After completing the Tournament of Books shortlist, I was excited to get back to books of my own choosing! I picked up The Latinist by Mark Prins from my local bookstore @downboundbooks after reading about it in Molly Young’s Read Like the Wind newsletter. This book had a couple of very strong selling points for me - an Oxford setting, and a favorable recommendation from @mollybethyoung that mentioned “antique trolling” with a comparison to The Secret History. 

 

This book follows Tessa, an American classics scholar at Oxford, and her professional mentor, Chris. Tessa discovers that Chris has possibly sabotaged her future academic job prospects by writing a bad letter of recommendation for her applications. The book alternates between their perspectives - Chris has decided he is in love with Tessa and will stop at almost nothing to keep her near. Meanwhile, Tessa makes a discovery about an obscure poet that might help save her career. 

 

This book is gripping. The tension had me - Chris and Tessa are both obsessive and controlling, pernicious and self-absorbed. Neither are particularly likable, though I did personally side with Tessa in this twisted reimagining of Daphne and Apollo. I did sometimes feel a bit lost in the details of mythology and Latin, but not enough to distract me from the main plot. I was completely absorbed by this book. I don’t think it will be for everyone, but I loved it.

 The Trees is the first book that I’ve read by Percival Everett. It is surprisingly funny for a book about murders, racism, and injustice. Maybe it would have been less surprising if I had read Everett before. 

 

The Trees is centered in the town of Money, Mississippi, where Emmett Till was lynched. It starts when one of the relatives of the Bryant family, the family that lynched Till, is found dead. With him is a second dead body that eerily resembles Emmett Till. Soon after, the police lose track of the black man’s body, until it mysteriously reappears with a second dead Bryant family member. Two members of the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation are dispatched to help solve the mystery of the disappearing and reappearing body, while eerily similar murders start happening all over the country. 

 

This book is of the allegory/satire variety. It does a great job of balancing brutality and absurd humor. At the beginning, I thought I was in for a straightforward(ish) murder mystery, but the story took a turn towards the surreal. This was a quick read. I appreciated how it made me angry but also made me laugh. I think this will be a top Tournament of Books contender! 

 Last review for my Tournament of Books shortlist goal! I read the entire shortlist this year, and saved one of the best of the tournament for last. Thanks to @harperbooks for sending me a copy of The Sentence by Louise Erdrich awhile back. This was my first Erdrich and it won’t be my last. 

 

The Sentence follows Tookie, a woman released from prison now living a quiet life with the former cop who arrested her. Tookie works at Birchbark Books, an indie bookstore in Minneapolis that is actually owned by Erdrich IRL. In fact, Erdrich is a character in this novel. After a bookstore regular dies, her spirit refuses to leave the bookstore. Tookie must deal with the haunting during a tumultuous time - this is a Covid novel, and also depicts the unrest in Minneapolis after the murder of George Floyd. 

 

Erdrich’s writing is so smooth. Reading Tookie’s story felt like comforting despite the turmoil happening around her. I loved the relationships between the characters. They were complex and felt real. This book was somehow warm and reflective despite being set amidst the chaos of 2020. Also it is full of book recommendations! I loved that! If you’re a book person (which I assume anyone following me probably is), I highly recommend it. 

 Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge left me wanting more. I listened to the audiobook, and I would have DNF’d if not for my Tournament of Books shortlist goal. I don’t think there is anything particularly wrong with the writing. The story just didn’t grip me, which is a disappointment because I was hopeful at the prospect of this historical fiction novel that was inspired by the life of one of the first Black female doctors in the US. This book follows Libertie, the daughter of a practicing Black doctor in Reconstruction-era Brooklyn. While Libertie’s mom can often pass as white, Libertie cannot. When the book starts, Libertie is young, and absolutely idolizes her mother. As she grows up, she struggles with the weight of her mother’s expectations and the limits imposed by society on Black women after the Civil War. Eventually she accepts a marriage proposal and moves to Haiti, where she continues to fight for her own freedom in a culture where women are subordinate to men. 

 

Something about the story just held me back from feeling emotionally invested. The plot feels meandering at times, and there isn’t really one plot-line that we follow through the entire book. It was a little all over the place. At the end of the day, I just didn’t really like this one. I alternated between bored and annoyed. I am normally pretty selective with my historical fiction (it’s not my favorite genre), so that likely had something to do with it too. 

The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki was a commitment. The audiobook was 18 hours and 50 minutes long! I listened at a faster speed and it was still very long! Truth be told, if this wasn’t a ToB book, I would have DNF’d it. I thought the very beginning was compelling. 12-year-old Benny’s father is killed when he is run over by a chicken truck in the alley behind their home. Shortly after, Benny begins hearing the voices of inanimate objects, while his mom Annabelle starts hoarding. After the opening, I found the book to be a slog for quite awhile. It moved really slowly for a really long time, with extreme levels of details that IMO didn’t add much. I didn’t care about the characters at all for awhile. It was kind of like a book with no form, just emptiness. Eventually, it picked up - more characters were introduced, and I did start to care by the last 1/3 of the book. The very end was great! Everything came together beautifully. I finally cared about Benny and Annabelle. It just took so long to get there. I would only recommend this if you’re already a fan of Ozeki’s writing, or if you really enjoy detailed descriptions and don’t mind a slow plot. I listened to the audiobook, and I do think the narrator was pretty good overall, but I found the voices that he did for Annabelle made me unsympathetic to her. I think I would have felt for her more in print.

The Confession of Copeland Cane by Keenan Norris was another Tournament of Books surprise. The surprise, for me, was that I hadn’t heard more about this book prior to the Tournament. This book follows Copeland Cane, a young fugitive, accused of an unknown-to-us crime, in a near-future post-Covid scenario where media conglomerate Soclear Broadcasting basically runs the government. The book is narrated mostly by Copeland as he tells his own coming-of-age story. Copeland grows up in a housing project in Oakland. He spends some time in juvenile detention before landing a spot at an isolated prep school as a token Black student. All the while he struggles to understand the cruelty of the world around him, and his place in it.

This book felt reminiscent of recent NBA winner Hell of a Book, because they both balance humor and solemnity to grapple with the topic of being a Black male in America in the age of police killings. The book is written in Copeland’s vernacular. I think audio is the way to go with this one - the narration was superb. If this sounds like one you would like, I’d recommend sticking with it. It didn’t grab me from the beginning, but at some point I found myself completely absorbed in Cope’s world and story.

Subdivision by J. Robert Lennon is thus far my favorite surprise book from the Tournament of Books shortlist this year. I loved the peculiar world of the Subdivision, where we are dropped in with our unnamed narrator, with little context and lots of mysteries. She arrives at a guest house a meets an interesting cast of characters, including two former judges both named Clara who run the guest house, a lovesick truck driver, a little boy who appears to have no parents in sight. The narrator finds herself constantly under threat of seduction by the shapeshifting bakemono, and seems to slip into conversations continued from her memory at times. 

 

I loved the puzzling world of this book. Answers don’t really come until the very end. The way the story wrapped up was surprising but made sense. I am so glad I read it! I hadn’t heard of this author before seeing this book on the shortlist, and now I’m so glad I have, as this book was one of those completely original absorbing stories that feel rare and enthralling. I listened to the audiobook on @librofm and it was fantastic - I did not want to stop listening! If you like slowly unravelling settings and books that drop you right in the middle of the story, definitely pick this one up. 

Butcher’s Crossing is the first book I’ve read by John Williams. This book is Williams’ take on the classic western. Harvard student Will Andrews, inspired by Emerson, leaves Boston in search of nature and adventure. When he arrives in the small Kansas town of Butcher’s Crossing, an old family acquaintance introduces him to Miller, a buffalo hunter, who agrees to lead a hunting party (funded by Andrews) deep in the Colorado territory. The two are joined by Charley Hoge, Miller’s sidekick who will take care of the livestock and camp, and skinner Schneider, who opts for a monthly salary instead of a share of the profits.

This book was gripping. When they eventually find the epic herd of buffalo, Miller descends into a mad bloodlust, insisting on killing every buffalo and ultimately dooming them to a winter stuck in the mountains. There was palpable suspense when they couldn’t find water along their route, abject hopelessness when they were trapped in the snowstorm, and the overwhelming feeling that things were too good to be true when they finally started their journey back to Kansas. My emotions ran wild. I had dreams about being stuck in the Colorado mountains. It was hard for me to read the brutal scenes of the buffalo slaughter, but I couldn’t look away.

I read the forward after reading the book (I always do it this way to avoid spoilers), and learned that Williams set out to write novels in three different genres - this being the Western, Stoner an academic novel, and a historical novel with Augustus. This is a western at its core - complete with many tropes, boom towns with railroad hopes, hunting parties full of lustful men, and of course the frontier.

This book is impressive and I won’t forget it. Thanks to @meeeshreads for buddy reading it with me! It was so nice to have someone to discuss it with. I’m excited to read more by John Williams - Stoner is definitely on my list for this year! Also, this book is being made into a movie with Nicolas Cage, which is a perfectly casting choice for deranged Miller, so I’m looking forward to that too.

When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut traces the lives of prominent mathematicians and physicists of the 20th century. The sections meld fiction and nonfiction, using both facts and imagination to describe major scientific discoveries and their effects. I’ve never read a book that prominently features pure mathematicians. I studied math in graduate school, so it was interesting to read about the imagined inner lives of people that I only knew from the equations named after them. This book explores the idea that you might not understand or grasp the consequences of scientific discovery until it’s too late. All the time in school, in pure math, people would ask what abstract research was used for in the real world. Often the answer was “I don’t know, but hopefully applied mathematicians will someday figure out how to apply it!” And what if your work gets used to hurt people? To kill? To change the course of history? And what to make of brilliant minds that spiral into madness? This was a really unique and interesting book, and I can see why it has captivated so many.

I picked up All’s Well by Mona Awad at the B&N hardcover sale. It’s on the Tournament of Books shortlist, and I knew some friends had read and liked it. This book follows a professor in a dwindling theater department as she directs the Shakespeare play All’s Well that Ends Well. On top of mutinous students who would much rather perform Macbeth, Miranda also has to deal with unrelenting chronic pain, as a result of a previous fall from a stage. 

 

At first I thought this book would not be for me, mostly because while I don’t mind an unlikable narrator, I don’t love being inside the head of someone bitter and unreasonable. Not that Miranda isn’t justified - but at first I was kind of like, just do the other play?? Eventually this book takes a turn, and while it isn’t any less dark, it gets weirder, and I started to like it a lot more, to the point where I could not put it down because it was so exhilarating. 

 

This book is darkly funny and bizarre. The line between what is real and what is happening inside Miranda’s head is blurred. The dizzying conclusion of this story could have been a bit more clear, but it still worked. Awad is a gifted writer and storyteller, and judging by this book, her mind works in unique and mysterious ways. I’m definitely going to go back and read Bunny, her first novel. I’d recommend this if you like dark comedies (comedies? Tragedies? It’s a bit of both), unlikable narrators, and wild rides.