What I'm Reading This Week (January 1, 2024)

 I didn't plan it this way, but how appropriate it seems to be starting a new reading week on the very first day of 2024. Last week I finished The Last Talk with Lola Faye by Thomas H. Cook and Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus and I will post reviews for both books in the next several days (loved them). I'm also close enough to finishing two others, The Night of the Storm by Nishita Parekh and Laurie Frankel's Family Family that I'll probably finish one of those today.

I'm a fan of Laurie Frankel novels, so I was happy to get hold of a review copy of Family Family (to be published on January 23). You might think it's missing a comma in its title, but the first "Family" is actually an adjective and the second a noun. Put a little emphasis on the adjective, and you get the point of the title. This is Frankel's take on today's debate about pro-choice vs. pro-life and where adoption fits into the debate. It also addresses cancel culture issues - and is a very good coming-of-age novel for several different characters.

Nishita Parekh's debut novel, The Night of the Storm, is set in Houston during the horrific arrival of Hurricane Harvey in August 2017. The storm killed about 100 people mainly because of the catastrophic flooding involved. But inside one home, they are not nearly as worried about the wind and water outside as they are about the neighbor who seems to have been mysteriously murdered right before their eyes.  That's scary. But even scarier is knowing that the killer has to be a family member trapped inside the house with the rest of them.

I'll also be spending some time this week with some of these:

I enjoyed Thomas H. Cook's The Last Talk with Lola Faye so much that I immediately went looking for another Cook novel and found Red Leaves (2006). The plot doesn't sound very original (a couple's teenaged son is accused of kidnapping and killing a little girl and they start to believe he may really have done it) but I don't know if that was true seventeen years ago, so I'm giving Cook the benefit of the doubt. Cook is a good storyteller, but this one reads very differently from The Last Talk with Lola Faye...not nearly as suspenseful so far.

This will be my first nonfiction read of 2024 even though it's not turning out to be quite the book I thought it was going to be. The basic premise of the book is that the act of writing forces you to focus your mind and organize  your thoughts to such an extent that writing about it is the best way to learn any new subject you take on. It's commonly called "reading across the curriculum" and means that every discipline should include teachers capable of teaching how to write within their specific area. I'm hoping that it helps me in my own writing of reviews, especially of nonfiction titles.

My Favorite Scar is to be published on January 16, so it will definitely be coming up very soon for some serious reading time. I've read the first two chapters (18 pages), and I'm enjoying the style even though this is a translation from the Spanish. If you're wondering what the "favorite scar" thing is all about, it refers to the two main characters, a father and his fifteen-year-old daughter. In one conversation between the two, the father tells Ambar that she is his favorite scar as he points to a tattoo of her name on his forearm. I'm looking forward to this one.

Also waiting in the wings for now are these:

Believe it or not, I've never read a novel by Agatha Christie or Lilian Jackson Braun. That's the kind of hole in my reading that convinced me to shake things up in 2024. I'm curious to see if I'll be able to avoid slipping back into the same old choice-habits, though. 

Have a great reading week everyone...hope you didn't wake up with a headache this morning! Happy New Year!