Happy Tuesday, friends. Things feel a lot more hopeful and optimistic this week than they did last week. I am so very grateful for that! Living with an anxiety disorder is no joke, and every time an anxiety spiral strikes, I am reminded of that.
I didn’t have a ton of time for reading last week. Some of it was that I just wasn’t in the right headspace for reading and some of it was just a busier week in my life. But I still managed to finish two books and really liked both of them:
It Happened One Summer by Tessa Bailey (★★★★☆)
I’ve been burned by Tessa Bailey before, but a few trusted readers had good things to say about this book so I decided to give it a shot. I’m so glad I did! I really, really liked this contemporary romance where the main character felt like a play on Alexis Schitt of Schitt’s Creek. In this novel, Piper is an influencer/socialite who has gotten into too many scraps for her stepfather (a famous movie producer) to handle. So he sends Piper and her younger sister to a small fishing town in Washington to try to revive her late father’s dive bar. It’s there she is cut off from her old life, has to learn how to survive on her own, and meets a man who may change her world. Brendan is a sea captain (the same job that got her father killed) who doesn’t think much of Piper when she arrives and thinks she’ll hightail it out of town soon enough. But he’s surprised by her tenacity and strength, as she learns how to exist in a new world and revive her father’s bar. This novel fully tugged at my heartstrings and ugh, I just loved the love story between Piper and Brendan. They were so perfect for one another! I have some issues with this book, though. I felt like Brendan was pretty one-dimensional with zero flaws. He’s the kind of man that makes dating very, very hard because real people are not built like him. I just wanted a bit more personality from him. Secondly, the ending was fully ridiculous and over-the-top and a lot of it didn’t make sense with the way the characters were written leading up to these final scenes. But romance authors these days seem to put a lot of stock in these fully ridiculous endings (I wish they wouldn’t) so it is what it is. All in all, though, a fantastic romance and I’m excited to read the next book in the series soon.
Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo (★★★★★)
This book tries to answer the question of how we got to where we are today: escalations of white male rage, white male conservatism, and violence against Black people, people of color, and immigrants. And wow, does Oluo do an incredible job answering that question. This book takes on all pieces of our society that have been affected by white male mediocrity: politics, sports, higher ed, women in the workplace, social justice movements, etc. I was particularly aggrieved by the chapters on women in the workplace and women in politics because the injustices women have had to put up with because of white male mediocrity are endless and continuing. This book isn’t here to offer answers. It simply serves as a way for us to recognize how we have continued to lift up white male voices and forget the women and the people of color who are also engaged in our society. Only when we recognize that there is a problem can we begin to move forward. This is a wonderfully written book that I think is well worth a read.
It’s the expectation that many white men have that they shouldn’t have to climb, shouldn’t have to struggle, as others do. It’s the idea not only that they think they have less than others, but that they were supposed to have so much more. When you are denied the power, the success, or even the relationships that you think are your right, you either believe that you are broken or you believe that you have been stolen from. White men who think they have been stolen from often take that anger out on others. White men who think they are broken take that anger out on themselves.”
What I’m Reading This Week
- The Vanishing Stair by Maureen Johnson (audio) – I have a couple hours left in this audiobook (the second in Johnson’s Truly Devious series). I’m enjoying it a lot!
- A Beastly Kind of Earl by Mia Vincy (e-book) – Man, I love Mia Vincy’s historical romances. Her covers are atrocious but the writing is exceptional. I’m 100 pages into this romance and loving it so far.
- A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (print) – So many people have raved about this book! I have very high expectations, but I’m trying to temper myself. I just started it yesterday so I don’t have any opinions just yet.
What are you reading?
I just finished a memoir by Valerie Bertenelli, and it was pretty good! Now I’m reading Plucked (I have only just started, but it’s a subject I honestly find fascinating).
I am in the huge minority here, and I’m ready to be roasted for this, but I really didn’t like A Gentleman in Moscow. I will wait to hear your take on it!
Well, you know how I felt about A Gentleman in Moscow by now, so I share your feelings! It was so disappointing to DNF it, but it just wasn’t holding my attention like I expected it to.
I almost felt the exact opposite about the characters in It Happened One Summer. Piper was relatively flat for me – how did she go from spoiled princess to getting her hands dirty getting the bar ready in days? She was just never really developed in any real way. It didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the book at all, but I did question a lot about the characterizations in that book. I think the second book in the series is a bit divisive – I gave it a slightly higher rating than the first book, but a lot of Goodread folks didn’t like it as much. If you ever get around to reading it, I’ll be interested in your perspective.
You know, it’s weird because I agree with all of your points about Piper but it didn’t bother me nearly as much for some reason. I was more focused on how PERFECT Brendan was and how unrealistic his character was. I guess there were a lot of weird character choices in that book!
I finished “Take My Hand” over the weekend which I enjoyed – I gave it 4 stars. I think you were a little more meh on it. It wasn’t 5 stars for me but I thought it was well done. Now I am reading “Detransition, Baby.” My friend who is a child psycho who works in a gender clinic recommended it to me. It’s about a person who detransitions from female back to male and then gets his girlfriend pregnant and suggests they raise the child w/ his ex-girlfriend (who transitioned to female). There is a lot going on but it’s giving me insight into the life of a transgendered person. Some of the drama bothers me, like some infidelity that happens in a book. That bothers me no matter whether it’s a cis or no-cis relationship, though! next I am reading “Left on 10th” – a memoir by Nora Ephron’s sister!
Ooh, I need to go back and see what you thought of Detransition, Baby! I’ve heard really mixed reviews and it sounded a little more literary than I typically like. But I’m very interested in your thoughts about this book!
I am still reading quite slowly – sigh – and just going with what’s already in my Apple Books account. I thought I might want to read the Tessa Bailey book but… um, I’m glad I read the reviews on Goodreads. I am kind of a prude, honestly, when it comes to sex scenes and given some of the reviews and quotes provided, this would probably be a DNF for me! I have had to DNF Abby Jiminez’s books before, so that probably tells you something about just how, well, prudish (that’s such a great word, as an aside…) I am.
But the other book – oh, that sounds like a fabulous book on a terrible topic. Every single thing in that quote you included hits right at the heart of where we are. Adding that to the (long) list – I hadn’t heard of it, so thank you for sharing!!!
I need to be better at given an open-door rating for my romances! I like them steamy, but I know a lot of people are uncomfortable with that level of detail, so maybe I’ll give an “Anne-approved” rating when it’s a romance that’s not open door, haha. I totally understand not wanting to read about all of that!