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what I read: Feb 2023

LHC #201: "The Lover: A Sufi mystery" by Laury Silvers. In the acknowledgements, Murat Coskun! And I thought, the drummer? What's he doing here? The writing wasn't very elegant. Too much sufi, not enough mystery, like the plot is a distribution mechanism for the research. And the dialog seemed kind of modern.

"The Essex Serpent" by Sarah Perry. I got this for Christmas, and I'd finished a hardcover from the library and had three more on the way but they hadn't arrived yet, so I picked this up to read on the bus one evening, and I was totally hooked. No supernatural to speak of, though I often expected it to veer into Lovecraft, but great just the same. 

LHC #202: "The invisible life of Addie Larue" by VE Schwab. Hard copy because the eBook had like a 16-week wait (!). As this book moved up my hold list, I was growing increasingly ambivalent to it. The boy's book club read this in the fall, and they had some issues. I remember the boy said he didn't expect so much sex, and also, if someone's going to live a really long time, he'd expect them to venture a little farther from home. But I've read five other books by her, six if you count the YA one under a slightly different name that was about a library of bodies and eyeliner? 

I did not find there to be too much sex, except when things kind of stopped working for me with respect to the relationship with Luc. Agreed about the travel thing. And I kept wondering, Addie spends a whole day with someone sometimes, or an entire evening. Do they never have to go to the washroom? Doesn't she? 

LHC #203: "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair. AudioBook. It was published in 1906, and I feel like things haven't changed enough, or maybe are sliding back towards how things were back then? Fascinating and horrifying. Wikipedia says this book led to the Meat Inspection Act, which made me wonder if perhaps most people only read the first third of the book? US covers so much more stuff than just that. Though it really does completely abandon plot once Jurgis becomes a socialist and starts attending meetings, where endless speechifying occurs. With which I don't necessarily disagree, but still. At one point I thought the book could only end with Jurgis dying, but the author chose a different path. 

The reader did a great job, and I was highly amused to see some of the other projects he's worked on: "Santa's little yelpers"! 

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