TBR List Update: July

    

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 July 2023

Books read: 7

Books I decided NOT to finish: 3

I flipped through Predators, Prey, and Other Kinfolk, but with a towering stack of library holds, it didn't make the cut. I renewed At Home like 8 times -- I do like Bill Bryson's chatty nonfiction -- but finally gave it up. I need more narrative, I guess. I also dropped The New One, which is about new parenthood, because I'd been first on the hold list for months and it was never free, and then I guess my library no longer has access to it in Overdrive, but I didn't get a notification that the hold would never be filled. Maybe I'll listen to the audiorecording sometime and not count it as a book.

Books left on the TBR List: 71

Best book of the month: The Sparrow

I liked The Sparrow more than I thought I would, and the sequel Children of God wasn't bad. either. (It wasn't on the TBR list, but I wanted to read it right after finishing the first, which was.) I missed their debut 20+ years ago, so only had a bare knowledge of the plot: Jesuit priest is only survivor of a space mission to an inhabited planet -- and he is maimed and reviled and generally in a deplorable state. This story was part sci-fi, part philosophy. and took careful reading to explore questions about conversion/colonization, faith/doubt, and what it means to be human. Lots of yummy linguistics, anthropology, theology. There wasn't a ton of text spent on the mechanics of space travel or communication, which means it holds up to a critical review a few decades later -- the same timeframe that part of the book takes place. Thankfully, the author had the good luck to set first contact in 2019, not 2020! I like a story that makes me think, and this one had quite a few ethical puzzlers to mull over.

Worst book of the month: Nothing!

I didn't read much, but it was all pretty good!