Friends

I am apparently incapable of doing these posts at month's end, but here's a round-up of things I've read since my last books read post.

Recently Finished:
Cinema Love, Jiaming Tang. 1980s China and 2020s NYC (specifically pandemic times), with multiple POVs. The book centers around gay men from rural China and the women who loved and hated and protected them. Not an easy read, but compelling. This one also hit weirdly because I live near one of the neighborhoods featured in the book. The pandemic times scenes were spot-on, but it's also a little disorienting to read about a specific time and place you know pretty intimately but from the perspective of someone else who also clearly knows the time and place pretty intimately!

Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart and Other Stories, Gennarose Nethercott. Solidly mid short story collection. I really liked "The Thread Boy" and "Drowning Lessons," but most of the others stories left me either feeling meh or completely baffled about what I was supposed to get from them. At least two just stopped in a way that I think was supposed to be ~edgy or ~shocking, but came across as unfinished thoughts.

Catfish Rolling, Clara Kumagai. First five-star read of the year. Loved the magical realism, loved the timey-wimey-ness, loved the science fiction elements and the family dynamics and the late teens/early twenties protagonists. Highly recommend this one, and definitely going to keep an eye out for more from Kumagai.

What You Are Looking For Is In the Library, Michiko Aoyama (translated by Alison Watts). I wanted to like this book. It does some fun magic-of-books-and-libraries things, and I liked how each of the vignettes connected to each other. But the prominent fatphobia from all of the POV characters (the Librarian is described as grotesquely overweight) was extremely uncomfortable and a major turnoff.

In Memoriam, Alice Winn. I absolutely consumed all 380 pages of this book in two days. It would have been one day except I had prior engagements already scheduled that I could not skip. My second five-star read of the year. I could not put it down. I'm still thinking about it a full month later. It immediately went on the to-buy list.

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder. All I can really say about this is oof.

The Clothing of Books, Jhumpa Lahiri. A meditation/essay on book covers and how they are and aren't a reflection of the author's vision of their book. I liked the insight into the lack of control traditionally published authors have over the cover designs of their books and how that can be distancing for the author (or for Lahiri, at least; I think she'd be the first to admit that her feelings on this aren't universal).

Daughter of the Moon Goddess, Sue Lynn Tan. This was a fun adventure story after some much heavier reads. This was my beach vacation read, and I had a good time. I think the love triangle would be more interesting if it were queer, but it's the B- or C-plot, so whatever. Looking forward to the sequel once my library hold comes in.

Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again, Shigeru Kayama (translated by Jeffrey Angles). The novelizations of the first two movies, by the screenwriter! They mostly follow the films, but there are a few major changes, especially in the first (like shifting characters' ages to minimize the romantic subplot). I appreciated the translator's historical context notes at the end. I can't imagine a Hollywood blockbuster going from concept to wide release in just six months!

Current Reads:
The Siege of Burning Grass, Premee Mohamed
Sonnets to Orpheus, Rainer Maria Rilke