Well, friends, this week has really been a difficult one. I won’t go into it much, just that I’m feeling a bit raw around the edges, both physically and emotionally. I thought about skipping a post this week, but then remembered that I had a few more mini-reviews written up that I could edit and get ready. Thank you, Past Kim, for your diligent work!

These mini-reviews are for some more nonfiction, most of which I’ve talked about briefly on my Book Riot podcast, For Real, but that I found I have a little more to share about. Let’s dive in!

Locking Up Our Own by James Forman Jr.

Locking Up Our Own is a look at mass incarceration and the disproportionate impact on people of color that comes at the problem from a perspective I hadn’t thought about before. Forman Jr. looks back to the 1970s, and how measures that were part of the “war on crime” were supported by a significant segment of African American leaders who thought they were the answer to helping protect their communities from epidemics of drugs and violence. The book looks back at measures like marijuana legalization, sentencing guidelines, and more were supported by influential leaders, and how those measures, coupled with both overt and unintentionally racist policies, have incrementally built up to our current problems in criminal justice. The book won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction, which makes sense – the reporting is excellent, and the writing is great.  I thought this book was fascinating, and a must-read for anyone interested in these issues.

The Fact of a Body by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich

The Fact of a Body has been on my to read pile forever, but I finally picked it up because it won the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for lesbian memoir/biography. The book is a true crime memoir, about the story of a Louisiana man convicted of molesting and murdering a six-year-old boy. Marzano-Lesnevich came across his case when she was interning at a law firm, and it stuck with her because hearing what he’d done made her question her own long-held convictions about the death penalty revisit her own childhood sexual abuse by her grandfather. This book was very good, but also extremely difficult to read. It has frank discussions about pedophilia and sexual abuse, but it doesn’t feel exploitative because those stories are shared while trying to explore issues like guilt, truth, and family. I didn’t love the author’s reliance on imagining to fill in the gaps of the true crime narrative, but overall I’m glad I read it.

Tomorrow Will Be Different by Sarah McBride

I randomly picked up Tomorrow Will Be Different off the new books shelf at my local library, and I am so glad that I did. Sarah McBride is a transgender activist and young widow who writes about her experience coming out, advocating for trans rights, and losing her husband to cancer when she was just 24. While I thought McBride’s work on activism was interesting, the heart of the story is about her family and her relationship with her husband, Andrew Cray. She’s a really empathetic writer, who nonetheless is skilled a connecting her story back to larger issues facing transgender people, particularly those who have less privilege than she does. This book made me cry in multiple places, I really loved it.

Text Me When You Get Home by Kayleen Schaefer

Who doesn’t want to read a book all about female friendships? Text Me When You Get Home starts out with an exploration of the idea of “text me when you get home” a common refrain among female friends. And although it can be about safety, it’s also a way to show care, commitment, and love among female friends. In this book, Schaefer dries to dig deeper into the idea of female friendship, looking at famous true and fictional friendships, the science behind female camaraderie, and her own history of female friends. Overall, the book is heavier on memoir and lighter on sociology than I would have liked, but overall it was a breezy, thoughtful book that also made me think more about all of the female friends in my life.

I ended up taking last week off from blogging while I was on vacation, so I’m pretty belated in getting up a June reading wrap up. But I like being able to look back on these as a quick record of my reading, so I suppose better late than never.

Here’s what I finished in June:

1. The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman (fiction, audiobook)
2. Locking Up Our Own by James Foreman Jr. (nonfiction)
3. The Fact of a Body by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich (true crime/memoir)
4. Enchanted Islands by Allison Amend (fiction)
5. Text Me When You Get Home by Kayleen Schaefer (nonfiction)
6. Tomorrow Will Be Different by Sarah McBride (memoir)
7. An Unkindness of Ghosts by Kat Howard (fiction/fantasy)

The three fiction books I read were all delightful in their own way. The Invisible Library was a funny, entertaining start to a new series with an adventurous woman at the center. Enchanted Islands was a nice literary detour, a fictionalized memoir about an American spy in the Galapagos Islands. And An Unkindness of Ghosts was a great piece of contemporary fantasy that I wish was part of a series.

My nonfiction reading was equally as great. I loved Locking Up Our Own and Tomorrow Will Be Different a ton, and also have positive things to say about The Fact of a Body and Tomorrow Will Be Different. Reviews soon, I hope.

A Look to July

For my birthday on Sunday, I went on an independent bookstore crawl here in the Twin Cities, stopping by four new-to-me shops in Minneapolis and St. Paul (Paperback Exchange, Subtext Books, Moon Palace Books, and Magers and Quinn).

I bought… a lot of books, so I think my focus for the rest of the month will be trying to read as many as possible. The month is already off to a great start — I finished six books while on vacation, and already wrote mini-reviews of each of them — so we’ll see how many more works I can actually put in my brain before August arrives.

What was your favorite book of June? What are you looking forward to reading in July?

I am back from vacation, and what a wonderful break it was! Since the Fourth of July was in the middle of a week, my sister and I decided to take the entire week off work to hang out at my parents’ house in Wisconsin. The week involved campfires, boozy drinks, swimming, boat rides, and a ton of reading. I brought a pretty huge pile of books, and managed to finish six of them! Here’s what I enjoyed on vacation:

The Ensemble by Aja Gabel — I very much enjoyed this story of a high-level string quartet, which followed their individual and collective journey from young musicians to middle-aged partners, parents, and ensemble members. There’s a lot of music content in the book, everything from what it’s like to play as a group, to what it feels like to play or listen to specific pieces of chamber music, that I really adored. It was great!

Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis — Thanks to an upcoming episode of For Real (spoilers, I guess?), I finally got around to reading this book about the men who influenced the direction of the United States in the decade after the Constitutional Convention in 1787. I liked this one because it wasn’t a straight history book —  Joseph Ellis looks at specific incidents and relationships like Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr’s duel, the collaborations between John/Abigail Adams and James Madison/Thomas Jefferson, to explore bigger issues. It’s a short, readable, personality-driven history that I’d recommend.

Neverworld Wake by Marisha Pessl — I’m not entirely sure how to sum up the premise of this book in just a couple of sentences, so I’m just not going to bother. Marisha Pessl is one of my favorite writers, and her first foray into young adult (or maybe new adult?) fiction was so great — totally weird, but I loved it. It’s one of those books that straddles the line between realistic and genre fiction almost perfectly, which is my favorite literary intersection. The characters were great, the mystery was intriguing, and the fantastical elements were just weird enough to work.

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones — I wanted forever to read this book because I was nervous it wouldn’t live up to all of the hype. I don’t think I adored it as much as many readers, but it was still very, very good. The book is a portrait of a young marriage, and what happens after the man, Ray, is sent to prison for 12 years for a crime he didn’t commit. I thought the story was excellent, and Tayari Jones did an amazing job creating characters with depth who you could root for even while they were making really questionable choices. I was really impressed with how she brought the story to a close, as well, though I won’t say more to not spoil the book.

Don’t You Ever by Mary Carter Bishop — This book is a memoir by a woman who discovers in her 20s that her mother had a secret baby at age 18. She writes about what that discovery meant for her family, both when she was a child and as an adult when she starts to develop a relationship with her half-brother. Although this wasn’t a life-changing, world-view altering memoir, I thought it was a really interesting story that was well written and page-turning. It’s the kind of interesting, thoughtful-but-not-challenging memoir you’d want to read on vacation.

Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew Sullivan — The event that kicks off this mystery is a difficult one — a young bookstore clerk discovers a young patron has committed suicide in her bookstore, and that he had a photo of her as a child in his pocket. As Lydia tries to understand why Joey killed himself, her entire carefully-constructed life starts to come unglued, as his suicide has some strange connections to her own childhood tragedy. This one was a page-turning mystery that I figured out just a few chapters ahead of the protagonist. I liked it a lot.

I also started two more books I’m hoping to finish in the next few days — Stalking God by Anjali Kumar (memoir about finding a religion to believe in) and The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan (young adult fiction about a girl who goes to Taiwan trying to understand her mother’s suicide). Even without endless reading time, I think I’ll finish those this week.

Happy Sunday, everyone! What are you reading today?

This week, I finally took stock of my outstanding reviews and realized how far behind I’d fallen on nonfiction! I think I talked about most of these on my Book Riot podcast, For Real, so in the back of my head that means I’ve reviewed them… when in actuality I’ve never spent the time getting thoughts on paper (so to speak). I’m going to share five recent-ish nonfiction reads this week, then hopefully finish them up when I’m back from my Fourth of July vacation. Enjoy!

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark is the story of the hunt for the Golden State Killer, a serial rapist and murder active in California in the 1960s and ‘70s, and McNamara’s quest to identify him through true crime reporting originally published on her blog. McNamara died unexpectedly in 2016, so the book was finished by her husband and research assistants, based on her nearly-completed drafts and copious notes. Despite the fact that parts feel unfinished, this is still one of the best works of true crime I’ve ever read. McNamara is thorough, curious, detailed, and a truly stellar writer – this book is genuinely creepy in some sections. She’s also extremely empathetic, and never lets telling the story of the GSK get in the way of being sensitive to the victims and their families in the way some true crime writing does. This book is excellent.

Bachelor Nation by Amy Kaufman

Bachelor Nation is the “first definitive, unauthorized, behind-the-scenes cultural history of the Bachelor franchise,” looking at every aspect of how the show gets made and what has happened to the contestants since their appearance on the show. Although I’m not really a fan of the show, I am super interested in books that tell you how things get made, so this one caught my attention. It’s a quick, light read, and I definitely enjoyed it, but I didn’t think Kaufman’s final conclusions about the show were especially novel or made me think about the show in a different way than when I started. It’s a solid read, but nothing spectacular.

The Song Poet by Kao Kalia Yang

Kao Kalia Yang is a Minnesota writer, the daughter of Hmong immigrants who fled to the United States from Laos in the 1970s (a story chronicled in her first book, The Latehomecomer). The Song Poet is the story of Yang’s father, Bee, a man recognized in his community as a song poet. In the Hmong tradition, “the song poet recounts the story of his people, their history and tragedies, joys and losses.” Yang adopts her father’s voice to to tell his story from childhood to fatherhood, while also recounting her own experience growing up in Minnesota. This book is really beautifully written, and an important to book to read now as we’re having all of these difficult conversations about refugees and immigrants. I really loved it, and can’t wait to backtrack to her first memoir.

Damnation Island by Stacy Horn

Stacy Horn is such an interesting writer – she’s written about choral singing, cold case detectives, parapsychology and, in Damnation Island, the history of New York’s Roosevelt Island in the 19th Century. At the time, the island was called Blackwell’s, and was the site of  “a lunatic asylum, two prisons, an almshouse, and a number of hospitals.” Originally, it was supposed to be a modern, humane place to incarcerate or house the city’s poorest people… but of course that didn’t work for long because bureaucrats are going to bureaucrat. Horn’s deep dive into the island is punctuated by other fascinating stories about this time and place, such as Nellie Bly’s undercover work at Blackwell’s for her book Ten Days in a Mad-House. Overall, I thought it was just fascinating – recommended!

Dear Madam President by Jennifer Palmieri

Jennifer Palmieri was the communications director for Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president and, in that role, got to see and experience what it was like to try and elect the first female president of the United States. In Dear Madam President, Palmieri writes an open letter to the future first woman president, sharing what she learned in the campaign and what she thinks we all need to do differently when we think about women and leadership.I don’t think there was anything especially novel in terms of advice in this book, but I am going to continue to devour books that give an inside account of the 2016 presidential campaign because there’s just so much we all still need to unpack. I liked this one, and recommend it for political junkies of many stripes.