Park Bench (by Christophe Chabouté)

For the RHC category "read a wordless comic." This is a graphic novel about a park bench and the lives that intersect with it. The author is French and you do see a word or two of graffiti, for example, which has been translated.  But this is largely wordless. 

 It's fun to follow all the small stories along the way.   From the old couple who shares a pastry on the bench every day to the unhoused man who sleeps on the bench to the skateboarder who rides his board along the bench.  But the ending is pretty sentimental (the ending of not just one of the vignettes, but all of the vignettes). If you don't mind that, it's sweet.  

Birthday Retreat Books

I spent a week taking the sea air on the Mendocino coast, and while there, finished four books!

The Making of Pride & Prejudice (by Sue Birtwistle & Susie Conklin)  

This was a gift from a few years ago and part of my quest to read through some of my physical books this year. The photos are a bit blurry and I would have enjoyed clearer photos, more interviews with the cast, basically a book ten times the size of this relatively slim volume. It definitely made me appreciate a lot of nuances that went into making the miniseries (this is about the BBC miniseries with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth), from custom-printing fabrics on muslin to hiding lighting equipment with foliage in a ballroom. A must-read for 1995 devotees, but you'll definitely wish it were longer!

Headshot (by Rita Bullwinkel)  

Tournament of Books selection and I'm gonna be honest, I hated it. The repetitive style (which is I'm sure deliberate, because this is about boxing and it makes you feel like being punched with names repeated over and over and over again...) drove me mad. I enjoyed the flash forwards but they added up to nothing I was wholly uninterested in the winner, as the only characters I really enjoyed weren't in the final. I also hate boxing. I also found it implausible that none of the 8 girls were explicitly non-white, and race wasn't even mentioned. So either they were all white, or race never impacted their lives. Did not work for me. 

The Wedding People (by Alison Espach) 

Also in the ToB, but it was very "beach read" with romcom vibes and a predictable plot. That said, I immediately loved our main character Phoebe (who shows up at a hotel that has been rented out for a wedding, and gets drawn into the lives of the wedding people) and the fun cast of characters. I could see where this was going a mile off but I stayed up late to finish it anyway because it was delightful. Will make a perfect movie.  

Mansfield Park (by Jane Austen) 

I can't remember the last time I read Mansfield Park from cover to cover, so I'll include it here! It's been decades, probably. I enjoyed it so much this time around - I'm very familiar with the 1999 film and it actually takes fewer liberties than I thought it did! (The scene of Mary undressing Fanny in the rain, for one.) Jane Austen is always a joy.

The History of Sound (by Ben Shattuck)

This was one of those great Tournament of Books surprises! I am not typically a short story fan so I never would have given this a shot otherwise. But this book is an absolute gem. Just a series of perfect short stories that are linked together - the first is connected to the last, and then there are pairings in between, spanning centuries at times, but always located in (what is now known as) New England. 

The Tournament has been hit or miss but with Irena Ray and now History of Sound, my faith is renewed.  (Today's judgment is also delightful; it busted my bracket but I couldn't agree with it more.)  

They've turned the first and final stories into a movie starring Josh O'Connor and Paul Mescal, and I already know I'm unprepared. If you have seen All of Us Strangers you'll have a slight idea what you're in for, and not just because Paul Mescal is in that one too. 

Anyway, that's beside the point. These stories are amazing! And you should read this collection. The end.

Number One Is Walking: My Life in Movies and Other Diversions (by Steve Martin)

I love Born Standing Up and Steve Martin's novellas, and of course his films, so I was excited to read this. It's charming but it's also very slight - the most any movie gets is a few panels of a comic, and some only get a sentence. (His sentence about Bowfinger, that Eddie Murphy deserved an Oscar nod, is correct though.)  

I'll be very sad if we never get a complete memoir of all his films. Instead this one just skimmed the surface with cute anecdotes and then is padded out with dozens of one-panel comics (the comics, and book, illustrated by Harry Bliss) that are mildly amusing at best. 

It's not bad, it's just very surface-level, and not exactly what I want from Steve Martin. I could read an entire book about Three Amigos or L.A. Story alone.  Give me more, Steve!

Seattle Books

I visited Seattle for work last week and finished four books, pretty much all on airplanes, as is my wont.  Two for the ToB, one for the RHC, one for fun. Here they are:

The Extinction of Irena Rey (by Jennifer Croft) 

Read for the Tournament of Books, and probably my favorite so far apart from James in this somewhat underwhelming year so far.  It's got a sprinkling of Pale Fire (footnotes of an unreliable narrator who is allegedly translating a book written in Polish by a Spanish translator into English...) and Annihilation (gathering of semi-strangers in an uncanny landscape). This novel is about a group of translators who get together, kind of cult-like, to translate the magnum opus of a Polish author, who disappears, and things get weirder from there. It's one of those gems that the ToB helps me discover and it was a surreal read.

The (Big) Year That Flew By: Twelve Months, Six Continents, and the Ultimate Birding Record (by Arjan Dwarshuis)

Read for the RHC category of "a nonfiction book about nature or the environment." This is a Dutch birder who broke the global Big Year record and raised money for the Preventing Extinctions Program. His memoir is equally about birding and observations on conservation efforts (and the impact of climate change and deforestation) that he sees along the way.  I would have liked it to be more linear - he does a lot of flashbacks to his childhood that interrupt the narrative - but enjoyed it overall.

Colored Television (by Danzy Senna)

About a biracial author living in Los Angeles who gets drawn into the television industry.  I loved this until the halfway mark where the main character started making inexplicable decisions and I started getting annoyed because this is not how Hollywood works! I liked the unpredictability of the ending and my annoyance had ebbed by the end. Well written overall and would definitely read more by Senna.

The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy (by Elizabeth Kendall and Molly Kendall)

Whenever I drive by Lake Sammamish I think about Ted Bundy. I dipped back into The Stranger Beside Me and then followed some breadcrumbs to this memoir, which I didn't know had been rereleased and updated in 2020.  Kendall was Ted Bundy's girlfriend for many years and ended up going to the police no less than three times when she started to suspect his involvement in the murders.  Molly was her young daughter, to whom Bundy was a father figure. She first wrote the memoir at a time when she still talks about how part of her will always love him; she's traumatized and still healing.  The memoir is kept intact with a new afterword that talks about how she feels now, decades later. There's also a chapter from Molly that is unforgettably chilling and satisfyingly full of rage. Worth reading for true crime fans!