Book 11: Wild by Cheryl Strayed

I don't know why exactly I decided that I needed to read this book now, since it's not exactly a new book. It's also a style of book that was once dominant in publishing (memoir of How Someone Dealt with Trauma) that's become less common, and I had the thought that maybe when it felt less like the entire world was in one constant state of trauma, we had more space for equally real and valid individual traumas. Do we have the capacity for a memoir about how someone dealt with the unexpected death of a parent to cancer, given the global pandemic and failing democracy and climate change and war?

Possibly I don't have the capacity for that, but I still found this book fascinating. It's a book about a woman leaving her marriage, selling everything she owns and flying to California to hike the Pacific Crest Trail alone, despite the fact that she had done very little hiking (and no thru hiking), because it felt like it was what she had to do to process her mother's death. The author is so extraordinarily lucky; the degree to which she was unprepared for the reality of this task was very stressful for me just to read about, let alone experience. But it also made me think about how infrequently I do anything without doing everything I can in my power to be as prepared as possible, in order to not appear like I don't know what I'm doing (even when I don't), and how exhausting that is, too. It's also a book about a time that's totally different in many ways; it was published in the early 2010s, but her trek took place in 1995, when if you left for a hike like this, you were simply out of contact except for when you pick up your supply boxes at the small towns in between multiday hikes. 

It made me weirdly nostalgic for the '90s, an era which had its own laundry list of Bad Institutional Things (and which contain the seeds of many of the worst aspects of today's problems), but which also feels like a time when it was more possible to just do things! Anything! Try something else! This is less a "boy weren't things better in the '90s" reflection, because while I'd rather not live in a pandemic, I don't actually think that things were better or simpler or whatever. Maybe I'm just reflecting on the fact that I was never the kind of young adult that Cheryl Strayed was, for better or for worse, and it feels less and less likely that I will ever be that kind of adult in any age, and sometimes that feels like my own loss. 

(Also, I reread part of A Walk in the Woods, which is a book by Bill Bryson about his own ill-planned hike on the Appalachian Trail that same year, and which was undertaken for wildly different reasons, and boy is that a great compare and contrast of what it was to be a young white woman in the '90s and a middle age white man in the exact same time period.) 

Grade: A  

Book 10: A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske

Man I had such a nice time reading this book! It was one of those that I started and finished in one day, because I was so eager to see where the story went. 

This is definitely one of those books where the overall synopsis does a lot of the heavy lifting: if a story about gays in magical Edwardian England sounds like it'll be up your alley, it almost certainly will be. The slow burn of interest between Robin, a baronet struggling with providing for his sister after his sister's death, and Edwin, a magician whose power is small enough to be the black sheep of his magical family, is wonderful. I also loved the way magic works within the "normal" history of England, and how it creates an unequal hierarchy that leads to bad decisions by many characters. 

It's a rare book that manages to be equally interested in the romance (and sex!) at the heart of the story as it in the historical and magical worldbuilding; it manages to really nail both genres, and I'm so glad that it's the first book of a trilogy so I can spend more time in this world with these characters (and new ones as well). 

Grade: A

Book 9: The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting by KJ Charles

A big change of pace from my last book, quite intentionally! This was such a satisfying read, and one that I started at around 8 p.m. intending to only read for a couple of hours, and then I ended up finishing it all that night. 

This is a delightful regency romance that focuses on the marriage mart, and specifically on a beautiful brother and sister who are attempting to secure favorable matches with the appearance of gentility and connections while possessing none. Robin is yet another KJ Charles character in the mold of the likeable con artist, who is doing everything he can to help his sister secure a truly advantageous match. But it's a really interesting book that doesn't shy away from how ultimately unsatisfying a marriage like that would be, even with financial security, and not merely from the standpoint of enduring a loveless marriage for the sake of wealth: it takes seriously just how easy it is to make a woman suffer in a marriage like that, with no recourse at all. 

Robin is thwarted in his plans to marry a plain heiress by her uncle John Hartlebury (known as Hart), who can tell that Robin isn't all he seems but is also drawn to him. There's a disastrous evening of gambling that KJ Charles fans may find a bit familiar in the best of ways, but the connection between the two of them develops in a very different way, and I found the ultimate resolution to be really quite lovely. Hart's niece Alice is also a wonderful character, and this book delivered all of the best things for the characters who deserve them, and none for those who don't. 

Grade: A 

Book 8: The Ghost Road by Pat Barker

Boy, this book really fucked me up! Which isn't exactly unexpected, it's the final novel in a trilogy about WWI, so it's not a surprise that an anti-war novel would affect me like this. But it took me a long time to get through the final hundred pages, because I dreaded what was coming so much. 

This third book is about the process of Billy Prior preparing to go back to France at the end of the summer in 1918, intercut with Dr. River's memories of his childhood and family friendship with Charles Dodgson and his experiences studying death rituals in Melanesia. The narrative follows Billy back to France, using diary entries and a letter home as well as prose to tell the story of the final months of the war. He was assigned to the same unit as Wilfred Owen, who I knew just enough about as a historical figure to know that my dread was warranted. 

While Billy and the troops are at war, bored for 23 hours a day and then terrified for the other one, Dr. Rivers continues to work with injured men and contemplate his own role in the entire endeavor. Billy leaves his now-fiancée to head back to the front and loves and misses her desperately, while also sating his constant need with men and women when he can. And while I was prepared for more death and destruction caused by war, I was somehow not expecting the first appearance of the influenza pandemic, which was harder to deal with at the moment for obvious reasons. There's a lot to this book, and this trilogy, and it makes me want to both reread the whole series and to read all of the war poetry of this era and just a whole lot of history about this war and what led to it, but first I think I'm going to take a break and read some romance novels or something, because boy.  

Grade: A 

Book 7: Daybreak by Kate Hawthorn

A winter contemporary m/m romance! I had high hopes for this one, which involves a thirty year old widower who's certain he'll never find love again even three years after the sudden death of his husband, and a cute young grad student who's on a roadtrip trying to run away from every part of his life he can't deal with. That's a setup I am generally behind, including the classic car breaking down and there's only one mechanic who can help and no hotels around so sure, why don't you stay with me, but it never quite clicked for me. One way I know I'm not as invested in a romance novel as I should be is when I'm constantly questioning things, like what kind of cross-country roadtrip takes you to Burlington, Vermont on the way to New Hampshire, given the highway system in upstate New York and New England. But the main issue is that they both had too MANY issues, and the conflict as it were goes on for two long. This is a story that could handle being a novella much better than a full length novel. 

Grade: C 

Book 6: How to be Alone by Lane Moore

 This is another book I ended up taking out from the library as a result of a podcast, and man. It's not the easiest of reads? It's a book about trauma, and how the specific lessons you learn about love as a child and teenager stay with you, and how to create a life within that, if not exactly in spite of it. It's not a trauma porn book; while some of the elements of her experiences are specified, a lot of it is referred to rather than laid out for the reader's perusal, which definitely shifts the emphasis away from being one of the standard mid-2000s memoirs that were all anyone (or me in any case) read for a while. 

It's a book that feels challenging to me in a very 'well you just have to sit with this, you can't fix it even if you want to' way. The format is a series of essays, which could be read as individual pieces (and some of them were published that way), but for me the strength of the book is the cumulation of all of them. The weight of the last essay is built upon all of the rest. I'm glad that I read this book after I read Thanks for Waiting, because this is a book that doesn't have a neat narrative ending; this is a book about a woman who desperately wants a found family, and a soulmate, and to know how to have 'normal' emotional connections with people, and it doesn't end with her married and/or fixed. But it still ends in a place that leaves you with hope and a sense of possibility, rather than despair or a nice, pat narrative destination. I don't know. This book kind of fucked me up, and I'm glad I read it. 

Grade: A 

Book 5: Proper English by KJ Charles

Okay, so you know how there are some books that you keep thinking that you should read but never do because the timing is wrong or whatever? Sometimes I end up not reading books because of SPITE, and I'm very glad in this case that I was finally able to let go of it.

This is a prequel to Think of England, one of my very favorite historical queer romances, and for years we had been hoping for a sequel about the main pairing in that book, and instead we got a prequel about a different (but also delightful) side pairing in that same book. And basically, it took reading all of the Will Darling trilogy which gives us some glimpses of the future for the ToE pairing for me to let that go and be able to enjoy reading about Pat and Fen's origin story. I can say both that I am delighted I was finally at a point where I could read this for them, because it is a romp and a half, and glad that I didn't force myself to read it when I was still feeling bitter, because I think I would have ended up ruining it for myself.

This is another mystery at an English country house at the turn of the twentieth century, and this time our focus is on Pat, who is for the first time trying to figure out what to do with her life now that her eldest brother has married and she's no longer needed to manage the family estate. While there she encounters Fen, the superficially silly fiancee of one of her oldest friends who is hosting the shooting party, a match she finds extremely puzzling. She teaches Fen how to shoot, and the two of them become closer as they all deal with the brother-in-law of their host, who is terrible in basically every possible way. 

Pat's voice is wonderful, and the relationship that develops between her and Fen is truly delightful. The sex could have been hotter, if I am honest, but overall I had a great time reading this. 

Grade: B