January was a great reading month, as usual! It's always good to get ahead on my goals for the year. This month, I also had time to read books for what ended up being 4 different book clubs (one of the books was the same), and I'm continuing with all of them for now since I'm interested in the next book they're reading, respectively, but it's also ok if I have to drop off one or two temporarily or permanently down the road.
- Children of Virtue and Vengeance by Tomi Adeyemi-It's been a few years since I read the first book, which I enjoyed, but felt relatively YA/traditional epic fantasy except that it was African-inspired. I liked this second book much better--it's more complex and grey, and does a haunting job of portraying the dynamic between groups that have been struggling against each other for generations, with different levels of power and oppression. The third book, Children of Anguish and Anarchy, is coming out this year, so it was a good time to finally catch up on the series.
- Out of the Corner by Jennifer Grey (Book club read)--Very interesting, very detailed/explicit about sex and drugs, favorite chapter was "The Time of My Life" about her experience on Dirty Dancing--really helps illuminate what was happening in the scenes, amazing how similar she was to Baby; also her Dancing with the Stars behind-the-scenes was quite poignant even though I've never seen the show, and the end presented an exciting unknown of being a woman past marriage/childbearing.
- Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (Other book club readx2)--I feel like this was THE book of 2023--I'm actually attending two book clubs this month for it, and a lot of other people I know have read or are reading it for book clubs or otherwise. It's very enjoyable and I read it in a day, but for me, it was an interesting premise and character but it didn't teach me anything new or have any unusual take on feminism, so it's not living up to what I expected from the hype, and I probably would have liked it more without it. Still, it's often fun to read a book in the current zeitgeist.
- My Goodbye Girl by Anna Gomez-This was a review book from LibraryThing that I'd accepted last year, so feeling good about finishing it! Read my review here.
- The Last Blue by Isla Morley (Yet another book club read)--This is another one of a slew of books in the late 2010s/early 2020s (is it too soon to say that, lol?), about the Blue People of Kentucky--I thought this one was a prettily written love story that focuses a lot on the landscape and wildlife since the MP is a photographer and the FP, the "Last Blue," rehabilitates wildlife as a hobby. I'd recommend it if you are looking to get immersed in a slower historical fiction about what life might have been like as one of the last of the Blues, in the 1930s.
- Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro (Book club read for February)--This is the first fiction I read by Shapiro, and I loved it. Just as well-written as her memoir, Inheritance. Beautiful commentary on the nonlinear nature of life, time, and memory.
- The Fast and the Furies (Syn City Shifter Book #3)--Also a review book from LibraryThing. This romantasy was actually more interesting to me in its use of Greek mythology and shifter cultures in a possibly postapocalyptic society, including Syn City, which centers on roller derby. Would go back and read the others.
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