So here's a new thing I'm going to try to do. This is a collection of thoughts on every single book I read this month, be it an overly critical rant (likely), obsessive blabber (quite likely), or a few neutral thoughts (all in which I'm most likely to overuse the word "really," which is a problem I have.) I'll post something like this most months, maybe, if I feel like it. And also, technically I read these books between March 28th and April 25th, but for simplicity's sake let's pretend I read these all in the month of April.
The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair by Joel Dicker. I hated this book. Marketed as a literary thriller, the English translation will be released next Tuesday and is supposed to be a big deal as it is supposedly "the publishing phenomena topping bestseller lists around the world."
In reality, this book is just a thinly-strung-together series of caricatural characters who do truly incomprehensibly stupid things, as well as loads of unnecessary repetition in the form of "extracts" and dialogue, with a few unpredictable narrative "twists" as its selling point. It's not that I don't usually read books of this genre - it's really just bad. (In fact, I do occasionally like crime stuff - here's a great interview with French author Emmanuel Carrère, who wrote a true crime book that I recently read and loved called The Adversary.)
The fact that this book has received so much praise, including the Grand Prix du Roman from the Académie Française leaves me (figuratively-ha) speechless. I have no earthly idea how such a terribly written book could win this and two other French literary prizes, unless they are judged purely on how well the contenders conform to recycled plot lines and genre tropes, which I doubt.
Here's my theory about this book - while it takes place in America and is about Americans, it was originally written for a European readership by a European. Thus, it has a distinctly European flavor to its humor, which I vaguely recognize but don't fully understand, and also don't find funny at all, nor, I suspect, will most American readers. I suppose we will find out soon enough.
Conclusive feelings: terrible, hated it.
City of Thieves by David Benioff. Derik and I listened to this audiobook driving back from visiting my family for Easter. I've been meaning to pick this one up since Tom, the sales rep from Penguin, enthusiastically declared it his favorite book from the last few years. The plot moves super fast, and somehow Benioff develops super interesting, complicated characters at the same time. Probably because he is a screenwriter and is used to writing characters this way, maybe? Just a guess. I don't really know what I'm talking about.
Conclusive feelings: excellent plot, thorough enjoyment was had (haha.)
An Untamed State by Roxane Gay. This is definitely going to be one of my top favorites of the year. In her narrative Gay somehow addresses the complicated-ness of gender, race, trauma, privilege, and relationships, especially when they all overlap with each other in problematic ways. I'm actually in the middle of reading an essay collection by Gay called Bad Feminist, which includes an excellent essay called "I'm Not Here to Make Friends" (which I had previously read online in full or in part, can't remember, but I loved it then too.) In this essay she addresses the problem of "likeability" and the way we often use it to critique female characters in literature and pop culture. The main character in this book is an excellent example of a woman who doesn't follow social norms/expectations and so isn't necessarily "likeable" and thus - according to Gay, and also me, much more interesting.
Conclusive feelings: impressed, in awe, disturbed, many thoughts were provoked (haha)
Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety by Daniel B. Smith. Stunned by the insight, wisdom, and humor in this book. It definitely isn't self-help, doesn't include any "tips" (I'm so over "tips") and is a thoroughly realistic, fascinating, and quite often funny representation of one man's experience with anxiety--a state of mind many of us know and love. :)
Conclusive feelings: funny, liked it.
Signed, Sealed, Delivered by Nina Sankovitch. This new semi-memoir about letter writing is definitely a step up from Sankovitch's last semi-memoir about reading one book a day for a year called Tolstoy and the Purple Chair. (Any memoir about doing-one-specific-activity-every-day-for-one-year I automatically hate.) She does have some good insights about what makes letters, as texts, interesting and different, but I would have liked her to go on even more about the voyeuristic nature of reading a letter as a third party, which I don't think she ever even mentions. It seems like some of her insights were tamped down in favor of anecdotes and examples of famous letter-writers, presumably to be more palatable to general readership, which is too bad.
Conclusive feelings: Short, fun, some insight, not incredible. Liked it.
Servants by Lucy Leatherbridge. I got into this one because my interest in Downton Abbey went through a recent revival when I was at home sick last month. I don't care very much about the Grantham's and their issues, but I always found myself strangely emotionally attached to the servants and their lives/problems. Though, I do admit I went on the LDS church's family search website to find out if I'm related to any "imporant" people through my British line of ancestry ... after an hour or so I found a few Earls of Warwick that lived in the 15th century(yeah baby). Anyway, I'm especially fascinated by the class system in Britian and how that all works, as it's very foreign to me and I can't quite imagine what that master/servant relationship would look and feel like. This book had a lot of cool information that was generally well presented, and not too much at length to make it boring, yet definitely needed some explanatory footnotes in some places.
Conclusive feelings: Interesting info dump but nothing amazing. For something similar yet better check out At Home: A History of Private Life by Bill Bryson.
Light Years by James Salter
I don't have much to say about this one. I really love James Salter, he's an excellent stylist and generally writes about complicated relationships which I like, but I didn't connect with the story as much as I have with his others.
Conclusive feelings: Good writing, otherwise meh.
The Pure and the Impure by Colette
Love Colette, I don't feel like going on much about this one other than to say it's my favorite I've read of hers so far (her journalism seems a bit more visionary and accessible to a contemporary readership than her novels, from what I've read so far.) Gender and sexuality in early 20th century France = obviously I'm interested.
Conclusive feelings: Thoroughly enjoyed.
American Crucifixion by Alex Beam
Alright I'm burning out here. I love me some good Mormon history, so I was excited to see a new book about Joseph Smith. The premise is basically this: what was it about Joseph Smith that made people want to kill him, and how did that go down? It wasn't groundbreaking, honestly there wasn't much in here I didn't already know (if not in detail), but I did appreciate the section of Joseph Smith's polygamy (which needs more scholarship/is fascinating to me/judging by this supposed picture maybe I would have married him?/what am I saying.)
Conclusive feelings: Interesting, good part about polygamy, not groundbreaking.
That's it, thanks for reading. Have you read or heard of any of these books? Which would you read (please don't read the first one)? What are your thoughts? Please share. Which words did I overuse? Please give me feedback of any sort. Bye now.
The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair by Joel Dicker. I hated this book. Marketed as a literary thriller, the English translation will be released next Tuesday and is supposed to be a big deal as it is supposedly "the publishing phenomena topping bestseller lists around the world."In reality, this book is just a thinly-strung-together series of caricatural characters who do truly incomprehensibly stupid things, as well as loads of unnecessary repetition in the form of "extracts" and dialogue, with a few unpredictable narrative "twists" as its selling point. It's not that I don't usually read books of this genre - it's really just bad. (In fact, I do occasionally like crime stuff - here's a great interview with French author Emmanuel Carrère, who wrote a true crime book that I recently read and loved called The Adversary.)
The fact that this book has received so much praise, including the Grand Prix du Roman from the Académie Française leaves me (figuratively-ha) speechless. I have no earthly idea how such a terribly written book could win this and two other French literary prizes, unless they are judged purely on how well the contenders conform to recycled plot lines and genre tropes, which I doubt.
Here's my theory about this book - while it takes place in America and is about Americans, it was originally written for a European readership by a European. Thus, it has a distinctly European flavor to its humor, which I vaguely recognize but don't fully understand, and also don't find funny at all, nor, I suspect, will most American readers. I suppose we will find out soon enough.Conclusive feelings: terrible, hated it.
City of Thieves by David Benioff. Derik and I listened to this audiobook driving back from visiting my family for Easter. I've been meaning to pick this one up since Tom, the sales rep from Penguin, enthusiastically declared it his favorite book from the last few years. The plot moves super fast, and somehow Benioff develops super interesting, complicated characters at the same time. Probably because he is a screenwriter and is used to writing characters this way, maybe? Just a guess. I don't really know what I'm talking about.Conclusive feelings: excellent plot, thorough enjoyment was had (haha.)
An Untamed State by Roxane Gay. This is definitely going to be one of my top favorites of the year. In her narrative Gay somehow addresses the complicated-ness of gender, race, trauma, privilege, and relationships, especially when they all overlap with each other in problematic ways. I'm actually in the middle of reading an essay collection by Gay called Bad Feminist, which includes an excellent essay called "I'm Not Here to Make Friends" (which I had previously read online in full or in part, can't remember, but I loved it then too.) In this essay she addresses the problem of "likeability" and the way we often use it to critique female characters in literature and pop culture. The main character in this book is an excellent example of a woman who doesn't follow social norms/expectations and so isn't necessarily "likeable" and thus - according to Gay, and also me, much more interesting.
Conclusive feelings: impressed, in awe, disturbed, many thoughts were provoked (haha)
Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety by Daniel B. Smith. Stunned by the insight, wisdom, and humor in this book. It definitely isn't self-help, doesn't include any "tips" (I'm so over "tips") and is a thoroughly realistic, fascinating, and quite often funny representation of one man's experience with anxiety--a state of mind many of us know and love. :)
Conclusive feelings: funny, liked it.
Signed, Sealed, Delivered by Nina Sankovitch. This new semi-memoir about letter writing is definitely a step up from Sankovitch's last semi-memoir about reading one book a day for a year called Tolstoy and the Purple Chair. (Any memoir about doing-one-specific-activity-every-day-for-one-year I automatically hate.) She does have some good insights about what makes letters, as texts, interesting and different, but I would have liked her to go on even more about the voyeuristic nature of reading a letter as a third party, which I don't think she ever even mentions. It seems like some of her insights were tamped down in favor of anecdotes and examples of famous letter-writers, presumably to be more palatable to general readership, which is too bad.Conclusive feelings: Short, fun, some insight, not incredible. Liked it.
Servants by Lucy Leatherbridge. I got into this one because my interest in Downton Abbey went through a recent revival when I was at home sick last month. I don't care very much about the Grantham's and their issues, but I always found myself strangely emotionally attached to the servants and their lives/problems. Though, I do admit I went on the LDS church's family search website to find out if I'm related to any "imporant" people through my British line of ancestry ... after an hour or so I found a few Earls of Warwick that lived in the 15th century(yeah baby). Anyway, I'm especially fascinated by the class system in Britian and how that all works, as it's very foreign to me and I can't quite imagine what that master/servant relationship would look and feel like. This book had a lot of cool information that was generally well presented, and not too much at length to make it boring, yet definitely needed some explanatory footnotes in some places.Conclusive feelings: Interesting info dump but nothing amazing. For something similar yet better check out At Home: A History of Private Life by Bill Bryson.Light Years by James Salter
I don't have much to say about this one. I really love James Salter, he's an excellent stylist and generally writes about complicated relationships which I like, but I didn't connect with the story as much as I have with his others.
Conclusive feelings: Good writing, otherwise meh.
The Pure and the Impure by Colette
Love Colette, I don't feel like going on much about this one other than to say it's my favorite I've read of hers so far (her journalism seems a bit more visionary and accessible to a contemporary readership than her novels, from what I've read so far.) Gender and sexuality in early 20th century France = obviously I'm interested.Conclusive feelings: Thoroughly enjoyed.
American Crucifixion by Alex Beam
Alright I'm burning out here. I love me some good Mormon history, so I was excited to see a new book about Joseph Smith. The premise is basically this: what was it about Joseph Smith that made people want to kill him, and how did that go down? It wasn't groundbreaking, honestly there wasn't much in here I didn't already know (if not in detail), but I did appreciate the section of Joseph Smith's polygamy (which needs more scholarship/is fascinating to me/judging by this supposed picture maybe I would have married him?/what am I saying.)Conclusive feelings: Interesting, good part about polygamy, not groundbreaking.
That's it, thanks for reading. Have you read or heard of any of these books? Which would you read (please don't read the first one)? What are your thoughts? Please share. Which words did I overuse? Please give me feedback of any sort. Bye now.
