Another journal

It was nasty hot this month and I was in a Libby holds lull, so I didn’t get into much longform reading in September. But, I did turn to physical books more because they’re more pleasant to read when it’s warm, since it’s not a hot little square.

The Storygraph reviews for my top three books:

Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut

I think this is the one, the Vonnegut book woven through the most things for me—other than Cat’s Cradle, which is it’s own thing honestly. The way it moves forward while building a path to the past, the layers and layers, so simple each alone but building up depth like glaze. And funny as all hell.

A re-read of the household copy. For such a short little book it has so much in common with Moby Dick, doesn’t it? The meandering narrator avoiding what is coming with little divergences that seem unrelated but all nonetheless part of the greater weave.

Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon

I really liked this, the world as described by our main character and the POV(s) that drift up later is rich and real. The texture of world before and the world after (and the world after that) describes the constraint then freedom, then community in a way you can feel in your bones. More old lady main characters!! More non-human characters treated as people!!!

This was another pull from a Reactor Mag rec list. I really liked it. I love love love a tired and curious old lady as our POV, I adored the introduction of non-human people, the world building did that thing where it was clearly robust and existed but we only interact with the bits that are relevant to our POV character so it feels real and lived-in.

This ended up in a recent newsletter reading recommendation section, as well.

Unknown Quantity by Mignon G. Eberhart

I enjoy re-reading Eberhart’s tight little mysteries. This one starts with such a wild premise and then just twists itself up into an even more complex knot as it goes.

I have a grip of Eberhart’s books that I snagged from Murder By The Book‘s sale shelves back when it had a physical store. They’re always solid, Eberhart just wrote reliable mysteries from 1929 up through the 1980s and put interesting women in them. There is nothing as good a reliable go-to mystery, tbh (see also my bunch of English Horseracing Mysteries).

Here are the titles that didn’t quite make it to the top three – ignore the sad blank for Unknown Quantity, I went and added the proper edition to Storygraph after pulling the image.

Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hochhauser actually had the same rating from me as Unknown Quantity, but it’s not the one the graphic grabbed. It’s basically a brilliant little twist on Cinderella’s step mother but what really made it fun for me was a pretty grounded feeling understanding of life in the vague middle ages of fairytales. Householding! Hawking! Apples, so many apples. Also a good understanding within the story and the characters of what marriage is.

Honestly, for the first half of the book I was not won over but it got me in the end enough to enjoy it and recommend to folks looking for a different kind of “fairy tale retelling.” Recommend clicking through to the Storygraph link up there and checking the community content warnings, though.

I only JUST finished the non-fiction that ate up the back half of the month for me, so you’ll see that next month.