reading list - july - september 2022

Amy Lea, Set on You. NY: Jove, 2022.

Crystal is a fitness trainer, so when a new guy steals her spot at the gym, he’s in for trouble. That he turns out to be her Grandmother’s fiancee’s favorite grandson further complicates... whatever it is they have.


Lily Chu, The Stand-In. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2021.

Gracie is buying coffee when a photographer ambushes her. Next day, she is asked, by the woman for whom she was mistaken, to act as a body double. Since she just lost her job, Gracie agrees, beginning an adventure that changes every part of her life.


Cat Sebastian, Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes. NY: Avon, 2022.

When Lady Marian receives a note suggesting that her husband, the Duke of Claire, has a prior, valid marriage which will be kept secret for a small price, she ends up with the blackmailer tied to a rented bed. It is not her first exercise in misadventure, or her last.


Robert Thorogood, Marlow Murder Club. Naperville, IL: Poisoned Pen, 2021.

Judith is a little old widow who composes crosswords and goes for a nightly swim in the Thames. That’s when she hears a shot at her neighbor’s. And since the police can’t crack the case, much less the two more murders that soon follow, Judith recruits some friends to give detective work a go.


Eliza Sussman, Funny You Should Ask. NY: Dell, 2022.

Chani is just starting out when she’s assigned a profile of the latest James Bond actor, an American named Gabe who has previously only had himbo roles. Her piece goes viral and he becomes a star. Ten years later, he’s lost the part (and his Bond Girl wife), and management hopes a reprise of their interview will rehabilitate his image. Gabe and Chani each, separately, have similar hopes.


Cat Sebastian, Queer Principles of Kit Webb. NY: Avon, 2021.

The other half of a scheme targeting the Duke of Claire, this is the story of Perry, the Duke’s second son, and the highwayman-turned-coffeeshop owner Kit whom he hires to steal from his father in order to pay off the blackmailer who would expose Percy’s illegitimacy.


Lauren Forsythe, Fixer Upper. NY: Putnam, 2022.

Aly has spent too much time without promotion at work, and too much time on guys who leave her, then get their sh-t together. She wants her own guy, but only seems able to make one better for someone else to benefit. So she decides to put her two problems together, creating a solution for women everywhere with her new business.


Katherine Center, Bodyguard. NY: St. Martin’s, 2022.

Hannah’s new assignment -- just after her mom dies and her boyfriend dumps her -- is guarding her favorite movie star, incognito. So, pretending to be Jack Stapleton’s girlfriend. Yeah, it’s awful. How can she not fall for him?


Tobin Buhk, Wicked Women of Detroit. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2018.

Another installment in what seems to be an attempt to catalog crime in every American city, this one focuses on a string of women (there’s also a book of old white men, don’t worry) who shocked sensibilities not with scandalous statements or sexuality, but good ol’ murder.


Damian Duffy & John Jennings, Octavia E Butler’s Kindred. NY: Abrams Comicrafts, 2017.

Dina, a black writer, is moving into her new house when she comes unstuck in time. This graphic adaptation, features muted color and a frantic, almost hallucinatory quality that reinforces Dina's confusion as she is repeatedly drawn back to the Maryland plantation where her family began. An unflinching glimpse into life before the Civil War, it is appropriate for high school history and literature classes in which discussion of uncomfortable themes is allowed.


Catherine McKenzie, et al; First Street. NY Serial Box, 2020.

A multi-author legal thriller featuring clerks at the Supreme Court which ends abruptly and without any sort of resolution, as if merely preview of a much longer work. I would generally approve; endings are too often contrived. This, however, feels like a budget ran out and writing stopped mid-plan.

Preslaysa Williams, Low Country Bride. NY: HarperCollins, 2021.

Maya designs bridal gowns, and is on the verge of a big promotion when her father breaks his hip. She goes home to help him and, predictably, has cause to question her plans. Yet the only real obstacle to happiness is her own self-doubt.


N. Scott Momaday, Ancient Child. NY: Doubleday, 1989.

Set Lockman is an artist in crisis; Set doesn't’ know that he is a bear. Grey, however, recognizes him and helps him become whole in this dreamlike drift between fiction and myth. The Worcester Meat death scene alone makes it worth reading; that scene ranks near a spicy Salman Rushdie chapter and Bokononism’s Last Rites among my favorites.


Nathanial Whitten & Walter Morton, Superoptimist Guide to Unconventional Living. NY: Vitally Important, 2022.

A follow-up to Secrets of the Superoptimist, this volume continues espousing belief that one can change life for the better by changing one’s attitude. Presenting a number of tips for changing perspective or seeing opportunity in difficult situations, it is a good reminder that our attitudes determine our moods and that, if we wish to be happy,we should be happy.


Tessa Bailey; Hook, Line, & Sinker. NY: HarperCollins, 2022.

In this follow-up to It Happened One Summer, Piper’s little sister Hannah, who works for a film production company, convinces the director that Westport is a perfect setting for his current project, and the romance she started with Fox last summer quickly heats up again.


Ali Hazelwood, Love Hypothesis. NY: Jove, 2021.

Olive is a graduate student at Stanford (in a better program that Elizabeth Zott, thankfully), working on a better test for pancreatic cancer. Olive wants to convince her best friend that Olive’s ex really is fair game, so she lies about having a date with a different guy. When her friend shows up unexpectedly, Olive panics and kisses the only man handy - the most hard-assed professor in the department. Somehow, he doesn’t seem to mind.


Ali Hazelwood, Love on the Brain. NY: Jove, 2022.

Another smart girl, this time a neuroscientist, in the same story as Love Hypothesis. Which was slightly surprising; authors don’t ususally recycle plots so immediately, though both Austen and Shakespeare did so with regularity and great effect. This, likewise, is a worthwhile reprise: Bee’s obsession with Marie Curie is delightful,and unwrapping the confusion that is her love life is a process full of amusing cringe. Hazelwood’s characters are sharp and well-drawn, their situation is interesting, and there’s even a nice little rant against the Graduate Record Exam (which I took three times).


Ali Hazelwood, Under One Roof. NY: Jove, 2022.

Okay, this time it’s an environmental engineer with the EPA thrown together with a corporate attorney who slowly realized that her supposed nemesis actually feels quite differently. I probably wouldn’t even notice it’s the same as the last two if I weren’t reading everything from Dr. Hazelton at once -- and wouldn’t be reading it all all if I weren’t enjoying each presentation of the plot.

reading list, april - june 2022

 Martha Wells, Artificial Condition. NY: TOR, 2018.

Murderbot is free now, and wants to know about the incident that got it wiped, supposedly for killing fifty-seven human clients at the Ganaka Pit mining facility. To learn what happened there, Murderbot takes a security contract on that moon. It doesn’t go well.


Anne Hillerman, Spider Woman’s Daughter. NY: HarperCollins, 2013.

Talk about making a series one’s own: in the first installment since inheriting Leaphorn and Chee from her father, Anne shoots the Lieutenant in the face -- and follows Bernadette, Chee’s Navaho wife and partner on the force, as she searches for the shooter.


Kwana Jackson, Real Men Knit. NY: Jove, 2020.

Mama Joy Strong’s Harlem knitting shop is a neighborhood institution, but her heart attack puts it at risk. Unless her adopted sons can keep it going. Maybe, with Kerry’s help, they can.


Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents. NY: Open Road, 2012.

This is the flip-side of Parable of the Sower, in which Olamina’s journals record her founding Earthseed as a response to contemporary slow-motion apocalypse. The Talents, on the other hand, is not autobiography but history, as Olamina’s daughter tries to piece together her famous mother’s life from documents and interviews. By the end, you may also understand and accept Olamina’s truth. Oh, and I despise the tale of capitalistic abuses from which the book takes its name.


Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry. NH:Doubleday, 2022.

I love Elizabeth Zott, the host of Supper at Six, and you will too.


Catie Disabato, Ghost Network. NY: Melville House, 2015.

Is it too much to call out Nabokov? He like convoluted mysteries, too, but it’s Pnin that Diabato’s ‘editing someone else’s manuscript” approach echoes. The mystery? How a pop star gone missing is related to a group of Avant-guard Parisians, via Chicago’s unbuilt train lines.


Ahmir Khalib Thomspson/ Questlove with Ben Greenman, Music Is History. NY: Abrams, 2021.

This book is about history, particularly the past fifty years or so -- Questlove’s lifetime -- as seen through the lens of popular (Black) music. The questions are about what makes history -- what is it, how does it come about, who is it about, who records or validates it, how we relate to it as individuals. The stories are personal, but the events are substantial and the conversation is good and the music is great. Music Is History is the 2022 national library Big Read, a book chosen to provide a common experience for readers across the country, and by asking us to think about how e think about history, may help develop a common understanding. Or at least an appreciation of some tunes we didn’t know.


Jennifer Saint, Ariadne. NY: Flatiron, 2021.

May have said this already, but I am thrilled by the sudden deluge of books foregrounding the women of Greek myth: none of it happened without them, but aside from Helen and Cassandra, how many of them do we know? Minos’s daughter, princess of Crete, Theseus’s lover and aid in killing the Minotaur, Dionysus’s wife and priestess of Naxos... the depths this book reveal more clearly to non-classicists, relationships between the gods and Greeks that are otherwise confused by time and unfamiliarity, and the emotional currents connecting them, show why these stories remain vital even now.


Amal el-Mohtar & Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War. NY: Simon & Schuster, 2019.

This epistolary Romeo and Juliet tale features time-traveling agents working to build a future either mechanistic or vegetative by changing various strands of the multiverse. But really - how does one lose any war, except by fighting? To make war is to lose.


Natalie Hays, A Thousand Ships. NY: HarperCollins, 2021.

This is the women’s war. The women of Greece and Troy have waited long enough for their turn, says the muse Calliope, as she give their stories to the complaining poet, who will tell their tale or none at all.


Haruki Murakami, Strange Library. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014.

A dreamlike noir novella, in which all the narrator knows for sure is that he lost his shoes and his pet starling; he did not have his brain sucked out by a librarian.


Peter Schilling, Jr., The End of Baseball. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2008.

No, not an expose of MLB’s manipulation of ball composition, but a fiction based on Bill Veeck’s stated desire to buy a team and immediately hire Negros to play. It’s set just a few years before Veeck bought the Cleveland club and did just that by helping Larry Doby integrate the American League.


Melissa Ferguson, Meet Me in the Margins. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2022.

It’s romantic fiction about writing romantic fiction: romantic, and fiction.


Luke Epplin, Our Team. NY: Flatiron, 2021.

A look at the 1948 Cleveland Baseball Club, first integrated team in the American League and last World Series champions in that city, by examining four main contributors to their success: Bill Veeck, Bob Feller, Satchel Paige, and Larry Doby.


Paul Dickson, Bill Veeck. NY: Bloomsbury, 2012.

Shark week concludes with this deft, detailed biography of a man whose father ran the Cubs, who later bought the Browns, Indians, White Sox, and White Sox again: a lifer. Dickson handles his controversial subject evenly and in relation to his times. He also all but verifies Veeck’s intention to pull the plan fictionalized in The End of Baseball (above), which would have seen the Phillies field an entire team of Negros in 1942, five years before Jackie Robinson debuted with the Dodgers.


Jasmine Guillory, While We Were Dating. NY: Berkley, 2021.

Anna is an actor and Ben is an ad exec. While they were dating they had lots of great sex and fell in love. Hope I didn’t just give away the ending.


John Feinstein, Where Nobody Knows Your Name. NY: Doubleday, 2014.

This study examine the line between Major and minor league life through discussions wiht players, managers, and umpires, many of whom are trying to return to the Bigs, during the 2012 International League season.


Vanessa Riley, A Duke, a Lady, and a Baby. NY: Zebra, 2020.
    An Earl, a Girl, and a Toddler. NY: Zebra, 2021.
    A Duke, the Spy, an Artist, and a Lie. NY: Zebra, 2022.

A fairly new series of Regency romances featuring members of Widow’s Grace, a group that helps abused widows retain their property -- and children -- from scheming in-laws. As a bonus, they also address racial conditions in nineteenth-century London that are often overlooked in fiction.


John Bellairs, Eyes of the Killer Robot. NY: Puffin, 1998.

In this Johnny Dixon mystery, a ball-playing robot from fifty years ago turns out to be a golum powered by they eyes of a (formerly) living person. Johnny’s eyes would be perfect for the new model.


Mary Kay Andrews, Homewreckers. NY: St. Martins, 2022.

Genre fiction: it’s a mystery, about a disappearing young teacher. It’s industry expose, a behind-the-scenes look at reality TV production. It’s romance, as the local star fields attention from both co-star and producer. Oh, and it’s kinda fun, so there’s that.


Edward Achor, Summer of Beer and Whisky. NY: Public Affairs, 2013.

The title refers to a nickname for the American Association of Base Ball Clubs, the 1880s “Beer & Whisky League” founded as an alternative to the stodgy National League, which didn’t allow alcohol or Sunday ballgames. Achorn focuses on the pennant race between St. Louis and Philadelphia to frame discussion of the characters and circumstances that lead to founding, and the consequences that we still see in the game today.


Jasmine Guillory, Royal Holiday. NY: Berkley, 2019.

Vivian accompanies her daughter on a business trip to England, but Vivian’s the one who ends up getting the business from Her Majesty’s private secretary. And it’s delightful seeing someone over fifty fall in love again.


Amy Stewart, Girl Waits with Gun. NY: Mariner, 2016.

In the aptly-named Constance Kopp, Stewart has found a amazing character for the first in a series of mysteries. Set in early 20th-century New Jersey, she fictionalizes the actual adventures of a pioneering woman in law enforcement.


Ibi Zoboi, Pride. NY: Balzer + Bray, 2018.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen inspires retelling. I think that this version, set in Brooklyn, is my favorite.


Mia Manansala, Arsenic and Adobe. NY: Berkley Prime Crime, 2021.

First in a new series of culinary cozies, featuring a family of Filipino restaurateurs and including recipes, finds an unpopular food blogger face down in his dessert.


Kerry Winfrey, Very Sincerely Yours. NY: Jove, 2021.

When Teddy gets dumped, she emails a local children's’ television host for advice. He suggests trying something new, something that scares her, every day. And what’s scarier than asking out that host, her celebrity crush?


Lauren Kate, By Any Other Name. NY: Putnam, 2022.

After her promotion to editor, Lanie meets her star author (whose next book is four months overdue) for the first time after six years of email. It doesn’t go as expected, but Lanie still needs to produce a manuscript to keep her new job.


Gregory McDonald, Fletch. NY: Vintage Crime, 2002.

Fletch is a newspaper reporter with great bone structure following a story about the local drug scene when he’s hired to ‘murder’ a local businessman, with equally great bone structure, by the intended victim.


Emily Henry, Book Lovers. NY: Berkley 2022.

This story, about an agent, an editor, a small town, and the author who brings them all together, is delightful -- in many ways wonderful -- and, ironically, given it is about editing a book, goes on too long.


Liz Bowery, Love, Hate, and Clickbait. Toronto: Mira, 2022.

The author says she writes love stories about terrible people, and her political consultant IS terrible, then falls in love. Truth in advertising is everything in politics, after all.


Jasmine Guillory, Wedding Date. NY: Jove, 2018.

Alexa and Drew hit it off while trapped in an elevator, so she agrees to be his plus-one or a wedding that weekend. But long-distance relationships are hard -- especially when they’re new.


Farrah Rochon, Dating Playbook. NY: Hachette, 2021.

Taylor is excited to have a new client, but the former pro footballer doesn’t want anyone to know he’s hire a trainer -- so they use a fake-dating cover story. ‘Cuz that always works.


Elizabeth Hubscher, If You Ask Me. NY: Jove, 2022.

Violet is an advice columnist, but when she walks in on her husband with a pretty neighbor, she’s all out of answers. And now, thanks to the cute firefighter responding to an autographed jersey fire in her driveway, she’s got many more questions.


John Waugh, Reelecting Lincoln. NY: Crown, 1997.

When in doubt, read history. This journalistic account of the 1864 Presidential election gives hope that, even in a bitterly divided country, the mechanisms of democracy hold and, as George Strong noted at the time, the American people can be trusted to take care of the national honor.


Avi, Perloo the Bold. NY: Scholastic, 1998.

Perloo is an historian, so he knows that the leader can nominate a non-hereditary successor. But why him? Still, to save his own life from the jealous jilted heir and his tribe from an unnecessary war, book-loving Perloo does what he must, in his own way.


John Updike, Witches of Eastwick. NY: Knopf, 1984.

Three young divorcees have determined that small-town dating is like Monopoly: eventually one lands on all of the squares. So when a dark stranger from New York moves into an abandoned mansion, each harbors secret hopes. Yet when he does choose a bride, they turn on one of their own. An utterly, predictably depressing book, saved only by the luminous prose lovingly lathered on these despicable people.


Julie Murphy, If the Shoe Fits. NY: Disney, 2021.

Did you notice the publisher? The title? Is it a spoiler to scream, “Cinderella”, set in a reality dating show? Part of the Meant to Be series, which seems an obvious, even overdue, extension of their Princess brand.


Jason Mott, Hell of a Book. NY: Dutton, 2021.

I keep checking my bank account for royalties, because this feels like a book I’d write while unconscious -- which is only to say that I relate strongly to one of the character’s fractured relationship with reality and wish I wrote so well. Plus a Nic Cage cameo.


KM Jackson, How to Marry Keanu Reeves in 90 Days. NY: Forever, 2021.

Nic Cage offering advice on a plane? Pshah. In this, Keanu is not only the object of an action-packed road trip but, at its eventual end, proves that he is The One.


Alexa Martin, Mom Jeans and Other Mistakes. NY: Berkley, 2021.

Jude and Laura have been best friends since third grade, so when their lives fall apart they move in together, creating a new family with Lauren’s little girl and starting a podcast. it should be perfect.


Ernessa Carter, 32 Candles. NY: HarperCollins, 2010.

Remember that scene in the John Hughes teen classic 16 Candles when Molly Ringwald sees Jake leaning against his Porsche waiting for her to come down the steps? Yeah, just like that, except sixteen years and half a continent away from high school.


Jasmine Guillory, By the Book.  NY: Hyperion, 2022.

Another “Meant to Be” title from Disney, this time derived from Beauty and the Beast: an ambitious editorial assistant is assigned to help a blocked author deliver his manuscript.

Deselection 2022.2

 Thomas Hardy, Return of the Native. NY: Harper & Row, 1966.

Hardy was a poet, but, like most poets, he liked to eat. Since poetry doesn't sell very well -- or make much, even if it does sell, he also wrote fiction, to keep the larder stocked. Originally published in 1878, structured as a classical tragedy, set in Wessex, and peopled by minor gentry, upon brief perusal it is, in almost all ways, dull beyond description and not, according to its introductory text, worth the effort.

Elaine Harger, Which Side Are You On? Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2016.

A discussion of seven different questions of social responsibility taken up by libraries between 1990 and 2015. Riveting, and essential to understanding why librarians are often passed over for management positions even in libraries.

SH Butcher and A Lang, The Odyssey of Homer. NY: Modern Library, undated.

Translated into prose, it is simply not the way I want to read or remember this story.

Charles Dickens, Hard Times. NY Fawcett, 1966.

This was a fun story, and having read it, I have no need of the mass-market paperback.

Avi, Perloo the Bold. NY: Scholastic, 1998.

Childrens' books is a category marked for reduction in my new space. Now that I have shelves and they're out of boxes, there's no one around to enjoy them but me.

Juan Jose Millas, From the Shadows. NY: Bellevue, 2019.

Hiding in a family's closet and cleaning up their life? Too creepy to share shelf with Stephen King.

 

John Bellairs, Eyes of the Killer Robot. NY: Puffin, 1998.

This fine children's mystery is another casualty of its class as non-core collection. 

Kay Redfield Jamison, Unquiet Mind. NY: Knopf, 1996.

Another of my ex's books that she chose to pack with mine. If she didn't want it...

 

Since it's mid-December as I type, let's call this complete for the year. It doesn't really seem like I'm making progress on clearing the shelves, though. Maybe next year.

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