An okay reading month all things considered. December is always the month I’m inclined to read the least. I want to curl up with Christmas movies and find myself a little burnt out from thinking after socializing so much! I read some solid books and some questionable books… here’s where I landed:
MAILMAN by Stephen Starring Grant
4.5/5 Stars
I listened to Mailman and found myself thoroughly entertained. It’d be a great choice for an audiobook if you want something that you can listen to with a partner. It’s a memoir about a guy who loses his cushy marketing job at the beginning of the pandemic and decides to become a rural mail carrier in Appalachia. I really enjoyed learning more about the process of being a mailman, especially one in a rural area. The author is a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and one of my friends brought up a good point that he probably maybe just became a mailman for a year just for a good book idea… which he sort of maybe alludes to at the end. It took away a little bit of the charm of the book– as that makes it feel more manufactured– but I still enjoyed it overall.
BITTER SWEET by Hattie Williams
3.5/5 Stars
Bitter Sweet ended up being a bit of a forgettable book to me. A young woman in PR falls for a narcissistic, much older writer in the UK publishing world. It’s quite cliched and very #metoo, and I think there are better stories out there that give the same kind of dark “romance” vibes.
FELLOWSHIP POINT by Alice Elliott Dark
4/5 Stars
This is an incredibly, incredibly long book. I looooooved the writing, though I listened to it and I’m not sure I would have had the energy or patience to sit down with a book. It’s one of those super long, character driven novels where you get fully immersed in someone’s tiny slice of life. It felt very much like an Elizabeth Strout book to me! It takes place between Maine and Philadelphia with a cast of characters in the orbit of Agnes Lee, a celebrated children’s book author, who is in the process of trying to convince the other shareholders of a property in Maine to donate the land to a land trust for conservation. There is a LOT going on but it develops slowly. You feel like you’re friends with everyone by the end. Family drama, friendship, aging, conservationism.
LITTLE ONE by Olivia Muenter
4.5/5 Stars
Olivia Muenter’s next book is coming out soon! Little One checks all of the boxes for an exciting read to me. This is about a woman who escaped from her father’s cult in rural Florida. It’s creepy and very well-written and had me on the edge of my seat. The whole time I kept picturing it as a series on Netflix! It goes back and forth between the past– her experience growing up in the cult– and the present, unraveling the tangle of it all with a (cute) investigative journalist. The endinggggg.
SOME BRIGHT NOWHERE by Ann Packer
3/5 Stars
Whew. Some Bright Nowhere was much heavier than I expected. It’s about a husband following through with his dying wife’s final wish to spend her last days with her friends… and not him. I don’t know what I thought I was expecting when I started reading it, but it was quite depressing. I read it right around Christmas and it was just kind of a bummer all around and I didn’t find the characters particularly likeable? One element of the book that I liked was comparing adult male friendships to female friendships and what that looks like, for better or for worse.
THEO OF GOLDEN by Allen Levi
2/5 Stars
Theo of Golden started coming across my desk, so to speak, every single day. I was seeing it everywhere and hearing about it…. but all from people who were saying, “oh everyone is talking about this, I’m going to read it.” I hadn’t known anyone who had actually read it. So I read it and I’m convinced it’s an industry plant It’s a self-published book that sold a lot of copies, I’m assuming to church groups, and then got picked up by a publisher. It’s very much a religious book, which I think certainly has its audience. But I personally found it boring and preachy. I also had just read Fresh Water for Flowers, which had a similar vibe of getting the stories of different strangers.
