[I've been
reading]
« January, 2025 »
Intuition

How did I wind up with this book? Unclear. It’s an unthrilling tale of scientific intrigue (did someone cheat at science to make it seem more like their lab found what might be a cure for cancer?) which felt as slow-motion as the process itself. What saved it, for me, was that it takes place in and around where my partner works, real life places that I’ve been which FELT real. That said, if I read one more book by a Harvard grad talking at length about Cambridge.... A good book, maybe not a great book.

Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments

This was a sequel to a book I enjoyed. It’s a YA-ish tale about a young poor Black woman (in Scotland) who is trying to keep a caravan roof over her family’s head while also learning more about how to do magic. And this magic is not just the “ghostwalking” that she learned from her grandma, something we learn that “real” magicians don’t even consider magic. There’s a cool weird library and a lot of other interesting scenery and ultimately there is a narrative about class and who belongs. I was concerned the sequel might not be as good as the first but it was.

The Midnight Club

Book 1: The Midnight Club. What if there was a way to see the future when you were younger, or see the past when you were older? And what if there was a thing in your collective past which made you really really want to do those things and maybe see if you could get a better outcome? This is about a group of friends who went to college in Vermont in the late 80s and who get back together there in 2014, looking for answers. It’s about the fallibility of memory and the curse of nostalgia. I liked it and the Vermont-y parts seemed real.