March Reading

My March reading was a bit more productive than my February reading (and not just because of the extra days!).

Daisy Jones and the Six, by Taylor Jenkins Reid

This was a novel I’ve seen recommended a lot around the internet, so I finally took the plunge and tried it out. I really liked it! It’s fiction, but is written in an oral history format. The narrator changes pretty much every paragraph and while that takes getting used to, Reid did a fantastic job giving each narrator a distinctive voice. I also love how it allows characters to tell different versions of the same story, back-to-back, highlighting their discrepancies. It deals with some heavy topics, but it was a fast read and well-done.

Time’s Convert, by Deborah Harkness

A semi-prequel/semi-follow-up novel in the “All Souls World” (i.e., it is separate from the trilogy but uses the same characters and world). It was a pretty fast read but I didn’t like it as much as the original trilogy. I did like how it changed narrating voices and moved across timelines. It was a good story but lacked some of the magic (see what I did there?) of the original books. Worth it if you’ve read the trilogy, but I wouldn’t recommend it as a standalone (which it was probably never meant to be).

A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway

This is Hemingway’s autobiography of years he spent in Paris. It’s essentially a collection of essays but gives you insight into his relationships and personality that you can’t get from his novels. You also learn about other eminent people with whom he interacted. (Fun fact: F. Scott Fitzgerald once asked for Hemingway’s assurance that his “manhood” was sufficient in a Paris restroom. Seriously. That’s the kind of stuff you don’t learn in AP English.) I would actually suggest this combination of books for a reading triad:

• The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway): Classic novel that I appreciated more as an adult than as a high school student. Does involve bull-fighting.
• The Paris Wife (Paula McLain): Novel written from the perspective of Hemingway’s first wife (Hadley Richardson) who was with him in Paris and during the events that inspired The Sun Also Rises.
• A Moveable Feast: Obviously a source for The Paris Wife but also refers to events, people, and the writing involved in The Sun Also Rises.

My library’s version featured a section outlining changes that Hemingway made to various pieces. (The work was published posthumously.) As a writer, it was reassuring to see that even the greats write, struggle, rewrite, struggle, edit, etc.

Transcendent Kingdom, by Yaa Gyasi

Gyasi’s Homegoing wrecked me (it is a gorgeously-written, important, but brutal book), but her beautiful writing drew me back to read her newest. This literary fiction book was my favorite of the month. The story tells the story of a family dealing with mental illness and drug addiction, and how the narrator struggles to understand these issues in the context of both her religious faith and her work (she is a neuroscience PhD student).

The Lost Apothecary, by Sarah Penner

This book was a fast read that told the intersecting stories of three female protagonists (one in the present, two in the past). The past storyline focuses on a female apothecary in the 1700s who secretly peddles poisons to women to kill the men who wrong them. The present storyline focuses on an American woman on what was supposed to be an anniversary trip in London, except that her marriage seems to be falling apart so she’s travelling alone. For me, the past storyline was far more compelling. In all honesty, I’m not sure the present timeline was really even necessary. It adds some additional suspense to the end, but I found myself enjoying the past pieces far more than the present ones.

The Guest List, by Lucy Foley

The structure of this book was great for a mystery/suspense novel and I liked how Foley interwove different times of day. However, there were a few plot holes toward the end and several of the characters were completely unlikeable. For some people, that’s okay. But I quickly lose interest in a story where pretty much everyone is terrible, even if overall it is done well.