March: What I Read

I have mixed feelings about my reading list for this month, mostly because the books I read were-- in some cases-- just more difficult than I wanted them to be.  In my middle age, I am looking for year-round beach reads, I guess.  And then! The ones that were easy reads-- which were most of them, BTW-- kind of weren't very good, generally.


10. Good Mourning by Elizabeth Meyer:  This is a memoir of a socialite turned funeral consultant.  It's mildly entertaining but really frustrating because she talks about her privilege but there's still SO MUCH she doesn't recognize.

9. Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It by Gary Taubes:  I kind of hate science writing as a genre-- there, I said it-- because there is a huge temptation for writers to combine disparate bodies of literature as if they tell a coherent narrative and sometimes they;re just making shit up with a terrible mansplaining tone.  Which is maybe what's happening here.  And he has really weird pictures of naked women's bodies.  The upshot: CARBS MAKE US FAT YOU FAT ASSHOLE.

8. Backseat Saints by Joshilyn Jackson:  I love her-- so entertaining.  And she is even better on audiobook because she reads her own.

7. The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson:  Ditto.

6. Ripper by Patricia Cornwell:  YIKES. This is an update of her original Ripper book, and it's goooood.

5. My Husband's Wife by Jane Cory:  Fast, serviceable thriller.

4. The Mommy Group by Elizabeth Gold:  An interesting ethnography of rich-ish older moms in Brooklyn.  Some good gender and class critiques of parenting.

3. Necessary Trouble By Sarah Jaffe:  This is about the rise of populist movements in the early 2000s-- really depressing in a post-election context.

2. The Sellout by Paul Beatty:  This was HARD and also funny.  I really only wanted to engage with it on a surface level because I am a lazy reader, but there was a lot going on here.

1. Idaho by Emily Ruskovich:  This is heartbreaking and spare and lovely.  Also really creepy.

I am at 32/120 books for the first quarter, only 2 books ahead of pace, and I need to read faster because 10 books is a slog some months, and it would be nice to be able to only have to read 5 or 6 and stay on track, especially in the busy fall semester.

Don't forget to enter the Snapology.com giveaway-- I will pick a winner Wednesday, April 5.