What I read in July!
Aug. 2nd, 2024 11:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mozaikmageI read seventeen non-VIZ manga books this month! Mostly because my work schedule shook out in a way that I had multiple hours a week where I was just sitting alone in a room and/or ticket booth with my book of the moment and could straight up start and finish a single book in one day like I was in middle school again. I generally average around 100 pages an hour, which I don’t think is absurdly fast, but I did have a lot of reading time this month. Anyway, here they are in reverse chronological order! Cut for length.
Memory Piece by Lisa Ko
Her idea of the 2040s is so bleak and depressing and yet less so than Hanya Yanagihara’s vision of the future in To Paradise (at least according to the reviews, I haven’t read that one.) I liked the gay parts and the interconnectedness of art and activism and alternativeness, but I don’t know if the big timeskip from the 90s to the future worked for me. I really liked Jackie and Giselle’s parts, I don’t know if Ellen landed as well and I think that’s because the future worldbuilding just did not work for me. More experimental than what I usually go for I think. But pretty good!
Kamila Knows Best by Farah Heron
South Asian-Canadian Emma retelling that sands off all the really annoying and unpleasant edges of Emma as a character, making the whole thing feel kind of mushy and lower-conflict than the source material. It feels like the author was afraid to give Kamila actual character flaws of her own, rather than flaws in how other people perceive her. That’s what most of the conflicts were: other people underestimating Kamila or thinking she was too interested in frivolous things to do serious work. It’s also nominally set in Toronto, but all of the locations specifically mentioned in it are Indian and generally Asian restaurants made up for the book so it feels more like it could be anywhere with a large Asian immigrant population (like the town in which I live, or Edison, New Jersey, or Jersey City, New Jersey. I am mostly familiar with locations in New Jersey sorry.) It did make me think “you know what is really Set-in-Canada? The Narusasu Canadian Government AU Fic!” and then I went and reread the whole thing to remember how they made it feel so set-in-Canada and I think the answer is mentioning specific place names, and street names, and building names, and other geographical features. Kamila Knows Best kind of takes place in a void with two apartment buildings and a few fictional small businesses.
The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
I didn’t think they were that interesting actually. But I did find myself coming back to it for days after I finished reading it. Like, “wow, that sure did happen in that book.” Also made me start wrestling with my eternal “should I quit drawing comics and making art forever” question again. Because, like Jules, I’m kind of bad at it. But also, like Ash, I’m very passionate about it and have been forever and know a lot about it that isn’t reflected in how I actually do it. But also like Jules and unlike Ash, I have no money. I dunno this book just made me really think a lot about Me, lol.
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
I thought “I should read more classic books” and a Twitter thread mentioning that this book had photography in it intrigued me. Really weird pacing, nothing happens for half the book and then a lot of things all happen very quickly. Still funny how much Hawthorne hates Puritans. I vaguely remember reading the Scarlet Letter in high school but not in detail. I liked his thing of calling it a “romance.”
Main Character Energy by Jamie Varon
I really, really need this author to show not tell more. I started watching the Cherry Magic anime while reading this book (after reading the Cherry Magic manga) and it just struck me how incredible CM is for showing the traits Kurosawa admires about Adachi (his kindness and diligence and work ethic) through things Adachi does in front of Kurosawa, but in this book all of Poppy’s actions and thoughts kind of revolve around herself, so when Oliver tells her “oh Poppy you’re so fun and bright you’re just like your dead aunt Margot and you light up every room you’re in” and I’m like bitch WHEN WAS SHE FUN LIKE HER DEAD AUNT MARGOT. GIVE ME ONE SCENE IN WHICH POPPY IS FUN and not complaining about her family or her lack of progress on her writing career. Which I am fairly unsympathetic about because she’d only tried to query one book before deciding she’s done trying to be a novelist. I don’t feel like she’s tried hard enough for the wall she’s hit to really feel like an impenetrable wall, you know? And her writing block didn’t feel believably insurmountable either. Maybe I’m just being uncharitable lol.
Also the France stuff felt more generic than Emily in Paris and the part at the end where she was like I’m not just some clueless exploitative American tourist anymore made me roll my eyes so hard they got stuck like that forever. This book was not very good I think. I wanna write my own wish fulfillment travel romance now... I love traveling... I wanna go to another country again...
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
I saw it in the library and thought “you know what I should read more longform creative nonfiction and I have heard of this title” and then I read it and turns out like a third of the book is photos. Which were interesting and helped me visualize stuff since I hadn’t seen the movie. Primary takeaway is that wow, people can be so greedy and horrible, and also I learned a lot about the Osage in the 1900s.
All-Night Pharmacy by Ruth Madievsky
So glad this book confirms that I am not the only twentysomething lesbian child of Russian Jewish immigrants living in the US now. I really liked the second half of the book that focused on the protagonist’s relationship with Sasha, but the first half of the book read like every other “messy hot girl protagonist” book that’s trendy today. I’m glad OP committed to making it gay at least, and that part where she talked about how she felt about the lesbian activist murdered in St. Petersburg made me start crying because like, God, somebody else has had the thoughts and feelings and experiences I had. Power of literature real!
Minor Detail by Adania Shibli
Hard to read, very sad, very thought-provoking. Also a “power of literature real” book. Really short but like. I had to read it in very small doses.
Chef's Kiss by Jarrett Melendez
Graphic novel discovered by going on Libby and filtering for “romance” “lgbtqia+” and “available now.” An IRL acquaintance/facebook friend of mine did the colors, as I learned from the credits page. I actually think the art style for this one didn’t lean into the inherent absurdity of its premise enough— there’s a taste-tester pig but the art doesn’t really go into expressive-cartoony territory enough to make the whimsical and silly parts feel like they belong to this world.
Come & Get It by Kiley Reid
This book made me vividly relive 3 years of undergrad in Atlanta, Georgia. I don’t know if I wanted to do that with my time. I felt kind of bad for all of the characters, honestly. I’m glad it didn’t end with everyone literally dying though, I was kind of expecting that at a certain point.
Lose You to Find Me by Erik J. Brown
YA gay romance novel also discovered by going on Libby and filtering for “romance” “lgbtqia+” and “available now.” I found the jokes surprisingly funny for a recent YA novel and the concept intriguing, but I don’t think the bait-and-switch love interest works. It’s like the bait-and-switch villain trend in animated movies: we end up knowing more about and getting more invested in the false lead than the actual endgame, especially since the main character spends wayyyy more time with the false lead than the endgame character. Hilariously all the Goodreads reviewers are big mad this YA novel has infidelity in it. First of all, teenagers are messy with relationships, possibly even messier than adults, second of all, do you honestly think this romcom about being a waiter at an old folks’ home is going to have a bad influence on the youth, third of all, underage drinking is like, right there as a problematic thing to get weirdly heated about in your Goodreads review. I dunno the cheating was honestly the least of my concerns. I think the actual love interest needed a lot more time with the main character.
What I really want out of a romantic false lead story is a main plotline functionally identical to the UnTwo subplot from Theory of Love (live-action Thai BL TV show). God I miss them... EarthMix is cool and all but White was really good as Two.......
Anyway.
The Winners by Fredrik Backman
I read the first two books years ago and then found the third one at the library and had to finally finish the series. So I read the whole thing in two hours at work and then at the end of it I started crying, at work. BENJI!!!!
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
I don’t know how well the different parts of this book all fit together. I feel like the prose was a little overwrought sometimes: we don’t need a fancy turn of phrase in every sentence. But it was pretty neat. I agree with everyone else who said the time travel plot stuff really fell apart in the final act, because it really did fall apart in the final act. Also protag should have kissed Maggie at least once but it was relieving to me that at least the author knew protag was into Maggie even if protag herself did not know that. I actually really liked all of the time travel refugee characters a lot. We could’ve done without the conspiracy angle in the endgame at all, I’d have easily read a whole book of just this little group hanging out. I think the romance worked fairly well, though Maggie should have been the love interest in my entirely unbiased opinion.
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
This felt more pointed and focused than Come and Get It, though I read this one first and liked it enough that I wanted to read Come and Get It afterwards. Reid has an incredible ear for naturalistic dialogue. All of her characters talk like real people. It’s like she sits in public spaces with a tape recorder and transcribes what everyone says or something.
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
This was both very funny and very dark, which I loved about it. The changing points of view, the chapter breaks with police interview transcript bits, the kindergarten parent drama of it all, the... frankly heartbreaking depictions of an outwardly beautiful and successful woman trapped in an abusive marriage, and the deeply traumatized young mom finding community and belonging for the first time... I think the humor made the darker parts hit even harder. This book strikes a really good balance. Unsure if I want to try watching the TV show. I thought the Sydney setting was interesting (as an American) and like, we’ve all seen California on TV before. Very high-spec cast though. Maybe someday.
Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead
I don’t know why I’ve been reading so many books about, like, small Groups of People/families/communities recently. I found this particular group of people very unpleasant to read about in the end, and not really in a fun way. I was kind of expecting this book to be more satirical than it ended up being. I just don’t care that much about rich New England prep school people.
Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee
This book somehow made me feel the way The Full-Time Wife Escapist (manga) made me feel. Wow, so many ways to be a woman in a society, wow, parenting and marriage and career and roles. Very multifaceted book, felt more ambling than plotted but never boring. Imagining if Casey and Ella got together instead... Could’ve used more lesbians, generally.
What else I got: I finished another draft of my fictional anime fandom zine drama story and sent it around for Opinions! I got some feedback and am going to revise it again before querying... after a few more people who promised to read it get back to me. I'll give them like another month.
Memory Piece by Lisa Ko
Her idea of the 2040s is so bleak and depressing and yet less so than Hanya Yanagihara’s vision of the future in To Paradise (at least according to the reviews, I haven’t read that one.) I liked the gay parts and the interconnectedness of art and activism and alternativeness, but I don’t know if the big timeskip from the 90s to the future worked for me. I really liked Jackie and Giselle’s parts, I don’t know if Ellen landed as well and I think that’s because the future worldbuilding just did not work for me. More experimental than what I usually go for I think. But pretty good!
Kamila Knows Best by Farah Heron
South Asian-Canadian Emma retelling that sands off all the really annoying and unpleasant edges of Emma as a character, making the whole thing feel kind of mushy and lower-conflict than the source material. It feels like the author was afraid to give Kamila actual character flaws of her own, rather than flaws in how other people perceive her. That’s what most of the conflicts were: other people underestimating Kamila or thinking she was too interested in frivolous things to do serious work. It’s also nominally set in Toronto, but all of the locations specifically mentioned in it are Indian and generally Asian restaurants made up for the book so it feels more like it could be anywhere with a large Asian immigrant population (like the town in which I live, or Edison, New Jersey, or Jersey City, New Jersey. I am mostly familiar with locations in New Jersey sorry.) It did make me think “you know what is really Set-in-Canada? The Narusasu Canadian Government AU Fic!” and then I went and reread the whole thing to remember how they made it feel so set-in-Canada and I think the answer is mentioning specific place names, and street names, and building names, and other geographical features. Kamila Knows Best kind of takes place in a void with two apartment buildings and a few fictional small businesses.
The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
I didn’t think they were that interesting actually. But I did find myself coming back to it for days after I finished reading it. Like, “wow, that sure did happen in that book.” Also made me start wrestling with my eternal “should I quit drawing comics and making art forever” question again. Because, like Jules, I’m kind of bad at it. But also, like Ash, I’m very passionate about it and have been forever and know a lot about it that isn’t reflected in how I actually do it. But also like Jules and unlike Ash, I have no money. I dunno this book just made me really think a lot about Me, lol.
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
I thought “I should read more classic books” and a Twitter thread mentioning that this book had photography in it intrigued me. Really weird pacing, nothing happens for half the book and then a lot of things all happen very quickly. Still funny how much Hawthorne hates Puritans. I vaguely remember reading the Scarlet Letter in high school but not in detail. I liked his thing of calling it a “romance.”
Main Character Energy by Jamie Varon
I really, really need this author to show not tell more. I started watching the Cherry Magic anime while reading this book (after reading the Cherry Magic manga) and it just struck me how incredible CM is for showing the traits Kurosawa admires about Adachi (his kindness and diligence and work ethic) through things Adachi does in front of Kurosawa, but in this book all of Poppy’s actions and thoughts kind of revolve around herself, so when Oliver tells her “oh Poppy you’re so fun and bright you’re just like your dead aunt Margot and you light up every room you’re in” and I’m like bitch WHEN WAS SHE FUN LIKE HER DEAD AUNT MARGOT. GIVE ME ONE SCENE IN WHICH POPPY IS FUN and not complaining about her family or her lack of progress on her writing career. Which I am fairly unsympathetic about because she’d only tried to query one book before deciding she’s done trying to be a novelist. I don’t feel like she’s tried hard enough for the wall she’s hit to really feel like an impenetrable wall, you know? And her writing block didn’t feel believably insurmountable either. Maybe I’m just being uncharitable lol.
Also the France stuff felt more generic than Emily in Paris and the part at the end where she was like I’m not just some clueless exploitative American tourist anymore made me roll my eyes so hard they got stuck like that forever. This book was not very good I think. I wanna write my own wish fulfillment travel romance now... I love traveling... I wanna go to another country again...
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
I saw it in the library and thought “you know what I should read more longform creative nonfiction and I have heard of this title” and then I read it and turns out like a third of the book is photos. Which were interesting and helped me visualize stuff since I hadn’t seen the movie. Primary takeaway is that wow, people can be so greedy and horrible, and also I learned a lot about the Osage in the 1900s.
All-Night Pharmacy by Ruth Madievsky
So glad this book confirms that I am not the only twentysomething lesbian child of Russian Jewish immigrants living in the US now. I really liked the second half of the book that focused on the protagonist’s relationship with Sasha, but the first half of the book read like every other “messy hot girl protagonist” book that’s trendy today. I’m glad OP committed to making it gay at least, and that part where she talked about how she felt about the lesbian activist murdered in St. Petersburg made me start crying because like, God, somebody else has had the thoughts and feelings and experiences I had. Power of literature real!
Minor Detail by Adania Shibli
Hard to read, very sad, very thought-provoking. Also a “power of literature real” book. Really short but like. I had to read it in very small doses.
Chef's Kiss by Jarrett Melendez
Graphic novel discovered by going on Libby and filtering for “romance” “lgbtqia+” and “available now.” An IRL acquaintance/facebook friend of mine did the colors, as I learned from the credits page. I actually think the art style for this one didn’t lean into the inherent absurdity of its premise enough— there’s a taste-tester pig but the art doesn’t really go into expressive-cartoony territory enough to make the whimsical and silly parts feel like they belong to this world.
Come & Get It by Kiley Reid
This book made me vividly relive 3 years of undergrad in Atlanta, Georgia. I don’t know if I wanted to do that with my time. I felt kind of bad for all of the characters, honestly. I’m glad it didn’t end with everyone literally dying though, I was kind of expecting that at a certain point.
Lose You to Find Me by Erik J. Brown
YA gay romance novel also discovered by going on Libby and filtering for “romance” “lgbtqia+” and “available now.” I found the jokes surprisingly funny for a recent YA novel and the concept intriguing, but I don’t think the bait-and-switch love interest works. It’s like the bait-and-switch villain trend in animated movies: we end up knowing more about and getting more invested in the false lead than the actual endgame, especially since the main character spends wayyyy more time with the false lead than the endgame character. Hilariously all the Goodreads reviewers are big mad this YA novel has infidelity in it. First of all, teenagers are messy with relationships, possibly even messier than adults, second of all, do you honestly think this romcom about being a waiter at an old folks’ home is going to have a bad influence on the youth, third of all, underage drinking is like, right there as a problematic thing to get weirdly heated about in your Goodreads review. I dunno the cheating was honestly the least of my concerns. I think the actual love interest needed a lot more time with the main character.
What I really want out of a romantic false lead story is a main plotline functionally identical to the UnTwo subplot from Theory of Love (live-action Thai BL TV show). God I miss them... EarthMix is cool and all but White was really good as Two.......
Anyway.
The Winners by Fredrik Backman
I read the first two books years ago and then found the third one at the library and had to finally finish the series. So I read the whole thing in two hours at work and then at the end of it I started crying, at work. BENJI!!!!
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
I don’t know how well the different parts of this book all fit together. I feel like the prose was a little overwrought sometimes: we don’t need a fancy turn of phrase in every sentence. But it was pretty neat. I agree with everyone else who said the time travel plot stuff really fell apart in the final act, because it really did fall apart in the final act. Also protag should have kissed Maggie at least once but it was relieving to me that at least the author knew protag was into Maggie even if protag herself did not know that. I actually really liked all of the time travel refugee characters a lot. We could’ve done without the conspiracy angle in the endgame at all, I’d have easily read a whole book of just this little group hanging out. I think the romance worked fairly well, though Maggie should have been the love interest in my entirely unbiased opinion.
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
This felt more pointed and focused than Come and Get It, though I read this one first and liked it enough that I wanted to read Come and Get It afterwards. Reid has an incredible ear for naturalistic dialogue. All of her characters talk like real people. It’s like she sits in public spaces with a tape recorder and transcribes what everyone says or something.
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
This was both very funny and very dark, which I loved about it. The changing points of view, the chapter breaks with police interview transcript bits, the kindergarten parent drama of it all, the... frankly heartbreaking depictions of an outwardly beautiful and successful woman trapped in an abusive marriage, and the deeply traumatized young mom finding community and belonging for the first time... I think the humor made the darker parts hit even harder. This book strikes a really good balance. Unsure if I want to try watching the TV show. I thought the Sydney setting was interesting (as an American) and like, we’ve all seen California on TV before. Very high-spec cast though. Maybe someday.
Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead
I don’t know why I’ve been reading so many books about, like, small Groups of People/families/communities recently. I found this particular group of people very unpleasant to read about in the end, and not really in a fun way. I was kind of expecting this book to be more satirical than it ended up being. I just don’t care that much about rich New England prep school people.
Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee
This book somehow made me feel the way The Full-Time Wife Escapist (manga) made me feel. Wow, so many ways to be a woman in a society, wow, parenting and marriage and career and roles. Very multifaceted book, felt more ambling than plotted but never boring. Imagining if Casey and Ella got together instead... Could’ve used more lesbians, generally.
What else I got: I finished another draft of my fictional anime fandom zine drama story and sent it around for Opinions! I got some feedback and am going to revise it again before querying... after a few more people who promised to read it get back to me. I'll give them like another month.
no subject
Date: 2024-08-05 08:39 pm (UTC)re: Free food for Millionaires: i was actually just reading up a bit on this book last week! and particularly the author; i got curious about "wow, min jin lee spent like ten years writing Pachinko, what the hell was she doing for money during that time" & then clicked and creeped around via Wikipedia & yeah i had no idea she'd written anything before Pachinko lol. have you read that one as well or nah? would be curious how they compare
no subject
Date: 2024-10-16 03:42 pm (UTC)