this month it snowed a lot and there was nothing to do because: pandemic, and i read:
the office of historical corrections, by danielle evans (i heard about this from the book of the month club but didn't end up buying it - i got it from the library on kindle, which, honestly, is my preferred medium. i don't tend to love short stories, but i really liked these - the author is a black woman and the stories touch on race in different ways. the book ends with a novella that i liked the least of any of the stories, but i'd definitely recommend this book even if, like me, short stories aren't your thing.)
a traveler at the gates of wisdom, by john boyne (i have REALLY enjoyed the two john boyne books i've read before now and i heard about this one and my library didn't own it, which was surprising to me. i requested it and they bought it, and you know what: there is a reason they didn't already have a copy. you can go ahead and pass on this book. it's long. it has a shtick: each chapter continues the story that is begun in the first chapter, but in a different culture and different time in world history. AND THEN IT DOES NOT EVER TELL YOU WHY IT IS DOING THAT. they never come together. at like two places in the book there is some acknowledgement that it is happening. and that is it. so this is a book with a shtick instead of a book that is doing anything profound. i'm not even sure it was published in print (i got it on kindle) in the US.)
bone, by yrsa daley-ward (this is a re-read of a book of poetry. i thought about giving it away after reading it now for the second time, but i can't. some of the lines i need to have in my home to go back to. highly recommend!)
on earth we're briefly gorgeous, by ocean vuong (this author is "coming" to pittsburgh in a few weeks as part of a lecture series (presumably he'll be at home and the lecture will be pre-recorded, like others in the series this year), so i wanted to read it in advance of the lecture. i didn't hate it (my friend Q didn't even finish it), and there were some really interesting relationship in it: narrator with his grandmother, narrator with his mother (to whom the book is addressed, like a letter, but like many epistlary books i found myself being like "you would never put that in a letter to your mother - you are telling us this because the audience needs to know, not your mother"), narrator with his first lover. there were some pretty graphic sexual parts, which i wasn't necessarily expecting (again: see "letter to mother problem," above). i'll be interested in seeing what the lecture is like. this is getting a lot of critical acclaim.)
what doesn't kill you makes you blacker, by damon young (i heard the author interview ta-nehisi coates in the same lecture series i referenced above; he is a pittsburgher and i decided to listen to the audiobook of his memoir. it was really funny and also quite poignant and i always like listening to books read by the author. he grew up in the part of pittsburgh where we live, but when it was a primarily black neighborhood. it was really interesting to hear his take on east liberty and shadyside today (spoiler alert: "portlandia with pierogies"), and this was altogether a book i really enjoyed and would definitely recommend if you like memoir.)
