We’re finally in the best season for reading! Just like this time last year, my TBR exploded. At one point I was reading four books at the same time, only to ditch them for The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by VE Schwab, which took over bookstagram. The fomo was real.
I caught up on some other highly anticipated books of 2020, one backlist title, and meant to finish off the ACOTAR series, but I’m still in the middle of the last book. I’ve been in a book slump for the last week and a half, and I think it’s because I’m having anxiety about 2021 coming around. Reading is a wonderful escape but I might be spending too much time in la la land.
Writers & Lovers by Lily King
★★★★ // Goodreads
I tell him I was thinking about all the people I’ve pitied and scorned for ‘selling out’ or ‘settling’ and how none of them are alone or broke or driving to a shrink’s office in Arlington.
At 31, Casey is still pursuing the creative life while her old friends have given into more practical fields. She’s been working on a novel for six years, waitressing to pay the bills, barely, is dealing with the death of her mother, her estranged father, a health scare, and a love triangle.
There’s a lot on Casey’s plate, but somehow the story felt so ordinary. I think that’s how we often cope in life. We tell ourselves that big things are no big deal.
I don’t usually like a tidy ending, but I couldn’t help but feel relief, if not joy, for something finally going right after a long string of things going wrong.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfegh
★★★.5 // Goodreads
Sleep felt productive. Something was getting sorted out. I knew in my heart—this was, perhaps, the only thing my heart knew back then—that when I’d slept enough, I’d be okay. I’d be renewed, reborn. I would be a whole new person, every one of my cells regenerated enough times that the old cells were just distant, foggy memories. My past life would be but a dream, and I could start over without regrets, bolstered by the bliss and serenity that I could have accumulated in my year of rest and relaxation.
24 years old, living off her inheritance in New York, in the single-minded pursuit of sleep. Sleep, it solves everything, doesn’t it? A darkly funny portrayal of depression.
Who doesn’t dream of taking a year off to recoup? This story took that to the extreme. It was wonderfully voyeuristic and absurd, but it did begin to drag on, though I imagine that’s an accurate reflection of how a year of troubled sleep would feel. I could see this story as a novella.
My favourite part was the complicated relationship between the narrator and her loyal friend Reva.
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
★★★★ // Goodreads // Reading buddy: Sonia
That was the thrill of youth, the idea that you could be anyone. That was what had captured her in the charm shop, all those years ago. Then adulthood came, your choices solidifying, and you realize that everything you are had been set in motion years before. The rest was aftermath.
The Vignes twins run away from their small, southern Black community at 16. Years later, one sister returns with her black daughter, while the other sister passes for white, a secret she keeps from even her husband and daughter.
I was surprised that as the story developed, it seemed to follow the daughters more than the sisters, becoming more a story of the daughters uncovering their mothers’ pasts and discovering their connection to each other than a story digging into the personal psychological experiences of the sisters. Although the story wasn’t as impactful as I hoped it’d be, it was an enjoyable read and I flew through the addicting writing.
I recommend Letti’s review.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by VE Schwab
★★★★ // Goodreads // (Gifted) // Reading buddy: Cindy, Sadia, Sonia, Tegan
I see someone who cares. Perhaps too much. Who feels too much. I see someone lost, and hungry. The kind of person who feels like they’re wasting away in a world full of food, because they can’t decide what they want.
Desperate to escape an arranged marriage, Addie makes a deal with the devil for time and freedom, to belong to no one, and is cursed to live forever and forgotten by everyone she meets, unable to leave a mark on the world, until 300 years later, a young man in a hidden bookstore remembers her name.
An atmospheric and suspenseful read, which I found slow and repetitive at times. As my fave booktuber says, the vibe is: white hipster who is a poetry or film major at a liberal arts college in New York. However, if you relate to the desperate desires of leaving a mark on the world and to be seen as enough for who you are, the characters may very well break your heart.
A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J Maas
★★★★★ // Goodreads // Reading buddy: Monica
There are different kinds of darkness… There is the darkness that frightens, the darkness that soothes, the darkness that is restful. There is the darkness of lovers, and the darkness of assassins. It becomes what the bearer wishes it to be, needs it to be. It is not wholly bad or good.
The second book of the A Court of Thorns and Roses series, so no blurb for this one. If you don’t know ACOTAR: Beauty and the Beast retelling + faerie smut.
ACOMAF rendered ACOTAR completely irrelevant. It didn’t even feel continuous from ACOTAR. I felt I was reading completely different characters! That said, it’s still helpful to read the first book to know Feyre’s origin story and perhaps to make Rhys’ redemption more compelling (unless you hold a grudge).
Overlooking that, I was thoroughly entertained. Not much banging, lots of flirting. Crazy ending. Lots of rage at certain characters.
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
DNF-37% // Goodreads // Reading buddy: Cindy
Motivated by her brother who died from a heroin overdose and her suicidal mother, Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for suffering by studying reward-seeking behaviour in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction, at the same time grappling with her childhood faith.
Paused this buddy read for Addie and didn’t get around to picking it back up. I wasn’t very compelled by Gifty’s religious musings from her scientific perspective. However, a short story that shares these themes that I did enjoy was “Omphalos” from Ted Chiang’s speculative fiction collection Exhalation.
Gyasi’s Homegoing remains one of my all-time favourites.
Little Gods by Meng Jin
DNF-16% // Goodreads // Reading buddy: Sadia
A portrait of brilliant physicist Su Lan pieced together through memories from the people in her life.
Paused this buddy read for Addie and didn’t pick it back up. I stopped quite early on in the book so I don’t have much to say. There was a great sense of mystery around who Su Lan was that I think could potentially get more interesting, but I wasn’t yet engaged because it was so vague (and surreal, which I’m generally not into). My fault for stopping so early.
What was your favourite read this month?
PS: my favourite harry potter quotes, my tbr for the rest of 2020, books i collect in multiples