April 2025 Bookmail
Slowly getting my numbers back up...
Yes, being unemployed, you would think I would have more time to read but it seems like I actually need to do things like apply to jobs and put furniture together and all that. I’m getting better, though! Here are my meager readings this past month.
The Family Recipe - Carolyn Huynh
The Tran family, rich from the success of their banh mi empire, is incredibly disjointed, the five siblings estranged from their father and each other ever since their mother left when they were children. Now they are summoned home by their father’s best friend and lawyer and told they each have to complete a task in the next year in order to win their father’s inheritance. I loved the writing of this and the insights into Vietnamese culture, both from first generation children and flashbacks to their parents’ experience as immigrants. One of my best friends growing up was a first generation son and parts really hit home for me remembering things he would mention. I will say, though, that this is a 600 page book stuffed into 300 or so pages. It needed so much more room to breathe and it goes at a breakneck pace. This would have been a great family epic but instead it’s a regular novel that is constantly moving forward at the cost of taking time to sit with the (numerous) characters. But I liked what it was doing so I’d check out another book by Huynh.
I used to always try and read all the Booker Shortlist but this year I could only manage the winner. (It helps when the winner is very short.) Set in one day on the International Space Station, it’s really just a slice of life reflection on earth, space, and humanity. On a sentence by sentence basis, it’s gorgeous. I understand why people fell under its spell. I found myself having trouble focusing on it, though. Even at a short 120ish pages, it felt like it took me ages to read it. That was partly me reading it on my laptop, probably, as I’m never as good at reading on it, but I think the other part was that there wasn’t a central story to pull me forward. This was just snapshots of the astronauts and their day: there’s a typhoon, one of the astronaut’s mother’s just died, someone does a spacewalk. When we got chunks of backstory from the astronauts, that’s where it shined for me. The writing really is beautiful. But I, personally, needed a bit more (and I know that’s a me problem.)
Meet Me at the Crossroads - Megan Giddings
This, meanwhile, I adored. One morning, seven mysterious doors appear around the world. When they open, they show a strange, alien world. Stepping through the door will bring one of two outcomes: either you get to explore the world and maybe encounter some sort of magic or you “pop.” There’s no way of telling which. Ayanna and Olivia are two black midwestern twins, one raised by their father in a door-related religion, one raised by their very Catholic mother. Despite being very different, they love each other immensely. But when one goes missing in door-related circumstances, this becomes a story about grief, ghosts, family, and everything that goes with it. The writing is extraordinary, sometimes touching something so specific and intense, sometimes incredibly funny. I always wanted to know what was going to happen next and I teared up a bit at the end. Very, very much recommend.
Improve: How I Discovered Improv and Conquered Social Anxiety - Alex Graudins
Important disclosure: Alex is a pal of mine. As long as I’ve known Alex, I’ve known she was a) a comics person and b) an improv person. So reading their memoir about how they got into improv and their struggle with anxiety (something I also was unaware of!) was both lovely (Alex is a great writer and artist) and even more proof of one of Alex’s points in the book: you never know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. Alex has such a charm in her art, it’s almost impossible not to smile as you read. I’d definitely recommend this to anyone interested in graphic memoirs, people who like improv, and people who struggle with anxiety. It’s wonderful.
How are everyone’s Aprils going so far? Alas, I did not get that job I had the good interview for I mentioned in the last newsletter (boooo) and as such, I have been working on side hustles and job applications since then. I have an interview tomorrow for an extremely part time job (in that it is only on Tuesdays) but at least that one would be some money rather than no money. Isn’t it funny how people need money to live and all that?
One thing I’ve been doing a lot of is movie watching. Since I have the Regal Unlimited pass, seeing a movie for me is bus fare and a fifty cent transaction fee so at least two or three times a week, Iv’ve been taking myself to a movie in the evenings. The horror flicks will be in the next Horror Dispatch but in non-horror movie viewings, I saw:
Mickey 17 - very fun, laugh out loud funny at times. Very much enjoyed it and would see it again. The highlight was that I saw it with my pal Jack who is celebrity face blind so the movie ended, the credits started and he turned to me and went “Robert Pattinson … that was the main guy?” and I laughed aloud.
Black Bag - I would not have seen this based on trailer alone as I’m not a big spy movie person but my friend Oli had said in our gc that it was more of a whodunnit and it started with the spy “detective” inviting five suspects to a dinner party and that’s what sold me. And it was really fun! Very much a whodunnit, it keeps you on your toes the whole time. Very, very much recommended.
The Luckiest Man in America - a little indie flick based on the man who broke the world record for money won on a game show on Press Your Luck in the 80s. It’s exactly what it says on the tin and if that sounds like something you’d like, you should take yourself. I had a nice time and really enjoyed the atmosphere, the film-making, and the slow unravelling of each of the characters as the routine taping gets crazier and crazier.
And now, time for my usual spiel: your beloved book and horror nerd is currently unemployed but you can help her out by subscribing to this newsletter for $5/month or $35/year. If you subscribe, you get to choose a book for me to read and I’ll dedicate a whole bonus newsletter to it. And, in fact, the first one of those is coming to you NEXT WEEK. I am a third a way through the book as I type, having started it this evening, and I’m very much enjoying it so if you want to get a taste of that sweet, sweet subscriber bonus, keep your eyes peeled.
In the meantime, enjoy your April and I’ll be back next week with a Subscriber Special and in two weeks for a new Horror Dispatch!
