April has been the most hectic month of 2023, but certainly not the cruelest. We made it through two kid birthdays and Easter in the same seven-day stretch; the snow melted (on a nearly 90-degree day) and returned and melted again; I tackled three editing projects; and I wrapped up the last of my work for my class on Ignatian Spirituality.
In the midst of all that, an astonishing number of library holds came in. I made a valiant effort to get through them all—but phew, it was rushed. I wish I could’ve taken my time a bit more. I’m looking forward to a slower month in May before my summer class starts up.
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt
This book is dense and niche and takes a lot of thought to get through, but if moral philosophy is at all of interest to you, it’s a must-read. I’d also argue that it’s worth skimming if you’re one of the many people who has looked around in the last few years and thought, “Why can’t we agree on anything?” Haidt offers some compelling answers. (And this book was written before the Trump presidency!) There is a handy one-page summary at the end of each chapter and a total sum-up at the end, so don’t be scared off by the fact that it took me nearly two months to read it.
The Final Gambit by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
If I’d been paying attention to my library e-book holds, I would’ve paused this one until summer. Alas, I was not paying attention, so I breezed through it in a few days on the Kindle app. The Final Gambit is the third and final1 installment of The Inheritance Games series. In book one, we learn that Avery Kylie Grambs, a teen on the verge of homelessness, has been named the sole heir to the Hawthorne fortune. What follows is three books' worth of riddles, puzzles, love triangles with the four Hawthorne grandsons, and unearthed family secrets.
The first book was the best, IMO, but I stuck with the series because I just wanted to know the answer to the question laid out in book one: Why would a Texas billionaire leave everything to Avery? The Final Gambit finally reveals the answer—and it was worth three books to get there. Though the plot was even more convoluted in this book than in the rest of the series, I have to admit that these books are just plain fun.
Good for fans of Clue, Knives Out, chess, those murder mystery parties, escape rooms, humorous sidekicks, and tortured love interests who brood while looking devastatingly handsome. Not for people who don’t have a healthy ability to suspend their disbelief or for those who can’t deal with love triangle angst.
Weyward by Emilia Hart
I picked this one up at the library based on the beautiful cover and the intriguing description: three women across five centuries have a mysterious (some would say witchy) connection to nature that leads them to find their own empowerment in patriarchal societies.
I knew by about 25 pages in that this wasn't for me, but I continued skimming and speed reading until the end because I didn't want to give up on it too soon. Everyone else seems to like it, but I just didn't. It felt too moralistic, and there were content warnings galore that you wouldn't guess from the summary (sexual assault/rape, abortion). I love a sweeping generational story, but this missed the mark.
People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry
Alex and Poppy have been best friends since college. Every year they reunite for a summer trip before returning to their vastly different lives: Alex as a teacher in small-town Ohio, Poppy as a writer at a travel magazine in New York. But something went awry on vacation in Croatia two years prior . . . and Alex and Poppy haven’t spoken since. That is, until Poppy becomes restless at her dream job and talks him into just one more trip.
I didn’t initially realize that this book was by Emily Henry, the author of Beach Read, which the rest of the world loved and I absolutely hated. So I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed this one!
Romance novels often rely on telling readers why a couple belongs together, but Emily Henry does a fantastic job of showing Alex and Poppy’s changing relationship. From their awkward first meeting to the evolution of countless inside jokes, this is a couple that feels real (even if the last 50 pages or so drag on).
God Is Young by Pope Francis
I had the rare opportunity to browse the library shelves solo instead of chasing after my kids in the children’s section. This book is one of many I grabbed off the shelf on a whim. At right around one hundred pages, it was short enough that I decided to take up residence in a window seat and read through it in one sitting.
Pope Francis is overflowing with wisdom; he is such a gracious soul. In God Is Young, he and his interviewer Thomas Leoncini explore issues facing modern young people. For being in his eighties, Francis is well acquainted with the challenges presented by our ever-connected yet “unrooted” culture. He explores issues of human dignity and work, exploitation by consumeristic societies, the pitfalls of focusing on accumulation of wealth, and why the young and the elderly have so much more to offer their communities than many societies want to admit.
I couldn’t write in the library book, so I filled my camera roll with photos of quotes I want to spend more time chewing on. Pope Francis has given me much to contemplate. Highly recommend, even for the non-Catholics among us!
The Need to Be Whole by Wendell Berry
I learned about this book from the On Being podcast interview with Nick Offerman. When Offerman mentioned that he was thrilled to be the narrator of a Wendell Berry audiobook, I knew I’d be committed to listening. Audiobooks aren’t usually my favorite mode of reading (see “ADHD with low auditory processing”), but I made it through 19 hours of Offerman reading at 1.5 speed and it didn’t even feel like a chore. He’s the perfect narrator for Berry’s beautiful words.
This essay collection links the American people’s continued disconnect from the land, its people, and its living things, to the continued disease of racism. According to Berry, we will never be able to heal racial division and violence against people of color until we come to terms with our nation’s past, facing it squarely and looking it dead in the eye without making excuses or calling for cancellation.
The Need to Be Whole is the most thought-provoking thing I’ve read in a long time—and that’s saying something since I kicked off this month’s reading with The Righteous Mind. I have a hunch the written version would have been fairly dense, but the audiobook actually make me look forward to folding laundry.
Up next . . .
It turns out that half of grad school is just professors and classmates recommending books to each other in the chat on Zoom. Hence this leaning tower of mostly spirituality-related reading that I ordered as a reward for myself for the end of the semester. Will I make it through any of them before my summer class starts in June? Will I choose to bring them with on our upcoming Florida vacation?
Honestly, probably not. But as all book lovers know, having the books in your possession offers a smidgen of reassurance that we will someday actually read them.
Happy spring, friends! What are you reading during this transition season?
Or so I thought, until I noticed while adding it to Goodreads that there’s a fourth spin-off book coming out later this year.