books read: 2024 march

[meitachi]

Happy April! We've set our moving date to June 4, so I've got about two months to focus on the Rochester job hunt, while wrapping up house cleaning, touch-ups, and sale as well as the logistics of a cross-country move. Also squeezing in a couple of fun trips and a visit back to NC for my brother's Ph.D. graduation. It was bittersweet to leave AST but also a relief, and a rare chance to rest while planning for the future.

And hopefully to read a lot! Here's a look back at March.

1. The Fortunes of Jaded Women by Carolyn Huynh - So it's a sort of lighthearted "women's lit" story featuring intergenerational squabbling and complex mother-daughter relationships, but featuring Vietnamese American women in California. And, you know what, we deserve that. The prose itself is not good, none of the characters are particularly likeable (which is fine but they're also a bit flat), but I still enjoyed it more than I expected. Maybe just to see intergenerational AAPI messiness that isn't all trauma and immigrant narratives. The twists are ridiculous but it's fun to hate the characters, and find surprising kernels of sympathy at times.



2. The Kamagawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai - This is lightly billed as a mystery but there is no real mystery or detecting; the story is far more focused on past relationships, missed connections, memories and nostalgia that are associated with a specific dish. The consulting detective and daughter then find the right ingredients to recreate the dish in question. A gentle, slow read, but mostly it made me hungry. I want to try all these dishes.



3. Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto - I had skipped it for a long time, unimpressed with the way it was marketed. I finally gave it a shot because I enjoyed the Singaporean mystery (older busybody protagonist), but it really did not compare. It is too aware of the Asian American tropes and all of the characters felt very two-dimensional as they filled their assigned roles. The found family aspect was also a bit too on the nose and forced, and the mystery itself was not particularly clever (in its telling or in its solution).



4. Villains are Destined to Die Vol 5 by Gwon Gyeoeul - Beautiful and delightful! I love this webtoon, and also Callisto and Penelope.



5. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott - A gift from my MIL, as one of her favorite books on writing. It's a combination memoir and writing advice and overall had some lovely bits and a clear authorial voice/perspective. I'm not sure any of it will particularly stay with me, but I am also not writing...



6. There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya - Picked up in an indie Rochester bookstore, amid the fairy tale, folktale, and mythology section. Delightful! Selected and packaged by her translator, as these short stories were all released separately across many decades of Petrushevskaya's career, but I enjoyed how they all came together to be eerie, dark, and fantastical, much in the vein of original fairy tales. Most stories set in Soviet Russia and reveal much of the grim poverty, but also the shining glimpses of gold: love, hope, lust.



7. Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility by Rebecca Solnit, Thelma Young Lutunatabua - A collection of essays on climate justice and how to feel hopeful and productive rather than hopeless and helpless. It was broken into sections and the second half of the book was much more impactful and moving to me, in terms of focusing on collectivism. The first half was more about straight facts and figures, much of which I already knew.



8. The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu - A sci-fi alien world infused with Indian and Asian mythology, starring a shantytown, Monkey King lore, Aladdin/djinn lore, underground fighting rings -- really imaginative worldbuilding and fun characters! The POV character was fabulous, honestly. But it was strangely paced and the emotional beats were quite...off. We got info-dumps rather than naturally unfolding emotional reactions, with no room for those reactions to really breathe and drive the story. Still, it was a fun jaunt in terms of the world, the plot, and some diverse relationships.



9. There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself: Love Stories by Ludmilla Petrushevaskaya - Still lovely writing, but not as much to my personal tastes as the fairy tales. Focuses a lot on a maternal instinct in these love stories, even when it's a romantic relationship. I do like better understanding Soviet Russia through her eyes though, such as the draft (and how the young men dodged it), the shared apartments, the subsistence living. Harrowing but not the point so much as the backdrop.



10. The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz - A very fun Holmes romp in line with the original stories, and captured the tone and the adventure that I enjoyed. Good pacing for a full novel-length story when most of the original stories were much shorter. I solved a couple of the twists but they were still clever and fun.



11. The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett - (Shadow of Leviathans #1) Another very fun detective duo in the vein of Holmes and Watson, except set in a high fantasy world. Very creative world-building that feels inhabited, which Bennett is great at creating. Loved the character dynamics and the murder mystery, which is tied up to more complex political intrigue, all with the eerie threat of the fantasy leviathans threatening the very existence of the empire/world. Very excited to read the next in the series, whenever they're written.



12. On the Fox Roads by Nghi Vo - A novelette online, set in 1920s-30s Midwestern America with bank heists galore. But featuring Asian American immigrants and some magical realism and a genderqueer character! Lovely and atmospheric, it was fun to see more traditional Asian folklore intersecting with the plains of the rural Midwest landscape.

F1 in Suzuka this weekend and the peak cherry blossom trees are gorgeous. Total eclipse on Monday too! And NHL playoffs begin this month.