July 2024 Reading Round-Up
The best and worst of my reading month
Welcome to the July 2024 Reading Round-Up. Each month I write about the books I’ve read and rank them from worst to best.
7. Lies and Weddings - Kevin Kwan
Fiction, 435 pages
At first glance, it would be hard to tell that the Gresham family is struggling financially. The book opens on the oldest daughter’s lavish wedding in Hawaii, attended by elite guests from around the world and admired for the lack of expenses spared. Beneath the surface, however, the Gresham’s spending has created a mountain of debt that can only be resolved through hard work or smart financial decision making, neither of which the family is capable of. The solution, cooked up by Rufus’s mother, a former model from Hong Kong, is for her son to marry well. Rufus, however, has other plans, having decided that he is instead in love with a local doctor and childhood friend. One increasingly outrageous event after another follows, sending the family into full panic mode and requiring ingenuity and some deus ex machina.
There is very little that is creative about this book. Even the title, Lies and Weddings, is a precise descriptor for its contents. I couldn’t help but get the sense that Kevin Kwan was given a multi-book deal and he either ran out of ideas or decided to stick with what works. I would recommend this book only if you are looking for something purely sweet and easy; otherwise, you will quickly become frustrated with the surface-level plot, quick resolutions, and poorly written dialogue.
Rating: 6/10
6. There There - Tommy Orange
Fiction, 294 pages
When Tommy Orange’s debut novel There There was published in 2018, it was immediately met with critical acclaim and named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. There There follows twelve characters from Native American communities who all end up at the Big Oakland Powwow by the end of the novel. Each chapter charts a portion of the journey to this inevitable culmination, including a young man inspired by his uncle to be a documentarian and record the stories of people like him, a fourteen-year old who wants to dance for the first time at the powwow, a pair of sisters pulled apart by alcoholism and other circumstances beyond their control, and a tech-savvy kid who learns how to use a 3D printer to make guns and sell them for money to help his struggling family. Orange states at the beginning of the book that each character is meant to show that the Native American community is larger and more complex than the stereotypical iconography of sports teams and reservations. I picked up There There after the quasi-sequel, Wandering Stars, received rave reviews. I enjoyed the book and Orange’s writing, but couldn’t reconcile the individual stories with the dramatic conclusion, which came across to me as somewhat forced.
Rating: 8/10
5. Anita de Monte Laughs Last - Xochitl Gonzalez
Fiction, 352 pages
Anita de Monte’s art career had just started to reach a pinnacle in 1985 when she falls from the window of her apartment and dies. Everyone knows that she was pushed by her husband Jack, an art behemoth in his own right, but his stardom and powerful connections help shield him from liability. By 1999, when Raquel finishes her junior year as an art history major at Brown, Anita de Monte and her art have been all but forgotten. Ensconced in an elitist and largely white world, Raquel struggles to see herself reflected in the art that she is studying. When she starts to date a wealthy recent graduate with a prestigious art show on the horizon, her story starts to run parallel to Anita’s. It’s only near the end of the book that Raquel discovers Anita’s art and story and begins pushing for her inclusion in her curriculum and in the art world’s consciousness. I mostly read this book on audio and thought that the narration was phenomenal. For a book that blends plot with character development, the audio performance propelled the story and my interest forward.
Rating: 8.5/10
4. The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory - Tim Alberta
Non-Fiction, 505 pages
Tim Alberta, a writer for Politico and now The Atlantic, grew up attending an evangelical church in Michigan led by his father. After leaving home, Alberta remained religious but removed from the growing extremism taking hold in evangelical churches across the country. Nothing crystallized this more than when his father died unexpectedly in 2019 and Alberta was confronted by openly hostile members of his childhood congregation who, instead of offering condolences at the funeral, lambasted him for being critical of Donald Trump. This deeply disturbing experience inspired The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, Alberta’s exploration of a cheapened faith that has become reliant on profiteering, scandal, and politicization. Alberta argues that the church’s hard rightward turn and fervent support of Trump borders on a type of idolatry that perverts the central gospels of evangelicalism. I thought this was a fascinating look at the far-right in American politics and culture. Alberta’s faith and connection to the issue does the subject a service because he is able to offer insight and criticism that might not be as credible from someone on the outside looking in. At a time when Trump is urging “beautiful Christians” to vote so “you don’t have to vote again,” this book feels particularly timely.
Rating: 9/10
3. The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels - Janice Hallett
Fiction/Mystery, 413 pages
I was blown away by Janice Hallett’s debut The Appeal, a murder mystery within a tight-knit local theatre troupe told through the emails and texts of the suspects. Not only was the story gripping, but the structure added an extra layer to the mystery because I, as a reader, could never be quite sure about what should be trusted and if I was in possession of every piece of relevant information. Luckily for me, this same structure was deployed in The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, a murder mystery involving a cult and a baby believed to be the anti-Christ. Similarly to The Appeal, this book is told through investigative materials collected by a journalist who wants to write a true crime book on the subject eighteen-years after the ritualistic sacrifice went wrong. I was so pleased to find myself back in the twisty mind of Hallett, who is an expert in doling out tidbits of information slowly and from a remove. Should the journalist who compiled the information be trusted? Or does she herself have an ulterior motive in investigating this case? Is the journalist withholding information? This is a fast-paced, compelling read that I blew through over the course of one day and solidified the fact that I will read any book Hallett writes.
Rating: 9/10
2. North Woods - Daniel Mason
Fiction, 369 pages
In many ways, the protagonist of North Woods is a patch of land in western Massachusetts. Eventually, that land will be settled by a British soldier and veteran of the Seven Years War, who is determined to make his living growing apples. When he dies fighting in the Revolutionary War, the house and orchard are passed to his twin daughters to carry out his life’s dreams. The sisters grow old as spinsters, the land is bought by a successful painter, then passed to an owner of a button factory. So moves time, as one generation after the next discovers the area and its beauty, attempts to claim and conquer it as their own, and discovers that in the eternal struggle between man and nature, nature nearly always wins.
The structure of this book reminded me in many ways of one of my favorite books that I have read this year: Jenny Erpenbeck’s The End of Days. It is a narrative feat to simultaneously tell the stories of individual characters, a few acres, and the country writ large. I came so close to giving this book a ten. I was blown away by the structure and Mason’s ability to center centuries of history within the confines of one location that shifts with time. It’s only flaw was that I didn’t feel like it stuck the landing as well as it should. Until the final pages, the narrative felt like a reverse-archeological dig: each chapter added a different layer to pre-existing foundations laid by the people, animals, and nature that inhabited the land before the next generation. The protagonist of the final chapter seemed to come seemingly out of nowhere, providing a vehicle for a too-tidy, too-moralistic ending. If those final ten pages hadn’t been included (which, by the way, were still written beautifully at the sentence-level), this book would have earned a perfect 10/10 due to the incredible blend of structural ingenuity, narrative prowess, and writing craft.
Rating: 9.5/10
1. Beautiful World, Where Are You - Sally Rooney
Fiction, 352 pages
My favorite type of novel is the one where the characters are on full display but not much really happens otherwise. In my opinion, only the most talented authors are able to pull off a story that doesn’t rely on plot but still keeps readers engaged and connected. Sally Rooney’s talents are featured prominently in this niche area of the literary genre in Beautiful World, Where Are You, a book that was as much a page-turner as the most juicy thriller or romance because of the singularity and depth that Rooney affords her characters.
Alice, a successful novelist perhaps reflective in some ways of Rooney herself, moves to a small seaside town in Ireland after being released from a Dublin psychiatric ward. Looking for some quiet and a place to recover, she meets Felix, who packs orders in a warehouse setting approximating an Amazon facility. In her spare time Alice writes long, eloquent emails to her best friend from college, Eileen. Eileen works for next to nothing at a literary magazine in Dublin and is increasingly lonely as she approaches her mid-thirties in a version of the world she did not anticipate for herself. While Eileen replies to Alice’s emails with eloquent musings of her own, it is clear that despite their deep love for one another there is also unaddressed tension in their friendship. Increasingly adrift, Eileen relies on a childhood friend and occasional lover, Simon, whose Catholic faith acts as a centering and isolating characteristic. Each of the four protagonists are struggling with something internal, existential, and inter-relational, but somehow I never found any of it annoying or forced. Instead, I was completely blown away by Rooney’s capacity to write about the ordinary so beautifully and her ability to make me care so much.
Rating: 10/10
If you like what you’re reading, please consider spreading the word about The Book House Blog by sharing this newsletter with anyone you know who might enjoy. And, if you haven’t already, subscribe for free to receive new posts.
Want to see past months’ round ups? You can find those here. You can also check out my most recent posts below.
