April 2023 Reads!

One of the things that I find myself missing about blogging is not just writing about running, but also just kind of documenting other stuff that I'm doing. One of those things is what I'm reading.

Of course being that it's now November, I'm super behind on this! But I had a couple of drafts in the hopper before things got crazy last April/May that I figured I'd go ahead and share.

Enjoy, and as always please feel free to share anything you've read lately that you're particularly excited about.

In case you missed it...

January 2023 Reads February 2023 Reads
March 2023 Reads
Reads from previous years

(29) ℹ️ Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez (356 pages, 2020). Audiobook. It’s interesting, having grown up in South in an evangelical church & community (though far from the most fringe or hate-filled of evangelical churches & communities), gone to college at a rural ultra-liberal midwestern school, & now living in perhaps (I don’t actually know, just guessing) the most leftist and least religious region in the country. I often feel like I live in an unbridgeable gap between two vastly different worlds and neither has even the *vaguest* clue about just how unbridgeable that gap is, because they haven’t lived on both sides. This book starts in the early 20th century and walks through the history of how the religious far-right and toxic masculinity/patriarchy/military nationalism ended up so hopelessly entwined. Some of it I knew but a lot of it I didn’t, or didn’t know the full story, and while it was incredibly educational, it was also deeply depressing and left me feeling even more hopeless than before about politics in our country and how deeply far right-wing evangelical interests have penetrated into the Republican party.

(30) ℹ️ Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood by Satya Doyle Byock (240 pages, 2022). Paper book. The national treasure Anne Helen Petersen put this book on my rader when she interviewed the author for one of her newsletters. Essentially, the author wanted to study the period of time between roughly age 20 and 35 when we are definitely adults but definitely not yet middle-aged, a time when many of us feel like we should have it “figured out” but kind of feel like fuck ups because we definitely don’t. She brings a wide range of lenses and disciplines to bear on this subject, including psychology, sociology, history, and literature, and in the end makes a pretty solid argument about what’s going on during this time, why so many of us feel like a mess in our 20s and early 30s, and what information it might be helpful for older teens/college-age people to have as they approach “quarterlife.” I want to buy this book for every twenty-something I know!

(31) ✨ The Measure by Nikki Erlick (368 pages, 2022). Audiobook. One day, every adult in the world 22 or older finds a small box has arrived at their current place of residence, engraved with the words, “The measure of your life lies within.” Inside is a string which indicates the person’s lifespan. And thereafter, every young person receives such a box on their 22nd birthday. You can choose to look, or you can hide the box in the back of your closet, or you can throw it into the ocean; it’s up to you. The story explores the different types of dilemmas that this strange situation inspires, and how different people choose to handle them. This was such a beautiful and human and well-written book & I’m pretty sure I cried a little at the end.

(32) 🎭🔍🗡️All the Dangerous Things by Stacy Willingham (326 pages, 2023). Audiobook. Other than the occasional catnap or blackout, Isabelle Drake hasn’t slept since her eighteen-month-old son Mason was snatched from his crib while Isabelle and her husband slept. Now the pair have split, the trail seems cold, and Isabelle hasn’t been totally absolved by the police, but she’s determined to keep the case in the public consciousness by doing true crime conventions, TV interviews, and now a podcast. But the podcaster’s questions are shaking things uncomfortably loose for Isabelle from both the recent past and her childhood, making her question what she believes to be the truth about both time periods. An entertaining enough thriller, but not life-changing.

(33) 🔍🗡️The House Guest by Hank Phillippi Ryan (336 pages, 2023). Audiobook. Alyssa Macallan has been abruptly dumped by her rich and powerful husband, but also seems to have stumbled onto a friend in a hotel bar–Bree Lorrence–just when she needed one. Soon Bree, also fleeing a problematic relationship, is staying in Alyssa’s guest house while Alyssa waits to be kicked out. But then Alyssa learns her husband is being investigated by the FBI, which leads to all sorts of questions about recent events in her life, including Bree’s sudden appearance. I spent most of this book wondering where it was going – it felt meandering without any real plan until I got to the end and the big (not really that big) reveal. Not much tension to speak of & kind of more just a series of (confusing) events.

(34) 🪄Vita Nostra (Метаморфозы #1) by Marina & Sergey Dyachenko (408 pages, 2007). Audiobook. As one review put it, “A cross between Lev Grossman's The Magicians and Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian … The anti-Harry Potter you didn't know you wanted." And actually that’s a pretty good description. When Sasha Samokhina’s plans to attend university in Moscow fall through, she learns she’s been accepted (or rather, chosen?) to attend the mysterious Institute of Special Technologies in a small provincial town. She soon finds herself faced with nonsensical text books & draconian expectations, with no clear explanation of what all this is for – only that, if she fails or quits, there may be dire consequences for her families. And then, one day… Well, you’ll have to read to find out.

(35) 📚🎭 Deacon King Kong by James McBride (384 pages, 2020). Paper book. Set in the Cause Houses (housing project) in south Brooklyn in the 1960s, a cranky old church deacon nicknamed Sportcoat shoots the project’s resident drug dealer–a 19-year-old former Sunday School student and youth baseball prodigy of Sportcoat’s–at point-blank range. The rest of the book explores both the reasons behind and the consequences of this act throughout the community for its different residents (church members, other African-American and Latinx residents, white neighbors, local cops, and neighborhood mobsters). A bit slow but still an excellent read.

(36) 🎭🔍🗡️Burntown by Jennifer McMahon (304 pages, 2017). Audiobook. After her father drowns in a flood, Necco and her mother Lily are left homeless in their quaint college town of Ashford, Vermont–known as Burntown to those struggling to survive its hard, dilapidated industrial underbelly. But recent events have forced Necco to reconsider whether what she knows about the night of her father’s death is the whole truth. With help from a set of fellow Burntown misfits, Necco pursues the truth while dodging a possible killer with connections to her family’s past. Not bad but this isn’t my favorite Jennifer McMahon.