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.
…Cold Cold Bones by Kathy Reichs
Cold Cold Bones is an improvement over last year’s The Bone Code with its disappointing vaccine tampering plotline. I read the Temperance Brennan novels because I have become invested in the character and her relationships with Canadian hunky private detective Andrew Ryan, surly North Carolina detective Skinny Slidell and her daughter, Katy, who in this novel has recently been honourably discharged from the army and may be suffering from PTSD, which is causing issues between her and Tempe. But I am beginning to feel that as Kathy Reichs keeps churning out these novels, she is sacrificing Tempe’s intelligence for the sake of plot. Tempe’s behaviour is becoming more and more frustrating as she continues to defy police orders, and just plain common sense, and puts herself in unnecessary danger while acting like she is an action hero instead of a forensic anthropologist.
…The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins
My feelings towards The Confessions of Frannie Langton are ambivalent. I do not hate it, but I do not love it either. It was just… okay. If you like historical fiction, you may enjoy The Confessions of Frannie Langton, but I do not think you are missing out if you never read it. The novel is about a Black woman (a former slave) accused of murder, but the slavery aspect of the novel becomes a subplot to the primary narrative of a forbidden relationship between a mistress and her maid. I found The Confessions of Frannie Langton to be a bit boring in the middle, which is too bad because I was interested in reading about a former slave’s life in England during a time when slavery was recently abolished, and slaves were supposed to be considered free people in England.
…Homeland Elegies by Ayad Akhtar
Homeland Elegies is an intriguing mix of autobiography and fiction. The protagonist is named after the author, Ayad Akhtar. The fictional Ayad is a writer and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of a successful play called Disgraced, just like the real Ayad. The fictional Ayad’s father is a doctor, just like the real Ayad’s father. These little bits of fact will make you wonder, as you read the novel, how many other details are based on actual events that happened to the author. Ayad Akhtar does this on purpose as a commentary on the confusion between fact and fiction that we see today in social media and the news. What is truth? What is “fake news”? Are we discerning enough to not take things at face value? It is this blending of fact and fiction that initially attracted me to read Homeland Elegies, and I am very glad that I read it.
…Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Velvet Was the Night is the second novel written by Silvia Moreno-Garcia that I have read, the first being Mexican Gothic, which I reviewed in May. I like Mexican Gothic better, despite the strange turn it takes towards the end, because I prefer gothic over noir; however, I still found Velvet Was the Night to be an engrossing read.
…The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper
I highly recommend The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper. I started reading it with no expectations and was pleasantly surprised by how much I ended up enjoying it.
…Pandora’s Jar by Natalie Haynes
Pandora’s Jar by Natalie Haynes is not what I thought it would be. I must have been so excited about a new Natalie Haynes book that I did not comprehend the synopsis before I bought it. I thought it would be a collection of short stories she wrote about the women featured in Greek myths. Instead, it is an examination of Greek myths where Haynes uses her extensive knowledge of Greek mythology to trace how white men changed the origin stories of Greek mythological women to suit their own ideas of women. But even though it turned out to be a completely different book from what I thought I would be reading, Pandora’s Jar is an interesting book. If you have any interest at all in Greek mythology, I think you will find this book interesting as well.
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