Last Month in Review: January 2015

I'm a little surprised how much reading I was able to accomplish in January, as I felt a little slumpy.  Or rather, I read quite a bit but didn't get super-excited about any new book in particular. However, I re-read some fan fiction and listened to the audio of a book I'd read previously, and all of those I loved, so there's that. I bought a new camera in January, so I've been spending some time learning how to use it -- it's my first digital SLR and it's got more bells & whistles than any of my previous cameras. That's one of my photos above.

I'm also pleased with myself that I've been blogging at a more regular pace than in previous years. In chronological order, here is what I read:

1. The Sunlit Night by Rebecca Dinerstein.  Alas, I'm not sure I was the best reader for this book.  Interesting-sounding and featuring an exotic landscape (tiny Norwegian island north of the Arctic Circle), and with all of the literary cred one could hope for in a novel, but I just didn't get it. The book will pub in June and I will be meeting the author in about one week at Winter Institute. I probably will not end up reviewing this one.

2. Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem. This was an audio book that I started at the beginning of December, but it took me quite a while to get through.  I probably would never have selected this for myself, but I received a complimentary copy from Random House Audio.  The reader was good, and I think Lethem is a helluva writer.  When it was good, it was very, very good but when it was bad, it was boring.  Most of the time I didn't care one whit about the characters or their situations.  I don't think I'll do a review of this one, either.

3. The Best Revenge, parts I and II by Arsinoe de Blassenville.  My disappointing fiction made me turn to fan fiction, and this story doesn't disappoint.  What if Severus Snape had been Harry Potter's first contact in the magical world?  This novel-length work eliminates the Gryffindor and Slytherin biases from the original series, while still keeping most of the key players firmly in character.  Harry gets sorted into Hufflepuff, Hermione into Ravenclaw, Draco into Slytherin, and Neville into Gryffindor, and these four, plus Harry's Hufflepuffian cohort create ickle firstie mischief.

4. Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher. Review here. I liked a lot about this epistolary book but felt it would have been SO much better at half the length, or with some actual character development, or something. This felt like the literary equivalent of a brilliant SNL sketch that got expanded into a full length film -- great material stretched far too thin.

5. Girl at War by Sara Nović. This debut novel explores the Yugoslavian civil war through the eyes of Ana, a girl whose life is utterly changed by it. We get a dual portrait of Ana as a girl during the war and again 10 years later as a university student in America, as she tries to reconcile her very different lives within herself.  Highly recommended. This book will be published in May 2015. I hope to review it eventually.

6. Orhan's Inheritance by Aline Ohanesian. Another war novel, this time set during the Armenian genocide in Turkey, told from the POV of a young Turkish boy & an Armenian girl during the conflict, and from the POV of the grandson of the Turk in modern times. This is the second novel I've read (after Chris Bohjalian's Sandcastle Girls) that deals with the Armenian genocide, and it reminded me once more how often fiction informs my knowledge of world history. This one will be published in the upcoming months, and I hope to review this one eventually, too.

7. This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett. I often find that listening to an audio book provides a very different experience from reading the book, and this was no exception.  I'd read this book almost two years ago in ARC form and liked it quite a lot.  Recently I decided to purchase the audio because Ann herself was reading it, and I fell in love with this book. She's an excellent reader and the book had a much deeper emotional resonance with me after listening to her. I'm a bona fide fiction girl from way back, but this book is now my favorite book Ann has written.

8. God Help the Child by Toni Morrison.  I liked this one significantly more than her last 2-3 novels, and it might even be my second favorite of her books, after The Bluest Eye.  This one is spare, either all plot or all character, with very few descriptors in between.  It's almost like she said, "Fuck it.  I'm 83 and I don't have time for any filler."  This book will pub in April and I hope to review it one of these days.

9. Survivors by Dyce.  This is a novella-length work of Harry Potter fan fiction (probably about 75 pages, so I'm counting it) set after the war.  It's the development of a friendship between Hermione and Snape, then a gradual romance, inspired in part by Jane Eyre. Fluffy but good.

10. The Given World by Marian Palaia.  Here's another novel that just wasn't the right book for me.  If you think you'd like the literary love child of Rachel Kushner & Lena Dunham, though, it might be the right book for you.  It's a story of loneliness and finding oneself, it's redefining what family can mean, and it takes a hard look at how the loss of a loved one at an early age can haunt you for the rest of your life.

11. The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy by Rachel Joyce.  This is a companion novel to her previous book, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, and definitely not a standalone read. Pretty good book, and I hope to review this one, too, but my original review of Harold Fry is here. If you loved Harold Fry (and I really did), you should definitely read this one, but if the first one left you wondering what all the fuss was about, this one won't clear it up for you.


Eleven books isn't bad, but only one of them (the Toni Morrison) qualifies for a spot on my diversify-your-life shelf, and only one of them is non-fiction. What about you, gentle reader? What delighted or surprised or disappointed you in your January reading?