Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Review: Mexican Gothic

Mexican Gothic Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I waited on the hold list for this book for 16 weeks so I didn't quite read it during the season I'd hoped, but this is a decent Gothic novel set in the mountains/cliffs in a silver mining village in Mexico. Noemí is sent there by her father to check on her cousin, who married one of the men in that family.

I'd say this has some genuinely scary stuff and plenty of elements warranting content warnings so do your research, plus some general ick factor based around a plot point I will not reveal. I do believe the book and author deserve the attention this year; it's the second book by her I read in 2020.

View all my reviews

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Reading Envy 209: Best Reads of 2020 with Guest Menagerie

Jenny invited past guests and members of the Reading Envy Readers group in Goodreads to contribute their best reads of 2020. In true Reading Envy fashion, books were not necessarily published in 2020. We always like to hear if you read a book because you heard about it on the podcast!

Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 209: Best Reads of 2020

Subscribe to the podcast via this link: Feedburner
Or subscribe via Apple Podcasts by clicking: Subscribe
Or listen through TuneIn
Or listen on Google Play
Or listen via Stitcher
Or listen through Spotify 
New! Listen through Google Podcasts


Books discussed: 

Jenny's full list of 5-star reads for 2020
Sovietistan by Erika Fatland
The Empire of Gold by S. A. Chakraborty
The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
Deacon King Kong by James McBride
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tolkarzcuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
One Hundred Twenty One Days by Michèle Audin, translated by Christiana Hills
The Eighth Life by Nino Haratischwili, translated by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin
Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica translated by Sarah Moses
Mama Day by Gloria Naylor
Milkman by Anna Burns
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Glass Hotel by Emily St John Mandel
A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World by C.A. Fletcher
Not Without Laughter by Langston Hughes
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste
Fiebre Tropical by Juliana Delgado Lopera
The Last Best League by Jim Collins
The Mercury 13 by Martha Ackman Lauren
The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart, translated from the French by Barbara Bray
How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr
Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm ed. by Yarimar Bonilla and Marisol LeBron
Letters: Summer 1926 by Boris Pasternak, Maria Tsvetaeva, and Rainer Maria Rilke, translated from German and Russian by Margaret Wettlin and Jamey Gambrell


Other mentions:

Discussion of The Only Good Indians on the Shelf Wear Podcast
Discussion of Drive Your Plow... on the Book Cougars Podcast
Discussion of Drive Your Plow... on the Book Cougars Goodreads group

 

Stalk us online:

Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy
If you want to hear more from one of the guests who appeared on this episode, go to the episode guide and do a search.

All links to books are through Bookshop.org, where I am an affiliate.

Monday, December 28, 2020

Review: Nights When Nothing Happened

Nights When Nothing Happened Nights When Nothing Happened by Simon Han
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Cheng family moves to Plano, Texas in 2003, settling into suburbia. The father is a photographer, but has what I would call ptsd about intimacy. The mother is an engineer and works many hours with international teams. Jack, the son, spent his younger childhood in China with his grandparents and one night saves his little sister Annabel when she goes outside in the freezing cold, he thinks to sleepwalk. The story rotates between the family members where is becomes clear that all of them understand events differently, and some ideas originally presented as facts may not be. The children are underparented and this leads to a major event that disrupts the entire family, bringing their new identities into question.

This is on the long but not shortlist of the Tournament of Books. I read it from my public library on my new Kindle Oasis (a gift, not an advertisement.)

View all my reviews

Sunday, December 27, 2020

Review: The Memory Monster

The Memory Monster The Memory Monster by Yishai Sarid
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a difficult read for me and I'm not sure I quite understand what the author wants the reader to take with them. The narrator is a historian specializing on the Holocaust, and throughout the book gives tours of several camps to school groups and tourists, all of whom hold varying degrees of reverence, knowledge, and interest in the many Jewish people who were killed there. I don't know if the narrator lacks the ability to communicate the horror when he is present with it every day, or if his deep knowledge of the details accidentally comes across as being impressed, but there is definitely something disconcerting or uncomfortable in how he communicates with others. Sometimes it is his anger in how others want to believe it didn't happen, to move on, to capitalize on the horrors. All the while his family is back in Israel, where his son is bullied at school. Memory, memorial...

What isn't addressed of course, is the fact that the author is an Israeli, son of a prominent politician, who served in the Israeli army and worked for the government as a DA and was educated by some of the United States' top schools of government...yet the narrator says nothing about the memory monster of another people's displaced homeland, which to me is inherit and circles back to the narrator's musings on power and victory, whether or not this was his intention.

This is translated from the Hebrew by Yardenne Greenspan and is from Restless Books - a publisher I subscribe to precisely because they pull me out of my comfort zone with every read. I would check out a few more reviews because a few people are better able to comment on how this issue manifests in modern Israel and amongst groups of Jewish people worldwide.

View all my reviews

Saturday, December 26, 2020

Review: We Ride Upon Sticks

We Ride Upon Sticks We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"It was high school. A sea of adolescence streamed by, each of us in our own way trying to both fit in and stand out...so what if there was an open flame burning in her locker? It was nothing compares with the dark storms secretly and openly raging inside each and every one of us."

I was only in elementary school in the 1980s so I'm too young for actual nostalgia and too old for retro nostalgia. If you like girl power and 80s nostalgia, this is the book for you. The novel is about the 1989 Danvers high school field hockey team, and their best season ever thanks to ... witchcraft? It is campy and fun yet I wasn't the right reader for this book. It happens. I don't want to punish the book or author for it though. I would recommend it to a lot of different kinds of readers, actually, just not myself.

View all my reviews

Friday, December 25, 2020

Jenny's Best Reads of 2020

Every year I do a round-up of my 5-star reads. For the podcast's sake, these date from December 2019 through November 2020. On December 29th, the Best of 2020 podcast will post, featuring highlights from my list along with multiple guests sharing their top reads of the year. After December 31, I'll post my stats for the full actual calendar year. I love looking at those, but I could still read 10 books between now and then.

Unlike most book lists, these books are not necessarily published in 2020, simply read in that year.

Cover images are not the same order as below, apologies. If you are interested in my thoughts on any of these specific titles, your best bet is to find it on my Goodreads account - this list is Read2020 and sorted by rating.


Around the World - Middle East focus (plus one that snuck in from Asia 2019)

Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi, translated by Marilyn Booth
Daughters of Smoke and Fire by Ava Homa
In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vadney Rattner
Our Women on the Ground by Zahra Hankir, ed.
Headscarves and Hymens by Mona Eltahawy, narrated by Mona Eltahawy
Beirut Won't Cry by Mazen Kerbaj
Home by Various, translated by Various (Two Lines Arabic poetry)


Science Fiction and Fantasy

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Romancing the Inventor by Gail Carriger
Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust
Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth
How Long 'Til Black Future Month by N.K. Jemisin
Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice, narrated by Billy Merasty
Homesick by Nino Cipri


Horror


The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones


Romance

Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert
Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert


Western

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey


Literary Fiction in Translation

Optic Nerve by Maria Gainza, translated by Thomas Bunstead
A Girl Returned by Donatella Di Pietrantonio, translated by Ann Goldstein
The Eighth Life by Nino Harataschwili, translated by Charlotte Collins & Ruth Martin
That We May Live by Various, translated by Various
Spring by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated by Ingvild Burkey
The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld; translated by Michele Hutchison
The Mussel Feast by Birgit Vanderbeke, translated by Jamie Bulloch
Farewell, Ghosts by Nadia Terranova, translated by Ann Goldstein


Literary Fiction - Backlist

The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson, also narrated by Claire Danes
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin, narrated by Bahni Turpin
Mountolive by Lawrence Durrell
Fair Play by Tove Jansson, translated by Thomas Teal
Clea by Lawrence Durrell
Tracks by Louise Erdrich
Four Souls by Louise Erdrich
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich


Literary Fiction - Current

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout
Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine
Real Life by Brandon Taylor
Hex by Lauren Dinerstein Knight
Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn
The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd
The Prettiest Star by Carter Sickels
Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell
Polar Vortex by Shani Mootoo
What Happens at Night by Peter Cameron
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste
Memorial by Bryan Washington


Rereads

Stephen Florida by Gabe Habash
Normal People by Sally Rooney


Graphic Novels and Comics

Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman
They Called Us Enemy by George Takei, illustrated by Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott, & Harmony Becker
Apsara Engine by Bishakh Kumar Som


Nonfiction- Memoir

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones
A History of My Brief Body by Billy-Ray Belcourt
Eat a Peach by David Chang and Gabe Ulla, narrated by David Chang
My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland


Nonfiction - Other

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey
Writing Wild by Kathryn Aalto
On Lighthouses by Jazmine Barrera, translated by Christine MacSweeney
My Grandmother's Hands by Resmaa Menakem
Tides by Jonathan White
The Selected Works of Audre Lorde by Audre Lorde
Just Us by Claudia Rankine
Oak Flat by Lauren Redniss; narrated by Lauren Redniss, Darrell Dennis, Kyla Garcia, Kimberly Guerrero, Hillary Huber, Ann Marie Lee, Elizabeth Liang, Crystie Lightning


Poetry

Postcolonial Love Poem
by Natalie Diaz
An American Sunrise: Poems by Joy Harjo
13th Balloon by Mark Bibbins
Homie by Danez Smith
Junebat by John Elizabeth Stintzi
How to Fly (in Ten Thousand Easy Lessons) by Barbara Kingsolver
Blizzard: Poems by Henri Cole
Together in a Sudden Strangeness Alice Quinn, ed.


Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Reading Envy 208: Thriving in Marginalia with Lauren

It's the last regular episode of the year, featuring frequent guest Lauren. We talk reading around the world, different ways of interacting with other readers, poetry, and more. I know there is a slight sound issue and we think it is internet connection related. I took out of it as much as I could but every once in a while it arises mid-sentence. We will try to do better next time!

Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 208: Thriving in Marginalia.

Subscribe to the podcast via this link: Feedburner
Or subscribe via Apple Podcasts by clicking: Subscribe
Or listen through TuneIn
Or listen on Google Play
Or listen via Stitcher
Or listen through Spotify 
New! Listen through Google Podcasts


Books discussed: 


On a Truck Alone, to McMahon by Nabaneeta Dev Sen
Reading the Ceiling by Dayo Forster
Ursula K. LeGuin: The Last Interview edited by David Streitfeld
My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland
An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo

Other mentions:

#readtheworld21
Dune by Frank Herbert
Dune (feature film, forthcoming)
The Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice
Chef by Jaspreet Singh
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin
National Book Award - Lifetime Achievement Award, Ursula K. Le Guin
Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin
(documentary)
*Columbus, GA (I called it Columbia the first time, sorry)
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe by Carson McCullers
The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Books on the Go podcast - American Sunrise
Crazy Brave by Joy Harjo
When the Light of the World was Subdued edited by Joy Harjo
Want by Lynn Steger Strong

Related episodes:

Episode 083 - Slowing Down and Rereading with Julie Davis
Episode 097 - Blank Spaces with Lauren Weinhold
Episode 123 - Godlets and Forests with Lauren Weinhold
Episode 133 - To Understand the World with Lauren Weinhold
Episode 138 - Shared Landscape with Lauren Weinhold 
Episode 147 - Bonus Poetry Recommendations with Lauren
Episode 161 - Women in Translation Month Recommendations with Lauren
Episode 163 - Fainting Goats with Lauren
Episode 186 - This is Gravity with Jeff
Episode 189 - Surreal Superpowers with Tim
Episode 197 - Surly Magnificence with Lauren

Stalk us online:

Lauren at Goodreads
Lauren is @end.notes on Instagram
Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy

All links to books are through Bookshop.org, where I am an affiliate. I wanted more money to go to the actual publishers and authors.

Sunday, December 13, 2020

Review: Want

Want Want by Lynn Steger Strong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the story of a woman juggling two jobs and two kids while she and her husband are filing for bankruptcy; one of her oldest friendships keeps coming to mind for reasons that become more clear. It's kind of like Severance without the zombies, with the added responsibility of children, but the same daily grind feeling.

I actually enjoyed it, a very strong capture of the 2010s especially in more expensive places like NYC. I read it because it is on the Tournament of Books long list, it was short, and I could get it from the library without a wait. I feel like there is a lot to discuss with Want but that people who hate relationship novels are going to hate it. (I, on the other hand, love a good relationship novel!) We'll see.

View all my reviews

Wednesday, December 9, 2020

Review: Reading the Ceiling

Reading the Ceiling Reading the Ceiling by Dayo Forster
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ayodele is turning 18 and is selecting a man to have sex with.
I don’t want to wait for this falling-in-love business, or aim for passion, even though everyone everywhere – books, films, magazines – makes it seem like the ultimate. I want to get this sex thing over and done with so my life can move on.
The novel is written in three sections following what would happen if Dele follows three different scenarios. It's not quite choose your own adventure in feeling, although the consequences are at times surprisingly long-reaching. It's like a coming of age story combined with an exploration of all the contextual factors a young person might face in The Gambia - economics, education, religion, marriage, children, loss, relocation, class, etc.

The voice in the writing is vivid and entertaining and it reads quickly. I like how details in the background that happen in one story happen again but not exactly the same and yet you need to know what came in the first version to understand the rest; this introduces a bit of complexity the author could have avoided with three distinct stories but I feel makes the reading experience better. The story is also very international as Dele has a Chinese friend, has travel possibilities that are wide-ranging (America, UK, or "just" Dakar....)

View all my reviews

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

Review: Almanac of the Dead

Almanac of the Dead Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It was one of my goals to read more indigenous authors in 2020, but I've decided to withhold judgment on Leslie Marmon Silko until I've read her other works. I know better than to punish a writer or a novel for not being what I wanted but this doesn't match the cover blurb or what I was hoping for. Instead of a family or community saga saturated in characters from various indigenous backgrounds, it is a novel about government corruption, police corruption, drug trafficking, people trafficking, unethical business practices, and people who place no value on lives other than their own. Most of the characters are white men and the author puts the reader inside their narratives, leaving me reading from uncomfortable perspectives page after page after page. By the time I got back to the characters I initially felt invested in, I didn't care as much about them after they'd been absent for 500 pages.

Most of the novel takes place in Tuscon but some characters and chapters are in Mexico, elsewhere in Arizona, maybe California. Current events are eco-terrorism, the early hints of the Internet (the novel was originally published in 1991), the AIDS crisis, and the ongoing commercial failures of the industries who had moved into Tuscon and Phoenix.

There is an underlying sense that those who are indigenous have developed various ways of coping with the dominant population (some comply, some become corrupt, some plan revolution, some stick to themselves) and the novel actually ends in a somewhat hopeful way, but it's a heck of a journey to get there. This book is dark and reminded me of the experience reading 2666.

The underlying premise according to the publisher blurb is this fragmented text handed down from ancestors to these elderly sisters but it really played such a minor role - I would have loved to see it more significantly a part of the text. With how much attention is given it in the beginning I was left without feeling it had done much. Same with many of the early characters, honestly. I think the author may have tried to do too much and just ended up not doing much. Publishers Weekly didn't disagree with me.

CW rape, murder, suicide, drugs, harm to children, harm to animals, kidnapping, etc.

View all my reviews

Friday, December 4, 2020

Review: The Bamboo Stalk

The Bamboo Stalk The Bamboo Stalk by Saud Alsanousi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Continuing my focus on the Middle East, this is my first read from Kuwait! José is the child of a mother from the Philippines who worked for a family in Kuwait when she became pregnant, and the father is the son of the family for which she is working. José's grown up being told he will go live with his father in Kuwait when he turns 18, and this is his journey between cultures, languages, and religions. He also has to navigate a situation where his Kuwaiti family doesn't want to acknowledge him because of the family's reputation, which is why he and his Mother returned to the Philippines in the first place. He looks more Filipino which also creates some challenges in Kuwait.

He is José in one country and Isa in another. His mother named him after José Rizal, and there are epigraphs from Rizal at the start of each section. José also visits a historic site connected to Rizal that had me looking more into Filipino history and landscape.

People from the Philippines work all over the world, and this is the first novel I've read that lives in this reality. There are multiple Filipino characters in Kuwait in this novel, not just in service roles like José's mother but working in the mosque, attending university, and more.

This is the first novel from Kuwaiti writer Saud Alsanousi. The prose is simple and straightforward, which probably comes from the author's experience as a journalist. The writing style makes the 500 pages a breeze, and to me it feels and reads more like YA so I have added it to that bookshelf. I have spent two years focusing my reading on Southeast Asia so it was nice to have this connector piece of a novel to this year's reading.

View all my reviews

Wednesday, December 2, 2020

Review: Untold Night and Day

Untold Night and Day Untold Night and Day by Bae Suah
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"Just finish it," I chided myself. "It's only 160 pages, come on!" And thus I persisted.

Halfway through, last night, I drifted off into upright couch sitting deep sleep, where I had four intense nightmarish dreams in a row, and apparently moaned throughout (not in a good way.)

And I DO blame this book, which I can't make any sense of. I can't tell what's real or what's not. I can't understand how what seems imagined or historical in one scene is real in another. I don't understand how the characters seem to switch places and identities and also move between real and imagined (they also seem lost and confused.) I don't understand what is meant to be a deep connection to The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat, a short novel of similar tone I read earlier this year and also didn't understand.

The translator Deborah Smith has obviously gone deep with this author and this feverish style; apparently the author is considered an outsider in Korean lit as well. I might point you first to her translator note, which is the last few pages, before reading the novel. I give the translation efforts 5 stars.


View all my reviews

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Books Read November 2020: 296-330


Five star reads (links are Amazon affiliate)

296. Beirut Won't Cry by Mazen Kerbaj ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (Hoopla eBook, my review)
297. To Keep the Sun Alive by Rabeah Ghaffari ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (personal copy; my review)
298. Here for It by R. Eric Thomas ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (physical ARC; my review)
299. Together in a Sudden Strangeness Alice Quinn, ed. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (eARC from Edelweiss; my review)
300. Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (eARC from NetGalley; my review)
301. We Love Anderson Cooper by R.L. Maizes ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (physical ARC; my review)
302. Simmer Down by Sarah Smith ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (eARC from NetGalley; my review)
303. Luster by Raven Leilani ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (personal copy; my review)
304. Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, narrated by Jenny Sterling ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (Hoopla audiobook; my review)
305. Spirit Run by Noé Álvarez ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (physical ARC; my review)
306. Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (eARC from Edelweiss; my review)
307. Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice, narrated by Billy Merasty ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (Hoopla audiobook; my review)
308. The Twelve Dogs of Christmas by Lizzie Shane ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (eARC from Edelweiss; my review)
309. The Silence by Don DeLillo ⭐️⭐️ (eARC from Edelweiss; my review)
310. Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Umoja Noble ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (library copy; my review)
311. Wintering by Katherine May, narrated by Rebecca Lee ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (Volumes app; my review)
312. Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (eARC from publisher; my review)
313. My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (physical ARC from publisher; my review)
314. The Girl Who Fell to Earth by Sophia Al-Maria ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (Hoopla eBook; my review)
315. Music for the Dead and Resurrected by Valzhyna Mort ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (eARC from Edelweiss; my review)
316. One Life by Megan Rapinoe, narrated by Megan Rapinoe ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (Volumes app; my review)
317. I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are by Rachel Bloom ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (eARC from NetGalley; my review)
318. Fire on the Island by Timothy Jay Smith ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (physical ARC; my review)
319. Jack by Marilynne Robinson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (eARC from Edelweiss; my review)
320. Why I Held Your Hand by Augusta Reilly ⭐️⭐️ (eARC from NetGalley; my review)
321. Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (Libby eBook; my review)
322. Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu, narrated by Joel de la Fuente ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (Volumes app; my review)
323. The Beadworkers: Stories Beth Piatote ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (physical ARC from publisher; my review)
324. Oak Flat by Lauren Redniss; narrated by Lauren Redniss, Darrell Dennis, Kyla Garcia, Kimberly Guerrero, Hillary Huber, Ann Marie Lee, Elizabeth Liang, Crystie Lightning ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (Volumes app; my review)
325. American Cheese by Joe Berkowitz ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (eARC from Edelweiss; my review)
326. Kim JiYoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo Jamie Chang ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (Libby eBook; my review)
327. A Death in the Rainforest by Don Kulick ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (Hoopla eBook; my review)
328. The Big Door Prize by M.O. Walsh ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (eARC in NetGalley; my review)
329. All Systems Red by Martha Wells, narrated by Kevin Free ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (Audible audiobook; my review)
330. Red Pill by Hari Kunzru ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (library copy; my review)

Books Read: 35 

audiobook: 7
eBook: 18
print: 10

library: 9
review: 23
personal: 3

Around the World: 8
Book Clubs: 2
Booker Prize: 1
Graphic novel: 1
Indigenous: 3
Memoir: 5
Middle East: 3
Non-fiction November: 11
Poetry
Read the World: 3
Sci-fi/fantasy: 3
Tournament of Books: 6 (wow!)

Reading Envy 207: Innocent and Ruthless with Tricia Deegan

Jenny records across the sea to talk to artist and English teacher Tricia Deegan. If you hear any words that seem stretched out, blame the internet under the ocean! I did what I could in the editing but there are a few unavoidable blips. Nothing too bad, so please enjoy this new guest to the show.

Download or listen via this link: Reading Envy 207: Innocent and Ruthless

Subscribe to the podcast via this link: Feedburner
Or subscribe via Apple Podcasts by clicking: Subscribe
Or listen through TuneIn
Or listen on Google Play
Or listen via Stitcher
Or listen through Spotify 
New! Listen through Google Podcasts


Books discussed:

Grid of books featured on episode 207

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Farewell, Ghosts by Nadia Terranova; translated by Ann Goldstein
Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier
Travels with a Tangerine by Tim Mackintosh-Smith
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

Other mentions:

Leila Slimani
Maupassant
Delpine De Vigan
The Years by Annie Ernaux
Blindness by Jose Saramago
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Elena Ferrante
Grimm's Fairy Tales
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Girl with a Pearl Earring
by Tracy Chevalier
The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
Darwin
Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier (William Blake)
The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier
Native Son by Richard Wright
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
Becoming by Michelle Obama
These Truths by Jill LePore
Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X Kendi
Stamped! Racism, Antiracism, and You by Ibram X Kendi and Jason Reynolds
A Black Women's History of the United States by Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross
Kim JiYoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo, translated by Jamie Chang
City of Girls
by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by V.E. Schwab

Related episodes:

Episode 071 - Bad Priest, Good Priest, No Priest with Scott
Episode 098 - Just a Bunch of Stuff that Happened with Bryan Bibb

Stalk us online:

Tricia is @trishadeegan on Instagram
Jenny at Goodreads
Jenny on Twitter
Jenny is @readingenvy on Instagram and Litsy

All links to books are through Bookshop.org, where I am an affiliate. I wanted more money to go to the actual publishers and authors.