There are a million places to find professional book reviews. Mine are decidedly non-professional; they’re really just short bursts of what hit me hardest or tickled me pinkest or made me wish most ardently that I had an actual book club. My star ratings are imprecise and subject to change:
I loved this book! Let’s gush about it!
This was great! Lots to talk about! Let’s meet up for beers!
This was good! So glad I read it. And you?
Meh. Or did I miss something?
Actively disliked. How sad!
Another rewarding reading year!
Pink Slime
by Fernanda Trías |
Plucked from the staff recommendation shelves at East Bay Booksellers somewhat randomly. I devoured this slim, grim novel in two days. I can’t get the narrator or the boy she was caring for out of my head. My heart is all cracked and bruised from it. Set not in our pandemic but in an imagined one, where a red algae, swept off the ocean when the wind picks up, is gruesomely deadly and most everyone has moved away from the coast. So much is packed into these 200 pages. Memory, mothers & daughters, lovers, indecision, nostalgia, holding on, letting go, hunger, ferocity/tenderness. No stock characters (looking at you, Ocean, sorry to say!), no wasted words. Translated from Spanish.
The Emperor of Gladness
by Ocean Vuong |
As one of the legions who fell hard for On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, I can’t believe I’m giving Vuong’s sophomore novel just three stars. I will have to let it sit and write more later. My expectations were so high, so the disappointing elements really knocked me for a loop. I could have handled some overwrought prose, but the scenes where the whole gang banded together to embark on a far-fetched quest were (dare I say?) cringe-worthy, calling Shaggy and friends to mind even before they all jumped in a van and, on the way out of town, picked up the demented old lady in the owl sweater. A difficult blow to bear when all off Briefly Gorgeous was so pure and perfect.
That said, I know Hai and Sony and Grazina will always have a warm place in my heart. Maybe one day I’ll re-read just the beautiful parts — and there are many! — skipping over the pages that miss the mark.
James
by Percival Everett |
I had heard all the praise for James, but it took me a while to sink into it. Just a few pages in you learn that Jim and all the other slaves speak refined English when amongst themselves, but to stay out of trouble they affect “slave talk” when white folks are around. I get it, but it felt like an overwrought conceit, and it rubbed me the wrong way.
But the story was a page turner, so I moved through the book quickly. The conceit stopped bothering me, even as the story swerved a little awkwardly into some scenes that felt more allegorical than plot-driven. I stayed with it, though, and the righteous anger behind it all got hold of me. The message drives the narrative toward, and the way it comes together in the end feels organic and powerful, and I closed the book feeling the weight of its import.
The Sentence | Louise Erdrich
Read: August 2025 (thank you, Nan!)
Rated:
Reviewed: I came to appreciate this novel gradually. I didn’t like the first chapter at all, so had to be won over. I’m a sucker for a good haunting, and this book has a decent one. It’s set during the pandemic and it was definitely interesting to look back from a few years down the road. (Side note: we saw Eddington — Ari Astor starring Joaquin Phoenix — while I was reading this, a very different story set during the pandemic!)
There are definitely some good potential book club topics throughout, but the thing I loved most about the book was the loving depiction of the bookstore it’s set in, and the people who work there. Gave me definitely warm fuzzies for booksellers, and I was awash in that when I went to East Bay Booksellers recently and plucked three books off the staff recommendation shelves.
Audition | Katie Kitamura
Read: May 2025
Rated:
Reviewed: I think this book has received rave reviews from critics (and made Barack Obama’s 2025 summer reads list!), but it pissed me off. I thought the first half was brilliant, and then it did this very intentional switcheroo thing for the second half, and I hated it. Hated the characters, hated the unlikely plot, hated the world it put me in. So the two and a half stars are for the intriguing first half. This would have been a great one to have real book club about, because I do wonder if I’m alone in my ire or if there’s someone out there who would commiserate with me!
David Copperfield | Charles Dickens
Read: April-May 2025
Rated:
Reviewed: Okay, guess what? Apparently I love David Copperfield! Aside from a few sections where Dora was just too too dopey to be endured, or David’s devotion to Steerforth just a bit too treacle-y, I was so into this old tome from beginning to end. I laughed, I cried, I delighted in Dickens’ way with words. He wrote it in 1850 and yet it felt so sharp and fresh and relevant. And enjoyable. Oh – and it was so gratifying to read it with Demon Copperhead still fresh in my mind. Bravo, my friend Barbara K, what a fantastic job you did riffing off this classic!
If I had been posting this year as planned, I would have devoted an entry to my dear departed mother-in-law Elizabeth Newark, a long-time member of the Dickens Society (and the Jayne Austen Society), an author in her own right and a firebrand of a feminist, stubborn and independent as Aunt Betsey Trotwood herself. As I got into the novel, my one frustration was Dickens’ inability to imagine strong female character anywhere near as complex as his leading men. (I loved Agnes, but loved Barabara K’s Angus even more – thanks again, Barbara!). I couldn’t help but wonder: how could my mother-in-law have been so devoted to Dickens? How did she reckon with his portrayal of women?
As far as I’m concerned, the jury is still out on whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing or completely inconsequential when humans leave traces of themselves behind on the world wide web when they die. But boy was I grateful when my search for “Elizabeth Newark” “David Copperfield” turned up this gem, What the Dickens!
My questions about her perspective were answered, which was deeply gratifying. But better still, the words conjured her up and I felt so deeply grateful. I could really feel her: Granny in all her sturdiness, her wit, her intelligence, her kindness. (I referred to her as “your mother” when I first met Hugh; but as soon as Caiman was born a few years later we began calling her Granny, and it stuck.) She was not warm and mushy like my mom (interestingly they got on quite well!), but she was solid and caring, and I loved her.
The Candy House | Jennifer Egan
Read: March 2025
Rated:
Reviewed: I loved A Visit from the Goon Squad, and it was cool to revisit some of the characters (or their relations), but all in all I didn’t think this held together super well. Glad I read it, but left me wanting to find a REALLY GREAT NOVEL to read.
Kindred | Octavia Butler
Read: March 2025
Rated:
Reviewed: I really, really, REALLY wanted to love this. It’s a page turner, I’ll give Butler that, and the harrowing scenes stick with you and make you ponder just how evil humans can be. But the writing is just… not good. Am I wrong? I don’t think I’m wrong. But I sure would love someone to tell me I picked the wrong Octavia Butler book and suggest one that would turn me into a fan.
Martyr | Kaveh Akbar
Read: March 2025
Rated:
Reviewed: Didn’t quite live up to the hype for me, but still really, really good.
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle | Barbara Kingsolver
Read: January-February 2025
Rated:
Reviewed: Now I feel like I’m friends with Barbara Kingsolver, which is a para-social relationship that pleases me.
Wandering Stars | Tommy Orange
Read: January 2025
Rated:
Reviewed: This book really made me wish for a book club. So many rich themes to talk about: the generational trauma inflicted upon Native Americans, identity and culture and the harm done when a culture is forcibly erased. Bloodlines and what is passed down, and what we might owe our ancestors. Family and loss and addiction, and the idea of believing in something, whether it’s a religion or a drug or music or some god or ritual we invent because we need something to ground us or guide us or lift us up.
Home is Not a Country | Safia Elhillo
Read: January 1, on the flight home from NYC
Rated:
Reviewed: What a hauntingly beautiful story, written in verse that flows like a river, featuring an utterly unique take on time travel.
See 2024 list >>
If I Had a Book Club 