In this bookish mystery, the president of a university library has a stroke and his second-in-command, Leisl Weiss, is called back from her sabbatical to fill his role in the interim. Just days before his hospitalization, Leisl’s boss had overseen the delivery of a recently-acquired precious artifact. When Leisl takes the helm, she finds that the manuscript is missing. She must find it quickly in order to prove her competency & prevent donor backlash.

Let’s start with what I enjoyed about this book: a nerdy library setting with bookish characters will always appeal to me. Leisl is a compelling protagonist — thoughtful and principled, but flawed and a bit self-centered. Also, I was engaged through the whole story and was invested in the outcome.

Now, where the book fell short for me lies mostly in the secondary characters. They all had the building blocks of fascinating ensemble players, but none were fully developed enough. In particular, there is a side storyline of a librarian who, in the midst of the whole drama, goes missing. Her story had such potential to add richness to the narrative, but unfortunately it came off to me as a flippant use of mental health distress.  

I kept wanting all the hints about Leisl’s husband’s mental fragility to amount to either a relapse on his part or a lesson on her part that translated to her treatment of Miriam. Neither happened and it left me feeling like they were dehumanized.

On the whole, not a bad read, but not one I’ll quickly be recommending. 

 On more than one occasion while reading this book, I just wanted to hold it to my chest in a tight hug. The Book of Form and Emptiness is creative & thoughtful, with kindhearted, messy characters and a sensitive look at mental illness. It explores seemingly incongruous themes from climate change to the purpose of art to the power of found family.

The protagonist, Benny Oh, starts hearing voices after the unexpected and upsetting death of his beloved father. He realizes that the voices are the objects of the world trying to get his attention. On the whole, he finds their pleas overwhelming and he retreats into himself in search of solace. Ultimately, he finds comfort at the public library where things are literally quiet and orderly, and he meets a delightful cast of characters from the social margins who help him see his worth and sanity. Benny’s mother, Annabelle, wracked with grief, experiences her own breakdown and begins hoarding. Benny’s new “ability” clashes dramatically with Annabelle’s penchant for collecting, and the two have to figure out how to hold their little family together amidst their individual struggles.

Ruth Ozeki is incredibly inventive and this book definitely played with structure and perspective in an original way. The supporting cast of characters were all treated as full people which added immensely to my enjoyment.

My only critique of the book is that I wished for even more insight into the world Ozeki built around objects. The Book (a character in itself!) explains to Benny that there is a bit of a rift between Made and Unmade items, and occasionally goes on rants about how various objects (specifically books) view humanity. I really enjoyed those parts and they came with less and less frequency as the book progressed which was a bit of a bummer. 

 What a phenomenal memoir. Jesse Wente is an Ojibwe film critic from Toronto, Canada who uses his own story to highlight the ways that Canada has failed to reconcile with First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples despite the feigned social and political focus on the subject. With wit and clarity, Wente shares about his family in Serpent River, his absolute love of movies, his radio career, and his activism on behalf of the wider Indigenous community.

What Wente shares is not new — in fact, that’s one of his points. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission reported clear steps to take (that have not been honored), but it essentially reiterated a previous report from 1991 called Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. These issues have been raised repeatedly over decades, but it’s in a colonizer’s best interest to whitewash history wit a more palatable story or act as if all injustices exist entirely in the past, both of which are egregious lies. Wente firmly calls for an awakening, a reckoning, a commitment to truth.

This book belongs alongside Minor Feelings (Cathy Park Hong) and White Tears Brown Scars (Ruby Hamad). Wente does an excellent job of exposing the ways that culture and media perpetuate violence, further oppressing those who have already been deeply harmed.

 See No Stranger is a stunning memoir manifesto from activist Valerie Kaur. Chronicling her (very full) life up until now, Kaur shares about how her compassionate posture towards hate and despair are informed by her Sikh faith. Raised in California and largely radicalized by anti-Sikh hate crimes after 9/11, Kaur reflects on her own growth catalyzed by putting her body on the frontlines as an activist and storyteller.

Kaur is guided by the mantra: You are a part of me I do not yet know. She promotes wonder as a way through hate, going as far as to say “the failure to wonder is the beginning of violence.” She is admirably rooted in the teachings of her religion that emphasize caring robustly for humanity and intentionally positions its adherents as people who show up and help.

Something especially powerful about this particular memoir was the weaving of anecdotes with practices that Kaur has developed over the years through deep personal work both alone and with support of community. She humbly points out moments when she acted out of fear, rage, or hurt and described how she worked to uproot those tendencies. Kaur is most definitely someone I’d like to continue to learn from and think most everyone would benefit from reading her story. 

 This short, creative, unsettling novel follows an unnamed teenager narrator who is stuck on an island off the New Hampshire coast in a separatist community of retirees (self-named The Wrinklies) who begrudgingly let her stay after her grandmother dies and her parents cannot be reached.

In Cygnet, Season Butler writes with clarity, wit, and rich description. Her imagination is on clear display and produced an immersive, memorable read.

One of the book’s endorsements compared the main character to Holden Caufield which caused me to approach the book apprehensively as I realllllly did not enjoy Catcher in the Rye. However, I must admit that the characterization is apt AND I liked it. The teenage confusion, the paradoxical observational astuteness juxtaposed with youthful naïveté, the uncertainty of self… all of this came together to reveal a complex and endearing narrator. The book is quiet and character-driven, exploring generational distrust & misunderstanding, the end of the world, and a person’s worth.