Somehow it is the end of May and I don’t quite know how we got here. Time just keeps marching forward, doesn’t it? Quite rude of it, honestly. If we could just take a couple of weeks’ break so I could catch up on things, I’d really appreciate it.
Enough of that, though. Here’s a quick round up of everything I read in May
Kurouzu-cho, a small fogbound town on the coast of Japan, is cursed. According to Shuichi Saito, the withdrawn boyfriend of teenager Kirie Goshima, their town is haunted not by a person or being but a pattern: UZUMAKI, the spiral—the hypnotic secret shape of the world. The bizarre masterpiece horror manga is now available all in a single volume. Fall into a whirlpool of terror!
I love Junji Ito, I’m a huge fan, and I’ve somehow managed to never read two of his classics, Uzumaki and Tomie, all the way through before so when I saw they had brand new all in one editions, I immediately put them on hold at work. Like most Junji Ito works, Uzumaki starts slow and then raaaaaamps up. I liked some chapters better than others but the way he moves from ‘this guy’s dad has a weird thing for spirals’ to, well, how it ends is impressive. And his incredibly detailed art!! Even when it’s horrifying, it’s beautiful. Although, seriously, everyone should have moved away after roughly chapter two.
Young Sophia has lived in so many different countries, she can barely keep count. Stationed now with her family in Central America because of her parents’ work, Sophia feels displaced as an American living abroad, when she has hardly spent any of her life in America.
Everything changes when she reads a letter she was never meant to see and uncovers her parents’ secret. They are not who they say they are. They are working for the CIA. As Sophia tries to make sense of this news, and the web of lies surrounding her, she begins to question everything. The impact that this has on Sophia’s emerging sense of self and understanding of the world makes for a page-turning exploration of lies and double lives.
I’m a sucker for a graphic memoir. I’m always fascinated by the different lives people lead and I’ll pick up pretty much any one for a glimpse into another life. Sophia’s book is masterful in mixing a strange, secretive family life with the typical problems of being a teen girl anywhere. I also really enjoyed her deceptively simple art style. I’ll definitely be looking for more from her.
The Gilded Shroud - Elizabeth Bailey
1789, London
When Emily Fanshawe, Marchioness of Polbrook, is found strangled in her bedchamber, suspicion immediately falls on those residing in the grand house in Hanover Square.
Emily’s husband - Randal Fanshawe, Lord Polbrook - fled in the night and is chief suspect – much to the dismay of his family.
Ottilia Draycott is brought in as the new lady’s companion to Sybilla, Dowager Marchioness and soon finds herself assisting younger son, Lord Francis Fanshawe in his investigations.
Can Ottilia help clear the family name? Does the killer still reside in the house?
Or could there be more to the mystery than meets the eye…?
It’s my favorite genre: historical woman solves a mystery. And it has my favorite bonus flavor: we fell in love solving a mystery. Ottilia (or Tillie, as she becomes) is delightful as she’s incredibly quick and clever, charming, and quick to laugh, even when it’s a little inappropriate. The mystery was just twisty enough to keep the characters on their toes so that while I figured out the killer pretty early, I wasn’t incredibly frustrated our detectives weren’t on the same page as me.This is easily one of my new favorite series and I gobbled this up, immediately putting the next book on hold. I’m a Ottilia fan.
We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence - Becky Cooper
1969: the height of counterculture and the year universities would seek to curb the unruly spectacle of student protest; the winter that Harvard University would begin the tumultuous process of merging with Radcliffe, its all-female sister school; and the year that Jane Britton, an ambitious twenty-three-year-old graduate student in Harvard's Anthropology Department and daughter of Radcliffe Vice President J. Boyd Britton, would be found bludgeoned to death in her Cambridge, Massachusetts apartment.
Forty years later, Becky Cooper a curious undergrad, will hear the first whispers of the story. In the first telling the body was nameless. The story was this: a Harvard student had had an affair with her professor, and the professor had murdered her in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology because she'd threatened to talk about the affair. Though the rumor proves false, the story that unfolds, one that Cooper will follow for ten years, is even more complex: a tale of gender inequality in academia, a 'cowboy culture' among empowered male elites, the silencing effect of institutions, and our compulsion to rewrite the stories of female victims.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It’s a brick of a book, a good 440ish pages with an extra 100 of footnotes, but it’s so incredibly readable. It’s a mixture of an investigation into a murder, a remembrance of a life, a look at women in academia, how stories are told, and just everything in-between. I was honestly blown away. Though it’s starting point is true crime, this is about so much more and I’ll be recommending it to everyone. Looking forward to the next thing from Becky Cooper.
Sinkhole: A Legacy of Suicide - Juliet Patterson
In 2009, Juliet Patterson was recovering from a serious car accident when she learned her father had died by suicide. His death was part of a disturbing pattern in her family. Her father’s father had taken his own life; so had her mother’s. Over the weeks and months that followed, grieving and in physical pain, Patterson kept returning to one question: Why? Why had her family lost so many men, so many fathers, and what lay beneath the silence that had taken hold?
In three graceful movements, Patterson explores these questions. In the winter of her father’s death, she struggles to make sense of the loss—sifting through the few belongings he left behind, looking to signs and symbols for meaning. As the spring thaw comes, she and her mother depart Minnesota for her father’s burial in her parents’ hometown of Pittsburg, Kansas. A once-prosperous town of promise and of violence, against people and the land, Pittsburg is now literally undermined by abandoned claims and sinkholes. There, Patterson carefully gathers evidence and radically imagines the final days of the grandfathers—one a fiery pro-labor politician, the other a melancholy businessman—she never knew. And finally, she returns to her father: to the haunting subjects of goodbyes, of loss, and of how to break the cycle.
As always, I’m fascinated by memoirs of how every day people deal with terrible things. I was shelving this, read the back, and instantly checked it out for myself. Unfortunately, I did it the disservice of reading it right after We Keep The Dead Close and really nothing could have lived up to that. As interesting as this was, there was always a distance, not quite leaning into the historical and yet not getting to intimate, either. I can understand wanting to keep that separation when writing things that are so very personal but it just felt like it wasn’t quite sure what it wanted to be, memoir, reflection, or exploration.
Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China - Paul French
Chronicling an incredible unsolved murder, Midnight in Peking captures the aftermath of the brutal killing of a British schoolgirl in January 1937. The mutilated body of Pamela Werner was found at the base of the Fox Tower, which, according to local superstition, is home to the maliciously seductive fox spirits. As British detective Dennis and Chinese detective Han investigate, the mystery only deepens and, in a city on the verge of invasion, rumor and superstition run rampant. Based on seven years of research by historian and China expert Paul French, this true-crime thriller presents readers with a rare and unique portrait of the last days of colonial Peking.
I’m always interested in narrative nonfiction that sounds interesting on its own and is set in a place I know little about. I had absolutely no clue what 1930s China was like and this seemed completely up my alley. The writing is a little weak and sometimes the story is kind of pulling you along despite itself. However, the research French clearly did for the back half of the book and the very last chapter, that tells you what happened to each the players during and after the war, hits incredibly hard. The book itself is dedicated to Pamela and truly, I’m glad to know of her. She deserves to be remembered.
The Bride Wore White - Amanda Quick
Being Madame Ariadne, Psychic Dream Consultant, wasn’t Prudence Ryland’s ideal gig, but it paid well which was reason enough to do the work—until she realizes that her latest client intends to kill her. But Prudence, a master at reinvention, finds a new job and home as far away as possible and is finally able to relax—which turns out to be a big mistake. Letting her guard down means being kidnapped and drugged and waking up in a bloodstained wedding dress in the honeymoon suite next to a dead man. With the press outside the hotel, waiting with their cameras and police sirens in the distance, it’s obvious she’s being framed for the man’s murder. Prudence knows who is responsible, but will anyone believe her?
It doesn’t seem likely that rumored crime boss Luther Pell or his associate, Jack Wingate, believe her seemingly outrageous claims of being a target of a ruthless vendetta. In fact, Prudence is convinced that the mysterious Mr. Wingate believes her to be a fraud at best, and at worst: a murderer. And Jack Wingate does seem to be someone intimately familiar with violence, if going by his scarred face and grim expression. So no one is more shocked than Prudence when Jack says he’ll help her. Of course, his ideas for helping her involve using her as the bait for a killer, but Prudence feels oddly safe with Jack protecting her. But who will protect Prudence from her growing fascination with this enigma of a man?
I’ve talked about my love of the Burning Cove series before, apparently before book four when they took the turn of “also sometimes people have psychic abilities.” God, I love these nonsense books. They read in about two hours, they have the most nonsensical plots you’ve ever seen, and I adore them. This was book 7. 7!! I hadn’t even realized it came out until I saw it in the new books section at work and grabbed it as quickly as I could. I wish we got more than one a year. Some of my favorite candy bar books.
May really flew by. I was lucky enough to have friends in town several weekends in May and spent a long weekend up in Vancouver BC for VanCaf, a delightful free indie comics show that you should definitely go to whenever you’re in town. One of the highlights every year for me is a tradition some friends and I have started where, after the show ends on Saturday, we all grab take out from a row of restaurants and then just sit out in the nearby park and eat together.
I was lucky enough to get to see friends again this year, have a lovely park picnic Saturday night, and then ended up spending Sunday just relaxing in the delightful Airbnb I had, completely with adorable little patio I spent time writing on all weekend. It was a much needed respite and I’m so happy I got the chance for a proper trip.
Alas, I have no big exciting plans to look forward to in June but in July, I’ll be headed down for a long weekend in New Orleans to visit my best friend Katy with our mutual friend Heather. I’ve never been to New Orleans so feel free to send suggestions. I’m mostly happy just to see my friends, perhaps eat some delicious food, and see something spooky. But I’ve got a whole month and a half to plan that!
We’ve come to the end of this month’s newsletter and I am here to remind you that following along on this reading journey is completely free but if you’d like to subscribe (for the low, low price of $35/year), you get to choose any book you’d like for me to read and I’ll devote a whole newsletter to it. Alas, no one has yet sent me one. I have subscribers! Bless and/or torture me with your recommendations! I’m waiting for you!
It is June the first and I must gird myself against the onslaught of Summer Reading at the library. I hope you all are ready to enjoy it. Until next month, happy reading!