Another month has passed and with that, summer is over as well. The little monster has started first grade ("What?" I hear you say. "What do you mean? He is just baby, how is he doing this?" Believe me I ask these questions too.) We continue to work through unpacking and we've found what I hope to be most of our boxes of books. It's definitely not all, which is somewhat unfortunate because we have already filled the bookshelves we have. I did not consider the fact that our previous place had built in bookshelves that are lacking here. Oops. Guess we'll have to go shopping for some more shelves!
Talking about books, let's see what my stats looked like for August
Number of books read
6
The Murder of Mr. Ma by John Shen Yee Nee and SJ Rozan
The Good, The Bad, & The Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Andrea Vernon & The Corporation for UltraHuman Protection by Alexander C. Kane
Nosy Neighbors by Freya Sampson
Brat: An '80s Story by Andrew McCarthy
How To Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin
The Murder of Mr. Ma by John Shen Yee Nee and SJ Rozan
Historical fiction murder mystery taking place in 1920s London, trying to track down who has been killing Chinese immigrants. Lots of Sherlock-esque elements here (a Sherlock/Watson relationship between Dee Ren Jie and Lao She, street urchins as eyes and ears, opium use, the general setting) with an interesting twist. It look me a little time to get into the setting and get myself into the story but once in, I was in. Fun, quick-paced mystery that I very much enjoyed. Looks like it’s the start of a series so I’ll prob check out the others.
Rating: 4.15 stars
The Good, The Bad & The Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Meddy Chan, her mom and 3 aunties are back, this time in Jakarta celebrating both her honeymoon to Nathan and Chinese New Year. Now that Meddy has found her love, it’s time to focus on the aunties, in this case Second Aunt rekindles a romance with a former boyfriend (who may or may not be a crime boss). Naturally, there is a mix-up and our heroes get tangled up in 3 feuding families. While still a lot of fun, this is probably the weakest of the Aunties books, probably because I feel like we spent way more time with Meddy (and Nathan who, I’m sorry, is very boring) and less time with her mom and the aunties, who, let’s be clear, I am THERE for.
Rating: 3.75 stars
Andrea Vernon & The Corporation for UltraHuman Protection by Alexander C. Kane
I've read this at least three times and it is just as fun every time. Office-comedy except the office is for a company that manages superheroes. There's an equal amount of superhero-ing (a giant alient egg thing shows up over Yankee Stadium one day) and office-ing (the superheroes need to complete sexual harassments training) and I love it. And it includes my favorite/most obnoxious superhero, Inspector Well Actually, who has powers of super observation and can basically tell the future but only if he is correcting someone ("Well, actually...")
Also, I've listened to a few audiobooks that Bahni Turpin has narrated and she is great
Rating: 5 stars
Nosy Neighbors by Freya Sampson
I think the summary for this book does it a disservice. Because it describes something that sounds like a cozy mystery with two misfits team up to solve a crime. Which...eh. Not really the tone. The initial mystery sort of takes a back seat to a lot of background for the two main characters who are both in their own ways running from their pasts. Pasts that I think the author could have done a better job with (something I am struggling to put into words without spoilers but I think the author was too concerned with keeping them likeable that it hurt the impact of their pasts). I liked the set up but things took a turn that was fine but not really what I wanted.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Brat: An '80s Story by Andrew McCarthy
A memoir from Andrew McCarthy that seemed to be full of contradictions. He talks about revisiting his early acting career and gaining a better understanding, but I felt like he kept the reader at arm's length and I never really got to know him. Which I suppose makes sense, considering he talks about how a defense mechanism of his to act very aloof and pretend he doesn't care, which seemed to have rubbed some of his costars the wrong way (although hard to say cos he doesn't really get into it... except with Jon Cryer and that's mostly cos McCarthy didn't like him). His timeline jumps around a bit because he's trying to keep things tied to the 80s, which made things a bit hard to follow at times. He describes his acting style and what he was drawn to as much more prestigious work than his IMDB page would suggest (sir, you were in Mannequin and Weekend at Bernie's. Not shade to either but come on). And honestly, he titles this Brat but then talks about how he wasn't really part of the original Brat Pack. He was more Brat Pack-adjacent. But I did like his writing and he had a turn of phrase about his dad that I liked and wishing I had written down before I returned the book to the library.
Rating: 3 stars
How To Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin
A murder-mystery that flips back and forth between 1965, the summer when Frances got a reading from a fortune-teller that told her she would be murdered and started a lifelong obsession, and present day with her great-niece Annie who is trying to uncover the truth and find out who did kill her Great Aunt Frances (that's not a spoiler, it happens pretty early in the book and the summary describes) in part to gain access to a vast fortune and let her and her mom stay in the home they've always lived in. It's a fun story, with lots of twists and turns, potential allies and suspects.
Rating: 4 stars
Total pages read
1,817
Fiction
83%
Female authors
50%
BIPOC authors
33%
US authors
67%
Rereads
17%
Book Club reads
17%
Format
audiobook - 83%
hard back - 17%
Where'd I get the book
Kindle/Audible - 17%
library - 83%
Decade published
2010s - 17%
2020s - 83%
Resolution books
50%
The Murder of Mr. Ma is by an Asian-American author
The Good, The Bad & The Aunties is by a Malaysian author
Nosy Neighbors is by a UK author
