Bookshelf: Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

I watched the HBO miniseries well before I finally picked up this book. And it’s usually weird reading the book a movie or tv show you like is based on second. You notice the changes, the side stuff that was taken out. But I didn’t feel that with Sharp Objects. It felt like it’s own distinct entity from the show in a way I haven’t felt with a book I had already watched.

Reading it helped me appreciate the show much more, and having watched the show already made me appreciate the book. Because I knew the ending going in, I could really spend time with Camille as a character and not consumed with sussing out the whodunnit of the case.

As more novels are being adapted into miniseries, like Normal People and Little Fires Everywhere, it’d be interesting to experience the source material and see what changes were made for television and how it’d shaped my experience with both tellings of the story.

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Bookshelf: The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes by Elissa R. Sloan

 This book is about the life of a pop star in the early 2000s, and how that life broke her down. I started reading this book around the time Framing Britney Spears was aired on FX and Hulu, and it really does give you insight into what it's like being in the storm of fame. How things are just happening around you and you're trying to keep up. People who have their own agendas and trying and failing not to fall for their bullshit. Your personal life being picked apart. The pressure to look perfect. How a young girl was not protected by the people who were supposed to protect her. Sound familiar?

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Bookshelf: Luster by Raven Leilani

Between this novel and Kiley Reid's Such a Fun Age, this really is the time for 23-25 year-old protagonists finding themselves in various forms of unhealthy relationships, then end up finding whatever piece of themselves they needed to find. And as someone smack dab in the middle of the age range, I hope I can find that piece, too, but without the unhealthy relationships.

Most women I see reflected in pop culture in that age group are people who have at least their professional life together. So to see two complicated women who don't know what they want to do with their lives at this age is refreshing. We're pressured younger and younger to know exactly what we want to do with our lives and it's exhausting.

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Bookshelf: My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

Everyone has had that fantasy of sleeping for a year and waking up a new person; totally motivated and able to deal with life and be the person you've always wanted to be. This book puts that into practice. What would it take to actually pull off being asleep for a year? And what would it actually be like while you're in it?

This is pretty much like the quarantine book for the ages. For those whose lives were put on indefinite hold thanks to the incompetency of the cheeto-in-chief, it really has felt a bit like hibernation. A state of stasis, hopefully without the self-medicating.

This book is definitely not like anything else I've read. Our narrator is one of the messiest people who has been the focus of a novel. But through her drug-induced state, you do come to realize why this period of sleep was a rational decision for her and that you want her to get what she wanted out of it.

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Bookshelf: Crooked House by Agatha Christie

This is the second book that is in my B&N Collectible Edition of Agatha Christie stories, so now I'm two-thirds the way through it. This book is very much like Clue, except we know the weapon. So I spent a lot of time trying to figure out, along with the lead character, who the true murderer was. I did not see the true identity coming. I was detecting right alongside the lead character, and all of my theories were wrong. And that's the fun of a whodunnit. It should surprise you and come out of left field, but not so far out that you can't buy it. You can buy the identity of this murderer and why they did it.

It's hard to talk about a book where the mystery is a whodunnit because you don't want to reveal who did it if you want other people to read it. So, if you like playing Clue or watching the movie Clue, or liked Knives Out, you'll like this.

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Bookshelf: Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney

This was the first book I've read where the prose was written in how a person really thinks and comprehends others. It was like a real time breakdown of her interactions with and feelings about other people, and herself.

It's smart and messy. And I related to Frances, out protagonist, in some of the ways she processed her emotions and interactions with other people. Not her experiences. She doesn't her own feelings readily, and she overanalyzes and thinks through the different reasons why a person is acting the way that they are.

But that's what people do. They guess at what everyone else is feeling and try to navigate that as best they can, until they find out what's really going on with them. I think a lesson from this book is to have those deep conversations with your friends and everyone else in your life so you don't have to make assumptions about their behavior.

I'm looking forward to picking up Rooney's second novel Normal People, and hopefully finish it before the Hulu series airs.

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Bookshelf: Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips

This book is unlike any crime fiction you've ever read. The event that kicks of our year in the Russian peninsula of Kamchatka is the kidnapping of two girls, 11- and 8-year old sisters Alyona and Sophia. Each chapter is from the perspective of a different female character living on the peninsula, set in each successive month from August to June.

There isn't any depiction of the actual police investigation. There are a couple characters who were tangentially involved with the investigation are featured in several chapters. One woman is a witness to the kidnapping, another is an administrator at the local school who loves her weekly meetings with one of the lead cops on the case, and another is the wife of a police officer who worked the case.

It's interesting to see how the kidnapping affects the peninsula, and in the difference in the reaction to the disappearance of an indigenous eighteen year old a few years before the events of the book. And none of those tensions are stated obviously. There is direct discussion in the difference in treatment of white Russian people and the indigenous populations, but there it's not hamfisted. Every conversation about it is relevant to the characters having those thoughts or discussions, and weaves an important tapestry of the region as time goes on.

I think this is the first time I've read anything that could be considered crime fiction. It's just a genre that I've mainly delved into in movies and television, but never with my reading choices. Normally when I think of crime fiction, I think of a detective unraveling the details of the cast, dealing with twists and turns, and who's lying and who's telling the truth. But I think by not starting with the stereotypical crime fiction, I don't have a set view of what crime fiction should be.

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Bookshelf: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

This was the fist Agatha Christie, and the first murder mystery, I've ever read. That's an odd thing for me, because I love the genre. I happened to have a coupon, so I bought one of those fancy Barnes & Noble collectible editions. It also has Crooked House and Endless Night, so I’ll probably end up reading those two at some point.

I loved how integral the poem was to the story, because it’s featured right before the book starts because that’s where the inspiration for the title came from. But no, that’s how each person is killed. Follows it exactly. It was really interesting to see which characters would be one of the last to go. There wasn’t a situation where I couldn’t believe the decisions the characters were making, nothing that could be made fun of for being stupid in a parody mystery movie.

The killer was definitely not who I was expecting it to be. The character I thought was the killer was going to be Philip Lombard, the ultimate self-centered asshole. He was one of the final two characters, and he revealed himself to be the killer to Vera Claythorne, but he was lying just to keep himself alive and desperate to make it off Soldier Island. While he was serving in a war, he let men die and was pretty callous when talking about it.

The character I was rooting for most was Vera. She was clued into the puzzle from the beginning, and was the first person to put together that that is the way people were dying. I know that all of the characters are in this situation because they are responsible for someone else's death, with Vera being responsible for not stopping a boy in her charge from swimming in rough waters and being slow to save him in order for her lover to be in line for an inheritance, with the lover later leaving her because of it. She shows the most guilt for her actions, and by most, I mean only. So, while I was thrilled that she was the last survivor, I was a bit sad that she wasn't able to escape the island and succumbed to the killer's plan in a state of shock that accompanied her guilt.

Once I finished the book, I decided to look up if there were any film or tv adaptations I could watch, and I learned that in some, the ending was changed so that Vera and Philip survive. And since there was a successful Christie adaptation in 2017 with Kenneth Branagh's Murder on the Orient Express, and Death on the Nile coming in the fall, I would hope that other novels that don't feature Hercule Poirot to be made. I think And Then There Were None would be on the top of the pile, and maybe Vera could be the lone survivor and circumvent the fate of the 10 Little Soldiers poem that doomed her.

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Bookshelf: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

My sister recommended this book to me because she read Carmen Maria Machado's story inspired by Law & Order: SVU called "Especially Heinous". Not long after that, it was announced that FX was going to adapt this collection into an anthology series. Then I bought it and it say unread on my shelf for over a year because I stopped reading but didn't stop buying books. I started rectifying that over the summer, and finally made my way back to this book.

This is the first short story collection I have ever purchased, and the first short stories I've read outside of an educational setting. So that's just been cool, reading different kinds of fiction, nice to vary up my reading diet.

The stories themselves are heavy in genre metaphor, and it will probably take me a couple more reads before I fully understand them, and maybe finding some smart people who are professional critics to read their thoughts. But I'm willing to do that work to understand, because on a surface level they are fantastic genre stories, and I know they are more than that, and I'm interested in learning. And I think people need to read more stories where they have to figure out the metaphor, whether it's by themselves or by listening to others. That will just make you a better reader.

My favorite stories in this collection: "The Husband Stitch", "Real Women Have Bodies", and "The Resident"

You can find more of Carmen Maria Machado's writing here.

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Bookshelf: Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

This is essentially about a fictional Fleetwood Mac in the 70s, which is feels like it is targeted directly to me because Rumours is one of my favorite albums of all time. I would have loved if Daisy Jones was a real artist. Just hearing how her voice was described, I wanted to hear her sing so badly, and it sounds like some of the music of the 70s that I love.

The book is structured like an oral history of the group, and it was really fascinating seeing each of the characters contradicting the other about who did what, over pivotal or trivial events. And because it's an oral history, you have to read different interpretations of the events happening, and you have to decide whose account to believe, and who is an unreliable narrator.

I figured the band would split up in some way, and I had wishes for the outcomes of certain characters, and when those didn't happen as I thought it would, I got upset for them like I was reading the oral history of a real band or real people. I had definitely chosen who I had sympathized with in the band pretty early on. The big conflict of the book is Daisy vs. Billy, and I was definitely Team Daisy. Billy was a dick to the band and wanted to be the one in control of everything, and while Daisy wasn't easy to deal with, she was nice to the band and was accepting of their opinions. And the way the songs she wrote and the way she was singing was being described, it was definitely something I would listen to.

The book is being adapted by Amazon Prime as a limited series to come out next year, and I am psyched for it. I can't wait for the recreations of events by the younger versions of the characters, and the Behind the Music-like interviews of the older characters.

Also, you know when you're reading a book that is describing a song that was written by a character, or one that was created by the author to play in the background to set the scene, and you want to be able to listen to it? I have never felt that way about fictional songs more than when I was reading Daisy Jones & the Six. The author also included lyrics for all of the songs in the back of the book, so that bodes well for when they are actually recorded for the show.

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Bookshelf: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

This book is so good. I don't even want to write anything about it because I want people to go into it with as little knowledge as possible. When I read the synopsis for it, I thought I knew where it was gonna go, or at least a few ways it could. It did not go in any of the directions I thought it would, in the best way possible. Even as I was reading, I let go of the theories I had when I picked up the book and just became so engrossed in the story. And to mention, the way things end up, nothing feels like it's coming out of left field. Every decision makes sense, even if you didn't see it coming.

Because it's called The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, it would not be giving anything away to say that the novel is structured by the seven husbands. When I started reading it, I knew immediately this was going to be a great read, and I wanted to savor it. So, I though I'd read a husband a day. And that worked for the first sitting. Then the second sitting, I read three husbands. And then this morning I saw that I was halfway through and I figured I'd stop with about a quarter left in the book for me to read tomorrow. That didn't happen. I finished it in two and a half hours. I never stopped to check my phone, take a sip from my water, or go to the bathroom. I read straight through, and I don't think that has ever happened to me when I've read a book before. I do try not to check my phone when I'm reading, but I do take water and bathroom breaks because I realize those needs can't really be ignored. When I was reading this morning, I didn't feel thirsty even though I was kind or parched. Just kept reading because I needed to know what happened next.

So, even though I didn't go into detail on the actual content of the book, just take it from how enraptured I was by it that you should pick it up and read it for yourself. Or, it was announced recently that is being developed by Taylor Jenkins Reid for Freeform, if you're more of a tv person, but that will probably be awhile so just get the book.

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Bookshelf: Circe by Madeline Miller

This is a great exploration of the goddess and witch Circe that, from I can tell, is usually at best a supporting character in the Greek myths. She is probably most known today for being in Homer's The Odyssey, which I read in freshman year in high school, and do not remember a single thing about.

This is only the second time I've read a reimagining of Greek mythology, the first being the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series by Rick Riordan. Those books were also a great way of learning how the gods worked, and the first time I had learned some of the myths of the Titans, who came before Zeus and the Olympians. This way of reimagining these classic myths, whether it's like Circe, where you focus on a specific god, or like Percy Jackson, where you create new characters related to the gods, and how they might affect them.

Both Circe and Percy Jackson make all of these gods feel like real people, with motivations you understand, or we see the affects of their actions on the lives of real people. You may leave thinking of them in a different light of the original myths the gods are apart of, but that's most likely the point. 

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Bookshelf: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

I haven't read many books from the nineteenth century. Before picking up Little Women, I had previously read two books from this time, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Frankenstein I really enjoyed, and Scarlet Letter was a chore to get through. The only reason I read those novels was because they were part of the curriculum at school, which is the only reason I didn't delete my copy of that horrible book from my nook. So, all that being said, this is the first time I've willingly read a novel this old.

Also, it should be mentioned that the only reason I picked up this book is because I got really into the trailer for Greta Gerwig's upcoming film adaptation, and I will be going to see it the first day it opens.

At the start I was reading a chapter at a time, because I was still getting used to the language and writing style of the 1800's. It also helps that I got the Barnes & Noble Classics edition, so it comes with footnotes that explain the cultural references of the time so that isn't totally lost on the reader. It was more about getting the rhythm down of the prose and how the characters talk, and then translate it to my twenty-first century English, and I enjoyed that challenge of conquering the book. And as I adjusted to the style, and got more into the story, I was able to pick up the pace of my reading.

Full disclosure: I have seen the 1994 film adaptation of Little Women, and watched the episode of Friends where Joey got super into the book because it was flying around twitter after the trailer for the new movie was released.

So, I pretty much knew what was going to happen in the book. But, I was still gripped. I knew the events but I didn't know what had been changed or dropped for the movie, and I didn't get the full picture of the March sisters because there aren't whole chapters devoted to them. And since the movie primarily focused on Jo, the way I felt about the other three were how they affected Jo and didn't get as much of a sense of who they were and how they changed over time. Especially in regards to Amy, who I hope gets her due in the upcoming film adaptation that it doesn't seem like she did in the others.

Most of the books I read for fun are usually newly released books, because they're new stories that haven't been spoiled because they really haven't entered pop culture or been adapted into something popular and you can be surprised. And I think it's good to go back and read these classics. Some of them you may not even think you know the ending to because there are adaptations that change some things because there are things you can do in a novel that you can't in a two hour movie. Then there are some that are just adaptations in name only.

It's important to read these books that are considered classics still, find out why they are considered classics, and maybe reevaluate whether those books are a relic of the past, or stand the test of time. And that's an important discourse to have about works of art, whether we should move forward with or without them, enter some works that were paid less attention, for whatever reason, their due, and add newer works to the canon.

Given that this book is still being read 150 years after it was originally published, and is still being adapted for film, I'd say that we should continue to have Little Women on our shelf.

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