March 2023 Reads!

Hello friends, I don't know about you but I am SO EXCITED that it is properly spring. The time has changed, my evening light is back (as an evening post-work runner I *super* appreciate this), and we've even had a few pleasant days of weather (in spite of all the bananas rain & wind we've been getting in SF lately).

March was a pretty solid month of reading, including several starred reads! As always, I am taking recommendations if you have any to offer.

In case you missed it...

January 2023 Reads February 2023 Reads
Reads from previous years

(19) The Last Guests by JP Pomare (336 pages, 2021). Audiobook. Lena & Cain, an Australian couple with money worries, reluctantly decide to put the family lake house Lena inherited up on a vacation rental site, a situation that is complicated by an increasingly problematic secret she is keeping from Cain. Then one night a harrowing experience at the lake house threatens to destroy everything. Has Lena’s secret finally come home to roost or is there something even more sinister going on? The premise here was a bit outlandish in my opinion and the ending felt sort of unbelievable and unresolved, as if this were intended as the first half of a book rather than an entire story.

(20) What Remains of Me by Alison Gaylin (384 pages, 2016). Paper book.

At seventeen, Kelly Michelle Lund was convicted of shooting and killing a famous Hollywood director. Thirty years later, she is five years out of prison when her husband’s famous actor father (a contemporary of the director Kelly was convicted of murdering) turns up dead as well, making her once again a person of interest. The story flashes back and forth between Kelly’s ne’er-do-well teenage days mourning the recent loss of her twin sister and slipping into Hollywood’s seedy underbelly and the present day as Kelly and a surprising ally fight to keep her out of prison. For all that this wasn’t the best-written book I’ve ever read and the constant overuse of italics and ellipses drove me a bit nuts, I have to admit I tore through it, desperate for answers to the book’s many mysteries.

(21) The Other Widow by Susan Crawford (352 pages, 2016). Audiobook. Dori’s boss Joe (with whom she’s been having an affair) summons her for an emergency chat in his car; not long after he tells her they must end their affair because it isn’t safe, a catastrophic wreck kills Joe and Dori flees the scene. Joe’s widow Karen finds herself juggling grief, worries about Joe’s business, and her attraction to another man. Cop-turned-insurance investigator Maggie is assigned to Karen’s claim and feels certain all is not what it seems. This was a solid book but it felt more focused on, like, gossip between various women rather than the actual plot so I had a hard time staying engaged & interested in the story.

(22) Looker by Laura Sims (192 pages, 2019). Audiobook. A recently separated, unhappily childless woman becomes obsessed with her actress neighbor and her family, watching them through the windows and hoarding the discarded items she leaves on the curb. The book is basically a first-hand account of how she loses her mind and makes one terrible decision after another until she is completely and utterly off the rails. It was depressing and sort of one-dimensional and very much not for me.

(23) ⭐ I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid (210 pages, 2016). Audiobook. An unnamed woman is having doubts about her relationship with her boyfriend of seven weeks, Jake; we learn via her internal monologue that she is considering "ending things" with him. In the mean time, she's driving with him through the winter darkness to the remote farm where he grew up to meet his parents for the first time. The story cuts back and forth between her narration and two unnamed people talked about some mysterious, horrible tragedy that's happened recently. And...that is about all I can say without starting to get into spoilers! Let me just say that I personally think the terms "psychological thriller" and "twist" are major mega overused, so my bar for both is high. And this book met that bar. It's the type of book that, as soon as you finish reading it, you want to flip back to the beginning to read it all over again now that you know what was going on. I'm glad it's short because I definitely want to reread/re-listen it!

(24) ⭐ Embassytown by China Mieville (345 pages, 2011). eBook. One of my favorite books so far this year, by the inimitable China Mieville! Embassytown is a tiny human colony on a distant planet that is home to the Ariekei, or Hosts, who speak in a language that requires their two mouths to speak different words at once. Even after decades of coexisting, only a few pairs of human Ambassadors––genetically engineered twins––are able to speak the strange two-voice language. After years of traveling the galaxy, Avice has returned to Embassytown with her new husband, just in time for the arrival of a new, very strange Ambassador who soon throws the fragile equilibrium between humans and Hosts into chaos. Brilliantly original and cleverly constructed (because Mieville), this book was challenging and demanding in all the best ways, and I couldn’t put it down. If you are a language nerd, in particular, you will DEFINITELY want to seek this one out.

(25) The Children on the Hill by Jennifer McMahon (352 pages, 2022). Audiobook. After their parents are killed in a car accident, siblings Vi and Eric go to live with their beloved Gran, the brilliant psychiatrist Dr. Helen Hildreth at the bucolic Vermont inn where she is renowned for taking on patients that no one else will treat. Eight years later, when Vi is 13 and Eric seven, Gran brings home skittish, silent, near-feral Iris, another 13-year-old girl whose background she refuses to share with Vi. The pair soon induct Iris into their freewheeling life of caring for damaged animals, sneaking into the drive-in for horror movies, and hunting monsters. Their story is interspersed with that of middle-aged Lizzy Shelly forty years in the future, who has traveled to Vermont to investigate a monster sighting and the abduction of a young teenage girl. Because monsters, Lizzy learned back on the farm with Gran, are absolutely real. I really liked this book and have been enjoying downloading more Jennifer McMahon back titles from the library.

(26) ⭐ The Longest Race: Inside the Secret World of Abuse, Doping, and Deception on Nike's Elite Running Team by Kara Goucher (288 pages, 2023). Paper Book. I’ve followed Kara Goucher’s running career since I first became aware of who she was around the mid 2000s, I think. As a Nike-sponsored athlete coached by the legendary Alberto Salazar on his vaunted Oregon Project team, she quickly became one of the most decorated female distance runners in the sport. Later on, as her relationship with Salazar came to an end followed a couple of years later by the end of her Nike contract, more details began to come out about how her time at Nike and NOP was maybe not as paradisiacal as it seemed from the outside. 

Friends, I have followed all of that and consumed any number of articles and podcasts with/by/about her since then, and I thought I pretty much knew what the story was there. Well *whew*, friends, let me just say, I read this book and I did NOT. Kara goes into much more detail in this book than she ever has publicly before, and it is absolutely harrowing. HARROWING. I just. A number of times while I was reading I had to stop myself from hurling the book across the room and cursing, because I was so, so MAD on behalf of Kara and everyone else who ended up in a position where they had to deal with Nike’s, NOP’s, and most of all Salazar’s absolute and utter bullshit. Kara has risked (and lost) so much by revealing what she has over the years, but she’s done it to protect and inform other pro runners (especially young and/or female runners and those with marginalized identities) that come after her, and the way I see it, she’s a hero for doing so.

(27) The Drowning Kind by Jennifer McMahon (336 pages, 2021). Audiobook. My second JM book. So far she seems to be very into pairs of siblings living with their grandmother in a bucolic setting in the 70s, and stories that flash back and forth between the past and present. In the 70s, Jackie and her older sister Lexi spend time at their grandmother's country home, particularly swimming in her pool and the nearby lake. In the present day, Jackie learns that Lexi––long ago diagnosed with manic bipolar schizophrenia, and apparently off her medication––has turned up dead in the pool at their grandmother’s house, which she inherited. In addition to those flashbacks, we also get a glimpse into Lex and Jackie's grandmother's early life, how she struggled to get pregnant until a fervent wish at a lauded natural springs resort seems to bring her dream––and maybe also something more sinister––to life. We spend most of the book weaving our way into the connections between all three timelines. Solidly enjoyable, not life-changing.

(28) ⭐ Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado (241 pages, 2017). Paper book. CMM first came to my attention when an essay began circulating a few years back that referenced her short story The Husband Stitch (the first story in this collection). I was captivated and intrigued by the article and immediately put Parties on my to-read list. But you know how to-read lists are and I just got around to it this year. If you enjoy brilliant and incisive short stories of the speculative, feminist, LGBTQ+ type, this collection may be right up your alley.

As always, happy to hear any recommendations!