My February + March in reading

The past two months I’ve been subjected to extreme emotional whiplash. In February, I went to Stockholm for my birthday—what a treat! And in March, my dad entered hospice and swiftly died. Somehow, through all of it, reading remained a constant comfort.

Girls Lost by Jessica Schiefauer (translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel)

Yeah, I’m that dork who reads books from the countries I travel to. I basically give myself homework assignments. Fortunately, Girls Lost was lovely; it’s the story of three teenage girls who discover a mysterious flower whose nectar allows them to change genders overnight. This wondrous power becomes fraught as the transformation awakens different desires within each of them. The story is tender as flower petals and ruthless as weeds. I recommend it.

Boom Town by Sam Anderson

I can already tell this is going to be one of my favorite books of 2023. Ostensibly, Boom Town is a history of Oklahoma City—but really it’s more of a biography of Oklahoma City? It chronicles the city’s growth and personality as if it were a person. Anderson was sent to OKC initially to cover its basketball team in the early aughts (who knew I would come to care so much about NBA games from a decade ago?), but his narrative of the city sprawls as vast as its greedy, ever-expanding borders. None of it is in chronological order. There are prairie chickens and sonic booms, and you get to hang out with Wayne Coyne. I loved it. Planning a road trip.

You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington by Alexis Coe

This one’s been on my list for a while, and I figured it would be a good read for Presidents’ Day. Here’s what I liked about this bio: there was absolutely nothing about military troop movements during the American Revolution. Thank goodness Coe figured this out—I do not care about gaps in the enemy lines and cavalry charges or whatever. Instead, I got to learn that Washington survived malaria a truly astonishing number of times—seriously, he should have been dead long before he became president. Coe not only includes the recipe for Washington’s favorite breakfast, but also a discussion of why other historians are so obsessed with his manly thighs. Looking for Washington’s personality rather than his military exploits? Look no further.

Brave New Weird: The Best New Weird Horror of 2022, edited by Alex Woodroe

Exactly what it says on the cover, my friends. On Tenebrous Press’ website they define weird horror as “the Progressive Metal of the literary world,” which is a solid description of what you’ll find in this anthology. A small town festival where the citizens swap not only masks, but lives. The internet at its worst. Ghosts in bikinis. My favorite stories were by Charlotte Ariel Finn, Carson Winter, Kirstyn McDermott, Sloane Leong, Jolie Toomajan, and Sergey Gerasimov.

The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer by Janelle Monáe

I adore Janelle Monáe’s music—and they’re a phenomenal actor to boot—so I had big hopes that they’d be a triple threat when it came to their debut short story collection, based on the world of their 2018 Dirty Computer album and accompanying film. Not so much, I’m afraid. What the book cover doesn’t tell you is that they collaborated on each story with a different Black author—which is really cool! But I think their individual styles were stifled by conforming to Monáe’s style—it might have been better as an anthology inspired by Dirty Computer. Some of the tropes were a bit tired, and there was way too much info-dumping about the universe. The only story that gripped me was “Timebox,” co-written by Eve Ewing, about a queer couple who finds a closet in their new apartment that provides unlimited time—not subject to the passage of time outside the closet. Unsurprisingly, this discovery strains their relationship.

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim (narrated by Jennifer Lim)

It’s been a while since I read a courtroom drama. In Miracle Creek, we find a mother on trial for setting a fire at a hyperbaric oxygen chamber treatment center that killed her autistic son and injured others. But is she guilty? There’s the insurance money, after all—and numerous other motives for the disaster. This nuanced story reveals how America fails so many of us—immigrants, caretakers, the disabled—and questions the definitions of those categories. Content warning for child death.

I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai

I have some questions about how Rebecca Makkai manages to write such readable novels that plumb the depths of the human condition. In this novel that questions our cultural obsession with true crime and sifts through the nuances of the Me Too movement, protagonist Bodie Kane—a podcaster and film professor—returns to the New England boarding school she attended as a teenager to teach a special course. One of her students wants to create a podcast about the murder of Thalia Keith, who was killed at the school, supposedly by an athletic trainer, back in the 90s—and who was also Bodie’s former roommate. Bodie falls into her student’s investigation, toppling her life along with it. As it churns up memories of the initial Me Too revelations, the novel is emotionally difficult to read at times—but overall I found it compelling.

The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd

Here’s a novel I wanted to like more than I did. The story sounds good at first glance: a young mapmaker on the up-and-up is fired from the New York Public Library by her legendary mapmaker father after they disagree about the significance of a cheap gas-station map from the early 20th century. As it turns out, this map contains a paper town—a fake town added by the company to prevent copyright infringement. But as her parents and their friends discovered years ago, that town may not be so fake after all, and some people will do anything to find it. I guess the story isn’t the problem—it’s the prose style, which is full of clichés I would have cut from a final draft. Plus, I guessed the big twist almost immediately. Not my favorite.

Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls

I’d heard about this novella for years, and I’m so glad I finally read it! Suburban housewife Dorothy is living in a perpetual malaise with her cheating husband—until a frog monster escapes a local research institute and shows up at her home. His name is Larry. Naturally, they begin a torrid love affair. Things go about as well as you’d expect. But is Larry the “Caliban” in this situation? I don’t think so. Brave new world, indeed. I loved this.