Kung Hei Fat Choi! It’s chinese new years today and we’re entering the year of the snake!
February is the superior month of the year if you ask me; it’s the shortest, there’s valentines day, winter break, black history month and it also just so happens to be my birth month!
So if I’m going to be on theme, maybe a romance novel, maybe some short fiction, but theres room for a larger book because of winter break.
I’ve decided to not force myself to read the book club picks, but curate my TBR better so that I don’t have to DNF so many books. It puts me in a slump when I don’t connect with a book. And I usually have good instincts about my likes and dislikes. I’ve been itching to read Reese’s January pick “The three lives of Cate Kay”, but I haven’t yet, so I still might.
The book club picks:
Reese’s book club pick: Isola by Allegra Goodman
Expected publication: February 4
Genre: Historical Fiction
Pages: 368
Allegra Goodman was the author behind the book “Sam” that was Read with Jenna’s pick for january 2023.
Isola is a book about a French noble woman who becomes orphaned, and left to die on an island as punishment by her legal guardian. She has to learn survival the hard way in harrowing weather that turns colder and colder. How do you stay alive when you have nothing to live for?
This is a portrait inspired by the real life of a sixteenth-century heroine. – and may I just note – gorgeous cover!
GMA book club: Junie by Erin Crosby Eckstine
Expected publication: February 4
Genre: Historical fiction / Magical realism
Pages: 368
Growing up on a plantation tending to the white masters daughter Violet, Junie is overwhelmed with grief when her older sister Minnie dies.
But when guest arrive and hint at marrying Violet, Junie commits a desperate act that rouses her sisters spirit form the grave. And Junie begins the task of freeing her sister.
Read with Jenna: This is a love story by Jessica Soffer
Expected publication: February 4
Genre: Contemporary fiction / romance
Pages: 303
Jane is dying, and Abe is recounting their life together as a way of keeping them going: the parts they knew—their courtship and early marriage, their blossoming creative lives—and the parts they didn’t always want to know—the determined young student of Abe’s looking for a love story of her own, and their son, Max, who believes his mother chose art over parenthood and who has avoided love and intimacy at all costs. Told in various points of view, even in conversation with Central Park itself, these voices weave in and out to paint a portrait as complicated and essential as love itself.
I *think* this book might be for people in long and somewhat stable relationships that can relate to this. Coming from a broken family and
Dua Lipa’s Service 95: The bee sting by Paul Murray
IThe Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under―but rather than face the music, he’s spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife Imelda is selling off her jewelry on eBay, while their teenage daughter Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge-drink her way through her final exams. And twelve-year-old PJ is putting the final touches to his grand plan to run away from home.
Where did it all go wrong? A patch of ice on the tarmac, a casual favor to a charming stranger, a bee caught beneath a bridal veil―can a single moment of bad luck change the direction of a life? And if the story has already been written―is there still time to find a happy ending?
I’ve been on the fence about this one since it was longlisted for the booker prize and won last year. I keep picking it up in the bookstore and everytime I see it’s Irish, I put it back down. I can’t explain it, but Irish literature has burned me. It feels bleak and sad and grey. I’ve also struggled with enjoying the writing from Ireland. The accent is different, the slang, the way they speak. It’s just not for me.
Belletrist: The mystery guest – a true story by Grégoire Bouillier
When the phone rang on a gloomy fall afternoon in 1990, Grégoire Bouillier had no way of knowing that it was the woman who’d left him, without warning, ten years before. And he couldn’t have guessed why she was calling—not to apologize for, or explain, the way she’d vanished from his life, but to invite him to a party. A birthday party. For a woman he’d never met.
It says true story, sounds interesting enough.
New releases january:
We all live here by Jojo Moyes
Expected publication: january 14
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 464
The author behind “Me before you” brings us this book about Lila Kennedy. Lila has a broken marriage, two wayward daughters, a house that is falling apart, and an elderly stepfather who seems to have quietly moved in. Her career is in freefall and her love life is . . . complicated. So when her real dad—a man she has barely seen since he ran off to Hollywood thirty-five years ago—suddenly appears on her doorstep, it feels like the final straw. But it turns out even the family you thought you could never forgive might have something to teach about love, and what it actually means to be family.
It’s a long book, so maybe perfect for a long weekend?
Deep cuts by Holly Brickley
Expected publication: February 25
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 288
At a campus bar in Berkeley, fall of 2000, and Percy Marks is commenting on the music playing on the jukeboks.
Joe who is a song writer hears her comments and asks her to give him feedback on one of his songs – and a partnership that will span years ignites.
Moving from Brooklyn bars to San Francisco dance floors, Deep Cuts examines the nature of talent, obsession, belonging, and above all, our need to be heard.
Three days in June By Anne Tyler
Expected publication: january 28
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 176
Anne Tyler is a pulitzer prize winning author many may know from her bibliography of successful books – a spool of blue thread or The Accidental tourist.
This short little book follows a mother navigating the days before and after her daughters wedding. Just after losing her job and getting back an ex-husband to manage like a child and secrets are revealed right before the I do’s. Gail I fear, is not prepared for these three days.
It sounds like a lot of fun, but I’m curious why it’s released in the middle of winter? This feels so much like a summer book.
Show don’t tell by Curtis Sittenfeld
Expected publication: February 25
Genre: Short stories – fiction
Pages: 320
Curtis Sittenfeld is an auto-buy for me. I absolutely LOVED her short story collection “You think it, I’ll say it” and her novel “Romantic comedy” that came out in 2023. (You may also know her as the author of “Rodham” fictionalized story of Hilary Clinton.)
Here she is back with short stories and I couldn’t be happier. On my list. Running to the bookstore!
Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis
Expected publication: February 25
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Pages: 352
A debut novel about Dr. Naida Amin who publishes an article on the possibility of rehabilitating ISIS brides, and then the UN offers her just that job. Coming out of a breakup, she heads to Iraq where she might just have to save herself first, or so it sounds like to me.
Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks
Expected publication: February 4
Genre: Memoir / Non-fiction
Pages:224
The pulizer prize winning author of the book Horse, shares a memoir of sudden loss and journey to peace.
When she loses her partner of more than 3 decades, on memorial day 2019, she kept herself busy with the many demands. Waiting three years before giving herself room to breathe, she goes to Australia and ponders the different ways cultures grieve, until it helps her get through her own and rebuild a life without him.
The strange case of Jane O. by Karen Thompson Walker
Expected publication: February 25
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 288
The year after her daughter is born, Jane suffers a series of strange episodes: amnesia, premontions, hallucinations and an explicable sense of dread.
Janes symptoms lead her psychiatrist deep into her mind, and cause him to questiion everything he thought he knew about reality.
This is a speculative mystery about memory, identity and fate, and we’ve lost who might still be among us.
Bibliophobia by Sarah Chihaya
Expected publication: February 4
Genre: Memoir
Pages: 240
Books can seduce you. They can, Sarah Chihaya believes, annihilate, reveal, and provoke you. And anyone incurably obsessed with books understands this kind of unsettling literary encounter. Sarah calls books that have this effect “Life Ruiners”.
Her Life Ruiner, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, became a talisman for her in high school when its electrifying treatment of race exposed Sarah’s deepest feelings about being Japanese American in a predominantly white suburb of Cleveland. But Sarah had always lived through her books, seeking escape, self-definition, and rules for living. She built her life around reading, wrote criticism, and taught literature at an Ivy League University. Then she was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown, and the world became an unreadable blank page. In the aftermath, she was faced with a question. Could we ever truly rewrite the stories that govern our lives?
Famous last words by Gillian McAllister
Expected publication: February 25
Genre: Thriller / Mystery
Pages: 336
Some might remember McAllister as the author behind “Wrong place, wrong time” – Reese’s pick for august 2022. A time travelling thriller. Now she’s back with a new book and it sounds exciting.
It is June 21, the longest day of the year, and the life of new mother Camilla is about to change forever. After months of maternity leave, she will drop off her infant daughter at daycare for the first time and return to her job as a literary agent. Finally. But when she wakes, her husband Luke isn’t there, and in his place is a cryptic note.
Then it starts. Breaking news: A hostage situation is developing in London. The police tell her Luke is involved—but he isn’t a hostage. Her husband—doting father, eternal optimist—is the gunman.
You are fatally invited by Ande Pliego
Expected publication: February 11
Genre: Thriller / mystery
Pages: 384
A writers retreat on a private island, with a trope that sounds like Agatha Christie’s “and then there were none”. Guests are turning up dead, a storm cuts off the island from the rest of the world and the bodies pile up.
A killing cold by Kate Alice Marshall
Expected publication: February 4
Genre: Thriller / mystery
Pages: 304
A woman invited to her wealthy fiance’s family retreat realizes they are hiding a terrible secret—and that she’s been there before. She finds an old photo of herself and memories long buried start resurfacing.
What I’m planning to read in February:
There are a few books I didn’t finish last month, so I’m transferring them to this month. I’m about 150 pages into the secret history so I’ll continue on that, Trick mirror, and Fleishman is in trouble. While the Muriel Sparks novel “Girls of slender means” fell of the board completely. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to read all her books in order, or where to begin, so that one goes back on the shelf for now until I make up my mind.
But I did start reading Doppelganger by Naomi Klein, I’m about 8% in, and honestly, I forgot that I was reading it. But it was very interesting, so I think I’ll try and pick that one up again.
Onyx storm came out towards the end of January, but since I wasn’t a big fan of the fourth wing series, I decided to try one of her romance books instead. It is the love month after all. So I’m reading Variation by Rebecca Yarros.
I added Good Dirt, by Charmaine Wilkerson that came out at the end of January, and “Disappoint me” by Nicola Dinan that I got an ARC of from Netgalley.
I also started a book club with some friends, we meet every 2 months and our first book out is Elena Ferrante’s “Days of Abandonment”, so I’m looking forward to reading a book with a real life book club.
I want to add a whole bunch more, because there are just sooo many good books out now, and my TBR is toppeling over, but I think I have to set my limit there and just see, but even this looks ambitious, even for me. I already have a feeling that I’ll transfer some of these until next month since Sittenfeld for example doesn’t even come out until february 25 – and I doubt I’ll read it the last three days of the month. But well see. Who knows, my mood can change. Mood reader forever.
What are you reading?
Marie III 