Book 26: The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk

A book about the longterm impacts of trauma on people's brains and bodies was certainly an interesting thing to read at the height of the pandemic in New York City. It's a very good book, with a lot of fascinating insight into the development of the fields of trauma psychology and psychiatry, but it did leave me thinking 'oh wow okay so there's just going to be so much trauma to deal with on the other side of this, great.'

I found this book interesting both in terms of how it made me look at my own life and responses to trauma, but also in thinking about this area of study and work and how underserved it is, and whether it's an area I would want to work. This has been something I've tossed around for many years at this point, with the same issues always stopping me: it would take a ton of work and effort and money, and the system is so broken. One of the most affecting aspects of this book was the description of how hard it is to get anything done because of politics and policy surrounding mental health (not just in the U.S., but in particular here), and it feels like both an impossible thing to dedicate your life to, and also something that's actually worth doing so. Anyway, I really enjoyed this book, and also found it deeply affecting, on multiple levels.

Grade: A

Book 25: The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

Well, this certainly was an experience. I read this book after having watched the movie for the first time a couple of weeks prior, and it was amazing to me how much of the movie isn't based on the book itself. Obviously there are lots of adaptations that really transform the source material, but I was surprised in the book by how successful Tom is in the book -- there isn't the same level of potential culpability or overt homosexuality, which makes me wonder why the movie felt compelled to make the ending as tragic as it was. Or rather, I feel like I do know, which is a shame.

The writing is really lovely and it is extremely evocative, but it is hard to know how I would have read the story if I hadn't seen the movie first, because it is so definitive. I'm looking forward to reading her other, even gayer works now.

Grade: A 

Book 24: Catfishing on Catnet by Naomi Kritzer

This is a delightful YA about a chatroom community where one of the members is in fact the internet, and is the best kind of benevolent friend version of an all-seeing AI. It's just a really nice story of what humans would like our robot overlords to actually be like: a friend who knows everything, who cares for us, who learns and acts in our best interests as well. I really liked it, but a couple of months later it hasn't really stuck with me past that. CheshireCat is the ultimate chatroom admin who just really likes cat photos, and also happens to live inside our computers, literally. An excellent romp.

Grade: B

Book 23: A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier

I really enjoyed this book! This was a classic 'sold by the cover' book for me - I saw it while taking out other books at the library and apparently I've been in the mood for historical novels that take place around or between the world wars right now. This book centers on Violet, a woman in her early thirties who was "left behind" by The Great War - her brother and her fiance were both killed, and her  family has never really recovered. She had been living with her mother and working as a typist, and then she decided to move to a different town and live as a boarder and joins a society of women needlecrafting cushions for the cathedral in town.

It is such a quiet book, but also one that really digs into the choices that women had to make in that era, and the responsibilities and needs that hit against each other. There's a lesbian romance in the story as well, and it's told in a way that feels both faithful the era and also isn't interested in being tragedy porn, either. The same is true for Violet's romances, although there is a constant specter of sexual violence that, while probably historically realistic, I found a bit out of keeping with the rest of the story. The book also has the feeling that all intra World War books written after the WWII have, which is the tension between the characters' lack of knowledge of what's coming next, and what we know will. All in all, I had a lovely time reading this, and it made me want to read a lot more about this era. Sometimes I feel that way because I was disappointed by the fiction and want more from the history, but in this case it's purely because the story piqued my interest in the best possible way.

Grade: A

Book 22: Long Bright River by Liz Moore

A book club book! Which I did not in fact manage to read in time for the actual book club meeting, but in my own defense it was scheduled as a zoom meeting for the end of March and I was not yet at a point where that was something I was remotely capable of doing. Boy, what a time.

Anyway! The book. This is an extremely well done modern crime novel, about a woman who grew up in Kensington, a very rough neighborhood of Philadelphia, and became a cop and walked the streets of her old neighborhood. Her sister was also lost to those streets a long time ago, and now there's a killer out there targeting drug users and women who are sex workers in order to buy drugs. She feels the need now to go beyond the department in order to attempt to both find her sister and protect others like her.

The protagonist is a cop, but the cops are not the good guys--in a lot of ways that's one of the only things about this book that made it tolerable to read in 2020, even before George Floyd's death. The narrative is extremely well-told, with an unreliable narrator that makes the reveals both land extremely hard and was stressful to deal with in lol March. It's not exactly my kind of book, but if you are looking for a modern crime novel that focuses on women, I would recommend it.

Grade: B

Book 21: Spin the Dawn by Elizabeth Lim

I finally managed to read this! It was a new book that I had taken out from the library and renewed so many times, and then the pandemic hit and I've had it at home for even longer. And I'm really glad I finally read it.

This is a classic YA set up: a young girl has to pose as a boy in order to gain entry at court. In this particular situation, Maia is a tailor who learned her trade from her father, and when the emperor commands that all the best tailors in the land come to compete to become his imperial tailor, she goes in her sick father's place. Once there, she goes through a Project Runway sort of gauntlet, and is aided by the court sorcerer Edan. He knows her secret, and when her reward is creating three impossible gowns for the emperor's wife-to-be, he accompanies her on her journey to make them, somehow.

There's a magical pair of scissors left to her by a relative and jealous rivals and the secrets of both an emperor and the princess warrior he's intending to marry, and it's just a really lovely read. The only thing I didn't love is that it's the first in a duology, but the second book comes out in July of this year, so hopefully I'll manage to read it sooner that I got to this one.

Grade: A

Book 20: The Right Swipe by Alisha Rai

This book is basically everything I am hoping for in a contemporary straight romance: a really likeable and recognizable lead, a male love interest who's not an irredeemable jerk, and wish fulfillment aspiration porn that manages to thread the needle of depicting a life that I might actually want if I had that money and access and status. You have a modern dating app corporate plot, a 'oh no I've run into my one night stand again and they're really fucking hot' plot, a mysterious older figure pulling some strings--nothing about this book is particularly unexpected in exactly the right way. I have been trying to find good contemporary straight romances, and I am definitely going to keep tabs on what this author puts out next.

Grade: B