Currently Reading
I think I spotted Days of Distraction by Alexandra Chang while scrolling through the OverDrive catalog of ebooks and eaudiobooks, and was attracted by the cover and the title. It’s a novel that draws heavily on the author’s life experiences as a young Chinese Asian-American woman working as a tech writer in a corporation owned and managed by white, middle-aged men, leaving her close-knit family in California, and moving to Ithaca, New York with her Irish-American boyfriend for his career.
The narrator’s experience with incidents of overt and inadvertent racism in the workplace and outside of it are painful to read, especially knowing they are probably based on the author’s real-life experience. The book was released near the very start of the pandemic, and reading about how the narrator handles this major life decision at age 24 seems like a good choice for this time-out-of-time period we are going through.
I started reading A Year of Writing Dangerously: 365 Days of Inspiration & Encouragement by Barbara Abercrombie last month when I participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) for the first time. Recommended for any writers looking for very short motivational chapters! (I didn’t finish the book or the 50K word challenge by Nov. 30th, but am enjoying the continuation of both into December.)
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Recently Read
A Vineyard Christmas by Jean Stone was our book club’s December selection. It introduces the mystery author character Annie Sutton who has fulfilled a long-held dream of moving to Martha’s Vineyard and living there year-round, when a baby in a basket is left on her doorstep before Christmas. It’s followed by three more books so far.
Temporarily Not Listening To
Troubled Blood is #5 in the popular Cormoran Strike series by Robert Galbraith. (Now called the “Strike” series, apparently). The downloadable audiobook I borrowed from the library expired before I could finish it, so I’m waiting for it to come back around to me again.
Recently Listened To
Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam starts out with a white family (mother, father, two teenaged kids) leaving the city for a luxurious vacation rental home in the country for a week, just before the world goes terribly wrong and the black owners of the home arrive, looking for their own safe haven.
A memorable audiobook that, like That Kind of Mother, delves into issues of marriage, race, and class by putting families into a crisis situation.
Agatha Raisin and the Witch of Wyckhadden was, as always, narrated very well by Penelope Keith, but the story of Agatha alone on a holiday at a frowsy seaside resort left me feeling sorry for Agatha and hoping her life will take a turn for the better in the next book in the series (#10.)
Currently Listening To
Narrated by Robert Bathurst, All the Devils Are Here is the new Louise Penny book featuring Inspector Armand Gamache, of course! As you can tell from the cover, this one is set in Paris.
This post is linked to “It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?” hosted by Kathryn at The Book Date. Check out the link-up party there for more book lists!
