We're an Open Book
I didn’t make any official goals this year but one thing I’m trying to do is read more “literary fiction” and books by men of color.
The Bad Muslim Discount is a carefully observed coming-of-age story of two young Muslims–Anvar, a sarcastic Pakistani immigrant in San Francisco, and Safwa, a young Iraqi woman burdened with endless tragedy in a country torn apart by war.
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I hope you’re joining us this Friday for a day of reading, bookish chatting and challenges. Sign-ups are still open here!
I tried to make a feasible TBR that I can hopefully get through in one day. After I took this picture I realized I didn’t have an audiobook on here so I’ll have to scope one out to add in.
…I read more thrillers!
The Dry by Jane Harper
Finance investigator Aaron Falk hasn’t visited the struggling farming community of Kiewarra in over 20 years—not since he was run out of town for his association with a dead girl. But when his childhood best friend commits a grisly murder-suicide Aaron is called to attend the funeral and gets roped into the investigation.
This was a solid crime novel, to quote one of the blurbs on the back; it has twists on every page. My favorite thing about Jane Haper’s books are her endings–she writes revelations right up to the last word on the last page.
I’ve been experimenting with crime thrillers this year and this is one of my favorites. I liked that it had a character-driven angle with Falk’s past.
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384 Pages | Roaring Brook Press | Science Fiction YA | 5/4/2021
This book was very much Black Mirror but make it Cli-Fi.
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13 Hours 33 Mins | Simon & Schuster Audio | Literary ? | 6/1/2021
Editorial assistant Nella Rogers is used to being the only Black girl at Wagner Publishing. Then Hazel McCall is hired as a new editorial assistant. Nella is optimistic that the new Black girl–with her activist lineage and “Harlem cool”–will help her challenge the company’s diversity problem. Instead, Nella finds herself slowly pushed out of the comfortable place she secured for herself in the company.
I’m not the biggest fan of books where racial trauma is used like this but I came into this book thinking it was a thriller so I assumed I’d at least get enmeshed in a unique world and it would have compelling plotting. But this book toes the lines more of literary fiction with speculative elements. It has elements of modern Black horror like Get Out and social satire like The Sellout but at the end of the day doesn’t really say anything. I just thought this was kind of silly and found it extremely tedious.
I do not know how to review this book without spoilers so….
*Here be spoilers *
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