Bookwormish, 4th quarter of 2021
Okay, favorite books from this most recent quarter year, in roughly one sentence each, go…
TOP BOOKS
The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik - I love it when an author takes the already excellent worldbuilding from their first book, and uses the second book in the series to unfold it further outward in unexpected yet inevitable directions; in other words, Naomi Novik continues to write at the top of her game.
Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - A gentle and lovely elegy to her father.
The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel - Like probably pretty much everyone else, I saw this and thought, Alison Bechdel wrote a book…about fitness…? But because it’s Alison Bechdel, fitness is a lens through which to examine the human condition, her struggle for utter self-sufficiency, and her gradual - and still ongoing - capitulation to the idea that not all interdependence with fellow human beings is a bad thing.
Shirley and Jamila’s Big Fall by Gillian Goerz - This sequel to Shirley and Jamila Save Their Summer continues to be a wonderful kids’ mystery/adventure, a modern-day, kid-scaled Sherlock Holmes retelling, but very much stands on its own with a core theme of friendship and what it means to be a good friend.
A Stranger at Home by Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton - Sequel to Fatty Legs, and I thought this one was even better - here Olemaun, an Inuvialuit girl, returns home from her terrible experience at Catholic boarding school and has to struggle with no longer quite belonging in either world.
EVEN MORE GOOD BOOKS
The Low, Low Woods by Carmen Maria Machado and Dani - A dark Carmen Maria Machado tale, this time in comic book form, set in a dying mining town where something terrible is happening to its women but the women keep forgetting.
Josephine Against the Sea by Shakirah Bourne - Continuing my pursuit of selkies and other folklore creatures of the sea; this is set in Barbados and draws from Caribbean folklore to tell a story about family and returning to life from grief.
The Jewish Cookbook by Leah Koenig - This crossed my desk at work and looked interesting, so I flipped it open - and the first thing I saw was a recipe by someone I knew in Berlin. Whoa. I ended up reading through the whole thing (yes, I read a cookbook cover to cover) and really appreciated the breadth of culture it covered. We American Jews are mostly from Ashkenazi (Eastern European) backgrounds, so we can be a bit myopic about what falls under “Jewish” food; this book has recipes from Eastern Europe, yes, but also Yemen, Montreal, Iran, Calcutta, Greece, Uganda, Central Asia, North Africa, and so so so many other places where Jewish communities have settled over the centuries. Really a delight!
Go South to Freedom by Frye Gaillard - A little-known piece of American history, told via the true story of a family who fled slavery and found freedom with Seminole people in Florida, and later in Mobile, Alabama.
The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker - This felt like old-fashioned storytelling in a way I can’t quite explain; it reminded me of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell in that it takes its time detailing many, many small incidents, most of which are not earth-shattering, but together add up to quite a captivating whole. I’m still not sure what I thought of this book as a whole, actually, but it engaged me despite its languorous pacing.
The Heartbreak Bakery by A. R. Capetta - Charming story of an agender teen finding community, purpose - and love! - at a queer, and perhaps slightly magical, bakery.
An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good by Helene Tursten, translated from Swedish by Marlaine Delargy - I picked this up knowing nothing about it (charming cover and a colleague said she liked it) and was rather shocked to find myself reading about a murderer! Definitely clever, though.
Displacement by Kiku Hughes - For most of the way through this was a very engaging story of a girl learning about her own family’s experience of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II (via time travel!) and I learned a lot from it. The last bit of the book, though, suddenly got weirdly didactic and heavy-handed, which it really didn’t need - the story spoke for itself.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré - Similarly mixed; the first half of this was an incredibly moving story of a girl struggling against horrific odds (and poverty and misogyny) to make a life for herself in Nigeria. Then in the second half it became didactic and rather unbelievable, with so much of the dialogue being points the author clearly wanted to make rather than things characters would actually say. And then it looked like it was going to veer into being a murder mystery, and then it didn’t? I was grateful for some parts of this book, but very frustrated with others.
Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, translated from French by Lewis Galantière - Don’t know that this deserves to be an “honorable” mention… Saint-Exupéry’s descriptions of the natural world- the desert and night skies of the title - as he experienced it as a pilot in the 1920s and 30s are so, so beautiful. But his colonialist, racist, xenophobic bullshit gets so horrifying in some parts. I gave up on this book completely at least twice, before eventually coming back to it and making myself finish, out of some need to see it through to the end and then decide if there was anything salvageable. I think there was? But it’s so exhausting to have to sort horribleness from gems. And sometimes it feels like everything written prior to, like, a decade ago is that.
Not meaning to end on such a downer note! I love books and clearly I have a lot of thoughts about them. :-) Coming soon: my year-in-review reading wrap-up for 2021!
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(Crossposted from this post on Dreamwidth, which is now my primary journal. Comments are fine in either place.)