The Reading Room

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

It is a terrible thing to want something you cannot have. It takes you over. I couldn’t think straight because of it. There was no one else, I realized, whom I could possibly tell.

Summary - OFarrell takes us back in history to a dark time when husbands, fathers and even brothers could commit women to asylumsoften for absurd reasons.

A haunting story full of family secrets.

O’Farrell is wonderful. I haven’t loved every single book I’ve read by her but that doesn’t take away from what a talented writer she is. Her structures can sometimes be too confusing, in my opinion, but when they work, they are masterful. Because of her complicated structure/timelines I think O’Farrell should always be read, rather than listened to – especially in instances like Vanishing Act where there are no chapter breaks and storylines switch at random times.

Perris

UNDERRATED GEM ALERT

Summary - Gritty, yet beautifully written, this literary novel takes on such tough topics as addiction, mental health, and physical and sexual abuse with grace and dignity, portraying Tessa as a compassionate and resilient survivor. Despite the violence and trage there is also a lot of love and hope in this.

It had been a while since fiction blew me away like this - this book was so powerful and well written. There are dark parts (mostly in the beginning) but it is also a beautiful book with some unexpected relationships and moments that make this a book you don’t want to miss.

Annie Bot

A sizzle to a fizzle…

Annie Bot started off so strong and so propulsive but around the thirty percent mark it turned into a completely different book.

Summary - Doug an uptight, withholding, misogynistic, vindictive neat-freak has recently split with his ex, Gwen (a successful, ambitious Black woman). This setback has pushed him to purchase Annie, a ‘Cuddle Bunny’ he paid handsomely for to customize to his exact specifications.

You will be infuriated with Doug in every which way, there is no doubt about that. Greer did a great job at setting this AI world up and executed rather well. The plot and pacing was a little off and went to place I wasn’t expecting and didn’t particularly like but I still recommend this book because AI is coming and it is terrifying.

We All Want Impossible Things

It took me a bit…

Life is messy. I certainly dont expect tidiness from yours or anybo elses.

Summary - We All Want Impossible Things revolves around the lives of two female best friends. Ash is a recently divorced, single mother and the narrator of the novel who cares for her best friend, Edi, a woman of ovarian cancer and currently living in a hospice care center.

For the first 20 or so percent I was pretty unsure about this one, everyone and I mean everyone loved it so I was super confused. I realized that my distaste was coming from the not-sick main character, Ash’s poor life choices and selfish behavior. Once I got around halfway I took my opinions of her out and was then able to see that she was grieving her absolute best friend, people grieve in different ways and Ash was looking for an outlet, a reprieve from the unhappiness.

Summer Romance

“When Im quiet I can hear my heart yearning for impossible things. I want a perfectly pared-down home, and I want to hang on to every scrap of the past. I want a break from my kids without missing a single minute of their lives. I long for a partnership, and I long for freedom. I long to be enmeshed with someone without losing myself. I want all of it.”

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Sociopath

“I dont care what other people think. Im not interested in morals. Im not interested, period. Rules do not factor into my decision-making. Im capable of almost anything.”

Summary - Sociopath: A Memoir is at once a jaw-dropping tale of a life lived on the edge of the law, and a moving account of one woman’s battle to gain a deeper understanding of people who, like her, are sociopaths.

The first hmm maybe half I was all in, I loved learning about how non-existent the term sociopath is/was when Patric Gagne was researching and attempting to learn more about sociopathy and psychopathy. Learning about Gagne’s upbringing and childhood was also fascinating.

Oye

“Pay attention. This is how people end up with pain and illnesses. They go through difficult things, and then they dont find a place to put those feelings. So their bodies take it all for them.”

Summary - Structured as a series of one-sided phone calls from our spunky, sarcastic narrator, Luciana, to her older sister, Mari. As the baby of her large Colombian American family, Luciana is usually relegated to the sidelines. But now she finds herself as the only voice of reason in the face of an unexpected crisis: A hurricane is heading straight for Miami, and her eccentric grandmother, Abue, is refusing to evacuate. Abue is so one-of-a-kind shes basically in her own universe, and while she often drives Luciana nuts, theyre the only ones who truly understand each other. So when Abue, normally glamorous and full of life, receives a shocking medical diagnosis during the storm, Lucianas world is upended.

Ordinary Human Failings

Really, who would care about a family like theirs? Theirs were ordinary human failings, tragedies too routine to be of note.

Summary - Set mostly in the early 1990s, it tells the story of the Greens, a family of Irish immigrants who have moved to London in the hope of escaping the social stigma of daughter Carmels teenage pregnancy and her brother Ritchies escalating alcoholism. Judged reclusive and odd by their new neighbors, the Greens are easy scapegoats when trage visits their estate.

The Bastard of Istanbul

I’m a part of the Elif Fan Club!

“The past lives within the present, and our ancestors breathe through our children.”

Summary - The story is centered around the characters of Asya Kazanc and Armanoush Tchakhmakhchian. It is set in Tucson, Arizona; San Francisco, California; and Istanbul, Turkey. The novel deals with their families and how they are connected through the events of the 1915 Armenian genocide.

Most summaries make this book seem more complicated than it actually is. You follow Asya. You follow Armanoush. Then you wait and see how their stories connect. It was beautiful. I absolutely love Shafak’s writing. What I wasn’t expecting was that ending, wowzers, it was GOOOOOD.

Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books

“How can you come to know what’s right when all the information you’re ever given is wrong?”

This quote is actually from the author’s note but I find that it sums up the book so well. The fact that I typically only read that overview first paragraph of summaries (because full summaries give away too much) made this one quite the surprise for me. I thought it was going to be light-hearted and an easy read – boy was I wrong.