I’m finally back in a good reading groove! It’s been a chaotic spring but as the days get longer, so too do my reading hours. These are a few of the reads I loved this month. Thank you Random House for gifting me these books, noted with a star.
Notes From a Young Black Chef
Kwame Onwuachi
This is a memoir by Chef Kwame Onwuachi, known for his appearance on Top Chef. It’s a really interesting look into his life and training. I enjoyed this book immensely but you can tell it’s a memoir written by a young person, there are moments when you can read some vengeance in his side of the story. Perhaps rightfully so, but it struck me.
Violeta*
Isabel Allende
Anything Isabel Allende writes is perfection and this book is no exception. The story of Violeta’s life begins in the flu pandemic of the early 20th century. In classic sweeping Allende style it follows her through love, loss, and finding herself over the course of a lifetime. I highly recommend.
The Woman in the Purple Skirt
Natsuko Imamura
In this eerie short novel The Woman in the Yellow Sweater follows The Woman in the Purple Skirt, building an imaginary relationship with her in her mind. What starts at voyeurism quickly becomes more as the two women’s lives overlap in intentional ways. I enjoyed this book, it’s a short but thrilling read.
This Is How You Lose Her
Junot Diaz
Sometimes I get a craving for a specific sentence or type of language from a book I’ve read before. This month the craving was for Junot Diaz. His writing is extremely vulgar but at the same time very beautiful. In ‘This Is How You Lose Her,’ young, Latino men try to find love and continuously foil their plans with poor choices. I know these men and this book always strikes a chord with me.
Stolen Focus*
Johann Hari
This book really shook me. In it Hari explores how our collective cognitive abilities, primarily focus, are deteriorating because of the way our society is structured. My screen time dropped 30% the week I read this book. It’s a wake up call about how we want to spend our lives and what impacts our well being. The piece isn’t a self help book, more of a journalistic exploration of the problem. I highly recommend.
On Beauty
Zadie Smith
We read this for my book club this month. It’s a take on ‘Howard’s End’ set in a suburb outside of Boston. Two feuding intellectuals end up working at the same college and odd interpersonal relationships develop between their two families. Almost all of the characters in this are deeply unlikeable, intentionally, but I enjoyed it. It got mixed reviews from my book club who didn’t feel Smith had a strong understanding of Boston.
Circe
Madeline Miller
This book was AMAZING. I’m late to the party with this one, it was popular a while back but I can’t recommend it enough. In this retelling of the Greek witch Circe’s story she gets the fleshed out character she always deserved. It’s a feminist take on the myth that makes her out to be a villain. It’s beautifully written and extremely satisfying.
Memphis*
Tara Stringfellow
This is another must read. It’s a family saga of several generations of Black women living in Memphis. The prose read like poetry and the characters are beautiful, broken, and relatable. It’s a stunning story of love, growth, and family told in the long format a story of this depth deserves.
Flights
Olga Tokarczuk
This is my second book by Tokarczuk and I loved it just as much as the first. This is a collection of abstract vignettes related to the theme of travel with a few narrative threads woven throughout it. It’s not her typical style and there were some passages I found tedious but for the most part it was lovely and thought provoking.