The second quarter of 2020 ended yesterday. I read a total of 23 books in the past three months, bringing my total for the year to 41 (I accidentally left two titles off my First Quarter list – oops). I set a goal to read 100 books every year, and while my reading has picked up slightly due to the pandemic, it hasn’t really taken off like I thought it might.
A big portion of my reading this quarter has been occupied with a third re-read of the Amelia Peabody mystery series by Elizabeth Peters (which I have always read on audio, never in print). It’s been five years since I last read it, and I’m experiencing it pretty differently this time. Aside from this favorite series, my reading this quarter consisted of a few YA mysteries, a few adult thrillers, a few graphic novels, and one popular science book.
The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James
I went through a period early in the quarter when I wanted to read some recent popular adult fiction, preferably mysteries, and this was available on audio from the library. It’s about a young woman who goes to the town where her aunt disappeared decades ago in order to solve the mystery of her disappearance. It’s a solid mystery, though there are some supernatural elements, which is not usually my cup of tea for a mystery. I tend to prefer mysteries that rely only on what’s real for all the answers.
Big Lies in a Small Town by Diane Chamberlain
This is not my normal fare at all, but I enjoyed it a lot. I had actually been searching for another mystery, similar to The Sun Down Motel, and came across this one marked as such. While there is a mystery to it, I wouldn’t categorize it as a traditional whodunnit. It’s more like what is traditionally called literary “women’s fiction,” and it uses the split time period trope that I often encounter in that type of story.
Half of the story is told from the point of view of Morgan in the present day, a talented artist who has been granted early release from prison (for a crime she maintains she did not commit) in order to restore an old mural painted in 1940 for a post office in North Carolina. The other half is told from the point of view of the artist, Anna Dale, in 1940. The central plot revolves around what happened to Anna, who disappeared without quite finishing the mural. As Morgan restores the painting, she grows closer to uncovering the town’s secrets. I enjoyed reading about North Carolina in both time periods; it’s where I went to college and it’s fun to recognize some of the landmarks and the culture. Chamberlain is also just a talented writer who breathes life into both of her protagonists, and she surrounds these sympathetic characters with an interesting, well-paced story.
I Killed Zoe Spanos by Kit Frick
This is a modern take on Rebecca, which I’ve actually never read. I enjoyed it nonetheless, though I do feel I would have gotten more out of it had I been able to compare it to the inspiration. Still, it’s a solid YA mystery with a creepy setting, a smart protagonist, and several surprises.
The Vanishing Deep by Astrid Scholte
I enjoyed this YA fantasy about a flooded world and the island that has the ability to bring loved ones back to life – but only for 24 hours – despite its completely ludicrous plot. Read my full review here.
The Silent Sister by Diane Chamberlain
I enjoyed Big Lies in a Small Town so much that I sought out others by Chamberlain. This one is about a woman named Riley who, after her father dies, begins to investigate what really happened when her sister Lisa died by suicide 20 years ago. It’s less of a mystery than Big Lies in a Small Town, though it has its share of surprises. Chamberlain excels at creating living, breathing characters who make bad (but believable) choices, and I appreciate that her endings – at least of the books I’ve read so far – provide closure and catharsis.
What I Want You to See by Catherine Linka
Linka’s book is a sort-of mystery, sort-of coming of age story about Sabine, a freshman at the prestigious CALINVA art school in California. On full merit-based scholarship after being homeless for a time (her mother’s employer kicked Sabine out of her home where they had been living after her mother died), Sabine is terrified that she’ll be kicked out if she doesn’t do enough to impress Colin Krell, the tyrannical teacher who seems to have it out for her. His one bit of good advice is to study a master’s painting by “translating” (i.e. copying) it. When the opportunity arises for Sabine to translate Krell’s current masterpiece – without him knowing, of course – she takes it. But everything is not as it seems. While the mystery concerning Krell’s painting and Sabine’s translation of it is less than surprising, Sabine’s journey is engaging, and the lack of a perfectly happy ending almost made my heart break for her. Read my full review here.
Necessary Lies by Diane Chamberlain
While I enjoyed this book the least of Chamberlain’s books, it’s the one that I’ve thought the most about since finishing it. This one is fully historical, with the entirety of the book’s events (except for small bits at the beginning and end) taking place in rural Grace County, North Carolina in the 1960s. It splits points of view between Jane, a young social worker, and Ivy, the teenager whose family is assigned to Jane. The main focus of the story is on North Carolina’s eugenics program, which was broader (operating outside of institutions) and longer-lasting (well into the 60s) than any other state’s program. Jane is a naive, inexperienced social worker fresh out of college (where there really isn’t a program for women in social work at this time), and when her supervisor is injured, she’s given a full caseload, which includes Ivy’s poverty-stricken family. Jane finds herself pressured by the other social workers to sterilize Ivy, whose older sister has already been sterilized. Lying about the procedure – telling the patient they’re merely getting their appendix removed, for example, as Ivy’s sister was told – is normal. Fourteen year old Ivy, meanwhile, whose parents are both dead and whose family is employed by a landowner to work his farm, tries to care for her sister (who is mentally disabled), her sister’s baby, and her grandmother. The resources provided by the social workers are essential to their lives.
What I found most riveting were the details about the eugenics program itself, of which I knew very little (mainly just that the United States had them). Reasons for sterilization included mental disability, mental illness, and epilepsy, though in reality generational poverty was often the real reason. Characters often tell Jane that such people deserve to be sterilized, even without their knowledge, because they’re drains on the public. Sometimes sterilization was welcomed, though, as is the case with a supporting character who did not have the ability to keep herself from becoming pregnant but did not want any more children. The program was fascinating – and horrible – to read about. The story, unfortunately, was predictable, so I found it often frustrating to read (why can’t the characters see where this is going like I can?). You, too, could likely sketch out what happens to Ivy and what Jane eventually does about it. Still, it was a worthwhile read and one I’ve recommended to others.
The End of October by Lawrence Wright
I found Wright’s novel about a flu pandemic – which eerily mimics much of what we’re experiencing now – riveting, and I talked about it endlessly with friends and family, but I can’t say it was actually a good book. Read my full review here.
The Phantom Twin by Lisa Brown
The graphic novels I’ve read this year haven’t really wowed me. This YA one was cute enough, about a conjoined twin whose sister convinces her to have experimental surgery to separate them and dies. From then on, the surviving twin sees her sister as a ghost. The setting is a turn of the century sideshow, where Isabel and her sister Jane were employed. Now that Jane is dead, Isabel must find a new kind of life. I enjoyed the story, but didn’t find it that special.
The Pathfinders Society: The Mystery of the Moon Tower by Francesco Sedita, Prescott Seraydarian, and Steve Hamaker
This is another cute graphic novel – for middle grade readers this time – about a group of kids who join the Pathfinders Society and set out to find a treasure. It’s almost too fast-paced, with not much time given to character development or even development of the clues, but kids who enjoy treasure hunts will likely enjoy this.
Gotham High by Melissa de la Cruz and Thomas Pitilli
Bruce Wayne, 16, is kicked out of boarding school and returns to Gotham City. There he finds himself caught up in a kidnapping, and future friends/nemeses Selina Kyle and Jack Napier are involved. The plot was a bit more convoluted than I expected and at times hard to follow, but mostly I just didn’t care enough about the characters. Perhaps this is better for more die-hard Batman fans than me.
The Kinder Poison by Natalie Mae
I enjoyed this exciting high fantasy, full of magic, competition, betrayal, and some unique world-building, but took issue with its central premise of kindness as king. Read my full review here.
And It Was Good and It’s a Miracle! by H. Claire Taylor
These are books 2 and 3 of a self-published humor series by an author who lives here in Austin. The premise is that in small-town present-day Texas, God begets a daughter named Jessica. The series follows her from a small child into adulthood, and books 2 and 3 focus on her life as a teenager in high school (though the whole series is geared toward adults, not kids or teens). The books are very funny: God will often pop into Jessica’s head with a funny revelation (“Don’t tell anyone, but I wasn’t really paying attention when I created Australia”), or to clarify a translation error in the Bible (“It was supposed to be Powerful and all that, not All-Powerful), and when he wants to use strong language, he says “Oh Me!” In book 2, Jessica is tasked with finding her own special miracle that she can perform, and it turns out to be as football Kicker (naturally). Taylor also skewers Southern/Texan evangelicalism pretty handily; for those of us who grew up with or around evangelical Christian Texans, much of the observations ring very, very true. The first book is by far the funniest (so far), but there are 6 in the series and I look forward to reading them all.
Bad Science by Ben Goldacre
Ben Goldacre is a British physician and science writer who wrote a column called Bad Science in The Guardian from 2003-2011. Published in 2008, his book Bad Science covers many of the topics he wrote about for the paper, all focusing on bad medical science in some fashion. He discusses homeopathy, skewers modern “nutritionists,” teaches readers how to determine if a study is a good one or a bad one, and covers the anti-vaccination scare as it occurred in the UK (lucky us, the discredited former doctor who started it all now lives in Austin). He also delves deeply into the placebo effect, which was the most fascinating chapter for me and which I regaled my friends with at a recent picnic for many minutes. (Did you know that the placebo effect works better with two pills than one, and even better with an injection than a pill?) This is exactly the kind of nonfiction I love reading.
The Amelia Peabody mystery series, Books 1-8
I first listened to these (and I’ve always read them that way, as audiobooks) as a kid, when my family would check out kid-friendly audiobooks (both for kids and for adults) for our long road trips during the summer. I was fascinated by the concept of Egyptology as a kid, and I loved Amelia’s sassy narration, the love between her and her husband Emerson, and especially the intrigue of their teenage children and wards (we started listening in the middle, when Ramses was 16).
I listened to them properly, this time from the beginning, in grad school, and then again five years ago. I began to pick up on more of Amelia’s faults during these re-reads (she’s wrong quite frequently!). Of course, these faults are apparent and part of the fun for mature adult readers, but they went completely over my head as a kid. But it’s only this third reading where I’ve really noticed the glaring faults in the books themselves. While Amelia values and respects the Egyptians as a people, including their culture and religion (she is cognizant of the fact that the British don’t treat their women any better, for example), imperialist ways of thinking – British superiority, in general – always seeps through. Amelia is not as open or fair-minded as she thinks, though she certainly outpaces many of her peers. In fact, the whole concept of the books is a problem (British colonizers digging up Egyptians’ ancestors and regulating what Egyptians can and cannot do with their own country and possessions), and this fact goes completely unrecognized and unmentioned.
Aside from these glaring issues, I also noticed the rather alarming amount of fatphobia that Amelia spews. It’s lessened somewhat in later volumes, but for the most part, fat characters are portrayed as ridiculous, stupid, lazy, and sometimes villainous. Emerson, too, is not as charming as he once was to me, with all of his shouting and half-insults, then maintaining he is a calm, reserved person (and again, the disconnect between what he thinks about himself and what he is is part of the humor, but it’s just not as funny this time around). I’ve even noticed some flaws in the narration, performed wonderfully by Barbara Rosenblat, whose English accent was flawless to me as a child but whose American roots are apparent to me now.
I’m still enjoying the books quite a lot, and I intend to finish the series (I’ve always stopped somewhere in the middle before this for one reason or another), but my nostalgic love for them has been tempered by these realizations.