January Book Review
I read a lot of fantasy last year. I’m attracted to the concept, but found myself frequently annoyed, and I finally caught the pattern: I am impatient with fantasy characters who resist their own setting.
A hundred or more years ago, it would have made sense. Poe’s big mystery reveal that the murderer was not a human at all but rather a rare and exotic animal. Alice’s puzzling trip through Wonderland. Real people fainting at their first sight of a Matisse painting, not from delight but from horror upon their first exposure to cubism (decried by some at the time as the root of all that was wrong with modern society).
But my kids have all seen orangutans, not only in books and nature shows but also multiple times in person at zoos. My youngest got two sets of Bluey toys for Christmas and promptly invented a multiverse with a kind Heeler family and a parallel, evil Heeler family. He’s five. (He also mostly watches nature shows and PBS kids, although I think Spidey and Friends probably introduced him to the multiverse concept. Point being, he’s aware of it, but not steeped in it.)
Fantasy is now conceptually plausible; not that I expect a fae or vampire to appear on my doorstep and demand I fulfill a prophecy, but when one does so in a book I accept it immediately and move on with the plot. But if the main character, who rides a dragon and controls lightning, all but refuses to believe in the existence of another, slightly different, kind of dragon, I roll my eyes and consider abandoning the book (but I don’t, because I’m a nosy bitch and want to know what happens).
I think what I actually like would be more accurately labeled as magical realism, though that’s tricky because some things that feel like that are called fantasy (Starling House comes to mind). So that’s what I’ll be trying to find moving forward—although I’m sure I’ll read lots of things that don’t fall into that category, too.
Cleat Cute by Meryl Wilsner, fiction. An aspiring pro soccer player is drafted to her (very attractive) hero’s team.
Becoming Kin by Patty Krawec, nonfiction. Subtitled “an indigenous call to unforgetting the past and reimagining our future,” this book honestly addresses the harms caused by settler colonialism to indigenous peoples (and indirectly to themselves), and suggests a hopeful way forward, together.
Noor by Nnedi Okorafor, fiction. An artificially augmented woman flees her home after a violent attack and uncovers corporate secrets. (Reread for bookclub)
Femina by Janina Ramirez, nonfiction. A fascinating “new history of the Middle Ages, through the women written out of it.”
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid, fiction. A magazine writer is specifically chosen by an aging actress to write her tell all memoir.
The Book of Delights by Ross Gay, nonfiction. A year-long collection of brief essays, each considering a different delight encountered by the author that day.
Yours for the Taking by Gabrielle Korn, fiction. It’s 2050 and climate crisis has prompted the Inside Project; self-sustaining domed cities. One wealthy investor is determined to make hers a feminist utopia—but at what cost?
Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube by Blair Braverman, nonfiction. Memoir of an adventurer and dog sledder.
Ruthless Vows by Rebecca Ross, fiction. Conclusion of the story begun in Divine Rivals.
Who Gets Believed? When the Truth isn’t Enough by Dina Nayeri, nonfiction. The social politics of credibility, viewed mostly through the lens those who aren’t granted it.
Book adjacent media:
The Percy Jackson and the Olympians series on Disney+. Phenomenal first season, really hoping they finish the series before the kids age out of their characters because the casting is great.
I was also curious how the All Souls trilogy by Deborah Harkness ended, after reading A Discovery of Witches last month, but couldn’t get the other books through my library—so I watched the TV series (which they did have) instead, for closure.
Total books read: 10
Fiction: 5
Nonfiction: 5