Eight Mostly Great Books I Read in March and April
- May 5
- 4 min read
Updated: May 8
What a couple of months! I partially read books in my TBR (I should get a prize for that) and partially read new books I picked up on my college tour east with the 17 yo, and for Independent Bookstore Day.
In this stack I found books I loved, books I respected, books I didn't quite understand, and one DNF. Can you guess which one? I was shocked, myself.
This book is beautifully written. The characters are compelling, and the plotting is next level. And then you get to the end -- and it's mindbending. I find myself continuing to think about this novel because I am still working out all the intricacies of the story in my head. I highly recommend this one. Plus it's extremely timely given our growing debates about the powers of Big Tech.
This is a lovely novel that concerns two sherpas who are watching over the body of their English client, who has fallen many feet off the trail. As they consider what to do, we get their backstories, the politics of Nepal, the history of sherpas and mountain climbing, and reflections on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. This book is a slow meditative burn which emphasizes the connections and disconnections between cultures and peoples. Beautifully done.
I will admit, I don't quite get this book. I got it structurally, sure, but it just didn't connect for me. I'm probably not quite the right audience (it came in a book subscription box), but there are parts I really loved. This book is about a Korean pro basketball player who gets trapped in a weird three-way frenemy-ship with a Korean sports journalist and another player who the sports journalist has been obsessed with since childhood. Its also follows the Korean player's girlfriend, and her work in Korean soap operas. That's where this book went off the rails for me -- I'm not a huge fan of Korean soaps. But if you are -- you'll love this. Oh and the subplot about the sister with cancer is beautiful. See? Lots to like, if you're the right reader.
Gorgeous, beautiful writing about a woman who abandons her mainstream life and goes to live with a group of nuns whose order is slowly dying out. It's also a COVID book, and a book about how our childhoods shape us, and how our traumas find us. And there is thing with mice. This book is amazing and it's no wonder it was on the Booker Short Lists. Highly recommend. If you liked RUTH, you'll love this.
This Kafka-esque story about a woman who just stops eating all meat -- and how that enrages her famiy and tears them apart -- is weird and wonderful and sad and dark. In a lot of ways it's a protest novel -- about our world, our planet, our cultural structures. Han Kang won the Nobel Prize in 2024, so you're in for deeply considered story here.
First: I loved PACHINKO. PACHINKO is a perfect book. So I am a Lee fan, and I'm really looking forward to her new book.
But I just couldn't get through this one, her debut novel, which was obviously re-issued to take advantage of all the Pachinko love out there. That's why I bought it, at least. And there's lot to like in it, but you can tell she hasn't figured it all out yet -- and that's not a bad thing, again, this was her debut. I just couldn't follow her for nearly 700 pages as she wandered through the story, so I DNF'd around page 150.
Holy moly. That's really all I can say. HOLY MOLY. My mother told me to read this last year, my friend Steve told me to read this two months ago -- so I picked it up for Independent Bookstore Day and HOLY MOLY. This book, about G.W. Pabst's fateful decision to return to Europe on the eve of World War II, and how he did the mental gymnastics to keep working in the Nazi system, is just extraordinary. The different points of view that come in and out of the book help tell this story about one man's complicity that also manages to indict the reader at the same time, in the final pages. It's a masterwork -- my favorite read of the last eight weeks, for sure. It's no wonder it's shortlisted for the Booker.
I always keep a collection of short stories in my purse for when I have a minute or two while I'm out and about. This book is perfect for that, as the stories are mostly very short. This collection of magical realist stories set in Iraq are beautiful and painful and confounding. I highly recommend if you want a real window into another culture, and in tiny bites.
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