Told you another one was coming! To be fair, this newsletter was mostly written in a Starbucks on Easter Sunday, which was delightfully empty and I got to listen to the staff joke around which is always a nice soundtrack to write to. I also overheard an electrician tell his girlfriend about electricity “If you’re not scared of it, it has no power over you” and now I’m very much worried about that man’s safety.
Anyway, here are some books, catch you at the end for a March round up.
Tournament of Books Books I Read
Kiara and her brother, Marcus, are scraping by in an East Oakland apartment complex optimistically called the Regal-Hi. Both have dropped out of high school, their family fractured by death and prison
But while Marcus clings to his dream of rap stardom, Kiara hunts for work to pay their rent—which has more than doubled—and to keep the nine-year-old boy next door, abandoned by his mother, safe and fed. One night, what begins as a drunken misunderstanding with a stranger turns into the job Kiara never imagined wanting but now desperately needs: nightcrawling. Her world breaks open even further when her name surfaces in an investigation that exposes her as a key witness in a massive scandal within the Oakland Police Department.
Leila Mottley wrote this at nineteen and that alone is an achievement. I was writing anime fanfiction at nineteen and it wasn’t great (though it is how I met my best friend in college.) This is poetically written, gorgeous sentences flowing into each other. It does take a bit to get where it wants to go and there are some very rough bits to read (of course there are) but it definitely gets under your skin. I normally probably wouldn’t have picked this up and I’m glad I read it, though I think I’m more excited to see what Mottley does next cause she’s twenty one.
Olga Dies Dreaming - Xochitl Gonzalez
It's 2017, and Olga and her brother, Pedro “Prieto” Acevedo, are boldfaced names in their hometown of New York. Prieto is a popular congressman representing their gentrifying Latinx neighborhood in Brooklyn, while Olga is the tony wedding planner for Manhattan’s power brokers. Despite their alluring public lives, behind closed doors things are far less rosy. Sure, Olga can orchestrate the love stories of the 1 percent but she can’t seem to find her own. . . until she meets Matteo, who forces her to confront the effects of long-held family secrets. Olga and Prieto’s mother, Blanca, a Young Lord turned radical, abandoned her children to advance a militant political cause, leaving them to be raised by their grandmother. Now, with the winds of hurricane season, Blanca has come barreling back into their lives.
There is a lot happening in this book and it probably could have used a heavier edit, to either cut 100ish pages or add 200ish more to make it the family epic it wants to be. I have some friends that had a rough time with it but I was interested enough in all the plotlines to be engrossed (and was reading it in pdf-form so I could highlight as I went, which helped with the massive paragraphs.) Bad parents always hit me hard in books, mainly because I’m lucky enough to have two great parents and I just cannot fathom people being awful to their children, and the mother in this book is beyond the pale. I liked this but I can see how the problems, both structurally and with some of the characters, would make this a hard read for some.
My Volcano - John Elizabeth Stintzi
On June 2, 2016, a protrusion of rock growing from the Central Park Reservoir is spotted by a jogger. Three weeks later, when it finally stops growing, it’s nearly two-and-a-half miles tall, and has been determined to be an active volcano.
As the volcano grows and then looms over New York, an eight-year-old boy in Mexico City finds himself transported 500 years into the past, where he witnesses the fall of the Aztec Empire; a Nigerian scholar in Tokyo studies a folktale about a woman of fire who descends a mountain and destroys an entire village; a white trans writer in Jersey City struggles to write a sci-fi novel about a thriving civilization on an impossible planet; a nurse tends to Syrian refugees in Greece while grappling with the trauma of living through the bombing of a hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan; a nomadic farmer in Mongolia is stung by a bee, magically transforming him into a green, thorned, flowering creature that aspires to connect every living thing into its consciousness.
I honestly don’t even know how I feel about this book. I was really excited to read it! And then it was just … so many things at once. There were parts I really enjoyed, parts that stuck with me, and other parts where I’d read five pages and realize I could not have told you what happened in them. This is very much an experimental novel and sometimes those just don’t hit with me. I’d say I’m about 50/50 on this. It had really high highs but ultimately, I finished it and went “…okay.”
Regular, Non-Tournament-Based, Reading
Love, Hate, and Clickbait - Liz Bowery
Cutthroat political consultant Thom Morgan is thriving, working on the governor of California’s presidential campaign. If only he didn’t have to deal with Clay Parker, the infuriatingly smug data analyst who gets under Thom’s skin like it’s his job. In the midst of one of their heated and very public arguments, a journalist snaps a photo, but the image makes it look like they’re kissing. As if that weren’t already worst-nightmare territory, the photo goes viral—and in a bid to secure the liberal vote, the governor asks them to lean into it. Hard.
Thom knows all about damage control—he practically invented it. Ever the professional, he’ll grin and bear this challenge as he does all others. But as the loyal staffers push the boundaries of “giving the people what they want,” the animosity between them blooms into something deeper and far more dangerous: desire. Soon their fake relationship is hurtling toward something very real, which could derail the campaign and cost them both their jobs…and their hearts.
Enemies to lovers fake dating novel, you say? This was very fun, even if Thom was a little bit of a sociopath. Having this be about pr optics for a governor’s campaign was one of those things that seems silly if you think about it too hard but made sense while you were reading. I liked Clay’s backstory and I also really enjoyed the views into how the internet was reacting to their relationship. It’s not perfect but after reading a lot of capital L Literature for a month, it was a nice wind down.
The daughter of a baronet and minor heiress, Rosalind Thorne was nearly ruined after her father abandoned the family. To survive in the only world she knew, she began to manage the affairs of some of London society’s most influential women, who have come to rely on her wit and discretion.
So, when artistocratic wastrel Jasper Aimesworth is found dead in London’s most exclusive ballroom, Almack’s, Rosalind must use her skills and connections to uncover the killer from a list of suspects that includes Almack’s powerful patronesses and her former suitor Devon Winterbourne, now Lord Casselmaine.
Torn between her old love and a growing attraction to a compelling Bow Street runner, Rosalind must not only unravel the mysteries surrounding Jasper’s death, but the mysteries of her own heart as well…
My favorite genre: historical lady solves a mystery. I’m a sucker for them. I definitely like Rosalind Thorne and I think she’s got an interesting position to be coming at these mysteries from but also, and this is 100% a me problem, it’s a love triangle and I haaaaaate those. I tried to google to figure out who she ends up with (I’m horrible but I would be much too anxious if I bet on the wrong horse and then it came back to bite me, I know, I’m the worst) and google WOULDN’T TELL ME and now I’m going to keep reading the series but very trepidatiously. The mystery itself was pretty good, I liked all the side characters, but JUST LET ME PICK A BOY IN PEACE.
Golden Boy: A Murder Among the Manhattan Elite - John Glatt
By all accounts, Thomas Gilbert Jr. led a charmed life. The son of a wealthy financier, he grew up surrounded by a loving family and all the luxury an Upper East Side childhood could provide: education at the elite Buckley School and Deerfield Academy, summers in a sprawling seaside mansion in the Hamptons. With his striking good lucks, he moved with ease through glittering social circles and followed in his father’s footsteps to Princeton. But Tommy always felt different. The cracks in his façade began to show in warning signs of OCD, increasing paranoia, and—most troubling—an inexplicable hatred of his father. As his parents begged him to seek psychiatric help, Tommy pushed back by self-medicating with drugs and escalating violence. When a fire destroyed his former best friend’s Hamptons home, Tommy was the prime suspect—but he was never charged. Just months later, he arrived at his parents’ apartment, calmly asked his mother to leave, and shot his father point-blank in the head.
Journalist John Glatt takes an in-depth look at the devastating crime that rocked Manhattan’s upper class. With exclusive access to sources close to Tommy, including his own mother, Glatt constructs the agonizing spiral of mental illness that led Thomas Gilbert Jr. to the ultimate unspeakable act.
I’d never heard of this and I’m always up for reading a true crime book. This was much more a recitation of facts rather than true crime writing, which is fine but it was more like reading a long newspaper article than a book. At the end of everything, it just was a story of a guy who needed some help that he never got or accepted and it was incredibly sad. Also, Chevy Chase’s niece played a big role which was very unexpected.
March was a big month for me! I started it off by driving up to Seattle and meeting several friends who had flown out to go to Emerald City Comic Con with me. I didn’t table this year, just hung out with my friends, and it was lovely. If I could just chill and watch Season 1 of The Circle in a Seattle hotel room with Katy and Heather and Rachel and Lark and all the other folks we grabbed along the way, that would be my preferred way to live my life.
Middle of the month, I flew out to Eastern Oregon for a convention in a little town called Ontario. I was a guest so they paid for my airfare and my hotel, which is a career goal of mine checked off! It was right on the Idaho/Oregon border and such a different vibe, an atmosphere I’m not super used to. It was fun, though. Two friends went with me, Terry and I saw Scream VI Saturday night with probably the entirety of Ontario High School (teenagers think they’re so funny), and the last hour of the show a local paranormal investigator just told me and Jeff Parker ghost stories. 10/10, would do again.
Lastly, the last weekend in March I drove up to Seattle to see a showing of Mister Organ, David Farrier’s new documentary. I hung out with my friend MK and their husband Pete Saturday night which was lovely and then took myself over to the screening Sunday early afternoon. Seeing a documentary with a film festival crowd that’s super into it is highly recommended and the movie was great. Definitely go into it blind. David Farrier also has a newsletter called Webworm that I also recommend!
And that’s it for March! We’re caught up! My April will be pretty chill as I have no plans until May so I’m hoping to get lots of writing and reading done.
I didn’t mention it last newsletter but a reminder that if you’re a paid subscriber, you can pick a book for me to read and cover. I’ll devote a whole newsletter to it! So if you want me to read your favorite book, a book you hated, a book you’re curious about but would rather me read it and tell you about it, just let me know!
See you soon! Until then, happy reading!