March was a busy month with the launch of Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree (subscribe please!), and now I’m entering a really busy time for writing in April, which is why this review post is late. I’ve also got several pieces out on submission that I’m hoping to hear back from soon, so cross your fingers for me.
When I started compiling this list, I felt like I hadn’t been reading a lot recently because of all this busy-ness. But pulling in all these reviews reminded me of the great stuff I’ve actually read. Yet another advantage to looking back on things.
Speculative Fiction
Penric’s Travels by Lois McMaster Bujold – This sequence of novellas works much better than the first three as a combined story. I loved this part of Penric’s adventure. The bottle dungeon is such a clever idea that I absolutely want to steal. The crossdressing story of the middle novella reminds me of a Shakespeare plot in the precarious position it puts Penric in. And the overarching love story is atypical and wonderful in the more practical bent it puts on things. Basically, this is a wonderful sequence of Bujold’s books. If you’re a Bujold fan, you’ve probably already read it. If not, this wouldn’t be a terrible place to start either.
Avatar: The Last Airbender: North and South by Gene Luen Yang – Another decent story from the Avatar comics. Not as great as some of the others, but it builds some of the bridge between ATLA and Legend of Korra. It’s an interesting meditation on how cultures change and move forward, though pretty surface level.
Recursion by Blake Crouch – This was a reread, my recommendation to my Bellevue book club. This book goes through many genres in sequence: meditation on life’s possibilities and disappointments, action-thriller, post-apocalyptic horror, and finally a meditation on relationships. I had forgotten some of the keys to the narrative and was happy to find those twists worked on me again. I’m just mad that I didn’t invent the time travel conceit in this book, which is very close to a vague concept I’ve been contemplating for my own novel.
A Short Stay in Hell by Steven Peck – A book about a man condemned to spend the afterlife in a library of infinite books. You would think that this would actually be paradise, but instead, the library contains all books that are possible to be written, for example, a book of all A’s, a book of all B’s, a book of half A’s half B’s. It goes on and on like that.
Once you understand the premise, the book really becomes a meditation on eternity and how humanity might cope with it. The various schemes for creating order and interest and meaning are well thought out and move along at a good clip (for a book about endless sameness).
The closest read-alike I can think of is perhaps CS Lewis’s The Great Divorce, but this book isn’t trying to paint an accurate picture of Christian doctrine but leave space for personal meditation. I will certainly listen to this one again!
Fiction
Beyond the Mapped Stars by Rosalyn Eves – I had heard such good things about this book, and now having read it, they are all deserved. This is one of the first books with a Mormon protagonist published by a mainstream publisher that isn’t a sensationalist polygamy book. I loved how Rosalyn Eves was careful to include just enough explanation for those not familiar with the LDS church and its history, but still relied somewhat on the reader to figure things out.
Eves also manages to pack in almost every controversial issue in the history of the church in a short YA volume: race restrictions, polygamy, LGTBQ issues, women’s blessings, relations with the Native Americans, it’s all in there. And she deals with them all in a very forthright yet ultimately faithful way. The science versus religion theme as well as the marriage versus career question felt so authentic and realistic to me as an LDS woman, without feeling anachronistic in its feminism.
The eclipse setting was fascinating, the characters were loveable and interesting, and I even enjoyed the romance in the book, which is a big ask for someone as picky as me. This is a book I’m already recommending to my book club and will pass along to my sons and daughter when they are ready for considering the issues it presents. Highly recommend this book!
The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré – This novel is strangely depressing and optimistic at the same time. Adunni’s life is extremely hard: she is married off at 14 to an old man with two wives and repeatedly raped by her “husband.” Her circumstances don’t get any better after she is forced to flee and become a maid. And yet amidst all of this, Adunni never gets depressed or checks out. She is constantly advocating for herself, trying to figure out how to get the education that she knows will better her situation. She’s very naive about the world as well, which works as long as you remember that she’s only 14. Whether Adunni’s resilience is realistic or not, her attitude was the thing that got me through an otherwise difficult book.
The other interesting thing to note about this novel is that it’s written in non-standard English, a kind of pidgin English as if Adunni herself is speaking. If you’re a high-speed audio listener, you’ll probably need to slow down your speed for this one. I had to go from 1.75x to 1.25x, and it still took me a good 30 minutes of listening before I really felt like I was catching all of the words she was saying. At first, I was annoyed with this style, but as you go along in the book, it becomes apparent why the author has made this choice and how it complements the theme of the book.
Overall, I learned a lot about the situation of women in Nigeria from this book. I can’t say it’s a really enjoyable read for me, as it’s not particularly to my taste. But it’s definitely less harsh than some other books I have read about similar subjects and the literary style adds to it. I can recommend it, as long as you know what you’re in for when you pick it up.
Nonfiction
Laundry Love: Finding Joy in a Common Chore by Patric Richardson, Karin B. Miller – I officially DNF’d this one at 77%. I picked this book up at the recommendation of Modern Mrs Darcy, but I just don’t love it. I was hoping to get some great laundry tips and maybe decrease my hatred of laundry just a little. But no.
For one, as someone with a chemistry background, there was way too much bad science in this book. The sentence “soap is only used to make water more wet” physically hurt me. That is not how soap works. Not at all. There’s all the standard panic about “chemicals” and advocating for “plant based” or “natural” soaps. Hate to break it to you, but those are also chemicals and not in any way natural. There are reasons to advocate for them, but these aren’t the ones. If you’re that sloppy with your science, how can I trust anything else you say?
Second, a lot of the advice in this book ends up taking you more time sorting and washing and drying your clothes. He claims that you’ll actually save time and money because you aren’t using a dry cleaning service. Hate to break it to you, but the only thing that I dry clean is my husband’s two suits, which he only wears a few times a year. I think this book is probably better for single people or couples without kids who shop at expensive department stores.
Overall, I can’t recommend it, though I will use some of his stain removal tricks.
The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It by Neal Bascomb – There’s so much more to this story than just Roger Bannister. I found the interplay between the three runners across the distance of continents fascinating. This book also made me more baffled than ever about the old “amateur athletics” concept–how did such a corrupt and ridiculous system survive so long? As much as I am not a sports fan, I think people who dedicate their lives to something that people want to consume deserve to be paid for the effort, and that includes professional athletes.
However, I wasn’t in love with the writing style. Something about it just didn’t click with me and made it hard to keep track of the various runners’ names. I think I was two-thirds of the way through before I had the three main runners straight; maybe that’s a flaw in me as a reader though. It’s also really hard to describe such short races in a way that doesn’t become just a word-salad of split times.
Discourses and Selected Writings by Epictetus – Another one crossed off my 2022 5×5 challenge. I didn’t read the whole volume, just The Handbook (Enchiridion, if we’re being pretentious) which summarizes Epictetus’ philosophy. Sometime when I have more time, I’d like to get around to reading the rest of his writings. The Handbook is just as advertised: pithy observations on how to live in a sensible, stoic way. I enjoyed the translation; it was just modern enough to feel relevant, while still preserving some of the antiquity of the original. I think the real value of this book will come as I incorporate my highlights into my regular quote review (via Readwise.io). It’s the kind of advice you need to return to over and over in different circumstances and let it sink in.
