Alright, friends. We're two weeks into July already, and if I think about the swift and unrelenting passage of time too much, I'm going to start dry heaving and maybe pass out... so instead of having you go fetch the smelling salts, let's do a little reminiscing on how well June went, shall we?
June, that glorious start to Summer, when the Washington weather decided to do a hard pivot at the top of the month back into the grayest skies you've ever seen, forcing everyone who lives in the Pacific Northwest to reckon with whether May's 70-degree temperatures and blue views were simply a trick of the imagination. Such a temperate climate can certainly inspire some enthusiastic indoor time - as if ever really needed a reason - and a whole lot of reading.
A WHOLE lot. In fact, not only my best reading month in all of 2023 so far, but also some of my highest star ratings in recent memory.
So is it any surprise whatsoever that July has been absolutely tanking hard for me, in terms of actually committing myself to this reading challenge? Listen, I've been mainlining fanfiction like it's going out of fashion - and for a brief moment in time just recently, it really did seem like it might have run its course - but actually trying to tie myself down to a published narrative has been completely miserable.
I figured that instead of listening to me moan and groan about how my weak and puny little arms can't even hoist a hardcover anymore, or the number of times I've accidentally dropped my phone on my face in the last two weeks, we could talk about the books I totally loved last month. We might as well do something productive with our time together, you know?
Here's all of the SIX books I read back in June, and which Seattle Public Library Book Bingo Reading Challenge squares they helped me check off!
Bingo Square: "BIPOC Poetry Collection"
Time is a Mother, Ocean Vuong
A tender and emotional reflection on grief surrounding the death of their mother, Ocean Vuong's second poetry collection is deliberate, compelling, and worth sitting with awhile after you've finished it.
I had a convo with a friend back in March about Poetry, and how it just doesn't come naturally to me. We talked about mulling over phrases in your mind, remaining open to the spirit of interpretation, and reading things two or three times before you really started to pull the threads that bound together metaphor. Poetry may be brief, we decided, but it takes time. It is WORTH your time.
Time is a Mother is one of those highly-regarded poetry collections that has also gone a little bit Instagram-famous. Just days after finishing it myself, I came across an announcement that it had been released as an audiobook on VINYL, if that can be any indication of not only its popularity, but also, the kinds of people who are its biggest champions.
But I don't think that's a bad thing. If there's anything that I'm taking out of that convo with Kayla, it's that poetry should engage and connect with its audience, no matter what forms that takes. Ocean Vuong is not any more or less legitimate as a poet for their words reaching the hearts of a larger audience, just like I am not any more or less legitimate as a poetry reader for needing to take pauses at the ends of lines, parse out words, reread phrases to better explain the metaphor to myself, and take breaks between poems to consider what I've read.
I don't think I'm ever going to be a true-blue poetry reader. I mean, I'm all for Shel Silverstein, and I do enjoy a good dirty limerick or two. But this rarefied air is difficult for me to breathe. The lofty genre-based legitimacy of calling myself a Poetry Enjoyer is still far from my reach. But it's incredible to note that these kinds of challenges bring me further and further from my comfort zone, allowing me to stretch myself until that tight ache forms between my shoulders. Only with poetry, the ache is in the heart.
Four stars.
Bingo Square: "BIPOC or LGBTQ Horror"
The Only Good Indians, Stephen Graham-Jones
Over a decade after a shared act of violence altered the lives of four reservation boys forever, something has come back to seek a retribution for the destruction they wrought. Now men, this revenge attempts to undue the relationships they have formed and the lives they've built, chasing them as far as they can run... even when the direction they're pointed seems to be towards home.
Okay. This book has given me quite a lot to ruminate on. Unfortunately for me, the book also came highly hyped and recommended by not only one, but
two people of my immediate acquaintance, and in attempting to organize my many scrambled thoughts into something remotely resembling an actual review I could relay to my friends, I decided I needed to jot down a few notes. Extensive notes. Six handwritten, single-spaced pages of individual notes, squiggly and squashed, in my Book Journal, in a space where normally a review would exist.
It still doesn't exist, by the way. I'm still weighing over the various segments and pieces contained within this bundle of firewood that was The Only Good Indians, each twig or branch a separate theme or motif that itself would merit at least three pages of graded classroom material. What can you concisely say about something you're still thinking about, over a month later? Whose material you're still weighing in your mind?
Something something about genre. I mean, I feel that this particular Horror novel leaned more to the side of Magical Realism for me, than straightforward Horror, maybe because the main characters kind of took all of the freaky stuff in stride when it started happening... maybe because we got action described from the POV of the villain? Were they really a villain? Maybe because it carried so many of the markings of folklore... maybe because the descriptions were so vivid and emotive, that it all felt kind of wrapped in a layer of magic? It didn't feel like a Thriller either, for all that aspects of it really were thrilling.
Something something about pacing, too, I think. I feel like we lost a little bit of ground in the final segment, the one focused on Denorah. Whereas the other puzzle pieces kind of interwove action AND description AND character, the final stretch just feels like one big chase sequence, with far less emotional heft. That's a concrete thought; congratulations to me.
Something something about characters, but I really can't get into it without unwinding the various interconnected spools of yarn that bind my hands over the course of an hour or two. If you want to get into discussions of how Gender influences this novel, of how Youth and the redemption achieved by way of the virtues of the subsequent generation might save us all, of contemporary values of Traditionalism, Earth Stewardship, the ferocity of War and Nature both, of news stories as public perception, of the all-consuming destructive power of Revenge... ask me about it later, once I've had a chance to think about it a bit more.
Four stars.
Bingo Square: "Same Author, Different Genre #1"
Paladin's Grace, T. Kingfisher
After the death of his god leaves him and his fellow paladins without purpose, Stephen has resigned himself to doing his penance as best he can by assisting the Temple of the White Rat. However, when a local perfumer named Grace seems to keep running into trouble in the same circles, he can't help but be interested, especially when her perfumes are accused of poisoning a nearby monarch. The fact that decapitated heads keep showing up around the city, though, is also a concern.
In total, I enjoyed this book. I think that's what I have to start with: I had a good time reading it, the world it occupied was fun, with a varied cast of characters, some of whom I really enjoyed meeting. It was
incredibly funny, and did a great job in balancing action and description.
But I didn't love it. The pacing felt pretty uneven, and it took a little while for the main plot to actually get underway. Some parts felt like a lot was happening, and others felt like I could easily skim through dialogue until something finally DID happen.
But most of all... I HATED one of the main characters. Certainly not Stephen, who was incredibly funny and charming, but instead, his love interest, Grace. It was like every scene she was in lost air: she's a downer, she's constantly complaining, she keeps finding herself in questionable circumstances and only seems capable of reacting in one of two fashions - doing something equally reckless and nonsensical, or completely shutting down and crying.
In a regular Fantasy, this would be totally fine, because you wouldn't need to occupy that character's frame of mind all that often. But it's not! It's a Romance Fantasy, and emotional perspectives are kind of key to the genre, and the function upon which the majority of the action is based. Which meant we spent a whole lot of time with Grace... and across the 400 or so pages of the book, I really don't think she improved much at all.
The actual Romance scenes weren't my favorite, either.
Will I read more in the series? Sure, probably. I did actually enjoy it, like I said, and reading two books by T. Kingfisher for the first time, in one month, made me realize that I am, in fact, quite a fan of T. Kingfisher. But I'm not jumping out of my seat to recommend this one in particular: I've heard that other titles in this series can kind of act as standalones, so maybe I'll read the next one soon and let you know if it's even worth it to handle this one at all.
Three stars.
Bingo Square: "Graphic Novel or Manga"
Lore Olympus: Volume One, Rachel Smythe
Winner of the Goodreads Choice Awards for "Best Graphic Novel in 2021," this graphic novel series follows the classic story of Hades and Persephone, told with new and modern sensibilities, in an Olympus that looks a lot closer to a modern day city.
Here's the thing: Lore Olympus is almost universally beloved, as you can clearly see reflected in the Goodreads rating (currently: 4.31 stars). It was an incredibly popular independently-published webtoon before it was purchased for print publication, there are already four volumes published within the last few years, it's incredibly popular on TikTok and Tumblr alike, and even when I was checking it out from the library, one of my favorite librarians told me how much she absolutely loved the series.
I didn't like it. But it's one of those things that I feel like I have to somehow explain or justify, based solely on how much seemingly every other reader LOVES it, in an all-caps kind of way.
At this point, I think I'm just pretty darn biased against modern-lens mythology vibes. I hate that Olympus is a city; I hate that they have things like malls and sports cars and strip clubs. I hate pretty much any kind of storytelling that co-ops previously-existing literature, and applies a sort of Sparknotes-sideways view of them to shoehorn into stereotypes, in order to fit a modern setting: Hermes is an oblivious jock, Apollo is a domineering and self-obsessed model, Artemis is a spunky girl-next-door, and Hades is a mopey loner. I hate it!
The women are all petite and curvy, with big eyes and dark eyelashes, and the men are all wide-shouldered and incredibly tall. Persephone is a kind of straight-off-the-farm type, who seems to only exist to be taken advantage of, by multiple male characters in just one volume. Zeus and Poseidon are all balls and no brains. The only thing I can say in the characterization's favor is that this is one of the only representations of Hera, of all the pantheon, who is not just absolutely awful. In fact, I liked her quite a bit.
The art is quite visually striking, and the colors are aesthetically pleasing. And for what is clearly a whole lot of people, they really, really love this series. Just not me.
Two stars.
Bingo Square: "Sea Creatures"
How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures, Sabrina Imbler
Documenting marine biology profiles alongside reflections on their own life experiences, Imbler's How Far the Light Reaches will be the most unique memoir you read this year... as well as the most enthralling.
I had finished my previous read kind of disheartened, and was a little miffed before I went to bed. Arbitrarily, I decided to read a couple of pages in this one before I fully gave up for the night... and an hour later, I had impulsively finished the first two chapters.
This book is half-memoir, half science journalism - the author's career background - interweaving descriptions of marine animals with personal perspectives into the life of the author. Vivid descriptions of invasive goldfish, cuttlefish, octopus mothers, salps, and more, provide the background for explorations on race, belonging, eating disorders, and the queer experience.
Both deeply personal and uniquely informative, I knew within those first few chapters that this memoir was going to be one of my favorites of the entire year. The writing is welcoming, but literary; the prose is lyrical, but highly aware of its scientific background; the voice is reflective and emotive but slightly detached, holding the reader at an arm's length while whispering personal truths.
I didn't know that chapters about sturgeons and sand strikers could make me cry! Because they weren't, not really, but about the immigrant experience and the fuzzy relationship between alcohol and sexual assault. Imbler's incredible ability to make biology accessible, relevant, and interesting when entangled with details from their own life were incredibly accomplished, and in today's cultural environment, as resonant and important as ever.
To be clear: I checked this out as a library book, and plan on picking up a copy for my own personal library sometime in the new year.
Five stars.
Bingo Square: "Same Author, Different Genre #2"
The Twisted Ones, T. Kingfisher
After the death of a long-removed and nearly-forgotten relative, Mouse is tasked with venturing to the sticks of North Carolina, and seeing what can be salvaged for resale. While sifting through the hoarder's junk, she stumbles upon a mysterious journal, written by her step-grandfather, detailing some of the terrible things he's seen in the woods around the house. At first, Mouse dismisses it as the ramblings of an old man... until she comes face to face with some of them herself.
I haven't read Horror novels in a while - a function of being an incredibly anxious human being with a reasonable amount of self-awareness - but somehow, in the month of June alone, I ended up reading two of them.
However, like with The Only Good Indians, I don't know if I'd classify this strictly as a true-blue Horror: While TGOI held important reflections on contemporary perspectives on race and folklore, The Twisted Ones felt a little more akin to a Fantasy... perhaps because Kingfisher's "white ones" felt so reminiscent of traditional stories of the fae of Northern Europe.
The narrative combined its classic Horror elements with a distinct Appalachian twang, and Fantasy reminiscent of Irish fairy stories. But instead of a dreamy, nostalgic haze, these folks of the hill aren't the type to grant you a boon if you leave cream out at your window. Impossibly tall, bone-white pale, and harnessing otherworldly power, the holler people live in a hill that is not always there, is not always possible to cross to, and is protected by a hodge-podge crew of poppets, terrifying pseudo-alive creatures constructed from bits of bone, fur, wood, and what junk they can find lying around.
I genuinely did not see the twists coming when they happened, especially because the other elements of the book were refreshingly open and straightforward. Mouse is never alone or told that she's crazy... and yet it was still thrilling and eventful nonetheless. It was really novel of this novel, to be able to build tension based on something other than ostracizing the main character, honestly.
Plus, it was just SO funny.
Four stars.
What have you been reading this summer? What's been your favorite so far? Let me know, in the comments below!
