I didn't think Sigrid was very interesting in the first book, she was so overshadowed by Sheldon Horowitz, so at first I was a bit baffled by the decision to make her the center of a related novel. But her Scandinavian perceptions of American culture are usually pretty interesting and give the book more oomph that I expected: lots of discussion and tinkering about with the conflict of the American cult of the individual and the need for collective good. The book, which is set in the lead up to Obama's election in 2008 and was published in 2018, reads as perhaps a bit naïve after the events of 2020 and the death of George Floyd. Also, the person we are supposed to care about Sigrid saving, her lost brother, is pretty meh.
41. Matrix by Lauran Groff
This isn't my favorite historical fiction about a medieval abbess based on a real historical figure (for that, go read Nicola Griffith's Hild) but it is still an excellent novel with lots of insight into the fascinating culture of a nunnery. There's some beautiful writing about nature and power and how women navigate the world. There were a few things that kept me at a bit of a distance, not sure exactly why--possibly some inconsistencies in the main character's belief system that left me feeling quizzical? possibly the authorial voice being a little too contemporary about predicting the fact that human behaviors will render the planet uninhabitable?--but it was a book I could put down and leave for a bit before coming back to. Still, a very enjoyable and interesting read. I think I'll go re-read Hild now...
42. Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell
An excellent ending to an excellent YA series. What started as a critique of the Chosen One story so often deployed in YA lit (and most memorably in Harry Potter) in the first book, this third book has lots of closure and a good amount of continued interrogation of the magikal world that the author constructed. I appreciated the inclusion of Agatha's journey, a side story that I might have enjoyed a little more of: her fatigue with the role she was forced to play as the Chosen One's girlfriend, her desire to have a life of her own, and the playing against type as the golden girl who wants to be free of the benefits that everyone assumes she enjoys. The Simon/Baz relationship was a little long winded at times, but then, I'm not the teen audience that this was written for so my impatience was probably due to that. And I'd read a whole book about Penelope who is like Hermione on steroids if the author cared to write an off-shoot book.An excellent ending to an excellent YA series. What started as a critique of the Chosen One story so often deployed in YA lit (and most memorably in Harry Potter) in the first book, this third book has lots of closure and a good amount of continued interrogation of the magikal world that the author constructed. I appreciated the inclusion of Agatha's journey, a side story that I might have enjoyed a little more of: her fatigue with the role she was forced to play as the Chosen One's girlfriend, her desire to have a life of her own, and the playing against type as the golden girl who wants to be free of the benefits that everyone assumes she enjoys. The Simon/Baz relationship was a little long winded at times, but then, I'm not the teen audience that this was written for so my impatience was probably due to that. And I'd read a whole book about Penelope who is like Hermione on steroids if the author cared to write an off-shoot book.
43. Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell
Fun science fiction novel: good world building and characters and a decent sense of pacing with adventures and twists. There were a few things that were drawn out a bit long for my taste (the miscommunication between the two main characters felt a little YA in its prolonged time to a resolution) but as regards the plot, the author does a good job of not over-explaining every little thing which can bog down sci fi to the point of tedium. So a little excess of leisure on the interpersonal relationships is a small gripe for a book that moves well on every other front.
44. Skunk and Badger by Amy Timberlake
Absolutely charming children's chapter book with the titular skunk and badger, lots of chickens (who are sheltered from predatory stoats by the main characters), geology, a little revisionist folk tale (chicken little and quantum physics) and lots and lots of wise examples of the challenges and rewards of friendship. So pleased to see this is the first in a series. Will Skunk and Badger be the next Frog and Toad? I don't see why not.
45. Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch
Probably not the fairest thing to read book 2 in a series before reading book 1 and then judging it...but...that's what I did. I caught onto the premise of the two remaining magical cops working alongside London Police (one master, one apprentice) quickly enough and the book is fast and an easy, relatively entertaining read. I can't say the relationships are very rich though and the main character's inability to catch onto some pretty obvious flaws (if you call inadvertently sucking the energy out of jazz musicians until they die a flaw...) in other characters was a bit tedious. I think some of the stuff that I found a bit gratuitous (vicious human animal hybrids) were put in the story as seeds for future books in the series because their appearance here didn't seem to have much purpose other than a sprinkling of horror in amongst the magic and murder. Not sure if I'll read more of the series or not; maybe give book 1 a try and see if it pulls me in?
46. A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett
A re-read of this most wonderful series of books. Really, I can't count how many times I've read it (5 or maybe 6 times? and listened to the excellent audio books at least 2 or 3 times, too ) but Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching series is just what the mental health doctor ordered for me. I love them so much.
47. Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett
I'm re-reading Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching series again because they make me happy and just get better and better. I love them so much.
48. I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett
Is this my favorite of the Tiffany Aching books? Maybe? But really why choose. Just love them all.
49. Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
It kind of kills me not to give this book 5 stars, but when 1 character out of the 5 central figures that the book is centered around is a disappointing stereotype, 4 stars is the best I can do. There are amazing feats of storytelling in this book and plenty of moments of beauty and insight that anyone who has read Doerr's previous books will expect. So why did no one in the (I'm sure) extensive editing process step up and say that making the eco-terrorist character autistic and giving him the "kick-me" name of Seymour was a simplistic shortcut? I felt a gut punch of disappointment when I realized that yes, an author who I previously thought was sensitive to stereotypes like this clearly has a blind spot and that he was indeed going to use autism in this way. I had to set the book aside for about a week before I could come back to it, and every time there was a section that focused on Seymour, I was pulled out of the book. So frustrating. Because there is so much in the other 4 characters' stories to enjoy and admire. The only other thing I would say is that the resolution section of the book felt pretty abrupt: I think another 50 pages (doable in a 622 page book) would have helped ease the narrative to a close with a little more grace.
50. The Beatryce Prophecy by Kate DiCamillo
I like the themes of this book--the power of stories, the importance of love--but unlike some of DiCamillo's most amazing books (Despereaux) this one felt like it was telling me the themes rather than having me discover them through the characters or the plot. I kept waiting for them to come alive because there's certainly potential here, particularly in the stubborn goat, the monk with the wild eye and the king who walked away from ruling, but instead I felt like I just followed them on the journey without really knowing them. And Beatryce remained a character that I only knew I was supposed to love because other people (and animals) loved her, not because of anything she really did or said. It was a strangely neutral story for such a skilled writer to produce. Still a decent book for kids to read, but it doesn't really transcend that category.
51. A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
Very fun revision of the magical school genre, this time with way less charm and way more risk to the students. I liked the premise that the only reason you'd go to a school where you have a high risk of dying is that you have an even higher risk of winding up dead if you don't go. I think this book is more similar to the Hunger Games books than to other magical academy books (like Harry Potter or The Magicians series) due to the fact that all the people inside the system are kept at an intense level of stress and survive via alliances (and their own unique skill sets that they use to craft the alliances). There are privileged students who come from the Enclaves and independent students who have to start from scratch to make their own connections and supports. I enjoyed the angry, fed-up voice of the main character and thought that the author did a great job of gracefully revealing the intricate world through the plot rather than stepping back and explaining. I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the series.
52. One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters
Good god what sentimental clap trap. I won't be reading any more of this series; the only reason I didn't abandon it was I was amazed at how bad it was and wanted to give it a chance to redeem itself, but it was deeply stupid until the bitter end.
53. The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik
Book 2 of this series was just as fun as book one. It follows the first book in feeling like the Hunger Games crossed with school of magic (think The Magicians rather than Harry Potter due to lack of whimsy) and the plot and character development arc is similar (think Catching Fire and Katniss) with the prickly and suspicious main character learning to trust other people and to revise her view of what is possible in the deeply dysfunctional world she inhabits. I'm looking forward to book 3!
54. The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles
An entertaining read that moves along quickly and has moments of grace, but I found there was a forced naivete to the narrative that grated on me. All the characters were too good to be true (out of four individuals sent to a juvenile work camp, not one of them did anything reprehensible or bad? It was always just an accident or mistake that they were nobly willing to take the punishment for? It would have been much more interesting if one of them actually had committed a crime but the author clearly prefers this sanitized version) and the precocious little kid, Billy? I guess the author just assumed we'd all be charmed rather than irritated by him. The only slightly complicated character has a really abrupt ending, as though the author wrote himself into a corner and couldn't find any other way out. The one female character is frustratingly underused. And oh god, I lost count of how many references there were to The Odyssey to the point where I just grew pretty sick of them. When Professor Abernathy chucks his life as an author with an office in the Empire State Building to ride the rails with a character named Ulysses I just had to roll my eyes.
55. A Queen in Hiding by Sarah Kozloff
Fun start to a new high fantasy series. Lots of good world building and characters. There are few issues with pacing and some spots that felt a little self-conscious, like the author had been told to incorporate a little GRRM/GofT violence and brutality to appeal to that series' readership, but did it in a half-hearted manner. But these two quibbles didn't derail the rest of the plot, just kept it from moving effortlessly.
56. The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
The Sentence is a strange book, a beguiling book, and at least for me, a somewhat hard book. With a large part of the book set in Minneapolis in 2020, it takes on race and pandemic induced trauma directly, and a lot of this was hard to read, particularly since the pandemic still rages and there is little improvement in policing policy. I had to set aside the craving for resolution because that's not how the world works, even though that is often an expectation in fiction. Intertwined with the events are vivid characters, including a bookstore that is as much a character as any of the humans, with complicated lives. One of the features that I appreciate most about Erdrich is the complexity of her characters' inner lives: one might believe in ghosts and the power of sage smudging to banish them, but have little connection to reservation culture, another might be an urban punk who is brought to tears by the opportunity to wear someone else's jingle dress and dance. Nothing that is meaningful for one person is assumed to be shared by others and each character's relationship with the visible and invisible is completely unique. I didn't always know where the book was going, but I was happy to keep reading and find out.