September Reading Log!

[mozaikmage]

I started writing this mid-month so it’s in chronological order of when I read them this time! Please clap.
This month I read 17 books total, including a Russian translation of a Polish mystery-comedy from the 70s, some recent popular books, and a lesbian time travel romance that was getting widely discussed on my TL.

The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud

Person I follow on Tumblr was posting about Lockwood & Co and this was ready to borrow on Libby so I read it. Fun middle grade/YA type thing. Interesting worldbuilding with the ghosts and the kid stuff. Lucy’s funny.

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

This one made me sad, but it was really interesting. Lots of things to think about. Interesting time period/location/group dynamics for a story.

The Stand-In by Lily Chu

Was on one of Jo Walton’s reading columns and I’ve learned we have very similar tastes in women’s fiction (we are both big Sophie Kinsella enjoyers) so I put a hold on this one and it came through! Gracie is a really funny and fun narrator, and the other major characters are all interesting to follow. Fun wish-fulfillment type story, enjoyed it overall.

Flux by Jinwoo Chong

Confusing! Either I skimmed too hard and missed it or I never got a coherent explanation of how exactly the time-travel stuff worked. At first I thought it was a Slaughterhouse-Five “unstuck in time” situation but then he seemed to be physically appearing in his own past and then I was like what and also how did this kill people? Also I kind of wish it’d kept going past where it ended. But interesting overall. I didn’t intend to read two White/East Asian mixed race books in a row that was a coincidence of when my holds ended on Libby.

Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou

I feel like this did a lot of what Yellowface (Kuang) was trying to do for publishing but for academia, and also a lot more successfully. It was genuinely very funny at times, and just the right amount of over-the-top. I spent the first half of the book going like “Ingrid noooooo” and the second half going like “oh go off Ingrid”. I think I would recommend this to others.

The List by Yomi Adegoke

Hm. I liked the British African culture/family parts, I liked Ola’s friendship dynamics, the overall plot left a very bad taste in my mouth especially after the whole Ed Piskor thing happened in comics a few months back. I can see what it was trying to do? Maybe? But I don’t know if it was effective about it.

The New Girl by Jessie Q. Sutanto

How does this author publish 3 books a year. Anyway I suddenly realized I haven’t read a single book for this year’s Storygraph Reads The World challenge and Indonesia was one of the countries and this was the only ready to borrow book from the list for Indonesia on Libby so I figured I’d give it a shot. Definitely a very YA book. I dunno if the tone worked for me, I kind of wanted more atmosphere and it did that annoying thing of “this entire school has like 5 people” (the main character’s a sophomore but like freshmen, juniors and seniors are basically never mentioned and I have no idea how they’d fit into the school social structure) but overall pretty fun, Lia’s narration was fairly amusing, and Stacey was great.

Maame by Jessica George

Also for the Reads The World challenge, Ghana. I wasn’t sure if this one counted but since I’d just read a different book with a British Ghanaian protagonist I thought it’d be fun to get a different perspective on the experience. Also I remembered <user name=queenlua> reviewed this one a while back. I think I generally agree with that review: I feel like the whole thing w/Maddie’s last boyfriend was kinda crammed in there and when he just gave her those perfectly Therapyspoken paragraphs I was like oh come on. I wish there’d been more space/time to develop Sam as a character and his relationship with Maddie so he didn’t have to read out perfect paragraphs to show how much better he is for her than the other guys.

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

I felt guilty about only reading diaspora books for the challenge so far so I decided to try this one too. Turns out it is also kind of a diaspora book but more of a Generational Family Traumas book. I think reading The List and Maame before it did help because more names/words were already familiar to me when I started it, but I did keep pulling up Wikipedia to learn more about the stuff mentioned. The format was really neat: it’s like each chapter is a short story about the next generation in two lines of descendants of one woman called Maame. Not light reading, but I enjoyed it overall.

Everything’s Red by Joanna Chmielewska

EVERYONE CLAP I READ A BOOK IN RUSSIAN ALL THE WAY THROUGH because it’s never been translated to English and my mom recommended this one to me ages ago. Also Poland was on the challenge list and the only Tokarczuk book available on Libby right now is the doorstopper Books of Jacob and I wasn’t ready to deal with that, so I remembered my mom told me about this book and now here I am.

ANYWAY.

The title comes from a pseudo-translation of the Danish town name Allerød where Joanna’s friend Alicia has a summer house and everyone comes to stay there, which then becomes a recurring motif throughout the story. I thought it was going to be a murder mystery but it ended up being more of a comedy-farce. A guy gets stabbed to death and then half a dozen more people get almost but not quite murdered: stabbed, poisoned, shot at, always enough to put them in the hospital but never enough to kill them. I thought that would be the big twist, that they needed to be put away for some reason, but no the murderer was just that bad at their job. It was kind of funny? But also like. I realized Russian people in Russia in the 70s probably had more of a familiarity with Polish linguistic quirks/idioms than I do. Like how a J-E manga translation today might include honorifics and words like “kawaii” because American weebs know what those are now. I found myself googling idioms and swear words the characters used with each other. But it was short and I finished it, please clap.

The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman

Long! But I did enjoy it. It helped me figure out a lot of what I wanted to do with my Romantasy WIP and make me want to get back into working on it. I liked the meandering nature of it and the tension between Christianity and Paganism/Faerie.

Pride and Prejudice and Pittsburgh by Rachel Lippincott

My Twitter friends were talking about this book and I saw it was available to borrow on Libby and very short so I just went and read it. Very misleading title, there's no pride and prejudice and very little Pittsburgh in this time travel regency romance, the regency and the art/art school parts felt under researched especially to me an Art School Alumna (THAT'S NOT HOW THE RISD WAITLIST WORKS! AND PORTRAITURE IN 1810S ENGLAND WAS MID AS HELL, LANDSCAPES WERE THE COOLEST ART HAPPENING THERE), and the whole thing felt rushed. It felt like the regency time period was only chosen bc Bridgerton was popular, not because the author actually cared at all about it. Also the language for the regency sections wasn't regency accurate at all, and the main character was way too excited about British food for me to believe it, and her phone still worked in 1812 she just couldn't charge it which is tbh kind of a cop out imo. MID BOOK

She Gets The Girl by Rachel Lippincott

Same (co)author as the book above but I actually liked this one a lot more. The Pittsburgh stuff felt real, both POV characters were charming and distinct (probably because two different ppl were writing them), their family and friends felt developed and interesting. Less of a slog overall.

Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad

Interesting, though I kept expecting something gay to happen between Sonia and Mariam. The whole “why would you go back there” aspect of it was interesting.

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera

This book wasn’t even that long but it felt like it took me forever to read. I found it really confusing in a way that I think was intentional but didn’t work for me at all. I couldn’t really grasp the worldbuilding or how much of the fantasy aspects are metaphorical vs really happening in the world. I should’ve taken the “weirder than China Mieville” blurb on the cover as a warning. I am too normie for this book, and I’ve heard people say it’s one of this author’s more accessible, less-weird things even. I read it for the Sri Lanka space on the Storygraph Reads The World Challenge, and tbh as far as books by Sri Lankan authors go I liked The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida more.

The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende

This was the same length as TSBD and I finished it in like, under two hours. I don’t know how but it just felt... smooth. I think I might want to read more Allende in the future? I read this for the Chile space on the Storygraph Reads The World Challenge and also because it was the only Allende book ready to borrow on Libby. I did cry a few times, but it felt a little bit like it was pressing buttons to make me cry? Very... constructed to manufacture sympathy. But it did manufacture that sympathy and I did enjoy the found family endgame situation. It was cute.

NSFW by Isabel Kaplan

I did not intend to read 3 books by 3 different Isabel/Isabellas this month, it just kind of happened. This one reminded me of my currently hibernating litfic novel draft, so I picked it up at Book Club Bar on my birthday weekend excursion and read it. I think the blurbs and back copy were both significantly overselling how “funny” and “comedic” this one was. It wasn’t that funny. It was an interesting look at the entertainment industry and a distressing look at how men get away with sexual harrassment and an honestly not that interesting look at an uncomfortably codependent parental relationship. Overall I think it was okay, but I wish we’d gotten to see more of the narrator’s life outside of her work, even though she didn’t have a lot of it. Maybe instead of the middest boyfriend alive she could have had at least one lesbian experience.

Comments

[virgomoon]

oooooh what were your thoughts on "The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida" ??

also in that vein: have you read any sff/fantasy that has been Very Good recently?

[mozaikmage]

I honestly really enjoyed Maali Almeida! It had a really intense sense of atmosphere and place, like I could swear I felt the room getting hotter around me when I was reading it. And it was... not like laugh out loud funny but like, consistently amusing to read? Except for when it was viscerally unpleasant and tragic and gut-punching. I liked it a lot. I liked that like, even though Maali kind of sucked in a lot of ways, he was surrounded by so many people who loved and cared for him and wanted to find out what happened to him. Martyr! reminded me of it a lot.

SFF that's been Very Good recently....... [opens my storygraph again] I quite liked The Bright Sword and JSMN, and Half a Soul was very fun... The Familiar was really good? All of those are fantasy and JSMN isn't even a recent fantasy novel lmao. I liked Delany's Triton, but I could feel a lot of it going over my head. I really, really liked what it was doing though, as it felt like a weirdly close reflection of reality for a novel that mostly takes place on a moon of Neptune.