Vacation Reads
I just went on a ten-day vacation to New York City, Boston/Salem and Montreal, and I managed to read FOUR books during my vacation (I spent a lot of time on planes and a train):
I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
Apparently, some people are taking offense to the title of Jennette McCurdy’s memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died. I think we need to end the idea that we owe our mothers our undying love and respect just because they gave birth to us, especially in the case of mothers like Debra McCurdy. Jennette McCurdy’s memoir is an unflinchingly honest look at the relationship between an abusive mother and her daughter and the toxicity of the entertainment industry. Jennette tells her story very matter-of-factly and with humour; she is not looking for your pity. I had been looking forward to reading this book since I first heard about it, and I think it is great. I highly recommend it.
…White Ivy by Susie Yang
If you were to reduce its plot to the simplest of terms, then White Ivy is not a very original novel. It is a story about a poor and unremarkable person who wants to belong to the wealthy and important crowd. It is a story that has been told repeatedly. White Ivy has been compared to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, which I did not like. There are certainly parallels between the two novels, especially the fate of one of the characters in White Ivy which mirrors that of Bunny in The Secret History, but I like White Ivy because it tells its story from the perspective of a Chinese American protagonist, a complicated woman who you can empathize with (up to a certain point), and it is as much about the immigrant experience in America as it is about a social climber.
…The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue
Set almost entirely within a maternity ward at an Irish hospital during the 1918 influenza pandemic, The Pull of the Stars is an engrossing and rich reading experience, and I feel as though I have come out of the experience of reading it like the novel’s narrator, Nurse Julia Powers, with a deeper understanding of how the world operates.
…The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling
The Death of Jane Lawrence is one of those books that sounds like it should be good, but then it turns out not to be. Very disappointing, as I love me a gothic novel. The Death of Jane Lawrence definitely is gothic, and there were definitely creepy moments that I read through very quickly because I did not want to scare myself before going to be bed, but in the end, The Death of Jane Lawrence gets bogged down in the science of magic, and I am not entirely sure what I was that I just read.
…Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children Series by Ransom Riggs
Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children is a YA series consisting of six novels based on an intriguing concept: a fantasy story designed around vintage photographs. Ransom Riggs uses 19th and early 20th century photographs that he collected to bring his characters to life and to create evocative settings. The first three novels in the series, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Hollow City and Library of Souls, were quite fascinating to read. The photographs that appear throughout the novels are eerie and some are just downright creepy; they compliment the story very well.
…My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
My Year of Rest and Relaxation is one of the more bizarre novels I have ever read, but I liked it and found it to be darkly funny and compulsively readable.
…Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
I thought I would enjoy Sapiens, but I was not as engaged by it as I was by Humans: A Brief History of How We F***ed It All Up by Tom Phillips. You cannot blame Yuval Noah Harari for this because he does do a good job of telling a comprehensive, but also succinct history of humanity, and he does have an engaging narrative voice. But I found Sapiens to be a bit of a slog to get through, especially when it came to certain subjects like the evolution of mathematics, science and capitalism. What can I say, I am more of a humanities girl. My biggest take away from Sapiens, though, is that Sapiens should not have evolved, and that we have been destroying this planet we call home since pretty much the very beginning of our existence.
…The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
The Midnight Library is one of those books that I keep noticing shows up in listicles of recommended books on Buzzfeed. I was kind of reluctant to read it because I find that heavily hyped books usually do not turn out to be as good as I hope. The Midnight Library is a novel that teaches its reader to appreciate the life that they have and to learn to see the good in it. It is a pleasant reading experience, for the most part, but I did not find it to be revelatory and it did not offer up anything that I do not already know.
…Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff
I watched Lovecraft Country the TV show on HBO back in 2020 and thought it was pretty good. It is too bad the TV show was cancelled before it got a second season. I have had Lovecraft Country the novel on which the TV show is based sitting in my TBR pile for a long time and finally got around to reading it. It is too bad I took so long to read it because I really enjoyed the novel and was disappointed that it had to end. As is usually the case, I thought the novel was better than the TV show.
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