This exploration of entitlement, race, misogyny, jealousy, and the not-so-pleasant aspects of the publishing industry had me cringing throughout. The characters are complex and messy and predictable enough to be realistic. It got me thinking about all of the things that stand in the way of living with authenticity (or even being able to identify authenticity in ourselves or anyone else), which doesn't really leave me feeling optimistic.

1) I actually read several good books this month, but the tagged is probably my favorite of the bunch.
2) I decided to give up on a book of essays by Wendell Berry, not because they aren't good, but just because I'm not in the mood for essay after essay.

#Two4Tuesday

Thanks for the tag, @TheSpineView and @The_Penniless_Author

I'm traveling a lot in June and then starting a new full-time position, so I'm not sure how much reading I'll get done, but this is my June #bookspin list.

I did add a reread of Bury Your Dead because we're going to be in Quebec City, and then several others that I hope will hold my attention on the plane (I usually have a lot of trouble reading on flights).

@TheAromaofBooks

This is my elder child's graduation cake, but I like to think it's also a celebratory cake for my 4-year Litsyversary, which fell on the day of the graduation party. Hooray for 4 years on the only social media app I don't routinely fantasize about deleting! (And hooray for homeschooling my first child through high school!)

I thought of the tagged book so many times during our 2-hour falconry experience yesterday. This local place has special certifications that allow them to offer interactive presentations to the public in a safe and legal way. I still kind of want to get into falconry, which I imagine would be rewarding, humbling, and very messy, but maybe I can just get my next job with a falconer. (This is me with a Harris's hawk.)

I took a graduate course on the Qur'an several years ago and have been intrigued ever since, so although I have a complicated relationship with memoir as a genre, I enjoyed Lamya H's reflection on the lives of the prophets as they relate to and inform her own life experience. I feel like this is as much a story of maturing into one's 30s as it is a story about coming out and religion, and a few juvenile elements make sense to me through this lens.

1. To be honest, I forgot it was a holiday! Saturday is all-day orchestra concerts that my kids are playing in (last of my elder kid's senior year!), Sunday is graduation party for said elder kid, and we'll have family in town for all of it, so I assume we'll be doing something with all of them on Monday.

2. I'm way too wary of wishes to make any, so I'd probably pass.

@TheSpineView #Two4Tuesday

Romance is not my genre, and I've had mixed experiences with Sittenfeld's novels, so it was a lovely surprise to find myself so immersed in this novel that I stayed up into the wee hours to finish it. I even loved the lockdown email exchange, and I usually loathe epistolary storytelling. It's emotionally real, the friendships are jealousy-inducing, and it's so sexy when the guy is like, "I'm sorry, I said something wrong. Please let me clarify."

I really like how Makkai unspools her stories, leading readers through the conflicting assumptions, fears, and motivations of characters trying to navigate their personal lives within the context of our culture. I enjoyed the exploration of the positives and negatives of coming of age as the last of the GenXers (*raises hand*) compared with the experiences of today's teens. She conveys well how imperfectly we decide who matters and who doesn't.

"Ninety-four was the last good year for pop culture."

Hear, hear!

Well, heck! Another overlap with The Shards! It's one of my favorite things about reading books in close proximity to each other...I notice connections that I might not otherwise notice.

Going directly from Ellis's The Shards with its LA prep school kids to this one is very interesting, at least so far (60 pages in).

This is the first I've read from Ellis, although I saw the movie version of American Psycho, so I had an idea what to expect. It's definitely a page turner, but I don't feel like I quite connected with the over-privileged nihilistic prep school cast. It's certainly clever, just perhaps more self-consciously clever than I prefer. It feels like a (raunchy, gory, violent) commentary about wealth, responsibility, and emotional vacuousness.

I'm not super into tarot, but when I saw Brink Literacy Project's "The Literary Tarot" on Kickstarter a while back, and then realized that a friend of mine from school is one of the authors contributing to the pairings, I decided to back the project. It's taken a long time, but I finally received the finished product, and it's gorgeous!

Major and minor arcana are paired with literary works that reflect the essence of each card. ?

1. Currently reading two novels, one set in Los Angeles, the other set in Manhattan.

2. I'm not sure if I have a favorite setting, but I'm pretty tired of reading books set in NYC.

3. Nothing particular, just any setting that's vivid and easy for me to picture.

@Eggs #WondrousWednesday

This is an interesting look at the history of how humans have dealt with their dead and how our biases around race, culture, and status, as well as financial incentives, have shaped these practices. Most interesting to me is how the design of modern theme parks and subdivisions is influenced by cemetery design. It's lightly peppered with Dad Jokes and an excellent follow-up to This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust.

The thing I like best about this novel is the way it plays with stories, the narratives we create (or accept from others) that shape how we see our lives and our role in other people's lives. However, the execution isn't as adept as it might have been. Words (like "eying") and similes are overused, the son doesn't seem real and his age doesn't align with his stages of development, and the MC is less sympathetic than I think she's supposed to be.

Audible exclusives. The idea that there are audiobooks I can't get from the library feels so very, very wrong.

@ozma.of.oz #SundayFunday

I struggle with imposter syndrome a bit after coming to this teaching gig relatively late in life and via an unconventional path, but on nights like tonight when I came home from teaching a class on humor in Shakespeare during which we all laughed so hard my face is sore, I feel like I might not be too bad at this job after all.

I'm enjoying this series even though it's feeling a little like Three Pines with the high per capita murder rate, and this installment is a little closer to a damsel-in-distress plot than I prefer. It's interesting how quickly the mystery part of the plot unfolds as compared with the relatively slow pace at which the interpersonal relationships develop. Is the "small world," running-into-people thing common on islands IRL or just in fiction?

I had to look up "baseball boots." I am quite familiar with Chuck Taylor high-tops, but I have never heard them referred to as "baseball boots." I've always thought of them as basketball shoes (that aren't really great for sportsing at all but are mostly just cool looking).

With family from all over Appalachia (northwestern SC, western NC, eastern TN, southwest VA, up to West Virginia and into Ohio), some branches that have been there since the late 1600s, I found Kingsolver's portrayal of the culture there fair and brutally honest. It's an awkward thing to consider that part of my heritage, the forces that propel some people away and keep others stuck fast, the juxtaposition of severe poverty and steadfast loyalty.

1. I don't seem to have much time for TV the past few years, but I have gotten more into watching football, which is sort of like a series.

2. Road trip anywhere! I also like flying somewhere, taking a road trip, and flying home. I prefer going new-to-me places because I like to explore.

3. Euchre or Catan if there are enough other people around, Spelling Bee or Pyramid Solitaire if I'm on my own.

@Eggs #WondrousWednesday

1. Yes! My elder child's graduation trip through New England and Quebec (J'étudie le français pour mes vacances! I'm super ready (to start conversations in French and then have people switch to English)).

2. Not really, but I did love Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer. And any season is a good season for spooky reads.

#Two4Tuesday @TheSpineView

This veers a little into "farce" territory at points, but overall I find it to be a clever, hilarious, and insightful look into relationships between women. May we all be bonobos to one another.

Usually I take a new hardcover or two (purchased or library borrow), my Kobo all loaded with library loans, and audiobooks on Libby or Libro on my phone (plus noise-cancelling headphones).

But for my trip next month I'm thinking of under-booking myself so I have an excuse (and space in my luggage) to buy from local bookstores.

Which reminds me: Anyone have recommendations for must-visit bookshops in Quebec City?

#SundayFunday @ozma.of.oz

I enjoyed this collection of interwoven short stories about a family that relocates from Jamaica to Miami. The author's use of second-person perspective in some of the stories is effective and unobtrusive (many times I read second person and can't stop remembering that's what I'm reading, but here I was able just to enjoy the stories). These stories do not make me want to visit Miami, but then, I've never wanted to visit Miami anyway.

I might be too old to enjoy this novel. It's not bad, just kind of sophomoric, by which I mean the narrator (and maybe the author?) feels wise and worldly to herself, but to an old lady like me, she just seems so...young. She's got such conflicted ideas of what it means to be a grown-up, and I get that this is the point, but I'm not sure it's all that interesting to me. Maybe if I had a "home town" or an affinity for New York I could connect more.

I'm using a very minor procedure on my shoulder blade this morning as an excuse for a mini readathon this afternoon! My plan is to finish the tagged then start on The Bandit Queens, which I only have for one more day on a skip-the-line Libby loan. The other two are for if I need a break. Hopefully I can find a comfortable reading position that doesn't stretch anything that shouldn't be stretched or compress anything that shouldn't be compressed.🤞

1) A coworker once described me as "the most relentlessly intelligent person he'd ever met."
2) The ability to make lattice pie crusts with gluten-free dough.
3) Beets and beautiful greens from Monday's CSA share (sideways to fit).

@Eggs #WondrousWednesday

This is a cute middle-grade mystery imagining the mischief Ada Byron Lovelace and Mary Godwin Shelley could have gotten into had they been contemporaries. With a supporting cast that includes Charles Dickens and Percy Shelley, this novel is an homage of sorts to the greatest creative minds of 19th-century England. A little silly and a little too modern in thinking for the time period, this is still a fun intro to the genre for young readers.

I'm enjoying reading Christie's books in order in part because I can imagine her getting older and seeing the patterns and personalities and emotions of different ages from the perspective of age. She's always focused on character and motivation, but I find this book especially focused in that direction and in an interesting way. There may be one twist too many for my taste, but I like particularly her portrayal of the compromises of marriage.

On to May! #bookspinbingo

The Iliad is my #bookspin and The Shards is my #doublespin

@TheAromaofBooks

April #bookspinbingo. Alas, no bingo this month! And I haven't finished my #bookspin or #doublespin yet. 🤷 If I weren't spending so much time studying French for our trip to Quebec (probably unnecessarily both because people will likely speak English and because I have so much trouble understanding the metropolitan French accent that it's unlikely I'll do any better with the Quebecois accent), I might have done better.

@TheAromaofBooks

O'Farrell's portrayal of Lucrezia is enjoyable and her isolation palpable, and Alfonso is realistically terrifying, but this novel didn't strike me like Hamnet did. The timeline is a little confusing in places, possibly because I was listening to the audiobook and couldn't turn back when I got disoriented, or maybe just because the flashbacks were so close together in time with the present moment.

Lots going on today (including a trip to the rose garden, where the roses were putting on quite a show), but I managed to sneak in some audiobook time with the tagged book. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. Good tension, but as with Hamnet, knowing the ending is making the whole endeavor kind of depressing.

Got my copy from the local indie today, @jen_the_scribe ! I'm encouraged by the fact that it has what looks like 14pt font...turning more pages per tiny chunk of reading time might help me feel more like I'm making progress.

May #bookspin list! It's a highly aspirational list for a month that we plan to fill with graduation events and family visits and birthday celebrations. 🎓🎂

As always, thank you for hosting @TheAromaofBooks !

This morning has been all about reading-adjacent activities, like listening to Anne Bogel explode my TBR on "What Should I Read Next?" while watching the antics of our backyard wildlife on our garden cam. This lizard did pushups in front of the camera, and later a bird hopped over a lizard (same lizard? I'm not sure). So, basically it's been a really exciting morning.

Although it's set in 1990s Northern Ireland, this novel has the feel of YA dystopian fiction. Dystopian fiction works because it's at least somewhat believable/based on reality, but a story that feels like dystopian fiction but is set in the real world is unsettling to me. My teen history buff son has recently been talking about the ills of colonialism and what the world would look like without it. This novel fits well with that conversation.

I started the Caroline Alexander translation of The Iliad on audio, but I think I'm going to need to read the print version to retain any of it. I focused well during the introduction (super interesting!) but kept spacing out during the actual story. Which is unfortunate because I have much more time to put books in my ears than to put them in front of my eyes.

A rose from our garden. Our landlord has a landscaper, so I enjoy them but do no work.

I finished listening to this audiobook while sealing and stamping graduation announcements. Mary Louise Kelly and I don't have a whole lot in common (same generation, elder children a year apart in age, and that's pretty much it), and I admit to glazing over during some of the world news bits, but as Kelly writes about the milestones of middle age---empty nest, aging parents, career shifts, marriage challenges---her words resonate so much for me.

Started this one before work but luckily also before putting on makeup. I hope I don't cry through the whole thing, but as the parent of a high school senior, this is the perfect time for me to read this, which is also the worst time for me to read it, if I don't want to walk around with mascara lines down my face.

Although this novel could have been more skillfully constructed (there's a "first this happened, then this" feeling sometimes rather than an organic unfolding, and sometimes the passage of time feels off), I enjoy how it explores family, both the one we're born into and the one we create, collective and personal wisdom, the ways in which a community is interwoven, for better or worse, and the challenge of being drawn to that which will hurt us.

Me when I got up this morning: "My goals for today are to work out, make kale salad, and prep for the rest of this week's teaching."

Me halfway through my coffee: "My goals for today can wait until I catch up on my reviews and update my First Line Journal."

And yes, that's two e-readers, and also yes, the Kindle is upside-down.

The Millennials I know are really into this book, so I finally picked it up. I read the first third carefully then skimmed the rest. I like the number of citations and stories Clear uses, and although the information isn't new if you've read books or listened to podcasts about habits, he organizes it in an accessible and logical way. So, if this is your first habits book, I recommend it. But if you're not a novice, you can probably skip it.

My nominations for #camplitsy2023. With so many awesome titles already showing up among the nomination posts, I had to make sure I posted mine before I added a billion more to my list!
@Megabooks @squirrelbrain @BarbaraBB

Is Kevin Wilson becoming one of my favorite authors? Well, let's see...I read one of his novels three times, once aloud to my kids. Both his novels and his short stories make me laugh in the sad way I enjoy, like things are bad and likely to get worse, but there's this little thing, at least. So I suspect the answer is yes. These early stories of his feel a little different than his later writing, but still carry his hallmarks.

1. Yes, my mom helped my friends plan a surprise going-away sleepover party before we moved the summer after 8th grade. She drove me to my friend's house and handed me a TV Guide she said I needed to take to the door to drop off to my friend's mom. 33 years later, I'm still a little embarrassed that I was so gullible.
2. Sure, I enjoy the unexpected in fiction if it makes sense overall.
#Two4Tuesday @TheSpineView

This feels very man-written, specifically it feels written by a man of a certain generation grappling with a mid-life crisis. Powers is a fair bit younger than the writers I usually associate with this style (Updike, Mailer), but he pulls it off well, by which I mean his narrator is so absorbed with his own worldview and unexamined emotions, he can't parse the reality others are living. He goes about cluelessly but with feigned confidence.