December 2022 Reads

Photo by Tom Hermans on Unsplash

My reading is on a steady streak, nonfiction is making an appearance, deleting social media apps ALWAYS makes more time for reading, and being on steroids for an unexplained rash certainly narrowed my ability to focus for the better when it came to reading (not many good things come from being on steroids, so I took this as a win).

The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

I bought this book in a small shop thinking it was Mandel’s newer book, Sea of Tranquility, but I’m still glad I read it. Mandel’s writing is dreamy and slides through time (much like I remember the experience of reading The Night Circus) tho TGH is much more concrete than TNC, but maybe more compact, a tighter lens then one of my all time fav books Station Eleven, also written by Mandel. I liked how the character paths overlapped, but there was no tight end to their resulting interactions. I still think about this book, the darker settings, and Vincent out filming five-minute segments of her life.
Paperback, purchased ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

A Master of Djinn (Dead Djinn Universe #1) by P. Djèlí Clark

Entertaining, interesting and some really good world building. Main characters are diverse in this fancy suite wearing detective novel set in Cairo, 1912, where there’s been magic for 40 years. I read a lot of this hopped up on steroid and/or up all night because my daughter, and then I, had the flu. #FUNTIMES here at the end of 2022.
Paperback, from a friend ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Currently Reading

How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell

What, nonfiction? I know. I am as surprised as you are, but I have a feeling my brain is interested in a lot more nonfiction for 2023. We’ll see.

The StoryGraph

I’m on Goodreads here, but I using The StoryGraph more for a few reasons: Goodreads is problematic (read this Time magazine article) and it’s owned by Amazon. And I like StoryGraph’s metrics much better, plus it was founded by a Black woman.