At the start of 2017 I set a goal to read 40 books by the end of the year. In February I hit 20 so I increased my goal to 65 with hopes to reach 100 by the end of December. This a record of what I’m reading.
This is the second in V.E. Schwab’s series about Kell, a youngish magician living in one of 4 Londons, who has the unique ability to travel and carry messages between them all, and Deliliah Bard, kick-ass pick-pocket and uniquely fun heroine.
These books are transporting, plot-driven, and just plain fun to read. Book #3 is already on my bedside table, waiting…
When I was chatting with my friend Noelle’s husband about fantasy/sci-fi books (they’re his jam), he recommended I read Ursula Le Guin. A few days later I went to the bookstore and picked up the first in Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle trilogy, A Wizard of Earthsea. I think that had I been a 15 year-old boy and not a woman of 38, I would have connected with this book more than I did; Le Guin wrote it for a teenage audience and it does read like a YA book.
It’s the story of a young magician who, in an attempt to best his rival at magician school, unleashes a fearsome shadow into the world. In an attempt to escape the shadow he has called forth, he hones his powers, fights dragons, escapes the dangerous clutches of a beautiful queen, and embarks on an epic sea journey to the end of the world.
Though I didn’t love A Wizard of Earthsea, I’m interested in reading more Le Guin so I’m putting the next two Earthsea books and The Left Hand of Darkness on my to-read list.
As someone whose inevitable monthly mood swings impact not only myself but those around me, I was interested in reading Ayelet Waldman’s A Really Good Day. Part diary, part experiment, part drug history lesson, the book exposes Waldman’s ongoing battle with severe mood imbalances and details her experiences taking minuscule doses of LSD in an attempt to find balance in her life. In it, she candidly reveals her insights on microdosing, from the discovery of what it is to “microdose,” to finding a dealer, setting up a dosing calendar, tracking the results, all while researching the history and cultural conceptions/misconceptions of the drug.
Overall the read was a fairly interesting one, though I felt the book could have been edited down a good 100 pages; I found myself wanting more of Waldman’s personal life and less LSD history and cultural positioning.
How reliable is an unreliable narrator? This is the question I asked myself throughout the whole of this page-turner. The premise of Norwegian by Night is an interesting one: Probably senile, recently widowed, Jewish American man moves to Oslo, where he doesn’t know the language or the culture, to live with his granddaughter and her husband. Recently arrived, he witnesses a violent crime and rescues a young boy at the scene; they escape, evading the police, his granddaughter, and those looking for the boy. Do we trust this narrator, and to what end?
While Norwegian by Night is, at its core, a book of suspense, it also provides a fascinating look at Jewish identity, the frailty of memory, language and the ability to communicate without words, war and the effects of violence on the brain, parenting, aging, and death. It’s great. Read it.
It’s New Year’s Eve, 1984, and ex advertising maverick Lillian Boxfish, now 84, goes for a walk around Manhattan. She makes stops at meaningful haunts from her life, restaurants, bars, buildings, parks, revisiting her life’s big moments, weighing the cause/effect of old choices, remembering love and relationships long over but not forgotten. On Lillian Boxfish’s journey, we journey with her, into her present via memories of her past.
The book is very readable. Rooney peppers the narrative with nice bits of writing, some good character development, and an intriguing portrait of then/now New York. I just didn’t love character of Lillian Boxfish; the older version I liked okay, but I found the younger version of the character pretty obnoxious and unlikable, and didn’t buy her advertising genius. A fine read, but didn’t love it.
Though the premise of this book hinges on a romantic liaison, to call this book “a romance” is misleading. There is no bodice-ripping, no Fabio, no throbbing love muscle. I almost didn’t pick it up because of that label.
Think of “romance” in the best sense, it can be sexy, confusing, satisfying, transformative. A young maid on an estate and a young heir of a neighboring manor engage in a tryst that, in one afternoon, realigns the trajectory of their lives. Her life after this one Sunday is changed forever, setting her on a course of self discovery and exploration. She is awakened to the prospect of a different life, she is changed.
I won’t spoil here what leads to this realignment, for that would reveal the heart of the plot. I will say that the more I read, the more I enjoyed the book. I relished the elegance of the prose, and the hazy briefness, so full of longing and sadness, of their romantic encounter. A lovely read.
“It’s important to say what hope is not: it is not the belief that everything was, is, or will be fine. The evidence is all around us of tremendous suffering and tremendous destruction. The hope I’m interested in is about broad perspectives with specific possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we act. It’s also not a sunny everything-is-getting-better narrative, though it may be a counter to the everything-is-getting-worse narrative. You could call it an account of complexities and uncertainties, with openings.” -Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark.
A necessary read for engagement, action, perseverance, and, yes, hope in the current political state.
I discovered this trilogy by V.E. Schwab on Goodreads and loved the cover treatments so decided to give the books a try.
About the series, from V.E. Schwab’s website: “A fantasy series that takes place in a series of parallel Londons—where magic thrives, starves, or lies forgotten, and follows the last of a line of blood mages and a pickpocket from Georgian London as they combine forces to save the worlds—all of them.”
A Darker Shade of Magic (#1 in the series) is a rollicking good time of a book about a blood magician named Kell, and a kick-ass heroine pickpocket named Delilah. They join forces to defeat those out to destroy Kell and the London he inhabits. Time/space travel, political intrigue and evil plots, spells, adventure, and (you guys!) MAGIC.
I can’t say that I’d put Ways to Disappear into your hand and tell you “you have to read this.” It just wasn’t that book for me.
What it is: a beautifully written book about a Brazilian author who goes missing, last seen climbing into a tree with a suitcase and vanishing, and the American translator who comes to Brazil to search for her. You get the literary meta-ness of a writer (Novey) writing about an author and her translator, the texts that they share and the stories they put out-the author’s in Portuguese, the author/translator’s in English-into the world. When she gets to Rio, the translator begins to question: how well does she really know this author whose work she has lived, breathed, and worked on for years, with whom she has spent much time lingering over exacting words, discussing the fabric of her stories? Where does the author draw the line between herself and the characters she creates? How can the translator “read” the act of the author’s disappearance? When you’ve put a body of writing out into the world, do you ever really disappear?
While I didn’t love this book, I did enjoy it. I appreciated the elegant writing, the story, the characters, and the thoughts it provoked.
Brief Book Reviews 