The Books I'm Reading Now
I'm reading The Guncle, Steven Rowley's sassy, heartwarming fiction about an uncle caring for his young niece and nephew after their mother's death; Reasons to Stay Alive, Matt Haig's memoir about mental illness and coping with depression; and The Space Between Worlds, Micaiah Johnson's science-fiction story about multiverse travel, mysteries, privilege and power, and identity.
Which books are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms?
01 The Guncle by Steven Rowley
In Steven Rowley's fun, funny, and heartwarming fiction The Guncle, aging former sitcom star Patrick is temporarily caring for his niece and nephew.
Patrick's best friend from college (who later married Patrick's brother) has died, and Patrick's brother is going through a health crisis of his own.
Which leaves setting Patrick and his beloved (but sometimes foreign-to-him) Maisie and Grant loose in his home in and hometown of Palm Springs, making things up as they go along. They each have their grief and confusion, but they also adore each other and have their love to fall back on.
Patrick's life in recent years has been primarily focused on shutting off the outside world, but the demands of a six- and nine-year-old reeling with pain and in desperate need of constancy mean he can't hide anymore. To honor his friend, he'll need to be strong enough for Maisie and Grant, despite his own pain and fears.
02 Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig
The author of The Midnight Library and How to Stop Time explores his own depression and mental illness in his short memoir Reasons to Stay Alive.
“To other people, it sometimes seems like nothing at all. You're walking around with your head on fire and no one can see the flames.”
Haig takes the reader through the emergence and progression of his depression, recounting his thought processes, his overwhelming emotions, the pressures of the world around him, and his reliance on his now-wife and family as ballasts through it all.
I'm listening to Haig read this audiobook.
03 The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
Cara can travel through the multiverse--but only to worlds where another version of herself no longer exists. Her other selves seem uncannily apt to die, so Cara is able to visit 372 other Earths where her counterparts are no longer living.
She comes from poverty and an unfavored area, and she lives in uncertain status, without citizenship or security aside from her employment for the mysterious, greedy Eldridge Institute. She's long been slated to collect off-world data, the purpose of which is of no interest to her--she's more focused on tracking the shadows of her other existences, piecing together the lives of her counterparts, and keeping a journal of all that was and might have been.
But when one of her eight remaining selves mysteriously dies, shocking secrets are revealed that connect various worlds and shake Cara to her core.