I’ve been home for only five days and yet it seems as though my trip is already a dimly-remembered thing of the past. It’s so strange how that happens. It doesn’t take me long to get back into the rhythm of things, but it does take a lot of effort to catch up on life after a week away. There’s just so much to do! The groceries, the laundry, the weeding, my god, the weeding. Three weeks of weeds is a lot of weeds, friends.
I managed to get some reading done, with all the hours on the plane and in airports, and in the occasional downtime in the evening. I have to say that it is a very eclectic mix of books – a dense nonfiction looking at the polarization of society, a second-chance romance, a thriller (I know! Me! Reading a thriller!), a very long novel about the Partition of India, and a YA book.
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Doppelganger. In the social media world and beyond, Naomi Klein has been confused with Naomi Wolf for years – both are radical writers of import named Naomi, after all. And I will say two things: first, I had confused Naomi Klein with Norma Klein, who wrote that YA book Sunshine back in the 70s. (Me: Oh wow, I loved that book! Also me: wait, that’s NOT by Naomi Klein?) (Also, I can understand the mix-up, I always get John Irving confused with John Grisham). Second, in the 90s I really loved Naomi Wolf’s writing – her Beauty Myth and Promiscuities were very formative for me. I was disappointed when she started to go off the rails; I think it was Fire With Fire that I stopped really reading or paying attention to her, and then she had a real fact-checking issue with her book Outrages. By then, she was off my radar.
She really went off the rails during Covid and this book focuses a lot about that – the polarity and divisions in our world. This was a fascinating, balanced, dense, well-researched book about the polarity of our world and the notion of doppelgängers. It goes to Nazi Germany and Canadian Indigenous culture, to autism and the treatment of people who think differently. There’s so much here, too much for me even to recap – it’s all balanced and compassionate too. A very thought-provoking, intelligent, fascinating read.
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Every Summer After. I love reading Canadian novels and it’s neat reading one set in Ontario when I was actually in Ontario! Okay, I was on Lake Ontario, not Ontario’s lake country but still. This was a pretty cute second-chance romance; I didn’t love it due to the plot twist, which felt really weird and off-putting to me, but I enjoyed it well enough.
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The Last Word. I don’t read thrillers very often but this was a ride! I’m not well versed in this genre but it seems to me that this was super creative and original. I think the moral of the story is…think before you give a book a one star rating? Anyway, it was very fun and there were so many twists and unexpected turns. I didn’t love the graphic violence or stressful “Will the dog be okay?” moments but I’m a baby for that kind of stuff, I think people who enjoy thrillers will like this a lot, because I did even with all that.
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What The Body Remembers. If you, like me, enjoy a lot of symbolism in character portrayals, then you are going to really enjoy this book about the Partition and the ensuing horror and chaos that came with it. India is a country rich with culture and this book showed me a different perspective than I have read before – that of a Sikh family. It focuses mainly on two women, a junior and a senior wife, but it also encompasses the political and social changes of that time. Married to a wealthy landowner who is also an engineer working with the British government, Satya has failed to do the one thing she is supposed to do: have a baby, or more accurately, a son. Roop is brought in as junior wife to do just that; she visualizes herself as being a loved younger sister to Satya, and as you can imagine, this does not happen. I wished there was a “cast of characters” at the beginning of the book to keep all the characters straight – there are just so many and they are referred to by different names and nicknames, and it’s hard to figure out who is related to whom and how. It’s kind of chaotic, but I guess that is in keeping with the theme of the book.
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The Statistical Probability of Love A First Sight. I don’t typically read YA anymore, because I am 49 and mostly I identify with the parents in such books. But someone (who WAS it? Was it you?) recommended this and oh, what a sweet, cute little book it was! Totally heartwarming and cute story about a pair of teens meeting on a plane on their way to the UK, where the protagonist is going to her father’s second wedding.
Happy long weekend to my fellow Canadians, and happy regular weekend to everyone else! In true May long fashion, it’s cool and rainy today. Will I still be weeding? Yes, I will. Have you read anything good lately? I currently have SIX library books on my side table and three more that need to be picked up this weekend, so I guess if I’m not weeding, I’m reading! xo
OMG, Nicole! YES to that entire first section! The weird way time collapses on itself! The Naomi confusion! The disappointment in later Naomi Wolf! I will put the Klein book on my TBR–I feel like I’ve read some parts as shorter articles elsewhere.
Fun Facts: I think Shauna Singh Baldwin thanks “SAWNET” in the acknowledgments? That was an online group I moderated in the 90s! She used SAWNET to crowdsource people’s memories of the partition. Also, she and her late partner had a really cool spy-themed restaurant-bar in Milwaukee called “Safehouse.”
I DID NOT KNOW THAT!!!! What a cool connection that is! I found her research to be very thorough and it was a really good read.
Wow, you got a lot read during a busy trip.
Well, the plane rides were pretty long! So I had to do something, other than glare at the woman next to me who had a mask around her chin and coughed continuously…
That first book sounds REALLY interesting! I like mysteries, but not thrillers so much. LIke, I don’t like being anxious while reading a book, and I DEFINITELY don’t like it if bad things happen to animals! But sometimes I’ll read a thriller if the plot sounds really interesting- maybe I’ll check this one out.
Enjoy your weekend of weeding and reading! It sounds lovely.
The part about the dog in the book almost completely ruined it for me (although the dog turns out fine, it was too stressful). So that’s your warning! I don’t like violence or descriptions of violence, and violence that threatens animals just breaks me! I pushed through because it was such an interesting and unique book, but whooooaaaaa TOO MUCH.
Thanks for always taking time to write your book recs, they are very appreciated!
Thanks so much Colleen!
The podcast If Books Could Kill just did an episode on Doppelganger – they joked that it was the first time that they had ever reviewed a good book. I never read any of Naomi Wolf’s books but I’ve had the experience of a public figure that I like going off the rails. Sigh.
I’ve been on the Lucy Barton journey for the past few weeks. I’m almost done with Lucy by the Sea and it is going to be a hard act to follow.
Oh, it’s SO good Birchy – but it’s very dense and pretty long, so make sure you have time!
Did you read Anything is Possible as well? It’s good to read while everything is fresh in your mind.
I will choose reading over weeding any day!🤣 I always appreciate your honest book reviews, and I have so many of them saved in my screenshots folder. Right now, I’m listening to The Authenticity Project and I’m enjoying it so far. Did you recommend that one? There’s always so much to do after getting home from a vacation! I’m so glad you had a good time and had a chance to read!
I haven’t read that! I will look it up right away!
Getting home and tackling all the things can be daunting. Weeding sounds particularly draining/never-ending. I appreciate the book reviews. I’m not big into thrillers myself, but when I see one recommended and I’ve given it a try, I often enjoy it. I just finished Tom Lake. I liked it, but my fav part was the way it was told – through conversations with her daughters. I found that unique and clever.
Ernie, you said it: it’s very daunting. A few times I stood in my kitchen thinking “wait, what am I doing again?” And weeding is never ending, truly, but I don’t really mind it. It’s just there is SO MUCH right now! I’m glad you liked Tom Lake and I LOVED the daughters!
Getting back into the swing of things after a vacay of any length can be tricky. I’ve seen a few other people mention Doppelganger and it sounds intriguing. I occasionally read a YA book, they seem to have gotten deeper over the years, more A than Y.
Oh that’s so true, Ally, and you know what – I still love to go back and revisit the YA books that we loved when we were Y ourselves – like Judy Blume!
I have heard of one book (the Carly Fortune) in this post! And I don’t know who the Naomi people are. Must be a difference of me being just a bit younger? Similarly, when people were confused about who Maggie Smith of You Could Make This Place Beautiful was, I was like – who is Maggie Smith? She references in the book that there was confusion over which Maggie Smith she is. And I was like – note to self, google Maggie Smith.
I got 3 different summer reading guides this week from 3 different sources that I respect and love so now I am having major FOMO over what I could be reading! But I rely on my ebooks hold list so I will get to the hot books next summer I guess! 😉 I just finished James by Percival Everett which was very good – it’s a sort of retelling of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer but I did not read that book so I read it as a standalone work of fiction. I know the gist of the storyline for Tom Sawyer and that is as much as I needed to know to really appreciate this book. It tackles some tough topics so I do not understand how it can be described as “uproariously funny.” HOW. I did not laugh or see much humor in the book but I don’t know how you could? It is supposedly satire but not like LOL satire. Now I am reading “Trust” which was strongly recommended by a few people. It’s broken into 4 parts and apparently the 4 parts are very different and I’ve been told to just push through the first part (which is written with so many big words which gives it a kind of pompous/I’m so smart kind of vibe). After that I plan to read “The 7 year slip” which is a lighter kind of book.
“Uproariously funny” reminds me of that Jeannette McCurdy memoir, which was touted as “hilarious,” and I thought “did we read the same book?” I have so many “hot books” that just got in from the library, that were hot like eight months ago, so I feel your pain! Well, library holds are library holds, right?
I laughed because when I heard about the book by Maggie Smith, I thought “the Countess Dowager wrote a book?” What can I say, I’m a big Downton Abbey fan. The Naomi thing could be the age thing, I was a teen/ young woman when I read Wolf’s books and they were hugely impactful to me. And then she turned out to be kind of a nut, who knew!
Well, I get confused when authors use only common names in their stories (think Ann, Mary, Sue). So, I do understand confusing those authors. I haven’t read a great book in a while.
Oh, I get that, especially if you read two books back to back that have the same character names!
I read The Statistical Probability in 24 hours a few years ago – it was just SO cute and easy to read!
Maybe I heard about it from you! Did you talk about it recently? It was just adorable and sweet in every way!
I’m with you on a lot of YA these days; more and more, I appreciate a main character who has a little bit of Been There, Done That. But The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight does sound good, so I’ll give that a try. Thanks!
C, I also have this with memoirs about women in their 20s who are hot messes. I just want to say “girl, get it together!!!” I’m kind of done with that kind of book.
My review of Every Summer After: What a weird book. It’s a mashup of an adult romance and a YA novel. I have some issues with lax parenting and excessive drinking and drug usage with this book, but it was also really hard to put down.
LOL. Why do I write like that?
Congrats on getting so much reading done when you weren’t at home. I always pack a million books and then end up reading ten pages.
Hahaha, so you had mixed feelings then! The drinking/ parenting didn’t bother me, but the twist about the brother really did!
So impressed by how much reading you got done. I always feel like I should get more reading done when I travel, but then often the opposite is the truth (and I am not reading much right now to begin with. Sigh. So much to do, so little time.)
I feel you on this “It doesn’t take me long to get back into the rhythm of things, but it does take a lot of effort to catch up on life after a week away.”
I had way more travel in the last 4 months than in a long time and it definitely makes catching up on life a challenge.
Oh San, you have been travelling so much! You must be totally discombobulated!
I confuse the Naomis as well (John Irving and John Grisham less so). Naomi Wolf has well and truly lost the plot. I loved The Last Word (I kept thinking “But wait! There’s more!”). I have What the Body Remembers on my shelf and have been trying to get to it on the recommendation of a really good friend – I did finally start reading Caste.
I accidentally watched the movie on Netflix of the love at first sight book! I like Haley Lu Richardson so even though I don’t usually watch romance movies I let it keep going and it was extremely cute and fun.
This was such a sweet book that I would probably also watch the Netflix movie (is it short? I like short movies)
You did start reading Caste! It’s so good and well-written.
SUCH a varied reading list. I try to do the same – a fluff book (mystery/romance), a more “serious” book (nonfiction/less fluffy fiction), and then a print book that’s usually geared towards, well, self-improvement. I don’t get bored. I suspect the same is true for you. 😉 I need to consider more YA books for my fluffy reads…
I’m hit and miss on YA books these days – I still enjoy them but mostly, I’m identifying with the old people in the books! Ah, life. I do like a varied reading list, keeps me on my toes.