reading lately: January roundup

It's a little early to be coming out with a January roundup, but with a 20th anniversary (!!) trip to an all-inclusive resort - the kind of place where I can often go a book a day, with no kids along - I decided go ahead and recap what I've read so far so that I can put together an entire vacation reading post. I've been saving up some Netgalley advanced reader copies from favorite authors (Joshilyn Jackson and Annabel Monaghan!) to devour then. Meanwhile, the start of the year had some fairly quick reads, a couple of disappointments, some human depravity... but also some delight.

Literary/contemporary fiction

Heart, Be at Peace: This novel about a small, rural Irish town that is starting to see peace after the economic and social storms it has weathered - only to have a new one is brewing, with the production and distribution of drugs in the community and the addiction and violence that comes with it - is told in 21 voices, so it almost reads like interconnected short stories. While quite character driven, especially driven by the individual voices and how they are furthering or reacting the state of things in their community, it still manages to build a bit of narrative tension as we lead up to the breaking point with the fears and anger about what the drug trade is doing/could do to the town and its young people. Each voice felt unique and grabbed me from his/her first paragraph, but the difficulty of 21 narrative voices in a community with generations of history/grudges/marriages/everyone knowing everyone's business in a small town is that I struggled to remember who was related to whom, and if this new narrator was one I had encountered in a previous chapter yet (and then the nicknames on top of that!). I loved the writing, themes, structure, and evocative emotions, but wished that I didn't occasionally feel completely lost. Maybe I needed a family tree or character sheet to truly appreciate this work, but I thought it was excellently done (Ireland and your slate of amazing writers - again!) and will be reading other books by this author for sure - in fact, learned after finishing that it's a companion to an earlier book, The Spinning Heart. I do think it can be read as a standalone, but if the characters are in both maybe better to start with the first in order to keep them all straight. Either way, worth a read for sure. ★★★★.25

Dominion: A family + a church drama set in small-town Mississippi in the early 2000s, this book is told from the perspective of two women who are involved with the two "leading men" of the town - Priscilla, wife of the megachurch pastor who has his hand in every aspect of society in Dominion (religious, social, and economic) and Diamond, girlfriend to "Wonderboy", youngest of the pastor's 5 sons who is star of the high school football team, a musician performing in church, generally considered to be the most handsome and perfect in all ways... except it's immediately clear to the reader he's very much not. While there are a few major inciting incidents, this is a mostly character-driven story of how Priscilla and Diamond are sort of subsumed by their relationships with these men, and how they reconsider and grapple with their flaws. It started out with such promise for me - the voice of "First Lady" Priscilla has just the right amount of snark to point out the hypocrisy of her philandering pastor husband and to provide an interesting commentary on the Black church in the south, both the foibles of church lady life and the more serious issues, as well as the misogyny and violence of the "boys will be boys" attitude. But her character just ended up not feeling consistent with this as she seemed to work hard to be willfully ignorant of the terrible things her son was doing. In general I struggled a bit to get at the (very worthwhile and interesting) themes because of how ick all of the characters ended up feeling - honestly, just completely depraved in terms of the main male characters, and enabling of this behavior in terms of the female characters. Made me feel kind of depressed about humanity... Early on in the book there were a couple of random chapters interspersed into the ones that were told from Diamond and Priscilla's perspectives that recounted sexual assaults - nothing super duper graphic, and clearly trying to illustrate a point, but still felt gratuitous and yucky and also just made for narrative structure that felt off, just one of the loose threads I found that the book left for me. ★★★

Mystery/thriller

The Last Devil to Die: I just love this series. A comedic cozy mystery would be easy to turn too much toward shtick or feel phoned-in by the fourth book, but I grow to love the beloved original 4 in the Thursday Murder Club crew even more with each book, as well as the new characters that are introduced across the series. While the plotting/solving of the murder (of an elderly antiques dealer, and the mystery of a bunch of missing heroin that seems tied to his death) that the crew takes on in this book is clever as always, it almost takes a backseat to the characters in this book - but in a good way. Relationships and friendships deepen, and there is a lot of poignant exploration of the grief of dementia and the feeling of loss that comes from losing that person (or losing oneself, as the one with the dementia) before they are gone. I cried at parts, but then of course I also laughed at the idiosyncrasies of my favorite characters, their always-delightful repartee, and their cunning way of playing up being doddering old people to exhaust suspects into coughing up information. Looking forward to book 5! ★★★★

Boundary Waters: After a few heavier reads I was in the mood for the structure and puzzle of a police procedural, so I thought I'd finally pick up the second book in the Cork O'Connor series about a northern Minnesota small town sheriff. In the first book of the series, Iron Lake, I enjoyed the introduction of the sheriff character who has troubles on the homefront yet is super dedicated to his job and his community, and the procedural plot in combination with the nature writing about the woods/lakes of Minnesota as well as its native peoples and their stories. But perhaps I remembered it as more "procedural" than it was, because this second book wasn't that at all - much more nature thriller. I still liked the nature writing about the wilderness that borders Canada as well as the Anishinaabe characters/stories, but overall a tad disappointed by the lack of procedural, and more so by how convoluted the background of the missing person case and why so many people - good guys and bad guys - would be trekking through the wilderness to find this one person. Overall the plot of encountering dangerous people out in the remote woods + the nature writing reminded me of Peter Heller's books like The River (though his are more literary and a bit more post-apocalyptic than commercial thriller), and some of the native stories/characters in a mystery/thriller setting reminded me of the Leaphorn & Chee novel series by Tony Hillerman, or even Angeline Boulley's YA books. My husband has read about 20 books in this series now, so they are enjoyable escapist reading - perhaps especially with appropriate expectations about the thriller vs. procedural - but I think I will probably stick to William Kent Kreuger's non-Cork O'Connor books from this point (which I have found to all be excellent). ★★★

Historical fiction

Buckeye: Historical fiction of the sweeping, character-driven variety, this story is set in a small town in Ohio in the WWII years through the Vietnam era. Against the backdrop of the war years, the changes in American culture more broadly as well as the development of this small town in general, the book focuses on two couples whose lives become intertwined for an unexpected reason. We see how the characters handle a big secret among them and the repercussions of it for their marriages and their families. With a character-driven novel I'd say it's best to go in knowing only a little about the plot, because a plot summary will tell most of what's going to happen, so I'll leave it at that and focus more on vibes. Which for me were... fine. It was easy and overall enjoyable reading, but a little basic and a lot long. It was phrased as feeling "network tv" on a Sarah's Bookshelves Live podcast episode, and that describes it well. Sometimes I can get a sort of simplistic vibe that for a good story or one where I really love the characters, but I just didn't here, perhaps because the "sweeping" aspect makes it feel like I don't really get to know the characters, as we're covering so many years of their lives rather than really settling in somewhere. I can see why people would love this one, especially if they like the historical fiction genre more than I do, but for me, a bit underwhelming. ★★★.25

YA/middle grade

The Poisoned King: After going on an island-hopping quest in the magical Archipelago to figure out why its magic was fading and save its fantastical creatures, Christopher has returned to his ordinary life in London. He dreams of going back though, and so even though it's because of a poison spreading across the Archipelago and killing the dragons that usually cannot be felled by anything, he is filled with joy to receive the summons of tiny, pompous dragon Jacques and fierce, wise sphinx Naravirala to return. This time he meets Anya, princess of one of the islands, who needs help rescuing/avenging a family member. When they realize that their two quests are actually inextricably linked, they form a strong friendship and partnership, and they put their bravery and loyalty into action, along with a whole cast of magical/mythological creatures. Impossible Creatures was the first middle grade book I read last year and remained as one of my favorites for the entire year - so what a delight to get to start off this year with the sequel, which was just as wonderful. Maybe even more so because it meant returning to a familiar place with this vibrant and creative world that Katherine Rundell, along with familiar characters who charmed me just as much, and some great new characters + mythological beasts too. I was engrossed the whole way and enjoyed the journey, even more so when I got to discuss favorite parts with Hendrik when I finished. I'm not sure whether there are more books planned in this series, but much as I love the characters and the world of it, I actually felt quite satisfied with the story told here and might like it just left here with the way it is... ★★★★.5

Nonfiction/memoir

Love, Nina: A Nanny Writes Home: My mom handed me this memoir-in-letters a while back, and I saved it for when I needed something easy to pick up and put down - as in the week of January that had a snow day every. single. day. With all that nuttiness I needed something diverting and easy, and these amusing little observational letters that Nina Stibbe wrote to her sister in the early 1980s, after moving from their smaller town to London to work as a nanny. It starts with plenty of awe and descriptions about her new place and her new city, but as she settles into the role taking care of precocious Sam and Will, we quickly see that this isn't just any nanny gig - she's working for the deputy editor of the London Review of Books. This means that in addition to the family's quirks and repartee (she records lots of amusing short conversations), the letters contain all kinds of appearances of literary and theatre people - writers, editors, critics, directors, etc. - most frequently playwright and actor Alan Bennett, a neighbor who comes for dinner almost daily. Just when I thought it was getting a tad long to be just missives about the quotidian (if not interesting who's-who of the London literary scene), in the letters in part 2 Nina starts also writing about starting college in her early 20s, and we also get a picture of student life (former nerdy English majors like me will love this part) as well as a picture of someone trying to figure out who and what she wants to be in life, from the big picture to the small (loved how we see her gradually getting better at cooking and exploring new cuisine as she makes dinner for the family and reports back to her sister on the recipes she has tried). I didn't find it laugh-out-loud hilarious like the blurbs on the cover would lead you to believe, but I did find plenty to amuse me, and even more so, I couldn't stop being so fascinated by the real people - like Wikipedia page legit - that became part of Nina's everyday life during her nanny years. She sounded like she held her own so well with them, even as an inexperienced 20-year-old, and I found that so fascinating. Would recommend this if you like epistolary books, especially the literary variety like 84, Charing Cross Road, and if you like the work of Kim Fay (Kate & Frida or Love & Saffron), which has the epistolary format as well as the young person finding her way and the budding culinary aspects both of the young person learning to cook/explore interesting ingredients as well as the developing food scene and philosophies of the early 1980s (also made me think a bit of Ruth Reichl's memoirs in this way). ★★★★

Hope everyone who has had crazy winter weather has been able to turn it into cozy reading time... but also can't wait to share my non-cozy, hot weather beach reading soon 😉