The (Reading) Freedom That Comes With Acknowledgement

I like tracking my reading. I really do. I find it helpful to know what I read, when I read it. I like the act of writing it down, of looking at what my totals look like, what were my reading trends

However, there was a negative I found in all of this. I tended to finish books. That sounds stupid as a negative right? Of course I finished books. That's the goal. But I tended to finish books EVEN if I wasn't enjoying them. Because I had invested time in them. Because if I didn't finish them then they wouldn't count towards my totals. Totals that do not matter at all. Something I am well aware of. But it still held me back unless a book was TERRIBLE.

Recently, I started a bullet journal of the books I'm reading. This is just to keep track of what my reading looks like, visually, over time. What days am I reading. Maybe a bit of how quickly or not am I reading.

I've found something else. I am less concerned about giving up a book that isn't clicking with me. Because I have it written here. It is acknowledged. It's still not counted towards any totals. I still "lost time" reading it that could have gone to something else. But who cares. I'll drop it and if it strike my fancy later, I'll pick it up again some other time. Or I won't.

To be clear, I don't entirely know why. It's not like I think the few people still reading this (hi!) care how much I'm reading or when. No one is actually keeping track, making judgements. But it is enough and it's crazy how many books I feel like I'm getting through without actively trying to read more.

We'll see if this keeps up or if things settle back to where they typically sit. But for now, I'm enjoying things.

eBooks, it's been a while

Did you know the last time I finished reading an ebook was in 2020? It was the book Toddlers Are Assholes: It's Not Your Fault by Bunmi Laditan. I'm sure the fact that I was dealing with my own toddler while in COVID confinement had nothing to do with that selection

Anyway, April of 2020 was my last ebook. Before that things were trailing off a bit. The ebook before that was December of 2019 (Fleishman Is In Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner).

I didn't make a conscious decision to not read ebooks. It's just that once the little monster showed up and then I changed jobs to one that didn't require hours per day on public transportation in favor of one that required about an hour a day in the car, my reading switched over to audiobooks. In 2018, 50% of the books I read were ebooks. In 2019, that dropped to 12%. In 2020, it was just 2%. And then nothing. Not a single ebook in all of 2021 and 2022.

Why do I bring this up? Because, as I mentioned recently, I'm trying to do more non-audiobook reading in the evenings whenever I can grab a few minutes. It's an effort to go back to something I enjoy and spend less time scrolling through social media. So I've been reading the various books I have strewn around the living room and it's been mostly working out. But here's the thing. 99% of my books are packed away in boxes because we're only in this place temporarily. I do have a paperback book sitting in front of me I haven't read yet (American Dirt) but I'm not really in the mood for it. So I was trying to figure out what do I want to read? Do I dig through all of the boxes (so many boxes) to try to find a book I feel like reading?

Then I found my Kindle. The battery had long since died but I managed to find a charger that fit it and lo and behold, the thing turns on. And it turns out, I've downloaded books on there that I never read. Books that look interesting and that I would like to read. Good job, past me. 

Now I have some more books to read that won't require me to unpack a bunch of boxes and I can continue to read in the evening. 

February Reading Wrap-Up+

Alright, another month has passed. Better than January? Worse? Who's to say? It was a stressful month for me, which may or may not have affected the amount of reading I got done. Not that it was terrible but I feel like I had some fits and starts finding something I felt like reading and then finding the time to do it. But I still actually made it through a lot this month now that I actually look at those stats. This is why I track things instead of just relying on my thoughts. 

Let's look at this bullet journal for the month, because I have managed to keep up with this so far! 

Total books read

5

The Mothers by Brit Bennet

Klara and the Son by Kazou Ishiguro

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky

Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto

The Mothers by Brit Bennet

I had apparently downloaded a copy of this book through a Libro.fm sale and then forgot about it. So when I didn't know what to read, this seemed like a good choice. It's a complicated story following motherless Nadia and Aubrey, the local pastor's son Luke, and the ties to their Oceanside community. The story is complicated, or at least I've spent a good 20 min trying to summarize it in a few lines and have failed. It was a story I couldn't binge but instead would listen to in smaller spurts. I liked the prose and the role of the Mothers (a sort of chorus) when they were more directly involved with the characters. 

Rating: 4 stars

Klara and the Sun by Kazou Ishiguro

I actually won one of the Goodreads giveaways and actually started this book back in January but given this is one of the paperback books rather than an audiobook, it took me a bit longer to get through. That and it took a bit of time to get into the story and really figure out what's going on (and tbf, not sure I got all the way there). Taking place in the near future, Klara is an AF (artificial friend). Basically a robot friend but one that you can boss around without feeling bad about it. Klara is bought by a young sick girl Josie to keep her company as she spends time at home studying on her "oblong" (phone, I suppose) and trying to get better. Another story that is difficult to summarize in a few lines as we try to understand Klara's role in this world and Klara tries to understand exactly what will be expected of her with this family.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky

I like the ways seemingly small things in the modern world had big effects on history. And salt had some big effects on the geopolitics of the world, while I sometimes use salt to clean my cast iron pan. This feels like a comprehensive history and by that I mean Kurlansky goes off on some tangents that are only kind of related to salt, which made for a pretty dry read/listen from time to time. But it always managed to stay on this side of interesting so while I considered putting this down, I never followed through. I suppose that's something.

Rating: 3 stars

Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby

I couldn't find a book I was really excited about that was available from the library so I dug into some audiobooks I had on my phone already and decided Irby's is the way to go and is definitely something different from the difficult lit fic picks and very dry history I had recently finished. A series of deprecating essays about aging, GI issues and actually finding success with her weird blog (and previous books). The stories are very funny and the fact that she narrates the audiobook makes it that much better. I found myself speaking in her cadence a couple times. Good choice, me.

Rating: 4.25 stars

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Another Goodreads giveaway! Pretty sure I was entertaining these things for like 10 years before winning anything and then it was 2 in one month. Anyway, LOVED THIS. Vera Wong wakes up bright and early one morning to find a dead body in her tea shop. And since "nobody sniffs out wrongdoings quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands" she decides to take on the investigation herself. Vera is a force and I loved her. I loved all of the suspects she pulled together as well as she tries to get to the bottom of what happened. OK the mystery isn't perfect and I literally just finished it so it's possible my feelings will cool slightly, but honestly, Vera pulled me through and hopefully there will be more for Vera to tackle in the future

Rating: 4.85 stars

Total Pages Read

1,744

Fiction

60%

Female authors

60%

BIPOC authors

80%

US authors

60%

Book format

audiobook: 60%

paperback: 40%

Where'd I get the book

gift: 40%

indie: 20%

Kindle/Audible: 20%

library: 20%

Reread

20%

Book club

20%

Decade published

2000s: 20%

2010s: 20%

2020s: 60%

Resolution books

80%

The Mothers and Wow, No Thank You are both written by Black authors

Klara and the Sun is written by a Japanese-English author

Very Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers is by an Indonesian-Singaporean author

January Reading Wrap-Up+

First month of the new year. Feeling motivated? Ready to take on the year?

We tripped right at the starting line with the new year this year. I mentioned in my year end wrap up post, but the small one tested positive for COVID right as he was about to go back to school. He was luckily ok (asymptomatic), we never tested positive and neither did the people we were around before he tested positive. 

This month I am trying to do more reading a night. Not just listening to audiobooks throughout the day, as I've been doing, but making time, however little, to sit down with a physical book and read. It's something that is easier to say than do since I have a small window after the little one goes to bed, before I go to bed, to do everything: unwind, catch up on TV that isn't children's programming (though seriously, check out Bluey), see what's happening online. Anything. But a friend got me a copy of The Bullet That Missed, the latest Thursday Murder Club book and what was I going to do, not read that immediately? Don't be stupid.

One other new thing I started doing is this bullet journal for reading. As if I didn't have enough spreadsheets going. I actually wrote about half a post about it and then...never finished it. So the year is starting out strong. Anyway, here's a screenshot of what my January reading looked like. I like this because it gives me a quick visual of when I'm reading. And it's easy to see how much quicker audiobooks go for me than any other kind.

Total books read

7

She Kills Me: The True Stories of History's Deadliest Women by Jennifer Wright

The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman

Finlay Donovan Knocks 'em Dead by Elle Cosimano

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell

Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong

How To Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Shur

The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music by Dave Grohl

She Kills Me: The True Stories of History's Deadliest Women by Jennifer Wright

Similar to another book of Wright's (It Ended Badly: Thirteen of the Worst Breakups in History) this book is sort of a listicle on steroids. Here Wright lists out 40 women from various points in history who committed murder, sometimes a few (though I mean, sure, one is too many) to too-many-to-count. I listened to this and each woman was given roughly 5-10 minutes so only a few paragraphs worth of information. What was there was interesting but ultimately I would have preferred if there were fewer entries that went into more detail.

Rating 3.25 stars

The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman

The third in the Thursday Murder Club series and OH MAN do I love this quartet of septuagenarian detectives. The group are looking into a cold case of a journalist who went missing, her car driven off a cliff, right after she was about to break a story about money laundering. Meanwhile Elizabeth is (briefly) kidnapped with the ultimatum to kill a former KGB operative or have someone she cares about killed. I won't go into too much more detail cos it's very fun to find things out with the crew. These books are just so much fun as much for the foursome (and the people sucked into their gravitational pull) as it is for the mystery itself. I may need to re-read the entire series while I wait for the next book to come out.

Rating: 5 stars

Finlay Donovan Knocks 'Em Dead by Elle Cosimano

OK, it may have been unfair to this and The Bullet That Missed at the same time. Both are murder mysteries so they occupy a similar genre (Cozy? Cozy-adjacent? I'm still not entirely clear) and while both are entertaining, sorry, Osman's are much better. I say this as I'm sure it somewhat colored by reading. Anyway, this is the second in the Finlay Donovan series, where we pick up right where the first book left off (spoilers), after helping send a high ranking member of the Russian mob to jail with Finay finding a post on a message board from someone looking to hire a hitman to kill her ex-husband. What can she and Vero do to keep Steven safe, what is Vero hiding from her, can she get her next book finished in time to keep her editor and agent off her back, and should she sleep with the hot law student or the hot detective? Lots of questions and honestly, Finlay isn't exactly the sharpest detective, which is endearing at times as well as extremely frustrating. The story is engaging, though I'm a little annoyed at the ending for spoilery reasons that holds it back

Rating: 3.95 stars

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell

This was a favorite read of last year and gotta tell you, it really holds up on a second read. A great look at the ways "cults", be them religious, MLMs, workouts, use language. It's fascinating and I was going to say without being judgmental but yeah, it is judgmental at time (and I'd say with good reason). But it's generally not judgmental of those taken in by the language but rather of the institutions that use them. One I'm sure I'll reread again.

Rating: 5 stars

Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong

A book club selection, the story about a woman named Ruth whose personal life has blown up. Her finance, whom she left school just seven months shy of graduating to be with, has left her for someone else. She finds herself 30 and a bit directionless, so when her father's health prompts her mother to ask her to spend a year at home helping to take care of him, she takes the opportunity and documents the days in her journal. Much of the book is focused on her relationship with her father and helping to take care of him as his recent Alzheimer's diagnosis gets worse.  (Something most summaries leave out and would have been nice to know for most of us going into reading this for our book club.) Almost all of the characters are well-developed and three dimensional (though her mother could use some work) and while no one is perfect, there is little judgment cast about. The story isn't too heavy, despite the weighty conceit, but there isn't a huge amount of growth or change from the characters

Rating: 3.75 stars

How To Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Shur

I will start this by saying I love the The Good Place. It was, and is, one of my favorite shows. That alone was enough to get me to check out this book (that and a positive review from the podcast For Real). This book is Shur's collection of everything he learned about moral philosophy in his research for the show. It's a layman's introduction to moral philosophy that is funny and the audiobook is read by Shur and a bunch of actors from The Good Place. The concepts he goes into can be difficult and contradictory and frustrating, but Shur makes it accessible. I was disappointed when I realized the book was ending; I could have easily done another hour

Rating: 5 stars

The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music by Dave Grohl

When I saw Grohl had written a book and not only that but narrated the audiobook, it was a no brainer to check it out. It's a collection of essays about Grohl's life and it's been a crazy one. The opening essay was my favorite, with Grohl mixing his life as a dad with how he got to the point of playing sold out stadiums. And admittedly, my favorite stories were the ones that involved his family and where he is now. But that's not to say that the stories of him getting his musical start, playing in Nirvana, almost joining Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, forming the Foo Fighters and 1000 other things. At times the stories involve a lot of lists, of musicians and bands, producers and venues that can get a bit repetitive. And the stories could have VERY easily gone into a boring "look how great I am" territory (and there is a LOT of name dropping) but Grohl manages to come off so humbled by everything that has happened to him. Highly recommend listening to him telling the stories

Rating: 3.5 stars

Total pages read

2,098 - I was on a role in Jan. Will I be able to keep this up throughout the year? Probably not

Fiction

43%

Female authors

57%

BIPOC authors

14%

US authors

86%

Book format

Audiobook: 86%

Hardback: 14%

Where'd I get the book

Gift: 29%

Kindle/Audible: 14%

Library: 57%

Reread

14%

Book club

14%

Decade published

2010s: 14%

2020s: 86%

Resolution

29%

The Bullet That Missed is by a UK author

Goodbye, Vitamin is by an Asian-American author

My Favorite Reads of 2022

What is this? A second non-reading wrap up post of the year. What is going on? 

Anyway, I was thinking about some of my fav books I read in 2022. I had fewer 5 star reads compared to 2021 but I also had far more rereads that year than I did in 2022. For me, a 5 star book is generally one that I a) feel compelled to tell everyone about and b) want to reread. I have a lot of 4 star books that I think are good, beyond just "I liked it" but I'm not already jonesing to pick it up again. 

Top New (to me) Reads

 

 

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka

Top Rereads

 

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson

Evil Eye by Madhuri Shekar

Here's to some new 5 star reads in 2023!

New Year, New Spreadsheet?

One of the nerdier things about me is how often I use spreadsheets to track things. 

My books going back to 2013? Obviously

Sales in the housing market in my area, including time on market and about +/- asking price? You bet

Nap and feeding info for the goblin, including how long it would take to get him to go to sleep and what we were doing before he went to sleep in the hopes of figuring out the magic answer to getting him on a sleep schedule that worked? Yes (Did it work? Nope!)

So naturally, when I saw someone post about a bookish bullet journal in excel, I thought hell yeah, of course I'll do this. I mean, at least until I forget about it for a long enough period of time that I can't backfill the data. But for now, let's live in the present and just a few days into the year, I am on top of things. 

What is a bookish bullet journal you may be asking? From the 3 second video I saw (which I can't find anymore), it basically looks like this, though of course there isn't much filled in yet

With the idea, as best as I can figure, to mark down what days I'm reading each book. Each month will have its own color and by the end of the year I'll have a pretty chart that shows me when I was reading. I don't know how much it will tell me about me reading, except perhaps how much of a lag there is when I'm reading a physical copy of a book vs listening, but we'll see. 

The one piece I am pretty proud of is the counting the total number of days spent reading. Because the options are write in numbers in the colors but that would really ruin the vibe. Or else just manually count the squares but I don't want to do that. So after spending way too long considering the problem, I realized I could just write the number 1 in the same color as the background and have the row sum. I don't have to manually count anything but also I keep things aesthetically pleasing. And I get to pat myself on the back.

So there we go. I have something new to add to the month end stats posts, which make up, what 99.99% of the stuff I still post here.

2022 Year End Stats

Another year has passed. I'm trying not to make any sudden movements lest I spook the new year*. This year we had some changes including deciding we needed some more space (turns out the not-so-little monster is an outdoor child, something our townhouse didn't have much of) and a number of changes and uncertainty at work that have been, less than fun. 

*NOTE! I wrote this over the weekend and apparently did spook the new year because we're starting it with the little one home with COVID. Luckily, he is asymptomatic (we'd never have known if someone in his class hadn't tested positive so we were testing him before sending him back to daycare) and so far (knock on ALL THE WOOD) we're testing negative. Fingers crossed it stays this way. Thanks, 2023.

I see looking at my year end post from last year I said I wanted to start a new hobby. Well, why don't we make that a resolution for this year as well, since I didn't exactly manage to hit it in 2022. I would say work on this blog some more but honestly, I know the mental energy this takes and the mental energy I have at the end of the day (hint, it's not much. There's a reason I'm currently watching reruns of Fraiser)

I still don't have infographics for the year end because as with last year, I'm pretty sure you have to pay for those, but only pretty sure because I haven't bothered to look into it. I mean, the only posts I managed this year were the month end posts, though I did keep up with the mini reviews each month, so that's something. But I do have the stats for this year and I can compare them to my historic averages (2013-2021). Won't that be fun? 

Total books read

54 - made it to my goal of 52 books

Historic average: 52.7

Year with the most books: 2019 (58 books) / Year with the fewest books: 2016 & 2018 (48 books)

Total pages read

17,765

Historic average: 17,604

Year with the most pages: 2013 (21, 681) / Year with the fewest pages: 2018 (13,525)

Month with the most / fewest books read

November, December (6 books) / May, July (3 books)

Historic average: every month averages either 4 or 5 books

Month with most / fewest pages read

December (2,045) / May (1,021)

Historic average: September (1,687) / July (1,285)

Fiction

57%

Historic average: 59.9%

BIPOC authors

25%

Historic average: 17.5%

Female authors

61%

Historic average: 57.1%

Author's nationality

US: 65% (Historic average: 68.6%)

UK: 19% (Historic average: 20.0%)

Sweden: 4% (Historic average: 0.6%)

Singapore: 4% (Historic average: 1.3%)

Canada: 1% (Historic average: 1.9%)

Ireland: 1% (Historic average: 0.2%)

Japan: 1% (Historic average: 1.5%)

Malaysia: 1% (Historic average: 0% - new country!)

Mexico: 1% (Historic average: 0% - another new country except I already had it in my tracker so who knows)

Translation

6%

Historic average: 3%

Rereads

7%

Historic average: 20% - so this year I am way down from my normal. Not necessarily due to any conscious decision to read new stuff. 

Book format

audiobook: 93% (Historic average: 34.4%)

paperback: 7% (Historic average: 28.4%)

Where'd I get the book

Library: 78% (Historic average: 18.6%)

Kindle/Audible: 9% (Historic average: 39.0%)

Indie: 9% (Historic average: 18.1%)

Gift: 2% (Historic average: 9.3%)

Decade published

1920s: 2% (Historic average: 1.1%)

2000s: 6% (Historic average: 17.3%)

2010s: 43% (Historic average: 59.9%)

2020s: 50% (Historic average: 5.7%)

Top Genres

Mystery: 24% (Historic average: 8.7%)

Science: 17% (Historic average: 4.5%)

Horror: 9% (Historic average: 9.0%)

History: 4% (Historic average: 4.0%)

Memoir: 4% (Historic average: 6.7%)

Resolution books

50%

Historic average: 48%

December Reading Wrap-Up +

It's crazy that another year is gone. A year that had a lot of uncertainty in it (moves! stuff at work that I don't really talk about here!). And of course more of the little monster who is his own pile of uncertainty. I'll have another post with my year end wrap up but for now let's focus on the reading I did in December.

Number of books read

6

The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in the Jazz Age by Deborah Blum

The Dragon Behind the Glass: A True Story About Power, Obsession and the World's Most Coveted Fish by Emily Voigt

Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka

Curious Toys by Elizabeth Hand

The Art of the English Murder: From Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes to Agatha Christie and Alfred Hitchcock by Lucy Worsley

Minecraft: The Island by Max Brooks

The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in the Jazz Age by Deborah Blum

A recommendation from the wonderful bookish podcast For Real (its run has ended but you can still check out past episodes) looking into a point in history not often covered in text books. Blum covers the early NYC medical examiners Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler as they investigate a series of medical mysteries from poisonings (accidental and otherwise) to "hey, why is that guy blue?", leading to modern forensic science methods. Interesting history and a wonder that anyone made it out of 1920s NYC alive.

Rating:  3.5 stars

The Dragon Behind the Glass: A True Story About Power, Obsession and the World's Most Coveted Fish by Emily Voigt

Another For Real recommendation. This time following reporter Voigt's journey to find a wild Asian Arawana (or dragon fish), the world's most expensive aquarium fish that sell for upwards of $100K. Admittedly, I thought more of the book would be about the fish, the history of it, the science, what people have done over the years to acquire these fish (murder included) and how it came to have such a high status. And that is in there but the real focus is Emily's many excursions to try to find this fish in the wild with the help of some thoroughly frustrating scientists. These trials and travails took up the majority of the book and I would have preferred a better balance of fish to her travels in Borneo.

Rating: 3 stars

(The title is centered and honestly, it doesn't seem to want to uncenter and it's driving me out of my mind but not enough to figure out WHY it won't just left align, nor to rewrite this section/post/whatever it takes to get it to format right. Just know that I hate it.)

Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka

This was so much fun. SO MUCH FUN. A bullet train, the Shinkansen Hayate, seems to be just packed with assassins. There's former hitman Kimura who is looking to get revenge on a passenger riding the train for hurting his son. There's the Prince, who looks like an innocent schoolboy but is anything but. There are the "twins" Tangerine and Lemon, who were tasked with returning the son of a crime boss and a suitcase full of who-knows-what. And then there's Nanao, nicknamed Ladybug and self-proclaimed world's unluckiest hitman. All he has to do is get on the train, grab a suitcase and get off at the first stop. But oh ho, will it be so easy? It will not. The narrative switches between these characters, as we meet other colorful characters who are slowly coming to the realization that maybe it's not just coincidence they're all on the train. Isaka does a masterful job at keeping up the suspense and a number of times I was very torn between looking up what was going to happen because I couldn't take it anymore and wanting to let it unfold for me. (I held out and went with the latter; I'm happy I did). Looooved this book. 

Rating: 5 stars

I also watched the movie and it's fine. The movie was entertaining in its own way and has the tone of the Deadpool movies (directed by the guy that did D2), with lots of violence and comedy. The book and the movie are different enough (in key characters, motivations, tone, level of violence) that no direct comparison is necessary.

Curious Toys by Elizabeth Hand

I had been making my way through this book since about September. I took it with me on a work trip thinking I would get lots of reading done and I don't know why I thought that, because I did not. And since this was an actual, physical paperback book and not an audiobook I could put on while driving or cooking or cleaning, it meant I had to find more time to sit down and focus on it and it turns out that is harder than I anticipated. But I did finish it. The story takes place in Chicago in the 1910s focusing on a child named Pin. A child of a fortune teller at the local amusement park, she dresses like a boy for protection (and also because she feels more herself when dressed as a boy). However, there's something going on at the park with young girls showing up murdered and no idea who could have done it. The story is told through multiple narrators, including a former police office, various people who work the amusement park and the local film studio, and even the killer. Ultimately the story worked better for me when it focused on the different characters and what day-to-day life was like for them. As the story focused in more and more on the crime, I found myself less and less interested. It felt a bit like Hand was more interested in the setting as well, since the mystery wrapped up relatively suddenly for all of the time spent on set up. Part of my feeling could have been because there were large stretches between when I would pick up the book again so perhaps a more consistent reading schedule would have made me like it more.

Rating: 3.75 stars

The Art of the English Murder: From Jack the Ripper and Sherlock Holmes to Agatha Christie and Alfred Hitchcock by Lucy Worsley

In the past few years I have learned that I am a fan of the English murder mystery. Mystery in general, sure, but I do find myself drawn to many of the English mysteries. And I also like some off-beat history (see Poisoner's Handbook above) so this seemed like a fun story. Worsley looks at the way true crime in the 1700s and 1800s inspired a culture of crime and murder stories to flourish in England. There was more on actual crimes than I was expecting but they work in bringing together the different trends seen in English murder mysteries and highlight that these fads were not created in a vacuum. It was interesting to see the way murder stories and especially the detective story evolved to the point we know today. Or I suppose, more to the Golden Age of Detective stories (which ends in the late 1930s) with a little bit of Hitchcock thrown in at the end.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Minecraft: The Island by Max Brooks

OK, this is a strange one. It's a fiction book about Minecraft, a game that I have never played and am only vaguely aware of. HOWEVER, it is written by Max Brooks who also wrote World War Z, a book I read almost every year. And the audiobook is narrated by Jack Black. And it is only like 6 hours long. And it was immediately available from the library. In this case the unnamed narrator finds themself in a strange world where everything seems to be made of blocks, his arms are squared off and nothing quite seems to work the way he remembers the real world working. He can't remember how he got here or how he can get home. The book is entertaining and well-written as the narrator tries to figure out what this world is and how he can survive, but ultimately the book feels like you're watching someone play the game. And I know there are many people who are into that and you do you but it wasn't really for me. The book is a series of adventures and perilous situations the narrator finds themself in but without much of a larger story of what's going on. And while I appreciated the explanation of how things work (because again, only vaguely aware of Minecraft), it never really added up to a larger narrative. But the book does what it sets out to do, and Jack Black was a good choice of narrator.

Rating: 3 stars

Total pages read

2,045

Fiction

50%

Female authors

67%

BIPOC authors

17%

US authors

67%

Book format

audiobook: 83%

paperback: 17%

Where'd I get the book

library: 83%

gift: 17%

Blogger reco

50%

Translation

17%

Decade published

2010s: 83%

2020s: 17%

Resolution books

33%

Bullet Train is written by Japanese author Kotaro Isaka and is a translation

The Art of English Murder is by UK author Lucy Worsley