May 2023 Reading Round-Up
The best and worst of my reading month
May has always felt like a Thursday to me. Just as the weekend is not yet in full swing, summer is close, but not quite here yet. The days are getting warmer and the prospect of vacation and more free time is on the horizon. I started this month in the throws of finals and then the writing competition for law reviews and journals. I then took an amazing and busy trip to Paris and capped off the month with Memorial Day weekend at the beach. My reading befits such a varied and disjointed month. I neither read a single Pulitzer winner (although I was thrilled by the announcement of the 2023 winners!) nor any non-fiction. I began the month with excellent short story collections (bite-sized writing is the perfect break from studying) and lighter reads to listen to, and finished the month with a fabulous 10/10 read about a guerrilla gardening group and a maniacal billionaire in New Zealand. I’m looking forward to a summer with a bit more free time for varied reading and some new blog projects. Until then, happy reading!
May 2023 Reading Statistics
Pulitzer Winners Read: 0
Number of Books Read: 12
Genre Breakdown: 12 fiction (100%)
Average Rating: 8.3
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12. Leonard and Hungry Paul - Ronan Hession
Fiction, 256 pages
I’m usually a big fan of character-driven books with limited plots. If the characters are compelling and richly written, plot becomes secondary (see: Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny). Unfortunately, Leonard and Hungry Paul, certainly a character-focused book if there ever was one, failed to contain characters nuanced enough to make the story worthwhile. Leonard and Hungry Paul are two adult men and friends in their mid-thirties who have lived at home with their parents in the UK their whole lives. Leonard has a full-time job as a ghost writer of children’s encyclopedias and is starting to navigate the world alone after his mother dies unexpectedly in her sleep. Hungry Paul works part-time as a postman back-up and spends the rest of his time playing boardgames with Leonard, visiting sick patients in the hospital with his mother, and training in basic martial arts. His sister Grace is getting married and her story, wedding anxiety, and concerns over the impact of her brother’s lifestyle on their parents is occasionally explored.
Unless I completely missed it, I don’t think it’s ever explained why Hungry Paul has the “Hungry” moniker attached to his name. No one is ever seriously angry with one another in the story, true conflict is rare, and even the reviews on the cover use the phrase “happy story” as the biggest compliment for the book. I love happy stories, I just felt like a certain oomph was missing from this one. Other than the circumstances of their individual lives, Leonard and Hungry Paul were virtually indistinguishable and the supporting characters in their lives had unrealistic saint-like qualities. The large chunks of dialogue did not depict how real people speak, but the descriptive detail occasionally made me laugh. If you are looking for a slow story where nothing bad happens, this might work for you, but be prepared for it to not stick with you after you are done.
Rating: 7/10
11. Happy Place - Emily Henry
Fiction/Romance, 388 pages
Every summer, long-term engaged couple Wyn and Harriet join their close-knit group of college friends in Maine for a week of fun, sun, and reminiscing (hence the title, Happy Place). Except this year, the last summer before the house is sold, Wyn and Harriet arrive with a secret that they have been keeping for five months: they’ve broken up. Determined to hide their split from their friends to ensure a smooth weekend, the ex-couple decides to pretend to be together, and in so doing confront the problems in their relationship and (potentially) repair it. I’m usually a big fan of Emily Henry’s work and thought that Beach Read and Book Lovers were two romances that exemplify the best of the genre. Unfortunately, Happy Place fell flat for me. I didn’t feel particularly invested in the characters, their struggles, or the central relationship. I was also disappointed with how Henry reached the conclusion, which I felt like came about suddenly and compromised some of the qualities I liked most about Harriet. The rest of the book felt long and drawn out with manufactured conflict and tropes galore. However, this book maintains an extraordinarily high average rating of 4.3 on Goodreads from 100,000+ reviews, so if you’re looking for a romance, don’t be deterred from giving this one a try.
Rating: 7/10
10. Lessons - Ian McEwan
Fiction, 448 pages
As Lessons begins, Roland Baines is reeling from the loss of his wife, who has just left him with their baby right as the Chernobyl disaster is unfolding. In the process of grieving what he has lost, Roland reflects on his childhood. Born in Tripoli to British parents stationed there after World War II, he is sent at a young age to boarding school in England, where he is seduced and taken advantage of at the age of fourteen by his young piano teacher. Convinced that the world is about to end during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Roland finds himself ensnared in a relationship that destroys his school life and charts him on a nonlinear path. As he grows, Roland lives through a span of extraordinary events but never does much with his life, bouncing from one thing to the next, raising his son, getting by. He has opinions on the world, but is mostly a passive observer, which can sometimes be a bit dry. Although McEwan’s quality of writing is superb, I thought that he was trying to do too much with this book, which spanned not just the 20th century but also through the pandemic. The central drama of the plot, the inappropriate relationship with the piano teacher, felt simultaneously important and unnecessary to the larger story. I kept waiting for McEwan to connect the dots between this event and the rest of his life in a more cohesive way, but it never arrived. Instead, Roland appears to be a man who is the victim of various women - his mother’s absence, the piano teacher, his ex-wife - and unable to get out of a rut to live anything more than a mundane existence.
Rating: 8/10
9. Stone Blind - Natalie Haynes
Fiction/Mythology, 368 pages
On a rocky outpost in the Greek islands live the Gorgons, gods amongst mortals ruled by Poseidon. When they are given the gift of a mortal child (albeit one with wings), they are unsure how to handle the new task, but soon become consumed with her care. A series of unfortunate events for this mortal Gorgon, named Medusa, lead to a curse that turns her hair into snakes and gives her eyes the power to turn anything living into stone, enforcing a self-imposed physical and visual exile. Her life probably would have continued as is - for Medusa in Stone Blind is gentle and kind, terrified of using her powers to harm anyone - until Perseus, a precocious and bumbling son of Zeus arrives with the help of the gods to take a Gorgon head.
Although Stone Blind is billed as Medusa’s story, the chapters alternate amongst the perspectives of the gods and mortals operating in her orbit, sometimes fairly far afield. It’s not immediately clear how all of these perspectives will intersect, but rest assured that they eventually (mostly) do, such as in any Greek epic. You don’t necessarily need to be familiar with the underlying myths that make up the story in order to enjoy this book. However, I can only assume that an understanding of basic Greek mythology would help to fully appreciate the added personality and commentary that Haynes adds to the classics. I read the first 75% of the physical book and then listened to the rest, and although both are easy to get through, I thought the narration added some necessary dramatics that made me appreciate this fantastic tale.
Rating: 8/10
8. Western Lane - Chetna Maroo
Fiction, 160 pages
Gopi’s mother has just died when her aunt warns her father that his three daughters are becoming too wild for their own good. If he’s too overwhelmed by raising them, she says, she and her husband would be happy to take one off his hands and bring her back to Edinburgh to raise. Instead of immediately obliging, the father decides to bring his daughters to the local squash court for intense and regimented training, which he hopes will distract them all from their grief. Gopi, eleven at the time, is the sister with the most talent for the sport, (which I know so little about that I just pretended was tennis), and quickly becomes consumed by its rhythms and routines. As Gopi trains, her two sisters drift from the sport and their father’s attention, taking on hybrid roles of motherhood. But the father remains unwell, leading to dramatic intervention. This short book packs a punch. Maroo writes the story from the perspective of Gopi, but the narration never feels juvenile or overly adult. I was immersed in the dynamics of this complicated Jain-Indian-British family and felt like the 160 pages perfectly encapsulated what Maroo set out to achieve.
Rating: 8/10
7. Romantic Comedy - Curtis Sittenfeld
Fiction/Romance, 305 pages
Sally Millz is a ten-year veteran writer for The Night Owls, a late-night sketch comedy show modeled on SNL. When the book opens, Sally is preparing for a week with host and musical guest Noah Brewster, an aging pop star known for a cheesy love song that made him popular as a teenager. The sketches that Sally proposes for his week - including one that pokes fun at the idea that mediocre looking men are allowed to date beautiful women but not vice versa - catches Noah’s attention, and the two establish a fleeting connection that is put on pause after Sally puts her foot in her mouth at the show’s afterparty.
Romantic Comedy is broken up into three distinct sections. Part 1 takes place over the course of the week in 2018 that Noah hosts TNO, following Sally as the show comes together. This was my favorite section of the book because it felt like a chance to see behind the curtain on the making of SNL, a show that I love and watch every week. I also felt like it gave Sittenfeld the opportunity to let her romance play out in an untraditional way. Ultimately, however, the story became more traditional in part 2 when Sally and Noah reconnect via long email exchanges during the height of the pandemic and in part 3 when Sally heads out to LA to visit Noah and establish their relationship.
This book has been criticized for being a bit of a let down. Unable to make the genre her own, Sittenfeld’s book instead follows its normal trajectory: boy meets girl, boy looses girl, boy and girl get together. Although Romantic Comedy doesn’t do anything revelatory or new, I did think it delivered on what its title advertises - a fun read with enjoyable, humorous characters, even if I wasn’t enamored by some of their choices at the very end.
Rating: 8/10
6. Seating Arrangements - Maggie Shipstead
Fiction, 299 pages
The Van Meters belong to the WASP filled world of New England, complete with boarding schools, the Ivy League, and eating clubs. They summer on the island of Waskeke (an approximation of Martha’s Vineyard) and are in the throws of preparing for their oldest daughter’s wedding to a Princeton alum whose family owns a private island. Winn Van Meter, the father of the bride, is status and reputation obsessed, marred by the knowledge that the establishment of his family does not go back enough generations for him to be truly accepted amongst the elite. One of his goals while on Waskeke, other than to walk his daughter down the aisle, is to get accepted into its exclusive golf club and to find out why he has been sitting on the waiting list for so long. For a family that presents as close to perfect to the outside, problems lurk beneath, including Winn’s lustful pursuit of one of the bridesmaids and his other daughter Livia’s recent abortion from a relationship with the son of Winn’s rival. Told over the course of the wedding weekend, relationships fray and chaos ensues. While the book is a page turner, Shipstead, a Booker Prize Finalist, writes with depth and acerbic humor about the elite and the worlds they inhabit.
Rating: 8.5/10
5. The Applicant - Nazli Koca
Fiction, 256 pages
The Applicant is written as the diary of Leyla, a Turkish twenty-something, while she awaits a German court’s decision on whether or not she can retain her student visa and stay in Berlin. Told over the course of 10 months, Leyla begins her diary on the day that she starts work at a hostel as a cleaner, a job where she scavenges the items left behind by tourists and funds her partying and writing. Leyla left her mother and sister behind in Turkey to deal with the debts left by her abusive and criminal deceased father and is determined to not return to a country that she feels will not welcome her and her left-wing ideology. With few options left to support herself, Leyla begins a relationship with a conservative Swedish tourist, who promises her a life in Sweden if their relationship can sustain the 2-year visa waiting period. The diary, which both records her day-to-day and serves as a space to reflect on her previous life and future aspirations, is the perfect template for a character as contemplative as Leyla. It deftly explores issues of longing, potential, and the politics of immigration. I was very impressed by the clarity of Koca’s writing, and would recommend reading this on the page rather than listening in order to fully capture the progression of Leyla’s journey through time.
Rating: 8.5/10
4. Kitchens of the Great Midwest - J. Ryan Stradal
Fiction, 310 pages
Eva is only a baby when readers meet her, but it is already clear that she is a food wunderkind. Her father, who narrates the first chapter, is something of a food savant himself, obsessed with creating the perfect combination of fresh ingredients to fill the void created by his wife who left the two of them to chase her dream of becoming a sommelier. Each chapter of the book is told from a different perspective (only one from Eva herself; she is 11 and growing excessively spicy habanero peppers in her bedroom), moving forward in time and tracking Eva’s growth and culinary development as she breaks out as a “once in a generation” palette. Eva’s life unfolds through this myriad of perspectives as well as the world of midwest, Minnesota-area cooking and the characters that inhabit the scene. I loved each character that I was introduced to (particularly the religious Lutheran woman with killer peanut butter bars), and learned by the end to not pick up the book when hungry.
Have I read books with a higher quality of writing? Yes. But there is something about a book that draws you in right from the start, keeps you turning the pages, and makes you invested in the characters and plot that elevates its quality. I think this book was a particularly good choice for audio - I would turn it on and not want to shut it off.
Rating: 9/10
3. Nobody Gets Out Alive - Leigh Newman
Fiction/Short Stories, 275 pages
Nobody Gets Out Alive is a short story collection set in Alaska. Each story follows a different protagonist, usually women, as they navigate survival within the harsh terrain of the Alaskan wilderness and their relationships with partners and family. In one story a single mom drives her two kids through Canada to get to Alaska in search of better opportunities. In another, a fortune teller navigates a client who runs opioid distribution clinics. In another, a pair of fathers take their daughters on a weeklong rafting and camping trip where they must fish to survive. I was drawn immediately to this collection because of the Alaskan setting, and particularly enjoyed getting to experience Alaska from a myriad of perspectives and locations. Although each story is separate from the last (i.e. no recurring characters), each includes themes of survival, adventure, and individuality. I was impressed by Newman’s ability to create so many distinct and vivid characters, and enjoyed nearly every story as much as the last.
Rating: 9/10
2. The Islands - Dionne Irving
Fiction/Short Stories, 272 pages
Dionne Irving’s The Islands is a short story collection centering around the lives of women in the Jamaican diaspora - both immigrants and the descendants of immigrants - struggling with issues of identity, the personal legacy of colonialism, and retaining connection. In one story, a newly supplanted suburban mother finds herself cooking Jamaican food for a white woman on the PTA, despite her own mother always lambasting her for not knowing how to cook. In another, a middle-aged woman returns to Panama to deal with the burial of her family’s housekeeper and is confronted with the memory of clashes between Americans and locals that ended in the death of her brother. And, in one of my favorite stories, also the first, a couple moves from San Francisco to Florida only to discover that their marriage, and identity in this new place, is not as strong as they once thought. I’m a bit surprised that this book doesn’t seem to have gotten more attention because it was incredibly well-written. Every story was vibrant and nuanced, exploring complicated themes through ordinary people, and was cnever written in an obvious way.
Rating: 9/10
1. Birnam Wood - Eleanor Catton
Fiction, 432 pages
After hearing about a devastating landslide on New Zealand’s South Island, Mira decides to assess the now cut-off and abandoned land as a potential location for a new outpost of Birnam Wood, the guerrilla gardening group that she leads. Birnam Wood’s mission is to plant crops, sometimes by permission and other times through trespass, on abandoned, underused, or unnoticed stretches of land throughout New Zealand to send a message about our capitalist society’s waste and inefficiency. As the book opens, the group is struggling to make ends meet financially and to retain its membership. The landslide has created a massive opportunity for growth and publicity, which Mira is determined to take advantage of. When she arrives, she is surprised to find the quirky American billionaire Robert Lemoine already there, who offers the land and a sizable quantity of startup money to Birnam Wood. Lemoine is the CEO of a large company that specializes in surveillance drones, and it is almost immediately obvious to the reader that Lemoine has darker motivations attached to his gift, which are largely unknown to Mira and the group.
This book is gripping from start to finish and is probably best described as a slow burn with a fantastic structure. The book is told in alternating perspectives and as a result, readers know about the idiosyncrasies and motivations of each of the main characters (add in Birnam Wood’s second-in-command, a disgruntled former member, and the true owner of the land to the mix), as the book unfolds. The catch is that the internal plotting is not known to the other characters, leading to intrigue and peril. Things are not as they seem in this unique, psychological story set in the beauty of the New Zealand wilderness by a Booker Prize winning author with immense, glorious talent.
Rating: 10/10
All of books written about above are available on my May 2023 Reading Round-Up Bookshop page, or you can click on the title of the book itself to be routed to the shop. All of the books I’ve ever recommended, sorted by post, are also available on the general shop page.
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Want to see last month’s round up? You can find that here.
I have been thinking about starting Stone Blind this month, so thank you for the review! Have you read any more of Nathalie Haynes' work? I see she has a couple books published, namely this one and A Thousand Ships which is about Helen of Troy.