April Reading Roundup
Woodworking, Sucker Punch and more books I read last month
Hello!
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Now, let’s get into what I read in April!
Woodworking by Emily St. James
Wow, wow, wow! What a book! And a debut, at that. A 35-year old English teacher in small town South Dakota is recently divorced and trans. Struggling to find community, a 17-year old trans girl transfers into the high school and an unlikely friendship is born.
I’m a ride-or-die for St. James. I expected to like this book, but I LOVED it. It has my three favorite things: coming-of-age, small town, ensemble cast. And it’s funny! This book has so much heart. Fave of the month!
I hope it goes without saying, but I consider myself extremely lucky to have friends who trust me enough to show me who they are. It’s not a small thing and it’s not something I take for granted. What is being done to the trans community is abhorrent. If you’re an ally, but maybe don’t have a lot IRL trans friends, I think this book will blow your heart wide open in the best way.
Deep End by Ali Hazelwood
I read a lot of Ali Hazelwood, but this one didn’t do it for me. The spice is super spicy, but there’s not much else to it. I wish she had fleshed out the relationship more. I also found the “conflict” in the third act to be kind of a snooze.
Sucker Punch: Essays by Scaachi Koul
Sorry to be riding and dying all over this newsletter, but in addition to Emily St. James, I ride-or-die for Scaachi Koul. I couldn’t wait to read this book. In case you don’t know, this is Koul’s much anticipated divorce memoir.
There are two amazing essays in here and they’re worth the price of the book. I felt like a few other essays needed a tighter edit. As much as I admire Koul’s writing and humor, in hindsight, this book may have been too up close and personal for me at the ripe old age of 48. However, I would have loved this book in my thirties. I’m glad she wrote it and I hope the people who need to read it find their way to it. I will continue to read everything she writes.
Once and Future Lovers by Sheree L. Greer
I took a writing class with Sheree a few years ago and she is hands-down one of the best writing teachers I’ve ever had. But I had never read any of her books. Until now.
This is a collection of short stories that mostly center around Black women loving each other in romantic and non-romantic ways. It’s such good writing. I devoured this. Beautiful imagery, beautiful sentences. I loved it.
True to You: A Therapist's Guide to Stop Pleasing Others and Start Being Yourself by Kathleen Smith
Kathleen Smith sent me her book, this book, because we have a shared friend in Mary Laura Philpott, and I’m glad she did! This book is so helpful in understanding codependency, people pleasing and how over and under functioning plays out in your relationships, especially in families. I flagged this excerpt:
“Telling people not to be too hard on themselves is a multimillion-dollar, if not billion-dollar, industry. … We buy books that tell us to wake up at 5 a.m., and then we listen to podcasts criticizing the people who tell us to wake up at 5 a.m. It is all deeply satisfying, because we get the dopamine hit from thinking about changing, and we get the dopamine hit from feeling superior to the very people who gave us that advice. Perhaps the problem isn’t that we’re simply too hard on ourselves. Maybe it’s also that we need people to tell us this.”
It’s such a great book. The chapters on over and under functioning have really stuck with me and helped explain a lot of sticky spots I’ve been in that didn’t quite make sense at the time. Kathleen also has a great newsletter if you’re curious about the kinds of things she writes about.
Rabbit Moon by Jennifer Haigh
I read an advanced copy of this because I was in conversation with the author for her book tour stop at Parnassus. And let me just say, she was one of the best author interviews I’ve done. I learned so much about her writing process, Shanghai and all kinds of stuff about publishing in China.
I learned through talking with Haigh that she’s not a plotter. She writes her books around a set of events. This isn’t my preferred type of book. I like a solid plot. But if you don’t and you’re interested in a family drama set in Shanghai, definitely pick this book up. She’s a celebrated author and a lot of her backlist books have done really well, particularly Mercy Street.
ICYMI: Here’s what I read last month:
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