Big Swiss (by Jen Beagin)

This year's Camp ToB booklist came out and I immediately knew I wanted to read this one. It's pretty indescribable, unpredictable, compelling and very strange. I loved every page of this! It constantly swerves away from where you think it's going; Jen Beagin is fearless.  It does have that "MFA" quality to it that I can't quite explain. Is it showiness? Quirk? Confidence? But regardless, I tend to like the MFA quality in novels, and I liked it here. Weird as hell. Check it out.

Recent Reads

And 75% of it wasn't even YA! 

Boyfriend Material (by Alexis Hall)

An adult M/M romance that I absolutely loved. Romance isn't actually my favorite genre but this was just hilarious, hot, funny - did I mention funny? Just thoroughly enjoyable with a great central couple. Plus, the sequel comes out next month! Highly recommended for romance fans.

Flying Solo (by Linda Holmes)

I loved Linda's first book, Evvie Drake Starts Over. This didn't quite hit the same heights for me, mostly   the pacing didn't work for me.  But the characters are great, and the main character's independence made for a nice subversion of the "hometown career girl discovers she belongs in her hometown with her childhood love" trope.

Follow Your Arrow (by Jessica Verdi)

Weak, but had a good ending that directly confronted biphobia and not being "bisexual enough" if you're with a man.  The main character did have some good growth over the course of the book but she was just insufferable at the beginning with her fixation on social media.  Plus she has a supposedly traumatic breakup and is in love with someone else in like a week? The timeline felt very compressed and clunky. I just stuck it out out of bisexual loyalty, I think.

Sea of Tranquility (by Emily St. John Mandel) 

This is one of the choices for Camp ToB this year (which is taking place on Discord for some reason, so I'm barely following it).  I didn't love Station Eleven as much as seemingly everyone else in the world, so I was not expecting this: I loved this novel. I adored it. I guarantee this will end up on my top 5 of the year and maybe even #1.  It's reminiscent of Cloud Atlas (jumps through time, a cyclical structure) but somehow Mandel pulls off a novel with the scope and impact of Cloud Atlas in like 300 pages? This blew me away.

Whereabouts (by Jhumpa Lahiri)

Whereabouts is another Camp ToB selection. It's a novella by Jhumpa Lahiri originally written in Italian and translated by her.  There isn't much of a plot, per se, more a series of vignettes from the life of a melancholy narrator, living in an Italian city.

There's something spare and meditative about this very interior story. Something about it resonated despite the fact that not a lot happens; I enjoyed spending time in this richly drawn world.

Detransition, Baby (by Torrey Peters)

My second Camp ToB read.  I loved No One Is Talking About This, but the commentariat seems to have...  not loved it.  I somewhat suspect the opposite will happen with Detransition, Baby, which is incredibly well regarded and reviewed, but which I disliked.  

Reese is a deliberately flawed character but I found her too horrible to sympathize with.  Which would be fine, except the novel seems to want you to sympathize anyway. Katrina is completely implausible in her behaviors and reactions. (Why would she want to share a baby with Reese who, again, is awful to her.) Ames seems masochistically entwined with her too, but I can understand the solidarity and love that is between them.  As a character, Ames is the best of the three, but also not particularly coherent.

As I sifted through Goodreads to find some reviews that might agree with me, the ones I did find complained about the ending (which I actually liked a lot) and the writing (which I was fine with).  So maybe I am just not on this book's wavelength. I did learn a lot from this book: the origin of the term transgender, the complexities of detransitioning, and much about genital dysphoria and sex in the trans world.  So ultimately I'm glad I read it but in the end, and maybe because I am a cis woman, this book was Not For Me. Which is okay.

Waikiki Reads

I read four books while on vacation, definitely a nice cross-section of my reading tastes (just missing the YA). And here now are those four books.

Golden Girls Forever (by Jim Colucci) 

I found out this book existed right before the trip, and serendipitous the library had it available.  A nonfiction book about The Golden Girls: what better book to read on my first airplane ride since 2019? It's full of great information and tidbits about the show, and I accompanied the book with many YouTube searches for particular scenes and moments. The closest this gets to drama is that Bea Arthur wasn't super friendly or warm to a lot of people. I still love the hell out of her though. 

Project Hail Mary (by Andy Weir)

I adore The Martian and after Artemis I thought it was the one and only truly magical book Andy Weir would ever write. But this goes back to the "lone dude in outer space doing hard science" well and thus scratches the identical itch as The Martian. Again the lead is basically Mark Watney (except he doesn't curse) but Weir adds in a first contact storyline that is both inventive and plausible. Absolutely loved this!

One Last Stop (by Casey McQuiston)

Oh, my heart. A romcom from the author of Red, White, and Royal Blue and it's perfection. The lead character is curvy and bisexual. (Some of the best bisexual representation I've ever read.)  The love interest is a hot butch woman. There's a sci fi twist. There's a ragtag group of friends. I cried at the end. And McQuiston is non-binary so this qualifies as "a romance by a trans or nonbinary author." A delightful book!

No One Is Talking About This (by Patricia Lockwood) 

Read for Camp ToB. This is a book in two parts: the first is an exploration of the internet (called "the portal") and full of true moments about what it's like to be "extremely online" in the era of Trump (called "the dictator"). The book then takes a turn in the second half and grapples with the intrusion of real life (and the heartbreaking impact of draconian "pro-life" politics) in an incredibly moving way.  This isn't an easy read, in the end, but it is an astonishing and remarkably subtle work. 

All four of these books were terrific, several being among my favorite reads of the year.

Klara and the Sun (by Kazuo Ishiguro)

 I love Ishiguro. Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day are two of my absolute favorite novels, and Klara and the Sun is definitely of a piece with those two.  It’s about Klara, an AF (or Artificial Friend) and the family she goes to live with.

It treads semi-familiar territory: the question of whether robots can have emotions. The dramatic irony and unreliable narrator. The slow worldbuilding. The quietly heartbreaking ending. And Ishiguro is a master at all of the above.  It doesn’t quite achieve the heights of my two favorites, but it reaches pretty high. 

Austin Trip Reads

Time to spend a week in Austin for our team offsite, and thus time to read on airplanes! Here are the four books I finished this week plus one I read the day I came home:

Trust Exercise (by Susan Choi)

Part of Camp ToB. It's narratively playful and postmodern, with point of view changes and so much to discover between the lines. Still pondering the hidden meanings and looking forward to the discussion later this summer.

Eliza and Her Monsters (by Francesca Zappia)

Young adult novel about fandom and anxiety, which treats both with the utmost seriousness. Eliza is an artist who writes an insanely popular web comic, but her identity is secret and at school she is reclusive and anxious. Worlds inevitably collide, with moving results. I immediately picked up another book by Zappia...

Made You Up (by Francesca Zappia)

...whose main character is a high school student with schizophrenia. My notes just say "wow, wow, wow." Again, I ended up in tears by the end. These two books succeed where (sadly) Turtles All the Way Down fails.

Good Riddance (by Elinor Lipman)

A charming and funny romcom, but there is some transphobic and fatphobic language. Not a lot, but here's a content warning nonetheless.  A woman inherits her mother's yearbook and when it fails to "spark joy" she throws it out. It's discovered by a documentary filmmaker (of sorts) and suddenly, family secrets begin to be revealed.  Funny and unpredictable!

Three Laws Lethal (by David Walton)

Speculative fiction that I learned about from John Scalzi's Big Idea feature. It was a really fun page-turner!

Daisy Jones & The Six (by Taylor Jenkins Reid)

A novel in the form of an oral history about a Fleetwood Mac-style band in the 70s, and in the summer edition of the Tournament of Books. (I started Bowlaway but it was too twee for me.)

I loved the format and overall enjoyed this, although I had an issue with the ending. Spoilers below:

The book seemed to suggest that Camila is just great, and I think it was a bridge too far to have her be so saintly to Daisy even as she was saying "I never want to see you again" (but only in a nice, kind, concerned way). And Daisy somehow thinks Camila is just great. Then comes the authorial intrusion, which makes no sense if this were a "real" oral history. That broke my suspension of disbelief.

Strangely, the core emotional beats reminded me of Fleabag which pulled off a similar ending perfectly. The problem here is that Camila is not God, but the book thinks she is. However, Camila was kind of a B, sorry about it!

I'm curious to see if anyone else has this take on it. Looks like I'll have to wait until June 26 for that discussion!