What Are We Reading, Page 16

I really liked I Have Some Questions for You which, as the brilliant title implies, raised more questions than answers. I noticed that the structure of the book was unusual and also very effective with her frequent use of the second person to direct the readers' attention and the listing of similar cases employed in shorthand references to conjure the readers' emotional memory. One thing that was left unresolved for the reader was the narrator's references to her her own sexual assault, and how hearing about others triggered her anxiety and insomnia. There was an incident that she related that took place in high school about being grabbed by the breast along with another girl, but that didn't seem to be the assault that caused her trauma. I have some questions for the narrator about that.

In the end, this book demonstrated clearly the unreliability of memory, as well as how difficult it is to know our minds let alone the minds of others.

Next up in my rotation is nonfiction, so I'm off to survey my TBR shelf.

I'm currently reading Our share of night by Mariana Enriquez. I've read her short stories before, which generally cross the border from Magical realism to horror, and this novel is in the same territory. It follows a father who serves as medium for a mysterious cult, and his son whom he is trying to keep from the cult's clutches. It also touches on the real-life horrors of life in Argentina, where people are disappeared and no questions can be asked.

I finished Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories. As soon as I could follow the plot and understand what was happening magic took over and I was lost again. Not a book I'd recommend.
Now I'm reading Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood by Maureen Ryan which is another book about toxic white men and how their abuse is forgiven because they are so wonderfully creative. Now that Weinstein got his just desserts Hollywood acts like all the problems are solved and they can go on with the same old S&M routine. Sheesh, Hollywood, I'm not quitting my day job.

I decided on Crying in H Mart which I knew was popular, but that's about all. Turns out it's another book about grief, but the eponymous first chapter was so engaging, that it may rise to the top of my recent reads on the same topic.

>5 vwinsloe: I can't remember why I read Crying in H Mart, it was probably the same as you, I found it mentioned in many places so I thought I'd give it a try. I had the same reaction as you and I loved all the food.

Well, I finished Crying in H Mart and, while I enjoyed it, there was way too much kimchi for my taste.

Now I'm reading The Margarets since I have had good luck with some of the older science fiction by women authors that I have read in the last couple of years. So far, it seems... complicated.

I love Sherri Tepper but haven't read this one. Let us know how it is.

Finished Our share of night which was very good, though very dark. Definitely horror, although also a family and coming-of-age story. There's a lot of violence and abuse of children involved.

I've just started I have some questions for you, inspired by Joyce's review. I like books with school/college settings.

>7 vwinsloe: "Complicated" is a good way of describing The Margarets. I enjoyed some of the story threads more than others, but overall it was a very thought-provoking book.

>9 Sakerfalcon: Good to know that about The Margarets. I shall soldier on.

I forgot to say that I read The chosen and the beautiful, after the conversation we had about it here. I really enjoyed it. The prose was beautiful, with some gorgeous set-piece scenes. I liked Jordan's POV of events, and the addition of demons and magic into the mix.

>11 Sakerfalcon: I'm glad. I loved her artistic choices; she painted such a vivid picture in a very short book.

I've returned once again to my favourite historical period, reading Medieval women : a social history of women in England, 450-1500 by Henrietta Leyser. As expected, the early part of the era mainly documents royalty, noblewomen and Abesses by name, though there is much information about the general education level and abilities of nuns, who were from every stratum of society. The post-Conquest period is more interesting, with data from court rolls, parish records, and general government accounts highlighting the lives and work of many ordinary women. I find it fascinating to discover how my ancestors lived, and imaginge what my life would have been like then.

>13 SChant: It's good that it gets into the lives of ordinary women too. Sounds interesting.

I enjoyed The Margarets. It was complicated, but the author's deft hand at plotting never let me get lost, even though I sometimes nod out when reading at bedtime. The downside of this was that I saw where the plot was going right away, but I remained interested in seeing how it got there. At the end, there were some twists that I didn't see coming and that made it a satisfying read.

I've started The Other Black Girl because it was mentioned here, and good enough, I guess, to merit a film version.

>15 vwinsloe: I loved The Other Black Girl, I hope you like it.

>15 vwinsloe: Glad you enjoyed The Margarets. Tepper has long been one of my favourite SF authors.

I've just read Woman running in the mountains, a Japanese novel about a young single mother in a society that is hostile to parenthood outside marriage. Takiko struggles to find work that will pay enough for her and her son to move out of the parental home, but over the course of a year she finds some physical and emotional freedom. I really enjoyed this.

I've just a few pages from the end of Desert of the heart, a novel from 1960 about a woman who moves to Reno for the 6 weeks required before divorcing her husband. She meets a younger woman, Ann, and the two find themselves drawn to each other. The casino/desert setting is so compelling and I am finding this a really engaging read.

>17 Sakerfalcon:. I have The Gate to Women's Country and Grass on my wishlist. Is there anything else that I should be looking for?

>18 vwinsloe: Those two are great. The rest of the Grass trilogy is good too. The three books are very loosely linked. Of her later books I loved The family tree and The fresco. The only book of hers that I really didn't like was Beauty because it was super dark.

ETA if you can get hold of her early Marianne trilogy, I highly recommend that too.

>19 Sakerfalcon: Thank you. I didn't know that Grass was a trilogy. I'll put all of these on my wish list, and you never know when I will I will find them! Thanks again.

I'm about to start Unclean Jobs for Girls and Women by Alissa Nutting - been after this one for a while, I think it was on the Tiptree (now known as Otherwise) shortlist in around 2010 - mixture of science fiction and surreal short stories.
Also continuing my interest in women in science with a biography of physicist Lise Meitner.

>21 SChant: I think that I've heard of Unclean Jobs for Girls and Women, but I haven't read it. Please tell us what you think when you are done - short story collections are usually so uneven that I hesitate to start one.

Finished Desert of the heart and really enjoyed it. Nice to read a book about a lesbian relationship where no-one dies and the ending is positive. I loved the Reno setting and how the author uses the desert and the casino as important factors in the story.

Now I've started Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. Bumped it up the queue because I've been seeing it everywhere lately.

>23 Sakerfalcon: Desert of the Heart sounds good, thanks.

I loved Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. I hope that you enjoy it, too.

>23 Sakerfalcon: Did you know there's a movie, Desert Hearts, based on the book? I accidentally saw it one night and liked it. I haven't read the book so I don't know how close its relationship to the movie is.

>22 vwinsloe: Well I'm almost 1/3rd through and not enjoying it. It's not stories, more vignettes with not particularly interesting themes, characterisation, or beautiful writing to liven it up. I think the author imagines some of the situations are humorous but they just seem like writing done by an earnest teenager keen to show how avant-garde she is. It has the benefit of being short, so I will finish it, but no more by this author for me.

>26 SChant:. Oh, that's not good. I'm not a big short story reader anyway, so it has to be really enjoyable to tempt me. Thanks.

>26 SChant: I know what you mean about short stories, they can be so hit-and-miss. I read a compilation this month that was mostly hit - Vampires Never Get Old: Tales with Fresh Bite by Zoraida Córdova (Editor). I can't remember if I wrote about it already, maybe somewhere else. These are definitely not your usual vampires, and there are many varieties - female, people of color, LGBT (of course, as is everything these days), young but not sparkly. I'm always hesitant to read short stories and always glad when they work out.

>28 Citizenjoyce: Agreed, they can be very variable, but I do like short story collections/anthologies. They're often great ways to dip into themes or areas that I'm not already familiar with, and fingers-crossed to find new authors. And if they turn out to be rubbish, well, Sturgeon's Law applies!

>29 SChant: Ouch. Too harsh. At least I don't find 90% are bad but maybe that's because I usually read short stories that follow a theme or author I like.

After my previous disappointment :) I've now started another short story collection, Women As Demons by Tanith Lee, which was unaccountably missing from my Womens Press collection from the '80s & '90's.

I finished The Other Black Girl, and, I am so glad that, for a change, I had read the Washington Post review first. I generally don't like magical realism, or any type of fiction that helicopters supernatural elements into an otherwise realistic narrative. But the Washington Post said that the book was a mash up between The Devil Wears Prada and Get Out, so I was prepared and not annoyed. I loved Get Out which was more fully out there. I also agreed with the Washington Post review in that some of the plot lines in The Other Black Girl were not fully fleshed out or finished off.

But I enjoyed it enough to look at the Hulu tv series trailer, and it looks perfect.

>31 SChant: Women as Demons isn't in my library, but I found Off With Her Head on Hoopla. Maybe I'll give it a try.

>32 vwinsloe: I'm glad you kind of liked The Other Black Girl. Only 3 more days until we see what Hulu does with it.

>33 Citizenjoyce: You must have the wrong touchstone in your reply to SChant.

I'm well into The Sixth Extinction. It's been on my TBR for a while, and since a theme of The Margarets was how humanity fouls its own nest, I was moved to finally read it. The Sixth Extinction is almost 10 years old now, and I wonder how many species have gone extinct since it was published.

>34 vwinsloe: Nope, that's the one. It's another book demonizing women, not as demons (I don't think) but as inferior.
The Sixth Extinction makes you wonder how our planet will survive in any way hospitable to humans or animals. I go about my pleasant little life feeding my backyard birds, front yard feral cats, and crazy dogs while the earth seems to be disappearing.

>35 Citizenjoyce: I misunderstood you about Off with her Head; I thought that you were referring to another book by the same author, not one on the same subject.

I think that I am on one of those "pairing" reads that was previously talked about by @SChant. The Sixth Extinction is bringing back some emotions that I had when reading the dystopian novel Migrations this year. The Sixth Extinction, so far, is written with a tone of wry humor. Whereas Migrations is emotionally wrenching. Now that I think of it, maybe instead of a pairing, I am having more of a read thread, since The Margarets is what led me to The Sixth Extinction in the first place.

>36 vwinsloe: I love it when one book just naturally leads to another.

I've started The Book of M which contains many of the same tropes shared by post-apocalyptic stories, but is intriguing nonetheless. In this story, people all over the world start to lose their shadows, and then their memories in a way that is more like a hasty Alzheimer's loss of autonomic function.

It's not a short book; I hope I like it.

>25 Citizenjoyce: Some of the reviews for Desert of the heart mentioned the movie. It sounds like there are some differences. If it comes my way I'll definitely check it out.

>38 vwinsloe: Curious to see what you make of The book of M.

I'm currently reading Olga dies dreaming, and loving it. It follows two siblings of Puerto Rican descent through their lives in New York society, and through them we see the story of Puerto Rico and its troubled relationship with the US.

I just finished the first two books of the Songs of Penelope trilogy by Claire North. I love myths retold. These are about the women left behind as their brave men went off to fight the Trojan War. In those days everyone had a personal relationship with their god or goddess, so we get to see the lives of both people and immortals. The first book, Ithaca, is narrated by Hera, goddess of queens, marriage, and women. All the goddesses have their favorites, and hers is Clytemnestra. The wise Penelope doesn't seem to be anyone's favorite, but she is respected by all. Deeply respected, by the women. None of the men show any respect for women, even their sons. They're there to do their jobs, birth sons, and be abused when the spirit strikes. We see the greedy suitors and petulant sons, but we get a taste of the strength and wisdom of women whether they be queens or maidservants. This first book is a setup, and it sets the tone well. Apparently those 20 years Penelope was protecting Ithaca she was doing more than unpicking stitches from a shroud. Then we move on to House of Odysseus. What a wonderful, completely absorbing novel about strong women, plots, loyalty, espionage, terrorism, and comeuppance. I'm spoiled for any other book for a long time. Athena, goddess of love and sex, narrates this one. The vapid Helen is her favorite. We're reminded again that being the favorite of the gods is not always a good thing. Most of the men come off very badly. We've seen Agamemnon described in other books by women as a sadistic bully. He's still there. Menelaus, husband of Helen, isn't any better, nor are his sons, nor is Penelope's son, Telemachus, though she loves him dearly. Loving men dearly, as Electra loves Orestes and Agamemnon, also doesn't work out well. But the women are glorious. Unfortunately, the third book, which she hasn't yet written, will no doubt be told from the perspective of Athena who favors Odysseus. We know what happens when he finally comes home. I don't know if I want to read it.
Now I'm on to Tom Lake by one of my favorite authors, Ann Patchett. I'm doing it quite a disservice by reading it while I'm still enthralled with Penelope.

>39 Sakerfalcon: I had Olga Dies Dreaming in my hand at a spring library sale and my arms were full and I didn't know enough about it at the time. From your description, it looks like something that I would like. I'm sure that I will see it again.

>40 Citizenjoyce: Greek and Roman mythology retold seems to be popular these days. I've been afraid to try any because I was sure that they would suffer by comparison with Madeline Miller's books. But it sounds like I should put Songs of Penelope on my wishlist. Thanks.

>39 Sakerfalcon: I liked The Book of M a lot. Sure, the worn out post-apocalyptic tribal warfare and chase scenes were a bit tiresome, but overall Peng Shepherd had a really intriguing concept that she brought to a satisfying conclusion. The book raised a couple of interesting questions that will keep me thinking for a while. I have already put her latest book, The Cartographers, on my wish list. So I would recommend The Book of M with the reservations that I mentioned.

I just found her short book The Future Library for free at Tor and I will be reading that, too.

https://www.tor.com/2021/08/18/the-future-library-peng-shepherd/

>42 vwinsloe: I'm about to start The Book of M. I've just read 2 books by a male author, Sebastian Barry, that were so depressing they made me want to slit my throat. I hope I won't have to pull out the bandages.

>43 Citizenjoyce: I hope you like it!

I'm currently reading something completely different. I saw West with Giraffes high on LT's Top Five Books list a few years back, and put it on my wishlist. It's eye-rollingly corny, but charming in its own way, and I suspect it will be a comfort read for me. Anyway, animals.

>44 vwinsloe: I'm 60% through The Book of M and not in love with it so far. It is interesting but I have a hard time relating to books that show people automatically degenerating into murderers. I know, even with politics the way they are today, I have a hard time buying that. Trump and the GOP are helping me with it, though.

>45 Citizenjoyce:. I don't have too much philosophical trouble with the violence having lived through many seasons of The Walking Dead on TV, but for the same reason, I find myself bored by it now. I wasn't really enjoying the book at the point where you are either, and I easily guessed the first plot twist. Those were the reservations that I mentioned (although for a different reason), and I think that good writers don't need violence to create dramatic tension. This was Peng Shepherd's first novel, and I hope that she is beyond those tropes now.

>46 vwinsloe: I finished The Book of M. I can see she can be a good writer when she eases off the violence. I love the way she describes deepening dementia. At first, I think my sister fought her dementia, but now she has leaned all the way into it and is more comfortable, no longer angry, very loving. There's a book I read a few years ago that sticks with me, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande who's a man but M reminds me of it. Just how much should you limit a person's life in order to protect them? I like the way Shepherd illustrated this question that most of us will have to ask or have asked about us eventually. There's a quote that comes up on atheist forums often, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths.” Meaning don't use intelligence or reason, rely on emotion to make your decisions. I love how Shepherd illustrates this with the Transcendents. So, overall I think it's a pretty good book with potential for much better in the future.

>47 Citizenjoyce: I am glad that you thought it redeemed itself somewhat in the end. The most interesting things for me to think about after reading it were: 1.when Ory rejected Ursula at the end, was it because it was the wrong body? Or was it because she only had a limited set of Max's memories that were on the recording? If it was because it was the wrong (and older) body, would a woman in Ory's shoes have felt the same? 2. What would those people whose shadows were remade out of books be like? Whose memory would I like to have? .

I also thought that the description of memory loss was well done. And the religious aspect? I asked myself, why do all post-apocalyptic books seem to have a group of religious fanatics? And then I realized what a stupid question that was!

>48 vwinsloe: Yes, I liked that it left us with some questions to ask ourselves. A while ago I read a post that someone wrote about how tired he was that religious leaders are always portrayed as evil and power hungry. It's just such a good job if power is what you want, as, unfortunately, is so well on display now.

From my current read, Sign Here by Claudia Lux __ "knew ... charm was a defense which rose to the surface less like cream and more like dorsal fins." Is that perfect or what?

>50 Citizenjoyce: That's a great line. Sounds like a funny book.

>51 vwinsloe: It's a book about hell so funny in places, moralistic in others. I liked it.

>52 Citizenjoyce: Thanks, I'm putting it on my list.

I'm reading The Moonday Letters which I believe was recommended by @Sakerfalcon. I usually don't get on well with books that incorporate a strong cultural mythology, but I'm not having any trouble with this SFF novel that brings Finnish shamanism and ecological ethics into the solar system. I didn't realize it, but I have had another book by this same author entitled Memory of Water on my wishlist for a very long time.

I read Unclean Jobs For Women and Girls, and I have to admit, I liked it. It reminded me of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender which I loved because it was so weird and unexpected. The stories in Unclean Jobs are also bizarre, and the characters verge on repellant, but the weirdness sucked me in. I'm going to check out other things by her. I'm going to try Made For Love which is also supposed to be weird. I've heard positive things about Tampa but I think that would be too overwhelmingly repellent to try.

>53 vwinsloe: I loved The Moonday letters! Glad you're enjoying it too. I need to reread Memory of water as it's been a while.

I've just reread Ancillary justice, which is just as good the second time around, and started a fantasy, Emily Wilde's encyclopaedia of faeries. Scholarly heroine undertaking field research in wintery Iceland-analogue. It's good so far.

>55 Sakerfalcon:. I will get to Memory of Water sooner rather than later now on the strength of The Moonday Letters. I really like her lyrical writing style.

I seem to have enjoyed all of the books that I have read that were labeled "historical fantasy," so I am putting Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries on my wishlist. Thanks for mentioning it.

I've started Heather Cox Richardson's new book Democracy Awakening. I'm quite familiar with her ideas, having been a subscriber to her Letters from an American almost since their inception, but it's helpful to see these ideas laid out in a longer, more cohesive format.

>57 vwinsloe: What a mind she has. She makes things so understandable. I'm #8 on hold for 1 copy on Libby. Also, I'm #51 on hold for 22 copies of Cassidy Hutchinson's book. I'll be happy to read both, but what a discrepancy in what Libby finds important. A little Heather Cox Richardson story. My cozy real-life book club was kind of invaded early in the year by a new man who was conservative, anti-feminist, and tried to put us down with his "great intellect." At one point he was showing us how all FDR's accomplishments were anti-American because the Supreme Court kept finding them unconstitutional. Richardson to the rescue because this is one of the bases of her understanding of conservatives, so I threw her at him. I said those conservative justices kept trying to dismantle everything FDR was doing, but finally he shut them down by threatening to pack the court, so they backed down and finally let his programs stand. Their objections had nothing to do with the constitution and everything to do with protecting the rich. He was so flustered that anyone, especially an old woman, had read anything about this particular subject that he never came back. I don't think he's missed by anyone.

>58 Citizenjoyce: That's a great story! I am enjoying Professor Richardson's book even more than I expected. There's a lot of information that I am sure that she researched for her history of the Republican Party To Make Men Free which I have not read. It's amazing to still be learning so much from her.

>58 Citizenjoyce: I love that story; nicely done!

>58 Citizenjoyce: Well done!

>59 vwinsloe:, >60 ScoLgo:, >61 Sakerfalcon: Thanks. It always feels good when you can access your reading when you need it.

I have started Haven which was mentioned here a while ago. I'm interested in seeing what Emma Donoghue does with 3 monks on an island.

I finished Haunted Nights a collection of Halloween-related short stories edited by Ellen Datlow and liked almost all of them. Maybe I'm going to start a run of good short story collections. Now I get to start Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America
by Heather Cox Richardson. I can't believe it came in so fast, though it is a short book. I am really looking forward to this.

>64 Citizenjoyce:. I hope that Democracy Awakening lives up to your expectations. I found the first section to be the strongest.

I finished Haven and I was really impressed by the plotting and character development. This one ranked higher for me than The Pull of the Stars, but it was just the predictable romance element that I found off putting in that one.

I've got to figure out what this year's Halloween read will be. I am thinking that I will read my first Holly Black. I have two sitting on my TBR pile, Book of Night which is her adult fiction, and The Coldest Girl in Coldtown which, I believe, was her breakout YA novel. Book of Night was apparently not as well received, but Holly Black is local for me, and that book is supposed to have some local flavor, which I would enjoy.

I liked Book of Night but I loved The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, that was the first of hers that I read.
Democracy Awakening - I don't know what to say. She knows far more than I and seems to be able to stay optimistic. Maybe by now, she's sharing the same sense of dread as the rest of us or she wouldn't have written the book. I guess she's showing how we have overcome the tendency toward oligarchy before, and we can do it again, but ... I'm sure the GOP will do all they can to ruin her life, starting with trying to get her fired.

>66 Citizenjoyce: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown will be the one for Halloween then. Thanks for your input.

Professor Richardson has been named on the right-wing "Professor Watchlist' website since at least 2016. I think at this point she must be tenured at Boston College, and she has brought some notoriety to a Jesuit university that can't quite seem to decide whether it is a school for academics or athletics. Boston College went through a challenging period in the early 1970s with the controversial professor and author Mary Daly, who wrote Beyond God the Father and Gyn-ecology, and although the university sort of sidelined her, I hope that they learned that controversial professors only increase the university's visibility in a good way. I suppose it will depend on how things turn out in the end though.

>67 vwinsloe: I had no idea she taught at the same place as Mary Daly. That must be one exciting school.

>68 Citizenjoyce: The legend is that Boston College was started as an alternative for local Roman Catholics who Harvard would not let in. I don't know how true it is. I went there when Mary Daly was teaching, and the College was just starting to broaden its emphasis to include sports. I'm sure that Heather Cox Richardson is attracting more than football players.

I've started The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, and it's fun so far. I couldn't ask for a more perfect Halloween read. Thank you.

It's Black History Month in the UK so I'm reading a couple of books by Black women authors. They are actually very similar in terms of the theme and characters, both focusing on Black families at the time of school integration. Betsey Brown by Ntozake Shange is set in St Louis, and told from the POV of the title character, in a voice that reflects the spoken dialect. Rattlebone takes place in a Black neighbourhood of Kansas City, Kansas, and is a collection of linked short stories focuses on teenage Irene. Some of the stories are from other POVs so we get a wider picture. Both are very good reads.

>69 vwinsloe: I'm glad you like it. I think it's a great introduction to her.
>70 Sakerfalcon: I checked out Rattlebone from Hoopla. We'll see how I like it.

Well, The Coldest Girl in ColdTown was a good read. It seemed to be older YA, with two plotlines and a backstory that was a bit complicated. That suits me, because I am frequently bored by YA.

Last week, I had the luck of finding Demon Copperhead on my local library's sale cart. So I started it last night, and it's good so far. I've read quite a lot of Barbara Kingsolver and have liked just about everything that she has written.

>73 vwinsloe: That was a good find! I think Demon Copperhead will be one of my books of the year.

I've just read the new Hill House quasi-sequel by Elizabeth Hand. She and Jackson are two of my favourite authors, so this was a match made in heaven for me. I though Hand did justice to Jackson's creation, summoning up the right sort of horrors and including some additional folk horror ingredients. The four protagonists were suitably flawed in ways that that the house was able to exploit to great effect. It is very rare that I buy a book and read it at once. This was one of those times, and I'm glad I did. ETA the book is titled A haunting on the hill.

>74 Sakerfalcon: A Haunting on the Hill sounds like the perfect read for the end of October. Putting it on my wish list. Thanks.

>74 Sakerfalcon: I just put a hold on A Haunting On the Hill I'm #17 on 5 copies so I guess it won't be a Halloween read for me.

I just finished 2 opposite types of books. the Haunting Danielle series by Bobbi Holmes is not my kind of reading. I was looking for Halloween reading and found this series about a haunted house. I've done the first 5 cozy mysteries just because after each one I had to know what happened next. They're simplistic, very gender typical, and every bit as much cozy as mystery.
Then, looking into banned books and my ongoing confusion about sexual confusion, I read the graphic memoir Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe. E describes eirself as AFAB (assigned female at birth) but has always hated the female parts of eirself. E would love to get top surgery and thinks of eirself as having a penis. E thinks of eirself as nonbinary and asexual. This seems to be a complete obsession. I have a hard time with a person being so completely obsessed with sex, but I can't see why the book would be banned except that it depicts sex and gender as concepts to be pondered. This leads once again to the idea that the only reason to ban books is to make sure people don't think beyond the surface of their lives.
Next up will be the latest addition to the Cormoran Strike series The Running Grave. I'm so glad there's a new one.

Has anyone read Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll? I see it's been picked by at least one book club, and I don't know if I can do a book about a serial killer who targets young women.

>78 Citizenjoyce:, no I have not read that. But it looks maybe more like The Shining Girls which centered the victims and didn't glorify the killer?

I finished Demon Copperhead, and as usual, being that sort of person, I really, really tried to find fault with it. I couldn't really, except perhaps that it was a bit predictable, and that predictability reduced the emotional impact for me. But that's a minor quibble. It was really one of my best books of the year.

So much so that I have something of a book hangover, and needed to find something completely different to avoid comparisons. So I started The Night Tiger which takes place in Malaysia back in the 1930s. That should be different enough.

I enjoyed The Night Tiger which was a puzzle mystery made more intriguing by its historical period, exotic location and culture. This is the sort of magical realism that I don't mind.

Next up is Waking Up White which I've come across often enough to think that it might be a bit of different approach to anti-racism thought. It's a memoir, but the author's premise is that she grew up believing that she didn't have a race, and that race was something that only minorities had. I've only started it, and her epiphany has yet to occur.

>81 vwinsloe: Hmm, that sounds like a realization many of us have had.

Reading science fiction at the moment, to get me through the long, wet days (sigh).
Just finished Firefly - Coup de Grace by Una McCormack. The beginning was a blatant rip-off of Charles Portis's True Grit, but then it settled down into an entertaining yarn of off-world meddling, local baddies, and our big Damn' Heroes wading in on the side of the little guys.

Started The Origin of Species and other stories by Bo-Young Kim - a new author to me, discovered in one of Lavie Tidhar's "Best of World SF" volumes. So far interesting and slightly off-beat stories, though I've only read a couple.

>83 SChant: Firefly- Coup de Grace sounds like a total comfort read!

>84 vwinsloe: Absolutely!

I've just finished Day of fallen night, the prequel to Priory of the Orange Tree which was one of the best fantasy novels I've read in recent years. The prequel was just as good. These are big books, full of excellent female characters and plausible worldbuilding.

Now for a complete change I'm reading the newish sequels to the Malory Towers series of girls' school stories! They are like popcorn and I'm devouring them fast.

I finished Cassidy Hutchinson's Enough. She's the perfect GOP woman and would probably still be working for trump if he had won. She's in the St. Ronald Reagan camp. Her first time voting was in 2016. She voted for trump because he was the moderate candidate. She's very young but worked her way up the political ladder quickly because she's pretty and firmly entrenched in the political hierarchy, plus she is supremely organized and a very hard worker. trump probably could have done almost anything and kept her support; she firmly supported him during the first impeachment hearing because impeachment should be used only for very significant actions. She worked hard to make sure no republicans voted yes. If trump hadn't fomented insurrection and said he believed Pence should be hung, she'd be in Florida now helping him in his second run for the President. I guess it takes a lot to convince people who are still in love with their psychopath father, but at least she did come around in the end. That's more than can be said for the majority of the party.
Now I'm rereading Dawn. Lord, I think Octavia Butler would have ripped her to shreds.

>86 Sakerfalcon: The Priory of the Orange Tree has been on my wishlist for a while. I've seen it a couple of times and was daunted by its size. Good to know that it's worth it.

>87 Citizenjoyce: You are a glutton for punishment. Thanks for reading Enough so that I don't have to. I had a much better time with the Xenogenesis trilogy, but all Butler's books with the miscegenation theme make me uneasy.

I finished Waking Up White which is the memoir of an anti-racist thinker and educator. I’ve read several anti-racist books, and this one seemed to resonate with me more than some of the others. Because it is not “preachy” nor written to shame the reader, you can follow the author’s journey and get more out of it that way. She talks about what the “dominant white culture” is, and how it differs from both “white ethnic culture” and the cultures of people of color. She also describes getting “zapped” like touching an electric fence, when she has said something well intentioned that would be ordinary in the dominant white culture, but is offensive to people of color. Recommended.

Now I'm reading The City We Became. The only other N.K. Jeminsin I have read is her Broken Earth Trilogy, and if I like this one even half as much, it will be a winner.

>89 vwinsloe: Thanks, I checked out Waking Up White and will read it sometime this month.
Doggone it, I see I read The City We Became and gave it 4 stars but don't remember anything about it. Now I guess I'll have to reread it before I can get to the second in the series.

>90 Citizenjoyce: I hope you'll like Waking Up White.

I was fortunate enough to find The City We Became and The World We Make sitting next to each other on the fantasy shelf of my local used bookshop, so I'll be reading them close in time to each other.

>91 vwinsloe: How's that for luck?

Reading Blue Machine by physicist/oceanographer Helen Czerski. I heard her speak at a Sheffield book event last month, and she was so passionate about the oceans that I had to buy the book. So far it's absolutely fascinating.

>92 Citizenjoyce: I sometimes get the impression that when I have good luck finding recently published books that they may not be well liked. But we'll see.

>93 SChant:. I see that there are some videos on Youtube of Helen Czerski. I will check her out. Thanks.

I finished Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II by Svetlana Alexievich. It's only 256 pages but seems much longer - story after story by adults who were children in the Soviet Union during WWII where they lived through war, death, famine, inhumanity, depravity, and war crimes. One of the subjects says that the children of the war have lived shorter lives than their parents. I don't know if that's true, but I can sure see how it might be. I don't always agree with Nobel Prize winners, but Alexievich is a treasure showing the world what life has been like in her country. I thought I knew pretty much everything that was done to people, but she brings up the fact that Germans thought that blood from children could help heal their damaged soldiers, so they did just that, picking the most beautiful and brightest children to give their soldiers the best blood.
To get the pictures out of my head I've started Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link. I won't recommend it to you >94 vwinsloe: particularly since you're not fond of magical realism. This is magical realism on steroids, it's like her imagination exploded, though I think the stories were much more fun for her to write than for me to read.
>93 SChant: Is Blue Machine pretty understandable? It sounds like something I should read.

>95 Citizenjoyce: Blue Machine is written for the lay-person (no lines of formuli, to my relief!). She explains the science in a very understandable way, using anecdotes and vivid description to illustrate her point. I'm about 70 pages in and really enjoying it.
Also, love Kelly Link's work, and I'm not fond of fantasy/magic realism either. There's just something about it that tickles my imagination.

>96 SChant: I can see some people would love Kelly Link, but her imagination is too wild for me. Thanks for the info about Blue Machine.

>95 Citizenjoyce: I could have sworn that I read something by Kelly Link, her name is so familiar to me. But I see that she mostly writes short stories, and I don't read many short stories.

I got a new bookcase though, and I am trying to reorganize my TBR pile. It has become obvious to me that books by men, large non-fiction books, and short story anthologies are languishing. I am thinking about maybe reading a large non-fiction book and a book of short stories at the same time, but at different times of day. These are all things that I want to read in theory, but the large non-fiction books are daunting to me since it takes me longer to read non-fiction in general, and other things are always calling to me from the TBR shelf. Hmmm.

>98 vwinsloe: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari is 464 pages, I don't know if that classifies as large, and it's by a man, so a twofer.

>99 Citizenjoyce: That's still on my wish list. But if it wasn't, it would be languishing on my TBR shelf!

Finally I read a book that kept me up all night because I couldn't put it down. Starling House by Alix E. Harrow is kind of horror, but not too horrible. I have Stephen King's Holly in my queue also and had to look back a couple of times to make sure I was reading the right book. The heroine lives life with rules of her own. She's raising her younger brother on a diet guaranteed to kill off brain cells - ramen, hot chocolate, gas station doughnuts. She steals whatever she wants from whoever she wants, friend or not. And she is, as all heroines seem to be, a very hard worker. There's a maybe haunted house that she's maybe been dreaming about, maybe monsters, rich exploiters of the land and the population, and the usual closed-minded small-town population. I couldn't get enough of it. I guess the fact that it's a Reese Witherspoon book club read shows just how much of a low brow I am.

>101 Citizenjoyce: Starling House sounds really good! Alix E. Harrow's Ten Thousand Doors of January has been on my wish list for a long time, but I've never read anything by her. I'll have to make a more concerted effort.

I finished The City We Became and started right away with The World We Make. The City We Became was an entertaining read, and, if nothing else, I finally understand the geography of New York City.

>102 vwinsloe: I really enjoyed Jemisin's Lovecraftian duology. I did think the racial aspects were a bit heavy-handed at times but also found the premise, characters, and story very entertaining. Jemisin's The Broken Earth trilogy is an all-time favorite series for me. I loved how the initial fantasy setting slowly morphed into science-fiction by the time we reach the conclusion in The Stone Sky.

Another pair of books I recently read that turns Lovecraft's racism on it's ear more deftly are Winter Tide and Deep Roots. In these books, Ruthanna Emrys imagines the aftermath of The Shadow Over Innsmouth from the perspective of inhabitants of that, "...ill rumoured and evilly shadowed seaport of death and blasphemous abnormality," who were, in the beginning of Lovecraft's story, described as being arrested en masse and sent off to camps, never to be heard from again. That seed begat Emrys' short story/novelette that led to the later novels. The Litany of Earth can be read for free online at Tor.com.

Of course, to get the full effect, one should probably have read, or at least be familiar with, The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

>103 ScoLgo: I agree with you on The Broken Earth trilogy, it's the only time I can remember finishing the first book in a series and going right out and buying the other two at retail. It was an astonishing read for me.

I'm also enjoying The Great Cities but in a different way. As a Bostonian, I'm a bit embarrassed to say that "I heart NYC," and Jemisin has really captured it. I don't find it too heavy handed in its celebration of multiculturalism. A long time ago, when I returned home after living in Colombia for 3 years, I had to get from one NYC airport to the other to get another flight, and there was terrible traffic and everyone was honking, and there was a Black police officer in a heated argument with a Middle Eastern cab driver, and they were both dropping F bombs left and right at each other. There I was, in February, with a sweater on and a suitcase full of summer clothes, and the tears just rolled down my cheeks, and I was warm enough. I was so glad to be HOME. The Great Cities so reminds me of that experience.

In any event, I'm not a big horror reader (I fail to be horrified), and I have never read Lovecraft. I will check out the Ruthanna Emrys books though. Thanks!

I've been reorganizing the TBR shelf in my own idiosyncratic way, and took a hard look at The Peabody Sisters, and said, "Today is the day." I think that it was @Sakerfalcon who said that it wasn't as hard to get through as it looks, despite it's enormous size.

I've got a book of short stories ready to read when I just don't feel like non-fiction, but, strangely, in the course of the TBR reorg project, I found a couple of books that I thought were short stories, but were not. They've been neglected on false pretenses then.

Having loved SF&F collection On The Origin of Species and Other Stories by Korean author Bo-Young Kim I'm now reading a second book of her stories/novellas I'm Waiting For You and enjoying it immensely. Shout-out to the translators, who convey complex concepts, lyrical writing, and humour (the most difficult) beautifully.

>105 vwinsloe: I have enjoyed all Megan Marshall's biographies - 3 so far, I believe. The Peabody sisters was very good. I wish she'd write faster though!

>101 Citizenjoyce: I'm really looking forward to Starling House!

>103 ScoLgo: I agree with you about Ruthanna Emrys's Innsmouth duology. It was superb. I liked it much better than The city we became (haven't read the sequel) and Emrys's more recent book, A half-built garden.

I'm currently reading Miss Bunting, one of Angela Thirkell's Barsetshire novels. These are amusing but rather snobbish by today's standards. They do depict life in WWII rural England very well though, especially as she was writing during the war without knowledge of its outcome.

>106 SChant: I thought I had read something of Bo-young Kim but find I haven't so have requested I'm Waiting For You and Other Stories.
I've been reading the biography Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women by Harriet Reisen and am so impressed by Alcott, another hard-working heroine. I liked Hospital Sketches very much but hate Little Women thinking such praise for women's self-sacrifice is dangerous. Now I realize that she couldn't help such praise since her brain had been washed into it since birth. I also didn't realize how much of her own life was in the book though her dire poverty was translated into the genteel poverty of the Marches. It almost makes me want to re-read the book. Almost. I love it when a person is able to overcome their upbringing and live the life they want.

>108 Citizenjoyce: The Reisen bio of Alcott is great. I seem to remember there was a lot about her mother too, who was an interesting and strong woman in her own right. Her father was quite another matter ...

>106 SChant: Bo-Young Kim looks like an author whose work I should explore. Thanks!

>107 Sakerfalcon: I was unaware of Megan Marshall's other books. Her biography of Margaret Fuller looks interesting, so if reading The Peabody Sisters goes well, I will look into that one.

I've started Krik? Krak! to read in the evenings when I am too tired for nonfiction.

>110 vwinsloe: Krik? Krak! is my favorite of Danticat's works. I hope you like it.

>111 Citizenjoyce: She is a wonderful writer, but I am not sure that it is the right book to read at bed time. Really brutal so far!

>112 vwinsloe: Brutal is the right word.

Just finished Helen Czerski's Blue Machine, an absolutely thrilling work about the structures and processes of the ocean, and the intricacy of human connectivity to this massive part of our environment.

I have a couple of new books to get into now:
The Future by Naomi Alderman. I've seen some mixed reviews - generally along the lines of "interesting ideas but muddled execution" - but I enjoyed The Power so will give it a go;
Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries, which looks like an undemanding stroll through some of the lesser-known women of history (though of course there are also some big names there). Probably a decent introduction to the subject and good to see plenty women from outside the white, Western canon included.

I finished Waking Up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debby Irving and found it both a powerful yet gentle assessment of race, racism, and activism. It's also a good guide to interpersonal relations in general. I'm always overly impressed by Type A people being somewhere between a Type B to Z myself. All that energy and optimism is quite something.
Then on a completely different note, I read To Catch a Raven: Women Who Dare by Beverly Jenkins. It's historical fiction about African Americans as reconstruction after the Civil War is breaking down. There are the usual post-slavery Blacks working in menial positions (one white "employer" when asked what she plans to pay the people who work for her says, "Well, before you were happy to work for just room and board, so I'll have to think about it.") and very wealthy Blacks who could buy and sell that employer. All well and good, but it's also historical romance and the very hot sex scenes made it difficult for me to listen while driving or exercising. My, my.
Now I'm listening to a book by a man, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation by Jon Ward. We know the home-schooling evangelical movement works to brainwash kids, we know they have a screwy view of sex, but it's worse than we thought, and you'd better not complain if you're the recipient of all that misogynist propaganda.

>114 SChant: I noticed that Warrior Queens & Quiet Revolutionaries is written by Kate Mosse. I've read some fiction by her - historical fantasy, maybe? I didn't realize that she wrote nonfiction as well. Looks interesting.

>115 Citizenjoyce: I'm glad that you found Waking Up White to be worth reading. And you're right; in order to have productive relationships with people, it is important to try to tune in to the various subcultures at play. I remember Rita Mae Brown saying somewhere that in the USA, Northerners don't get along with Southerners because when Southerners are effusively nice, Northerners think that the Southerners actually like them, when the Southerners are just being polite. So when the Southerner subsequently snubs or offends the Northerner in some way, the Northerner feels like they've been stabbed in the back. I totally got that when she said it, and I've never forgotten it.

>116 vwinsloe: I've never bothered with anything by Kate Mosse, historical fantasy not being my thing, but I heard her on a podcast talking very eruditely about this one and thought it was worth a look.

>117 SChant: I remember not being too impressed with what I read (Labyrinth, I think?) but I see that she is credited with being one of the founders of the Women's Prize for Fiction, and the nonfiction book that you mentioned could be a different experience from her fiction. Thanks!

I just started Dolls of our Lives. I am super excited. I just love the American Girls.

>119 ElizabethPotter: I see why I was never interested in American Dolls, they came out in 1986 - too late for my or my daughter's childhood. I was never interested in the Nancy Drew books either. I don't know why. My mother was a reader and loved mysteries. I was a reader but concentrated on science fiction which was mainly male authors at the time. I didn't even hear about Nancy Drew until I was an adult.

>119 ElizabethPotter: & >120 Citizenjoyce: According to this recent review in the New Yorker, the fascination with American Girl dolls seems to be a millennial phenomenon.

https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/why-are-millennials-still-attached-...

I think maybe that American Girls, like Barbie dolls of my generation, were not simply modeling motherhood as an inevitability. In the case of Barbie, she was also a career woman. In the case of American Girl, she modeled historical figures as well as career women. Great stuff!

>120 Citizenjoyce: Somehow I read a lot of Nancy Drew books growing up as well as a sleuth named Cherry Ames who was a nurse. I don't remember ever choosing those books, but they were in my home for some reason, and I devoured them along with anything else that I could get my hands on.

>121 vwinsloe: Maybe I didn't read Nancy Drew or Cherry Ames because the books weren't in my home. I don't think my parents bought children's books. There were lots of Readers Digest condensed books and some historical books and novels, but anything else I wanted to read had to come from the library. I guess I didn't get those books from the library because I didn't know of their existence.

>122 Citizenjoyce: I believe that the Nancy Drew and Cherry Ames books belonged to my mother and my aunt as girls. My aunt was an RN, so I assume that the Cherry Ames books were hers. They were published in the 1930s and 1940s, so that makes sense. My favorite girl detective at the time was really Trixie Belden though, also of the same vintage, although perhaps a little later.

I remember all kinds of Reader's Digest Condensed books that belonged to my grandparents. I read those, and they were very popular as I recall. I also read a lot of my father's adult books. He loved J.D. Salinger and had all of his books. As an adult, my mother read mostly magazines. So after the early mysteries, I was unfortunately not exposed to much women's fiction, except things like To Kill a Mockingbird and other popular books that were anthologized in the Reader's Digest Condensed books.

I finished The Woman In Me by Britney Spears. It's kind of a combination of Killers of the Flower Moon in which rich "others" are put in conservatorship by their "betters" in order to siphon off their riches and The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear by Kate Moore. Her father, of course, didn't want to make her talent disappear, he wanted that on full display earning millions. He just wanted herself to disappear. It's amazing such things could happen in the US in the 21st century. Poor Britney is a romantic, always wanting a man to love her, as was Gloria Vanderbilt. Some women are like that. Many women are encouraged to be like that. I guess the idea is that we don't need to put them all under conservatorships. We just need to make sure they find the right men to run their lives.

>124 Citizenjoyce: I did not know that Kate Moore had another book after The Radium Girls. I've put it on my wishlist. Thanks.

I'm a bit more than halfway through The Peabody Sisters, and I've started my second book of short stories. This time an anthology of post-apocalyptic stories called Out of the Ruins. It features my favorite Carmen Maria Machado story, Inventory (short story), and has some other well-known women authors as well as international authors who are unknown to me.

>125 vwinsloe: Out of the Ruins sounds like my sort of thing. Added to my Wishlist.

I finished the latest Martha Wells Murderbot novel, System Collapse. What a disappointment, it's about as interesting as a user's manual. The fascination of the fish-out-of-water story of her earlier books is gone. This is just strategy and battles.

>127 Citizenjoyce: Thanks for the heads up. I read the first 4 Murderbot books, which were all novellas, and didn't really see a pressing need to continue with them. Have you read them all? If you did, what did you think of them? I wonder about the two that I haven't read that came before System Collapse.

>128 vwinsloe: I liked them but, as with so many series, the first one is a grabber because of its novelty. With each succeeding book, the novelty gets thinner and thinner. I don't know that I'll continue.

>129 Citizenjoyce: Thanks. I won't go out of my way to read more, but the first one or two were definitely fun reads.

I finished The Peabody Sisters, which was a much better read than I thought that it would be. And last night I started The Candy House. I love Jennifer Egan's writing anyway, but this book seems to have a speculative element that really appeals to me.

>130 vwinsloe: LT has The Candy House listed as a sequel to A Visit From the Goon Squad which I didn't read because I have little interest in the music industry. Do you find it can be read as a stand-alone, or do I have to read Goon Squad first? This one looks much more interesting.

>131 Citizenjoyce: I don't think that you have to have read A Visit From the Goon Squad before reading The Candy House. The Candy House is not really a sequel. It has been described in places as a sibling novel or a companion novel. A few of the same characters are in both books, but to be honest, I don't even really remember the plot points that they shared. The books do share an unusual structure: not quite linked short stories, not quite post-modern novel. Sometimes it takes a few minutes to remember who the characters are, but the author does a smooth and clever job of reminding you a page or so into the next piece. I think it shares this characteristic with both Cloud Atlas and Emily St. John Mandel's linked novels.

You don't have to read A Visit From the Goon Squad at all, but you should know that it was really just represented as a music industry novel for marketing purposes. If I had read it for that reason, I would have been sorely disappointed, because while a few of the characters were in or around the music industry, many weren't. Egan just used the music industry as a way to best represent "aging," which was the book's theme.

>132 vwinsloe: Thanks, maybe I'll give Goon Squad a try. I did read Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid even though I had the same reservation and liked it very much I think because the musical group was fictitious so it didn't get into the mundanity of a real musical group.

>133 Citizenjoyce: Both Daisy Jones and the Six and Song for a New Day are much more about the music industry than A Visit from the Goon Squad is. I think you'll like it.

I finished I'm Waiting for You: And Other Stories by Bo-young Kim, and the two parts of the book affected me in two separate ways. The first and last stories could be put together as a novella, “I’m Waiting for You” and “On My Way.” They show a separated engaged couple trying to get to each other so they can marry but faster than light travel adds years and decades to their quest. One spends their time alone and depressed and rather self-destructive, the other is surrounded by people who hate them yet works constantly to make life better. It's kind of like the problem of picking the wrong line at the supermarket but on a galactic scale. I loved these stories and would have given the book 5 stars if they were the only ones presented. Unfortunately, the other two connected stories could also have made a novella, one I would gladly ignore. “The Prophet of Corruption” and “That One Life,” are Buddhist world-building contrasting the need for oneness with individuality and wondering if pain and suffering or support offer a better environment for learning. I think they won a prize of some sort, but to me, they were senseless naval gazing. So, overall, 3 stars for the whole collection.

>135 Citizenjoyce: I tried to read this a couple of years ago and had a similar experience. I loved the first and last stories, but I couldn't even finish the first of the other two. It just didn't engage me at all; I felt like I was reading random words on a page that had no meaning for me. I had been looking forward to the collection but was disappointed in the end.

>134 vwinsloe: I LOVED Song for a new day and will read whatever Pinsker writes going forward. Glad you enjoyed The Peabody sisters btw!

I've just started The golden enclaves, which closes the Scholomance trilogy by Naomi Novik. I haven't loved this magic school series. It's undoubtedly very creative - a magic school that actively endangers the lives of its students - but I find the first-person narration to be overly chatty and infodumpy. El will be attacked by a magical creature and the narrative promptly stops for a few pages of info-dump before continuing with the action. But I have just enough curiosity about the world to have kept reading (helped by finding all three books on kindle deals).

>136 Sakerfalcon: Exactly my experience, random words that had no meaning. Whew. I thought maybe something was wrong with my brain that it felt that way.

>136 Sakerfalcon: & >137 Citizenjoyce: I've got On the Origin of Species and Other Stories on my wishlist. It appears to be better regarded than the one that you read by Bo-Young Kim. Perhaps I'll find it some day, but I won't make much effort.

I've finished The Candy House which was brilliant. "Kaleidoscope" is as close as I can come to describing the structure.

I just finished Leslie F*cking Jones, a memoir by Leslie Jones, my little review: "At least 2 people told Leslie Jones she cusses too much, one of them very important to her, her writer. He also told her to organize herself and not just ramble. Yet here she is narrating her memoir, every other word a curse, rambling as she admits that her narration doesn't cover everything she wrote. She is a strong, admirable, funny woman with lots to say. I just wish she'd listened more to her writer." My sweet, saintly grandmother swore a lot, and I don't remember being bothered by it, I even thought it was funny when I was a child, but constant swearing grates on my nerves now. How could a person whose life revolves around communication so limit her vocabulary?

>139 Citizenjoyce: I'm a cusser, so I remember reading about this:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/26/health/swearing-benefits-wellness/index.html

For me, cursing seems to have been a way to express negative emotion without crying. I agree that it can be overdone.

Celebrity memoir is not a genre that I generally enjoy, so I probably won't read this one even though it probably doesn't suck. ;)

I finished The golden enclaves which had the same problems for me as the earlier books (see >136 Sakerfalcon:).

Now I've started Fourth wing which is a hugely popular new fantasy set at a military college with dragons. It relates interestingly to the swearing issue raised in >139 Citizenjoyce: and >140 vwinsloe: - so far the book reads as quite YA in tone, but with the F word randomly scattered throughout as if to remind us that this is an Adult Book. It's ridiculously addictive despite that.

>140 vwinsloe:, >141 Sakerfalcon: Random cussing, in my opinion, is what cussing is there for, emphasis. Constant cussing is just lazy and grating. I liked Fourth Wing, I didn't love it as so many people seem to, but I will read the next one.

>141 Sakerfalcon: & >142 Citizenjoyce: I had been wondering about Fourth Wing since it seems to be on so many "best of" lists lately. I'm putting it on my wish list.

I'm about halfway through The Starless Sea and enjoying it more than The Night Circus in which I thought the romance was too heavy handed for my taste. I do admire Erin Morgenstern, who writes as though she were weaving spells.

>143 vwinsloe: That's good to know. I liked The Night Circus but didn't fall in love as so many others have so I haven't tried The Starless Sea. Maybe I should relent.
I'm reading a little light seasonal collection of short stories, A Lot Like Christmas: Stories by Connie Willis. They're all science fiction or fantasy, most of them have romance but it's kind of 1950s romance so nothing serious or tedious. They're pleasant and creative and some are downright good.

>142 Citizenjoyce: Then I meant constant cussing. The F word pops up in sentences that really don't need it, rather than being used for emphasis. I am enjoying the book a lot more than I expected although the blatant setting up for a romance is heavy handed. The dragons are awesome though.

>143 vwinsloe: I agree with you about the romance in The night circus. I would have loved it without that, because the worldbuilding was so good. I liked The starless sea but can't remember much about it now.

>145 Sakerfalcon: Argh, the romance in Fourth Wing made me decide I wouldn't read any of the follow-ups, but I had to change my mind. I'm about to start Iron Flame now. I hope she got all that out of her system.
I just finished Counting The Cost by the oldest Duggar girl. She still loves her father though he has shown himself to be the usual power-hungry, money-grubbing kind of christian we all know and don't love. I have to hand it to anyone who is finally able to break away from decades of mind control and learn to live life on their own terms. I read another expose of the Duggars recently but I can't remember what it was. It comes to the same conclusion. Poor Daddy Duggar is out there without his tv show trying to continue mind-controlling his kids and followers and make his millions in some other nefarious way. Jill Duggar is much easier on her mother than the other book was. I have to find it.

>146 Citizenjoyce: Regarding folks who are "finally able to break away from decades of mind control," I literally JUST read an article about "fundie snark" that can be found in online forums where former fundamentalists go to be sarcastic about Christian fundamentalism. It seems to be a movement that shows up across Reddit, Tumblr, Instagram, etc. One thing for which we can thank the internet at least- these poor women can find support from others like them. Here's the article that I read if you are interested.

https://www.motherjones.com/media/2023/12/fundie-snark-reddit/

>147 vwinsloe: What a great article. I'm sure Jill Dugar wouldn't be a part of fundisnark, she's still very Christian and even fundamental though she has learned to protect herself as an individual. She still respects her parents and thinks her mother did a fine job raising the children. The author of the other book I read, which I still can't find, would be a snarker because she sees the hypocritical, power-hungry side of patriarchal fundamentalism and sees both Duggar parents as wielders of that power.

>145 Sakerfalcon: I'm reading Iron Flame and, no, she didn't get over her need to write romance. I'm not sure why so many writers need to throw it into every genre. Maybe they can't think of another way to show the "should I or shouldn't I" questions that we all have. Too bad.

>149 Citizenjoyce: I've just read the scene in Fourth Wing where Xadon and Garrick are sparring with their shirts off, and Violet gives us a page of drool-covered description. I'm clearly too old for this sort of thing because I found myself thinking "Oh for goodness sake! Get over it!"

>148 Citizenjoyce: It's strange how some of the fundamentalists can't really get over the brainwashing. I felt the same about Tara Westover who wrote Educated which was a really detailed, factual description of her horrible upbringing, and yet she didn't seem to have any negative emotions about it. Interviews that I saw that she gave afterword seemed the same. One would think that the repression of negative emotions would have some bad repercussions in the end.

>150 Sakerfalcon: Oh no, she doesn't get over it. I think in the second book she's 20 years old, still reacting exactly the same. They must think this sells books.
>151 vwinsloe: Girls are taught to be good, or in the FLDS religion to be sweet. No matter how much their intelligence grows, that admonition to be good doesn't seem to fade. Louisa May Alcott was brainwashed the same way, and she also kept the value throughout life.

>152 Citizenjoyce: I thought that Louisa May Alcott was a Transcendentalist? (This movement was written about in The Peabody Sisters which I just finished.) Do you mean Laura Ingalls Wilder perhaps? I understand that she was a real piece of work. I have Prairie Fires, a critical biography of Wilder sitting on my TBR pile.

>153 vwinsloe: No, I meant Alcott. Both her parents instilled in her the need to be a good girl, and she bought it.
I finished Iron Flame, barely. It is full of "one true love", feminine guilt, and martyr complexes and way too light on dragons. I won't be reading the sequel unless someone comes up with an abridged version that has only dragons and no people.

>154 Citizenjoyce: Who knew? And thanks for the heads up on Iron Flame.

After seeing A Door Into Ocean mentioned a few times in the Science Fiction Fans group, I've just started it myself. I got into it immediately, which is sometimes hard for me, so I think that I will enjoy it.

>156 vwinsloe: I love Joan Slonczewski. I read the series back when I was reading with my eyes instead of with my ears. I'd love to go back and revisit them, but neither she nor Sheri Tepper are on audio through Libby. What a pity.

>152 Citizenjoyce: Weird synchronicity here. The Boston Globe yesterday had an article about Louisa May Alcott publishing short stories under the name E.H. Gould. These stories were apparently unlike the stories that she wrote for children under her own name later in life, but were darker and more sensational (much like the stories that her character Jo March regrets writing.) An historian found quite a few of them in microfiche at the Boston Public Library, including "The Phantom," a Christmas story that echoes Dickens. Here's the link.

https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/909302

>159 vwinsloe: Yes I'd heard about those stories earlier, the ones she really wanted to write. They're also mentioned in Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women by Harriet Reisen. I guess in large families one daughter was assumed to be the caregiver. She was supposed never to marry and to care for her parents in their old age. Alcott sure fit that rule.

>160 Citizenjoyce:. I'll put that on my wishlist. Thanks.

Reading Natalie Haynes' Divine Might, her feminist take on goddesses in Greek mythology. She covers documentary and sculptural/painted versions of the stories, adds context of the times they were produced, and gives much more nuanced visions of the deities involved than we usually see from the whitewashed versions for children that many of us were brought up with. Also, a few nice splashes of humour references to modern films. I'm enjoying it very much.

>162 SChant: Libby doesn't have Divine Might yet, I can't wait until it does, but I did just finish Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati which was great. Those great Spartan warriors don't come off very well in any retelling by women authors.
I also just finished The September House by Carissa Orlando. I don't like horror usually, but this story about a woman learning to live in a haunted house is more than horror. Abused women who learn to follow the rules can be both horrifying and fascinating.

>162 SChant: and >163 Citizenjoyce: I noticed in the December State of the Thing that a thread about retelling of myths was mentioned, but it doesn't seem to list the books you are talking about.

https://www.librarything.com/topic/354811

I haven't read much beyond Madeline Miller, although some of the books in this genre look interesting.

>164 vwinsloe: Yes, it's a bit of a short list, missing out for example Christa Wolf's Cassandra and Medea. Natalie Haynes has written fiction around the Greek myths, but the one I mention above is actually a non-fiction examination and interpretation from various contemporary and later sources of the goddesses, as is her work Pandora's Jar.
It would be interesting to have a decent list of these re-tellings/re-interpretations as they often underpin a lot of white, western tropes and culture.

>165 SChant: I didn't pick up on the fact that the Natalie Haynes books that you mentioned are nonfiction. I should read one to have a deeper understanding of the representation of women in these myths.

I hope that everyone had a nice Christmas. I enjoyed Small Things Like These although I wished that there was one likeable woman character who was not deceased.

I was gifted a book entitled The Glass Summit and as I started to look it over, I was drawn in and decided to read it right away. The author is a Nordic skier and adventurer from Vermont, who has traveled widely and written books about vanishing cultures, and has an interesting perspective on womanhood, motherhood, and how others think about those things.

Happy New Year's Eve. I finished Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism by Rachel Maddow which gives a little hope that we've shut these white supremacists down before so maybe we can do it again. Now I'm reading The Postcard by Anne Berest which shows what happens if we don't. I think I'll start something happier tomorrow to begin the new year on a good note.

>168 Citizenjoyce: I requested Rachel Maddow's new book from the library. There are quite a few ahead of me, and I see that as a good thing!

I rang in the New Year with A Memory Called Empire. I was putting it off until I owned the sequel, but for some reason it called to me last night.

I finished A Memory Called Empire and really enjoyed it. I even wrote a bad book summary haiku and posted it on the book's main page.

Now while I wait for A Desolation Called Peace, I am reading Remarkably Bright Creatures which is charming but not at all my cup of tea. Much too treacle-y for me, but it was a holiday gift.

>170 vwinsloe: Haha! Love the haiku! Glad to hear you liked A Memory Called Empire. I think it likely you will also enjoy the sequel.

It also makes me think that, related to your comment in the SF group, you might enjoy Terra Ignota as well. Palmer's tetralogy is a more challenging read in ways, but her writing shares some of the same literary influences as Martine, (CJ Cherryh, Gene Wolfe, Ursula Le Guin, to name a few).

>170 vwinsloe: "her resting bitchface" Very cute. Now I guess I have to read the sequel.
>171 ScoLgo: I read Too Like the Lightning and didn't like it at all. I guess I prefer easier reads.

>171 ScoLgo: & >172 Citizenjoyce: I hope that I gave you a chuckle. I loved the descriptions of the Teixcalaanli facial expressions, particularly Nineteen Adze. What great characters.

I'm definitely going to try Terra Ignota at some point soon. In the past, I have tried not to read the first book in a series until I own the sequel, but I broke that rule with A Memory Called Empire and, now I may do it again.

Not sure what qualifies as a Girly book?? Can I just post whatever I'm reading?

I am currently half-way through Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow and nearly done The Pornography Wars: The Past, Present and Future of America's Obscene Obsession by Kelsy Burke. Next up will be Know my Name by Chanel Miller

Hi >174 LynnB: Thanks for joining! Here's the group description:

"For people who make an effort to read books by and/or about women. Whether it's sci-fi, social sciences or literature, we support female writers and positive representations of women."

That being said, we mostly post about books written by women.

So Alexander Hamilton is not a good choice. But Pornography Wars: The Past, Present and Future and Know My Name are perfect! In fact, both of those are on my wishlist, and I would very much like to know what you think when you are finished.

>174 LynnB: Pornography Wars does sound good. Oh, I forgot. I read Know My Name. It's very good. Poor Brock Turner, everyone was so worried about his damaged future but not about hers. I can only hope that she has helped to change that attitude.

I'm reading Daphne du Maurier for this month's Virago group challenge. I read her most famous novels when I was younger but for some reason never looked for any of her others. I've just read The house on the strand which was excellent (du Maurier is a rare writer who can convincingly channel the voice of the opposite sex), and I've just started The parasites.

I'm also rereading Unconquerable Sun, SF by Kate Elliott, in preparation for reading the next part of the trilogy, Furious Heaven.

>177 Sakerfalcon: I've never read anything by Daphne du Maurier, and I feel like I should. The House On the Strand sounds like it would be a good one for me. Thanks.

>175 vwinsloe: >176 Citizenjoyce: Thanks!

Glad to be part of this group. I'm sure it will add significantly to my "want to read" list.

>177 Sakerfalcon: Adding The House on the Strand to my list. I've read a few du Maurier titles. My first was The Scapegoat and I could not put it down. There is a flow to her writing that just works for me.

>177 Sakerfalcon: I've read only one Kate Elliott, Court of Fives. I liked it well enough, I may try more.
Every January I read from lists of the best of the previous year. So far of the woman writers I've read
After the Forest - Kell Woods Hansel and Grettle 15 years later in conjunction with Snow White and Rose Red. Greta is a really, really good girl/woman. She defers to the men in almost all ways, when she doesn't she should have. She forgives men who take her for granted or treat her like chatel, a sex toy, or a servant. Not my kind of witch
All the Little Bird-Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow is an interesting story about a neurodivergent woman who is disliked by almost everyone including her mother and daughter, who has her ways of soothing herself - loving accents and speech cadence - and gets taken in by charming people of one sex or another.
The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel is a combination Lessons in Chemistry and Where'd You Go, Bernadette with climate change, genetic engineering, and mammoths. It's pleasant and diverting
A Living Remedy: A Memoirby Nicole Chung. Chung, as a Korean baby, was adopted by a white couple. This is her memoir concentrating on fitting in, poverty, education, death and grief, and the pandemic. Her comments about the limits of the healthcare system when dealing with the poor are very good.
My Murder by Katie Williams is about several victims of a serial killer who have been cloned so they can live again. This one is well worth reading
Our Secret Society: Mollie Moon and the Glamour, Money, and Power Behind the Civil Rights Movement by Tanisha Ford showcases a woman I'd never heard of. She was very social, loved good clothes and nice things, helped raise money for the civil rights movement, and was attacked on all sides for being a woman. It's quite an eye-opener. We know movements tend to glorify the men and disregard the women who make them possible. Here's one more of those women.
This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub lots of time travel, kind of a 13 going on 30 pleasant read. I don't understand Daddy's girls.
I'm going to be reading Witch King by Martha Wells. Maybe this series will be better
And for my RL book club I reread Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. It's funny that the adopted parents in Little Fires were denigrated for not being able to connect their baby with her Asian roots while the real parents in A Living Remedy were encouraged to treat their baby like they would any other baby and ignore her Asian heritage.

>181 Citizenjoyce: Thanks for reading some of those books so that I don't have to. Lol. My Murder looks interesting, although I think that you've got the wrong touchstone there. Our Secret Society also looks good. I have never heard of Mollie Moon either.

Not sure how many of you are Canadians? We have an annual battle of the books on CBC radio, where five celebrities each champion a Canadian book and, at the end, we have the one book all of Canada should read. More info, if you are interested, is here: https://www.cbc.ca/books/canadareads/about-1.4025711

Why am I telling you this? Because this year, all five books were written by women!

Bad Cree by Jessica Johns
Denison Avenueby Christina Wong & Daniel Innes
Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune
Shut Up You're Pretty by Téa Mutonji
The Future by Catherine Leroux**

The debates will take place March 4-7, 2024.

**I'm excited to see Heather O'Neill as a panelist as she is one of my favourite authors.

Finally, there is a group dedicated to Canada Reads here: https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/855/CBCs-Canada-Reads-Fans

>183 LynnB: Wow, thanks. I hadn't heard of any of those books.
I just finished a 5 star read that I'd never thought I'd be interested in, Agatha of Little Neon by Claire Luchette is about a small group of nuns who are transferred out of their usual home because of budget constraints and into a half-way home in Rhode Island. Agatha learns to teach geometry. Can you imagine doing such a thing? The nuns have a can-do attitude about all their challenges and I started out thinking this was going to be a nice feel good book. They're all, or almost all of them, very nice and friendly, social, and willing to sacrifice. The reason for the Catholic church's need for budget constraints is just kind of casually slipped in. The way the sisters interact with the community and with each other is paramount, and those interactions are very realistic. I never would have thought I'd like a book about religious women so much.
>182 vwinsloe: Thanks. I try to remember to check touchstones, but don't get them all.

>177 Sakerfalcon: I've read only one Kate Elliott, Court of Fives. I liked it well enough, I may try more.
Every January I read from lists of the best of the previous year. So far of the woman writers I've read
After the Forest - Kell Woods Hansel and Grettle 15 years later in conjunction with Snow White and Rose Red. Greta is a really, really good girl/woman. She defers to the men in almost all ways, when she doesn't she should have. She forgives men who take her for granted or treat her like chatel, a sex toy, or a servant. Not my kind of witch
All the Little Bird-Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow is an interesting story about a neurodivergent woman who is disliked by almost everyone including her mother and daughter, who has her ways of soothing herself - loving accents and speech cadence - and gets taken in by charming people of one sex or another.
The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel is a combination Lessons in Chemistry and Where'd You Go, Bernadette with climate change, genetic engineering, and mammoths. It's pleasant and diverting
A Living Remedy: A Memoirby Nicole Chung. Chung, as a Korean baby, was adopted by a white couple. This is her memoir concentrating on fitting in, poverty, education, death and grief, and the pandemic. Her comments about the limits of the healthcare system when dealing with the poor are very good.
My Murder by Katie Williams is about several victims of a serial killer who have been cloned so they can live again. This one is well worth reading
Our Secret Society: Mollie Moon and the Glamour, Money, and Power Behind the Civil Rights Movement by Tanisha Ford showcases a woman I'd never heard of. She was very social, loved good clothes and nice things, helped raise money for the civil rights movement, and was attacked on all sides for being a woman. It's quite an eye-opener. We know movements tend to glorify the men and disregard the women who make them possible. Here's one more of those women.
This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub lots of time travel, kind of a 13 going on 30 pleasant read. I don't understand Daddy's girls.
I'm going to be reading Witch King by Martha Wells. Maybe this series will be better
And for my RL book club I reread Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. It's funny that the adopted parents in Little Fires were denigrated for not being able to connect their baby with her Asian roots while the real parents in A Living Remedy were encouraged to treat their baby like they would any other baby and ignore her Asian heritage.

>183 LynnB: I don't think that we've got any Canadians who post here regularly. I think we've just got Americans and Brits these days. So it's great to have some new book suggestions from Canada. Like >184 Citizenjoyce:, I hadn't heard of those books either. But go Canada! for selecting 5 books by women, although Canada certainly has some absolutely stellar women authors. Sounds like I am missing out by not reading Heather O'Neill. Is there any book of hers in particular that I should seek out?

@Citizenjoyce I can't imagine a contemporary novel about nuns that I would like. I am skeptically putting it on my wishlist.

>186 vwinsloe: Heather O'Neill's latest book, When We Lost our Heads was one of my top five books last year (out of 120). One of her early novels, Lullabies for Little Criminals won Canada Reads in 2007.

>187 LynnB: I'll put them both on my list. Thanks!

>187 LynnB: Oh, I read Lullibies for Little Criminals and liked it very much. I'll try more of her.
>186 vwinsloe: I thought exactly the same and wouldn't have read a nun book except it was a challenge. At first, I thought it was a pleasant little Singing Nun kind of thing but it's more a coming-of-age story with a woman coming to terms with the society she has chosen for herself and a little demonstration of the way the Catholic Church works as a business.

>189 Citizenjoyce: "a pleasant little Singing Nun kind of thing" lol

>186 vwinsloe: >190 vwinsloe: Not to mention The Flying Nun!

I'm reading Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

>191 LynnB: Sally Fields! Let us know what you think of Lessons in Chemistry. It's on my list, but I sometimes find that really popular books don't live up to the hype.

>184 Citizenjoyce: I read about Agatha of Little Neon when it was published but haven't managed to find a copy here in the UK. I'll have to try again, because after reading your review it sounds like something I would love.

>193 Sakerfalcon: Try abebooks.com It's a network of independent book stores and they have everything!

>194 LynnB: I've looked there but it would have to ship from the US. I will have to bite the bullet and pay for the postage. I think if it was going to be published in the UK it would have been so by now.

>195 Sakerfalcon: Try bookfinder.com. You can specify destination country in the parameters. I tried ISBN searches for both paperback and hardcover and it came up with quite a few results for the UK.

Edit: UK-based Blackwell offers this title in both hardback and paperback: Claire Luchette at Blackwells.co.uk

Though I am in the USA, I always check Blackwell's when book shopping. They don't charge me VAT and ship free from their east coast warehouse.

I finished Know My Name by Chanel Miller yesterday.

So powerful. Chanel Miller writes a brutally honest account of her rape and its aftermath. She shows us the invasiveness of documenting her injuries. The unfeeling court process where her victimhood was judged as harshly, if not more so, as the crime. She shows us so tragically about the impact on herself, and on those who love her. I thank her for finding the courage to pursue justice and to write this book.

Everyone should read her Victim Impact Statement. I would make it required reading in high schools.

As I read the reviews posted on LT, I wonder how many men have read/will read this book. Ideally man would and thus develop a deeper understanding of life as a woman subjected to sexual violence. Am I asking for the impossible?

>197 LynnB: It truly is an amazing book. It would be nice to think men would read it. Maybe mothers could encourage their sons to read it. That could change their relationship with women for their whole lives.

If you like math and questions of who to trust you might like The Theory of (Not Quite) Everything: A Novel by Kara Gnodde about adult orphans, one is a math genius and the other is his co-dependent sister who is looking for love.
But I discovered another gem, To Name the Bigger Lie: A Memoir in Two Stories by Sarah Viren. I hadn't heard of her but she references a couple of awards she's been up for or maybe won. What got her started writing this memoir was the election of trump and how to tell lies from truth. The first part of the book is about her high school philosophy teacher (I certainly never took philosophy in high school, but she comes from a much different social circle than I). She loved/worshipped this teacher, as did many of her classmates. One reason I'm not fond of philosophy is that the end result seems to be that you can't ever be certain of anything. So the teacher starts off with the usual what is reality spiel, then as he progresses he changes. He accepts religion and becomes a Catholic then for some reason goes off on conspiracy theories which he throws out at the class and tells them to do their own research, the mainstay of all conspiracy theories. When he presents the revisionist idea that the Holocaust might have happened but it was nowhere near the disaster it was presented to be she finally pulls away from him. Then later, as an adult writing about this encounter with conspiracy theories and how intelligent people can promote them, out of nowhere comes a Title 9 accusation against her wife - that she sexually harassed her graduate students. She knows her wife couldn't have done that but starts to think, "well, maybe." Again, well, maybe seems to be what you come up with in philosophy. So this whole small book, 304 pages, is about telling the truth from lies. Sounds boring, but it made quite an impression.

>199 Citizenjoyce: If you keep doing that, I am going to end up with a wish list long enough to go around the world twice. ;)

To Name the Bigger Lie is my sort of book. ( I was a philosophy major in college.)

>197 LynnB: & >198 Citizenjoyce: My favorite used bookstore has Know My Name, and I will pick it up next time I go.

I finished A Desolation Called Peace and liked it as well, if not more, than A Memory Called Empire. I couldn't help but think of the current war in the middle east.

Nonfiction is next in the rotation, and I've chosen to read Braiding Sweetgrass.

>200 vwinsloe: I don't understand how a person can delve so deeply into philosophy and keep on living. I think of myself as reasonably intelligent, but I guess not rational enough to consider philosophical questions without having emotional responses.

>196 ScoLgo: I love Blackwells, but that book says "Not for sale" when I look from here in the UK. I have found a copy on Abebooks which ships within the UK, it's a little more than I wanted to spend but sounds like it will be worth it!

I've finished Unconquerable Sun and launched into Furious Heaven. There's no summary to catch you up with events, so it's a good thing I did the reread. I'm really enjoying this space opera trilogy.

>202 Citizenjoyce: I was a philosophy major in college, and, believe me, so much of it is musty old white men living inside their heads, emotion verboten.

>203 Sakerfalcon: I haven't read any Kate Elliot, and it looks like I should. I'll keep an eye out.

>203 Sakerfalcon: Good to hear you were able to find a copy on Abe! It must be a regional thing with Blackwell's as I am able to add to the shopping basket here in the USA. At any rate, I imagine a used copy was less expensive than new.

I have Unconquerable Sun on my library wish list but am holding off until the series is complete. Looks like there is a third entry in the works for a 2025 release so it might be a while before I jump in.

Finished Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus recently. One of my book clubs selected it. I'd walked by it dozens of times in book stories, totally put off by the cover, which screams "chick lit".

Why didn't I hate this book? It has a lot of things I usually come down quite hard on: two dimensional characters, lots of coincidences, a humanized animal. I think that these things bug me when an author does them unintentionally. In this case, Ms. Garmus has chosen to deal with the issue of sexual harassment and sexual assault in the workplace in an unusual style. She writes at a fast pace, with lots of wit and some laugh-out-loud humour. She knows what she's doing, and her plot, characters and style align in a way that works.

So, go ahead and read this as a light read about a single mom struggling with her career and strange child. There's a lot of humour which makes the book an enjoyable read. But the serious issues are there for those who want to, or can't help but, see them. A "beach read" doesn't leave me with much to think about. This book did.

>206 LynnB: That's a good assessment. "Chick Lit" is a book written by a woman directed toward women readers and includes romance. I've learned that the designation has little to do with whether or not I will like a book or find it meaningful. I guess the designation is used so widely because many of the issues presented are glossed over or not mentioned in other genres.

>206 LynnB: Thanks for reviewing that for us. It's so popular that I am sure that there are a lot of copies around and I will be able to pick one up at a library sale soon, and I will keep what you said in mind when reading it.

I'm still reading Braiding Sweetgrass and painlessly learning a lot about plants and indigenous culture along the way.

Speaking of nuns, I am reading Matrix, and although I am halfway through, I don't know what to make of it. Lauren Groff is a chameleon of a writer, as she showed in her Fates and Furies, but this is still not the style of writing that I was expecting from her at all. At least its short.

>209 vwinsloe: I really liked Matrix. I wonder if listening to it rather than reading it made me less annoyed by the style.

>210 Citizenjoyce: I did warm up to Matrix and solidly liked it by the end. I was just expecting an effortless read with Lauren Groff's flowing prose, so I was very taken aback at first.

Fantasy is up next, and I've started The Bird King.

>211 vwinsloe: I'm finding myself bored with the fantasy genre that revolves around the acquisition of power, but I do like djins, so I was torn about The Bird King; however I find that Libby doesn't have it in audiobook, so I'm going to pass. I found myself abandoning Witch King by Martha Wells because, being pure fantasy, it couldn't hold my interest. I did read a fantasy that was just ok, no kings and queens. Planning a reread of The Other Black Girl for my RL book club and loving its concentration on hair care, I thought a book about fantastical skincare might be equally good. So I tried and stuck with, Rouge by Mona Awad. Nope. There's just too much vanity, envy, and bad mothers-daughters for me to recommend it to anyone, except my daughter. She's going to love all the weird facial stuff.

The Guest by Emma Cline is a book about users and the used. Alex, a young call girl, is both. Her mental illness and sociopathy are made clear throughout the book. Like a spy she makes her living by thinking on her feet and turning every new situation into an opportunity. Her job is to please and she does so very well until she gets sick of it. She is shown in contrast with other young men and women who continue to devote themselves to pleasing, organizing, anticipating, and caring for their rich masters who can live their lives of excess when all the day-to-day business of living is made smooth and peaceful. Why does Alex sabotage herself at every turn? Why is she so blind to reality? Or is the reader left wondering why all the other servants are so blind to reality that they also don't wreak havoc on their overlords? I didn't fall in love with Alex. I didn't fall in love with anyone in this book, but I couldn't stop reading it.

>212 Citizenjoyce: I didn't have any expectations about The Bird King but sometimes I do like to read a fantasy when the real world is making me crabby. I definitely didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition, but then again, nobody does.

>213 Citizenjoyce: I will read The Guest if I come across it. I found The Girls to be sort of the same as your description of it, but it did make me understand on a visceral level how a young woman might get involved in a cult group.

>214 vwinsloe: No one does.

>212 Citizenjoyce: It's a shame that Libby doesn't have The Bird King on audiobook. It was really not, as you logically assumed, about the acquisition of power. It was really more a critique of religion and power hidden in a magical story which as simple as YA. Think His Dark Materials only more so. And djinns!

I'm now reading The Girls of Atomic City. Someone suggested it to me as a companion book to the Oppenheimer film. But I think that I will read it instead of watching Oppenheimer which some witty person said nuked the Bechdel test.

I'm re-reading The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver for a book club. A very different book from her more famous We Need to Talk About Kevin

>217 LynnB: You'll have to let us know how it is. I've read three other of her books and loved them all. She knows how to grab the reader.
I've just read a book by a man, Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. For some reason, I guess because the first name is Nana, I kept thinking the author was a woman and being amazed that a woman could write this. There's so much detailed violence and, even though the two strongest fighters are women, I just couldn't see why a woman would need to be so detailed. Finally, when I was finished, I looked up the author. Nope, he's definitely not a grandmother. You can't always tell the gender of an author, but sometimes it's very clear.

>217 LynnB: I read that one several years ago, and really enjoyed the premise and the writing. Clever.

>218 Citizenjoyce: LOL. Although the violence in The Light Brigade was quite detailed, and I'm certain that Kameron Hurley is a woman.

I'm reading The Marriage Portrait now. I hadn't intended to, but I picked it up and read the first page and was hooked.

>219 vwinsloe: Well, that's true. Could it be that men just write it differently? I don't know, it's been a while since I read her.

>220 Citizenjoyce: I'm sure that you're right. Men do write violence, and many other things differently. I couldn't articulate how, but it's something that I've noticed.

>221 vwinsloe: Oh dear, I don't know. I guess I'll have to pay more attention.

I finished The Marriage Portrait, and I think that it suffered from my overly high expectations. I enjoyed reading it, but the back and forth in time structure made it seem more complicated than it was and lessened the dramatic tension instead of heightening it. The likely ending was telegraphed far in advance, which made it anticlimactic when I got there.

Now I think I'll find some science fiction.

I am about to re-read The Way the Crow Flies by one of my favourite authors, Ann-Marie MacDonald for a book club discussion.

>224 LynnB: I read Fall On Your Knees and liked it very much. I thought I had read The Way the Crow Flies but LT says no. I'm going to have to get to it.
You all know that I don't like high fantasy because of all the power-hungry strategizing. Well, right now I'm reading The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin by Masha Gessen. No fairy tale villain engages in more intricate strategizing than Vladimir Putin. If this were indeed a fairy tale I would think it too far-fetched. I never thought living here as a safe white woman in the US I would have anything to fear from him, but he's doing his best to inject himself into my nightmares.

>224 LynnB: I haven't read any Ann-Marie MacDonald, so I am putting both books on my wish list.

>225 Citizenjoyce: I am with you about Putin. He is a real life James Bond villain set on world domination. I'm not sure that I could bear to read The Man Without A Face in these times.

ETA: Just read this by the same author.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/tucker-carlson-promised-an-unedited-put...

I've started reading The Book of the Unnamed Midwife which probably everyone here has read. With my haphazard way of acquiring books, I've only just gotten it.

>225 Citizenjoyce: I read Man Without a Face and gave it four stars. I did, however, have a few issues with it.

This book, like many other recent nonfiction works I've read, doesn't use footnotes. So, despite the 16 pages of notes and sources, the work often seemed speculative to me as I read it. There is nothing in the text to indicate when something is referenced in the notes. I hope this is a short-lived fad and not a “new normal”.

Another trend I've noticed in my recent nonfiction reading is evident here: this is a book which is not quite about what its title, or more specifically, its subtitle, implies. Ms. Gessen documents many of the ways in which Russia under Putin is corrupt and is convincing in her argument. Yet we actually find out very little about how he came to be the leader of Russia. I found I knew almost nothing more about how he came to be leader than before I read the book. But, how much can we really know in a country which controls information so carefully?

I'm not convinced, though, that Putin's rise was "unlikely". His strong-man persona appealed to those looking for a leader to bring them through tough economic times. In fact, some information on the economic and social context of the times surrounding Putin's rise would have strengthened the book. Another reason his rise to power may not be "unlikely" is that there is virtually no culture of democracy in Russia and few institutional or non-governmental agencies to support this form of governance. Marching in protest isn't enough to build a democracy...is anyone prepared to take the reins if the protests succeed?

Towards the end, the book becomes more of a memoir/story of Ms. Gessen and her family. I liked that part and feel the author was very brave to write this book.

At its root, this book presents a type of conspiracy theory. Ms. Gessen is a highly respected journalist with solid credentials. She is also an activist with an agenda -- she's open about that. In the end, until/unless more evidence is discovered, each reader will decide how much they believe, and want to believe, about Mr. Putin.

>228 LynnB: I think I have to read something more current. Gessen ends the book with mass protests in Russia in 2012 and a hope for regime change. The Russian people were looking for a strong leader. How many times, in how many countries do we hear that now? What I got from the book was that Putin continually hides and disguises his actions, so if we know little of how he came to power it's because that is his intention.
>226 vwinsloe: Thanks for the article. How unsurprising that Carlson said “Russia is not an expansionist power,” he said. “You’d have to be an idiot to think that.” That's the GOP line and they're sticking with it. And I agree, Poland should be scared.

>224 LynnB:, >225 Citizenjoyce:, >226 vwinsloe: I loved The way the crow flies, especially the first 2/3s.

I'm reading Elizabeth Taylor's A game of hide and seek for this month's Virago group challenge. Taylor was brilliant at depicting the subtle details of life below the respectable surface of British mid-century, middle class life.

I've finally finished Furious Heaven, the middle part of Kate Elliott's space opera trilogy. It's inspired by Alexander the Great's life and achievements, relocated in time and space, and with the genders swapped. I know almost nothing about A the G, but even without that this is a great read for anyone who loves wide-screen space opera. Maybe wait until book 3 is published though, because I for one am not going to have time to reread this beforehand.

>230 Sakerfalcon: I looked up Kate Elliott, and I see that I have had a book of hers on my wishlist entitled Jaran for ages. She must be one of those authors whose books are in readers' permanent libraries. I guess that I will have to look for something more recent, but maybe not The Sun Chronicles until the 3rd book is published.

>226 vwinsloe: Did you see Rachel Maddow last night? She also referred to the Masha Gessen article. This is just a little excerpt. The whole conversation was pretty frightening.
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-nato-putin-poland/

>226 vwinsloe:, >228 LynnB: I'm not well-read in history, but here's another commentary on the Putin-Carlson interview that debunks Putin's "history" lesson. It doesn't have footnotes, but it does have a bibliography. https://www.rsn.org/001/putins-genocidal-myth.html?fbclid=IwAR2r27JbNdI3q4YIWcjV...

>233 Citizenjoyce: Thanks!

>233 Citizenjoyce: Thanks! I think very highly of the author, Yale Professor Timothy Snyder's, work.

>223 vwinsloe: Interesting. Thank you!

I finished The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, and, while I started out bored with just one more bleak post-apocalyptic story, it grew on me. Now I am wondering whether the two sequels The Book of Etta and The Book of Flora are worth reading. Has anyone here read either of them? Thoughts?

>237 vwinsloe: I read The Book of the Unnamed Midwife in 2016 and ended up really liking it. Got around to reading The Book of Etta in 2020, (4 years ago already!) and liked it too but felt it was a bit more of the same. I have not yet continued to The Book of Flora. Not sure that I ever will but can't rule it out completely. So many other books to read tho...

>238 ScoLgo: Thank you, maybe I'll give The Book of Etta a try, but I won't rush.

I'm slowly making my way through Democracy in Chains. It's a short book (although almost half is endnotes and references) but it is very densely written so the reader has to give it all of her attention. I'm finding it fascinating that the author has drawn a through line from SC Sen. John Calhoun (who the cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn lampooned) to economist James Buchanan.

>240 vwinsloe: Looks good. I'm listening to Oath and Honor and am glad that a person for whom I've had so little respect ultimately is working to support our democracy. One thing you can say for the right, which we're finding more and more, they make long-term plans and stick with them. That's how we got Dobbs. It's frightening. I'll have to read Democracy In Chains. I hope it doesn't give me nightmares.

I'm reading The Future by Catherine Leroux. In an alternate history of Detroit, the Motor City was never surrendered to the US. Its residents deal with pollution, poverty, and the legacy of racism—and strange and magical things are happening: children rule over their own kingdom in the trees and burned houses regenerate themselves. Gloria arrives looking for answers and her missing granddaughters,....

>242 LynnB: Looks good, unfortunately, Libby doesn't have it yet.

>241 Citizenjoyce: I admire Chaney's courage which the rest of her party is lacking. Do read Democracy in Chains if you can find it. It's mostly about Libertarian economic philosophy which was adopted by the Republican party. Not just supply side economics, but also this "public choice" doctrine which seems to be a euphemism for not wanting to be taxed for uses that one doesn't like.

>242 LynnB: I'm putting The Future on my wishlist right next to Naomi Alderman's book of the same title.

>244 vwinsloe: Ugh, libertarianism.

>245 Citizenjoyce: I rather liked Iain M. Banks' take on Libertarianism...

JR: Many critics and reviewers have claimed that the Culture represents the American Libertarian ideal. Given that this is clearly not the case, how do you characterise the politics of the Culture?

IB: Really? I had no idea. Obviously I haven't read the output of the relevant critics and reviewers. Let's be clear: unless I have profoundly misunderstood its position, I pretty much despise American Libertarianism. Have these people seriously looked at the problems of the world and thought, 'Hmm, what we need here is a bit more selfishness'? . . . I beg to differ.

For anyone interested, the full interview: Strange Horizons.

>246 ScoLgo: Ha. Alas, it seems many people do think that's just what we need.

>246 ScoLgo: YES! This is my favorite Banks quote:

"Libertarianism. A simple-minded right-wing ideology ideally suited to those unable or unwilling to see past their own sociopathic self-regard."

>248 vwinsloe: Perfect.

I'm reading Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune for Canada Reads, our annual "battle of the books". We start with five, and one gets voted "back to the shelf" following a series of debates each day, leaving us with one book all of Canada should read. This one, so far, seems like a very light read. A strange choice for this contest. But, I'm only a few pages in.

>250 LynnB: Seems a little romancey for me, but, hey, I'm in favor of anything that gets people reading. I like the "battle of the books" idea.

>251 vwinsloe: It was too romancey for me, too!

On to Shut Up You're Pretty, a collection of short stories by Tea Mutonji.

I finished Democracy in Chains and I feel thoroughly radicalized. Although this book was a National Book Award finalist when it came out, the right-wing called it a book of "conspiracy theories" despite the fact that it was very well-sourced and documented. I'm not sure that a bunch of people who believe in the same ideas, and who spread those ideas through teaching and funding could be called a conspiracy. It's just that their activity flew under the radar for most people who aren't in those circles.

>252 LynnB: I don't read a lot of short stories, but I would like to read something about the DR Congo by a Congolese author. Hmmm.

>254 vwinsloe: The short stories (very short: sometimes only 2-4 pages) in Shut Up You're Pretty are linked, focusing on the life of Loli, a Congolese immigrant living in subsidized housing in Scarborough (Canada). Loli arrives as a child, and we follow her life through a series of episodes, bringing her to her mid-twenties. We see her trying to fit in, navigating the highly sexualized world of teenagers from her neighbourhood, dealing with relationships and even deaths of those close to her. We see Congolese traditions and values, and they way life happens when you have relatively few resources and even fewer options. Well written, poignant stories.

Trigger warnings: sexual assault, drug use, suicide.

I'm continuing my Canada Reads pentathlon with Bad Cree by Jessica Johns

Hi all, I haven't been on LT for a while, but have started back up with my reading and LT helps push me along. Thought I would check in here because I'm so pleased that the first 4 books I've completed so far this year have all been by women authors. I wasn't even trying (and I usually do consciously try to make sure that more than 50% of the books I'm reading are by women).

I finished Possession by A. S. Byatt in January and have read the following so far this month:

Beyond These Walls: Escaping the Warsaw Ghetto - A Young Girl's Story by Janina Bauman
The Devastating Boys by Elizabeth Taylor, a short story collection
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

Enjoyed them all.

Currently working on The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, while dipping in and out of The Book Lovers' Miscellany by Claire Cock-Starkey and planning on starting The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones.

>256 LisaMorr: I loved We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves but I've yet to read a book I didn't love by Karen Joy Fowler. The Thirteenth Tale was the first book I read by Diane Setterfield and made me want more. The 1619 Project I think overreaches a bit but is still very worth reading.

>257 Citizenjoyce: That's great to know about Karen Joy Fowler and Diane Setterfield - these are my first by them and looks like I will need to add to the TBR. Also, I appreciate your thoughts on The 1619 Project.

>256 LisaMorr: Welcome back to LT!

I loved Possession and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. I read The Thirteenth Tale and know that I like it, but I don't remember much about it. The 1619 Project is still on my wishlist, but do let us know what you think.

>255 LynnB: Really short stories sounds interesting. I'll put it on my list. Thanks.

>256 LisaMorr: Did you read the Elizabeth Taylor for the Virago group read? I've read three of her novels this month, and want to get into the short stories.

ETA Yes, I can see your comments there! Those projects are great for getting me to take unread books off my shelf and actually read them!

I'm reading Denison Avenue by Christine Wong. Touchstone credits Daniel Innes as the author, but he is the illustrator. It's about gentrification of a Toronto neighbourhood, and the displacement it entails.

>262 LynnB: I've heard about that book, and I think that's a really creative way to tell the story. Do you think that it works?

>263 vwinsloe: I'm about 75 pages into it. The drawings are all at the end of the book. I would have liked them interspersed -- it would have added to the text. That said, I'm enjoying Denison Avenue. The writing is poetic and powerful.

>264 LynnB: On my list!

>259 vwinsloe: Thanks! Just starting The 1619 Project - so far I like how it's organized, will see if it works!

>261 Sakerfalcon: Yes, I agree. I only managed to fit in one and have a bunch more on the shelves - hopefully it spurs me on to read more.

Time to flip the page. I hope to see you all on Page 17.