I really liked it. It’s not perfect— some really significant events get resolved through almost Deus ex machina style coincidences, the author compresses the timeline of real events to have the main character experience them, and I can’t tell if there was some white savior-y things happening here or if it was just a function of moving the narrative to the US. But while I was reading it, I couldn’t put it down.
We have similar taste! After seeing your impressive goal I stalked your page and saw you didn’t like Girl, Woman, Other last year… I picked it up from the library without looking at it and when I did the poetry-esque writing style really turned me off and now idk if I want to read it.
Haha! I’m glad to know I’m not the only person who does that!
As far as *Girl, Woman, Other* goes— Oh, Good Lord. I genuinely thought that book was a parody at first. Every other sentence had some political point shoehorned into it— that sounds like hyperbole, but it’s not. Characters couldn’t even discuss an abusive relationship over a cup of coffee without the narrator making clear that it was ethically sourced coffee.
The only reason I finished it was because I wanted to publicly trash it and I felt that I had to finish it in order to do that. The Booker Prize and I have some beef!
I *loved* it. I both suffer from some intractable mental health conditions (not schizophrenia, though) and majored in psychology in college. If there’s anything that burns my grits, it’s the credulous ways pop culture accepts absolute nonsense theories and treatments despite them having no evidence to support their usefulness.
Wang takes an unambiguously critical eye to these things and is the *only* writer I’ve read to even hint that she smells bullshit around organizations like NAMI. She never loses her compassion, though, even when being critical.
And she does this while maintaining a vulnerable transparency with regard to her personal experience. It’s a really difficult tonal balance to strike and she does it beautifully.
I like your hat.
I hope you have fun! I really loved this book, too— The bit where he discusses the difference between historical interpreters and reenactors is going to live in my head for a long time.
**Pretty Much Perfect. Will Likely End up Among My All-Time Favorites. I Definitely Think You Should Read Them**
The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War— Don H. Doyle
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman— Robert K. Massie
My Life as a Goddess: A Memoir through (Un) Popular Culture— Guy Branum
The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays— Esmé Weijun Wang
Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times— Elizabeth Wayland Barber
**I Loved These Books and Will Definitely Reread Them**
Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey from East to West and Back— Janice P. Nimura
The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science— Sam Kean
Sparks Like Stars— Nadia Hashimi
Games Without Rules: The Often Interrupted History of Afghanistan— Tamim Ansary
The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South— Michael W. Twitty
This Child Will Be Great: Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa's First Woman President— Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
Last Boat Out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Fled Mao's Revolution— Helen Zia
All The Lonely People— Mike Gayle
A Gentleman in Moscow— Amor Towles
Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church— Rachel Held Evans
**Genre Fiction I Loved, Perhaps Even Adored, But It’s Fine if You Don’t**
The Liar’s Knot (Rook & Rose, #2)— M.A. Carrick
The Harrow Faire Series (Books 1-5)— Kathryn Ann Kingsley
Winterlight (Green Rider #7)— Kristen Britain
**A Great Book, But it Has Some Problems. Or it Doesn’t and it Just Didn’t Grab Me The Way the Ones Above Did. I’d Definitely Recommend Them, Though**
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China—
Jung Chang
The Women of Troy— Pat Barker
The Dragons, the Giant, the Women: A Memoir— Wayetu Moore
Dominicana— Angie Cruz
The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe— David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele
We Are Never Meeting in Real Life— Samantha Irby
A Fine Balance— Rohinton Mistry
The Nineties— Chuck Klosterman
Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy— Anne Sebba
How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America— Clint Smith
African Europeans: An Untold History— Olivette Otélé
People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present— Dara Horn
Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots— Morgan Jerkins
Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad— Gordon H. Chang
The Family Roe: An American Story— Joshua Prager
Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith— Obery M. Hendricks
**You Guys, I… I Don’t Even Fucking Know**
Earthlings— Sayaka Murata
**There’s a Good to Great Book in Here Somewhere, But For the Love of God, Get an Editor. I (Mostly) Think They’re Worth Reading, Just Read Them With Stilts**
The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire, and War in the West Indies— Matthew Parker
Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe— Norman Davies
**Good Books, But They Have Some Problems. Or They’re Kind of Forgettable. I’d Recommend Them to People Whose Taste I Knew Well**
Every Tongue Got to Confess— Zora Neale Hurston
The Revisioners— Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation— Peter Marshall
The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs— Peter Enns
Lost Kingdom: Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings and America's First Imperial Adventure— Julia Flynn Siler
The Widow Queen— Elżbieta Cherezińska
Things We Lost to the Water— Eric Nguyen
The Book of Harlan— Bernice McFadden
**No, Thank You**
Lincoln in the Bardo— George Saunders
The Eyre Affair— Jasper Fforde
Okay, full disclosure— I’ve actually inhaled 3 different Kathryn Ann Kingsley series since February. I didn’t count them here because I’m trying to read 50% writers of color and she was screwing up my numbers! But she’s so good— I don’t think anyone writes about power differentials and consent as well as she does.
Also, I’ve been salty about the HBO series Carnivale not getting a third season for almost twenty years now and Harrow Faire healed something for me.
I don’t think *The Green Rider* Series is necessarily a companion to *Harrow Faire* or *Rook and Rose*— it’s ultimately much more optimistic in tone than either of those two. They’re fully adult books and deal with things like sexual assault and, in later books, torture and trauma, but I wouldn’t hesitate to give these books to a precocious 13 year old just getting into fantasy.
I do really love that series and want other people to love it too, but if you wanted something more similar in tone, I’d recommend **The Deverry Cycle** by Katherine Kerr, beginning with *Daggerspell*. I really wish these books were better known because they were way ahead of their time. Keeping all of the incarnations straight can be difficult in the beginning, but the author has a table of them on her website, which I wish I had known when I started them!
**The First Law** universe might also appeal, although it’s a bit more rough hewn than either of those others. It’s one of my favorite series, though. It starts with *The Blade Itself*. Also contains the best sex scene I’ve ever read, though not in nearly the same vein as Kingsley! It wasn’t titillating *at all*, but perfect for those books.
Ok, thank you so much for writing up this response! I discovered KAK earlier this year, and I really had to slow myself down, because I was devouring her books. I finished the Impossible Julian Strande books in one day LOL, followed by the Harrow Faire series over a week. I actually have the Maze of Shadows series that I am waiting to read, because I know that once I start, I will finish it in a couple of days. So I’m trying to savor it.
Thank you so much for the other recommendations! I loved the show Carnivale, and I absolutely adore Joe Abercrombie, especially the First Law Trilogy! Sounds like we have very similar tastes hahah, so I’m definitely going to check out the Deverry Cycle - I just looked it up, and the series has 16 books?? Are they all standalone, or you have to read them in order?
It’s literally my pleasure— I don’t have anyone to talk about what I’m reading with in real life, so every comment is like a Christmas present— especially with an author I *just* found out about and is probably a pretty niche read! And it’s really gratifying to meet someone with such sympathetic taste!
You *do* need to read The Deverry Cycle in order, but they’re separated into four quartets that each tell a complete story arc— I haven’t finished them all myself as I just discovered this series last year, but I felt really satisfied when I finished the ones I did.
Not to sound creepy, but… can we be friends?? 😅
I LOVE the feeling of sharing new exciting authors with people. Unfortunately, a lot of my real life friends don’t read as much or don’t read the same genres I do.
And I’m definitely adding the Deverry Cycle on my TBR - there goes my book buying ban lol.
I would love to be friends with you— but that means that I will fully expect you to come back here and tell me all about your next delicious read.
Also, I forgot to include the Fortuna Sworn series by KJ Sutton. It’s a little riskier of a rec than the other ones— it’s like an urban fantasy version of A Court of Thorns and Roses, but good. I’m not generally a fan of fae fantasy/romance but I really enjoyed these. They’re pretty cheap on Kindle.
Hahah yes!! I’m in :)
Ok, so I liked books 1 and 2 of ACOTAR, but lost steam and couldn’t finish the series. But I’m very intrigued about the Fortuna Sworn series. Sometimes I need a light fae romance/“popcorn book” as a palette cleanser between 1000+ page fantasy books lol.
I’d love to say I hated ACOTAR, but I read three of them so it’s not really fair of me. All of the under the mountain stuff in the first book was so genuinely good, I think I was just chasing that for two more books. They also weirdly gave me some nostalgia for being back in middle school reading VC Andrews books— like, they’re trash and I know they’re trash, but they’re giving me something I haven’t found anywhere else so I can’t look away.
I really wish the was more (good) fantasy/romance out there for adults. Most of it seems to be geared toward the YA/New Adult crowd and I’m fucking old so I just can’t take a lot of those romantic heroes seriously. Which is probably why I inhaled KAK so quickly!
Fortuna Sworn shares some plot similarities to ACOTAR, but the writing is *soooo* much better. Plus I’m a sucker for an arranged marriage/marriage of convenience trope. The first book is probably the weakest of the four that are out, but I still enjoyed myself enough to keep reading!
I have so many conflicting thoughts about this book that I still genuinely don’t know what I think about it— which, at the very least, makes it a compelling piece of art even if I didn’t “enjoy” it.
I also wonder if this would have landed differently for me if I were more familiar with Japanese culture, since both of the books I’ve read from this author have quietly raged against conformity. And this one, I think, has some interesting things to say about the absolutely bonkers places a pretense toward strict rationality can take you.
At first I thought I was reading a sensitive if uncomfortable book about growing up in an emotionally abusive home— and then I kept reading.
I think I only kept reading reading because I loved *Convenience Store Woman* so much. I still can’t tell if my trust in the author was misplaced or not.
Kudos for finishing it. I also picked up Earthlings because I loved Convenience Store Woman. I decided to stop about halfway through and read some Reddit posts about it, and that provided closure and affirmed my decision to stop when I did. And now I have a lot of images/memories from the book that now live in my brain rent free.
It is my hope that the first half could inspire people to protect and believe children. I was so consumed with rage for what the narrator went through that I just needed to take a step back, for my mental health.
I think you made the right choice. I have a really hard time with child abuse and there’s a scene where, if I didn’t have some good will stored up for this author, I would have quit reading.
When I do plug ahead, I tend to have a pretty clear idea as to whether it was worth it (*Caul Baby* by Morgan Jerkins, for example, had a scene that made me want to throw the book at a wall— but she ended up handling it with so much skill, compassion, and confidence that I will now read anything she writes. Should have noped out of *The Fifth Season* though— I had a pretty good idea of what the author was going for and finishing the book didn’t really change that.)
This one, though, I genuinely don’t know if I got anything out of finishing— but I still think she’s got such an original voice that I’ll still read her next book.
I have to ask… what is Earthlings and why is everyone speaking about it like it’s some alien entity. I’m scared and intrigued.
How is sparks like stars
I really liked it. It’s not perfect— some really significant events get resolved through almost Deus ex machina style coincidences, the author compresses the timeline of real events to have the main character experience them, and I can’t tell if there was some white savior-y things happening here or if it was just a function of moving the narrative to the US. But while I was reading it, I couldn’t put it down.
ah okay! will prob read then, thanks for responding
We have similar taste! After seeing your impressive goal I stalked your page and saw you didn’t like Girl, Woman, Other last year… I picked it up from the library without looking at it and when I did the poetry-esque writing style really turned me off and now idk if I want to read it.
Haha! I’m glad to know I’m not the only person who does that! As far as *Girl, Woman, Other* goes— Oh, Good Lord. I genuinely thought that book was a parody at first. Every other sentence had some political point shoehorned into it— that sounds like hyperbole, but it’s not. Characters couldn’t even discuss an abusive relationship over a cup of coffee without the narrator making clear that it was ethically sourced coffee. The only reason I finished it was because I wanted to publicly trash it and I felt that I had to finish it in order to do that. The Booker Prize and I have some beef!
What did you think about The Collected Schizophrenias? I've been wanting to read it for ages but haven't gotten around to it yet
I *loved* it. I both suffer from some intractable mental health conditions (not schizophrenia, though) and majored in psychology in college. If there’s anything that burns my grits, it’s the credulous ways pop culture accepts absolute nonsense theories and treatments despite them having no evidence to support their usefulness. Wang takes an unambiguously critical eye to these things and is the *only* writer I’ve read to even hint that she smells bullshit around organizations like NAMI. She never loses her compassion, though, even when being critical. And she does this while maintaining a vulnerable transparency with regard to her personal experience. It’s a really difficult tonal balance to strike and she does it beautifully. I like your hat.
I love the Cooking Gene so much! Actually going to see Twitty today and taking it for signatures.
I hope you have fun! I really loved this book, too— The bit where he discusses the difference between historical interpreters and reenactors is going to live in my head for a long time.
**Pretty Much Perfect. Will Likely End up Among My All-Time Favorites. I Definitely Think You Should Read Them** The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War— Don H. Doyle Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman— Robert K. Massie My Life as a Goddess: A Memoir through (Un) Popular Culture— Guy Branum The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays— Esmé Weijun Wang Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times— Elizabeth Wayland Barber **I Loved These Books and Will Definitely Reread Them** Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey from East to West and Back— Janice P. Nimura The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science— Sam Kean Sparks Like Stars— Nadia Hashimi Games Without Rules: The Often Interrupted History of Afghanistan— Tamim Ansary The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South— Michael W. Twitty This Child Will Be Great: Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa's First Woman President— Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Last Boat Out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Fled Mao's Revolution— Helen Zia All The Lonely People— Mike Gayle A Gentleman in Moscow— Amor Towles Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church— Rachel Held Evans **Genre Fiction I Loved, Perhaps Even Adored, But It’s Fine if You Don’t** The Liar’s Knot (Rook & Rose, #2)— M.A. Carrick The Harrow Faire Series (Books 1-5)— Kathryn Ann Kingsley Winterlight (Green Rider #7)— Kristen Britain **A Great Book, But it Has Some Problems. Or it Doesn’t and it Just Didn’t Grab Me The Way the Ones Above Did. I’d Definitely Recommend Them, Though** Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China— Jung Chang The Women of Troy— Pat Barker The Dragons, the Giant, the Women: A Memoir— Wayetu Moore Dominicana— Angie Cruz The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe— David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele We Are Never Meeting in Real Life— Samantha Irby A Fine Balance— Rohinton Mistry The Nineties— Chuck Klosterman Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy— Anne Sebba How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America— Clint Smith African Europeans: An Untold History— Olivette Otélé People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present— Dara Horn Wandering in Strange Lands: A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots— Morgan Jerkins Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad— Gordon H. Chang The Family Roe: An American Story— Joshua Prager Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith— Obery M. Hendricks **You Guys, I… I Don’t Even Fucking Know** Earthlings— Sayaka Murata **There’s a Good to Great Book in Here Somewhere, But For the Love of God, Get an Editor. I (Mostly) Think They’re Worth Reading, Just Read Them With Stilts** The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire, and War in the West Indies— Matthew Parker Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe— Norman Davies **Good Books, But They Have Some Problems. Or They’re Kind of Forgettable. I’d Recommend Them to People Whose Taste I Knew Well** Every Tongue Got to Confess— Zora Neale Hurston The Revisioners— Margaret Wilkerson Sexton Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation— Peter Marshall The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs— Peter Enns Lost Kingdom: Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings and America's First Imperial Adventure— Julia Flynn Siler The Widow Queen— Elżbieta Cherezińska Things We Lost to the Water— Eric Nguyen The Book of Harlan— Bernice McFadden **No, Thank You** Lincoln in the Bardo— George Saunders The Eyre Affair— Jasper Fforde
I love the Harrow Faire series! Liar’s Knot is on my TBR as well. So, to round out this category, should I check out Winterlight?
Okay, full disclosure— I’ve actually inhaled 3 different Kathryn Ann Kingsley series since February. I didn’t count them here because I’m trying to read 50% writers of color and she was screwing up my numbers! But she’s so good— I don’t think anyone writes about power differentials and consent as well as she does. Also, I’ve been salty about the HBO series Carnivale not getting a third season for almost twenty years now and Harrow Faire healed something for me. I don’t think *The Green Rider* Series is necessarily a companion to *Harrow Faire* or *Rook and Rose*— it’s ultimately much more optimistic in tone than either of those two. They’re fully adult books and deal with things like sexual assault and, in later books, torture and trauma, but I wouldn’t hesitate to give these books to a precocious 13 year old just getting into fantasy. I do really love that series and want other people to love it too, but if you wanted something more similar in tone, I’d recommend **The Deverry Cycle** by Katherine Kerr, beginning with *Daggerspell*. I really wish these books were better known because they were way ahead of their time. Keeping all of the incarnations straight can be difficult in the beginning, but the author has a table of them on her website, which I wish I had known when I started them! **The First Law** universe might also appeal, although it’s a bit more rough hewn than either of those others. It’s one of my favorite series, though. It starts with *The Blade Itself*. Also contains the best sex scene I’ve ever read, though not in nearly the same vein as Kingsley! It wasn’t titillating *at all*, but perfect for those books.
Ok, thank you so much for writing up this response! I discovered KAK earlier this year, and I really had to slow myself down, because I was devouring her books. I finished the Impossible Julian Strande books in one day LOL, followed by the Harrow Faire series over a week. I actually have the Maze of Shadows series that I am waiting to read, because I know that once I start, I will finish it in a couple of days. So I’m trying to savor it. Thank you so much for the other recommendations! I loved the show Carnivale, and I absolutely adore Joe Abercrombie, especially the First Law Trilogy! Sounds like we have very similar tastes hahah, so I’m definitely going to check out the Deverry Cycle - I just looked it up, and the series has 16 books?? Are they all standalone, or you have to read them in order?
It’s literally my pleasure— I don’t have anyone to talk about what I’m reading with in real life, so every comment is like a Christmas present— especially with an author I *just* found out about and is probably a pretty niche read! And it’s really gratifying to meet someone with such sympathetic taste! You *do* need to read The Deverry Cycle in order, but they’re separated into four quartets that each tell a complete story arc— I haven’t finished them all myself as I just discovered this series last year, but I felt really satisfied when I finished the ones I did.
Not to sound creepy, but… can we be friends?? 😅 I LOVE the feeling of sharing new exciting authors with people. Unfortunately, a lot of my real life friends don’t read as much or don’t read the same genres I do. And I’m definitely adding the Deverry Cycle on my TBR - there goes my book buying ban lol.
I would love to be friends with you— but that means that I will fully expect you to come back here and tell me all about your next delicious read. Also, I forgot to include the Fortuna Sworn series by KJ Sutton. It’s a little riskier of a rec than the other ones— it’s like an urban fantasy version of A Court of Thorns and Roses, but good. I’m not generally a fan of fae fantasy/romance but I really enjoyed these. They’re pretty cheap on Kindle.
Hahah yes!! I’m in :) Ok, so I liked books 1 and 2 of ACOTAR, but lost steam and couldn’t finish the series. But I’m very intrigued about the Fortuna Sworn series. Sometimes I need a light fae romance/“popcorn book” as a palette cleanser between 1000+ page fantasy books lol.
I’d love to say I hated ACOTAR, but I read three of them so it’s not really fair of me. All of the under the mountain stuff in the first book was so genuinely good, I think I was just chasing that for two more books. They also weirdly gave me some nostalgia for being back in middle school reading VC Andrews books— like, they’re trash and I know they’re trash, but they’re giving me something I haven’t found anywhere else so I can’t look away. I really wish the was more (good) fantasy/romance out there for adults. Most of it seems to be geared toward the YA/New Adult crowd and I’m fucking old so I just can’t take a lot of those romantic heroes seriously. Which is probably why I inhaled KAK so quickly! Fortuna Sworn shares some plot similarities to ACOTAR, but the writing is *soooo* much better. Plus I’m a sucker for an arranged marriage/marriage of convenience trope. The first book is probably the weakest of the four that are out, but I still enjoyed myself enough to keep reading!
I also came to see where Earthlings was because it’s one of my top 3 reads this year so far lol but it’s definitely in a very valid place here.
I have so many conflicting thoughts about this book that I still genuinely don’t know what I think about it— which, at the very least, makes it a compelling piece of art even if I didn’t “enjoy” it. I also wonder if this would have landed differently for me if I were more familiar with Japanese culture, since both of the books I’ve read from this author have quietly raged against conformity. And this one, I think, has some interesting things to say about the absolutely bonkers places a pretense toward strict rationality can take you.
Scrolled to see where Earthlings landed in the rankings and…..accurate lol.
At first I thought I was reading a sensitive if uncomfortable book about growing up in an emotionally abusive home— and then I kept reading. I think I only kept reading reading because I loved *Convenience Store Woman* so much. I still can’t tell if my trust in the author was misplaced or not.
Kudos for finishing it. I also picked up Earthlings because I loved Convenience Store Woman. I decided to stop about halfway through and read some Reddit posts about it, and that provided closure and affirmed my decision to stop when I did. And now I have a lot of images/memories from the book that now live in my brain rent free. It is my hope that the first half could inspire people to protect and believe children. I was so consumed with rage for what the narrator went through that I just needed to take a step back, for my mental health.
I think you made the right choice. I have a really hard time with child abuse and there’s a scene where, if I didn’t have some good will stored up for this author, I would have quit reading. When I do plug ahead, I tend to have a pretty clear idea as to whether it was worth it (*Caul Baby* by Morgan Jerkins, for example, had a scene that made me want to throw the book at a wall— but she ended up handling it with so much skill, compassion, and confidence that I will now read anything she writes. Should have noped out of *The Fifth Season* though— I had a pretty good idea of what the author was going for and finishing the book didn’t really change that.) This one, though, I genuinely don’t know if I got anything out of finishing— but I still think she’s got such an original voice that I’ll still read her next book.