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Reading, June
Jun. 21st, 2023 09:45 pmI have had a lot going on, none of it involving house repairs due to constantly changing advice from my insurers, and have been dealing with my various stresses mainly by flinging myself into Hyrule, as Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom came out. I am still playing (the map is huge!) and have supposedly got someone starting on roof work sometime in the next fortnight, and then this month I tried to get back into writing regularly and read a whole bunch of books instead. In addition to this lot I am halfway through The Spear Cuts Through Water (brilliant, amazing narrative voice, bleak and with massive body count and I definitely have to be in the right headspace) and Yellowface (everyone is deeply unpleasant and I had a lot of issues with Kuang's Babel, but she does keep you reading).
One More Croissant for the Road, Felicity Cloake. I like Cloake’s food writing for the Guardian a lot (she does the “How to Make the Perfect…” series) but this book, in which she bikes round bits of France eating stuff, didn’t really work for me. It never progresses past the gimmick, she keeps almost all personal content out (to the extent that people she knows persist in showing up at destinations without any foreshadowing, despite her obviously having arranged this earlier) and while there’s a lot of great food in this, her most evocative piece of food writing is a frankly unnervingly repellent description of a twenty-five year old oyster.
Overexposed, Megan Erickson. I got this from a rec list of m/m romances set on wilderness trails; Levi, a reality TV show star, is walking the Appalachian trail alone after his sister, whose dream this was, is killed on active military service. He encounters Thad, a mysterious broody fellow hiker who is dealing with his own issues. It’s fine. I like the trail bits, but Thad’s reveal feels too on-the-nose.
The Unforgiving Minute, Sarah Granger. Up and coming tennis star Ryan competes on the pro circuit and gets involved with the uptight Josh, a former number 1 coming back from an injury. Josh never really worked for me as a character in this and neither did the sex scenes; what I did like was the scene where the evil fellow tennis player who’s manipulated both of them is finally exposed, which I thought was a great example of setting up a situation with two obvious outcomes and coming up with an unpredictable third that was much more satisfying.
The ABC Murders, Agatha Christie (re-read). Eminently satisfying all the way through. I remember reading this as a child and being happily appalled at the malice behind the murders. That bit in the movie theatre still chills me.
Caroline Canters Home and I’d Rather Not Gallop. Caroline Akrill. I picked up Akrill’s A Hoof in the Door, the middle book in her Fanes series, from a library book sale years ago. I wasn’t sure if I enjoyed it or not, but every time I’ve put it out with a pile of books to donate I’ve ended up re-reading it and putting it back on the shelves. She has a particular style - breezy, privileged, acknowledging and dismissing emotions simultaneously - and it’s all the more obvious in this her first series, which is technically about her (she is the Caroline of the title and the books are in first person) but much more about running a showing stable. It’s the obvious love of horses and her depth of experience that carries these, but there’s just enough character to make the emotional beats work. I would recommend starting with the Fanes series though.
Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, Josie Shapiro. Mickey Bloom, short, dyslexic and rejected by her father, finds escape and success in running. Two parallel narratives run through the book - the adult Mickey, competing in the Auckland Marathon, her first competition for years - and the child Mickey, growing up, burning with talent - and burning out, through abusive coaches and harsh training regimes and constant, casual misogyny. It’s very readable and I liked it a lot; I’ve also run the half marathon course three times so the first half of that narrative had familiar echoes for me.
( “Spoilers.” )
The Five Dysfunction of a Team, Patrick M Lencioni. Thin narrative - new boss takes on dysfunctional team, solves issues etc but the teamwork stuff is good.
Don’t Think, Dear: On Loving and Leaving Ballet, Alice Robb. More essays and interviews than memoir, Robb loved ballet, got into the School of American Ballet that Balanchine founded, but was dropped by them at 12 and left dance entirely a few years later. But she can’t stay away - and can’t stop thinking about ballet, dysfunctions and pain, tyrants and beauty, all tangled up. I did enjoy this but I think if I were more familiar with other ballet memoirs much of this would be a retread.
Trust the Focus, Megan Erickson. Justin heads out on a road trip, visiting sites his father photographed in order to scatter his father’s ashes there, and takes his best friend and secret crush Landry with him. This is very teenage/young adult and I found myself rolling my eyes a few times.
Again, Rachel, Marian Keyes. Rachel’s Holiday is my favourite of Keyes’s books (just edging out Saved by Cake, her depression recovery and baking memoir) and given that I really haven’t enjoyed the last few of her books I was wary of this unexpected sequel. It falls squarely into better than I feared but not quite as good as I hoped territory - the beginning and middle are strong, with her characters managing to act like adults (even if not entirely functional ones), and having Rachel be a rehab counsellor at the Cloisters, where she spent the earlier book as a patient/client, works really well, as does showing how competent she actually is at this. There is some odd stuff going on with the other Walsh family members, though (her mother has descended into caricature the furthest but all of them except Helen feel strained) and once we’re through the reveal it feels too much like we’ve been here before. Which I suppose is partially the point, but it didn’t quite work for me. There’s also a lot of emphasis on brand names and (female) appearance, with a very narrow range of acceptable options. I would still recommend this to someone who loved the first one but if they hadn’t read it I wouldn’t start here.
Bring on the Blessings and A Second Helping, Beverly Jenkins, first two in the Blessings series. Bernadine Brown catches her wealthy husband cheating; she divorces him and, looking for something worthwhile to do with her massive settlement and having started out as a social worker, buys Henry Adams, an historically Black town in Kansas founded by former slaves, and sets out to find homes for foster children. I picked this up off KJ Charles’ rec as bingeworthy soap opera, and it is, but it’s small town heartwarming soap and not big drama. I get claustrophobic around small towns that aren’t Stardew Valley, but it was still fun and it’s well-crafted & enjoyable even when totally predictable.
Squire and Knight, Scott Chantler; Pebble and Wren, Chris Hallbeck. Graphic novels my kids left lying around. Squire has a nameless squire to a boastful knight solve the curse plaguing a small town; Pebble is in a world where monsters have to go and live with humans in order to develop new special abilities (it started as a webcomic). Squire has some nice moments (the skeleton dog, the illusion in the well) but is obvious and the Squire himself lacks personality. Pebble is sweet but does require you not to think too hard about the worldbuilding. I would read more of Pebble.
The Bookbinder of Jericho, Pip Williams. Peggy is a bindery girl at the university printing press in Oxford, forced to settle for glimpses of books and the occasional damaged section rather than the education she dreams of; she left school at 12 to look after her identical twin sister, Maude, who is autistic and communicates, if at all, via echolalia . But it’s 1914, and when Belgian refugees arrive in Oxford, things start to change. There’s a lot going on in this and a lot of research, and while it’s all worked in, the ability of the extended cast to end up observing quite so many major historical points does stretch credibility a tad. However as I am working on a WWI novel I am struggling with the same temptations!
One More Croissant for the Road, Felicity Cloake. I like Cloake’s food writing for the Guardian a lot (she does the “How to Make the Perfect…” series) but this book, in which she bikes round bits of France eating stuff, didn’t really work for me. It never progresses past the gimmick, she keeps almost all personal content out (to the extent that people she knows persist in showing up at destinations without any foreshadowing, despite her obviously having arranged this earlier) and while there’s a lot of great food in this, her most evocative piece of food writing is a frankly unnervingly repellent description of a twenty-five year old oyster.
Overexposed, Megan Erickson. I got this from a rec list of m/m romances set on wilderness trails; Levi, a reality TV show star, is walking the Appalachian trail alone after his sister, whose dream this was, is killed on active military service. He encounters Thad, a mysterious broody fellow hiker who is dealing with his own issues. It’s fine. I like the trail bits, but Thad’s reveal feels too on-the-nose.
The Unforgiving Minute, Sarah Granger. Up and coming tennis star Ryan competes on the pro circuit and gets involved with the uptight Josh, a former number 1 coming back from an injury. Josh never really worked for me as a character in this and neither did the sex scenes; what I did like was the scene where the evil fellow tennis player who’s manipulated both of them is finally exposed, which I thought was a great example of setting up a situation with two obvious outcomes and coming up with an unpredictable third that was much more satisfying.
The ABC Murders, Agatha Christie (re-read). Eminently satisfying all the way through. I remember reading this as a child and being happily appalled at the malice behind the murders. That bit in the movie theatre still chills me.
Caroline Canters Home and I’d Rather Not Gallop. Caroline Akrill. I picked up Akrill’s A Hoof in the Door, the middle book in her Fanes series, from a library book sale years ago. I wasn’t sure if I enjoyed it or not, but every time I’ve put it out with a pile of books to donate I’ve ended up re-reading it and putting it back on the shelves. She has a particular style - breezy, privileged, acknowledging and dismissing emotions simultaneously - and it’s all the more obvious in this her first series, which is technically about her (she is the Caroline of the title and the books are in first person) but much more about running a showing stable. It’s the obvious love of horses and her depth of experience that carries these, but there’s just enough character to make the emotional beats work. I would recommend starting with the Fanes series though.
Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, Josie Shapiro. Mickey Bloom, short, dyslexic and rejected by her father, finds escape and success in running. Two parallel narratives run through the book - the adult Mickey, competing in the Auckland Marathon, her first competition for years - and the child Mickey, growing up, burning with talent - and burning out, through abusive coaches and harsh training regimes and constant, casual misogyny. It’s very readable and I liked it a lot; I’ve also run the half marathon course three times so the first half of that narrative had familiar echoes for me.
( “Spoilers.” )
The Five Dysfunction of a Team, Patrick M Lencioni. Thin narrative - new boss takes on dysfunctional team, solves issues etc but the teamwork stuff is good.
Don’t Think, Dear: On Loving and Leaving Ballet, Alice Robb. More essays and interviews than memoir, Robb loved ballet, got into the School of American Ballet that Balanchine founded, but was dropped by them at 12 and left dance entirely a few years later. But she can’t stay away - and can’t stop thinking about ballet, dysfunctions and pain, tyrants and beauty, all tangled up. I did enjoy this but I think if I were more familiar with other ballet memoirs much of this would be a retread.
Trust the Focus, Megan Erickson. Justin heads out on a road trip, visiting sites his father photographed in order to scatter his father’s ashes there, and takes his best friend and secret crush Landry with him. This is very teenage/young adult and I found myself rolling my eyes a few times.
Again, Rachel, Marian Keyes. Rachel’s Holiday is my favourite of Keyes’s books (just edging out Saved by Cake, her depression recovery and baking memoir) and given that I really haven’t enjoyed the last few of her books I was wary of this unexpected sequel. It falls squarely into better than I feared but not quite as good as I hoped territory - the beginning and middle are strong, with her characters managing to act like adults (even if not entirely functional ones), and having Rachel be a rehab counsellor at the Cloisters, where she spent the earlier book as a patient/client, works really well, as does showing how competent she actually is at this. There is some odd stuff going on with the other Walsh family members, though (her mother has descended into caricature the furthest but all of them except Helen feel strained) and once we’re through the reveal it feels too much like we’ve been here before. Which I suppose is partially the point, but it didn’t quite work for me. There’s also a lot of emphasis on brand names and (female) appearance, with a very narrow range of acceptable options. I would still recommend this to someone who loved the first one but if they hadn’t read it I wouldn’t start here.
Bring on the Blessings and A Second Helping, Beverly Jenkins, first two in the Blessings series. Bernadine Brown catches her wealthy husband cheating; she divorces him and, looking for something worthwhile to do with her massive settlement and having started out as a social worker, buys Henry Adams, an historically Black town in Kansas founded by former slaves, and sets out to find homes for foster children. I picked this up off KJ Charles’ rec as bingeworthy soap opera, and it is, but it’s small town heartwarming soap and not big drama. I get claustrophobic around small towns that aren’t Stardew Valley, but it was still fun and it’s well-crafted & enjoyable even when totally predictable.
Squire and Knight, Scott Chantler; Pebble and Wren, Chris Hallbeck. Graphic novels my kids left lying around. Squire has a nameless squire to a boastful knight solve the curse plaguing a small town; Pebble is in a world where monsters have to go and live with humans in order to develop new special abilities (it started as a webcomic). Squire has some nice moments (the skeleton dog, the illusion in the well) but is obvious and the Squire himself lacks personality. Pebble is sweet but does require you not to think too hard about the worldbuilding. I would read more of Pebble.
The Bookbinder of Jericho, Pip Williams. Peggy is a bindery girl at the university printing press in Oxford, forced to settle for glimpses of books and the occasional damaged section rather than the education she dreams of; she left school at 12 to look after her identical twin sister, Maude, who is autistic and communicates, if at all, via echolalia . But it’s 1914, and when Belgian refugees arrive in Oxford, things start to change. There’s a lot going on in this and a lot of research, and while it’s all worked in, the ability of the extended cast to end up observing quite so many major historical points does stretch credibility a tad. However as I am working on a WWI novel I am struggling with the same temptations!
