The Books I'm Reading Now
I'm listening to Lisa Jewell's haunting psychological thriller None of This Is True; I'm listening to The Comfort of Crows, Margaret Renkl's meditation on the nature witnessed in her backyard through the course of a year; and I'm reading Baby X, Kira Peikoff's near-future-set story of the power of holding and using others' DNA.
What are you reading these days, bookworms?
01 None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell
In Lisa Jewell's psychological thriller None of This Is True, successful podcaster Alix Summer is celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at the local pub when she meets a strange woman, Josie, also celebrating her birthday. Her "birthday twin" begins popping up where Alix is, and she's got a strange, disturbing life story to share.
Tempted by Josie's intriguing tales, Alix begins interviewing her for the podcast, despite feeling unsettled by her presence.
But Josie has been keeping dark secrets, with horrifying details and impact beyond anything Alix could imagine. And they're all beginning to come out.
I'm listening to None of This Is True as an audiobook.
Lisa Jewell is also the author of The Family Upstairs.
02 The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year by Margaret Renkl
Pull up a weed from the wet soil of the drenched garden and smell the rich life the earthworm has left behind. Just a whiff of it will flood you with a feeling of well-being. The microbes in freshly turned soil stimulate serotonin production, working on the human brain the same way antidepressants do.
In The Comfort of Crows, Margaret Renkl offers a literary, nature-focused devotional of 52 chapters, each meditating on an element inspired by her close examination of the goings-on in her backyard.
Renkl's beautiful, striking observations range from a New Year's Day sighting of a crow and her exploration of crows' senses of community and cleverness, which she hopes set a tone for the year to come; to a grief-stricken examination of deadly fads such as the desire to have a vibrant green yard, free of weeds, and the widespread impacts of the poisonous chemicals required to achieve such a thing.
Nothing in nature exists as a metaphor, but human beings are reckless metaphor makers anyway.
I'm listening to The Comfort of Crows as an audiobook. Renkl is also the author of Late Migrations.
03 Baby X by Kira Peikoff
In an imagined United States of the near future, any cell can be transformed into an egg or sperm. The process of creating embryos has been revolutionized, and parents can use Selection to analyze and choose an embryo based upon certain traits they desire in their offspring.
But anyone with nefarious intent can theoretically create an embryo with the DNA of anyone with whom they've come into contact and obtained cells from. This means that sought-after DNA specimen sources such as celebrities are in potential danger of having their DNA stolen while going about their daily lives--and ultimately having biological children that they're unaware of.
Ember is a scientist who offers her services to protect high-profile clients from DNA theft. She knows all of the tricks of The Vault, an underground, subversive group that has doled out justice to prominent figures by stealing DNA and revealing factors about their genes, predispositions, or origins. She's falling for her famous client, the musician Trace Thorne--but when a woman shows up claiming to be carrying Thorne's baby, it upends more than just Ember and Thorne's lives.