Fizz Reads A Book

In which I read a book, and tell you about it.

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New Emma Straub book? 😍 I’m so in.

(There’s also a new Ann Patchett! What a time to be alive.)

This book is about a cruise themed around a fictional boy band, who are now past middle aged, but still have tons of fans. The pov changes from one particularly disheartened band member, to one cruise guest who isn’t exactly sure she should be there and is going through some major life changes, and a staff member who is also at a crossroads. I liked it a lot. Emma Straub is a gem.

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I am a fan of Ryan Trahan’s YouTube channel, and I enjoyed his “50 States in 50 Days” series last summer. During that series, his wife, Haley Pham, announced this novel. When it came out, I requested it from the library via Libby, and it was a long wait. It’s a popular book.

You can tell the author is young and this was her first novel, but I felt like it improved as it went along. Or maybe that was just my impression. I speedily read the first half, partly skimming, but then the love story really caught me and I slowed down. Then there was the obligatory tension and misunderstanding that every romance novel has to have, and I impatiently skimmed it again. When they resolved the problem, I slowed down and finished the book properly.

It was a quick read, but I enjoyed it. No spicy scenes like an Emily Henry novel, just a lot of kissing. A promising book from a young author!

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This is a sequel to Sandwich, which I read a few years ago. At the time, I said that I both loved and hated the main character because she was so similar to me. For that reason, I ignored this book the first couple of times I saw it at the library. The last time though, I thought, “why not?” And I really enjoyed it! I was much more charmed by Rocky this time. Her life is very lovely, and so is her family. We had a nice visit.

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I read Emily Itami’s book Fault Lines last summer and adored it. When I saw this new one at the library, I was so excited that I gasped “Emily Itami!” out loud.

It took me a bit to get into, as it’s very different from her first book. But I ended up loving it just as much, maybe more. The world she created was so lovely and evocative. Three half-Japanese, half-British sisters gather at their family home in a small Japanese seaside town for one summer. They spend time with family and friends, and everyone grows, and it’s all so beautiful.

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Like almost everyone did, I loved the movie Project Hail Mary. I went home and requested the book from the library, along with the author’s earlier works. The Martian came in first.

I watched the movie that was made out of this book when it came out, so the beats were familiar. It was still very enjoyable. Also kind of nice picturing Matt Damon as the main character. I liked this book a lot.

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DNF’d the Billy Eichner audiobook. It’s 12 hours long! I was two hours into it and he’d just started talking about grade two. Like, I’m a fan, and he clearly had a beautiful relationship with his parents, but let’s do some editing.

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This cover is what drew my attention to the Asian Heritage Month display at the library. I love sakura, and hey, I’ve been on the Hankyu line! (Japan brag 😂)

If this is what the cozy Japanese fiction trend I’ve been hearing about is like, count me in. It was such a lovely, easygoing read. No tension or unpleasantness. Just a story about what happened to various people on the train. Very good!

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The library had a display of books by Asian authors for Asian Heritage Month, and the selection was so delightful, it made me fairly giddy. I took out three books.

I went to another branch yesterday that also had a display, but I wasn’t interested in any of their choices, so kudos to that first library!

I read this one first. Very short, so more of a novella. It’s about four families living in an apartment way out in the rural suburbs of Seoul. The apartment is a government-run experiment in communal living to encourage families to have more kids. (No idea if this is based on anything real.) You get to know all four of the mothers and their very different lives, and their efforts to blend these lives. It was very interesting, particularly because there seems to be such a difference in their society’s expectations of how a woman should behave. There was a lot of thinking a few steps ahead about how if they said or did something, what everyone else would consequently think. I don’t think it’s just women either, I think men and children are expected to behave a certain way too. Very interesting! I liked it a lot.

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This book irritated the hell out of me! I made it halfway through and decided not to finish it, which is rare for me. It’s very avant-garde, and the style is just not to my taste. Why does she repeat herself so much?

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I almost quit this book a quarter of the way through. It was just so grim. I was depressed by the topic. It takes place a mere hundred years in the future, in a world completely altered by climate change, nuclear war, AI, and other things that are very much happening today. It’s told from the point of view of a scholar who specializes in the 1990-2030 period, so it really smacks you in the face with everything going on in the world that infuriates me daily. McEwan mentions people blindly obsessed with an autocrat…conspiracy theories and religious zealotry growing in the face of scientific advancement…well, you can tell where he stands.

I’m glad I kept at it. It was very good.

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The author of this book is a two-time Survivor contestant, but I heard about it when he was a guest on the podcast Hollywood Handbook. It’s not quite a parody of the experience of going on a survival reality show, because it covers some pretty serious emotions and mental health problems. I really enjoyed it, despite not being a fan of Survivor.

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I raved about Jess Walter’s book Beautiful Ruins, but I tried to read his book The Cold Millions and didn’t enjoy it. So this could have gone either way. Fortunately, I really liked it. It’s about an older gentleman who has become a recluse in the woods near Spokane. Suddenly his grandchildren land on his door and he finds out his daughter has taken off, and he’s immersed not just in family drama, but the world. Really well written, really good story.

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I loved this book! It was so beautiful. It was fairly short, about 300 pages. It’s a Korean novel set in the near future, where robots have taken over a large part of the workforce. The story is about a robot jockey, a winning racehorse, and a small family struggling with grief and loneliness. It’s about animal rights, and technological progress, and family, grief and loneliness like I mentioned, and also living with a disability…this covers a lot! So good. Do read it.

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I feel kind of uncultured for not loving this book. It was long listed for the Booker Prize, and the reviews are effusive. It was certainly an interesting topic. It was a story of a life totally unknown to me. It was very well described. I just found it a bit slow at times. It was short anyway.

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This book was very well written. I didn’t love it though. The main character drops his daughter off at college and just keeps on driving, without a clear plan in mind. Maybe he left his wife, who cheated on him several years earlier. Maybe he’s writing a book about basketball. Maybe he’s helping on a controversial law case. He contains multitudes. He’s also clearly unwell, but insists on ignoring it. I didn’t like him, but I also understood where he was coming from. The ending was unexpected.

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Okay so I enjoyed this one, but not as much as some of Emily Henry’s previous books. This was my second least favourite so far. Not to say I didn’t like it, I just didn’t love it. I did like the main characters, Alice and Hayden. They are journalists competing to get a job writing a reclusive heiress’ memoir. I thought their love story was really sweet. The heiress’ story ended up being interesting, but I found the format of switching every chapter between Alice and Hayden in current day and Margaret (the heiress) in the past irritating, and I didn’t like Margaret for a good chunk of the book.

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Whoops, I immediately read another Ali Hazelwood book right after the last one. The woman is prolific. This one came out last year, shortly after Deep End, and I forgot about it until recently.

This was my least favourite of the author’s. It’s sort of a sequel to Not in Love. This time the main characters are 23 year old Maya, the younger sister of Eli from Not in Love, and Conor, the 38 year old business partner and best friend of Eli. It takes place at Eli and Rue’s wedding, and all the characters are from Not in Love. There’s also a fun cameo from the main characters from Deep End, and several mentions of Jack, the main guy from Love Theoretically. His wife is mentioned in passing, but she doesn’t even get name checked (it’s Elsie.) The wedding is taking place in Sicily, and it’s described beautifully.

The age gap between Maya and Conor is what’s meant to be problematic, and honestly it was for me, at least until the end. Hazelwood spends the whole book pointing out how it’s not problematic because Maya is very smart and independent, and in fact she’s the one with all the power because Conor is so stupid in love with her that he mightily restrains himself in her presence (illustrated by a lot of swallowing and jaw clenching.) Really it just gave me the ick and it was hard to get past. Also there was a trad wife vibe I couldn’t get past- Maya thinks about what a great dad Conor would be when she sees him with Minami’s kid, she gives up an opportunity for a prestigious scientist position to become a teacher (trad wife coded, no?) and Conor straight up fantasizes about getting Maya pregnant. Maya called it a breeding kink, which, also, ick. I ended up enjoying the book, but now that I’m thinking about Conor’s slavish devotion to making Maya his child bride essentially, I’m getting put off again.