A brief reading report: May through August
Everything I read this summer, because slowing down doesn't stop a good time
With the long days in London finally stretching less and less, it means the end of summer has nearly arrived. Irregardless of science, it’s my firm opinion that fall begins on the 1st of September, and I’ll expect a gusting cool breeze any hour.
It also means that another third of the year has come and gone, so another brief season of reading is ready for review.
While I’d love to be a summer-in-the-park-book-in-hand kinda girl every eve and weekend, the reality is work wise, this is one of the busiest times of year for me. Even still, I’ve made it through nine books in four months, which I find a respectably resilient rate.
If you want to catch up on the first part of my year to see what I’ve read to date, see the post below to get the full details:
Similarly, if you’d like to get my reviews in real time, feel free to follow me on Goodreads!
Without further ado, these are the books I read this summer. A note that these are not in chronological order, but rather, ranked favorite to least favorite.
Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood | 4.5 stars
This book snuck up on me. Narrated by a not-quite nun who nevertheless retreats to a quiet convent in stark, dry Australia, her life is interrupted by three arrivals: mice, bones, and a figure from her past.
Usually, I am not one for books that wander; I prefer plots over character, and I realize this as a fatal flaw. But Wood puts forth a novel that occupied an interesting place in limbo: there was just enough momentum from these ominous arrivals that the book drove forward, and the thoughts of the narrator I found earnest and moving.
The novel navigates deep moral, religious, and environmental questions, pushing through grief, forgiveness (or lack thereof), and the anatomy of a quiet life (and what can disrupt it).
I will say I don't think it is for everyone (especially if you have a fear of mice), but at first I didn't think it was for me and yet it absolutely moved me. I'll be thinking of this one a long time to come.
On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle | 4.25 stars
“Maybe we are a weather system—condensation and evaporation: we are together, we look at one another, we touch one another, we condense, we come together.”
A haunting and poetic meditation on what it means to be lost in time. Tara, the narrator, discoveries she is trapped on the eighteenth of November. Try as she might, she cannot reach the nineteenth.
There are many time loop novels, but what I found a little marvelous in Balle's version was the normality and peace with which our narrator approaches her dilemma. She is rational, as much as anyone can be, and at times that means she is deeply irrational, but she always pulls back to center. The language in this book is tremendous, with deeply philosophical meditations on time and personhood.
It is also a love story, and the way that Balle writes Tara's journey of flowing to and away from Thomas is poignantly sweet and painful. Once Tara steps outside the flow of time, it is difficult to hold on to that rock at the river's ledge.
Writers & Lovers by Lily King | 4 stars
“But I can’t go out with a guy who’s written eleven and half pages in three years. That kind of thing is contagious.” Amen.
Casey feels real; her problems, her struggles, the way she views and says things, and most of all her grief for her recently passed mother. She is also a tremendously interesting person, but isn't self-aware of her own unique nature, which is refreshing. Her unassuming nature but heartfelt personality snuck up on me as a reader.
The writing is beautiful, and while writing about writing (and writers, and novels) can go down mind-numbingly boring paths, King instead writes a book that is rooted in the mellow, truthful, and sweet parts of being someone like Casey.
I think I particularly enjoyed this book because I recognized it. Boston was a familiar landscape, as were the kinds of readers and writers Casey finds herself surrounded by. If you've ever studied writing in an academic setting, you know tremendous friends like Muriel, and you know nightmare machines like Oscar. If that kind of thing doesn't generate warm and fuzzy nostalgia for you, it is possible you won't like this book quite as much, however, I'd still recommend it.
Trust by Hernan Diaz | 4 stars
“Reality is a fiction with an unlimited budget.”
Trust is a book that thinks its smarter than you. It is a book about money, certainly; its powers of persuasions, its ability to appear and disappear itself and just about everything else in this world. But more than money, this novel is about silences.
The novel is composed of four sections: "fiction"; autobiography in progress; memoir; diary. The second half, the stories of women, breathe life into the first half, the stories of men. It is absolutely intentional, and done in brilliant (dare I say Pulitzer-esque) fashion, however it is a bit of a test of patience to reach this point The second half of this book is a resounding 5 stars and the first half on the greatness of man was boring.
The writing, while at times a bit dense, is also elegant and thoughtful. One of those novels where each section shifts tonally with grace, and sentences stretch on with intent.
However, when the flap says "the mystery at the center of Bonds," sue me, but I am in fact expecting a mystery at the center of Bonds. There is no mystery at Bonds unless you are a sexist who assumes until the bitter end that a wife could not possibly influence her husband.
We Keep the Dead Close by Becky Cooper | 3.5 stars
A thick nonfiction, Cooper details the life and murder of Jane Britton: a young PhD student in the Harvard archaeology department killed the night before an exam.
The myth that Becky hears as a student is a warning bell played for many girls at many schools: Don’t go near that teacher. But this legend is extreme in its blame and consequences for a vivacious young woman, and it is this rumor that sends Becky down a decade-long path investigating the twists and turns of the story: that Jane was murdered by a professor whom she had an affair with, who then cast red ochre over her body in an act of burial.
What follows are characters out of a play: the Shakespearean and near homicidal group Jane dug in Iran with, the many awful lovers and colleagues and professors, her real friends and fake friends, a farmer boyfriend, the nosy neighbors you eventually fall in love with. Everyone is a story within a story, and has their own view of what happened to Jane Britton.
At times, I did have the feeling that comes with reading of the genre, of “too much”; an instinct that this should be private, somehow. But alas, Cooper pushes on.
Shelf Life by Nadia Wassef | 3 stars
Shelf Life was a really interesting read. It details the story of Egypt's first modern bookstore, founded in Cairo by the author, Nadia Wassef, her sister, and their best friend. The chapters follow the different sections of a bookshop ('Classics', 'Self-Help', etc.) and start some really interesting conversations on what it means to sell literature, especially as a woman and particularly in an increasingly volatile climate like pre-revolution Egypt.
As someone who is a former bookseller in bookshops, as well as just a general human being, it did make me uncomfortable how Wassef discusses her employees across her stores and private life, as well as class in general. I think you could call it 'radical honesty', in theory, and make it part of this book's strengths (among which is her truthfulness in detailing experiences with marriage and motherhood), but it certainly made me respect her a little less.
Overall, I did enjoy this and felt like I learned a lot from one real stern lady, but there are certain things that left a bitter aftertaste.
The Ashes & the Star-Cursed King by Carissa Broadbent | 2.5 stars
This book about vampires completely lacked bite. The first book offered a bit of fun and creativity, whereas this second one felt messy, with less sharp characters, and deeply one-dimensional villains.
That’ll be the end of this series for me!
House of Flame and Shadow by Sarah J. Maas | 2 stars
This was...bad. And not even bad for Sarah, but like Chat GPT cosplaying as a fifteen-year-old bad.
At the crux of this issue is that I literally do not care about any of the characters at all.
Bryce and Hunt are the least compelling leads I think I've ever met, coupled with the least connected plot of nonsensical info-dumps I've experienced in a minute. ON TOP OF THE FACT that everyone interesting as a plot got dropped. Fury and June? Bye. Ariadne? Gone. Sigrid? Crunched, then never seen again. Hypaxia? Only visits when convenient.
Especially given the title of the book was House of Flame and Shadow, I thought we were going to get into the nitty gritty of this dark realm, but of course not. Even the "battles" (and I use that term loosely for Sarah) are exciting as we draw to the end of one of her books. Here, the battles were nonexistent, and the fights nonstarters.
A genuinely whatever book, and I doubt I'll tune into Book #4.
Park Avenue by Renée Ahdieh | 1.5 stars (and I’m being nice)
If I hadn’t paid nearly full price for this hardcover, I can assure you I never would have finished this book in the first-place. Alas, I was trapped by my own financial guilt.
This is the author’s first “adult” novel, and I use that descriptor loosely because I found the writing painfully childish to read. And that’s just what I can forgive.
There are interrupting chapters narrated by an unknown person that are deeply dumb and irritating. The twist at the end felt unrealistic and irritating. The characters were deeply under-characterized, underutilized and irritating. And that goes double for the narrator, Jia.
SAVE YOURSELF AND SKIP THIS.
So, what’s next this autumn?
Now that my hours at work will lessen a bit, and the weather in London is changing distinctly to “Stay the f— inside,” I am hoping to get through at least 11 more books to reach my reading goal for 2025, but optimistically, 15 would be golden.
At the top of my TBR are:
Katabasis by R.F. Kuang
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
The Tragedy of True Crime by John J. Lennon
The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman
Amity by Nathan Harris
The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson
The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis
Theft by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Daughters of Night by Laura Shepherd-Robinson
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (though I’ve been avoiding this for YEARS so what’s one more?)
loooved writers and lovers so glad you read