TBR List Update: March

 

I'm working my way through #VirtualMountTBR. Here's my current To-Be-Read List, and here's the list of titles I have read this year.

In March 2023

Books read: 18

Books I decided NOT to finish: 3

I really liked how it felt to say no and remove a book from the list. Weirdly freeing. I'm making note here of what the books were and why, just because.

Vita Nostra: I read a chapter in the ebook preview, and just didn't love the style (although the magical school genre is full of my favorites, there are occasional mismatches like The Magicians and Atlas Six).

Putting the Rabbit in the Hat was recommended by a colleague a year ago, and I was iffy then. I am absolving myself of guilt for not following up on a personal recommendation; we had a good conversation at the time, and that was enough.

After attempting again to finish The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America, I succumbed to the kind of fatigue that never seems to overtake me on cross-country flights.

Books left on the TBR List: 115

Best book of the month: Demon Copperhead

I was #137 on the library hold list when I requested this Barbara Kingsolver novel last fall. Everyone said "It's worth the wait!" and now I agree with them. The story of Damon's unusual birth to a teen mom in Lee County, Virginia, and his subsequent journey through the foster system and from home (or laundry room pallet) to home (or McMansion) amid the growing opioid crisis of the late 1990s, is tragic, grimy, emotionally exhausting, and shot through with threads of humanity. It's a portrayal of one type of American poverty -- rural, generational, relationship-rich but cash-poor -- perpetuated by institutions (educational, judicial, correctional, military, medical, industrial), endured by many, ignored by more. Although Kingsolver notes that her book is an homage to Dickens's David Copperfield, I did not find that not having read that classic negatively affected my experience. 

Worst book of the month: Foster

There was a similar waitlist for this slim volume (and I was both surprised and relieved to discover how short it was), but it did not satisfy. I wanted more of a backstory, more meat to the conflict, more resolution. I wanted better for the main character. I wanted to know more of what she was thinking and feeling instead of coming up against a blank wall. It was strange to me (because of how much I've looked into modern adoption and foster care) that all of the arrangements were made privately, informally, although I know that sort of kinship care was and is common in families/communities. I learned that this story was fleshed out into a film, The Quiet Girl, and perhaps with scoring and cinematography it gains emotional depth.