March Book Round Up
March felt like a bit of a weird reading month. I read some good books, but I've been struggling to focus unless the book is a real attention grabber like The Paris Apartment was for me. I've also been working my way through the Artist's Way workbook and the first week of March, the week in the workbook called for a week of no reading (and TV, and gossipy conversations, ect.). Julia Cameron calls for a week of creating - outputting instead of consuming. This is a balance I've always tried to keep in mind, but during the pandemic and especially during pregnancy and postpartum, I've struggled to no overread, or over consume. However, when it's bedtime and the house is finally quiet, the literal last thing I want to do is pull out some paint or fire up the computer to write. I want to lie down. With a book. Or a show. I need that relaxation. So I made it a full three days before I went back to reading. Actually I made it two days, and then stopped for another day after breaking the reading fast, felt guilty and gave it one more day. Then said screw you Julia Cameron, and read the rest of the week, ha. But. Just those few days did give me a jump on an idea. I started writing. I stayed up until 10:30 one night writing. And then I binged Emily In Paris season 2 the next night. It's a balance right!? I think that awareness though is working it's way in. I'm trying not to read during the day and spend my little bits of downtime writing or doing something semi-creative or meditating, which really just feels like just laying down these days. Realizing I do need some self-compassion and not always pushing myself to be more, while also realizing I can actually do more. Life seems to always be like that right? Both/and. So this month's reading was a bit slower, but it was actually nice to write more, to watch a whole season of Emily in Paris and finish season 1 of Sex Education as well. I needed the laughs and the fashion inspiration. It's all a process and I'm learning, ever so slowly, I don't have to (can't actually) arrive. It's two steps forward, one step back, listen to yourself, trust yourself, love yourself.
The first book I read this month was Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby. This one has gotten great reviews and much attention, it was one of Book Of the Month's top picks of the year for 2021. I had read all the other top books and instead of getting a free copy of Razorblade Tears, I got another copy of Hannah Anderson's The Four Winds to send to a friend because that book was so crazy good. I'd read in a review that Razorblade Tears was on the violent side and I really don't do violence. I cannot handle watching or reading about violence upon a human being, or animal, violence in gereral, so I stayed away. But then a friend who also does Book of the Month (we coordinate and swap reads each month) got it and then it finally ended up in my book stack. I was out of books to read and thought, why not? I am actually very glad I read it and still give it four stars, even if some of the very descriptive violence makes me want to vomit, ha. It's a rough around all the edges story of two fathers, one white, one black, who's sons married each other, are murdered and neither of the fathers can handle it - both their deaths and the fact that they were gay. This is a story of their reconciliation with their own homophobia while Billy Bob, the white guy, works out some of his racism. Cosby makes some poignant insights that I wish every (especially white) person in this country could read. Not necessarily new ideas, but how he uses the father's grief and what they experience while in that grief to bring about change. How true to life that can be. Taking that door, taking that risk to do something that makes your heart beat, to change or hardening in your grief and stifling it, keeping the same biases. All this mixed in with the somewhat redneck humor from the Billy Bob character that sometimes made me laugh out loud and a solidness, the steadiness of Ike that kept me focused on finding the murders. The hardest part is that it takes the son's deaths and their experiences in their attempt to avenge them, to make the fathers come to accept them as they are. That feels a bit too true to how many people view the LGBTQIA community. If they even get to the accepting part. Too many have died violent deaths because of these often very violent views, we need more movments to change, to accept, to celebrate. I feel like this book is pointing in that direction, as good place as any to start if you "don't get it". Also a few of Cosby's sentences made me stop and just admire his wordsmithery (is that a word?). Like this one, "The heat was a living thing that reached out and touched him with a suffocating caress. An oily haze gave the neighborhood a sepia tone, like he was trapped in an old photograph." Mmmm I can put myself in that scene. All in all, a book I'm glad I read even though it wasn't always easy.
My next book was Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie. Okay. So I didn't realize what a big deal Agatha Christie was/is. This woman. The only two books that have out sold her are the Bible and Shakespeare. She wrote over sixty books. Whole series full of engrossing whodunits. I saw a preview for the movie Death on the Nile come out and the fashion and mystery of it made me want to read it, as well as I have been meaning to read Agatha Christie for a while. She published Death on the Nile in 1937, which also made it super fun to read. Also fun because it wasn't a bunch of American's. If I would have listened on audible the English, Italian, French and Egyptian accents would have been divine. This book was a run read, kind of life a game of Clue, constantly wondering if my guess as to who the murderer was is right. Detective Hercule Poirot says many things in french, so it was equally fun to use google translate and hear the pronunciation. Let's be honest, I'm this close to taking french lessons. I just need some more time in my life, s'il vous plait.
On the heels of that, the much anticipated, The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley. I adored The Guest List and could not wait slash wasn't happy I had to wait a year for The Paris Apartment to come out. Ugh the writing process takes too much time... It did not disappoint. Again, lots of phrases, mainly curse words much to my delight, were in french so again, google translate coming in clutch and my desire for french lessons solidified. Another whodunit, clearly a month of murder mysteries for me. This one starts out with very creepy, bougie vibes and doesn't stop. Kellen had taken the boys camping the night I started this and I stayed up until I was sure I would fall asleep the instant my head hit the pillow (and after I'd double locked all the doors, even my bedroom door). I used to hate creepy suspense, but during the pandemic my love for them has really grown. The characters aren't super likable, although I did enjoy the main character Jess simply because she was, as all humans are, complex and has had a rough history. I wouldn't do what she did, but her why makes it make sense. Same with the Mimi character, who is most likely an enneagram 4, gives us all the dark, misunderstood, haunted past, brooding artist who will (semi-spoiler alert) creepily cut the eyes out of her nudie portraits of Ben. I loved feeling trapped in the darker side of Paris, the seedier, less touristy, albiet wealthier side of Paris. Specifically in an older, very posh, very spooky building. There were great twists and turns that had me squealing and saying "OMG no way" out loud, in awe of Foley's cleverness. If you're looking for a page turner, this is it. Although if you can hold off for Halloween that might be really fun.
Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson took the mood down a notch, but not in a necessarily bad way. She has a way of writing that is also a bit of a page turner but with deeper thoughts, deeper feels and heavier doses of life. This is a story of a mother keeping a secret from her children, her partner, all to herself. A secret of where she's from and what's happened to her, mainly to keep them all safe. When she dies, she leaves a recording for her children unraveling the past. Based on an island in the Caribbean, London and California, it's a story with a slow reveal, a bit of a murder mystery, and leaves her kids grasping to get a hold on reality, what do I know, who was my mother. The book talks about issues around being a young black woman in the 1960s, a black man and a black bisexual woman in the current day, all wrestling with history and oppression. I love the incorporating of food, of how colonization affected the food, the recipes, the mixing of cultures in what people eat. Wilkerson did some big research for this book and I deeply appreciated learning so much. There's so much thought and heart in this book. At one point, when she goes into the mother's history and all the things that had happened to her, I did get a bit depressed, wondering how, how do people keep going, keep living when they've survived so much pain. Yes, love. But also how do you not just drown in the pain some days? Her struggle with that pain is clearly painted and I think that's what I love. The pained family dynamics that feel so true to real life. The misunderstanding, the shame, the hiding. How much communication, surrendering, being vulnerable can mend. It was a beautiful story that made me cry a few times. For sure worth a read. My favorite paragraph from the mother is this, ""What you need to do, Byron, is know who you are, and where you are, at all times. This is about you, finding and keeping your center. This is how you take on a wave. Then you might find that you need to practice more or there's a storm swell coming in, or the wave is simply too much for you. You might even decide that you're just not cut out for the surfing and that's all right, too. But you cannot know which of these is true unless you go our there with your head in the right place." This was true of surfing and is was true of life, his ma said."" Ugh. So good. And all the water in this book. The descriptions, the ideas around the ocean, the power the storms, the unpredictability, the serenity of the calm of it. Got me good with the feels, Charmaine. Plus also, that cover art. Again, the tie in of the water and the mixed races, I could stare at the cover all day, it really is such great art.
A friend had suggested The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls to me a while ago and I couldn't believe I hadn't read it before. I knew it was made into a movie, but this book. I devoured it. I'm a sucker for memoirs that tell a wild tale. Some of her life experiences I was appalled by, saddened by, enraged by yet laughed with, cried, fell in love with the Walls family. I love so much how she can describe her parents dysfunction with love and laughter, show how complex humans are, how no one (usually) is all bad or all good. I also did a mini case study of birth order, or no, not even that, but just how personality stuck out to me (maybe mixed with birth order). While Jeanette is the second born and reminds me fiercely of a second born friend of mine, it's the personality part that is fascinating when looking at nurture/nature. How there can be very little resentment for some children and black holes of resentment for others, how poverty can motivate some and cripple others. How at times, her parents seem like maybe the worst parents ever and at other times, the best, how those moments of the best can factor in so heavily. I also loved bringing in the poverty that is present in American. I think there are times we forget how bad the poverty can be in this country, specifically the Appalachia regions - which has always sparked my curiosity as I've never been to that region. In some ways it reminded me a bit of Educated by Tara Westover, just scenes from these womens live that literally stop me and make me say, no way that can't be real. by It was just a fascinating read and the movie is now on my to-watch list. This is the not pictured book as I returned it to the library before I even thought about it, so excited to pick up my next hold, which still hasn't actually been picked up since it made it into my home.
The last book, a little novella, that I read was A Dream Life by Claire Messud. I snagged it from the new fiction section of the library simply because of the cover. It's a bubble gum pink, little book, almost pocket sized, with an image of lips smoking a cigarette, A Dream Life printed in a frolicking cursive font. I was like, I don't even care what this is about, the aesthetics are on point. It ended up being such a fun, quick read. I'll be honest, I am here for short stories right now. Little hundred pagers that can be finished in a night or two. And this one didn't disappoint. It's about a family in the 1970s that moves from a cramped apartment on the Upper East Side in New York to a luscious mansion from heaps of English money in Sydney, Australia. It's cheery, its colorful, it depicts displacement and changing of class, martial role struggles and learning how to manage the upper crest lifestyle of help and parties. It really is a delightful little read, Mussud has a way with words that make the book actually dreamy while wholly sinking you into the setting. Naturally, because I'm me, after I finished it I needed to listen to a podcast on it, wanting to go more in depth. I found an interview with Mussud by Jemma Birrell, formally of Shakespeare and Company, a bookstore I was intent on spending some time in while in Paris, and it was a delight listening to her Austalian accent and Claire's occasional slipping into french. A conversation on writing, on language, on character development, on how Puritanical North American's are in their character development, but why not have characters that are both/and, not just good. That's the real humanity, complex persons. Anyway, it was all a lovely way to end March. And since April started I haven't picked up a book due to the flu flying through our house, but am opting to binge Bridgerton season 2 and I'm not disappointed. Lolita did just come in from my hold list so hoping to start that classic next, circling back to my feelings and impressions on Validimir by Julie May Jonas from February.
**Also, Book of the Month is a monthly books subscription I use to get books rather inexpensively and I'm obsessed. It's $16 a month for the latest drop, which you can skip months or pick one, and then $10 for any other add on books. Lots of times the waits for holds at the library are so long, I easily justify the $10-16 dollars spent. If you want to try it out, let me know and I can give you a code for $5 off your first order. This is not remotely sponsored or anything, just a plug for my most favorite app on my phone, ha.
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