The Books I'm Reading Now
I'm reading recently published stories by Claire Keegan, So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men; I'm reading Amy Lea's feel-good time-travel story, Woke Up Like This; and I'm listening to the publishing industry satire Yellowface by R. F. Kuang.
What are you reading these days, bookworms?
01 So Late in the Day: Stories of Women and Men by Claire Keegan
In the brilliant, Irish-born Claire Keegan's newest collection, her stories explore gender dynamics, expectations, and what might be or might have been between the sexes.
Three stories from various eras in Keegan's career are revised and expanded here: Antarctica explores a married woman's curiosity about being with another man; The Long and Painful Death follows a writer at a retreat who faces a headstrong fellow writer; and in So Late in the Day, a man reflects on what might have been with his lost love, had he made different choices.
I received a prepublication edition of this book, published November 14, courtesy of NetGalley and Grove Press.
Click here to read my rave reviews of Claire Keegan's novels Foster and Small Things Like These and her short story collection Antarctica.
02 Woke Up Like This by Amy Lea
Charlotte Wu is a super organized overachiever, and planning the perfect prom is the final item on her high school to-do list. But decorating disasters threaten to undo her plan when she falls off a ladder and crashes into her nemesis, J. T. Renner.
When Charlotte wakes up, she finds that she's thirty years old. And the bearded fiance sleeping next to her...is J. T. Renner.
Forget the prom-planning disaster--Charlotte and J. T. seem to have been thrown forward in time and into the thick of young adulthood.
Can they find their way back to their seventeen-year-old selves? Or will they have missed thirteen years of their lives--and the chance to figure out how the heck they ended up together?
03 Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
I'm listening to R. F. Kuang's Yellowface as an audiobook.
Juniper Song is a bestselling author. But she isn't simply a hardworking writer overcoming sluggish first-book attention and sales, emerging with an enormous hit (and new pen name) overnight.
June Hayward is a longtime acquaintance of Athena Liu--the Athena Liu who is publishing's darling, with multiple critically acclaimed and celebrated titles, and the focus of June's years-long envy.
Until June witnesses Athena's death and mysteriously comes up with a story about Chinese laborers during World War I.
But wasn't Athena working on such a story before her untimely end?