It’s happened. I stayed mostly current on my book reviews for the summer and had to write only three more before posting this. Go me.
As usual, I’m reviewing only the books I like unless I have strong opinions about a book I dislike.
Fiction
Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead: I read this for book club and then I was sick the day of book club and had other plans so I couldn’t even go there to discuss how I disliked this book. This is one of Whitehead’s earlier works, and I like what I’ve read of his later works. But man, this one does not do it for me, even though the prose is beautiful. My issue is that very little actually happens in this book. It takes place in the Hamptons the summer of 1985, after Benji and his brother Reggie were once inseparable, and the book keeps hinting at things that happened, like you’re hearing someone talk about things twenty years later. But that doesn’t make for a good story. I never got the feeling that the narrator changed that much over the summer, even if he did kiss a girl and spend most of the summer in an empty house with his brother. (Seriously, where were their parents and why did their parents think it was a good idea to only come down on weekends if they were lucky? I know it was the 80s but come on.)
Triple Sec by TJ Alexander: Queer polyamorous romance! Gimme! I really liked this book. A divorced mixologist at an upscale cocktail bar meets a big shot lawyer… but the lawyer is married. There’s some Polyamory 101 that may feel like infodumping for those not in the know, and there are relationship contracts (and lots of revisions as the story goes on), but the chemistry does feel good, even if Bebe feels like one of those big personalities I’d probably like only in small doses. I also like the nonromantic storyline and Mel’s friendship with her roommate; I wish we saw more of him. The book is a little light on conflict but overall it’s a fun read. To be honest, a light romance novel what I needed after a few book misses in a row, and this fit the bill well.
Turtles All the Way Down by John Green: I really liked this book, even though it was difficult to read due to the realistic depiction of OCD. Ostensibly, the book is about two best friends investigating the disappearance of a local billionaire. In reality, the book is about privilege and our relationshp with our loved ones and the past and the inside of our heads and how intrusive thoughts really are intrusive and aren’t something that can just be turned off and how anxiety really can leave us trapped in our heads (oh gods I related to this one way too much) and how hard it is to explain what’s going on in there and how nothing actually cures a mental illness, not even an Applebee’s coupon. Oh, and they’re still teenagers through all this. I appreciate that romance wasn’t the focal point; in fact, I hesitate to call it a romance at all, but well, spoilers.
Delilah Green Doesn’t Care by Ashley Herring Blake: I really like this book, although it’s not as spicy as it was sold to me as. Hmph. Delilah is only going back to where she grew up because her snobby stepsister Astrid wants her as a wedding photographer. But when one of the stepsister’s besties turns out to be attractive and into Delilah, and the friends start plotting to break up Astrid and her fiance because he is truly The Worst, things get rolling. I really like the complex family dynamics going on here. I hated the small town I grew up in and it’s refreshing to read about adults who stayed in their town by choice. It almost makes me wish I enjoyed where I grew up and didn’t want to leave at the first opportunity.
Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle: You’d think this book was written for me since the protagonist is a bisexual statistics professor and published author who’s depressed after the Low Probability Event. Right? But even though I enjoyed this book, it’s my least favorite of Chuck Tingle’s tradpub works. I don’t know if I wasn’t in the right headspace when I started it or what, but the core story of the book was hit or miss for me. The buddy dynamic between Vera and Agent Layne was hot or cold. The investigation was hot or cold as they discovered things. I just wish I connected to the book more. Also, if Chuck Tingle does another book tour, I need to see him in a third city since I’ve seen him in NYC and Atlanta so far.
Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree: Reading the part of the acknowledgements where the author said they wrote this during NaNoWriMo 2021 certainly made me feel some kind of way. That aside, this book fit the description of high fantasy, low stakes. Viv just wants a quiet life after her D&D-esque adventures, and opening a coffee shop sounds like just the thing even if no one knows what coffee is. She attracts people willing to help her early on and they end up building something great. The conflict is light, but I enjoyed the character interactions (and now I need Thimble’s recipes, please!).
Nonfiction
Waste Wars: The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash by Alexander Clapp: This was indeed a wild journey. I vaguely knew about a lot of trash going overseas to be mined for valuable elements, but I didn’t know about actual people going through junk mail and using the names to catfish Westerners. This book also makes me seriously rethink what electronics I buy, which is a problem because of the enshittification of everything. I just got some new earbuds and I’m already thinking about how long they’ll last and whether I’ll be able to recycle them in an environmentally friendly fashion. Read this book and you won’t be able to think about your trash in the same way again.
How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom by Johanna Hedva: If this book were solely about what’s in the title, it would have been pretty good. I’m so down for a bunch of essays about pain and disability and doom. The problem is that it wasn’t. After some essays about disability (including the Sick Woman Theory essay that apparently made the author well-known), there were several about kink and aftercare and being a freak in great detail and I just… don’t care? If this was something advertised on the back cover, then I might not have picked up this book at all. But getting bombarded with this topic mid-book almost made me put it down on the spot. I only didn’t because I wanted to hear more about the other topics, but the kink stuff soured me on the rest of the book, as interesting as some of the topics were.
How to Sell Out: The (Hidden) Cost of Being a Black Writer by Chad Sanders: I’ll be honest, I didn’t know who this guy was before reading this book, but it turns out he’s a former tech worker who went into DEI work. I’m not sure what he does now. But this book contains a lot of stories with the bigger point: when you’re making your living by reliving your past experiences that happen just because you exist as a Black person, it wears on you. Yet who do white people turn to when they need DEI expertise or anti-racism training? That’s right, it’s primarily to people of color. It’s an essay collection, so some are better than others, but the main point remains and made this book an interesting one.
Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern by Jing Tsu: Since I listened to this book and it gets very into the history the language, I probably missed a lot, but what I did hear was fascinating. My main nitpick is that the title makes the so-called revolution sound much grander than it really was, when the actual revolution was a century of trying and failing and eventually succeeding at things. I can’t comment on any historical accuracy, but to be honest, I’d read an entire book about converting Chinese to Unicode because I’m that kind of dork. Please, someone write this.
User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play by Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant: This is yet another seemingly niche thing I’m a huge dork about. Things should just work, but making things “just work” is a surprisingly modern concept. I wish there was more history, but even more importantly, I want a second edition of this book since it was published in 2019 and a lot has changed in the world of “making it easy” since then, for better and for worse.
No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson by Gardiner Harris: This is the Johnson & Johnson expose that has gotten a lot of attention in the few months in between being published and me reading it. I had vague knowledge of the Tylenol murders and had heard about the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccines, which probably puts me at about the average knowledge that a reader might have going in. The content of this book goes further back than the Tylenol murders, although that plays a significant role in the book. Some of the content is even more recent, like trying to settle lawsuits that claimed its talc products caused cancer. Yes, this includes baby powder. So much for those smiling babies on their products. But the truth is that J&J has a great PR machine and they know how to set aside money for these lawsuits. You get sued? Whatever, just pay them off. Because that’s what you can do as a major corporation. This book provides a deep look into the history of the company and its controversies, and you won’t see those smiling babies the same way again. (Side note, Tylenol sucks. It never works for me.)
Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress–and How to Bring It Back by Marc J. Dunkelman: When I research books like this, I look up the author to make sure I’m not reading a book by some conservative schmuck who wants to blame liberals for everything. This book is fascinating because it’s written by a progressive who’s analyzing the history of progressivism in urban planning and infrastructure. According to his argument there are two big schools of thought: Hamilton-esque folks who want power centralized, and Jeffersonians, who want power less centralized. This might sound familiar if you’ve been humming Alexander Hamilton for the past decade. It’s an interesting argument to be sure, and the book is full of examples. Heck, the book is worth reading for the examples alone.