Category: Read This Book

Samir grows up in the 1930s in Lahore. He spends his childhood working in the family business creating and selling perfume. He’s only ten when he first sees Firdaus, a young Muslim girl, the daughter of a calligrapher. She looks up, and sees him too. They are both smitten. But before they reach adulthood, their world splits apart. In 1947, the Great Partition splits apart India and Pakistan. Now Samir and Firdaus find themselves on separate sides of the divide. Over the decades, across several wars that impacted the South Asian continent, Samir and Firdaus find themselves separated by so much more than space and time.

I love an epic, historical family saga, and The Book of Everlasting Things delivers. Malhotra has created a lush story with characters who you love spending hundreds of pages with. There’s something entrancing about such an incredible story that features so many winding storylines and plot twists. 

There’s something special about learning about rare professions. As Samir learns more about becoming a perfumer, so do we as readers. I know nothing about how perfume is made or the science about it. But over the course of Samir’s education, we, the readers, learn more about the different kinds of perfumes, each of which is known as a composition. Firdaus is a trained calligrapher, so we learn it with her as she masters different scripts and languages.

Deepti Gupta performs the audiobook, creating an incredible atmosphere as we follow their story through the decades. Gupta performs the story as it winds its way through narrative, historical, and diary-like portions of the novel. For hours and hours, I found myself completely engrossed in the story.

If you’re looking for a historical fiction novel that will take you on an incredible journey, look no further. The Book of Everlasting Things is a book you won’t want to miss.

Rebecca Hall is a scholar, activist, educator, and former lawyer. Wake follows Rebecca as she researches slave revolts and specifically, slave revolts led by women. Until I read this book, I had no idea that slave revolts were so frequent. I am unsurprised I didn’t know this, given the way history is taught and not taught here in the United States. While instances of slave revolts can be found by digging around, most of the information available is about the men involved and very little about the women. Honestly, I learned more about the slave trade from this book than I did during school. The depths of depravity are astounding and I am both haunted and disgusted by the things I’ve learned, more than I already was.

At the same time, this book is also a great story about researching history and reading between the lines to piece together the things that are left unsaid and thereby being able to get a more full picture of what may have happened. Wake also includes dramatizations of such stories as imagined by the author who is trying to fill in the gaps. The artwork is completely in black and white, which I think in some ways helps to keep readers from being overwhelmed by the imagery, which includes a lot of violence, enslaved Africans on ships, and more.

In the interwoven memoir we also learn about the present-day barriers keeping academics like Rebecca Hall from unearthing this history. The existence of bureaucratic red tape that makes accessing archives and records sometimes impossible. For example, Lloyd’s of London is a huge insurance provider (that still exists today) which laid the groundwork for its empire by insuring slave ships. I’m sure you can imagine how they feel about people accessing their archives with slave ship details.

This book is pretty intense and very important. I learned so much through this short volume and it’s been important in filling in my mental gaps around history.

In the two years since her parents got divorced, Effie has been unable to truly come to terms with how drastically her life has changed. Things aren’t helped by the fact that her dad has begun dating a younger woman named Trista, who is truly awful…and as a result, Effie has become estranged from her dad. When she learns that her dad and Trista are selling her beloved childhood home and throwing one last party, Effie is devastated. When she’s left off the party guest list, she’s hurt. But then she remembers a beloved childhood memento is hidden in the house, and her last chance to rescue it will be sneaking into the party…and Effie learns all sorts of surprising things about her parents, siblings, and one-time love when they don’t think she’s around.

This is kind of a cheesy premise, but it totally grabbed me. I liked the setting of the sprawling Victorian house, called Greenoaks, that is the center of this family and their conflicts. Being an old and quirky house, there are plenty of nooks and crannies for Effie to hide in, making her plan to steal inside, grab her childhood memento, and then slip away again seem plausible. But of course, nothing goes according to plan because who wouldn’t want to eavesdrop on so many party conversations? The sibling relationship in this book was nicely done, with each of them figuring out how to process the loss of their childhood home. Trista was definitely the type of character you love to hate, and readers will be right with Effie and her siblings in their hatred of her as Trista paints over their mom’s kitchen and sells off their childhood furniture. Although the family drama is at the center of this book, there is a lovely little second-chance romance that offers Effie a little perspective and distraction from the current heartbreak. The story takes place over the course of a single day, and Kinsella packs a lot of emotion and confrontations (and a few reconciliations), making this a heartfelt book about confronting change and holding on to memories as you move toward the future.

This short novel begins with an unnamed Indigenous PhD student beginning to suspect that he may not want to finish his doctoral program. As he mulls over options, he goes around and talks to his best friend and his advisor, trying to find a way forward. Eventually, he decides to write a novel, which he feels will better express the ideas and themes he had originally wanted to communicate with his doctoral thesis. After making this decision, he heads to his Indigenous community in Northern Alberta where he interviews Indigenous people around town and on his Nation’s reservation.

A Minor Chorus is a novel of ideas. The narrative voice of the unnamed protagonist carries the novel forward, his constant turning over of ideas written in such a way that the reader’s attention never wanders. As a queer Indigenous person, our protagonist frequently examines the role that colonialism has had on Indigenous peoples, particularly in his own community. He interviews several queer Indigenous men, each of them describing their own struggle with their sexuality and whether or not it will be accepted in their own Nation.

For me the strength of A Minor Chorus is the protagonist’s narrative voice. The novel is written in first person, and the narrative voice feels so emotionally intimate. Readers feel like we are watching him mull over ideas in real time. We listen as he argues with himself and tries to decide whether or not to leave his PhD program. We listen as he internally cries for a gay man he interviews who has resigned himself to living a closeted existence for the rest of his life. We catch our breath as we listen to a grandmother describe the horrific death and arrest of different family members.

A Minor Chorus is a short novel, but in such a small amount of space, Billy-Ray Belcourt communicates so much. His prose is incredible, which I often find when poets write novels. Belcourt is more well-known in Canada, where he’s a #1 national bestseller, but I hope more people in the U.S. find his work and love it as much as so many of us already do.

In this series starter novella, a security AI unit in a sci-fi world has hacked its protocols and is in full control of itself…but it’s hiding it pretty well because contrary to popular belief, it has no desire to do much more than watch media. After naming itself Murderbot (not that it advertises this), it pretty much does all the work that it’s supposed to do as a security unit for a human research team on a distant planet, using all its free time to watch shows and think about not caring about humans. But when an attack on another research outpost puts its humans on edge, Murderbot realizes that they might be the next targets and has to act to ensure that doesn’t happen…even if humans are totally stupid and frustrating and a distraction from what’s happening in the next episode of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. But perhaps the most surprising development comes when Murderbot begins to actually care about what happens to them.

I am not normally the type to take to non-human narrators in fiction, but Murderbot totally won me over within the space of a few pages. Here is a funny, snarky, and maybe a bit nihilistic robot who just wants to be left alone, but soon finds that when it starts caring, it’s hard to stop. The humor is pitch perfect, and the action scenes are thrilling. I think it can be a challenge to write highly technical sci-fi and not have readers lose interest or lose track of what’s going on, but Wells does a really great job of balancing the technical details, world building, and character development with moments of great tension and comic relief. Although Murderbot’s character arcs and inner journeys seem deceptively simple throughout this book and into the sequels (Murderbot learns that it’s good to care about others, Murderbot learns to make friends, Murderbot learns that it’s worthwhile to take own evil corporations even if there isn’t anything in it for Murderbot personally), I think that’s what makes these novellas so…endearing? And engaging? Because we are watching a robot who self-identifies as a Murderbot (for reasons, which will be divulged) learn what it means to be human, and there’s something really great about that journey. Also, it’s funny as hell.

The audiobooks narrated by Kevin R. Free are really excellent, and Free has great comedic timing. The series is running seven novellas and one novel strong at this point, and I can’t recommend them enough!

This book is under a hundred pages. The essay is first, then the short story. However, my recommended reading? Skip forward and read the short story first, then read Zadie Smith’s introduction, then read the story again. In Morrison’s own words, Recitatif is “an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial.”

The two characters are Roberta and Twyla and they are both eight-year-old girls from poor families. Their respective mothers dropped them off at the St. Bonaventure shelter, making them wards of the state. We learn many things about Roberta and Twyla. One has a sick mother, one has a mother who dances all night. One has a mother who is religious, one has a mother who wears too-tight pants. The girls are roommates at St. Bonaventure’s for four months and the story follows them there for a while, then they meet repeatedly when they are older.

One of the things we know about the two girls is that one is white and one is Black; however, we do not know which is which. Morrison deliberately does not tell us and this story is written in a way that it is impossible to tell. You can try to guess, but a few sentences later I promise your opinion will change and then flip flop again in the next paragraph. It’s very clear in the story that race is incredibly important to the tale and that crucial piece of information is deliberately kept from readers. Even details such as geographic setting don’t allow readers to determine the races of the two main characters.

I want to call out a big content warning for ableism and violence against a disabled character. The character is Maggie, who worked at the home where the girls were. The girls were very mean to Maggie and oddly, when Twyla and Roberta meet years later, they argue about what race Maggie was.

Recitatif is absolutely fascinating and Smith’s deconstruction and examination of the story is brilliant. It’s one of those stories that tells the reader more about themselves in the reading than it tells about the characters. I’m reminded of the phrase I’ve heard people use, the “I don’t see color.” Well, it’s not even an option in reading this story and it’s delightfully chaotic in that way.

Song Yan lives in a depressing Beijing apartment with her husband, Bowen, and mother-in-law. Before she married her husband, she aspired to be a concert pianist. Her music was her whole world. But then she gave it up, got married and started teaching piano instead of playing it. Despite telling herself that she shouldn’t care, she still misses playing her music.

Then one day, a mysterious package of rare mushrooms shows up at her door. Her mother-in-law recognizes the variety from the region of Yunnan and insists on making special mushroom dishes for Song’s husband. Song tries to bond with her mother-in-law over the mushrooms as even more and more packages of mushrooms show up at her door.

But the mushrooms seem to have a weird negative effect on Bowen, making Song and her mother-in-law uneasy. As Song searches for answers, she’s drawn to a mysterious house that’s said to be the home of a late pianist Song adored, revered even.

I love An Yu’s way of storytelling. Her prose is stunning. Her characters possess an intimacy that’s hard to craft in such a short novel. The plot of the book doesn’t seem as important as the feelings of the characters and their emotional experiences. I love that An Yu focuses on her characters with such an intense attention to detail.

There’s also an element of the fantastical in An Yu’s novel. Song Yan keeps having recurring dreams about a talking mushroom, the same kind of mushroom that keeps showing up at her house. Sometimes, you don’t know if Song is hallucinating or if there really is a talking mushroom revealing secrets to Song while she sleeps.

If you’re an audiobook lover, Vera Chok does an excellent job of performing the audio. She has this way of capturing Song’s narrative voice as she walks around Beijing, investigates the origins of the mushrooms, and tries to solve the mystery of the house she’s drawn to again and again.

This book is part biographical, a little bit autobiographical, and between these biographical bits are interspersed poems by author Ibi Zoboi. These poems are inspired by Octavia E. Butler, her life, her work, and the world she grew up in.

I remember seeing a Tweet from someone that said something like, “okay poets we get it, things are like other things” and that always makes me laugh but truly, poetry is a way of looking at something, whether it’s a physical thing or a feeling or a person or a life, in a way that we haven’t examined it before. Poetry can help us see things differently and this book is such a stunning, lovely example of that.

There is plenty more than biographical prose and poetry in this book. There are also photographs, including the earliest photo of Octavia Estelle when she was four years old. There are also some other historical images for context but there are a few that I am high-key obsessed with. One is a page from the first novel she wrote when she was ten. Octavia Estelle Butler was obsessed with horses. So she started writing a story about magical horses who live on an island. She was a shy and quiet child and would find solace in her writing and she would just write and write in her pink notebook. She knew she wanted to be a writer, even though her aunt told her that “Negroes can’t be writers.” Octavia Estelle was insistent.

Another of my favorite other images included in this book is one of the many notes of inspiration that Octavia E. Butler wrote to herself which turned into inspiration for my most recent tattoo. I adore this book and it’s a great recommendation for folks who are familiar with Octavia E. Butler as well as folks who are just learning about her.

Aaron Falk is taking a vacation and heading to wine country for the baptism of his best friend’s baby. The baptism is a year late because last year a disappearance in the family rocked the small Australian town and delayed the ceremony. Kim, a woman in her thirties with a new baby, vanished while at a food and wine festival, leaving her infant daughter in her stroller before presumably walking into a deep reservoir, although her body has never been found. The case is just as puzzling a year out as it was in the moment, and although Aaron is trained in financial crimes, he can’t help but turn his investigator’s eye to the case as Kim’s surviving family struggle to find information and make sense of the disappearance. But the more Aaron pries into the case, the more confusing and discordant information he uncovers.

I’m a big fan of Jane Harper’s Aaron Falk mysteries, The Dry (which was made into a great movie) and Force of Nature (also in production with Anna Torv co-starring), as well as her standalone mysteries The Lost Man and The Survivors. Her books always feature the rugged yet beautiful Australian countryside, and they offer up compelling mysteries that often dive into family secrets, preconceived notions, and the unreliable nature of memory. As an outsider, Falk has an advantage in how he perceives this case, which isn’t hot by any means. A year later, Kim’s family is desperately grasping at straws and trying to poke holes into the timeline of events from a year earlier to try and find some clue as to how she might have disappeared. Falk observes this all, and is always aware of his role as an outsider, but soon finds himself sucked into the mystery of all the close-knit friends in this town who have dark secrets and big tragedies in their pasts. The solving of this mystery isn’t as explosive or dramatic as some of Harper’s books, but the “twist” is deeply satisfying, and even more gratifying is seeing where this one last mystery takes Aaron Falk. I’m sad to say goodbye to this character, but overall this is a great final entry into his saga—and as I promised, no need to read the previous novels if you want to just dive in, but I highly recommend them anyway.

Definitely pick up this book if you love literary mysteries that have a strong sense of place, just like Tana French!

Mackenzie wakes up with a dead crow’s head in her hands. She stares at it in disbelief before it disappears. A thousand miles away from her family, Mackenzie tries to live a life below the radar, ignoring the loss of her sister, Sabrina. One year ago her sister died, and Mackenzie never went home for the funeral. Now, as the anniversary of Sabrina’s death approaches, Mackenzie is forced to face the fact that something is seriously wrong.

Mackenzie returns to her tiny hometown in Alberta to face the past she ran away from and the hard conversations she never wanted to have with her mom, sister, aunties, and cousins. But her return just stirs everything up again, and makes her horrific dreams worse. She feels like something is coming from her, and only a bad Cree would put her family in harm’s way.

Bad Cree is a horror novel, but it’s also just as much a family novel that centers around the lived experiences of Native women. The novel centers around these women as they support each other through the worst things life can throw at you. Just when Mackenzie begins to believe she needs to isolate herself to save her family, she realizes that there is strength in community.

Mackenzie and her family have an emotionally complex relationship with each other. They face the lasting harm from colonialism and ongoing violence against women as a direct result of men flooding the area to work in the oil fields and similar industries. These horrors are made manifest by something else, something sinister in the shadows. And this time, Mackenzie can’t run away from it.

I absolutely loved Bad Cree. It’s now going to sit in the pantheon of one of my favorite horror novels ever. Jessica Johns’ characters are so vibrant and beautiful in the face of the dark terrors they face. And this novel is creepy as all get out, crows flapping around in their sinister way, both in Mackenzie’s dreams and outside of them, making you always wonder what ulterior motives they might have. Ah, it’s so good!