Books 2018: Quarter 4

As you probably already know, I've been reading a classic a month for the last few years. It started as a one-year project in 2014, but I've enjoyed it enough to keep going with it & will probably continue until it starts to feel like a chore.

You can find my past reviews by clicking on the "books" tag at the end of this post, or be my friend on Goodreads. (You can also just go to the site & hunt down my review feed without being my friend. Don't worry, you won't hurt my feelings.)

ICYMI, the classics I selected to read in 2018 are here.

On to the reviews! (Settle in, it's not a short one)

THE CLASSICS:

October: The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins (1859, 672 pages). 4 stars. When twenty-three-year-old Laura Fairlie marries slimy forty-six-year-old Baronet Percival Glyde against the better judgment of both her sister and her family's lawyers, besotted Walter Hartright is crushed. Laura doesn't seem super thrilled about the arrangement either but feels bound to honor the marriage agreement made by her dead father. Things start to feel sinister, though, when Walter and other members of the family begin to have mysterious encounters with a young woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to Laura and dresses all in white. The woman in white claims to have a terrible secret about a certain London Baronet, and when tragedy strikes the family, Hartright is determined to uncover the truth. This book was a bit slow getting started, but by a few chapters in I was engrossed in the story and characters. Something super creepy was definitely going on and couldn't wait to find out what it was. Sure, it felt at times as if maybe it could have used an editor and Collins is much more the spell-it-out-for-the-reader type than the let-them-eerily-infer, but that's just the style of the period I think. For anyone who enjoys a creepy crime mystery/drama, Wilkie Collins is definitely the OG, so it's kind of cool to read what is generally recognized as *THE* first in the genre.

November: My Ántonia, by Willa Cather (1918, 232 pages). 3 stars. In the early 20th century, 13-year-old Ántonia arrives with her immigrant family in rural Nebraska, speaking little English and having been sold a lemon of a farm. The story is told from the perspective of Jim Burden, three years younger than Ántonia; essentially it consists of episodes from the down featuring the same cast of a dozen characters or so as time passes and Jim and Ántonia grow up. I kept thinking maybe I was just missing something when I read this book. For all that it shows up over and over on top classics and not-to-be-missed lists, I could not get into it. To me it read like a series of mildly interesting small-town episodes in the lives of an ensemble cast. It felt like things never really went anywhere and I kept waiting for something narratively significant to happen, but it never did.

December: If On A Winter's Night A Traveler, by Italo Calvino. (1979, 260 pages). 3 stars. This was an interesting sort of artsy, post-modern type of book. It is written mostly in the second person (ie, sort of addressing the reader as if they were the protagonist) & begins with "you" having picked up Italo Calvino's new book, If on a winter's night a traveler, at "your" local bookstore & settling in to read it. Only you realize after the first chapter that this copy is misprinted--it contains only the first chapter and some blank pages, repeated over and over again. So you return to the bookstore & learn from the bookseller that a number of copies have been misprinted, so sorry, here is a correct copy, which turns out to contain a different first chapter. Together with another reader, Ludmilla, "you" try to track down the rest of the book but keep instead encountering first chapters of completely new books. The result is a kind of book-ception that explores themes such as the subjectivity/objectivity of reading (and writing) books, the ideal reader and writer, authorial originality, and the reliability (or lack thereof) of perception while reading. Interesting and meta and definitely reminded me of some of Umberto Eco's work.

OTHER RECENT READS:

Broken Harbor (Dublin Murder Squad #4), by Tana French. (2013, 450 pages)
Read because: Tana French is pure comfort reading for me. See also: It was fall & in fall we read murder mysteries.
Review: 4 stars. When a father and two kids are murdered and their mother barely left alive in a remote area in Ireland (Broken Harbor), star murder squad detective Mick “Scorcherˮ Kennedy is called in to investigate along with his rookie partner. Some things about the case seem routine, but the more they investigate, the more oddities turn up. Scorcher must confront not only various suspects but also his own childhood memories of living in Broken Harbor, including his mentally ill sister Dina. Classic Tana French; if you like her other works, there's no reason you won't like this one as well.

The Witch Elm, by Tana French. (2018, 464 pages)
Read because: Again: Tana French = pure comfort reading; fall = murder mysteries.
Review: 4 stars. For twenty-eight-year-old young man of privilege Toby, things have pretty much always gone his way, until one night his apartment is broken into and robbed. Toby suffers a blow to the head from the intruders that leaves him seriously injured and facing long-term rehabilitation. Between that and learning that his beloved Uncle Hugo is facing terminal brain cancer, Toby decides to move back to the ancestral family home, the Ivy House, to care for his uncle and recover. Things take a grisly turn when Toby's cousin Susanna's five-year-old son finds a human skull in the massive witch elm in the Ivy House's garden. Having all spent significant time in the house in the period of interest to police, Toby, Hugo, and Toby's two cousins Susanna and Leon are suddenly suspects. As the investigation proceeds, the three cousins find themselves facing their pasts and unresolved conflict with one another, and Toby is suddenly forced to consider whether his past is exactly as he remembers it.

After Alice, by Gregory Maguire. (2015, 273 pages)
Read because: I've been trying to work through physical books I have & haven't read (except, oops, apparently I read this 2.5 years ago & forgot).
Review: 3 stars. I stand by my review from 2016: "In true Gregory Maguire style, this is book takes the original story of Alice in Wonderland and elaborates on it, giving additional backstory & depth to formerly minor characters. The story focuses on Ada Boyce, a friend of Alice's mentioned just briefly in the original book. Ada, who is clumsy, awkward, and supposedly dull, falls down the rabbit hole herself not long after learning that Alice has disappeared. The book alternates between following Ada's story as she searches for Alice and that of Alice's sister & Ada's governess as the two search for the pair of missing girls in the mundane world. Reasonably clever & well written & if you like Maguire you'll probably enjoy it well enough, but it's not his best in my opinion."

The Husband's Secret, by Liane Moriarty. (2013, 396 pages)
Read because: I'm finding I really like Liane Moriarty for comfort reading & this one had really good reviews.
Review: 3.5 stars. Elderly Rachel still lives with personal tragedy daily, and now her high-powered daughter-in-law is dragging Rachel's son and grandson away to New York for two years. Tess's husband has just informed her that he and Tess's newly-skinny cousin have fallen in love (but they're still open to Tess living with them). Cecilia's husband has just confessed a nightmarish secret that she's not sure she can keep. Three Melbourne women do their best to muddle through family, friends, and work in the midst of utterly tragic and/or absurd situations & secrets. Not bad, and as usual I think the characters were all really well done, and Moriarty has a real gift for coming up with these dark-yet-quaint domestic drama premises. But I wish this one had had a bit more action.

The Consuming Fire, by John Scalzi. (2018, 336 pages)
Read because: The Collapsing Empire (Book 1 of the Interdependency) was a fun read & you gotta find out what happens next.
Review: 4 stars. Everything you loved about The Collapsing Empire, but more. Hardcore kickass women. Scheming bad guys with no hope of getting away with the thing. Flow physics. My only complaints are 1) it's really short & 2) there's not much tension as the bad guys seem completely & utterly incompetent at everything.

The Giver, by Lois Lowry. (1993, 208 pages)
Read because: I have known about this book forever but always assumed (for reason I can't remember?) that it was a mauldlin middle grades novel that I'd have no interest in. UHHHHH wrong.
Review: 5 stars. 11-year-old Jonas lives in a perfect community with a perfect family, perfect weather, and perfect friends (well...sort of), as does everyone else in his perfectly orderly world. But when Jonas receives his adult job assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve with all the other new Twelves, his world is turned upside down. Eventually, he is not sure that he can continue living in this "perfect" world, let alone carry out the job responsibilities assigned to him, and makes a gut-wrenching choice. In terms of reading level, this book is indeed more middle grades than young adult (I finished it in two hours), but the story is in some ways just harrowing, even for an adult. Such an amazing novel for kids and I can completely understand why a) some people love it, b) some people hate it, and c) why it's still read over and over again twenty-five years later.

Between The World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates. (2015, 152 pages)
Read because: Another that's been on my 'to read' list for ages that I only managed to get to after knocking out Gravity's Rainbow.
Review: 5 stars. I really don't know what to say except probably everyone should read this book. Coates wrote it for his teenage son to try to convey some things he had come to understand about racism and privilege as a Black man living in the US and what it means for all of us. I am sure it can be a powerful read for people of color as well but I also think it is an important read for privileged white people, especially those who think racism is over or that being white doesn't make you privileged if you're poor or haven't had extensive conversations with people of color about their experience. Beautiful and sad and powerful.

Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor. (2015, 96 pages)
Read because: This little novella trilogy has been on my 'to read' list forever, and then Don won a complete set in a bookstore raffle. He read all three of them in about two days, and I then I stole them.
Review: 4 stars. In what one can only assume is the distant future, Binti is a young Nigerian woman, the first of her people to be accepted to the prestigious Oomza University, light years from her home. Challenges she expects include racism and intolerance and a lack of understanding of and respect for her customs. Challenges she does NOT expect include her ship to Oomza getting attacked by the nightmarish Meduse, an alien species that has been wrong by the University. From a story & character perspective, this book was about as haunting and rich as a book can possibly be in 96 pages. I only wish that it had been stretched and further developed into a few hundred! On the plus side, the reading level is accessible even for middle grades readers, something that seems to almost never overlap with rich, nuanced, brilliant stories.

Home, by Nnedi Okorafor. (2017, 176 pages)
Read because: Binti was excellent.
Review: 4 stars. See above.

The Night Masquerade, by Nnedi Okorafor. (2018, 208 pages)
Read because: The first two were great & I had to see how it ended.
Review: 5 stars. See above

Sunburn, by Laura Lippman. (2018, 292 pages)
Read because: This was literary agent Janet Reid's #1, couldn't-put-it-down read of the year.
Review: 4 stars. In the spring of 1994, Polly has left her husband and young daughter & wound up in a tiny east coast beach town on her way out West; Adam is stuck there too, ostensibly due to a broken down truck. Both end up sticking around through the summer, falling in love in spite of deadly secrets on both sides. Who's telling the truth? Who's lying? Who's playing the long game & who's just in it for the quick con? This was a brilliantly written book with fantastic characters & the author did a great job of creating a sense of place for the story. I can't say it was the absolute best book I read all year, but it was smart & enjoyable.

Everything, Everything, by Nicola Yoon. (2015, 307 pages)
Read because: I love a good YA & this one kept showing up over and over on all kinds of lists.
Review: 5 stars. 18-year-old Madeline Whittier has had SCID (boy in the bubble syndrome) all her life, & lived alone with her mother & nurse in her hermetically sealed home since she was six months old, with online classes for school and weekly movie and game nights with her mom for a social life. Then a cute, troubled boy moves in next door, and in a YA story, we all know what happens next. Well-written & engrossing, & full of cute drawings by Yoon's husband. A *little* cheesy in the grand tradition of YA, sure, but the characters felt rich and authentic so I can't begrudge them a little schmoopy here & there. Just be careful to avoid spoilers.

Probability Moon (Probability #1), by Nancy Kress. (2000, 334 pages)
Read because: I can't remember how this ended up on my to-read list.
Review: 4 stars. In the distant future, humans explore space via a series of gates left by a long-vanished civilization. Via these gates, humans encounter strange alien races, including the Fallers, who are bent on the extermination of humans, and the Worlders, a species unique in its concept of "shared reality," wherein all members of the species are compelled by debilitating headaches to share the same worldview. If a Worlder manages to break with "shared reality" by, for example, committing a heinous crime or insisting on a statement or beliefe that is not part of shared reality, they can become "unreal"--essentially, completely ignored and no longer acknowledged as a person. It's hard to say more without getting into spoilers, but let's just say that the humans' mission of exploration isn't exactly what they think it is, and they soon find themselves knee-deep in anthropology, sociology, archeology, and particle physics as they try to make sense of their predicament. A unique and interesting premise, mostly well executed, though there were a few slow parts and several sections that I had to read over and over again in order to follow. But I was intrigued enough to probably read the rest of the series at some point.

The Memory Illusion: Why You May Not Be Who You Think You Are, by Julia Shaw. (2016, 304 pages)
Read because: This book was on an audible sale & I wanted something light and nonfiction to kill a couple of commute days with.
Review: 4 stars. As a psychology minor, most of what was covered in this book was not new to me (memory: completely unreliable and you should probably never trust it!) but I still found it interesting to hear more of the details and more about the new research that's been done since I was in college. If you're into nonfiction psychology/cognitive science aimed at the casual reader, you'll probably enjoy it.

Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders, by Vincent Bugliosi. (1974, 689 pages)
Read because: I like a good true crime story & this book was on an Audible Halloween sale so I thought why not. Too bad I didn't get around to it until the Christmas season!
Review: 4 stars. It didn't really occur to me until I started listening to this book that I actually didn't really know most of the details surrounding the Manson family & murders. The book was written by the DA who prosecuted the case, so it is incredibly detailed and includes a number of first-hand accounts of interviews with Manson, his followers, and other people central to the case. It also goes into great detail about Charles Manson's life and upbringing prior to the murders. Super interesting, but it's also quite long, and there were a few spots where I felt it maybe could have been edited better.

An Unwanted Guest, by Shari Lapena. (2018, 290 pages)
Read because: Can't remember but it ended up on my to-read list somehow
Review: 4 stars. A group of strangers, some alone and some in pairs or couples, plan to spend a winter weekend getting away from it all at a cozy, old-fashioned inn in upstate New York. Alas, when the group gets snowed in, the power goes out, and one of the guests turns up dead, things get a bit tense, and a second death does little to reassure the guests and staff. Disgraced defense attorney David Paley takes on the role of unofficial investigator, but can he be trusted? And who else has secrets they aren't sharing? Pretty much a perfect beach/plane read. It won't change your life and I guessed the ending fairly early on, but I still found it pretty entertaining and engrossing for a vacation read.

The Devil in Silver, by Victor LaValle. (2012, 412 pages)
Read because: Victor LaValle is a genius & this one has been on my list for a long time.
Review: 5 stars. A working-class guy named Pepper finds himself temporarily committed to a cash-strapped mental institution while he waits to be prosecuted for a minor offense and in the process meets a cast of odd characters too poor and forgotten for anyone to worry about actually treating. But it's also not long before he learns that there's another, less mundane resident at New Hyde who may be responsible for some disturbing goings-on in the place. Pepper tries to engineer his escape while also striving to protect his new friends from a fate worse than institutionalization. Everything Victor LaValle writes is brilliant; this book is a prime example of how there's no premise too absurd if the author is skillful enough to pull it off. Much more than a monster tale, the story also explores the tragedy of the American health care system, what it means to be mentally healthy or not, the nature of reality, and how sometimes broken systems aren't fixed because they're actually working for the intended beneficiaries (though those people may not be who you expect).

* * *

Currently Reading:
They Both Die At The End, by Adam Silvera

Currently Listening To:
Codename: Verity, by Elizabeth E. Wein

Up Next:

• Truly, Madly, Deadly, by Hannah Jayne
• End Zone, by Don DeLillo
• An Unkindness of Magicians, by Kat Howard
• The Fisherman, by John Langan
• Armor, by John Steakley
• The Last Policeman, by Ben H. Winters
• Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military, by Neil deGrasse Tyson & Avis Lang
• Broken Monsters, by Lauren Beukes
• Chalk, by Paul Cornell
• Wolf in White Van, by John Darnielle
• Radio Silence, by Alice Oseman
• Carve the Mark, by Veronica Roth
• Legend, by Marie Wu
• Jade City, by Fonda Lee
• Leah on the Offbeat, by Becky Albertalli
• Danse Macabre, by Stephen King
• Haroun and the Sea of Stories, by Salman Rushdie.
• The Secret Place, by Tana French

And who knows, whatever else tickles my fancy. (Taking future suggestions as always!)