So Many Books, So Little Time (yep, that's a title of a book!)

Fiction

I enjoyed and admired True Biz, by Sara Novic. It features a compelling story focused primarily (but not exclusively) on Charlie, a 15-year-old deaf girl with a faulty cochlear implant, no knowledge of ASL, and parents deeply divided about how to give her a good future. Her father wins custody and enrolls her in River Valley School for the Deaf, where she begins to thrive. Meanwhile, the school district is threatening to close the school, a fact headmistress February Waters wants to keep hidden as long as possible (February is having her own problems with a deaf mother whose dementia is worsening and a wife who suspects her of a dalliance with a teacher). While these characters' stories (and other subplots) held my interest as a reader, I was also learning a lot about deaf culture, sign language, and deaf education. I listened to the audiobook, which had a feature I hadn't previously experienced. When conversations in the book would have been signed, the author was actually signing in the background; of course, much of the signing was silent but you could sometimes hear the movement of her arms and smacks when one hand hit the other. It helped remind you that these conversations would have been silent. Highly recommended.

Anthem, by Noah Hawley, was definitely not what I expected since the previous book by this author that I had read was a mystery. I've seen Anthem described as a pre-apocalyptic novel, which is a new genre to me. Anyway, the book is set a few years after the COVID epidemic and begins with an unexplained rash of suicides among teenagers. One of the teens who killed themselves was Claire Oliver, the daughter of a big Pharma CEO, who overdosed on pills from her father's company. Her brother Simon struggles in the aftermath, and his parents ship him off to the Float Anxiety Abatement Center, a psychiatric facility for young people. There, he hooks up with a group of other young people, including The Prophet, who speaks to God, and a young woman victimized by an Epstein-esque character. They break out and travel across country to try to rescue another young woman. Meanwhile, the bulimic daughter of a Supreme Court nominee has disappeared from her apartment in Austin, along with her boyfriend, who it turns out is the sun of a survivalist. With other subplots I'm not even mentioning, I found Anthem to be imaginative but a bit much. 

Emily Austin has created a unique character in Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead. Gilda is an atheist lesbian with some psychological issues, including an obsession with death. She turns up at a Catholic church to access free therapy but is mistaken for a job applicant and ends up taking the job as Father Jeff's assistant. The previous occupant of the position, Grace, died under suspicious circumstances, which Gilda starts investigating. At the same time, she begins a correspondence with Grace's best friend--pretending to be Grace. She's trying to keep things going with a new girlfriend while learning the Catholic mass. Meanwhile, her apartment descends into chaos (she hasn't washed dishes in weeks and they are piled everywhere). I wanted to shake her, but I remained interested in what was happening!  

In Light Perpetual, Frances Spufford takes a unique approach. He opens with a gripping description of a World War II bombing at a Woolworth's in London, an actual bombing in which many civilians, including children, were killed. Then he asks: But what if the bombing never happened? And he tells the stories of five children who would have been killed but weren't: twin sisters Jo and Val plus Alec, Ben, and Vernon. He pops into their lives 5 years after the non-bombing (1949) and then every 15 years. Perhaps the most interesting thing is that nothing particularly special happens to them--among them, they experience mental illness, business success and failure, becoming redundant because of technology and then finding a new career, domestic violence, marriage and divorce, parenthood, and so on. Perhaps that is the point. 

I didn't care for Taylor Jenkins Reid's best-seller Daisy Jones and the Six, but it was definitely innovative, presented as a collection of oral histories from the members of a rock band. Malibu Rising is much more traditional drama of a dysfunctional family. It reminds me somewhat of Anne Tyler's recent French Braid, dipping back and forth between the parents' story and the stories of the children, which was fine until we got to a very long section of the book detailing a party at one of the children's homes. For me, reading about an out-of-control party is about as enjoyable as reading a dream sequence. Not recommended. 

Mercy Street, by Jennifer Haigh, was certainly a timely book to pick up this week, dealing as it does with abortion. Mercy Street is a clinic, where Claudia offers counseling to the clients. Claudia has an every-other-weekend lover she met on line, but she's probably closer to her weed dealer, Tim. Tim also supplies one of the regular protesters at the clinic, Anthony, who is on disability for a traumatic brain injury and whose life consists of going to mass and protesting. He is drawn into helping Victor, a misogynist who hates white women who have abortions because they're not helping sustain the race. He has started a website where he posts pictures of women going into abortion clinics, and Anthony begins sending him pictures from Mercy Street. Victor then becomes obsessed with Claudia, whom he sees in one of Anthony's photos. Yeah, it sounds like a lot--and there's more--maybe too much. But it felt real and crazy the way today's world feels. 

Mysteries/Thrillers

In The Sun Down Motel, Simone St. James combines a currently popular trope--the true crime fan, in this case a family member, who decides to investigate a case and solves it when the police could not--with a ghost story. Not a hit with me. 

An Accidental Death (DC Smith series) and Songbird (Kings Lake series), both by Peter Grainger, were pleasant enough but forgettable . . . in fact, forgotten. In contrast, Cappucinos, Cupcakes, and a Corpse, by Harper Lin was just plain dumb. Note to self: do not read any more mysteries with cutesy food titles.

Nonfiction

Musician Michelle Zauner's memoir, Crying in H Mart, made many best of 2021 lists. It focuses largely on her experience caring for her Korean American mother as she battled and eventually died from cancer. Her mother and food were her primary connections to Korean culture (her relationship with her Anglo father was somewhat distant), and she cooks manically in the months after her mother's death. I can see why people found the book meaningful, although it didn't entirely resonate with me. I would have appreciated more reflection rather than just recounting, more effort to draw meaning from her experiences--perhaps I wanted her to metaphorize (new word) herself!

I picked So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading, by Sara Nelson, out of a Little Free Library I encountered while out walking. Although I always look at LFLs when I see them, I try not to take any books because I figure they'll just end up in a stack somewhere in my house. But I actually read this one fairly quickly, although I was somewhat disappointed when I saw her goal for the big year of reading was a book a week (her book was my 120th of this year, so . . . of course, I listen to a lot of books while doing other things, so maybe that's cheating). Anyway, I enjoyed her reflections on reading "issues" that I share--having trouble giving up on books, trying not to turn against someone because they like a terrible book (or, conversely, don't like a book I love), having a tendency to be disappointed in overhyped books everyone else loves, etc. On the down side, I found her a little full of herself and her New York life (people in fly-over country are not rubes, Sara). Overall, though, I enjoyed the book. 

Favorite Passages

Preventing her abortion was all they cared about. The bleak struggle of her life--the stark daily realities that made motherhood impossible--didn't trouble them at all.

--Jennifer Haigh, Mercy Street

Food was how my mother expressed her love. No matter how critical or cruel she could seem--constantly pushing me to meet her intractable expectations--I could always feel her affection radiating from the lunches she packed and the meals she prepared for me just the way I liked them. 

--Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

Allowing yourself to stop reading a book--at page 25, 50, or even, less frequently, a few chapters from the end--is a rite of passage in a reader's life, the literary equivalent of a bar mitzvah or a communion, the moment at which you look at yourself and announce: Today I am an adult. I can make my own decisions.

--Sara Nelson, So Many Books