Only three years later, I’ve read the it book of 2017!

I could have done with fewer poops and “pounding my SHARDS,” and at times the weird blend of schmaltz and sadism (as observed by one review I read in the Atlantic) did not work for me. Admittedly, I probably could have chosen a better time to read this than in the middle of a pandemic that has me thinking about death almost every waking moment.

There are some beautiful passages, some bizarre ones, and some nice Abraham Lincoln stuff that I liked as someone who once took an entire class on Lincoln’s coping with mental illness. And the full-cast audio production is as good as people insist it is.

But I found Lincoln in the Bardo difficult to enjoy even though I appreciated it.

Also, I am realizing that “books set in graveyards with ghosts as characters” is an unintentional wheelhouse of mine. The Graveyard Book. Spoon River Anthology. Lincoln in the Bardo. Might as well read A Fine and Private Place next.

Definitely read this to mentally escape back to Salem during Halloween, my version of the happiest place on Earth.

This might be the least WTNV book in the WTNV universe, and the one I think will stick with me longest. Opt for the audio book, because Mara Wilson’s narration is divine.

“Let me tell you something... There’s nothing nice about Southern ladies.”

I was not really familiar with Guy Branum before hearing him interviewed on Reading Glasses, my favorite podcast, where he came across as intelligent, warm, and hilarious. Those qualities imbue every chapter of his memoir, the best parts of which concern growing up in an agricultural town in Northern California. You should listen to the audiobook, because his voice is magnificent and adds gravitas and humor even to a description of reading the M volume of the encyclopedia as a kid.

This has everything I like in a romance novel: bickering, humor, genuine problems, a smart heroine, and well-written sex scenes that do not include cringe-inducing euphemisms.