lottpoet's 2023 reading

I'm back. Better late than never. I've had some health issues. I rang in the new year with intense pain in half my face. Turns out I needed a root canal. I had to work all the time (extra at my day job, all weekend at contract work) for a couple of weeks to earn money to pay for the root canal. Then the morning of the root canal, I tested positive for Covid (my first bout with it). I was sick with Covid for a couple of weeks and I've now, finally, gotten my root canal. I probably still have to work a bit extra to pay for the crown, but not nearly as all-consuming as the start of the year. Whew!

It's hard to know how to talk about what I read. My loves are fantasy, science fiction, and romance. But I also give myself little reading challenges to diversify my reading genre-wise. I read a lot of nonfiction towards the end of last year, focusing on nature, gender, and feminism. Nonfiction ended up being 1/3 of my total reading last year which is super cool. I'm still homing in on what I like in manga. I loved the first volume of Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. I almost want every manga to read like that. I also really liked Ouran High School Host Club and Kimi ni Todoke: From Me to You. So maybe I'll read more volumes of those as I try to find others I would like.

I usually read close to 100 books a year. I'm very good at picking my sort of books so I end up loving lots of books.

Favorite reads 2022 (ordered by earliest read to latest read)

1. The Body Is Not Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor
2. Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz
3. The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray
4. The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson
5. Wizards at War by Diane Duane
6. March, Book One by John Lewis
7. All about Love by bell hooks
8. Niccolo Rising by Dorothy Dunnett
9. The Guilty Feminist by Deborah Frances-White
10. Bird Brother by Rodney Stotts
11. Underland by Robert Macfarlane
12. Dear Black Girl by Tamara Winfrey Harris
13. The Chimera Code by Wayne Santos
14. The Book of Barely Imagined Beings by Caspar Henderson
15. How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell
16. Merlin in the Library by Ada Maria Soto
17. Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber
18. A Little Devil in America by Hanif Abdurraqib
19. The Hour of Land by Terry Tempest Williams
20. Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Vol. 1 by Kanehito Yamada
21. If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin

2022's thread
2019's thread
2016's thread
2015's thread
2014's thread

Books I've completed Jan.-June 2023 (favorites are bolded):

1. Deal with the Devil by Kit Rocha, audio, 1/27/2023
2. Grass by Sheri S. Tepper, ebook, 2/20/2023
3. Upgrade Soul by Ezra Claytan Daniels, paper, 2/24/2023
4. Jon and Mack's Terrifying Tree Troubles by A.J. Sherwood, ebook, 2/26/2023
5. Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng, audio, book club, 2/27/2023
6. Birds of California by Katie Cotugno, audio, 2/28/2023
7. Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz, paper, 3/8/2023
8. Sucker Punch by Laurell K. Hamilton, ebook, 3/12/2023
9. Exit Strategy by Martha Wells, audio, 3/13/2023
10. Rafael by Laurell K. Hamilton, ebook, 3/14/2023
11. Network Effect by Martha Wells, audio, 3/19/2023
12. The Ones We're Meant to Find by Joan He, audio, mytbr, 3/23/2023
13. Black Love Matters ed. Jessica P. Pryde, audio, 3/24/2023
14. The Vibrant Years by Sonali Dev, ebook, book club, 4/1/2023
15. Version Control by Dexter Palmer, audio, 4/1/2023
16. The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman, ebook, 4/7/2023
17. Girl Gone Missing by Marcie R. Rendon, audio, book club, 4/9/2023
18. The Crucible of Time by John Brunner, ebook, 4/17/2023
19. I'm Still Here by Austin Channing Brown, audio, 4/25/2023
20. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, audio, 4/25/2023
21. Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells, audio, 4/26/2023
22. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass, audio, 4/27/2023
23. The Last Interview and Other Conversations by James Baldwin, ebook, 4/29/2023
24. Frieren: Beyond Journey's End 2 by Kanehito Yamada, paper, 5/6/2023
25. Redeployment by Phil Klay, audio, 5/6/2023
26. Sinister Graves by Marcie R. Rendon, audio, book club, 5/7/2023
27. All That She Carried by Tiya Miles, audio, 5/10/2023
28. Bloodborne, Vol. 1 by Ales Kot, paper, 5/11/2023
29. Chasing Me to My Grave by Winfred Rembert, paper, 5/13/2023
30. Friday by Robert A. Heinlein, paper, 5/19/2023
31. Memory of Water by Emmi Itaranta, audio, book club, 5/20/2023
32. Smolder by Laurell K. Hamilton, ebook, 5/24/2023
33. Tell Me How It Ends by Valeria Luiselli, audio, 5/25/2023
34. This Is One Way to Dance by Sejal Shah, audio, 6/11/2023
35. A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow, audio, book club, 6/18/2023
36. The Loneliest Americans by Jay Caspian Kang, audio, 6/20/2023
37. Way Station by Clifford D. Simak, ebook, 6/24/2023
38. Black Girl Magic, ed. Mahogany L. Browne, paper, mytbr, 6/30/2023

Books I've completed July-Dec. 2023 (favorites are bolded):

39. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak, ebook, 7/1/2023
40. Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston, audio, 7/1/2023
41. A Mirror Mended by Alix E. Harrow, audio, book club, 7/5/2023
42. This House Is Haunted by John Boyne, paper, 7/6/2023
43. Happily Ever Afters by Elise Bryant, audio, mytbr, 7/7/2023
44. The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay, audio, 7/11/2023
45. My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones, audio, 7/14/2023
46. In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado, audio, book club, 7/15/2023
47. Ouran High School Host Club 2 by Bisco Hatori, paper, 7/18/2023
48. Difficult Women by Roxane Gay, paper, 7/20/2023
49. Read until You Understand by Farah Jasmine Griffin, audio, 7/22/2023
50. The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, ebook, 7/24/2023
51. The Shape of Thunder by Jasmine Warga, audio, 7/30/2023
52. Sissy by Jacob Tobia, audio, mytbr, 8/1/2023
53. I'll Stop the World by Lauren Thoman, ebook, book club, 8/7/2023
54. Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall, audio, mytbr, 8/9/2023
55. Just Like Mother by Anne Heltzel, audio, 8/14/2023
56. The Bright Hour by Nina Riggs, audio, 8/17/2023
57. Bitch Planet, Book One by Kelly Sue DeConnick, paper, 8/17/2023
58. Iron Kissed by Patricia Briggs, audio, 8/19/2023
59. Original Local by Heid E. Erdrich, paper, 9/13/2023
60. Transformation by Carol Berg, ebook, 9/14/2023
61. The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be by Shannon Gibney, audio, mytbr, 9/16/2023
62. I'm Waiting for You and Other Stories by Kim Bo-Young, ebook, mytbr, 9/19/2023
63. What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi, audiobook & ebook, 9/24/2023
64. Commonwealth by Ann Patchett, audiobook, 9/25/2023
65. Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden by Camille T. Dungy, audiobook, mytbr, book club, 9/27/2023
66. The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin, audiobook, 10/3/2023
67. With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo, audiobook, 10/6/2023
68. You Should Be Grateful by Angela Tucker, audiobook, 10/10/2023
69. Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender, audiobook, 10/10/2023
70. Nothing but Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw, audiobook, 10/26/2023
71. How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith, audiobook, 10/27/2023
72. Alien Tyrant by Ursa Dax, ebook, 10/28/2023
73. I Take My Coffee Black by Tyler Merritt, audiobook, 10/31/2023
74. Blackwater Falls by Ausma Zehanat Khan, audiobook, 11/7/2023
75. Micah by Laurell K. Hamilton, audiobook, re-read, 11/7/2023
76. Coda, Vol. 1 by Simon Spurrier, paper, 11/12/2023
77. Monstress: The Blood by Marjorie Liu, paper, 11/14/2023
78. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi, audiobook, 11/20/2023
79. Soulless by Gail Carriger, audiobook, 11/20/2023
80. The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate, audiobook, 11/22/2023
81. Morning Glory Milking Farm by C.M. Nascosta, audiobook, 11/26/2023
82. Bitch by Lucy Cooke, audiobook, mytbr, 11/28/2023
83. Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, audiobook, mytbr, book club, 12/5/2023
84. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, audiobook, book club, 12/10/2023
85. Fangs by Sarah Andersen, paper, 12/11/2023
86. Angels' Dance by Nalini Singh, ebook, 12/12/2023
87. The Guest List by Lucy Foley, audio, 12/16/2023
88. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin, audio, 12/17/2023
89. Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, audio, 12/19/2023
90. The Ancient Magus' Bride 1 by Kore Yamazaki, paper, 12/22/2023
91. Bone Crossed by Patricia Briggs, paper, 12/22/2023
92. The Light We Carry by Michelle Obama, audio, 12/26/2023
93. Colors of Nature ed. Alison H. Deming, ebook, mytbr, 12/26/2023

Books I'm reading right now (where things stood at 11:59 pm, 12/31/2023)

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
Black Futures ed. Kimberly drew, SantaThing

Glad to see you back, April. Happy reading in 2023!

That is a tough start to the year, April!

Glad to see you back but most of all in good health again.

Wow, sounds like a tough January, but I’m glad you’ve made it back to us!

>5 FAMeulstee:, >6 PaulCranswick:, >7 drneutron: Thanks y'all. Really glad to be in better health and catching up on my reading. I'm starting to *think* about catching up on my writing about my reading. Ha!

I'm working on a vampire novel. Did my own version of NaNoWriMo from mid-February to mid-March. Now I'm obsessed with the second draft of the novel, but at a bit of a slower pace.

Happy be be a reader if you need one!

>9 drneutron: Ooo! Thanks--I will probably take you up on it when it's ready for other eyes.

So far, I'm still not writing about my reading yet, but I did want to check in after reading I'm Waiting for You and Other Stories. That book broke me and then put the pieces back together. I feel like I thought I knew what literature was before reading it & now I know how much I didn't know. I loved it so much! It's ostensibly four stories (a pair of connected stories with one pair nesting in the middle of the collection), but they're pretty interrelated, I think. Y'all, I feel like I felt after finishing Beloved by Toni Morrison or Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie or A True Novel by Minae Mizumura or Krazy Kat by Jay Cantor or Embassytown by China Mieville or His Quiet Agent by Ada Maria Soto. I don't think I could write a coherent review now if I wanted to. I tried telling a friend yesterday what was so great about it, but I really struggled. I think I at least got across how blown away I was.

As for where I've been/what's happening with me, I've been struggling. I don't know if I'm flagging after the early years of the pandemic when I held it together decently? I've started therapy so hopefully things will improve. I honestly feel like I've been struggling since George Floyd's murder. It brought up all sorts of things that I've never fully reckoned with, about how anti-Black oppression has effected me. So, I've been enacting Black Liberation: pulling back from over-work & my only value being what I do, so lots of breaks and rests and saying no; trying to repair my relationship with nature (which slavery mucked with by equating nature with labor) by walking in nature, using the Seek (partly put out by National Geographic) app to start identifying what I'm seeing, considering learning how to swim; doing more of what is good & right for my body, including connecting more with my physical body; really listening to what I want and need and using that information to guide what I do more than what other people need or require of me; allowing myself to notice all the small, wonderful things in my life, in others', in the world. That's what I got.

Hope you all are getting good reading in. It's one of the things I'm eternally grateful for--so many excellent reads for me to enjoy.

1. Deal with the Devil by Kit Rocha
audio

This was a fun post-apocalyptic adventure where the characters are all a decent sort (I mean, except for the evil corporate-militia governmental entity). I loved how kick-ass the men and the women were. This world has a legend (an urban legend?) about the Library of Congress employees caching as much of the collection as they could in the last days of the governmental collapse. That's the lure that brings these people together. This was a great found family.

4/5 stars

Readalikes:
Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse for the betrayal/not betrayal luring of the woman.
The tv show Jeremiah for the post-apocalyptic community gathering and journeying hither and yon.
The tv show Firefly for the found family.

2. Grass by Sheri S. Tepper
ebook

This book was wild! There was a multi-planet quasi-Christian corrupt hegemony that decides to use an interstellar plague to further their power grab. There's an isolated planet with remnant alien ruins and strange hounds that are not hounds, horses that are not horses, and foxes that are not foxes. The Hunt is the only thing the noble families of the planet seem to care about. The main character comes on a sort of ambassadorial visit with her family and brings actual horses so she can get in with the big deal families by bonding over the hunt, not realizing real horses can't compare to the mounts that are used. Later, it turns out there are some alien creatures on the planet who are not completely decimated. So then we get weird mind-sex. It was so fun!

4.5/5 stars

Readalikes:
The Deep by John Crowley for the strange ritualistic society that's like a puzzle you don't quite have all the pieces of.
The Rosetta Codex by Richard Paul Russo for the alien race that uses the humans to resurrect themselves.
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell for alien alien cultures that humans try to interact with even thought they don't understand.
The X Factor by Andre Norton for the shy alien aliens who also use mind contact of some sort.

Edited: to add readalikes
Edited: to add ratings

3. Upgrade Soul by Ezra Claytan Daniels
paper

This tussles with questions of agency, connection, and responsibility. I think the story mainly comes about because of our society's ageism and possibly sexism (the woman is a scientist whose husband wants to give her more time for her science and career). It made the husband desperate for any possibility to circumvent what some would consider the progression of a natural lifespan. However, I would say that racism and sexism and now ageism does/did muck with the progression of their natural lifespan. (The husband is trying to shepherd his family's legacy of a black superhero who has been coopted by capitalist society.) There were interesting questions in here, including what is a life worth living and who decides that.

4/5 stars

4. Jon and Mack's Terrifying Tree Troubles by A.J. Sherwood
ebook

I was excited to get a new book in this series, although I'd been underwhelmed by the previous book. I like the Jon stories over the Mack stories. It was fine getting a story where both their expertises were needed, mostly because I liked seeing the brothers (Jon's husband, Mack's boyfriend) together. Not sure why I rated this four stars because most of what I remember is pretty disappointing. The tree mystery was interesting and strange (mainly because it covered more than a natural lifespan and so had to be more than one person, potentially mentor/mentee or family legacy). The deployment of the mystery was mainly to keep Mack running from tree ghost to tree ghost rather than anyone sitting down and thinking through the pattern or clues. I liked Grant who I think is a character from another set of books. But mainly, I find with A.J. Sherwood that I really like her first book or two in a series, but things get more outrageous and out of character after that, like desperately trying to find a way to extend the story. Frustrating.

4/5 stars

Edited: to add ratings

Congratulations on reaching 75 earlier this month, April!

I missed it! Congrats!

>14 FAMeulstee:, >15 drneutron: Thanks, y'all. Hope I get to talk (briefly) about #75 before we shift to next year's threads. Ha!

5. Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng
audio, book club

I liked Ng's first book. I struggled to stay engaged with her second novel. This third novel is a sort of very-near-future dystopia. I went back and forth between liking and loving this book & settled finally with like. The end could have totally pushed it into the favorite category but it was overlong and fizzly. Generally, I found the boy main character felt a lot younger than he was and confusingly clueless about the threat of real harm to him or his family--like, kind of ridiculously naive for someone who's been living under this oppressive regime for a good chunk of his childhood. I liked the dad a lot. I was ambivalent about the mom. I loved that librarians were an underground network of sorts trying to reconnect stolen children with their families.

4/5 stars

Readalikes:
The Plot against America by Philip Roth for the similar folksy selling of the indoctrination/assimilation/re-culturing of the children by removing them from their families (summer camps in Roth's book, permanent enforced foster care in Ng's).

6. Birds of California by Katie Cotugno
audio

Can't remember how I heard of this. I enjoyed it from page one. I do enjoy a grumpy hero/heroine, and it was pretty clear from the beginning that she had reason to be cynical and done with life. I enjoyed the way the romance developed as we get bits and pieces of the back story of the two characters. I suppose, it's a sort of second-chance romance. The two worked on a Nickeloden-type show as tweens & teens. I figured out maybe a third in what happened to the woman when she was a girl on the show to have her act out making easy headlines for the tabloids. I definitely want to read more by the author. I did really like the way she handled the romance.

4/5 stars

Readalikes:
Act Like It by Lucy Parker for a similar grumpy romance hero (the guy in this one) who gets to have a successful romance without being remade into a super nice guy.
Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll for a woman trying to make peace with herself & others while processing a traumatic childhood event.

Edited: to fix formatting

7. Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz
paper

I had been very excited about this collection--love the title and the cover. I appreciated the subject matter, but the poems were not quite my sort of poems. I was not sorry to have read them, but I'm not sure I'd read more of her poetry.

3.5/5 stars

DNF Warchild by Karin Lowachee
paper, mytbr

I tried to read this a few years ago and didn't get more than a few pages in. It was so brutal. I came back to it and really liked it for maybe the first quarter, the part that was more first contact. I felt so sorry for that kid (the main character). He had so much trauma to heal from. It's something I'm tackling in my vampire novels so I'm interested in how that's portrayed in fiction. Then this novel lost some of that magic for me again. I skimmed the rest of the book to see if I'd click with it again, but no. I feel pretty solid saying: it was fine; I was happy with what I read; I will not return to read it fully.

8. Sucker Punch by Laurell K. Hamilton
ebook

This was fine. I liked the newbie and was sad that he's probably leaving the field. I thought it could have been a better Larry Kirkland mentee thing where he could more quickly learn to hold his own with the Four Horsemen. I liked that he wasn't judgy and also had integrity. The central mystery was frustrating because it doesn't progress satisfactorily--it seemed to get snagged by technicalities and letter of the law wrangling (who has the warrant, what does it mean to vacate it, can you do so without losing your badge). Then the guy who was set up ends up getting killed anyway.

4/5 stars

9. Exit Strategy by Martha Wells
audio

This was fun. I love Murderbot as a character, and the narrator of the audiobooks does a fantastic job at getting its voice. It's strange because I'm always really into the adventure while I'm listening but they all seem to leave me a little unsatisfied at the end. I end up liking them fine but I really want to love them as they are so my thing: grumpy hero, robot/AI pals.

4/5 stars

10. Rafael by Laurell K. Hamilton
ebook

This book was not good. I've never been keen on the mystical stuff surrounding the various were-groups. I think there are some insensitive portrayals of the Latinx in this book. I really don't want Anita to have a rat-pal--yuck! Mostly, though, I was super annoyed with Rafael, who in the past had shown himself to be practical and analytical. Here he doesn't give Anita all the information because he hoped it would work out a different way and that almost gets her killed multiple times--all this while she's doing him a favor. I also really can't picture him being so reluctant to take down this guy who *might* be his son--that seems like more of a Richard white hat moral qualm. I also didn't appreciate that the first half of the book is one of those frustrating Anita Blake book things where there's a rush/time is of the essence, but somehow, in the midst of dire time constraints we pause again and again and again to talk about things large and small and trivial.

3/5 stars

11. Network Effect by Martha Wells
audio

Also fun. I loved getting to see ART again.

4/5 stars

12. The Ones We're Meant to Find by Joan He
audio, mytbr

This one I was hot and cold on the whole time I read it, which I did in several chunks rather than reading it straight through. I definitely walk around my house now saying 'Strongly agree' like Umi. This may not have been a good one to read on audio because I don't think I quite understand how all the parts fit together. But I have to appreciate a story about the strong bond between sisters.

4/5 stars

13. Black Love Matters ed. Jessica P. Pryde
audio

A variety of essays on Black Love, Black romance, Blackness in all its variety (Indigenous, AfroLatinx, multiracial, etc.), and Black Liberation. Some were highly philosophical; some told more personal stories or experiences; some were celebratory. I felt warm inside the whole time I was reading this.

4.5/5 stars

14. The Vibrant Years by Sonali Dev
ebook, book club

This was my first Sonali Dev. I liked it a lot. It was interesting to get a romance that looked at three generations of romantic entanglements and struggles.

4/5 stars

edited: to fix how I consumed some of the poems (ebook instead of audio)

15. Version Control by Dexter Palmer
audio

This was an interesting time travel/time paradox story. I liked the science in it. I was a bit unsatisfied that things really seemed to work out for him to the detriment of his wife, but I guess he was the inventor of the time machine.

4/5 stars

Readalikes:
Euphoria by Lily King for another take on scholars obsessing over and getting lost in their work.

16. The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman
ebook

This started out really well. I wanted something like Vivian Shaw's Dr. Greta Helsing books but about multiverse hopping librarians, but what I ended up with stayed put in a world I didn't find all that interesting (kind of steampunk regency) and meandered around town trying to one-up a nemesis. It was fine. I'm still really interested in the Library and following someone who was raised in it, but it sounds like the next book would also stay put in this world.

4/5 stars

Readalikes:
Deal with the Devil by Kit Rocha for more librarians trying to save the world, sort of.

17. Girl Gone Missing by Marcie R. Rendon
audio, book club

We read this for book club earlier this year. Some of us know the author (she's local). I remember going into a mini-dissertation at book club about how these books are marketed as mysteries but that I think they are really crime novels. I convinced a few people. Ha! These are quite short and propulsive, which is partly how we got away with putting this as the book club book even though it's the second in the series, reasoning that people could read both books in a month easily, if they wanted. I find the books uncomfortably tense because Cash is both savvily cautious and scrupulously reckless. I love Cash Blackbear as a character--I would read many more books featuring her. Cash has a lot of trauma. Having been in so many abusive White foster homes for most of her childhood, she longs for connection to her family and Native community, but she also shies away from close contact with anyone except the sheriff who looked out for her as he could and helped her get 'emancipated' as an older teen. Oh, I forgot to mention these are historical novels set in the 60's in MN. I love the narrator Siiri Scott for these books, unfortunately, this is the last one she narrates.

4/5 stars

18. The Crucible of Time by John Brunner
ebook

This was my second Brunner. Way back in high school, I read The Traveler in Black and didn't know what to make of it, but wasn't mad I had read it. I think in high school I read indiscriminately, like, lack of quality didn't bother me or not understanding what was going on. I was just grateful to be reading. Except for Interview with the Vampire--I do have strong feelings about vampire novels. Anyway, I loved this. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what Earth analogue the creatures on this planet were: some sort of insect or crustacean? tree creatures? I settled on cactus because they could store water but could also get quite desiccated. In looking at reviews after the fact, it seems they're not any one thing but are a little bit like multiple things. As the title says, this novel is a journey through long time. Civilizations rise and fall and rise again. It's almost assuredly a fix-up novel where original short stories or novelettes were stitched together to novel length. I didn't really mind. I liked getting to read about so many different cultures, and I do enjoy seeing how history gets garbled & mistranslated or understood differently over time. The arc of the novel is that their planet is endangered, getting more unstable, and they have to learn more and more about how their planet and then the galaxy, etc., works so that they can figure out how to save their planet or leave the planet for someplace more stable. Like the aliens, the societal stuff had a lot of overlap with Earth history, but was not an exact correlation. I especially appreciated that the tension between religion and science wasn't weighted so heavily towards science. I'm intrigued by this to read more Brunner.

4.5/5 stars

Readalikes:

The Scar by China Mieville, for strange creatures (I particularly thought of the cactus people) trying to understand their world and it's dangers through a combination of science and, with Mieville, the supernatural.

19. I'm Still Here by Austin Channing Brown
audio

I read this at the same time as Between the World and Me. I liked this well enough, but I liked the Coates' better. It may have been internalized sexism on my part. I definitely felt a bit distant from the religious/spiritual stuff. In the end I was glad I read it, but I didn't love it the way I hoped.

4/5 stars

20. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
audio

I found this book challenging and emotional. I had already read We Were Eight Years in Power and before that, I had read separately, his essay on "The Case for Reparations." I'm always impressed when writers can present complex arguments that engage my brain and they can also speak to my soul.

4.5/5 stars

21. Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells
audio

I enjoyed this. Not sure I have much to say beyond that.

4/5 stars

22. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
audio

It feels weird to say this but I became interested in Frederick Douglass after reading Transatlantic by Colum McCann. His section was by far my favorite of that novel. I know we read parts of this in my first Black Studies class in my first semester in college, but I don't really remember any of it. I thought this book was smart, profound in some spots, and, I want to say clever in the most positive sense. I admire that it's clever--that it is written with acknowledgement of its audience and the uses to which it will be put (as a slave narrative). I also really love this narrator (J.D. Jackson). Everything sounds smart and emotional when he reads it. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this book I was reading a bit out of obligation.

4.5/5 stars

23. The Last Interview and Other Conversations by James Baldwin
ebook

This was a brief book that I enjoyed more than I thought I would. I struggle with reading interviews and I wasn't sure I knew enough about James Baldwin to get much out of this. It turns out I learned things about him and his work (including the fact that he wrote a book about the Atlanta child murders that I think would be a great paired reading with Tayari Jones' Leaving Atlanta). I liked that this book had an interview from earlier in his career, maybe mid-career, and then, of course, the last interview. And these were smart people who interviewed him and challenged his ideas.

4/5 stars

24. Frieren: Beyond Journey's End 2 by Kanehito Yamada
paper

I didn't like this one as much as I did the first one. My favorite part is the flashbacks and her memory of the original quest and the realizations she has. The long-lived elf main character is picking up new companions in her journeys around this time, which *could* be good, but mostly at this point it's her teaching them lessons (although I appreciate that her first current-time companion is also pushing her and trying to get her to learn and change and grow). It was still pretty good, but I missed the overall bittersweet, somewhat nostalgic tone from the first volume.

4/5 stars

25. Redeployment by Phil Klay
audio

This is a collection of short stories about people (mostly men) in the military, on leave, or returning to civilian life. I think there was also one story about a guy who was posted overseas on a privatized military contract. The first story knocked my socks off! I thought it captured perfectly the mix of feelings (and PTSD) of a veteran trying to return to civilian life. No other story in the collection was quite as striking as that one, but they were all very good and covered a lot of territory (situation-wise and character-wise). I'm interested in the military and veterans. In my family, the men all served time in the military right out of high school, until we hit my generation. It did not go well for my youngest uncle who got a dishonorable discharge for striking a superior office and then could not get a job because of his veteran's status when he got out. I was in high school at the time, but I was surprised at how one mistake like that when you're 18 could stick with you for years afterward. My favorite book so far about the military has been Rites of Passage which is about a girl from a military family who is one of the first girls grudgingly let into the high school military academy her dad and brothers went to. This is now my second favorite book about the military.

4.5/5 stars

26. Sinister Graves by Marcie R. Rendon
audio, book club

I didn't like this one as much as I liked the previous volumes of this crime series. But, I was really sore that we got a different narrator. I loved Siiri Scott and thought she did a very good job with Cash who is likeable but is also prickly and kind of a mess (for very valid reasons!). Also, the sheriff, Wheaton, was not in this book as much & when he was his attention was divided. I did like very much the growth that Cash experiences in this book: slowly (awkwardly) reconnecting with her Native heritage, figuring out how to make college work for her, acquiring a mentor for her spiritual gifts, exploring developing a more mature romantic relationship with a man (who is not married or a playa; he thinks she's worth knowing). I will definitely read more, but probably on the page rather than audiobook. Siiri is the only Cash I want.

4/5 stars

27. All That She Carried by Tiya Miles
audio

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this & how emotionally invested I got. This was a different sort of scholarship than I've experienced in academia. As a poet, I definitely appreciated how the barebones facts of the artifact could open out to so many connected areas: women who were enslaved, how those who were enslaved were sold, what the enslaved were likely to eat or have access to, female handicrafts of the time, how those who were enslaved tried to pass on their lineage and family information, and how they tried to find each other at the end of the Civil War. I learned a lot.

4.5/5 stars

28. Bloodborne, Vol. 1 by Ales Kot
paper

I felt a bit like I came into the middle of a series. Most of the things that were happening I didn't really understand and felt quite distant from. It is based on a video game, which I did not know going in, so perhaps that accounts for the feeling of missing foundational information.

3/5 stars

29. Chasing Me to My Grave by Winfred Rembert
paper

I loved this! The art that Rembert creates (on leather!) is kind of stylized and quite expressive. The text is the telling of his life story, which is full of incident and struggle. He was raised in the Jim Crow south in a sharecropping family. He also talks about his artwork and what he tries to accomplish with it, what he's aiming for. The artwork is illustrative of his life: the things that happened to him, the things he witnessed. I found it moving and illuminating. I was especially interested in how he told the story of what happened to him, more of a spiral than linearly, and how he integrated the hurts that stayed with him (like feeling abandoned by his mother, and the biggie of racism). He had not had much formal education, so I found the way he wrote his story was helpful to me as I'm writing more and more prose (fiction and creative nonfiction) and feeling hemmed in and re-routed by written standard English.

4.5/5 stars

30. Friday by Robert A. Heinlein
paper

This was my first Heinlein. I suppose it's dated, but I still enjoyed it greatly. I sometimes like an old-fashioned sf story. I will totally re-read it at some point.

4/5 stars

31. Memory of Water by Emmi Itaranta
audio, book club

I wanted to like this way more than I did. It was way too stressful a read because the main character was hopelessly naive and careless. It was a bit like an American Girl story where the side character (best friend) has a way more interesting and complex story unfurling but we're mostly stuck with the privileged main character. I really wanted to know more about the water out there that the government is hiding to create scarcity, but that's not what the story is about, I suppose. I did like some parts, like the piecing together of the audio cassettes (including figuring out how this old technology works), how plastic is precious and scavenged for and mended, and the earlier tea master diaries and stories (although not much was made of this). This was our book club book in September 2020, but I just finished it this year. Lots of picking it up and putting it down.

3/5 stars