A delightful little novella about what happens with Queen Elizabeth II stops off at the lending library van near the palace and starts reading novels for the first time in her life. Involves a friendship with a gay servant from the kitchens who gives her reading recommendations and a discovery of what you can learn from books even if you've been everywhere and met everyone as a nation's sovereign. Just extremely enjoyable in the specific gay British way of Bennett.
Grade: A
An absolutely delightful gothic manor house murder mystery with bonus gay love story book! I really, really enjoyed what this story did with the conventions of both genres, and how it both delivered on the promise of those kinds of stories while also deconstructing elements of it. Definitely among my favorites of this author's, who's long been a favorite of mine!
Grade: A
Final book club book of the year! A lovely little novella about a future version of California that has split off from the U.S., and the food service bots who form their own restaurant collective and build their own community of bots and humans. It's very sweet and enjoyable, with some fairly obvious but still effective allegories, and I enjoyed my time with it a lot.
Grade: B
An incredible book. I read this because I wanted to have experienced the book before I saw the movie, and the way the story is told in this medium is just a triumph. Agnes is such a fascinating, compelling character, but everyone we meet is; this is historical fiction that somehow fully conveys how foreign a land the past is while also reminding us of the fact that people have always been people. The slight of hand with the capital S Shakespeare of it all is expertly done, and the fact that I knew going in what would happen didn't affect how it landed for me at all. Just a book that made me remember why books are good, actually.
Grade: A
