Welcome to Quick Lit, where I share short and sweet reviews of what I’ve been reading lately on (or around) the 15th of the month, and invite you to do the same.
This month’s post is a little unconventional (compared to how we typically do things around here) for two reasons: our site is being cranky this week (just the book stuff, and just on our back end—as a reader, you shouldn’t be affected, thank goodness!), and I’m traveling to attend a funeral. But I still wanted to share a quick peek at what I’ve been reading lately.
Nonfiction
I read several excellent nonfiction reads this month: one memoir, one biography, and one forthcoming narrative work that I’m not sure exactly how to categorize but I LOVED it and can’t wait to tell you about it … eventually. (I imagine it will be a Spring Book Preview spotlight title!)
The memoir is Ina Garten’s much-anticipated Be Ready When the Luck Happens, which was certainly on my radar but wasn’t necessarily a priority read. But then I found myself in need of a new audiobook on October 1, the memoir’s actual release day. I downloaded the audiobook on a whim and couldn’t stop listening to Ina narrate her own story. I listened to much of it in the car on a rather stressful solo road trip, and found Ina to be the perfect traveling companion: chatty, engaging, and soothing all at once. Maybe you should take my words with a grain of salt because I’m by no means a superfan: I have a few Ina Garten cookbooks, I’ve had good luck with her recipes, I’ve seen a few snippets of her tv show while vacationing someplace with all the channels. I’m not a student of Everything Ina—but golly I loved this memoir.
I also listened to the audiobook of Keith O’Brien’s biography Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball, narrated by Ellen O’Dair. What uncanny timing, to read this lauded biography just before Pete Rose died on September 30, which reignited conversations about whether his longtime ban from baseball should be lifted so as to clear the way for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky in a baseball-loving family, not even 90 minutes away from the Cincinnati Reds’ stadium. I’m not much of a fan these days, but I was interested in learning more about the man, the city, and the baseball culture that loomed so large in my childhood. And while it was interesting, to have so many blanks filled in that completely escaped me as a child, it was also very, very sad.
Fiction
Thanks to WSIRN alum Keren Form, I enjoyed a book off my (and it looks like practically everyone else’s) beaten path, Eric Silberstein’s The Insecure Mind of Sergei Kraev. What a fascinating and timely read! This story from translation management system pioneer turned debut novelist Silberstein begins with a global disaster concerning a certain olfactory interface algorithm in the year 2120. We then go back in time twenty years and trace the events that led to all of humanity’s neural implants short-circuiting on the ill-fated day that came to be known as 4-17. In the world of the story, the overwhelming majority of human live with neural implants: imagine the capabilities of a late-model iPhone installed directly into your brain. Those who control the information streaming through your implant control the world, and the way Silberstein plays with this conceit provides much of the book’s appeal. This is a nice combination of contemplative and plotty, a good pick for fans of Blake Crouch and Helen Phillips’s Hum.
Since our trip to Germany earlier this year, I’ve been seeking out more German novels, both in the original German and in translation. When I spied a reader recommendation of the family saga This House Is Mine by Dörte Hansen in the blog comments I pounced. The story takes place in the ritzy neighborhood of Ottensen in Hamburg and an old farmhouse in Altes Land outside the city. The farmhouse has been in the family for generations, and while it’s not haunted, exactly, it does seem to shoulder the weight of numerous past tragedies that transpired within its walls. While I appreciated the distinctly German vibe of this debut, I found myself thinking often of what Kirkus said in its review: that this book “was a surprise bestseller in Germany but will probably find a cooler reception here.” I read the edition translated by Anne Stokes; heaps of content warnings apply.
It’s my longstanding custom to read every Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club selection twice; this month and for that reason I had the pleasure of revisiting Dayswork by Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel. I finished my reread just hours before we hosting Chris and Jennifer in Book Club which was an utter delight: they read to us from the book, which wasn’t an experience I knew I needed but now will never forget. This is a slim, genre-bending little book, co-written by a husband and wife writing team, about a husband and wife trapped at home with their children in the early days of the pandemic while the wife researches Herman Melville. They discuss the historical tidbits she digs up, Moby Dick commentary from other writers, the troubles with Zoom school, and their own relationship and the pressures creativity sometimes puts on it. This is a slice-of-life story, a book about books, literary criticism, and history lesson all rolled into one, with more besides, and all in the form of a poem. I can’t wait to read what they write next.
I read another wonderful book this month that we’ll soon be reading together in MMD Book Club, but I won’t share it here until we announce it to our Book Clubbers later this month. Stay tuned!
What have YOU been reading lately? Tell us about your recent reads—or share the link to a blog or instagram post about them—in comments.