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.
It feels to me like our Fall Book Preview just happened—and yet much of my reading time is currently devoted to our Spring Book Preview titles, those publishing between January 1 and mid-April 2025. I’ve also spent many happy hours with Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club reading this month—both for our current selections and as I vet and choose titles we’ll read together in 2025. You’ll see that reflected in my selections below.
Because I do most of my advance reading electronically, I’ve been going with predominantly backlist titles with my audiobooks. Of these selections, regular readers may notice the unusually high percentage of nonfiction in my reading mix this month. I can’t explain how or why that happened: my reading selections are comprised of a heavy dose of both planning and whimsy, and that’s where this past month led me.
I hope you find something that looks intriguing for your TBR on this list (and in these comments), and I look forward to browsing your recent reads below. Thanks in advance for sharing your short and sweet book reviews with us here!
Welcome to November Quick Lit
This short story collection about love, sex, relationships, regrets, and secrets was one of my favorite books of 2021 and I feel like I’ve been talking about it ever since. I revisited it for the third time this fall, since we had the pleasure of hosting Deesha Philyaw in MMD Book Club last week to talk about short stories in general and this collection in particular. Some stories in this collection are quick five page reads; others are closer to 40 pages. All of them make you feel like you’re right there to witness a key revelation in the main character’s life. More info →
I loved this book when I first read it back in 2021: it anchored the Myths & Monsters category for the Summer Reading Guide that year. What a joy to reread this and talk to Stacey Swann about it in MMD Book Club in October! This spellbinding family saga reimagines Greek myths in a small-town Texas setting. In Swann’s telling, Olympus, Texas sits on the Brazos River not terribly far from Houston. It’s a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business, especially when it comes to the notorious Briscoe family. The clan is “a walking collection of deadly sins,” and due to patriarch Peter’s philandering, his children populate several households in town. When prodigal son March returns home after a years-long exile imposed after sleeping with his sister-in- law, he sets a devastating chain of events in motion. Though the story spans a mere six days, several lifetimes’ worth of secrets are revealed in that time, and the ensuing consequences to the family and their town are irrevocable. I especially appreciated that while the Briscoe family sees more than its share of heartbreak in the pages of this novel, Swann includes hints of hope and redemption as well. More info →
I wish I could remember what train of thought led me to Alderton’s debut: I downloaded the audiobook on a whim and it felt like the right book at the right time. In this memoir she explores what she knew and understood about love from the time she was young to the time she wrote the book when she was twenty-eight. The book is written in short chapters that take the form of lists, emails, personal vignettes, and satirical situations, which serves to balance the mood between the heavy and the light, the sincere and the silly. While romantic love features prominently, the book’s beating heart is platonic friendship, particularly her nearly life-long relationship with her best friend Farly, which anchors both the book and Alderton’s entire life. I pulled my car over to the side of the road so I could jot down this quote from the book’s final pages: “Nearly everything I know about love, I’ve learned in my long-term friendship with women.” I listened to the audio version narrated by the author and thoroughly enjoyed it in this format. More info →
I’ve been meaning to read this 2019 memoir ever since I read the author’s novel Little Monsters in summer 2023. I love novels about complicated family relationships; this memoir hits the same things albeit in a different genre. The story begins on a summer night in Cape Cod, when the author’s mother wakes her up at midnight to tell her she’s just kissed her father’s best friend. The author was fourteen at the time. So begins a decades-long affair, which the author is complicit in—and an essential accessory to—from the very beginning. This devastating secret would come to wreak havoc in the lives of all involved, and it would take many, many years for the full effects to be felt. This is a story about secrets, of course, about a complex and chaotic mother-daughter relationship, and about the daughter’s difficult road to break the cycle of generational trauma. It’s also very much a story about food, food writing, and Cape Cod. I listened to the audio version narrated by Julia Whelan, which was excellent. If you opt for this format, don’t miss the conversation between author and narrator at the end. More info →
Multiple readers—including several MMD team members—recommended this truth-is-stranger-than-fiction narrative to me, particularly because I’ve enjoyed reading fine arts thrillers and books about art crime in the past. This story of French thief Stéphane Breitwieser’s unmatched eight-year crime spree almost defies belief. In his meticulously researched tale, Finkel lays out how and why Breitwieser carried out more than 200 thefts of fine art worth over a billion dollars from 1994 to 2001, nabbing works from museums and galleries in France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands. This was interesting, if not exactly emotionally resonant. In fact, the bit that intrigued me most was Finkel’s almost passing reference to how Breitwieser has more in common with bibliomaniacs than with his fellow art thiefs—I would have loved to have heard more about that! I listened to the audio version, narrated by Edoardo Ballerini. More info →
I’m happy to share this is our January 2025 MMD Book Club selection! I knew it was a great pick when I devoured the audiobook in two days and came away with both a deep feeling of readerly satisfaction and an urge to talk about what happened with my fellow readers. This layered story weaves together the narratives of three different women in the same family, over a timeline that spans five centures. In the 1600s Altha is accused of being a witch for her knowledge of natural remedies and the healing arts. In the 1940s Violet is coming of age during WWII in a home where men are all-powerful and women are feared, though her own mother is absent, having died mysteriously when she was young. And in 2019 Kate is a young professional in London who is feeling increasingly isolated and imperiled due to her increasingly disturbing relationship with her boyfriend. Though living in different eras and facing different circumstances, Hart shows us how these women are fundamentally alike and share a deep spiritual connection that will ultimately save them. Weyward reminds me a little bit of Sarah Addison Allen and a whole lot of Kate Morton, two authors I love. I’m excited to read more from Hart—but first I’m excited to reread Weyward for Book Club and discuss it with the author in January! More info →
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.
The post What I’ve been reading lately: the new and the notable appeared first on Modern Mrs Darcy.