I haven’t been writing much lately BUT I have been reading! I’m slowly but steadily making my way through the stacks of books in my library queue. There have been some misses for sure—I found The Lost Apothecary, Mexican Gothic and The Vanishing Half all overrated—but also plenty of hits.
My favorite book that I’ve read so far this year is The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. It was laugh-out-loud funny, which I find is such a hard thing to accomplish with fiction. I just finished AC Wise’s Wendy, Darling, which was so good that I put the baby to bed, stuck the toddler in front of Paw Patrol, and curled up with a bowl full of popcorn to finish it. I loved And Then She Was Gone, Disappearing Earth as well as Saint X, which was beautifully written, although I need to stop reading books about missing daughters because they destroy my heart. I don’t normally like books where the main characters are writers, but I did recently enjoy The Plot, which pulled it off! Some other good books that I was way overdue to read were The Book Thief (how it took me this long, I don’t know!), Ready Player One and The Thirteenth Tale (again, a successful example of writing about writers!).
My second daughter and I have also been flying through the Nancy Drew series. I always thought I was a stickler for the original 56, but we’ve moved onto the ones in the 100s and I think I actually enjoy them more: There’s way less sexism and racism, the bad guys aren’t as obvious, the plots are more complex and they don’t use the word “attractive” every sentence (Nancy is an attractive 18-year-old, who lives in an attractive house and drives an attractive car).
Anyway. I’ll get back to writing soon enough here, but I’m definitely enjoying making a dent in my library books in the meantime!
Alison O. Bender 