Monday, February 6, 2023

Read in January 2023

And just like that, the first month of 2023 is over. Here's what I read in January.

I started off the year with some quick reads and some books that leaked over from 2022. As the Crow Flies by Melanie Gillman is a YA graphic novel about a LGTBQ girl who goes on a camping and hiking trip with a church group. As the only person of color, she's treated differently within the group. She ends up connecting with another camper with secrets of their own. Overall it was a meaningful story, but it ended abruptly. It seems like the author intended a sequel which, since 2017, still hasn't been published.

Mary (my 9-year-old) started reading the Harry Potter series last year, fulfilling all of my parenting dreams. I hadn't read the original book since it first came out in the late 1990s. It was every bit as charming and fun to read as I remember, and it makes sense that it's now considered a classic of children's literature. It's unfortunate that JK Rowling has gone off the rails and now writes rambling 1000-page books.

Like many others, I loved Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks. I was excited to read his earlier book, The Antidote: Happiness For People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking which was surprisingly hard to track down. Having finished it, I totally understand why Four Thousand Weeks is  more popular. The Antidote was academic and dense, with a lot of great information. However, it was hard to pull out the main themes and even now I'm having a hard time remembering any takeaways. Maybe appreciate that it could always be worse?

I'm not the type of reader who finds a new series and then races through all of the books, one right after the other. I tend to read one or two books a year, which means it takes me quite a long time to read full series. A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny is the seventh book in the Armand Gamache series (and the eighth that I have read). It focuses on the art world and is largely set in the adorable town of Three Pines, which made it extra promising. It was fine - but I am not sure if Penny's writing style changed in this book or if it just started particularly annoyed me, but all of the sentence fragments were so hard to read! Here's an excerpt: "Because she had no where else to be. No other hospital bed to sit beside. Her father was dead. Killed by a gunman in the abandoned factory. Beauvoir had seen it happen. Seen Gamache hit." Does this get better in later books? Because if not, I'm going to have to give up on this series!

I am a fan of the Ruth Galloway series, and the author, Elly Griffiths has started writing a new series. For some reason these are marketed as stand alone books even though they all feature the same detective. Bleeding Heart Yard is the third book featuring detective Harbinder Kaur. It's a mystery combing modern-day murders with the death of a student about 20 years ago. I enjoyed reading this one and Harbinder is quickly becoming one of my favorite detectives.

Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson was my first read from my 2023 TBR list. I listened to it on audio because I know if I try to read any dense nonfiction it will put me right to sleep! Overall I learned a lot, but this book didn't blow me away like it has the reputation for doing. I was expecting more history and analysis, and while there is a lot (the book is almost 500 pages), there was also a good deal of Wilkerson's personal experiences that read more like memoir. I felt like she was trying to combine two different books into one. She is also really down on America. I can look at the glass half empty with the best of them, but I think we need to have some hope for our country if we want to improve it.




Grow and Gather: A Gardener's Guide to a Year of Cut Flowers 
by Grace Alexander was a Christmas gift. The writing and photos were stunningly beautiful; however the text was so tiny, and many of the pictures were way smaller than they should have been! See all the white space in the middle photo? That said, I really loved this book. Contrary to what the title says, it's not really a thorough guide on growing cut flowers; it's more of a meditation on the seasons with a couple tutorials thrown in. Alexander's description of why she gardens in the Introduction is so spot-on: "I do not garden because it is therapeutic. It challenges me and finds my edges. I do it because I am compelled to increase the amount of beauty in the world. I garden because I cannot not." Grace Alexander has a newsletter if you're interested in more: A Manual for Paradise.


The Half Life of Valery K by Natasha Pulley is about a scientist who is pulled out of prison in the 1960s in Russian to work at a top-secret nuclear facility. This book is based on real incidents and I learned a lot about radioactivity (it was more interesting than I would have thought.) Valery, the scientist, uncovers nefarious goings-on and has to try to save as many people as he can without catching the attention of the KGB. With that description, you wouldn't expect this book to be funny - but it was, complete with an octopus. There was also a ton of anachronism and modern idioms, which happened so frequently that it had to be intentional. I recommend this one if you're looking for unique historical fiction.

Did you read anything good in January?

22 comments:

  1. I am taking 'A month in the Country' by J L Carr away on holiday next weekend. Hopefully I will have time to read it then. Happy Reading Sarah.

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    1. I looked this book up - it sounds wonderful! I love anything about art as well, so please report back if you like it!

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  2. Ha ha at the JKR comments. The books she writes under Galbraith are actually quite good, though. It's hard for me to know if I should be reading them and supporting her financially (I get them through the library, but...), but they're long, but not really rambling. I am done with my insipid defense of JKR now.

    It sounds like it was a great reading month for you! I read a lovely (short) book called Love & Saffron about the power of female friendship and it was probably the best read I had in January.

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    1. I've read all the Galbraith books up until the last one, and I did like the first 4. Troubled Blood seemed to have sooooo many tangents that didn't end up impacting the story, and the latest one seems just as long. I am overwhelmed thinking about it!

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  3. I really liked Caste a lot, and I learned so much from it. I was horrified, as an adult, to discover the way that Indigenous people in Canada were treated; I was horrified, after reading Caste, to discover that the Nazis took "lessons" from the American people's treatment of black people. Such a powerful, informative book.

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    1. It was also really interesting to read how modern-day Germany has dealt with their past vs. the US. One of my favorite parts was about the rise of Trump and how that all came about. It makes so much more sense to me now; and also worried for the future.

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  4. Whoops, that comment above about Caste was from me, I accidentally clicked anonymous.

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  5. I felt the same thing about Caste. I really appreciated so much of what she had to say, but it seemed...to not really connect in a coherent way.
    I am such a huge fan of the Harry Potter books. I loved them as a teen, and now my tween is OBSESSED with all things Harry Potter. I read one Galbraith book and found it too long and it had way too much swearing for me (it felt gratuitous and just...hard to concentrate on the book).

    Hmmm. My favourite book in January? Nothing was amazing, I'll admit, but I didn't read much because my little guy was sick. My favourite (I'd give it 3.75 stars?) was Between Two Kingdoms, a cancer survivor's memoir about her experience. I also read The Swimmers which had so much potential, but fell a bit flat for me.

    Yesterday I finished Run Towards the Danger, which I knew nothing about (aside from being a big fan of a show the author used to act on). I enjoyed it (again, another 3.75 stars?)

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    1. I read Between Two Kingdoms last year - like you, I liked the first part better than the second, which was unexpected because I thought the whole book was going to be about her road trip. I wonder how long it's going to take Goodreads to implement .5 and .25 stars?? :)

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  6. What an interesting month of reading, Sarah! I agree with you on Rowling/Galbraith. I think editors are afraid of her and allow her to write these behemoths, but they are so ridiculously long and off-putting. I read the first 3-4 of the Galbraith novels, but stopped once she dug in her heels on Twitter and showed no attempt to live and let live. I would have never expected that from her!

    I also love the Ruth Galloway series and have enjoyed the Harbinder books. I'm on the waitlist for the newest one. And I would recommend giving Armand Gamache one more try... I will say that the series kind of sagged in the middle for me a little bit but the last few books have been so enjoyable for me! I love how the villagers interact with each other and that Penny can make me laugh out loud in some of the most tense scenes.

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    1. It's sad that the Strike books have gotten so off the rails, because I really do enjoy the characters and want to know what happens with them. I resorted to reading spoilers for the last book because I couldn't face 1000 pages. Maybe I should skip some of the Gamache books and pick up later in the series. It goes against my tendencies but there really is no reason to slog through things I'm not enjoying.

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  7. Isn't Grow and Gather lovely? I can't wait till the weather clears and I can use some of her tips in my flower garden. I just finished The Family Chao and highly recommend it.

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    1. I love her artistic approach to gardening and I hope to incorporate that spirit into my flowers as well. I'm glad I could send you some traffic, us bloggers need to stick together in this 2-second video age!

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  8. Also-you were a top referrer to my blog last month. Thanks so much for your support and the mentions you have given me!

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  9. What a lovely and varied list of books!
    I'm putting Grow and Gather on my list for my husband! He is the gardener in our family and I'm always looking for good gardening books for him. (I got him Catie Maron's book Becoming a Gardener this past Christmas and he really loves it.)
    I have not read all the Harry Potter books - I read the first three then sort of ... lost interest. Though I've been told I jumped ship too soon and the books get better. Our 11 year old has no interest in reading them, so we might have to wait until the next kid becomes interested.
    I had kind of a "meh" reading month in January. Nothing really terrible, but nothing that I absolutely loved.

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    1. The Monty Don gardening books are very good and full of information - Grow and Gather is more inspirational I think, but still good if you have a basic knowledge of gardening. I think Harry Potter has to hit at the right time, I don't know if I would have been so into them if I read them as an older adult (I was in my early 20s when I did.)

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  10. I love the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series. At some point, I started listening to the books exclusively, and that's such a fun way to consume the novels, but I also don't know if the fragments continue. I feel that they would read BETTER in audio than in print, and I can see how it could get annoying to read fragmented sentences like that over and over again in print.

    I loved Caste. It was such a powerful book, especially looking at how Germany has taken the lessons of Nazism and used them to be better, but how the United States has not done the same with slavery. It's a punch in the gut, and I imagine it's very hard to be hopeful about this country as a Black American than a white American.

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    1. I will give the audio a shot then! I actually listened to one of the early books on audio, and that narrator had a droning voice - but I think it's a different narrator for the later ones.

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  11. I have not read a single JK Rowling book, I was well into adulthood when they were first published and have always had an aversion to reading anything that is hyped which I felt those books to be when they were first published. But, there must be something about them as they were and still are very popular. Reading is a very personal thing, isn't it. The Grow and Gather book looks beautiful x

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    1. So often I dislike a book, and then read someone else's glowing review - I actually love it because it means there is always something for every reader. After re-reading the first Harry Potter, I don't think they were overhyped, but I DO think they have been commercialized to the extreme, which I totally get is off-putting.

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  12. I love the Harbinder Kaur books and need to read the newest. They were a delightful surprise.

    I don't have any advice on the Louise Penny books. I read them slowly too now. Also, I have only listened to them and haven't noticed the fragmented sentences. I love the narrator so maybe its easier to ignore them in audio form.

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    1. That's the second recommendation for audio so I will definitely try that for the rest of the series. I love Harbinder too, she's so funny and down to earth.

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