by 2023 got off to a bit of a rough start for me, but despite that, I read some top-tier books this month, and can’t wait to tell you about them!
Anastasia: The Last Grand Duchess, Russia, 1914 (The Royal Diaries) (Carolyn Meyer)
I’m in the midst of revisiting all of my childhood favorites, and this series of historical diaries was one of my first forays into being transported into a world decades away from the one I was living in. The Dear America and Royal Diaries series are staples of the middle-grade genre, and delight regardless of age.
The Passenger (Lisa Lutz)
In the great Gone Girl tradition, we LIVE for an unhinged woman story. So full of twists! Endless turns! So many lives one person can live! I do my best not to give anything away that could be a potential spoiler when talking about thrillers, so all I have to say is this: if you’re looking for a book that sweeps you off your feet and leaves you turning pages so quickly that it’s a miracle you don’t give yourself a papercut, this is the story for you.
The Firm (John Grisham)
This is one of the Grisham classics, but I have to admit that I didn’t actually like it that much! Sure it kept my attention and I didn’t want to put it down, but the misogyny was a bit too overbearing and the main character was clearly Grisham’s self-insert power fantasy. There’s no shame in it – who among us writers can say that we haven’t written something where the protagonist is clearly us living the life we wish we had? Nonetheless, in the grand scheme of Grisham’s books, I wasn’t terribly impressed.
The Rainmaker (John Grisham)
Now, THIS is a Grisham novel that I can get behind! Told in the first person, a style which I infinitely prefer Grisham in, we follow Rudy Baylor, fresh out of law school and utterly unable to find a good job. With a set of clients that fall into his lap, he takes on a crooked (is there any other kind?) health insurance giant. Grisham creates characters more full and life-like than I’ve previously seen from him, and I left this book feeling genuinely impressed by his literary acumen.
Steal Like an Artist (Austin Kleon)
I really need to be reading more books that are written for creatives because every time I do I find it absolutely earth-shattering, change my entire workflow, and resolve to make more art. Sometimes I even do it! Something especially powerful Kleon said was:
“The writer Jonathan Lethem has said that when people call something ‘original’, nine out of ten times they just don’t know the references or the original sources involved. What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original.”
As someone who is consistently paralyzed with the fear that they’re just rehashing the same things a thousand other people have said, reading this left me feeling lighter than ever. I also love what he does with the digital AND analogue desks, and that’s something that I’m going to be implementing in the new workspace I’m building right now (more updates on that to come).
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas (Agatha Christie)
I’m a Christmas-in-July type above all else. I love the holiday season, no matter the time of year, and so reading this as the January blues hit and I was missing that love of my fellow man was exactly what I needed. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Christie owns the mystery genre and keeps her crown with this wintery story.
Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex (Angela Chen)
It’s hard enough to find decent LGBT books on shelves. Finding the rest of the acronym feels nigh on impossible sometimes. That’s why this nonfiction work on asexuality means so much to me. For anyone who has ever questioned why they don’t feel the same way that everyone else seems to, or if you’re just looking for an explanation of that mysterious ‘A’ at the end of the acronym on everyone’s lips these days.
It Came Upon a Midnight Shear (The Riverbank Knitting Mystery Series #3) (Allie Pleiter)
I’ve been biting my nails waiting for this next installment in the Riverbank Mystery series and this was precisely what I was hoping would come out of it. This is another holiday mystery, and the spirit of Christmas reverberates through the story (along with the perfect amount of intrigue and romantic tension)!
Virginia Woolf: And the Women Who Shaped Her World (Gillian Gill)
I love Virginia Woolf. Maybe it’s the English major in me, maybe it’s the Anglophile. Maybe I’ve just had the opportunity to read her lovely buttery prose and never looked back. However, there is something that I love more than Virginia Woolf’s writing: biographical information about any writer ever. Gill paints such an incredible picture of the generations of women that came before Virginia, leading us down the path to what made Woolf the writer she came to be. You can find a more full review here!
Spelling the Tea (Vampire Tea Room Magical Mystery #1) (Erin Johnson)
There are only so many times you can hear about the light shining off of someone’s sharp canines before the repetition starts to grind on you. Regardless, this was a fun read and a quintessential cozy mystery, deeply reminiscent of the Vampire Knitting Club series, albeit less well-written and with a slightly more irritating protagonist.
