New Books Read
The Home for Wayward Girls by Marcia Bradley*
CW: child abuse, trauma
We had to read this for the MFA graduation residency. It was. Not great. Loretta grew up on a ranch where parents sent their troubled daughters. But the Home’s prerogative is not rehabilitation and Loretta suffers from her abusive parents just like the girls sent to the home. Characters were very flat. The protagonist came off as a Mary Jane. Once she escapes the Home, everyone is always telling her how special she is and it came off really unbelievable. I understand the impulse to make it clear to readers that even someone who has been through something terrible can have a happy ending, but the way it was done here seemed like it minimized her trauma and the trauma of others who have been through these kinds of institutions. Made it feel trite. Also the nonlinear structure killed the tension because we knew from the start that Loretta was going to escape the Home and be happy and successful.
2.5/5 buttons
The Dragon’s Promise by Elizabeth Lim
I don’t think I enjoyed this quite as much as the first one, but it was still good. Shiori must fulfill the promise she made to her stepmother and return to dragon pearl to its rightful owner, along the way reckoning with dragons, demons, and magic hating citizens. I love the characters and the fantasy world. Shiori is such a good character (and so are Kiki and Seryu), and Lim does a good job of characterizing all her brothers even though there are 6 of them.
4/5 dragon pearls
All the Living and the Dead by Hayley Campbell
A nonfiction book all about people whose professions revolve around death. Funeral directors, embalmers, executioners, large scale disaster managers, crime scene cleaners, cryonics caretakers, death midwives the people who take your body when you donate it to science. It was fascinating and Campbell writes with inquisitive compassion as she puzzles out her own obsession with death. Did make me wonder if I should include more of the gross, gritty details of bodies that I mostly left out of my novel.
4.5/5 donated bodies
Spitting Gold by Carmella Lowkis
**Book Hangover Alert
Loved this. A sapphic historical fiction about two sisters running a scam as mediums. I liked the use of multiple perspectives to show us the unreliableness of our narrators. I know why the timeline was organized like all of Sylvie’s chapters up to the reveal, then Charlotte’s chapters rewind to the beginning, take us through the events of Sylvie’s chapters, and then go to the end. That’s how she preserved the big reveal at the end of Sylvie’s section, but then when we switched to Charlotte and had to rewind I was like WAIT but what happens NEXT?? It was still really good though.
4.5/5 toads
Hank’s Big Day: The Story of a Bug by Evan Kuhlman
We read this as our story time book at the museum this month. A very cute story of a roly-poly’s day out with his friend Amelia.
3/5 roly-polies
The Keeper of Lonely Spirits by E.M. Anderson***
**Book Hangover Alert
CW: grief; (The author does include content warnings at the beginning of the book)
I ADORED this. Like A Man Called Ove meets The House on the Cerulean Sea. Cursed with immortality and the ability to see ghosts, Peter finds ghosts and sends them on their way, wandering from place to place, unable to return home. But when a tricky ghost keeps him in town longer than expected, Peter finds himself growing closer to the residents than he has to anyone in centuries. I loved the characters and the found family and the plants and the ghosts. Cool magic system and ghost rules. Just loved the cozy vibes.
5/5 minty ghosts
Ocean’s Godori by Elaine U. Cho***
**Book Hangover Alert
The Alliance book 1 of 2
This was so fun. A disgraced pilot trying to find her place in the universe must help her best friend, heir to a controversial tech empire, when he’s framed for the murder of his family. She and her misfit crew set off on this epic space opera. It did have the learning curve of other sci-fi where they throw you in and you have to figure out what words mean and there are a bunch of characters and you’re like what is going on for the first little bit. But not nearly as frustrating as like Dune! I loved all the characters and I’m super interested in the conspiracy (it’s the first in a series which I forgot as I neared the end with mounting anxiety that we wouldn’t wrap everything up. We didn’t).
4.5/5 vultures
The Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez***
**Book Hangover Alert
An author retires to a barrio in the Dominican Republic where she builds a cemetery to bury all the notes from stories she didn’t write. Those untold stories weave together with her own story and the story of the woman she hires to care for the cemetery. A quiet, lit-fic book that asked a lot of really interesting questions about storytelling and who gets to tell stories and what happens to stories that aren’t told and the line between truth and fiction. Nice use of omniscient POV and weaving together of so many different people and stories. I liked that she didn’t tone down the Spanish for an English speaking audience. I liked working for it a bit.
4/5 sculptures
Bear by Julia Phillips*
I read this because bears are my favorite animal, but it wasn’t really about bears. It was about more sad adults. It wasn’t bad, I just didn’t like it. Sam is waiting for the day she and her sister can leave their home and dead end jobs on San Juan Island. But when a bear appears on the island, Sam’s sister realizes she may not want to leave. The prose was good, the characters were complex, the plot had an air of inevitability about it. But the moral of the story was “you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes.” And (spoiler) the bear dies. Very sad.
3/5 bears
The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson*
**Book Hangover Alert
Mistborn book 1 of 7
This was really good. In an ash-filled wasteland ruled by the immortal and divine Lord Ruler, rebellions never work. But a rag tag crew is forming to challenge the Lord Ruler and the nobility and it might just be one street urchin with a power she hardly understands that will be the key to overthrowing the Empire once and for all. It might be a bit on the long side with a bit of a slow start but the last quarter of the book was action packed. This is only my second Sanderson book but I can already tell he always comes up with really interesting, innovative magic systems. He also did a good job explaining the magic system in bits and pieces so I wasn’t overwhelmed with information and I felt like I was figuring it out as the characters used and learned about it. Could have probably had at least one more important female character. This is a high fantasy book that had the right amount of romance for me.
4.5/5 metals
Yimby: Yes! In My Back Yard! by Sheryl Recinos***
Full disclosure, someone in my MFA program wrote this book, so I’m a bit biased. A response to the “Not in my backyard” anti-homelessness and immigration slogan, this children’s book welcomes all people and advocates for housing for all. It has gorgeous illustrations and an important message.
4/5 advocates
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
**Book Hangover Alert
Thursday Murder Club Mysteries book 1 of 5
I loved this. At a retirement home outside of London, some of the residents solve old cold cases for fun, but when the builder for an expansion of the property is murdered, they suddenly have a real case to solve. This was just so darling. So fun, so British. I liked the multi-POV and the way Joyce’s journals were incorporated. Super excited about the film they’re making too.
4.5/5 mysterious photographs
Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green***
**Book Hangover Alert
Everyone should be required to read this book. Green writes so beautifully and informatively about the history, present, and potential futures of tuberculosis. I felt the same kind of frustrated longing reading this book as I did Braiding Sweetgrass–that we as humans could choose a better, kinder path, and we keep choosing not to. Capitalism sucks.
5/5 treatments
Funeral Songs for Dying Girls by Cherie Dimaline***
CW: sexual assault, drug use
Winnie and her father live in and care for the cemetery, but low revenue might force them to leave. When ghost tours reignite interest in the cemetery, Winnie thinks this might be the way to save the cemetery, but when a real ghost shows up, she has to decide whether to save her home or her new friend. I liked the depictions of OCD and the LGBTQIA+ and Native representation. It did feel like there wasn’t very much urgency in the main plot, and we were more worried about getting the ghost’s backstory, but I still enjoyed it.
3.5/5 ghosts
Books I did not finish
This year the only goal I set for myself was not to finish any books I wasn’t enjoying. I’ve already failed this goal several times this year, but I’m trying to do better. There are so many books I want to read. I don’t want to waste time reading books I don’t like.
Prague Fatale by Philip Kerr*
Bernie Gunther series
This was boring. I didn’t feel invested enough in the mystery to keep reading. It was a bit of a tits and ass book, but I could have gotten over that if I was invested in the mystery.
The Basic Kafka by Franz Kafka*
I’ve read The Metamorphosis and I really like that story, but I wasn’t really into any of the other stories in this collection. “The Judgement” was pretty good, but I just wasn’t into these enough to keep reading. Plus I think I’ve already seen the best lines from Kafka’s journals and letters on Tumblr.
*This book only includes straight white cis people. I’ve heard Brandon Sanderson has started to write more diverse casts in his more recent books.
**Book Hangover Alert indicates the kind of book that will leave you full up on love. Satisfied, but wishing the book never had to end. You’ll be laying on the floor with no idea what to do with yourself (other friends have called this feeling Good Book Depression or say that certain books necessitate Floor Time). This is the kind of book that gets its teeth in you and won’t let go easily. After the last page you’ll be thinking about this book for a long time. You’ll bother all your friends trying to get them to read it so that you won’t be alone in your Hangover.
***This book is part of my Books for a Social Conscience series! Read The Keeper of Lonely Spirits for some mature LGBTQIA+ romance. Read Ocean’s Godori for a Korean inspired space opera with LGBTQIA+ rep. Read The Cemetery of Untold Stories for Dominican rep and history. Read Yimby: YesI In My Back Yard! for compassion and social justice. Read Everything is Tuberculosis if you care about the future of humanity. Read Funeral Songs for Dying Girls for mental health, LGBTQIA+, and Native rep.
Reads marked as part of the Books for a Social Conscience series will regularly address topics like race and racism, colonialism and post-colonialism, LGBTQIA+ experience, feminism, BIPOC experience, social and political issues, history, identity, class, disability experience, immigration, gun violence, poverty, colorism, environmentalism, and more! The goal of these books is to diversify the stories we’re reading, grow our empathy for those who are different from us, and amplify voices who are often silenced.
