july: 16, 17, 18, 19 & 20

the song of achilles, by madeline miller (this author is so good at what she does in these books - retell myths from a different perspective - and i don't know a ton about greek mythology so i learned a lot in this book and found it really compelling.  i liked circe slightly bettter, but would recommend this!)

the girl who fell from the sky, by heidi w. durrow (i had bought this on sale a long time ago and finally read it, and i'm glad i did.  the main character survives a fall off a roof that kills her siblings and (white) mother; her (black) father is MIA, but she goes to live with her father's mother in a totally different community in a different part of the country.  i was intrigued by this book and liked the view into different cultures and geographies, but ultimately wasn't rushing home to read this book.  good but not super remarkable.)

the nickel boys, by colson whitehead (beautiful and devastating story - what an amazing writer.  learned a lot about this aspect of US history - 20th century reform schools that perpetuated racism and covered up the deaths of teenagers.  would definitely recommend this one!)

where'd you go, bernadette, by maria semple (my book club read this a few years ago and i passed on reading it that month, but kept it on my list.  when embarking on a road trip in july i got the audiobook on CD (ha) from the library and thought this was a great chance to read it.  and...i...hated? is that too strong a word?...this book.  i thought all the characters were horrible.  i couldn't tell if parts of it were satire, but i ended up deciding that they weren't satire-y enough to save the book.  the audiobook narrator annoyed the shit out of me.  i don't know - how was this book so popular?!?!  save yourself and read something else.)

no one is talking about this, by patricia lockwood (david sedaris recommended this book to the audience when i saw him live in pittsburgh this spring.  it is fiction and the first half is sort of a commentary on social media in a way that interested me but was also kind of hard to follow or get into...and then in the second half evolves out of that and takes a real turn (involving the main character's sister and a complication with her pregnancy) and the second half was incredible and it sneakily was so startlingly moving.  i wept through not just the last page, but literally the last 20 minutes of the book.  wet pillowcase, three kleenex used and thrown on the floor beside my bed, woke up the next morning with a headache.  this book is incredible AND i am not sure it is for everyone.  but wow.  i see why the NYTimes put this on their list of best books of the year.)

june: 14 & 15

two more good reads:

priestdaddy, by patricia lockwood (i found this on a list of the best memoirs of the last 20 years and was intrigued by the idea of a married man (lockwood's father) becoming a catholic priest.  this memoir is about that and not about that, and i liked her writing style a lot - it's what makes the story so intriguing and the memoir so enjoyable to read.  if you're into memoirs (like i am) or if this topic interests you, i'd definitely recommend this, but if memoirs aren't your favorite genre, this is one you can skip.)

happy-go-lucky, by david sedaris (i was lucky to see david sedaris in person in pittsburgh this spring and was eager to pick up his next book (this one) and was able to get it from the library as an audiobook.  about half the stories on the audiobook are live recordings and i liked getting the audience reaction.  this book, like all is books, was a great read!  he's so good at telling a story.)

may: 11, 12 & 13

in may i read three FANTASTIC books and now i am so spoiled because any book i read has to live up to this precedent.  after parable of the sower i seriously started and then immediately stopped three books in a row that couldn't live up to the fantastic writing of the three previous books.

pachinko, by min jin lee (i had owned this for a while and been afraid (here is my bias showing!) that a book with korea characters would have names that were hard to keep straight and i would get confused.  couldn't have been further from the truth.  i learned a TON about the experience of koreans living under japanese occupation leading up to world war two, something i knew nothing about, and was so moved by the characters that lee created and how eloquently she wrote their stories.  if you like a sweeping, multi-generational story, you MUST put this on your list!)

cloud cuckoo land, by anthony doerr (brilliant.  i loved his previous book all the light you cannot see, and was eager to pick this up.  the first third was hard for me - it's five narrators in three VERY different story lines, and i knew they had to come together but wasn't sure how it would happen.  the way it does is brilliant, and i was totally enraptured by the story lines.  highly recommend!)

parable of the sower, by octavia e. butler (this is a slower burn than the previous two, but i was super interested in this post-apocalyptic story that is science fiction-y...or is it fantasy...or is it afrofuturism...or is it all of these things.  it's a book that is unsettling because the world she creates is scary, and at the same time is a future that i could see coming to be.  i recommend this, but not as strongly as the previous two reads.)