June 2025 Book Mail
Hello from the Monastery! I got a bit turned around the past few weeks, getting into the flow of new job (and also doing a little bit of weekend work for the Spring Luncheon) so this newsletter is slightly delayed. But I would never deny you all my thoughts on books so here we go~
Books I Read This Month
Experimental Film - Gemma Files
After I read the Paul Tremblay haunted movie book a few months ago and was ultimately disappointed, my friend Lars suggested I check out this one and good suggestion! Told in retrospect, this book follows a Canadian film reporter/researcher as she becomes obsessed with an obscure film she finds that just might be evidence of the first female Canadian filmmaker in a rich, disappeared woman from the early 1900s. There’s folklore and haunted film reels and the ever-present specter of danger. I really enjoyed the writing style and will be checking out more by Files in the future, I think.
The Ghosts of Gwendolyn Montgomery - Clarence A. Haynes
Speaking of ghosts! Gwendolyn Montgomery is a PR superstar in NYC and very proud of the reputation she’s made for herself. After a profile on her comes out, however, events she’s running start being sabotaged in major ways. Across town, a queer medium keeps running into his ex-boyfriend while trying to figure out why the ghosts are getting louder. The back of the book called this a “sexy, ghostly adventure” which made me laugh when I read it but they weren’t wrong! I really enjoyed the dual point of view and seeing how these two stories would interconnect. The author is Afro-Latine-Panamanian and steeps the novel in that mix of cultures, which gives it both a lived in depth and led me to learn more about Panama than I had known previously. I’m unsure how I feel about the denouement, which was awfully fast. I wish a little more time had been spent on that but I also hope the fact that there’s not much means a sequel might be on the way because that is a universe I would definitely spend more time in.
The Wrong Lady Meets Lord Right - Suzanne Allain
Sometimes you just need a chill Regency romance. Our heroines are Arabella and Lady Isabelle, two cousins who have been raised by sisters despite Isabelle being of a much higher class as Arabella’s father married beneath her. When Issy’s mother passes away, the girls are whisked away to London to stay with their great aunt for Isabelle’s first season. Except Isabelle is a little sickly and would much rather lay in bed and read and their aunt’s eyesight isn’t what it used to be. So Arabella goes out as Isabelle and Issy stays home as the poor relation, both of them extremely happy to be living the life that they prefer. Until, of course, they both begin falling for men that believe them to be people they’re not. The set up for this is extremely cute and I love a pair of devoted friends/sisters/cousins helping each other out. Despite that, this plot felt rather formulaic, not that I need Regency romances to be groundbreaking, but if you’re going to use a tried and true plot, mix it up a little bit. Do something new with it. It all just kind of felt like it chugged along to it’s inevitable end. I know Arabella was our main character and we were following her point of view but I wanted to know so much more about Isabelle and her love story so maybe that was my issue. Still, it was cute, a fast read, and if they want to turn this book into a movie too (ala Mr. Malcolm’s List), I’d watch it in a heartbeat.
Catch the Sparrow: A Search for a Sister and the Truth of Her Murder - Rachel Rear
I am a sucker for both true crime and a memoir so when I saw this at the library, I snatched it up. Rachel’s stepsister went missing years before her stepfather and mother got married but living in a small town, everyone knew about it. This book is a way for Rachel to ask the questions she’d always wondered about growing up and connect with a sister she never actually got to know. I really appreciate what Rear is trying to do and it seems like the journey meant a lot both to her and the people she worked with and interviewed for the book. I’m not sure if I enjoyed (which is a terrible word for this but you know what I mean) the book as much as other books in similar genres but when it comes to things like this, I’m still so so glad they exist.
Set in modern day Seattle, an unnamed middle aged disabled Indian sociology professor decides to hold a swayanvar, an ancient Indian marriage rite where a group of suitors perform feats for the woman’s hand, for her 55th birthday. What follows is a rumination on aging, on culture, on misogyny, on disability, on friendships and love, on what it means to be human. For a book with a pretty strong center, it ends up being mostly vignettes of our heroine meeting different people who have different opinions on what she’s doing (her post about it goes viral, of course.) Some of these people are amazing, some of them are terrible, some of them might be goddesses?? We’re also slowly told the story of our heroine’s ancestors whose love “cursed” the family and honestly, that story was much more interesting to me, although clearly not what the author wanted to focus on. I’m glad I read this book, I feel like I learned a lot, but I don’t know if I’d seek out the author again.
Well, you work a week and a half at the Monastery and then your boss goes on pilgrimage for seven weeks. I am now alone in my office (though there are five or six other people nearby) for the next month and a half as my boss is leading a pilgrimage followed by a tiny vacation followed by a big meeting of his order. It’s wild to me that I am left with so little supervision (not that I’m going crazy but still!) but I’m not going to complain about it.
I DID discover this week that I have a long enough lunch break to make it to the library and back and THAT seems like a dangerous game. We’ll see how that develops in the following weeks.
Otherwise, I’m currently just figuring things out here, going on a few random adventures with friends (Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia was a delightful Saturday excursion) and continuing to get my bearings. Everyone pray I don’t melt this summer!
Speaking of reading, I have so much more time to read now, a full hour in the gardens each day, so this is your reminder that for $5/month or $35/year, you can subscribe to this newsletter, help me out with my bills, and pick a book for me to read and devote a whole bonus newsletter to. I really enjoyed the last one and I’m looking forward to my next book adventure, good or infuriating.
Until then, though, I’ll keep reading! I hope you do, too! Let me know what you’re enjoying and I’ll see you in two weeks for another Horror Dispatch and four for another Book Mail!