Gina María Balibrera, The Volcano Daughters. Beautiful Salvadoran-American historical fiction/magic realism. Harrowing and wonderful. There’s running commentary from a Greek chorus-style group of politically murdered women. I gradually realized as the book went on that one of the main characters is a fictional version of someone real, and it blew my mind, because I was all in without that and then–wow what, reality is so weird. Recommended.
Clara Benson, A Case of Conspiracy in Clerkenwell and The Mystery at Underwood House. Kindle. The next volume in each of the two series I’m reading by her. I felt that the former was the weakest in its series so far but still reasonably interesting, kept me going in the waiting room for a stressful medical appointment for a family member, hurrah for reliable historical mystery series.
Christopher Brown, A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places. If you’ve been reading Chris’s newsletter, you’ll recognize some of this material, but it’s polished and considered here rather than regurgitated whole. If you haven’t, you’re in for a treat, because his nature writing about American cities is excellent, he brings a combination of lawyer’s eye, science fiction writer’s perspective, and just plain enthusiasm about the world he’s living in, with all its flaws and foibles.
Agatha Christie, The Missing Will. Kindle. This was actually a short story, and not a very substantial one at that, but it was one of the things that was available for download from Gutenberg–they’re not particularly well-labeled, and I haven’t done the work of sorting which are which, I just find out by reading them.
James S. A. Corey, The Mercy of Gods. Human scientists taken by aliens who may be cruel, may be indifferent, or may just be alien, but they sure give the human research group a thoroughly unpleasant experience–that is by no means over, this is book one in a series. I liked the range of aliens but the entire reading experience of “series of variously unpleasant alien experiences” made me morose.
Edwidge Danticat, We’re Alone. A series of essays centering her experience of being Haitian/Haitian-American. Look, seeking out art from the perspective of a currently-slandered ethnic group is not actually activism, but it’s still a great plan. This is a short collection and, like everything else of Danticat’s I’ve read, beautifully done.
Margaret Frazer, The Reeve’s Tale. Kindle. I feel like she’s changing up the structure more in the mid-late series here, and I’m pleased by that; knowing that the corpse would show up at the 55-65% mark was not actually one of the things I liked best, and she’s keeping up with the things I do like about the Sister Frevisse mysteries.
Kate Heartfield, The Tapestry of Time. Oh gosh this was lovely. I didn’t read the blurb, I just saw that Kate had a new thing and snapped it up, so I went in completely cold. I can recommend that experience, but also I know that not everybody does well that way, so I will say: WWII clairvoyants at war, also the Bayeux Tapestry, yes it absolutely makes sense in context.
Peter Hessler, Other Rivers: A Chinese Education. Hessler taught in China twice, with a generation between the experience, and in the second case he had small twin daughters who went to a Chinese school, so there’s all kinds of non-standard perspective about China and education and recent history. This was complicated for him by the fact that in the middle of the second experience…the Covid pandemic hit us. So there’s all kinds of stuff about living in China during that as well. Extremely interesting.
Jenna Satterthwaite, Made for You. I didn’t find the ending of this very satisfying, but it was compulsively, horrifyingly readable. Its protagonist is an android who was made to fit a man on a dating show, and half of the narration is that thread, their time on the dating show (I said horrifying already, right), and the other half is after they’re married and have a child and he’s disappeared. Very hooky, kind of disappointing in the end.
Bill Schutt, Bite: An Incisive History of Teeth, from Hagfish to Humans. Too many humans in this book. (Do I have that reaction too often, yes, probably.) But still lots of interesting stuff about other species, and maybe you’re more interested in human teeth than I am, I expect a lot of people are. Maybe not a lot. But some. And even I could stand the human part.
Manisha Sinha, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920. I feel like Sinha had about six books her research could have supported, and what she didn’t manage to do was either narrow the focus to write only one of them or make her overview broadly compelling. The wealth of small details felt scattered and didn’t quite come together. I especially wanted more about the people she wrote about in the introduction–for example Northern Black schoolteachers who went South to teach during the Reconstruction. Let’s get a whole book about them. This one was mainly frustrating.
A. C. Wise, Out of the Drowning Deep. Do you like weird space religion? Because this is absolutely full of weird space religion. It’s a novella that just goes hard on the weird space religion front and does not quit. Wise is another author I find compellingly readable, even if I’m often a hard sell on angels.