Looking for a fresh read?

So, I gave myself the challenge of reading a book a week. Not since college days have I read at such a clip. It is turning out to be a little challenging, especially since I keep getting sucked into TV shows (Vikings: Valhalla, Dark, and Sweet Tooth, to name a few).

If you're interested, here are the 15 titles I've read so far this year. (I'm behind by two! Yikes!)

There should be a dramatic genre shift in the next months, as I have a LOT of nonfiction on my shelves waiting to be read. Which is going to slow me down even more. Maybe I need to squeeze in a few novellas, or else start counting the children's books I've been nibbling on. 

Anyway, because I'm a big fan of sharing my unasked opinion (in a low-risk zone), here are my thoughts on my top two reads of the year so far plus scathing criticism for my two least favorites. Enjoy.

My top favorite read so far...

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

MAGICAL. I don't know how to write a review that does this book justice. I suppose this is another novel we owe to David Mitchell for the groundbreaking form of Cloud Atlas, but dear lord, it's so much better than Cloud Atlas. Not that reviews need to pit books against each other, but...

Reading this book is like being caught in a frantic, bewildering fever dream, but a cozy one that you never want to end. Just lean into the chaos. Embrace the labyrinthine journey. It's warm and candlelit and there are cocktails. Are they posioned? Maybe. But the experience is worth the risk.

I'm sensing a trend. All my favorite novels are about the power of story and how story both drives us and makes us human. This one's about that, plus about how story is so many things to so many people and not necessarily the same thing to more than one person.

Don't try to figure it all out. It will drive you mad. The symbolism and the yarn-on-the-wall connections... you can get a loose map of meaning, but you won't find the 1:1 key because it never existed. I know this review doesn't make a ton of sense. It's not my fault. I'm still lost in the Starless Sea. Read it.

My absolute least favorite...  

Island by Aldous Huxley
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

It took me 3 weeks to read the first 200 pages of this book. I read the second half today, skimming, to get it over with.

I can see how this book would be a valuable and intriguing introduction for some into asking some of the bigger questions and reconsidering some of the Western structures so often taken for granted as normal and good.

But I did not enjoy it and I don't think it's fair that Huxley got to publish such a long and boring philosphical thesis under the thin guise of a novel. This is no novel. It is a sermon. And the novelish dressing on it is incredibly underwhelming. Sorry to Huxley and the friend who recommended this to me.

The only other book I rated 5 stars so far this year...

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I can't believe I read this at age 11. It's incredibly difficult after a long string of contemporary reads to readjust one's brain to the cadence and density of Dickens.

But my lord. It's so good.

Melodramatic. Charicaturized. Torturously winding. And all the freaking better for it. I love Dickens.

I remember WEEPING when I read this as a child. I also remember being absolutely horrified by Madame Defarge. This time around, I only misted up a little, and was not nearly so affected by Madame Defarge - In fact, she struck me as brilliant when I was reintroduced to her. No less evil, of course, but more fascinating.

Also: the comedic relief in this piece is SO GOOD. I had at least 3 lough out loud moments and several chuckles. Observations on Tellson's. Jerry Cruncher and his floppin' wife. The sturdy Miss Pross and her interactions with the steady Mr. Lorry. The cast of characters is incredibly broad, but each one fits so well.

The strange thing about this novel is that its flat characters (most of them) are flat, flat, flat (could Lucie be a more boring heroine? She's less even of a heroine and more of the saintly thread that happens to join all these other characters) and round characters (Carton and only Carton as far as I'm aware) are more like double-sided cutouts - first one way, then another, and you hardly know why. But it works for me. Five stars. Again.

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I have an additional thought that I'm going to put here: as as is my wont, I'm reading Goodreads review after the fact, and many people have criticized Dickens/this novel for having uninteresting, unrelatable characters that are impossible to care about.

And while I do agree that the characters are largely flat and unrelatable, I disagree that that's a problem.

This is a A Tale of Two Cities, not A Tale of Lucie Manette and Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton. This is a tale of Paris and London, of Unrest versus Peace, of Vengeance and Sacrifice. The characters are human vehicles through which the principal themes play out. No one character is truly that important in this book - they're all just playing their part in the great drama of illustrating the cause, effect, defeat, victory, and passions of the French Revolution.

It's also been criticized as dry and humorless in comparison to his other works. If you found no humor here, that's entirely your fault as a reader, because if you can't see the comedy in every single scene with Jerry Cruncher, or the references to the old workers at Tellson's bank, or the narrator's critical eye toward Mr. Stryver, you're clearly skipping whole passages!

Sure, if Dickens isn't your taste, I get it. But don't accuse him of falling short when you didn't pay attention to the book!

The other book I hated...

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

1) omg this was so boring.
2) what posessed D.H. Lawrence to write as if he understood everything there was to know about a woman's sexuality? That level of presumption may be bolder than the sex scenes themselves.

IDK what I expected from this book, but pages on pages of rants outlining the decline of true human civilization, dialogue by imbelicic characters on the vast differences of the classes, antisemitism, and weird references to ancient races and womb-feelings was not it. This book was so weird that the p€n!$e$ were among the least of its problems for me. I read it out of sheer curiosity and now I have zero remaining curiosity for anything else Lawrence may have written. Sure, it was graphic and unabashed. But mostly it was philosophical in a wildly boring way.

In conclusion: Most of my reviews land somewhere in the middle, and I would recommend 13 of the 15 with caveats, so if you just can't get enough of my opinion, you know what to do: View all my reviews