November 2022 Reading Round-Up
The best and worst of my reading month
Welcome to the November 2022 Reading Round-Up. Each month I write about the books I've read and rank them from worst to best.
I’ll start with a few apologies. First, sorry for the delay in releasing this. Law school finals are in full swing, and I’ve been slowly writing reviews as short study breaks (if you see typos, sorry, my brain is somewhat fried). Second, I read and listened to some really great books this month, many of which were 2022 National Book Award finalists (and the winner!). However, my favorite book of the month does not get released until April 2023. It is worth the wait and you can also pre-order it if you are so inclined.
My last final is on December 20, and after that I will be releasing my favorite books of the year by category. Until then, my favorite yearly round-ups are already out, which you can find below. Many of the books have been featured on this blog in the past!
As a reminder, all of the books written about below are available on my November 2022 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. Happy reading!
10. The Latinist - Mark Prins
Fiction, 335 pages
In the world of academia, a letter of recommendation for a doctoral candidate is everything. Tessa, a brilliant classics scholar at Oxford preparing to defend her dissertation in the coming months, can’t understand why no university will hire her. She can’t understand, that is, until she receives an anonymous email forwarding her the lackluster recommendation letter written by her esteemed supervisor and mentor, Chris Eccles. Tessa is betrayed. Chris, however, delusional in his obsession with Tessa, sees this as his one opportunity to keep her close. In an attempt to rid herself of Chris’s influence, Tessa goes to Italy to work at the excavation site for the tomb of a 2nd century poet that is the centerpiece of Tessa’s academic work. How far can she get until Chris catches up with her?
Prins leans in heavily to the classics side of the book, picking somewhat arbitrary times to fill the pages with Latin verse translations and analysis rather than focus on his plot. These sections are not often directly relevant to what’s going on at any given time - indeed, sometimes it felt like Prins just wanted to prove that he knew his classical cannon - so you can easily skim or skip these sections, as I did. I’m disappointed that this was the direction the novel took because I actually was pretty interested in the plot and the paths the characters were taking, but by the book’s mid-point, I was ready for it to wrap-up.
Rating: 6.5/10
9. Fellowship Point - Alice Elliot Dark
Fiction, 592 pages
Agnes Lee is a famous children’s book author known for her stories about an independent girl’s adventures. She has never been married or in love, but has instead committed herself to her work and the land that her father and his Quaker coterie purchased in Maine as a peaceful retreat away from their homes in Philadelphia. As she reaches her mid-80s with no heirs to pass her share of the trust to, Agnes becomes determined to preserve the land and nature. Her lifelong best friend and dispositional opposite, Polly, who is also reaching the twilight of her life while navigating her husband’s health problems and her condescending children, aids her in her pursuit. Through these two characters and their decades-long friendship, Dark writes about Fellowship Point and the history of its recent inhabitants.
There is no doubt that Dark is an experienced writer well-heeled in the art of telling a story. While I was never bored while reading and listening to this book, it is far too long and lacks self-awareness. The protagonists of the story are all extremely affluent, and while this is acknowledged, the recognition can feel performative and surface-level. The “revelation” that Agnes has at the end - that the land actually should belong to the Native American people who lived there before her family and their friends purchased the area to build their estates - seems a bit out of place when considering the events of the rest of the novel. Further, the story’s plot twist was way too convenient and unnecessary. I wish that Dark had left the tragedy of the story alone, which would have given the book the realistic credibility that it needed.
Rating: 7/10
8. Companion Piece - Ali Smith
Fiction, 240 pages
Companion Piece is divided into three parts. In the first third, readers meet Sandy Gray, the story’s middle-aged protagonist who is dealing with her aging father’s illness and the middle stages of the Covid pandemic. One day, she receives a call out of the blue from Martina, an old college acquaintance, who asks Sandy (somewhat bizarrely) to interpret a weird experience she had while being held at border control. Sandy, who hasn’t heard from Martina in years, is confused why she is on the receiving end of this conversation. Smith uses this call as an excuse to delve deeper into Sandy’s past. In part two of the book - my personal favorite section - Martina’s daughters arrive at Sandy’s front door demanding to know where their mother has gone. Ever since her conversation with Sandy, they claim, Martina has been acting strangely and now is missing. If the book had ended after this section, I would have been satisfied. The story was quirky, well-written, and thought through. Unfortunately, however, the third part lost me. Maybe it was because I was listening to the book on audio, but I was fairly confused why the third section - which follows the life of a ghost living in Sandy’s house - was included at all. Although I didn’t love all of Companion Piece, it is clear that Ali Smith is a talented writer whose style I connected with for the most part.
Rating: 7.5/10
7. Someday, Maybe - Onyi Nwabineli
Fiction, 333 pages
Someday, Maybe is Onyi Nwabineli’s debut novel about a woman grieving the suicide of her husband. Eve and Quentin met and married young, shortly after they graduated from university. Their marriage was happy, which is why, about 15 years later, Eve is completely devastated and blindsided when she finds her husband dead in their bathroom with no note. Despondent, Eve’s close knit British-Nigerian family and friends rally behind her, shepherding her through her mourning. Her mother-in-law, however, makes matters worse, blaming Eve for not seeing any warning signs before it was too late and delivering a barrage of demands to have all of Quentin’s belongings returned. If this seems like a depressing book, it absolutely is. However, Nwabineli keeps the book extremely readable, filling it with heartwarming characters and including a substantial amount of flashback scenes for context. I gave it a 7.5 simply because the book was good, not great. The story is plot driven but not a lot happens, and although the characters are likable, they all exist to support Eve and are not fully fleshed out as real human beings.
Rating: 7.5/10
6. Dinners with Ruth - Nina Totenberg
Non-Fiction/Memoir, 279 pages
Dinners with Ruth is both a story of friendship as well as NPR journalist Nina Totenberg’s memoir. Totenberg contrasts her experience coming up as a female journalist in a male dominated industry with RGB’s experience rising through the legal ranks by arguing cases dismantling discrimination on the basis of sex. RBG and Totenberg met in the mid-1960s when she was working on a story about one of the cases that RBG was arguing for the ACLU. Their friendship blossomed over the years in deep and meaningful ways. RBG cared for Totenberg when she lost her first husband, served as the officiant for her second wedding, and was frequently a guest at her dinner table. In return, Totenberg cared for RBG when her husband died as well as in the final years of RBG’s life. Totenberg is quick to point out that they did not mix work with their friendship, and never would RBG explicitly discuss what was going on inside the Supreme Court. However, Totenberg’s life is full of insider access - including parties and other events with multiple Supreme Court Justices - that seem hard to imagine for a newer generation of journalists. I enjoyed listening to this book because Totenberg narrates it herself. It’s warm and engaging, addressing both light and heavy topics about two women who have earned a spot in the iconography of American culture and history.
Rating: 8/10
5. The Town of Babylon - Alejandro Varela
Fiction, 297 pages
As The Town of Babylon opens, the story’s protagonist, Andrés, is debating whether or not to attend his high school’s twenty year reunion. A gay Latino professor of public health, Andrés has worked hard to distance himself from his closeted childhood where he was one of only a few children of color in his Catholic high school in the working class town of Babylon (presumably on Long Island). He’s only available to attend by chance - his father has had a series of health scares and he’s come to help his mother for the week with care - but the draw of his youthful memories convince him to go. He walks along the main road dodging traffic to get there, (because obviously his suburban town is built for driving, not pedestrians) and when he arrives, he is filled with the nostalgia of his past, reconnecting with old friends and memories. The reunion paves the way for the rest of the story, where, over the course of the next few weeks, Andrés navigates the health of his parents, his rocky marriage, and relationships with friends who knew him before he was able to fully be himself.
I really liked the first half of the book, but felt that by the end it became too preachy and the introspection slightly forced. Despite the nuance of his life in Babylon, by nature of his “escape” to the city, Andrés has become almost a caricature of an anxious liberal millennial - he diligently brings his reusable bags to a grocery store that is still dispensing plastic while thinking about the emissions from the cars around him. The majority of his reflections, however, are more nuanced than this, particularly when he is thinking about his relationship with his late-brother and the shifting demographics of a town founded upon the contradictions of the aspirational middle class American dream. This is an impressive debut that deserved its placement on the National Book Award’s shortlist. Although I rated it an 8.5/10, I’m still thinking about some of the points in the plot almost a month after finishing.
Rating: 8.5/10
4. All This Could Be Different - Sarah Thankam Mathews
Fiction, 320 pages
Another National Book Award finalist, All This Could Be Different takes place in the aftermath of the 2008 Recession. Sneha, a recent graduate, moves to Milwaukee after being hired as a consultant in what feels like one of the last remaining jobs on the market. Although her job comes with no security - she’s technically working as a contractor - and her tenuous immigration status is always on her mind, Sneha knows that her life is comparatively easy in comparison to those around her. For the first time, she is able to live like she wants, dating women and enjoying independence from the expectations of her traditional Indian parents. But nothing lasts forever, and soon Sneha is struggling to appease her landlord, keep her job, and maintain unequal friendships. If you couldn’t tell from the summary, All This Could Be Different is not a plot driven book. Although I did not find Sneha always particularly likable, the story is propelled forward by her humanity.
Rating: 8.5/10
3. Foster - Claire Keegan
Fiction, 95 pages
In 1980s Ireland, a father drops off his child at a couple’s farm where she will stay over the summer. The father’s wife is pregnant yet again, and sending his eldest away will temporarily relieve their burdens. The unnamed narrator of Claire Keegan’s novella, Foster, is young enough to be treated as a child but old enough to be perceptive about the world around her. She is nervous when she arrives at the childless Kinsella’s home, but is soon welcomed by the husband and wife who treat her as if she is their own. Over the course of the summer the child learns how to milk the cow, runs as fast as she can to get the mail, and follows around the wife like a shadow. Halfway through the summer she learns from a nosy neighbor that the Kinsellas had a young boy who drowned, allowing readers to understand the role that the child plays for the couple.
While the book is extremely short - only 95 pages - I loved every second of it. Like her previous novella, Small Things Like These, Keegan is able to craft a fully realized world using limited words. Although I kept waiting for something dramatic to happen, this is not that type of story. Instead, I finished the book with a dual feeling of warmth and sadness. There’s something extremely satisfying about being able to finish a book in one or two sittings, and this is made even more true when the writing is as clear and purposeful as Keegan’s.
Rating: 9.5/10
Thank you to Grove Atlantic Press for the advanced reader copy of this book. It was published in October 2022 and is available now.
2. The Rabbit Hutch - Tess Gunty
Fiction, 331 Pages
The Rabbit Hutch is a run-down apartment complex in Vacca Vale, Indiana that houses a diverse cast of residents. At the start of the book, each chapter serves as an introduction to one tenant or another, catching them while they are in the midst of their daily lives. While the characters might initially appear distinct, as the story progresses Gunty expertly layers their lives on top of one another like the placement of the apartment units. Just as the cast of residents is drawn from The Rabbit Hutch, the story is also limited in its temporal scope, taking place over the course of one week in the summer, culminating in the stabbing of the story’s main protagonist, eighteen-years-old Blandine. Vacca Vale - a declining midwestern town once known as the epicenter of the region’s automobile manufacturing industry but now known for its environmental and opioid problems - serves almost as a supporting character to the story, adding just the right amount of ennui and credibility to its inhabitants, including Blandine, who, as the book begins, lays on the floor of her apartment and “exits her body.”
I read, finished, and ranked The Rabbit Hutch a few weeks before the National Book Awards announced it as its winner. Not that it particularly matters, but I was excited to see that my reading taste aligned with and was not influenced by that of the selection committee. The Rabbit Hutch is a book I knew I was going to give a 10/10 about halfway through, when I stopped reading to think about just how good the writing in the story was. The structure is creative, the characters fully formed, and the sections distinct. I love a novel that is able to piece together the lives of people who are facially unconnected in creative and unexpected ways, turning the story into a type of puzzle for the reader to solve. It is hard to believe that this is Gunty’s debut. She has surely made a mark for herself with this book and I will read anything that she writes in the future.
Rating: 10/10
1. Games and Rituals - Katherine Heiny
Fiction/Short Stories, 240 pages
I’m a goal-oriented person, which means that even when I’m enjoying a book I’m always looking forward to the next one. I rarely find myself approaching the end of a book and wishing that it would keep going. Katherine Heiny’s latest wonderful collection of short stories, Games and Rituals, made me do just that. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you’ll know that Katherine Heiny is one of my absolute favorite authors. Early Morning Riser, released last year, was my favorite book of 2021 and probably the book I recommend most often to other people. Take this as my call to you to read this book if you somehow have not. It is rare to find an author who is so gifted at creating the fullest, funniest, most relatable cast of characters who you root for even if you don’t agree with all of their choices. The characters in all of Heiny’s books are definitively the stars of the show, not the plots.
When I saw that her next publication would be a collection of short stories I was simultaneously excited and nervous - what if the brevity of a story meant that I wouldn’t have time to fall in love with her characters? I shouldn’t have been worried. Games and Rituals is one of those rare and remarkable collections where every one of the eleven stories is as captivating and enjoyable as the next. While they are not necessarily connected, each story contains themes of love, friendship, the follies of youth, and reflection on past choices. In one story, a mother considers her behavior in her adolescence while simultaneously trying to figure out if her sweet seventeen-year-old son is doing drugs after work. In another, a woman reflects on her complicated relationship with her father while she cares for him after he mistook his hearing aid for a cashew and eats it. In one of my favorites, a woman’s life unravels over the course of an evening after she discovers a series of clues about her actor husband’s suspicious behavior. I was sad as I came to the close of the book, because I knew that soon there would be no more of Heiny’s complex and fulsome protagonists to discover.
Rating: 10/10
Thank you to Knopf for the advanced reader copy of this book! Games and Rituals is out on April 18, 2023. You can pre-order this lovely book here.
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Want to see last month’s round up? You can find that here.
Wow, two 10/10 books this month! Straight on to my Goodreads ‘Want to read’ list! I love reading your commentary, I only wish I had your ability to read so many books so I could keep up!!! Thank you, Jodi. Sometimes reading your review is better than the books themselves! If law doesn’t suit you, maybe you’ll consider writing a novel or becoming a book critic full time?!?