I picked this book up solely because it was part of the Tournament of Books' summer camp, and now I'm the more knowledgeable for having read it. I'm not much for thrillers, which is what I thought it was structured as—the first scene was riveting and intense and made my heart thump. In the end, AMERICAN SPY was a completely fascinating read that only suffers from the framework of its narration.

Marie Mitchell is an American spy during the Cold War. She's our protagonist and narrator. She's strong, defiant, and keeps her cards incredibly close to her chest. She is not what she seems, and she's constantly defined in stereotypes by her co-workers and managers as a black woman. Of course she becomes essential (and she knows it) for a super-secret CIA mission in 1980s Burkina Faso. If you don't know much about the US/CIA intervention in Africa—something I primarily associated with South and Central America (my heritage, in a way)—this book is a good gateway into that, and especially the figure of Thomas Sankara and the ideologies and coups that defined his country in that era. The fiction novel provoked me to look more into that history that I'd barely heard. The figure of Marie is fictional (unlike Sankara

Last month I had heard the news about Toni Morrison's passing while I was packing for a weekend away. Earlier this year I'd read and loved SULA, and thought that it was seemed like a good time to read her debut novel, THE BLUEST EYE. I read it in the span of an improbably quiet but beautiful day in upstate New York. Outside for the most part, summer heat, and in a forest. It was a pretty setting to read an unsettling story. The novel unfolds in frightening detail while flowered with Morrison's powerful and poetic prose. Her strength in storytelling transmitted with so few words; the book itself is only 160 pages, and there is immeasurable talent in that economy to convey the bleak reality of young Pecola Breedlove's life, our view of her through her peer Claudia, and a whole cast of people in 1940s Lorain, Ohio. I found myself rereading passages, transfixed by how Morrison was able to string together these everyday words into a searing portrayal of African-American life, full of unforgettable imagery and themes. To understand something in her way; to be let in and acknowledge the horror of the generational trauma and pain. There are not many writers like Morrison. I've found none like her; she may be singular. And she doesn't write for me, but I'm grateful to read her words.

I was utterly charmed by this story of a former math professor who has short-term memory due to an accident, and the connection he forms with his new housekeeper and her young son, affectionately nicknamed Root because his hair looks like the square root sign. There's a lot in this book I thought I would NOT like, particularly the tangents on math and baseball, but I was actually quite captivated by these subjects as Ogawa weaves them into the narrative, and as read by Cassandra Campbell—I do wonder if I would be more confused if it wasn't in audio? I felt like I could let the numbers and lines float around me rather than trying to scrutinize something on the page.

Much like how I thought I wouldn't like THE ART OF RACING IN THE RAIN because it was about race car driving, I was surprised to feel my heart warm to these characters and the love they find for each other despite situational circumstances (money, class, Japanese culture also play into the dynamics). I smiled when they were happy, and despaired when they were sad; I was endeared to them in every sense. And though I guessed as to some of the revelations near the end, I still felt like I was 'with them,' and wistful to have to say goodbye at the close. The novel is a quick and affectionate read if you're searching for a good audiobook.

Plus, just sayin', they really focus on the perfection of the number 28, which is my favorite number.

Rating may change... review to come...

I'm a sucker for novels about women's friendships. SWING TIME centers on a nameless narrator from London and jumps in time from her pre-teen years meeting her best friend Tracey in a dance class to decades later as an assistant to a world-famous pop singer. Smith wades into the story slowly, and it's engrossing the way her first person narration (a first for Smith!) seems almost distant. Usually with first person the reader feels like they're in the narrator's head—but not here. It's first person, but we don't necessarily know what she's thinking; we can only see what she's observing.

The narrator seems haunted by her former friendship (I relate a lot to this). The absence of Tracey on the narrator echoes in the space Smith leaves for the reader. I realized, much later after processing, that while I scoffed at certain revelations toward the end, Smith had put me in the shoes of another character, making judgments. When I look back at my own life and there are moments I exalt as pinnacle and forming, I see now that if I were to tell a stranger who wasn't there about my memory, they might dismiss it as something not that important, something that happened long ago, something that doesn't matter now. But that's the thing about our lived experiences and our memories of them; the people who witnessed you forming, they've seen you, been next to you, at your most malleable. That friend witnessed the horrors of your youth, the embarrassments, the firsts, the best, and the worst, and the myriad complicated emotions between. The complications of friendship are tethered to what was shared, and what cannot be with anyone else. And sometimes it's very difficult to stay connected to those people who knew you then.

And while much of the novel navigates the friendship of Tracey and our narrator through dance (the former quite talented, the latter less so), Smith always entrenches her reader in more than just one subject. There's commentary here on a lot, though Smith allows the space for the reader to come to their own conclusions on much of it—brilliant to experience, really.

Clearly I need to stop, as I started on a tangent without even touching on the MANY other themes! I really enjoyed reading this and spending a lot of time turning it over in my mind and processing it.

I've read Tolentino's work for years whether it was at Jezebel or The New Yorker. She's a formidable writer who can crystallize a moment in contemporary culture with a few words. And while there are smart people out there writing non-fiction and essays, Tolentino is one of the only writers who acknowledges the context of her own life to make sense of the world*, and offers up observation and understanding without condemnation or ridicule. She understands the underlying capitalist-society-invented notion of eating a salad at your desk, but she wouldn't mock you for enjoying Sweetgreen—she admits to doing the same thing.

I recognized a lot of the behaviors and routines in her essay "Always Be Optimizing," as someone who has been working in the corporate world for twelve years, and her insight goes deep into other subjects of the zeitgeist. The essay that hit me the hardest was "We Come from Old Virginia," where Tolentino plumbs the depths of the effects of the infamous, retracted 2014 Rolling Stone article "A Rape on Campus" and her own experience at her alma mater. "The Story of a Generation in Seven Scams" delighted me (in ways Tolentino understood it would) and also managed to make me examine that feeling; it's a paradigm-shifting essay. "The Cult of the Difficult Woman" and "I Thee Dread" had similar resonance about modern-day living, and all the traps that fail us in disguise. For book lovers, "Pure Heroines" really digs into what happens to women in contemporary literature, and makes quite the case for the women of YA lit.

I'll stop there, because I could go on about Tolentino—gush, you might even say. I borrowed this one from the library, but I'm definitely going to be buying it (when released in paperback, of course).

*This, I think, is the quality in her writing that provoke many people to call her a modern-day Didion. They have decidedly different vibes, but on this I agree they are similar.

This was the first time I've read a book in print and halfway through sought-out the audiobook. I believe I did this initially because the (beautiful) hardcover was so heavy in my bag on my commute; but I found that the brilliant narration enhanced my comprehension and enjoyment of the story.

The story is dark. It is narrated by a man named Tracker who lives in a land of shape-shifters, witches, horrifying creatures, terrifying people, and—most of all—violence. He has been tasked with his expert sense of smell to find a missing child who is important for unknown reasons at the start. The first line of the book is: "The child is dead."

There are moments of humor, where I found myself laughing out loud, usually at Tracker's expense. There are also moments in which I darkened at Tracker's misogyny, called out by other characters though it was. It was a bit difficult, specifically for me, to be in Tracker's mindset for the duration of the novel. I am still not convinced, but I know that to be my perspective, and something that often kept me from returning to the book when I set it aside.

The most interesting scenes in the book revolved around Tracker's relationships to others—to a group of orphaned children, to the titular Leopard, to Mossi (a favorite of mine), and to transformation itself. James also depicts scenes of love, lust, and sex between black men, something rarely written in epic fantasies. When I saw James speak on a panel about 'Decolonized Epics,' he mentioned how he plays with language to break rules, and his genius in that regard is definitely on display here. There are moments I was utterly lost, but once I stopped questioning, and let James' rhythm and cadence take hold, I was immersed.

Beyond the book's treatment of women, my other criticism lies in the world-building—or lack thereof. The settings of BL,RW are mapped (which is necessary to the reading: the character list and maps!), but the foundations are shaky. It's a world built on violence, but without much 'why' attending to the story. There is little nuance to be found with a world not fully rendered.

So: I liked it enough. I'd definitely urge you to try the audiobook--the book is already narrated in the oral tradition, and James has remarked on how good the audio is. Dion Graham literally sings! He also expertly narrated WASHINGTON BLACK, which I listened to last year.

There is so much emptiness in this book. Or maybe it's space? It's a strange way to write short stories; to leave so much untold, and I was hypnotized by most of it. Barrodale's collection seems to float, untethered to time or place most of the time, just engaging the reader with a character or two and their thoughts or obsessions or quiet observations. And sometimes it's not very quiet. They're usually very funny too, even in their eerie emptiness. In this way, Barrodale invites the reader into these characters’ lives, and lets them start to fill in the gaps with their own assumptions, and that's when she starts questioning you.

"Miserable people often think they have a special purchase on the truth. My husband was one of those. At the moment of his death, I told him I was relieved."

And perhaps moments like that are why Ottessa Moshfegh loves this collection; she mentioned the book in an interview and it's the sole reason I picked it up. I own and haven't read Moshfegh's short story collection, though—it's one of those books I have waiting in the wings, knowing it's there, ready to be consumed when nothing else makes sense.

I'd recommend this collection, but it's not writing that tries to win the reader over. As stated earlier, it kind of feels like Barrodale is interrogating you. For every question or thought I had about an undefined or out-of-focus context to a scene, I imagined her leaning in saying, "and why do you think that?" Even the title is directed at you.

"When we are young, we give ourselves completely. We allow our first friends or first lovers or first songs inside us, to become a part of our unformed being, without ever thinking of the consequences, or of their permanence within us. This is one of the beauties of youth, and one of its burdens."

A rapturous, heartbreaking book that captivated me as soon as I began. THE AIR YOU BREATHE is the story of Dor and Graca, two girls who forge a friendship on a sugar cane plantation in 1930s Brazil—one an orphan who works in the kitchen, the other the daughter of the new plantation owner that moves in. Theirs is a complicated friendship, a complex love as they explore life, music, and fame together.

I love books about intense friendships between women, and this one enthralled me. I had a lot of intense friendships when I was younger, but I also kept having to move due to being a military kid. Perhaps my love for these storylines is because I never saw these friendships age, though there are always pieces that stayed with me. It's funny that my closest friend now is the one I met my senior year of high school, the last time the military dictated where I lived.

Peebles' prose shines as she regales the reader about the birth of samba music in Lapa, a neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. The lyrical writing matches the heartbeat that music provides to the proceedings. The story is told through Dor, the quiet songwriter to Graca's attention-seeking singer. She provides a wistful, melancholy narrator looking back at her life as an old woman. Through her I learned so much about Brazilian history, samba music, and the range of forms that love can take. The end devastated.

I purposefully avoid short stories on audiobook, and this came emblazoned with "A NOVEL" on the cover. However, it's really a series of glimpses into the lives of people from Berlin during and after WWII. I think I would have gotten more out of the book if I'd read it in print, or there were different narrators. Sometimes the vignettes would begin and I wouldn't know what kind of character I was listening to because it was the same British-accented woman narrating all these Berliners and Cubans and even Chileans occasionally. It was disorienting.

There are memorable moments, details that I won't soon forget, including an imprisoned Cuban, a woman whose husband entombs her to keep her safe, and how García ties South America into Berliner history. I think I'd recommend this in print, though I didn't get much out of the audio. I personally haven't been much interested in WWII stories lately, listening to this as I walked past 56th Street every day, cordoned off with NYPD security since 2016 because a certain president's tower is nearby. I especially haven't been interested in the ones about those who were complicit though perhaps not legally criminal. It can feel suffocating...and dark. There is something to search for in these stories, but I am too weary to examine the parallels that exist today.