New year, same readerly life! I started off 2024 with some incredible reads! I’ve also decided to be generous with my four and five star ratings, because these records are really just for me. If I loved a book while reading it, or if I can’t stop thinking about the story or the characters after I’ve done, or if it impacts me at all, then it’s getting a good rating. This month I read:

• Banyan Moon by Thao Thai – I received this beautiful book as a Christmas gift from my lovely cousin (thanks JJ!). This was a gorgeous story about three generations of Vietnamese women, alternating between each of their storylines. We meet Minh, the grandmother, and learn of her life in Vietnam. Minh’s dauther, Huong, is living in Florida as we learn her back story. Ann, the granddauther, we meet when she must return to Florida upon her grandmother’s death. There, she and her mother grapple with the house full of their memories, their tense relationships, and everything unsaid between them. I loved these women and the challenges they have overcome.
• Yellowface by R. F. Kuang – Thanks to my cousin for this book as well! I had heard of this a lot last year, but hadn’t picked it up yet. I read this is one day – it was a propulsive thriller that I could not put down. What we know is that when the young, talented, Chinese American writer Athena dies unexpectedly, her friend June steals her work and publishes it as her own. What follows is a look into the dark side of the publishing industry, a look at white supremacy, cultural appropriation, and bias, and a look at what individuals will do to succeed. This was a beautifully written, dark story.
• Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin – This book was so popular last year I saw it everywhere! I thought it sounded interesting, but had heard mixed reviews so I waited a long time before I picked it up. I found it delightful! Sam and Sadie are life-long friends who develop video games together, with the producing support of their friend Marx. Along the way, we learn about living with disabilities, living as a mixed race person in America, living through grief, different kinds of love and how people express or don’t express love, and so much more. I thought this was a beautiful journey and I loved the characters!
• Clean Air by Sarah Blake – When I first hear the premise of this book described on the Currently Reading podcast, I knew I would love it! In this dystopian, cli-fi thriller, the setting is the future after all of the pollen has made the air unsafe to breathe. Characters are beyong just wearing masks, and are living in safe bubbles of purified air. We meet Izabel and her family right as a serial killer appears, the first of it’s kind since The Turning of the air. Izabel gets involved in the search for the killer and this a fast-paced thriller until the end!
• Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann [audiobook] – I heard about this true crime look into history a lot last year, and was interested to read about the beginning of the FBI. I listened to this, and I would not recommend the audiobook, as this is a dry book full of literally hundreds of different names. While the writing was dry, the story was fascinating. The Osage tribe of Oklahoma were the richest people around in the 1900’s when oil struck. The history of this tribe is beyond depressing, and is truly a systemic killing of a large group of people all for money and power. I learned so much about the fact that these rich Indigenous people were required to have a White man serve as their overseer of their finances. This practice led to white men systematically finding ways to murder people in order to transdfer their finances and land to themselves. There were brutal crimes, poisoning, and hidden webs of deception, where is where the birth of the FBI came in. I’m glad I know more about this reign of terror and this awful aspect of history.
• High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out by Amanda Ripley – Thank you to Andree for loaning me this incredible book! I loved reading this, as it was a learning experience with each new story. This journalist takes us through the study of conflict, mediation, breaking down barriers and walls, and how to get beyond conflict. The examples were so specific and different, from a local city council election to a gang member in an inner city to a rebel in Columbia. The final chapter outlined an exchange program where a group of liberal Jews from New York City met with a group of conservative correctional officers from Michigan. They stayed in each others’ houses, discussed hard topics, and the main goal was to be curious, but not to change peoples’ minds. I could literally feel my heart beat accelerating as I read that chapter, imagining how I would feel to have those conversations. So many of these examples demonstrated the critical importance of listening to people, truly listening to their stories, their concerns, and their wishes, without trying to impact an outcome. One of my favorite quotes stuck out because it included my word of 2024: “One of the burdens of high conflict is that it doesn’t allow for delight, for these little moments of joy. Curiosity is a prerequisite to delight. And it’s impossible to feel curious in the Tar Pits (high conflict)”. I highly recommend to book to all humans wanting to have better interactions with other humans.
• First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston – I usually love the Book of the Month mystery/ thriller picks and this was no exception. I enjoyed this fast-paced mystery that felt almost propulsive enought to be considered a thriller. We meet Evie, living a perfect life with her boyfriend. But then we quickly learn that Evie is an alias for a woman who works for an unknown secret man who assigns her jobs that require new identities and bad deeds. As Evie’s life unravels, we are there on the roller coaster with her. This was fun and full of questionable characters!
• The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride – This is the January book for my Secret Stuff Book Club with Laura Tremaine. I read two of McBride’s past books and appreciate his literary style and the way he creates rich, flawed characters. In this story we meet a group of Jewish people and a group of African American people who live in the same area of town. Chonda is a beloved member of the neighborhood, as she runs the local grocery store and never keeps track of what people owe her. She is the bridge between the two cultures, building community around her store. We meet lots of oher important and side characters along the way, and follow a few misadventures as they fight for equality and basic human rights. This is a story about community and found family.
• Better the Blood by Michael Bennett – I heard Elizabeth Barnhill recommend this book on Currently Reading and knew I would love it. This is a crime mystery that takes place in Auckland, New Zealnad (on my travel bucket list!), and is at the heart of the trauma from colonization. The Māori people lost their land, their homes, their dignity, through colonization, and some are determined to get it back. Our main character Hana is both a Māori and a policewoman, struggling with both identities, when the murders begin. As she works to solve the case, she is confronted with her own past and the past of her people. This was a gripping, propulsive thriller that touched on the real history of New Zealand (thought a fictionalized version), and I LOVED it!
• The Defense Eddie Flynn #1 by Steve Cavanagh – Last year I read the fourth book in this series, because I heard it could stand alone. I loved it, and decided I wanted to go back to the beginning of the series and get to know the lawyer Eddie Flynn from his origin story. This was a fast-paced legal thriller that involved the Russian Mob, a lot of threats of violence, and some slick law work. I LOVED it!
• Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano – After I read Hello Beautiful by this author last year, I knew I wanted to read more by her. This book was beautifully heartbreaking and yet sweet and soulful and hard to read and simply gorgeous. I can’t say enough about how much I enjoyed diving into the life of Edward. I don’t want to spoil the plot, but if you like a bittersweet literary journey, take this one! [Edward’s mother, father and brother die in a plane crash where he, at age 12, is the lone survivor. He is taken in by his aunt and uncle. The next door neighbor, Shay, becomes his friend and lifelong through years of depression and grief and love.
• Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger – For about a year I’ve been hearing about William Kent Krueger’s books and I finally got this one from my library. What a beautiful, heartbreaking, bittersweet tale. We are in small town Minnesota in 1961, a summer full of deaths. With each new death, Frank and his younger brother Jack follow a mysterial trail to figure out what is going on, surrounded by adults drowning in their own problems and unaware of all that the kids are seeing and hearing in this sad summer. I loved this reading experience.
• The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914 by David McCoulloug [audiobook] – I decided to read this book because I am traveling to Panama in March. I thought, because it’s nonfiction, that I would enjoy the audiobook. What I appreciated was how much I learned about what it took to build the Panama Canal, how France started it and how the US took over the process after a serious conflict, and how many thousands of lives (of mostly BIPOC men) were lost due to dangerous conditions, malaria, yellow fever, and more. What I didn’t appreciate as much was the extensive details that were provided for EVERYTHING. I would have enjoyed an abridged version, but this was basically a history class all about the canal. I am looking forward to seeing it in person later this year.

Favorite Books of the Month

Fiction: Ordinary Grace, Dear Edward, Better the Blood, Banyan Moon, The Defense & Clean Air were all 5 STAR books for me!

Nonfiction: High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out