Oh, I had such grand dreams for my blog in 2019, and then those plans got incredibly off track, but as it turns out…
In the month of April, year 45293 of the current global crisis, my insomnia kicked it into high gear to become Extra Strength Insomnia™. Wonder why that would be… Which means I spent a lot of time consuming all kinds of media. Sometimes this manifested in restarting Frasier and Cheers for the eleventh time, and others it manifested in reading as much as possible.
As a result, I finished 22 books in April. Which is wild, but also I didn’t leave my house, wasn’t much up for virtual socializing, and I don’t have kids, so my free time was mostly all free. Also, to be fair, about a quarter of these were comic series volumes, which are quick to get through.
These books fell within a few categories: Women’s Prize longlist selections, books for work, and books to take my mind off current events (aka, everything else).
Women’s Prize Longlist
I decided I was going to try to read all sixteen of the finalists on the longlist, just about in time for the beginning of the quarantine. In April, I finished six of them: Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo; Dominicana by Angie Cruz; Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson; Fleishman Is In Trouble by Taffy-Brodesser-Akner; Girl by Edna O’Brien; and The Dutch House by Ann Patchett (which I read on audiobook! haven’t been able to finish an audiobook since book-on-tape days, and what a great one to start back up on, with Tom Hanks as narrator).
I’m going to hold off on getting into these in detail for the moment, because I’m going to do a blog post about them when I finish. But I’ll sum up my current thoughts by saying, I found five of these to be excellent, superb, glorious, and one of them I found poorly written, voyeuristic, exploitative, and was disappointed it was on the longlist…so, there’s a teaser.
Books for Work
About two months ago (lol, what even is time?), I started a new job! It was difficult to leave my job in musical theatre, but it was also the right move for me. I’m now working at Town Hall Seattle, which produces 450+ events a year, a HUGE number of which are book talks. What a fucking dream, am I right?!
I read Here For It: Or, How To Save Your Soul in America by R. Eric Thomas in a matter of hours on a Sunday. It was hilarious and our pop culture references aligned perfectly. Eric mentioned Sister Act 2 at one point, and I made a note: “We’re best friends now, I don’t make the rules.” Amidst the humour was some truly stunning writing, poignant observations about life and death and race and religion and family and belonging, and an absolutely heartwrenching, gut-punching essay about love and loss. You can watch a replay of Eric’s event with Town Hall here. Highly recommend, he’s truly delightful.
Next up, I read Watchdog: How Protecting Consumers Can Save Our Families, Our Economy, and Our Democracy by Richard Cordray, with foreword by my girl Elizabeth Warren. Cordray was the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). He talks about the challenges with setting up the bureau, talks through some of their big touchstone causes and victories, shares a few stories about consumers who were helped by the CFPB, and discusses his experiences with the Trump administration in his last stretch as director. I found it a bit ironic that the CFPB was created to help protect consumers from, among other things, overly confusing and complicated financial language, and there was some of that in here. Maybe I only feel that way because I’m less familiar with the concepts. I’ll be honest, I largely think of the economy as an agreed-upon fiction, that encourages us to prioritize profit over people. It was nice to see that assumption flipped on its head as the CFPB worked to remedy economic loopholes and shortcomings in order to protect consumers. I wish there had been more individual success stories—I think that’s the real strength here, showing demonstrably the positive impact on people, but overall this one was pretty interesting. You can watch this event here.
Followed that with What It Is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man’s Blues. This one was a journey. I started out being a bit frustrated by the seeming “model minority” belief that Thompson seemed to have, but the investigation of his changing values and understanding of his place in America as a Black man was definitely not what I expected from the first chunk of the book. You can watch this event here.
And at the end of the month, I read The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor. This is the third of the Night Vale books, and I hadn’t read the other two. I wouldn’t have read this one when I did if not for work. I’ll be honest, I’ve long known of Night Vale, and I know of Joseph and Jeffrey because of their involvement with PodCon, as a result of which I’ve even attended a few live tapings of Night Vale-adjacent content. But listening to the entirety of Night Vale even though I found out about it relatively early on in its life, has always seemed like such a huge endeavor, because it felt like I needed to start from the very beginning to know what the hell was going on. I might be changing my tune on that one, though, because this one felt just fine as a standalone. Would it have been more in context if I’d listened to/read the other Night Vale content? I’m sure. But The Faceless Old Woman… is a dramatic, full-scale, epic story of vengeance in the vein of The Count of Monte Cristo, and I loved it. This event is happening on Tuesday, May 5, and you can RSVP to watch it here.
Distractions
The final category: random shit to take my mind off of the world. Some of these were more successful than others at this particular endeavor. Huge shout out to Scribd’s offer of a free 30 days (I ended up subscribing after that because of course I did) and the public library/Hoopla/Libby. Amazing.
First, the two books in this category that I read physical copies of:
I had been really excited to read Too Much: How Victorian Constraints Still Bind Woman Today by Rachel Vorona Cote, because I think there’s a lot of merit to the idea. It started out with such promise, and there were some solid points throughout. Whether those points were always supportive of the central thesis is debatable. I’m also conflicted about the inclusion of personal stories, which ended up being a huge component of the book. I did appreciate the mixture of academic language and profanity, which is some of my favourite kind of writing, and all of the Victorian literature and current cultural references were spot-on. All pros and cons considered, I ended up pretty neutral. ALL THE TRIGGER WARNINGS on this one, folks.
I’ve been hearing about Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes for a while now. I was looking for more readalikes for things like The Flatshare, Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating, and The Bookish Life of Nina Hill. This one was perfect in that regard. I read it in one sitting. This one tells the story of Evvie. The night she’s planning on finally leaving her secretly abusive husband, he dies in a car accident. Now she has to deal with the weight of a community that worshipped their favourite son, and figure out her own complicated grief while also working out who she is as a person without someone she’d been with since she was 15. Plus, there’s the need for some additional funds, which leads her to rent her mother-in-law space to a superstar ball player with the yips, looking for a place to lay low. Who can foresee what will happen between these two people? The people are messy, awkward, sometimes terrible to each other. Evvie is a glorious disaster, which is extremely relatable. I thought the apex conflict was one that could have been handled with that old favourite: communication! and I was bit disappointed about no sex on the page, but I truly loved this one a lot. Highly recommend, especially if you liked any of those other readalike books I mentioned.
And, here are a bunch of the ones I read on Scribd (plus The Dutch House):
I’ve read several Christina Lauren books at this point, but none I liked as much as the first one I read, Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating. Dating You/Hating You has been one of my favourites since that first one. It’s about two entertainment talent agents who meet at a Halloween party of mutual friends and strike up a friendship and then a potential romance – until their two firms merge and they’re suddenly in competition to keep their overlapping job. Super cute, really quick read, I gave it three stars.
The Past and Other Things That Should Stay Buried is my first book by Shaun David Hutchinson. I almost pre-ordered it when it was being released last year so I’m glad that it was available on Scribd. Dino’s ex-best friend July was a handful – and it turns out, that’s true even after her untimely death. When she suddenly comes back to life on the slab in Dino’s family funeral home, Dino has to help her figure out why she’s back. I’m pretty sure this one was representative of Hutchinson’s wheelhouse: queer teens, wild situations, complicated relationships. While it wasn’t my favourite book I read this month, I did enjoy it and I’m looking forward to reading more from him.
Proof by Seduction and Trial by Desire are books one and two in Courtney Milan’s Carhart series. I love Courtney Milan for a number of reasons, and I was just looking for some easy, classic historical romance, and these delivered. Proof by Seduction is about a fortune teller, Jenny, who must convince Gareth, the cousin of one of her long-time customers Ned, that she’s not a fake by finding Gareth a wife with her powers. I wonder how that will end…And Trial by Desire follows Ned, the aforementioned cousin, and his wife, Kate, who got married after a botched scheme to get her to marry Gareth in the first book, and who must rediscover each other and their partnership after Ned returns from three years away. I liked the second slightly more than the first, mostly because of the particular storyline, but these were delightful and exactly what I needed when I needed them.
And then there’s the books that I read via the library and Hoopla:
I’m not usually much of a thriller reader because most of my reading hours take place in the absolute dark, and too many episodes of Unsolved Mysteries when I was a kid have me absolutely certain there’s always a murderer outside my window. I mean, odds are…Anyway, I decided to try this one, Lock Every Door by Riley Sager, because I got on a jag of watching Booktube videos and one of the booktubers recommended it. The story is about a young girl, Jules, who is down to her last dollars, has lost her job and discovered her boyfriend was cheating on her. When an opportunity comes up to live in a swanky, infamous building as an apartment sitter for three months, getting paid an obscene amount of money, Jules ignores all of the warning signs and decides to move in. The first few days are great, until a fellow apartment sitter departs unexpectedly overnight without any warning—or at least that’s the way it seems. Jules tries to find her, and finds much more than she bargained for. It was well written and suspenseful and I loved the subtle “eat the rich” message implicit in the story (always up for that), but I also found it a little too predictable for me, and I was frustrated with the main character ignoring so many red flags. Like, all the red flags. To the point that she even acknowledged, “There are a bunch of red flags, but oh well, guess I’m going to move forward unchanged.”
I started reading the Locke & Key series by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez. This is the comic series that the Netflix series is based on, about a family whose father has been killed in an EXTREMELY graphic and violent way in front of them. As a result, they return to his hometown, to the family manor called Keyhouse, where strange things start happening. This is another one that has ALL the trigger warnings, and I’ve only finished these three volumes so far, but I find it such an interesting concept, and well plotted, that I’m definitely going to be continuing as much as I can stomach.
And finally, I read volumes 1 and 2 of Moonstruck by Grace Ellis, Shae Beagle, Kate Leth, Caitlin Quirk, and Clayton Cowles., It is the most adorable, most charming, most representational thing. It’s about a small town where everyone is a supernatural/mythological entity. Werewolf barista Julie and her girlfriend (also a werewolf) are just starting their relationship, but they must figure things out quickly when Julie’s friend and coworker Chet has their centaur half stolen at a close-up magic show. Like, legit, their back half is stolen and they’re given a human butt and are bereft. Amazing. The second volume takes place during what is meant to be a magical evening, and ends up going all kinds of wrong when a fraternity full of fairies causes havoc for them. I love, love, love this series and will be keeping it on my radar for future collections.
And that’s it! All the books I read in April. Whew. More soon.
Jo In Real Life 