Caste is consistently powerful, profound, disturbing, and absolutely necessary nonfiction reading from the brilliant Isabel Wilkerson. “As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.” In Caste, Wilkerson explores the unspoken, entrenched caste system in the United States--a hierarchical system that has dictated the fates of those in our country more powerfully than traditionally considered factors such as race or class. I read Caste with a group and met every other week to discuss it--and we went months past our original end date because there was so much to consider and reflect upon. Wilkerson is exceptional at laying out absurdities, horrors, disturbing historical events, shocking trends, and problematic tendencies without layering emotion or drama on top of any of it, leaving the reader to bring the appropriate emotion and discomfort to the matters Wilkerson presents. “Caste is insidious and therefore powerful because it is not hatred, it is not necessarily personal. It is the worn grooves of comforting routines and unthinking expectations, patterns of a social order that have been in place for so long that it looks like the natural order of things.” I was in danger of using up all my highlighters while endlessly trying to mark small portions of Wilkerson's consistently profound reflections. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Isabel Wilkerson is a journalist and is also the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration.

This collection of previously published Sedaris works is a gold mine of discomforting, edgy, offbeat observations--with more heart than I expected. I loved this audiobook. I listened to this collection by David Sedaris as an audiobook. I prefer to take in my Sedaris books by listening to the author's snarky, silly, spot-on, sometimes gross, and often farcical takes on the world. Whether Sedaris is reliving specific, offbeat memories and mining them for poignancy and also laughs, or presenting his own distorted versions of morality plays, he does so with dark humor but also, frequently, with heart. The section of limericks centered around dogs and their rude behavior wasn't my favorite, but I sometimes suspect that despite his edgy moments and curious observations, Sedaris may tone down his reflections for the comfort of his audience, and this felt like an absurd vignette he simply couldn't resist. I was drawn in by the mix of tones represented here, and by the introspection and vulnerability Sedaris intermingles with the off-kilter, singular, sometimes excruciating moments he draws readers into. I hadn't read (or listened to) a good number of these selections, and I was repeatedly surprised and delighted with Sedaris's depth...then often cringed at an eccentric, discomforting observation that promptly followed. I enjoyed the roller coaster and was taken with this collection. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Sedaris is also the author of Me Talk Pretty One Day, Calypso, Naked, Holidays on Ice, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, and many other books.

My very favorite books from October! These are the books I most loved reading during the past month. I included an immersive memoir (check out my endless Greedy Reading Lists of memoirs for more in this genre that I've loved); an older book I heard about while talking with my friend James on his Maybe I'm Amazed podcast last summer; All the Light We Cannot See author Anthony Doerr's newest wonder; the irresistible second book in Naomi Novik's Scholomance trilogy; Yaa Gyasi's story about family, clashing cultures, and science and faith; and a light fiction read about pen pals (and a modern-day Fred Rogers-esque television personality) that hit the spot. I'd love to hear: what are some of your recent favorite reads? 01 Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land was a complex, heartbreaking, hope-filled, surprising, fascinating read. This was my favorite read of the month! Young Anna lives in fifteenth-century Constantinople with her sickly sister, frustrated with endlessly stitching priests' robes--and secretly learning to read stories from the past. In twentieth-century Idaho, elderly Zeno has lived a life filled with yearning, war, and unexpected late-in-life academic satisfaction. He is directing a precious group of children in a farcical, heartbreaking play based on the stories Anna read five centuries earlier. And far in the future, Konstance is in a vault on the spaceship Argos, destined for a distant planet. She largely lives in a vivid virtual world and scribbles down scraps of information about the same ancient stories that touched the lives of Anna and Zeno. Even when all hope should be lost, each character continues to press on. "But what's so beautiful about a fool...is that a fool never knows when to give up." It took me a little bit of page time to sort out the various settings and characters at the start, but Cloud Cuckoo Land was consistently beautiful, always interesting, and sometimes heartbreaking. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of NetGalley and Scribner. For my full review, check out Cloud Cuckoo Land. 02 So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell So Long, See You Tomorrow is gorgeous, heartbreaking, and timeless. I loved it. In Maxwell's slim but chock-full book, our narrator is trying to piece together the events surrounding the shooting of a man named Lloyd Wilson in his 1920s rural Illinois hometown of Franklin fifty years earlier, when the narrator was a young boy. In doing so, he traces old memories and tracks down details from his childhood, reliving moments, piecing together information, and developing suppositions about the long-ago events. He does this while also diving into the imagined, robust details of life on two neighboring farms and within two inescapably connected families. The story and its voice felt reminiscent to me of a mix of Capote's In Cold Blood and Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. Maxwell's writing is lovely and poignant, and So Long, See You Tomorrow is gorgeously, painfully wrought. Maxwell explores loss, tragedy, the rich inner lives of children, the ripple effects of betrayal and fury, and the irresistible, never-ending contemplation of the past. Click here for my full review of So Long, See You Tomorrow. 03 Broken Horses by Brandi Carlile In Broken Horses, Brandi Carlile shares a beautifully open, poignant, tough, rich, gorgeous account of her life and career so far. The audiobook includes over thirty songs, and I highly recommend it. I listened to Broken Horses: A Memoir by Brandi Carlile, and I can't imagine feeling the full emotions involved and the immersive experience of this book without hearing Carlile's voice tell it--and without all of the music Carlile offers here. She weaves songs into her stories and personal history, and the placement of the music feels seamless and illustrative. She shares the pressures of the music business, the difficult matter of taking care of her voice and her body while trying to create and push and perform, and her magical encounters with idols who have become friends--including Elton John, Dolly Parton, Joni Mitchell, and Tanya Tucker. Carlile intersperses songs with stories about their impact on her or the influences that led her to write and create them. The music is all included again at the very end of the book, by which point the listener understands its import. Her songs felt incredibly powerful as a closure to her story. 04 The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik This second book in Naomi Novik's Scholomance series builds on book one's dark humor, dangerous forces, and the irresistible attraction between El and Orion. I tried to slow down and savor The Last Graduate. Last spring I posted a rave review of A Deadly Education: Lesson One of the Scholomance by Naomi Novik, and The Last Graduate is the second wonderful book in the Scholomance trilogy. Novik's Scholomance series is set at a magical school with two routes out for its students: a grueling, punishing path to graduation and beyond or, just as likely, death. Danger and darkness lurk around every corner. In book two, El continues to be a fantastically grumpy, powerful, whip-smart, socially awkward, straightforward character I was obsessed with, and I wanted to spend as much time with her as possible. In this second book of the trilogy, El is determined to somehow help her classmates escape their deadly school despite the selfish, privilege-driven approach that has dictated life-and-death outcomes for generations. Novik builds upon her irresistible Scholomance world in The Last Graduate, and I'm so very glad there will be a third book in this series. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group. 05 Very Sincerely Yours by Kerry Winfrey I delighted in the way Teddy and Everett shared pieces of their true, oddball, vulnerable, silly, thoughtful selves. Very Sincerely Yours was a satisfying, often funny, romantic book that hit all the right notes for me. Teddy Phillips isn't sure how she got to this point in her life. She's coasting in her not-dream job at a vintage toy store, all of her opinions and desires seem to have have been subsumed by her boyfriend Richard's plans and preferences, and she's not close with her best friends or even with her sister anymore. Winfrey's Very Sincerely Yours is light fiction that delivers delightful, charming banter, the promise of a new romance for Teddy, and wonderfully loyal friendships. I've been gravitating toward lighter stories like Very Sincerely Yours lately, and I need to create another light-fiction roundup. For other light fiction books I've enjoyed, check out the Greedy Reading List Six Lighter Fiction Stories for Great Escapism. 06 Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi Main protagonist Gifty's journey was full of challenges. Her struggles were not too easy or too cleanly resolved, and her voice had me hooked throughout Yaa Gyasi's Transcendent Kingdom. I listened to Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi's novel about a Ghanaian family living in Alabama. Gifty is working toward her PhD in neuroscience and is focused on studying addiction--an interest and passion inspired by haunting events in her family's past. During the course of the book, Gifty examines the shape of her childhood and young adulthood. Gifty is an appealing main protagonist, and the journey Gyasi took us on was fascinating. I couldn't wait to get back to listening to this. Gyasi is also the author of the fascinating, beautiful book Homegoing, which traces generations of a family from rural Ghana to coastal cities to the American South to the Great Migration to New York City. If you're interested in immigrant stories, you might also want to check out some of the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Great Stories about the Immigrant Experience.

Klune's newest novel is heartwarming, earnest, light, and sweet, with a vision of an in-between afterlife that is surprisingly romantic, redemptive--and centered around tea. "...we have to let go, no matter how scary it can be." I love an exploration of mortality, and in T.J. Klune's newest book, Under the Whispering Door, the author offers a heartwarming story that does just that. Klune's story features the selfish, narcissistic, workaholic character of Wallace, who notices one day that things in his life seem awry--and who is beginning to suspect that he is in fact dead. In a nod to A Christmas Carol, the Scrooge-like beginning to the book shows the insufferable, lonely Wallace witnessing his own sparsely attended funeral and hearing cutting remarks about his own outrageous rudeness and significant shortcomings. Before crossing over from the living forever, Wallace spends time in a mysterious in-between place (a tea house) in the form of a ghost and attempts to come to terms with his demise--and also possibly redeem himself a little bit before it's too late. Klune, the author of The House in the Cerulean Sea, offers another whimsical, tender, light-LGBTQ-love story about finding your true self, recognizing what you love, and treasuring friends who feel as precious as family. The inclusion, loyalty, and friendships here were heartwarming. The story's characters are full of love. Because even the grumpiest characters have soft, kind inner selves that emerge and act according to motivations that are often predictable, the characters often feel caricature-like. The book offers a handful of moments that felt too easy, and there's some significant repetition (for example, the idea of “you’re allowed to ask questions, it would be strange if you didn’t, and you're not supposed to know everything…but don't ask that question!”) Much like The House in the Cerulean Sea, the tone of this book for adults was earnest and felt to me to be geared toward a more juvenile audience than the story (it is at heart an exploration of mortality and what might happen after death; sex is alluded to; and characters fall in love). The first half of the book felt slowly paced and was spent with Wallace in limbo, being told how many things aren't known about the in-between state--and how little is known about what comes after. The last quarter of the book involved some transformation, action, and surprises, and the ending is very sweet. Although the tones of the two books felt different, the explorations of mortality and redemption here reminded me somewhat of The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. If you're interested in memoirs that explore similar themes, check out the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Powerful Memoirs about Facing Mortality. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Klune is also the author of The House in the Cerulean Sea, Wolfsong, and The Extraordinaries. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of NetGalley and Tor Books.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading Sally Rooney's newest novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You; the brilliant Isabel Wilkerson's nonfiction book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents; and Wholehearted Faith, the late Rachel Held Evans's upcoming compilation of essays, thoughts, and anecdotes about searching for faith. Which books are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney “I will probably continue to make poor life decisions and suffer recurrent depressive episodes...” Am I ready for another Sally Rooney book? I read Conversations with Friends a few weeks ago (and I loved Normal People last year). Novelist Alice just met Felix, but she invites him to travel to Rome with her. Meanwhile, Alice's best friend Eileen has just gone through a breakup and has reunited with a childhood crush. I predict that at this point Rooney will cue the characters' linking up, having sex, worrying about linking up, and worrying about sex. 02 Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson “As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.” In Caste, Wilkerson explores the unspoken, entrenched caste system in the United States--a system that has dictated the fates of those in our country more powerfully than traditionally considered factors such as race or class. I'm going to use up all my highlighters trying to mark just a portion of Wilkerson's endless brilliant reflections that I want to remember. 03 Wholehearted Faith by Rachel Held Evans Rachel Held Evans was the author of Faith Unraveled, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, and Searching for Sunday and died at just 37 in 2019. Wholehearted Faith is a posthumously published collection of Evans's essays, talks, and anecdotes, including some that were unpublished, about faith and Evans's reflections about seeking spiritual wholeness. Evans's friend and fellow author Jeff Chu compiled the pieces of Evans's work into this collection that asks questions about belief, belonging, doubts, and the exploration of faith. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of HarperOne and NetGalley.

I love Elizabeth Strout's books, but I didn't feel connected to the character of Lucy or her ruminations in Oh William! the way I did in Anything Is Possible or My Name Is Lucy Barton. Elizabeth Strout is one of my favorite authors, and this recently published book is her newest in the interconnected Lucy Barton web she's woven. In Oh William! Lucy examines her relationship with her first husband, William, and reflects on the fact that he has always been somewhat of a mystery to her. The two have remained connected through the years, and the closed-off William has always leaned on Lucy for support, despite the fact that he has been married two other times since Lucy, including to his current wife. Lucy remarried as well and is recently widowed. Now William has uncovered a family secret that shakes him, and he asks Lucy to travel with him to investigate the truth. In one respect Oh William! is an exploration of love, loss, friendship, forgiveness, and unshakable bonds. But I became impatient with Lucy's extensive ruminations and her speculation about what other people may have possibly felt or thought during certain moments in the past and her emphasis on examining tiny details of situations and memories. The frequent, stammering "...is what I mean" qualifiers within Lucy's private observations or recollections contributed to a sense that her middle-aged character was generally hesitant, unsure of herself, and without a clear sense of her own mind. This felt like somewhat of a departure from the thoughtful analysis of the past I recalled from her faulted, more self-aware character in My Name Is Lucy Barton. Meanwhile, William is narcissistic, often childish, and seemingly shallow, and it felt odd to have so much of Lucy's focus and energy turned upon him. The people Lucy has built her life around admiring and has spent her time clinging to as steady presences felt in many cases to be insufferable, selfish, and with little sense of duty or loyalty, and sometimes they aggressively asserted their own versions of reality regardless of the truth. We see Lucy begin to scrape the surface of discovering others' vulnerabilities, to realize her own self-told lies, and to recognize shortcomings in herself and in others, but while her own cherished versions of the past are in some cases threatened, her explorations of all of this didn't feel fully realized. I received a prepublication electronic version of this book courtesy of Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Check out my reviews of Elizabeth Strout's My Name Is Lucy Barton, Anything Is Possible, (both of which are interconnected to Oh William!) and Olive, Again. Strout also wrote Olive Kitteridge. In each of these books, Strout wonderfully mines small moments that make up a life.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading What You Can See From Here, Mariana Leky's novel about loss, grief, and change when a small village is faced with an omen of death; I started Elizabeth Strout's just-published novel Oh William! about Lucy Barton, her first husband, and their inexplicable, unbroken bond; and I'm listening to The Best of Me, David Sedaris's most recent collection of oddball memories and stories that mix humor and absurdity with a hint of poignancy. Which books are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 What You Can See from Here by Mariana Leky Selma has dreamed of an omen, an okapi. Someone in her small village is about to die. As her superstitious neighbors imagine that they may be destined to end their earthly stay, they struggle with unresolved issues, unspoken desires, secrets, and lies. Those around Selma work to quickly come to terms with their finite existence, and young and old members of the community consider their lives with new eyes. Yet somehow the village's loss, when it does occur, takes everyone by surprise, and Selma's granddaughter, Luisa, is forever changed by the events that follow. Leky writes about love, loss, grief, and understanding in What You Can See from Here. 02 Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout Elizabeth Strout is one of my favorite authors, and this recently published book is her newest in the interconnected Lucy Barton web she's woven. In Oh William! Lucy examines her relationship with her first husband and considers how he has always been somewhat of a mystery to her. Yet the two have remained connected through the years, and the closed-off William has always leaned on Lucy for support, despite the fact that he has been married two other times since Lucy, including to his current wife--and Lucy is remarried as well. Now William has uncovered a family secret that shakes him, and he asks Lucy to travel with him to investigate the truth. Strout gorgeously mines small moments that make up a life, and Oh William! is leaning toward being an exploration of love, loss, friendship, forgiveness, and unshakable bonds. Check out my reviews of Strout's My Name Is Lucy Barton, Anything Is Possible, and Olive, Again. 03 The Best of Me by David Sedaris I'm listening to this collection by David Sedaris. I prefer to take in my Sedaris books by listening to the author's snarky, silly, spot-on, sometimes gross, and often farcical takes on the world. Whether Sedaris is reliving specific, frequently oddball memories and mining them for poignancy and also laughs, or presenting his own distorted versions of morality plays, he does so with dark humor but also, frequently, with heart. The section of limericks centered around dogs and their rude behavior isn't my favorite so far, but I often suspect that Sedaris is toning down his reflections for the comfort of his audience, and this felt like an absurd vignette he simply couldn't resist.

The Paper Palace is atmospheric and often disturbing. I didn't understand many of the characters' motivations or reasoning so didn't feel connected to their situations. Fifty-year-old Elle is in her happy place--the house where she's spent a whole life of summers. But something is different this visit. Elle and her oldest friend Jonas have just crossed a line, betraying their spouses--and they may have set into motion a shift that could change everything for all of them, forever. Elle has an enormous decision to make: stick with her contented, comfortable current life, the husband she loves, and her kids--or upset everything to explore the fantasy of what might have been with her childhood friend and the young love they never explored. Miranda Cowley Heller digs into secrets, lies, abuse, desire, shocking truths, complications, and love, and delves into the stories of various members of the families she reveals in The Paper Palace. The Paper Palace is often disturbing. Molestation, sexual abuse, and rape occur repeatedly, and the detailed descriptions of the abuse somehow felt exploitative. The sex that occurs within loving relationships also felt charged, full of control and power plays, as well as oddly specific (the pinching of delicate body parts, descriptions of force, and tugging on hair, for example). Parent (and grandparent) figures’ seemingly willful obtusity, sometimes cruel ineptitude, neglect and lack of protection (as well as lack of affection), and missteps--and the terrible consequences of all of this for their young charges--were tough to repeatedly read about. The characters' duplicitous actions were difficult for me to empathize with; their romantic plights felt largely self-made and self-indulgent. It occurred to me that it's possible that Heller meant to freeze the characters in question within the stunted emotional states of their youths because of the traumas they endured then. The characters feel frequently passive, allowing events and circumstances to happen to them, then are buffeted along by the momentum occurring around them. I was distracted by some moments that felt conveniently inconvenient and seemed to primarily exist in order to drive the plot: a character reads part of a diary that would illuminate the grave truth behind two horrifying secrets...but inexplicably doesn't continue reading enough pages to understand the identity of the culprit. The diary author also doesn't clarify the situation upon finding out about this misunderstanding. In another case, a character trusts a proven-to-be-untrustworthy, aggressively unhelpful go-between to deliver an ultimatum to a family member, then simply imagines that the message was delivered. Instances like these didn't make sense to me as a reader. There were also a few odd inconsistencies in specifics; for example, “I’ve never been able to make myself throw up, no matter how hard I try" follows some pages after a conflicting detail I remembered because it was so specific and so willfully acted out by the character, “I put my finger down my throat, force myself to throw up into the garbage can any food she brings me." Characters are often lying, feeling betrayed, or actively in fear. Yet the characters felt largely lacking in introspection or even action. It was tough to feel as though I understood any of the characters’ motivations or even their personalities. Oddly timed pronouncements (I loved my husband; I idolized my sister) seemed like shortcuts that avoided providing what I was yearning for, which was to understand why the characters were making sometimes destructive, sometimes helplessly hopeless, sometimes actively unhealthy decisions. Yet the settings were wonderfully vivid, and The Paper Palace felt somewhat like atmospheric meditations on place that were linked by various tragedies, horrors, and disappointments large and small. One tiny detail with no bearing on anything significant that nevertheless kept jumping out at me: almost all--possibly every single one--of the copious picnic sandwiches mentioned throughout the book were noted as involving either mayonnaise (including peanut butter sandwiches) or butter. So many moist sandwiches! Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? This is Miranda Cowley Heller's first book. I was trying to think of other atmospheric novels that center around affairs at the beach, but the book that kept coming to mind was the memoir Wild Game by Adrienne Brodeur, about Brodeur's narcissistic mother's ongoing affair and how she brought her daughter into her complicated web of lies and cover-ups. I mentioned Wild Game in the Greedy Reading List Six More Illuminating Memoirs to Lose Yourself In.

More Memoirs I've Loved I find a good memoir irresistible, whether it's made up of key moments from the life of someone unknown to me or it's the background of a famous person's journey. For more more MORE memoirs I've loved that you might want to try, check out the Greedy Reading Lists Six Illuminating Memoirs to Dive Into, Six Illuminating Memoirs I've Read This Year, Six More Illuminating Memoirs to Lose Yourself In, Six Foodie Memoirs to Whet Your Appetite, and Six Powerful Memoirs about Facing Mortality. How many memoirs is too many memoirs, you may ask? Dear reader, the limit does not exist! Have you read any of these books? I'd love to hear what you thought. Which other books should I add to my memoir to-read list? 01 The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher The Princess Diarist is based upon the diaries Carrie Fisher kept while she was a young woman stumbling into her iconic lifetime role as Princess Leia. Fisher is candid, funny, charmingly offbeat, and she's mastered the art of honest self-examination. I loved listening to her fantastically raspy voice as she read her memoir in audiobook form--and she relates her youthful affair with the gruff and married Harrison Ford for the first time here. I felt like a little too much time was spent on youthful poetry and fanciful teenaged musings, yet the young Carrie seemed frequently and charmingly self-possessed even as she questioned her own motives, feelings, and life path. I laughed out loud repeatedly at Fisher's good-natured, self-deprecating, and confidently oddball views and contemplations. For my full review of this book, check out The Princess Diarist. If you love Carrie Fisher, you might also like A Star is Bored, a fictionalized celebrity-focused book written by Carrie Fisher's former personal assistant, Byron Lane. It was fun but also poignant, and I loved it. 02 Dimestore: A Writer's Life by Lee Smith “...the linear, beginning-middle-end form doesn’t fit the lives of any women I know. For life has turned out to be wild and various, full of the unexpected, and it’s a monstrous big river out here.” Lee Smith has written numerous fictional stories about the Appalachian South, including Fair and Tender Ladies, On Agate Hill, and Oral History. Here she traces her beginnings in the Appalachian coal-mining town of Grundy, Virginia, where the background of her life was filled with tent revivals, mountain music, and her daddy's dime store and the community that flocked to it. What could have been an interesting and charming memoir about growing up in Appalachia and the incredible changes in rural Virginia from the time of Smith's childhood to now surprised me with its depth and darkness. I was taken with Smith's open exploration of the good, bad, and ugly in her life, and I adored reading mentions of University of North Carolina English professors, other Chapel Hill figures, and the hidden gems of places that I love. 03 Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story by Jewel I'm a fan of Alaska: The Last Frontier, which is about the Kilcher family--of which Jewel is a part. She only occasionally appears on the show, but she comes on to yodel (her grandparents came to Alaska from Switzerland around World War II) with her extended family from time to time, which I love to see. Anyhoo, in her memoir Never Broken, the singer-songwriter traces her Alaskan origins, her first singing performances (at age 3 alongside her parents), how she began to write songs to express herself, and the now-famous story of a DJ airing her bootleg song and beginning her rise to fame when she was 18 and homeless, living out of her car. In Never Broken, Jewel shows really lovely extensive introspection and a detailed account of the fascinating-disturbing story of her youth. She shares her ongoing, active commitment to personal and emotional growth, bettering the world, being true to herself, and evolving through hardships. She seems like a good egg, and I really liked spending time with her through this memoir. 04 The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander “The story seems to begin with catastrophe but in fact began earlier and is not a tragedy but rather a love story. Perhaps tragedies are only tragedies in the presence of love, which confers meaning to loss. Loss is not felt in the absence of love.” Alexander writes gorgeously about the husband she lost suddenly, the elements that made him irreplaceable to her and to the world, and the impossibility and inevitability of adjusting to life without him. She shares the trauma surrounding this loss and her personal journey toward finding peace. The author explores the beauty of companionship and like a poet, she lays out her unique love story. I didn't know I'd care so much about a person I'd never heard of or met by reading his widow's account of life with him, but this was exquisitely beautiful. 05 I Must Say: My Life as a Humble Comedy Legend by Martin Short Martin Short has recently had excellent TV roles on The Morning Show and Only Murders in the Building, and each one has reminded me of how much I love his performances. In I Must Say, Martin Short shares stories of his Canadian childhood dreaming of making it big in show business in the United States, his years of hard work and tenacity, and the magical roles that marked his success. “We arranged to spend the next day, a Sunday, looking at apartments together, followed by a round of tennis, since we both played. Before Nancy left the Pilot that night, I said to her lasciviously— I don’t know what possessed me—“Have you ever tried a comedian before?” Which was either very sexy or very creepy, depending on your opinion of me. She just stared at me, betraying no emotion, and said, “I hope you have a racket. I’m pretty good.” I Must Say is naturally full of famous names and encounters, but it doesn't feel as though Short is gratuitously name dropping. I burst out laughing at some of the transcripts and asides in Short's book. His voice in this memoir is honest, funny, and poignant, and he and his many stories are just irresistible. Short comes across as charming, nutty, grounded, and really endearing in this fun, funny memoir. 06 It's Okay to Laugh (Crying Is Okay Too) by Nora McInerny Purmort “He will die, I know it, and I go there, though I have no business doing so. Our human imaginations are woefully unprepared for predicting actual pain, but I hack away at it anyway, trying to form a scar before I m even wounded.” Twentysomethings Nora and Aaron fell in love. They were romantic and silly and young. Then Aaron was diagnosed with a rare brain cancer, but the couple doubled down, becoming engaged in the hospital, marrying after Aaron's first surgery, and having a baby while Aaron was undergoing chemotherapy. It's Okay to Laugh is a darkly humorous account of the author's numerous and condensed life-altering tragedies. The brief life-lesson interludes that break up her story felt jarring to me, but her account was honest, raw, sad, and sometimes very funny.

Jackson's gothic horror tale is made all the more frightening by its reliance on terror, shadows, and mystery. This was a wonderfully spooky read. "Almost any house, caught unexpectedly or at an odd angle, can turn a deeply humorous look on a watching person; even a mischievous little chimney or a dormer like a dimple, can catch up a beholder with a sense of fellowship; but a house arrogant and hating, never off guard, can only be evil." It's getting close to Halloween, so I thought I'd add a spooky story to my to-read list, and Shirley Jackson's 1959 classic The Haunting of Hill House totally fit the bill. Four people arrive at Hill House in search of paranormal experiences: a scholar of the occult, Dr. Montague; an unorthodox woman with an open mind and brave disposition, Theodora; a young woman who has witnessed mysterious goings-on in the past, Eleanor; and the jocular, mischievous future heir of Hill House, Luke. "...intelligence and understanding are really no protection at all," she thought. The guests are greeted by the gruff, odd, reluctant caretakers of the house, Mr. and Mrs. Dudley, and they enter a house that simply feels unwelcome. Hill House is so confusingly laid out and off-kilter, the guests constantly feel emotionally and physically off-balance. They're hoping to find answers--but unexplained occurrences and creepy moments are only the beginning of what Hill House has in store for them. All four of the guests witness inexplicable phenomena, and odd events cause some of the guests to doubt their own senses of what is real, what might be imagined, and what seems unquestionably otherworldly. Eleanor has a particular connection to the house, feeling its powers uniquely in some instances, and as the group wavers between silly teasing, joking, curiosity, and fear, Eleanor wavers between overwhelming joy and bitter suspicion and revenge fantasies. It's not always clear if Eleanor has telekinetic abilities, if she is noticing events others aren't tuned into, if she's mentally ill, or if the ghostly voices are real and influencing her actions. Jackson's gothic horror tale is made all the more frightening by its reliance on terror, shadows, and mystery rather than gory elements. What the author leaves unsaid is as spooky as the story on the page. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? I haven't watched the ten-part Netflix series based on this tale--the cast looks great, but I'm not sure I can handle a version of this story in visual form. Shirley Jackson wrote six novels, including We Have Always Lived in the Castle, two memoirs, and the story "The Lottery."

Main protagonist Gifty's journey was full of challenges and not too easy or complete, and her voice had me hooked throughout Yaa Gyasi's Transcendent Kingdom. I listened to Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi's novel about a Ghanaian family living in Alabama. Gifty is working toward her PhD in neuroscience and is focused on studying addiction--an interest and passion inspired by haunting events in her family's past. During the course of the book, Gifty examines the shape of her childhood and young adulthood, including the evangelical church she grew up in and the inspiration and judgment she experienced there; her yearning for her estranged father in Ghana, whom they all call the Chin Chin Man; her brother Nana's athletic obsession, his injury, and his subsequent drug addiction; and her mother's tough love, how she shut down after Nana fell apart, and her current emotional paralysis. Gyasi had me immediately hooked by Gifty. She's had to stifle many of her emotions since she was a young girl--there wasn't space in her family for messy reactions from Gifty or for Gifty to have needs of her own. As an adult, Gifty sinks every waking hour into her pragmatic search for scientific answers that might be illuminating regarding Nana and the breakdown of Gifty's family. The author explores an interesting tension between science and the religion Gifty feels is a part of her. Her childhood preacher and the church community are faulted, yet her experiences within that community are an indelible part of her. Her various traumas have caused her to lock herself off from most other people, and she has long used work as a refuge and an excuse to be almost completely alone. When Gifty's mother comes to visit and falls into a depression, unable to get out of bed or even eat, we see echoes of her past patterns--patterns that panicked Gifty and led to her current, emotionally safer, self-reliant, closed-off lifestyle. It's gratifying to see Gifty shift her thinking and her approach slightly in order to open up just a little bit--and to see how powerful the promise of these small changes can be in various aspects of her life. Gifty is an appealing main protagonist, and Gyasi's journey was fascinating. I couldn't wait to get back to listening to this. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Yaa Gyasi is also the author of Homegoing, which I haven't yet read. If you're interested in immigrant stories, you might want to check out the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Great Stories about the Immigrant Experience.

This second book in Naomi Novik's Scholomance series builds on book one's dark humor, dangerous forces, and the irresistible attraction between El and Orion. I tried to slow down and savor this winner. Last spring I posted a rave review of A Deadly Education: Lesson One of the Scholomance by Naomi Novik, and The Last Graduate is the second in the Scholomance trilogy. Novik's Scholomance series is set at a magical school with two routes out for its students: a grueling, punishing path to graduation and beyond or, just as likely, death. Danger and darkness lurk around every corner. I looooooved the wonderful dark humor and unexpected details in A Deadly Education and the fantastic exchanges between El and Orion, and each of these elements is carried through in The Last Graduate. El continues to be a fantastically grumpy, powerful, whip-smart, socially awkward, straightforward character I was obsessed with, and I wanted to spend as much time with her as possible. Orion, the golden boy in El's class, irritatingly insisted on repeatedly saving her life and acting the annoying hero in book one. El, with her dark magic--more powerful than any of her classmates realize, which is just how El wanted it--feared she might accidentally take out Orion before she could master her skills if he kept hanging around. But in book two there's a grudging (on El's part) affection and connection between El and Orion that's lovely. In this second book of the trilogy, El is determined to somehow help her classmates escape their deadly school despite the selfish, privilege-driven approach that's dictated life-and-death outcomes for generations. El is torn: she could follow what feels like her destined path toward dark magic and destruction, or she could try to rewrite her future by envisioning something completely new. She hasn't exactly ingratiated herself to many people at school the past few years. She's been keeping her head down, snapping at ridiculous behavior when she can't resist, and actively cultivating her loner status in order to protect others from her shocking strength. In The Last Graduate, self-reliant, gruff El lets a select few friends into her inner circle and lets down her guard in ways that felt poignant. El and Orion's significant, unique powers turn out to complement each other as perfectly as their personalities do. They're both once-in-a-generation wizards for different reasons, and if anyone can shift the Scholomance away from its centuries-old pattern of churning death and destruction--if anyone could dare to encourage the students to abandon cutthroat survival strategies and actually work together--well, it's these two and their unlikely band of allies. A lot of page time was spent on logistics and on explaining why magical processes and machinations functioned the way they did--or why potential solutions were impossible. This slowed the pacing, but I felt less impatient about it than I did in book one, when Novik outlined in detail the workings of wizards' privileged enclaves and other magical systems. The young wizards hold the future of magic in their hands, in a sense, and their halting, experimental, frustrating, and often brilliant collective efforts made my heart soar. I found myself trying to slow down and savor Novik's irresistible Scholomance world while reading The Last Graduate, and I'm so very glad there will be a third book in this series. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Novik also wrote the fantastic Spinning Silver and Uprooted, both of which appear on the Greedy Reading List Six Magical Fairy Tales Grown-Ups Will Love. The dark humor in A Deadly Education and The Last Graduate reminded me of another book I also loved, Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading The Paper Palace, Miranda Cowley Heller's novel about a middle-aged woman exploring other possibilities for her life--and potentially destroying her marriage; Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi's wonderful book about a Ghanaian family in Alabama and the family members' twists and turns; and, in honor of the approach of Halloween, The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson's 1956 spooky story of four people seeking answers in a powerfully haunted house. Which books are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller Fifty-year-old Elle is in her happy place--the house where she's spent her summers her whole life. But something is different. Elle and her oldest friend Jonas have just crossed a line, betraying their spouses--and may have set into motion a shift that could change everything for all of them, forever. Elle has an enormous decision to make: stick with her contentment and comfortable current life and husband--or fulfill the dreams and fantasy of what might have been with her childhood friend? Miranda Cowley Heller explores secrets, lies, abuse, desire, shocking truths, complications, and love within the various members of the families she reveals in The Paper Palace. 02 Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi I'm listening to Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi's novel about a Ghanaian family living in Alabama. Gifty is working toward her PhD in neuroscience and is focused on studying addiction--an interest and passion inspired by haunting events in her family's past. She's examining the shape of her childhood and young adulthood: the evangelical church she grew up in and the inspiration and judgment she experienced there; her yearning for her estranged father in Ghana, whom they all call the Chin Chin Man; her brother Nana's athletic obsession, his injury, and his subsequent drug addiction; her mother's tough love, how she shut down after Nana fell apart, and her current emotional paralysis. Gifty is an appealing main protagonist, and Gyasi's story s fascinating so far. 03 The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson It's getting close to Halloween, so I thought I'd add a spooky story to my to-read list, and Shirley Jackson's 1959 Haunting of Hill House seemed like it would fit the bill. A scholar of the occult, his assistant, a young woman with ghostly experiences, and the future heir of Hill House arrive to the house hoping to find answers--but unexplained occurrences and creepy moments are only the beginning of what Hill House has in store for those who dare to be there. A ten-part Netflix series is based on this tale. Shirley Jackson wrote six novels, including We Have Always Lived in the Castle, two memoirs, and the story "The Lottery."

So Long, See You Tomorrow is gorgeous, heartbreaking, and feels timeless. I loved it. My friend James mentioned this book as a favorite of his when we talked about reading and books on his Maybe I'm Amazed podcast last summer, and I recently sat down to read So Long, See You Tomorrow. In Maxwell's slim but chock-full book, our narrator is trying to piece together the events surrounding the shooting of a man named Lloyd Wilson in his 1920s rural Illinois hometown of Franklin fifty years earlier, when the narrator was a young boy. In doing so, he traces old memories and tracks down details from his childhood, reliving moments, piecing together information, and developing suppositions about the long-ago events. He does this while also diving into the imagined, robust details of life on two neighboring farms and within two inescapably connected families. Decades after the events in question, our narrator continues to feel anguish about the role he may have played in adding to his playmate Cletus's potential anguish over his father's tragic actions. The now-elderly narrator lingers upon this issue even as he recognizes that a child--especially one only cursorily connected to the heart of the situation, as he was--could not truly have been culpable in any meaningful way, nor would he have had the power to significantly shift Cletus's situation. The childhood guilt he initially felt about this matter continues to be such a deep-seated and entrenched part of his thinking, it's heartbreaking. The story and its voice felt reminiscent to me of a mix of Capote's In Cold Blood and Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. Maxwell's writing is lovely and poignant, and So Long, See You Tomorrow is gorgeously, painfully wrought. Maxwell explores loss, tragedy, the rich inner lives of children, the ripple effects of betrayal and fury, and the irresistible, never-ending contemplation of the past. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Maxwell wrote six novels and a memoir, Ancestors. Much of his largely autobiographical fiction explored loss--he was haunted by losing his own mother when he was just ten--and was set in the Midwest.

ICYMI: This young adult historical fiction story was a five-star read for me. I adored it. “My books promised me that life wasn’t just made up of workaday tasks and prosaic things.” Laura Amy Schlitz's book The Hired Girl is fantastic young adult historical fiction written in diary form. It's 1911, and fourteen-year-old Joan's life is far from the romantic, sweeping novels she loses herself in. She's living a hardscrabble life on her family's Pennsylvania farm, working ceaselessly for her rough father and brothers--and dreaming of escape. When she runs away to the big city of Baltimore, she presents herself as an eighteen-year-old named Janet, and she is delighted to be taken on as a hired girl for the refined Rosenbach family. “In my new life I’m not going to be vulgar. Even though I’m going to be a servant I’m going to cultivate my finer feelings. I will better myself and write with truth and refinement.” Joan is desperate for knowledge, and the Rosenbachs encourage her growth. Mr. Rosenbach explains anti-Semitism, charming young Mimi shows Joan how to pin her hair and carry herself, and David halfheartedly attempts to woo her (which leaves Joan breathless, imagining Jane Eyre-worthy drama and desperate for an upheaval of her life worthy of that book). Meanwhile Joan is exploring her Catholic faith and questioning and recognizing the existence of God. She's growing up and growing into a calm assurance, finding her place in the world. Schlitz's novel, inspired by her grandmother's journal, explores art, faith, challenge, transformation, imagination, romance, growth, and wonderful humor. Joan is a funny, heartbreaking, meddlesome, irresistible main protagonist. I could have read about her for a full series of books, and I devoured The Hired Girl in twenty-four hours--whereupon I immediately wished I'd savored it more slowly. I loved Joan and I loved this book! Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Laura Amy Schlitz has also written the children's book Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village as well as Splendors and Glooms, a Gothic mystery about puppeteers that was a Newbery Honor book, among others.

Summers's young adult fiction begins with a fascinating premise--sisters are torn apart by tragedy and then further separated by a cult--but I found the motivations and exchanges unclear. My book club recently read this suspenseful young adult book by Courtney Summers. In The Project, Lo and Bea are young sisters whose parents die in a car accident. The sisters drift apart. Younger sister Lo gravitates toward a career of seeking and exposing the truth around her as a journalist, while Bea retreats into a reclusive, mysterious community. Lo tries to find and reunite with her sister, but she can't make contact with her, and she suspects the worst. When mysterious events come to light that seem linked to the seemingly harmless, benevolent group The Unity Project, Lo digs a little deeper into the life of the founder and into the group's activities. She suspects that its members are part of a cult. Lo just knows The Unity Project is dangerous--and she fears how her sister may be involved. In a classic Mom-Reads-a-Young-Adult-Book disconnect, I found myself repeatedly distracted by Lo's jarringly overfamiliar and unprofessional behavior at work (Isn't she going to get fired, mouthing off to her boss like this?), which was likely not the point of Summers's workplace scenes. There's dabbling with reading the Bible and minor explorations of faith outside of Lev, but most of this centers around Lev as a godlike figure and the blind faith and sacrifice demonstrated by his followers. The way in which Lo is drawn into the Unity Project world seemed outlandish, and various revelations about what was truly going on in the story didn't hold the weight or surprise for me that they seemed to be intended to. I'm intrigued by stories about secrets and mysterious communities or private groups, so the focus on a cult was a draw for me with this book. But the characters' exchanges in The Project felt a little unrealistic and overdramatic, as did the jumps and major shifts in situations that didn't feel explained or particularly warranted. I frequently felt unsure about the tone as well as the characters' motivations, which made it tough for me to feel invested in The Project. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Summers is also the author of Sadie, Some Girls Are, This Is Not a Test, and other young adult books. This book reminded me somewhat of Chelsea Bieker's God Shot, another fictional book about a cult--and a book I also had some trouble getting a handle on.

Rooney plunges the reader into uncomfortably claustrophobic and microscopically examined moments in Conversations with Friends I listened to the audiobook of Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney, read by Aoife McMahon (she also reads the audiobook versions of Rooney's books Normal People and Beautiful World, Where Are You). Frances is a college student studying and writing poetry and regularly performing spoken-word pieces with her longtime friend and former flame Bobbi. Frances and Bobbi fall in socially with a somewhat famous photographer Melissa (Bobbi has a crush on her) and her actor husband Nick, and fascinations, jealousies, hypersensitive reactions, and loaded conversations ensue. Frances spends most of her page time in self-obsessed analysis and introspection or making sweeping, oversimplified declarations about life and society, like the exploring college student she is. She pursues a reckless dalliance with the handsome (this characteristic of his is repeatedly emphasized), married Nick, who repeatedly demonstrates his low self-esteem. Most of Rooney's characters achieve little, but spin their wheels, spouting criticism at dinner parties, staying in lavish homes owned by detestable people, and adolescently and emotionally reacting to others. Frances's behavior around Nick frequently felt juvenile--she employed junior-high hard-to-get, passive-aggressive challenges as well as attempted-mysteriousness strategies. I wasn't clear on why thirtysomething Nick would be captivated by Frances's seemingly exhausting approaches, but Rooney presented him as so. While Frances detests her willingness to settle for having only part of him--he still loves his wife Melissa--she indicates that she's ready to go back to him in the end. Rooney's exacting descriptions of characters' speech, emotions, and actions pushed into tedium and uncomfortably entrenched me in Frances's endless mental spin. The detail with which Frances picks apart and analyzes each nuance, each look, and each word of every encounter--and the energy with which she reflects on each of these elements after the fact--was often excruciating to read. Rooney's microscopic attention to detail isn't always pleasant to dive into, but it is uniquely her own. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Rooney is also the author of Normal People and the more recent book Beautiful World, Where Are You.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm listening to Conversations with Friends, Sally Rooney's book about a young poet hyper-focused on her interactions and romantic encounters; The Project, Courtney Summers's suspenseful young adult book about a journalist searching for her sister and trying to uncover the dark side of a cult; and So Long, See You Tomorrow, William Maxwell's story of mining youthful, sometimes difficult memories while searching for the truth of a long-ago shooting. Which books are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney I'm listening to Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney, author of Normal People and the more recent book Beautiful World, Where Are You. It's read by Aoife McMahon. Frances is studying and writing poetry and regularly performing spoken-word pieces with her longtime friend and former flame Bobbi. When Frances and Bobbi fall in with a famous photographer and her actor husband, fascinations, jealousies, hypersensitive reactions, and loaded conversations ensue. The detail with which Frances picks apart and analyzes each nuance, each look, and each word she notices in others is often excruciating but I'm interested in Rooney's microscopic descriptions of speech and emotion. It's tough for me to feel a connection to Frances so far as she pursues a reckless dalliance with a married man. 02 The Project by Courtney Summers My book club is reading this suspenseful young adult book by Courtney Summers. In The Project, Lo and Bea are young sisters whose parents die in a car accident. They drift apart. Younger sister Lo gravitates toward a career of seeking and exposing the truth around her as a journalist, while Bea retreats into a reclusive, mysterious community. Lo tries to find and reunite with her sister, but she can't make contact with her, and she suspects the worst. When mysterious events come to light that seem linked to the publicly harmless, seemingly benevolent group The Unity Project, Lo digs a little deeper into the founder and into the group's activities. She suspects that its members are part of a cult. Lo just knows The Unity Project is dangerous--and she thinks her sister may be involved. 03 So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell My friend James mentioned this one as a favorite of his while we talked about reading and books on his Maybe I'm Amazed podcast last summer, and I'm finally starting to read So Long, See You Tomorrow. In Maxwell's slim story, a man is trying to piece together the events surrounding the shooting of a man named Lloyd Wilson in 1920s rural Illinois fifty years earlier. In doing so, he traces memories and tracks down details from his childhood, reliving moments and bringing to light information long forgotten. The story promises to explore loss, the state of seeking, the power of youthful memory, and the irresistible, ongoing contemplation of the past.

Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land was a complex, heartbreaking, hope-filled, surprising, fascinating read. Forgetting, he is learning, is how the world heals itself. In this recent book by Anthony Doerr (author of All the Light We Cannot See), young Anna lives in fifteenth-century Constantinople with her sickly sister, frustrated with endlessly stitching priests' robes--and secretly learning to read stories from the past. In twentieth-century Idaho, Zeno has lived a long life filled with yearning, war, and unexpected late-in-life academic satisfaction. He is directing a precious group of children in a farcical, heartbreaking play based on the stories Anna read five centuries earlier. And far in the future, Konstance is in a vault on the spaceship Argos, destined for a distant planet. She largely lives in a vivid virtual world but leaves to scribble scraps of information about the same ancient stories that touched the lives of Anna and Zeno. The stories in Cloud Cuckoo Land (which is the name of the book-within-a-book) connect these characters across space and time. It feels unfair to compare Cloud Cuckoo Land to Doerr's beloved and quite different book All the Light We Cannot See, and the books are exceedingly different. But in both books, Doerr demonstrates the ability to bring a reader deep into disparate situations and create emotional investment. I didn't feel immediately connected to Doerr's story because of the various timelines and characters, but as he began to deeply interweave the stories across time, he also set up rich glimpses into characters' lives at different points in history, and I began to be fascinated by the interconnectedness. Doerr presents ancient fables (invented by Doerr) that are imagined as having been written by the real-life ancient Greek author Diogenes. Using the stories as a common point between the book's timelines sounded potentially gimmicky--and also potentially confusing--to me at first. But the stories themselves emerge as not silly, but as elucidative and relevant to each character's hopes, heartbreak, and reckonings with mortality. "Some stories," she says, "can be both false and true at the same time." At one point, one of our main characters notes that academic commentaries through the ages have struggled with the famous ancient Cloud Cuckoo Land and its intentions. ("...was Diogenes writing lowbrow comedy or elaborate metafiction?") Was it a simple fable about a fool, or a genius examination of how essential hope is to the world? Cloud Cuckoo Land also explores devastating environmental destruction, human culpability, cruel wars, rightly earned despair, the gray areas of various complex situations, and, after it all, and within each disparate, desperate situation, cautious and almost embarrassingly persistent hope. He realizes that the truth is infinitely more complicated, that we are all beautiful even as we are all part of the problem, and that to be a part of the problem is human. Doerr's characters persist, each in their own way, in trying to make a positive mark on the world and in preserving what is precious to them--and what they imagine will be important to future generations. Even when all hope should be lost, each character in its own way continues to press on. "But what's so beautiful about a fool...," the text says at one point, "is that a fool never knows when to give up." Cloud Cuckoo Land was consistently beautiful, always interesting, and sometimes heartbreaking. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of NetGalley and Scribner. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Anthony Doerr also wrote the exquisite All the Light We Cannot See, as well as The Shell Collector, Four Seasons in Rome, Memory Wall, and About Grace.

In Broken Horses, Brandi Carlile shares a beautifully open, poignant, tough, rich, gorgeous account of her life and career so far. The audiobook includes over thirty songs, and I highly recommend it. I listened to Broken Horses: A Memoir by Brandi Carlile, and I highly recommend the audiobook. I can't imagine feeling the full emotion and immersive experience of this book without hearing Carlile's voice tell it--and without all of the music Carlile offers here. She weaves more than thirty songs into her stories and personal history, and the placement of the music feels seamless and illustrative. Broken Horses feels like a memoir for which I might actually need to experience the audiobook and the physical book, which contains photos from Carlile's life. In Broken Horses, Carlile traces her life's beginnings, her creative influences, her struggles with feeling at peace with herself, and the specifics of her musical journey and her personal life. She shares the pressures of the music business, the difficulties in taking care of her voice and her body while trying to create and push and perform, and her magical encounters with idols who have become friends--including Elton John, Dolly Parton, Joni Mitchell, and Tanya Tucker. I often feel torn when I read celebrity memoirs, because while I understand that people must keep some of themselves for themselves, I often find myself greedily wanting more more more vulnerability, detailed experiences, specific inspirations, an exhaustive exhuming of pivotal moments--and also a panoramic view of a person and a career. If I'm getting a peek at a person, I also want it all, however unreasonable that may be. In Broken Horses, Brandi Carlile shares a beautifully open, poignant, tough, rich, gorgeous account of her life and career so far. She is thoughtful, humble, and so gracefully fluid and curious, I treasured each moment she shared here. Carlile intersperses songs with stories about their impact on her or the influences that led her to write and create them. The songs are all included again at the very end of the book, by which point the listener understands their import. They felt incredibly powerful as a closure to her story. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? If you like memoirs, you might try the books on the Greedy Reading Lists Six Illuminating Memoirs I've Read This Year, Six Illuminating Memoirs to Dive Into, and Six More Illuminating Memoirs to Lose Yourself In. And if you like books about music, you might like the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Rockin' Stories about Bands and Music.

I delighted in the way Teddy and Everett shared pieces of their true oddball, vulnerable, silly, thoughtful selves. This was a satisfying, often funny, romantic book that hit all the right notes for me. Teddy Phillips isn't sure how she got to this point in her life. She's coasting in her not-dream job at a vintage toy store, all of her opinions and desires seem to have have been subsumed by her boyfriend Richard's plans and preferences, and she's not close with her best friends or even with her sister anymore. When others' decisions set Teddy adrift even further, she's forced to consider her life and the person she's become--and determine whether she's capable of change. She finds comfort in watching episodes of her local children's show, and she impulsively writes a letter to the calm, kind, handsome host, starting a correspondence that will shift the course of her life. Winfrey's Very Sincerely Yours is light fiction that delivers delightful, charming banter, the promise of a new romance for Teddy, and wonderfully loyal friendships. Her self-esteem has taken a hit over the years because of her unhealthy relationship, and I enjoyed watching her friends--and Teddy herself--push for her to pay attention to what she wants and to stretch herself, considering what might be possible. But I didn't buy the idea that someone as charming and quirky and self-possessed as Teddy was once she was removed from "Rick the dick"--as everyone around her brazenly begins referring to her disparaging, tedious, selfish ex--would have been so deeply involved with someone Winfrey presents as without many (any?) positive attributes. I would have liked a little more of a gray area where Richard was concerned. I delighted in the e-mails in which Teddy and Everett share pieces of their true oddball, vulnerable, silly, thoughtful selves. This was a satisfying, often funny, romantic book that hit all the right notes for me. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Winfrey also wrote Love and Other Alien Experiences, Things Jolie Needs to Do Before She Bites It, Waiting for Tom Hanks, and Not Like the Movies. I've been gravitating toward books like this lately, and I need to create another light-fiction roundup. For other light fiction books I've enjoyed, check out the Greedy Reading List Six Lighter Fiction Stories for Great Escapism.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading Broken Horses, Brandi Carlile's unflinching, fascinating memoir about her music, her influences, and her life; The Last Graduate, the second in Naomi Novik's dark, brooding, funny Scholomance series about a magical school filled with evil and darkness; and Very Sincerely Yours, lovely light fiction about a young woman who's undergone a breakup and a shake-up of her life who begins writing letters to the calm, kind host of a local children's show. Which books are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 Broken Horses: A Memoir by Brandi Carlile I'm listening to Broken Horses: A Memoir by Brandi Carlile. The physical book contains photos from Carlile's life, but the audiobook has songs songs songs! I can't imagine having the experience of this book without all of the music Carlile offers here. Carlile traces her life's beginnings, her creative influences, her struggles with feeling at peace with herself, and the specifics of her musical journey and her personal life. She shares the pressures of the music business, the difficulties in taking care of her voice and her body while trying to create and push and perform, and her magical encounters with idols who have become friends--including Elton John, Dolly Parton, Joni Mitchell, and Tanya Tucker. This is captivating so far. 02 The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik Last spring I posted a rave review of A Deadly Education: Lesson One of the Scholomance by Naomi Novik, and the sequel to that book, The Last Graduate, was published last week. Novik's Scholomance series is set at a magical school with two routes out for its students: a grueling path to graduation and beyond or, just as likely, death. Danger and darkness lurk around every corner. I looooooved the wonderful dark humor and unexpected details in A Deadly Education and the fantastic exchanges between El and Orion. El is a grumpy, powerful, smart, straightforward character I was obsessed with, and I wanted to spend as much time with her as possible. In Novik's second book of the trilogy, El is determined to help her classmates escape their deadly school--but she's torn about whether to follow her destined path toward dark magic and destruction or to rewrite her future and envision something completely new. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group. 03 Very Sincerely Yours by Kerry Winfrey Teddy Phillips isn't sure how she got to this point in her life. She's coasting in her not-dream job at a vintage toy store, all of her opinions and desires seem to have have been subsumed by her boyfriend Richard's plans and preferences, and she's not close with her best friends or even with her sister anymore. When others' decisions set Teddy adrift even further, she's forced to consider her life and the person she's become--and determine whether she's capable of change. She finds comfort in watching episodes of her local children's show, and she impulsively writes a letter to the calm, kind, handsome host, starting a correspondence that will shift the course of her life. Winfrey's Very Sincerely Yours is light fiction that delivers delightful, charming banter, the promise of a new romance for Teddy, and wonderfully loyal friendships.

ICYMI: Wiley Cash's The Last Ballad explores race relations and the fight for dignity in a 1929 North Carolina mill camp community. “There is an old saying that every story, even your own, is either happy or sad depending on where you stop telling it.” Cash provides rich details of life in a mill camp in 1929 North Carolina. The Last Ballad explores race relations and complicated relationships within a largely segregated living but racially mixed working arrangement. An individual tragic end also serves as a heroic sacrifice within a larger and extremely important fight for the dignity and conditions afforded by a union. This heart-wrenching struggle for survival and for dignity was at the heart of the book. It took me a little time to get into Cash's Last Ballad. It was a slow build but worth riding Cash's wave to an affecting middle of the story and a powerful sequence of final events. I really wish I’d read the final author’s note about Cash's personal links to the story before reading the book--the information there was fascinating, and I think would have lent even more power to my reading experience. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? I read The Last Ballad with my book club, and this week I reviewed When Ghosts Come Home, Wiley Cash's character-driven mystery set in 1980s Eastern North Carolina. Next I want to read Cash's A Land More Kind Than Home and This Dark Road to Mercy. Have you read either of these? Wiley Cash's writing reminds me somewhat of that of Ron Rash, another wonderful North Carolina author.

My very favorite books from September! These are the books I most loved reading during the past month. I included two titles from my continuing light fiction run, but I also listed a great nonfiction book by Bill Browder, a fascinating science fiction read, a feminist retelling of Greek mythology tales, and Michelle Zauner's powerful, beautiful memoir. I'd love to hear: what are some of your recent favorite reads? 01 A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes Natalie Haynes's mythological retellings put women at the center of many scenes surrounding the Trojan War. I was highly entertained by the sometimes darkly funny, sometimes tragic A Thousand Ships. I listened to Haynes read her captivating woman-centric version of events surrounding the Trojan War as an audiobook. These are the stories of the women left behind as the men journeyed and sought to inspire songs and stories--often women who may have been able to change the course of events if anyone had listened to them or they'd been given some semblance of power. Haynes's women are vulnerable in order to try to save each other, they carve out meager existences as they bide their time for revenge--and they try to guide the male decision-makers, for example, by pointing out the absurdity of the Trojan Horse. Through all of these accounts, Natalie Maynes offers frequently darkly funny moments and sometimes poignant scenes showing unusual perspectives and points of view. I was hooked throughout A Thousand Ships. 02 The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson In The Space Between Worlds, Micaiah Johnson offers a wonderfully imperfect heroine and her fascinating journeys through the multiverse, her various lives, and her alternate selves. I loved this science fiction debut. Cara is one of a dwindling number of traversers. She 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. But when one of Cara's eight remaining selves mysteriously dies while she is world walking, shocking secrets are revealed that connect various worlds and shake Cara to her core. She must cobble together the various bits of knowledge and savviness she's gained through tracing the steps of her many other selves if she's going to stand any chance of outsmarting the canny and intelligent Adam Bosch--a man who will otherwise almost certainly be the source of her undoing. 03 The Guncle by Steven Rowley The Guncle is full of heart and humor, quirky family love, and fun references to musicals and movies--yet Rowley also offers poignancy, an exploration of grief, and the impossible-seeming prospect of going on after deep loss. In Steven Rowley's fun, funny, and heartwarming light fiction story The Guncle, aging former sitcom star Patrick is coping with deep loss while also temporarily caring for his niece and nephew. I've been on a light-fiction kick lately, but I need some depth in my lighthearted reading in order to feel truly fulfilled. The Guncle delivers with heart and humor, copious fun references to and one-liners from Broadway shows and musicals, various nontraditional families and loving bonds, and a little bit of poignancy that brought a tear to my eye. Rowley explores grief and how it is a shared--yet completely individual--experience. This was especially interesting to me as related to the two lost loved ones for which Patrick does not feel officially able to “claim” a grieving role. The author is married to Byron Lane, the author of A Star Is Bored, another book I loved. For more light fiction with heart, you might check out the Greedy Reading List Six Lighter Fiction Stories for Great Escapism. 04 Red Notice by Bill Browder In Red Notice, Browder takes the reader deep into the intrigue and terror of the corrupt Russian political and business systems he uncovered. This is a powerful, fast-paced, compelling nonfiction read. The subtitle of Browder's nonfiction book is A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice, and in Red Notice, Browder traces his path from Wall Street to the Soviet Union after its breakup--and the crimes, mysteries, and political machinations that he witnessed and helped bring to light. Browder does an excellent job of taking the reader step by step through financial discrepancies, loopholes, realizations, and the ways that various scenarios and implications play out. He brought me along into the thick of situations of which I had little or no prior understanding in a way that assured that I never felt lost. He's specific without getting bogged down in the details, and the pacing of the book is appealingly quick and compelling. 05 Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner In her memoir Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner takes unflinching looks at her family, herself, and her potential future, all while exploring the rich flavors, traditions, and challenges of the Korean meals intertwined with her identity and her past. Crying in H Mart is a complicated, layered love letter to Zauner's mother, who is dying of colorectal cancer over the course of the book. The book is also an exploration of the author's Korean-American heritage, her feelings of being caught between two cultures, and, largely, her deep and growing connection to Korean food. Zauner delves into her intense love for the complex flavors, the frequently time-consuming and sometimes meditative preparations required, and her many emotional associations with certain dishes. Zauner takes unflinching looks at her life, choices, and feelings. Her story is compelling and intriguing--whether or not you're familiar with her or her indie band Japanese Breakfast. (She mentions her musical journey, but the band is not the focus of the book.) Crying in H Mart is beautiful, painful, and evocative. 06 Tokyo Ever After by Emiko Jean Emiko Jean's young adult light fiction is delightful, youthful, sometimes wonderfully silly, and heartwarming. The irresistible premise of Tokyo Ever After: a heretofore-unknown princess finds herself and searches for her place in the world. Emiko Jean's young adult light fiction Tokyo Ever After is the story of Izumi (Izzy) Tanaka, an everyday, average Japanese-American teen...who discovers that her father is the Crown Prince of Japan. Tokyo Ever After is about identity, expectations, truth, challenges, betrayal, loyalty, and self-discovery. Jean's story is lighthearted, romantic, and sometimes poignant with frequently silly, teenaged comments, references, and text chains. It's just lovely. For other great young adult books, you might try the titles on the Greedy Reading List Six Fantastic Stand-Alone Young Adult Books. And for more young adult stories about royalty, you might try Six Royally Magical Young Adult Series.

I loved Cash's Eastern North Carolina setting, the character of Sherriff Winston Barnes, and the pulsing racial, class-based, and family conflicts explored in When Ghosts Come Home. In his newest book, Wiley Cash offers a mystery and police procedural set in a small Southern town. When Ghosts Come Home centers around racial tensions, political angles, and the testing of longstanding allegiances in mid-1980s Eastern North Carolina. Sheriff Winston Barnes knows he probably won't be reelected. He does things by the book and isn't flashy, while his aggressive opponent seems to amass more wealth and (dubious sources of) support each passing day. Meanwhile, Winston's wife is in cancer treatment and his daughter has just experienced a devastating loss and is drifting, unmoored. He's got a lot on his plate. But when a body and an abandoned airplane are found in his quiet, coastal North Carolina town, Winston must try to unravel the mystery of the events at hand. Rumors, long-simmering conflicts, clashing loyalties, and Barnes's personal tragedy all complicate the discovery of the truth. I was all in for the shocking events that occurred late in the book. The very end of the story brought to light a sudden burst of twisty complications and cemented the course of events, but these goings-on occurred off the page and were summarized for the reader. I found that deeply unsatisfying. But I really like Cash's character-driven mystery writing, and I'm definitely in for reading his future books. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of NetGalley and William Morrow. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Wiley Cash is also the author of A Land More Kind than Home, The Last Ballad, and This Dark Road to Mercy. He's the writer-in-residence at University of North Carolina-Asheville. Stay tuned for my upcoming ICYMI (In Case You Missed It) review of The Last Ballad.

In this memoir, Ford shares how she navigated an unforgiving childhood and complicated relationships with her volatile mother and her incarcerated father, all the while figuring out her place in the world. Ashley C. Ford wishes she could know her father more fully, but he's been in prison since before she could remember, and she's not entirely sure how he ended up there. In her memoir Somebody's Daughter, Ford explores her complicated relationship with her mother, her endless loyalty to her younger brother, her complex feelings about her father and the idea of him returning home, and more. "I did not know that there are miles between running out of things to say, and running out of the strength to say them." As Ford examines her anxiety, her sometimes unhealthy relationships, and the circumstances of her childhood and upbringing, she considers her ties to the man who is her father and how significantly she may have been shaped by the people who made her and the people who raised her. Her shocked and deeply upset reaction to learning the nature of her father's crime gives way to what feels like an uneasy desire to consider him separately from his actions. His terrible crimes aren't explored at length or explained away, but sit simmering underneath her anxiety-filled attempts to reconnect with the man she's always considered a benevolent stranger, someone she hopes and dreams is capable of loving her unconditionally. In order to forge any relationship with her father, she must navigate this incredibly difficult situation. “Despite everything my father had done, I was still so eager to be claimed by him. To be protected by him. To the world he was a bad man. To me, he was my dad who did a bad thing. I was still trying to figure out what it meant to love someone who had done such a bad thing, but I did love him. And that was enough for me to show up, and say so to his face.” Ford feels an intense desire to be her own person, someone both of and separate from her challenging beginnings. Somebody's Daughter is beautifully straightforward and honest as the author follows the fits and starts (and, sometimes, roadblocks) on her path to self-discovery. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? I read Ford's memoir Somebody's Daughter around the same time I read the memoir Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner, and as I was beginning to read Brandi Carlile's memoir Broken Horses. These three memoirs have commonalities I didn't expect--though they offer varied voices and tones--and all of them captivated me.

Zauner takes unflinching looks at her family, herself, and her future, all while exploring the rich flavors, traditions, and challenges of the Korean meals intertwined with her identity and her past. I listened to this memoir, written and read by Michelle Zauner (of the band Japanese Breakfast). Crying in H Mart felt like a complicated, layered love letter to Zauner's mother, who is dying of colorectal cancer over the course of the book. “For the rest of my life there would be a splinter in my being, stinging from the moment my mother died until it was buried with me.” Crying in H Mart is also an exploration of the author's Korean-American heritage, her feelings of being caught between two cultures, and, largely, her deep and growing connection to Korean food. Zauner delves into her intense love for the complex flavors, the frequently time-consuming and sometimes meditative preparations required, and her many emotional associations with certain dishes. As her knowledge of cooking techniques and their links to tradition grows, Zauner feels increasingly capable of providing touch points for her mother--whether this takes the dietary forms of Korean comfort foods when sick; customary milestone meals; or passable everyday versions of the foods that have long sustained her mother and herself. Zauner also digs into her often difficult relationship with her father, her fears that after her mother dies she and her father will no longer feel connected, her choice to build her own family by marrying, and how impossible it seems that she could ever consider herself fully seen without her mother as a mirror. This is beautiful, painful, and evocative. Zauner takes unflinching looks at her life, choices, and feelings. Her story is compelling and intriguing, whether or not you're familiar with her or her indie band. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Zauner's 2018 New Yorker essay mentioned the title of this book and led to this work. Side note: I'd like a sequel about her band life, her husband's role in it, her take on the music business, and more, please.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading Anthony Doerr's upcoming literary fiction tale of interconnected characters that spans centuries, Cloud Cuckoo Land; I'm listening to Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner's memoir about growing up Korean-American, her mother, their relationship, and losing her; and I'm reading Somebody's Daughter, Ashley C. Ford's memoir about growing up while her father was incarcerated and the complicated childhood that shaped her adult self. Which books are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr In this upcoming book by Anthony Doerr (author of All the Light We Cannot See), young Anna lives in fifteenth-century Constantinople, stitching priests' robes and secretly learning to read stories from the past. In twentieth-century Idaho, Zeno is directing a children's play based on the stories Anna read five centuries earlier. And in the future, Konstance is in a vault on the spaceship Argos, copying information onto old editions of the same stories--stories that connect these characters across space and time. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book, which will be available September 28, courtesy of NetGalley and Scribner. 02 Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner I'm listening to this memoir by Michelle Zauner of the band Japanese Breakfast, which feels like a complicated, layered love letter to her mother, who is dying of colorectal cancer over the course of the book. Crying in H Mart is also an exploration of the author's Korean-American heritage, her feelings of being caught between two cultures, and her intense love for Korean food--the complex flavors, the frequently time-consuming and sometimes meditative preparations required, and her many emotional associations with certain dishes. “For the rest of my life there would be a splinter in my being, stinging from the moment my mother died until it was buried with me.” This is beautiful, painful, and evocative. Zauner's story is compelling whether or not you're familiar with her or her indie band. 03 Somebody's Daughter by Ashley C. Ford Ashley C. Ford wishes she could know her father more fully, but he's been in prison since before she could remember, and she's not entirely sure how he ended up there. In her memoir Somebody's Daughter, Ford explores her complicated relationship with her mother, her endless loyalty to her younger brother, her complex feelings about her father and the idea of him returning home, and more. As Ford examines her anxiety, her sometimes unhealthy relationships, and the circumstances of her childhood and upbringing, she considers her ties to the man who is her father and how significantly she may have been shaped by the people who made her, the people who raised her. She feels an intense desire to be her own person, someone both of and separate from her challenging beginnings.

This literary fiction from Ash Davidson is wonderfully wrought, with lots of tense undercurrents, heartbreaking situations, and few, if any, black-and-white answers. Rich Gunderson has been carving out a living logging in the Pacific Northwest for his whole life, just like his father before him and generations of family--many who died on the job--before that. But it's 1977, and things are changing. Rich's livelihood feels on the verge of becoming obsolete as the heavily harvested woods dwindle. He makes a desperate bid to make his own way by investing heavily into logging a corner of the forest. Meanwhile, environmentalists are fighting to stop logging and preserve the trees; a former resident with links to Rich's wife Colleen returns to town as a scientist researching water contamination and links to local health issues; and Rich's ability to earn back any of the savings he sunk into buying the woods seems in jeopardy. Rich and Colleen's relationship is strained by their many miscarriages and disagreements about their future. Damnation Spring is a roller coaster of a book. Author Ash Davidson lays out secrets, money woes, an old flame, a domineering sister, foolish relatives, dangerous and backbreaking work, brushes with disaster, the stress of straddling ecological responsibility and the demands human consumption, and overreaching uncertainty. Every character grapples with obligation, safety, and family issues. This literary fiction from Ash Davidson is wonderfully wrought, with lots of tense undercurrents, a growing sense of being trapped in an impossible situation, heartbreaking horrors, and few, if any, black-and-white answers--Davidson presents fascinating gray areas instead. The setting is lush and captivating and feels like its own character. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? This is Ash Davidson's first book. I mentioned Damnation Spring along with Tokyo Ever After and Good Girl, Bad Blood in the Greedy Reading List Three Books I'm Reading Now, 9/3/21.

Riley has crafted a middle-grade fantasy book with humor, adventure, characters to root for, and heart and depth that surprised me. I'll definitely read the next in this series. In James Riley's middle-grade fantasy book Story Thieves, young introvert Bethany and impulsive Owen are, hesitantly, new friends. They both love books, and they keep running into each other, both in class and at the library where Owen's mom works--and where Bethany seems to spend all of her time. They live in a world that feels like our own, with one important distinction. Because of her own origins, practical Bethany has the power to jump in and out of books, immersing herself in the fictional world of each story she enters. Responsible as she is, she makes sure to keep to the background so as not to change a story or appear on its pages. That is, until excitable Owen gets involved. This setup might have felt gimmicky or too convoluted, but Riley uses a sure hand: the logistics of how it all works are laid out as we dive in; we briefly dabble in well-known books and characters at times; and the author builds a rich book within a book and world within a world. Story Thieves has humor, adventure, characters to root for--and satisfying and intriguing intersections between Bethany and Owen and the fictional characters they encounter. Riley's characters have some heartiness to their back stories, and concepts of grief and imperfect parents are part of the book. Perhaps most satisfyingly, he allows a hard-fought loyalty to emerge between Bethany and Owen. I was surprised by the heart and depth in this fantasy book. The cover looked more juvenile than the story felt, so for me, it set a tone that conflicted somewhat with what was inside. I laughed, rooted for the main protagonists and their allies, and loved the twists and turns and realizations--as well as the resolutions and the fantastic setup for the next middle-grade book in the series. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Story Thieves is the first in a five-book series by James Riley. My son and I had fun reading this one together, and we're both excited to read the next one. Riley is also the author of the Half Upon a Time and Revenge of Magic series.

Johnson offers a wonderfully imperfect heroine and her fascinating journeys through the multiverse, her various lives, and her alternate selves in this science fiction debut. Cara is one of a dwindling number of traversers. She 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 collects off-world data, the purpose of which has never been of 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. If I figured anything out in these last six years, it is this: human beings are unknowable. But when one of Cara's eight remaining selves mysteriously dies while she is world walking, shocking secrets are revealed that connect various worlds and shake Cara to her core. She must cobble together the various bits of knowledge and savviness she's gained through tracing the steps of her many other selves if she's going to stand any chance of outsmarting the canny and intelligent Adam Bosch--a man who will otherwise almost certainly be the source of her undoing. I could become the thing I'd always feared, and then I might never be afraid of anything again. This was a fascinating story that offered satisfying character depth and various permutations of Cara herself, her family members, loves, nightmarish enemies, and best friends. Johnson's explorations of the complicated intersections of class, wealth and poverty, control of valuable resources, and disparate levels of freedom throughout the multiverse are haunting. Cara lives through tantalizing explorations of her alternate lives--and the shape of each is dramatically affected by her own various small and large decisions, others' choices, and chance. I was intrigued by the layers Johnson built into the story. In some worlds, Cara recognizes common characteristics in those she loves or fears; she sometimes barely recognizes the same people in other worlds; and she always mentally logs the various factors that allowed beauty or cruelty or desperation or joy to take root. There's a postapocalyptic feel to the story, with turf wars, corruption, mercenary "runners" who shake down travelers, and gritty survivors. When asked what this discovery could teach us about what mattered, about death, and human nature, and how to make the world a gentler place, both parties were silent. But we were right, the scientists said. And so were we, the spiritual said. Cara isn't superhuman; she's imperfect, sometimes selfish, tough, and occasionally she's wonderfully vulnerable. I loved her as an unlikely heroine, and I loved that it wasn't too easy for her to attempt to address complex issues within the multiverse. The middle of the story dragged a little bit for me, but generally I was hooked and ready for whatever Johnson was serving up. Side note: I'd like for this story to also become a movie, thank you very much. I received an advance digital copy of this book courtesy of Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? This is Micaiah Johnson's first book. Its tone reminded me a little bit of The Goddess in the Machine. If you like books with a postapocalyptic feel, check out the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Fantastic Dystopian and Postapocalyptic Novels.

The Guncle is full of heart and humor, quirky family love, and fun references to musicals and movies--yet Rowley also offers poignancy, an exploration of grief, and the impossible-seeming prospect of going on after deep loss. In Steven Rowley's fun, funny, and heartwarming light fiction story 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 means setting Patrick and his beloved (but sometimes foreign-to-him) Maisie and Grant loose in his home in Palm Springs, making things up as they go along. They are each going through grief and confusion, but they adore each other and have their love to fall back on as they flounder. For Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP), 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. I've been on a light-fiction kick lately, but I need some depth in my lighthearted reading in order to feel truly fulfilled. The Guncle delivers with heart and humor, copious fun references to and one-liners from Broadway shows and musicals, various nontraditional families and loving bonds, and a little bit of poignancy that brought a tear to my eye. Rowley explores grief and how it is a shared--yet completely individual--experience. This is especially interesting as related to the two lost loved ones for which Patrick is not officially able to “claim” a grieving role--he was not a husband to his beloved Joe and so was not considered family, and he was Sara's best friend (and, secondarily, her brother in law), but he doesn't feel he can grieve deeply like a family member who has cultural permission to do so. I was distracted by the brief, repeated shifts in point of view from Patrick to other characters. I really wanted to stay in Patrick's point of view, and I didn't feel that we gained much insight or information from the jarring moments in which we were swept into the other characters' perspectives. I loved the glimpses into show business, the foray into new love, and the uniquely fun, supportive, freeing relationship Patrick establishes with his niece and nephew. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? The author is married to Byron Lane, the author of A Star Is Bored, a book I loved. Rowley is from Maine and now lives in Palm Springs, and he also wrote The Editor and Lily and the Octopus. Have you read either of his other books?

ICYMI: My recent review of Natalie Haynes's entertaining A Thousand Ships brought to mind this wonderful title by Madeline Miller that I adored. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from or the mortals she has come to love. Circe, daughter of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, is an odd child. She's not striking and in fact, she's seemingly without power. But she grows into her glorious witchy wonder, and her abilities to transform her foes are revealed--along with her dangerous potential to threaten the gods. When Zeus, fearful of what she might be capable of, banishes her to a deserted island, Circe perfects her witchy powers, tames beasts, considers the world and her place in it, simmers and plans, and entertains well-known figures from mythology, including Icarus, the Minotaur, Medea, and Odysseus. We are sorry, we are sorry. Sorry you were caught, I said. Sorry that you thought I was weak, but you were wrong. Circe is a wonderfully faulted, curious, powerful witch. I was in for this book hook, line, and sinker. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? I mentioned Circe in the Greedy Reading List Six Wonderfully Witchy Stories to Charm You, and I recently mentioned it again in my review of Natalie Haynes's A Thousand Ships, a woman-centered retelling of events surrounding the Trojan War.

Browder takes the reader deep into the intrigue and terror of the corrupt Russian political and business systems he uncovered. Despite some small moments that felt heavy-handed, this is a powerful, fast-paced, compelling nonfiction read. The subtitle of Browder's nonfiction book is A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice, and in Red Notice, Browder traces his path from Wall Street to the Soviet Union after its breakup--and the crimes, mysteries, and political machinations that he witnessed and helped uncover. As Browder and his team began to make millions of dollars, they also exposed corruption in Russia, whereby they attracted the dangerous attention of Putin and those surrounding him. This put Browder's team's livelihoods and their lives in jeopardy. Browder escaped Russia, and he became obsessed with bringing to justice those in the Putin regime who had bilked the country of billions, those who willfully, blatantly, and continually threatened and stole from their countrymen and -women, and, particularly, those who tortured and put to death his brave, trusted Russian associate and lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. Browder's doggedly investigative, cannily media-focused, and sometimes desperate political actions drew even more ire from Putin and those in his ranks. Putin famously retaliated to Browder's attempts to punish those responsible for Sergei's death in shockingly large-scale fashion: Putin put into place measures that largely prevented Americans from adopting Russian children. Browder's writing occasionally stopped me with clunky-feeling descriptions (for example, women's looks and outfits are often described in detail, and they or their dress is said to be "classy" or "beautiful"; and on multiple occasions Browder relates that his words brought various crowds to tears--and that they had never been brought to tears before in such a situation--or that something related to the case or his accounts inspired clapping--whereupon he describes the quality of the clapping). These instances weren't the meat of the story by any means, but they felt jarring to me. Yet the story Browder shares is so compelling, so shocking, and so intriguing, I didn't mind skimming over some moments that felt heavy-handed. Browder does an excellent job of taking the reader step by step through financial discrepancies, loopholes, realizations, and how various scenarios and implications play out. He brought me along into the thick of situations of which I had little or no prior understanding in a way that assured that I never felt lost. He's specific without getting bogged down in the details, and the pacing of the book is appealingly quick and compelling. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? If you like nonfiction books that read like fiction, you might try the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Compelling Nonfiction Books that Read Like Fiction or Six of the Best Nonfiction Books I've Read This Year.

Natalie Haynes's mythological retellings put women at the center of many scenes surrounding the Trojan War. I was highly entertained by the sometimes darkly funny, sometimes tragic A Thousand Ships. I listened to Haynes read her highly entertaining woman-centric version of events surrounding the Trojan War. Penelope shares her increasing annoyance at the bards' reported tales of Odysseus as he extends his outrageously complicated and indulgent travels. Cassandra's spot-on visions and helpfully specific predictions are largely dismissed and disrespected. Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena bicker and take part in petty competitions with enormous repercussions. These are the women left behind--often women who may have been able to change the course of events if anyone had listened to them or they'd been given some semblance of power--women rolling their eyes at men's foolishness, and women terrified by their imminent sacrifice, slavery, rape, or death because their men set off to become heroes and left them alone. “He loses his wife so he stirs up an army to bring her back to him, costing countless lives and creating countless widows, orphans and slaves. Oenone loses her husband and she raises their son. Which of those is the more heroic act?” Haynes's women try to point out the absurdity of the Trojan Horse, they are vulnerable in order to try to save each other, and they carve out meager existences as they bide their time for revenge. Through all of these accounts, Maynes offers often darkly funny moments and sometimes poignant scenes showing unusual perspectives and points of view. I was highly entertained throughout A Thousand Ships. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? If you enjoy retellings of mythology and you haven't yet read Madeline Miller's Circe (which I gave five stars) or Song of Achilles (which I gave four stars), you might want to add these to your list. Are there other mythological retellings you've loved?

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading Wiley Cash's upcoming Southern mystery, When Ghosts Come Home; A Thousand Ships, Natalie Haynes's woman-centric account of events surrounding the Trojan War; and Under the Whispering Door, TJ Klune's upcoming heartwarming story about a dead man who must find personal peace before crossing over forever. Which books are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 When Ghosts Come Home by Wiley Cash Cash, author of A Land More Kind than Home and The Last Ballad, here offers a mystery and police procedural set in a small Southern town. When Ghosts Come Home centers around racial tensions, political angles, and testing longstanding allegiances. Sheriff Winston Barnes knows he probably won't be reelected. But when a body is found in his coastal North Carolina town, he must focus on far bigger issues. He suspects foul play in the case--and almost everyone in town is a potential culprit. Rumors, long-simmering conflicts, clashing loyalties, and Barnes's personal tragedy all complicate the discovery of the truth. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book, scheduled for September 21 publication, courtesy of NetGalley and William Morrow. 02 A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes I'm listening to Haynes read her highly entertaining woman-centric version of events surrounding the Trojan War. “He loses his wife so he stirs up an army to bring her back to him, costing countless lives and creating countless widows, orphans and slaves. Oenone loses her husband and she raises their son. Which of those is the more heroic act?” Maynes offers often darkly funny moments and sometimes poignant scenes showing unusual perspectives and points of view, from Penelope, sharing her increasing annoyance at the bards' reported tales of Odysseus as he extends his outrageously complicated and indulgent travels; to Cassandra, whose spot-on visions and helpfully specific predictions are largely dismissed and disrespected; to Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena's bickering and petty competitions with enormous repercussions. 03 Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune Under the Whispering Door is by the author of The House in the Cerulean Sea, and here, TJ Klune offers another heartwarming story, this time featuring the character of Wallace, who is suspecting that something is going on--and who is beginning to suspect that he is in fact dead. Before crossing over from the living forever, Wallace gets a week to finish out his life and tie up loose ends--and to maybe rethink some basic aspects of his life before it's too late. Klune offers another whimsical, tender, striking, LGBTQ story about finding your true self, recognizing what you love, and treasuring friends who feel as precious as family. This book is set for September 21 publication. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of NetGalley and Tor Books.

Emiko Jean's young adult light fiction is delightful, youthful, sometimes wonderfully silly, and heartwarming. The irresistible premise of Tokyo Ever After: a heretofore-unknown princess finds herself and searches for her place in the world. Emiko Jean's young adult light fiction Tokyo Ever After is the story of Izumi (Izzy) Tanaka, an everyday, average Japanese-American teen...who discovers that her father is the Crown Prince of Japan. She's been raised by her caring, no-nonsense single mother in a mostly white northern California town, and she's never known the identity of her father. Izumi is gobsmacked to discover that she's literally a princess. The only thing more outrageous is that she's asked to travel to Japan to meet her father and the rest of her royal family for the first time. Cue the ball gowns, thousands of years of customs and traditions to try to learn, introductions to tricky rivalries and jealousies within her family--and the uncomfortable implication that the outspoken Izzy should quiet down and fall in line. She quickly realizes that being a princess isn't all it's cracked up to be. “What had I pictured? That we’d run into each other’s arms? That our shared DNA would act as opposite ends of a magnet pulling us together? He is not a dad returning from deployment. I am not a child eagerly awaiting his arrival. There are no memories to anchor our relationship. He did not tuck me in at night, hold me while I raged with a fever, or cheer me on when I stole home playing softball.” Tokyo Ever After is about identity, expectations, truth, challenges, betrayal, loyalty, and self-discovery. Jean's story is lighthearted, romantic, and sometimes poignant with frequently silly, teenaged comments, references, and text chains. It's just lovely. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Tokyo Ever After is listed as Tokyo Ever After #1, with the second book in the series, Tokyo Dreaming, expected next year. Jean is also the author of Empress of All Seasons and We'll Never Be Apart. If you like light fiction, you might want to try some of the titles on the Greedy Reading List Six Lighter Fiction Stories for Great Escapism. For other great young adult books, you might try the titles on the Greedy Reading List Six Fantastic Stand-Alone Young Adult Books. And for young adult royal stories, try Six Royally Magical Young Adult Series.

Haig is vulnerable and specific in his short memoir about his own experiences with mental illness and depression--and he shares the small and large motivators he uses to remind himself that his darkness will pass. Matt Haig explores his experiences with 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 overwhelming emotions, the pressures of the world around him, and his reliance on his now-wife and family as ballasts through it all. He tracks the various coping mechanisms he tried, his thought processes, what worked and didn't, and moments of despair so deep he couldn't imagine coming out of them. Haig lists positive things in the world (they're referred to in the book's title) that comprise his motivations--small and large--for getting out of bed and functioning when doing so is a struggle. He seeks to explain his own situation with mental illness while allowing that others' experiences are different. And he showcases how reveling in small, beautiful aspects of life and the human experience provide him with enough hope to go on. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? I listened to Haig read this audiobook. Haig is also the author of the fiction titles The Midnight Library and How to Stop Time. If you like to read memoirs, you might try the titles on the Greedy Reading Lists Six Illuminating Memoirs to Dive Into, Six More Illuminating Memoirs to Lose Yourself In, Six Powerful Memoirs about Facing Mortality, and Six Foodie Memoirs to Whet Your Appetite.

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.

ICYMI: In Matt Haig's How to Stop Time, main protagonist Tom Hazard lives for centuries but is not allowed to fall in love. When he rejects the rules, he must reckon with mortality, heartbreak, and the meaning and purpose of his extended existence. “That is the whole thing with the future. You don’t know. At some point you have to accept that you don’t know. You have to stop flicking ahead and just concentrate on the page you are on.” In How to Stop Time, Matt Haig explores the beauty and the horror of time as it spools on essentially without end while his characters live through many centuries. Tom Hazard is a high school English teacher. He's also a seemingly 41-year-old man, but he's actually been alive for centuries. The Albatross Society has one rule for its members, all of whom live on and on: never fall in love. So when Tom begins to fall for the French teacher at school, it may renew his faith in the world and in humanity--but it can also only mean trouble. Haig dives into Hazard's wonder at new experiences and his and other characters' perspectives on the world and history, but also the heartbreak of their loneliness and the weight of the constant loss of their beloved “mayflies” (other people, who live such relatively short existences compared to Tom and his fellow Albatross Society members). “It made me lonely. And when I say lonely, I mean the kind of loneliness that howls through you like a desert wind. It wasn't just the loss of people I had known but also the loss of myself. The loss of who I had been when I had been with them.” While I enjoyed main protagonist Tom Hazard’s point of view, which evolves by the close of the story, the shift seemed to come about a little abruptly, so it felt somewhat unsatisfying. The ending felt a little too quickly wrapped up, and I didn’t feel particularly emotionally invested in the book's Big Events. But there were many lovely, lovely moments in How to Stop Time, and I really like Haig's writing style. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Haig is also the author of The Midnight Library and his memoir-ish book that I'm reading now, Reasons to Stay Alive, as well as many others. If you like books that play with time, you might also like the books on the Greedy Reading Lists Six Fascinating Second-Chance, Do-Over, Reliving-Life Stories and Six Riveting Time-Travel Escapes.

In Holly Jackson's young adult mystery sequel, we revisit the brave, faulted, irresistible character of Pippa Fitz-Amobi, who is drawn back into complex detective work when no one else can or will help her friend whose brother is missing. Yay, the fantastic character of Pippa Fitz-Amobi is baaaaack! In Good Girl, Bad Blood, Holly Jackson's sequel to the wonderful young adult mystery A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, Pip has sworn off amateur detective work. After all, last time around, all kinds of horrible things happened as she dug into (and solved, thank you very much) the mystery of the Andie Bell and Sal Singh case. Now Pip and Ravi are happily dating, her family has stopped worrying about her so much, and Max Hastings is on trial and is almost certainly about to go to jail for the heinous crimes revealed in the last book. Pip is still producing her popular podcast, but after the trial, she's convinced that she'll be finished with all of it. Really. That is, until her friend Connor comes to her in a panic. His twenty-four-year-old brother Jamie is missing, the police aren't responding with any urgency, and Connor just knows Pippa is the only one who can help figure out what's going on. Jackson offers layer upon layer of intrigue and twisty turns in this mystery. Nothing is too easy, but the author doesn't rely on red herrings, merely offering complex, interconnected situations that require Pip, Ravi, Connor, and company to unravel them bit by bit, relying on hunches, dogged detective work, and some lucky breaks. Pip is as perfectly imperfect a character as ever. In Good Girl, Bad Blood, she reckons with her own dark side and reflects on what she's capable of. She feels outrage at injustice and seeks revenge--and decides she can live with her aggressive actions and with not always being a "good" girl. I just loved this--I listened to it as an audiobook. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? A Good Girl's Guide to Murder is Holly Jackson's first book in this series. Her third book, As Good as Dead, is coming out next month. I can't wait.

Miller outlines many of the frightening, difficult, relentless aspects of coping with a chronic illness. She lays a journalistic view over some of her personal experiences and offers advice to those affected by chronic illness. “I needed a book written by someone who exists in that foggy space between the common cold and terminal cancer, where illness doesn’t go away but won’t kill you. I needed someone who lives every single day with illness to tell me that (1) I wasn’t alone and (2) my life was going to change in unexpected, difficult, and surprisingly beautiful ways.” The subtitle of Miller's memoir What Doesn't Kill You is A Life with Chronic Illness--Lessons from a Body in Revolt. Miller was a twentysomething writer in New York City when she began having odd symptoms, terrible pain, and mysterious physical issues. After multiple misdiagnoses and increasing discomfort and fear, she was ultimately diagnosed with Crohn's disease. “I became a professional patient, and a good one. I learned that bodies can be inexplicably resilient and curiously fragile. I would never get better, and that would change everything: the way I think about my body, my health, my relationships, my work, and my life. When things get rough, people like to say, this too shall pass. But what happens when 'this' never goes away?” In What Doesn't Kill You, Miller explores the isolation of enduring chronic disease and her own personal experiences coping with pain and uncertainty. She traces her own debilitating symptoms and her significant, life-threatening complications and severe flares of the disease. She spends substantial page time laying out the weaknesses of our country's health care system, and she offers footnoted information about chronic illness, its treatment, and related issues. I mentioned this book way back in June as part of my Greedy Reading List Three Books I'm Reading Now, 6/14/21 Edition. It took me a while to get through it because of the sometimes grueling reading. Chronic illness can be heavy, sobering, relentless, shocking, cruel, painful, frightening, and devastating. What Doesn't Kill You may be illuminating--especially if you or someone you know copes with chronic illness. I also found it somewhat personally triggering, which isn't a judgment, but it was my reaction. Miller's view gets broad at times, and her focus occasionally seems to stretch beyond the scope of what I felt the book was about--her facts, backed up with sources, range from those related to issues surrounding problematic health care providers (this feels somewhat off topic when it stretches into issues of sexual and other abuse by doctors) to health care inequalities and various other subjects. “…I sometimes miss being in the hospital…. It was nice, in a way, to just lie there and be taken care of. To be sick, openly, without worrying about pretending otherwise.” Some of Miller's exploration of chronic illness that I found most interesting included potential sibling resentment, unusual parent-child dynamics (related to body autonomy and personal space, for example), friend frustration (such as the popular “get better already” message, whether unspoken or verbalized), and unexpected possible positive outcomes, such as post-traumatic growth. Miller is a journalist, but I felt that her footnotes, statistics, and summaries of various findings brought me out of the heart of the book, as did her coping advice--although that aspect could certainly be valuable for a reader seeking resources and practical information. This all felt far less meaningful to me than her detailed accounts of specific scenes in her life and the pivotal (large and small) moments she went through. Her particular personal experiences, her hard-fought wisdom, and her thoughtful reflections about her own situation were the strengths of the book for me. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? Other books about chronic illness that look potentially valuable and interesting but that I haven't yet read include: Life Disrupted: Getting Real About Chronic Illness in Your Twenties and Thirties and You Don't Look Sick! Living Well with Invisible Chronic Illness.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading Emiko Jean's Tokyo Ever After, in which Japanese-American teen Izumi Tanaka discovers that her father is the Crown Prince of Japan; Damnation Spring, Ash Davidson's dark and beautifully written literary mystery set in the Pacific Northwest; and Good Girl, Bad Blood, Holly Jackson's sequel to the young adult mystery The Good Girl's Guide to Murder, which again features the fantastic main character of Pippa Fitz-Amobi. Which books are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 Tokyo Ever After by Emiko Jean Emiko Jean's Tokyo Ever After is the story of Izumi (Izzy) Tanaka, an everyday, average Japanese-American teen...who discovers that her father is the Crown Prince of Japan. She's been raised by her single mother in a mostly white northern California town, and she's never known the identity of her father. She's gobsmacked to discover that she's literally a princess. The only thing more outrageous is that she's asked to travel to Japan to meet her father for the first time. Cue the ball gowns, thousands of years of customs and traditions to learn, tricky rivalries and jealousies within her family--and the uncomfortable implication that the outspoken Izzy should quiet down and fall in line. Is being a princess all it's cracked up to be? 02 Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson Rich Gunderson has been carving out (pun!) a living from logging in the Pacific Northwest for his whole life--just like his father before him and generations of family before that. It seems his livelihood may be on the verge of obsoleteness as the heavily harvested woods dwindle, and Rich makes a desperate bid to make his own way by investing into logging a corner of the forest--and he does so without mentioning his move to his wife or young son. Secrets, money, uncertainty, straddling the line between awareness of ecology and demanding human consumption--what could go wrong? When a skull is discovered and local logging is shut down indefinitely by protesters, procedural delays, and investigations, Rich grows more and more concerned that regardless of what is uncovered about the mysterious death, his whole life may be about to implode. Damnation Spring is a literary mystery from Ash Davidson, and it's wonderfully wrought so far, with plenty of tension and few black-and-white answers but many fascinating gray areas to consider. 03 Good Girl, Bad Blood by Holly Jackson Yay, the fantastic character of Pippa Fitz-Amobi is baaaaack! In Holly Jackson's sequel to the wonderful young adult mystery A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, Pip has sworn off amateur detective work. After all, last time around, all kinds of horrible things happened as she dug into (and solved, thank you very much) the mystery of the Andie Bell and Sal Singh case. Now Pip and Ravi are happily dating, her family has stopped worrying about her so much, and Max Hastings is on trial and is almost certainly about to go to jail for the heinous crimes revealed in the last book. Pip is still producing her popular podcast, but after the trial, she's convinced that she'll be finished with all of it. Really. That is, until her friend Connor comes to her in a panic. His twenty-four-year-old brother Jamie is missing, the police aren't responding with any urgency, and Connor just knows Pippa is the only one who can help figure out what's going on. Jackson offers layer upon layer of intrigue and twisty turns in this mystery, and Pip is as perfectly imperfect a character as ever. I just love this--I'm listening to it as an audiobook. Holly Jackson's third book in this series, As Good as Dead, is coming out next month, and I can't wait.

I was intrigued by the wolves, and I was interested in McConaghy's exploration of the tensions between wilderness and civilization, but I didn't feel a connection to the characters in Once There Were Wolves. "This is the fear they live with now. The children in us long for monsters to take forms we understand. They want to fear the wolves because they don’t want to fear each other.” From a young age Inti realized she had a particular affinity for animals; if she tuned in, she could feel their feelings and even their physical sensations. Inti and Aggie Flynn grew up spending time with their father living off the grid and become attuned to nature, focused on preservation, and respectful of wildlife. Later in life the sisters find themselves in the Scottish Highlands together as biologist Inti works to reintroduce gray wolves into the region. Inti has hardened her heart in the years since she was a child, but she begins opening up because of the magnificent creatures she's studying. When a crisis erupts, Inti must choose between her beloved wolves and the outside world and its pressures to leave the wild behind. Meanwhile, it's not clear whether some elements within McConaghy's story are real or are imagined by Inti. Inti's empathy and her taking on of others' physical sensations just by witnessing them only add to the off-kilter aspects of the book--what is real, is she a reliable narrator, what's really going on? And: Whose loyalty can be trusted? Whose memory is solid? Who are the villains and who are the heroes--or is everyone and is every creature a mix of both? McConaghy digs into the issues surrounding--and, sometimes, the seeming impossibility--of balancing ecological and agricultural health and populated areas and wilderness. I didn't feel an emotional connection to the characters, even during the several fraught, desperate, charged encounters between certain players. I felt far more of a bond with and had more interest in the wolves themselves. I was fascinated by the scientists' tracking abilities, the data they're able to gather, and especially the social structures and behaviors within and among the packs. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? McConaghy is also the author of Migrations, which my book club is reading this fall.

I love Heller's quiet moments as his characters reflect, and I preferred that aspect of this book--which features a main character from The River--to the mystery element. The Guide is a literary thriller by one of my favorite authors, in which Jack (from Heller's book The River) is a guide at an elite fishing lodge in Colorado. After suffering a great loss in The River, Jack is eager to lose himself in nature and meet the needs of the boutique resort's clients. When he's set up as the guide for a famous musician, he baits her line, carries her gear, and sets her up for a successful fishing trip. But Jack is starting to realize that something dark and dangerous may be at work at this lodge, and that things are more complicated than they had seemed. Heller explores a disturbingly dark side of wealth and abused privilege--with global repercussions. In The Guide, the main protagonist Jack is as linked to the natural world as are the characters in his other books, but for the villains, the outdoors serve primarily as a cover for nefarious plots and machinations meant to expand their considerable power. In The Guide, the character of Jack is coping with the aftermath of major tragedies in his life (which occurred in The River), reflecting on his own potential culpability, and wondering how to move forward with his life. But despite the page time we spent with him in The River--when I felt a deeper connection to the character--I didn't feel like I gained significant understanding or dug into Jack's reflections in this book. I was glad to revisit the character of Jack. Yet we didn't really need the character in this book to be Jack in order for the story to work. I'd be happy to read about Heller's characters just walking around in the wilderness, thinking their thoughts. I just love the descriptions, the character growth, and the insight Heller provides in those moments--and that was what I most enjoyed in The Guide. But when things began unraveling in the story, I felt as though the tone of the book shifted abruptly into a dramatic, action-packed section that seemed straight out of a movie. I was also unclear in the very last scene of the book about the seeming surprise of a character's reaction. It's a minor point, but it didn't make sense to me and left me distracted at the end. I received an advance digital copy of this title courtesy of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and NetGalley. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? I love Peter Heller's books, including his thrilling, character-driven story The River, the meditative yet decisively action-oriented The Painter, and his post-apocalyptic story The Dog Stars, which was a five-star read for me.

My very favorite books from August! These are the books I most loved reading during the past month. The list skews toward light fiction, but I've got a mystery, a great novel by Allison Larkin, and a wonderfully witchy historical fiction read on here as well. I'd love to hear: what are some of your recent favorite reads? 01 The People We Keep by Allison Larkin Teenaged April has been dealt a difficult hand in life, and watching her struggle to make her way and connect with others in Allison Larkin's new novel alternately broke my heart and made it soar. In Allison Larkin's new novel The People We Keep, April is struggling. She's failing out of school, working some shifts at a diner, and living in a nonfunctioning motorhome that her father won in a poker game. She lives in a town where she's never felt like she belongs, within a family where she doesn't feel that she matters. A borrowed car and an open mic night open up new possibilities for April, while a fight with her dad sharpens her focus on leaving. April flees, heading out on the road with few expectations, aside from changing the trajectory of her life. Along the way, she meets various people and must decide whether to open her heart to them or to keep herself at a distance; she considers what she truly wants from her life; and she writes songs to cope with and interpret the world around her. 02 Don't Look for Me by Wendy Walker Walker offers a terrifying, disturbing premise--but I was fascinated with the character depth, explorations of grief, and the twist I never saw coming in this suspenseful book. Molly Clarke is dealing with bottomless grief. Her youngest daughter died in an unthinkable accident, and for Molly, making her way through each day is like wading through floodwaters threatening to drown her. So she walks away--from her distant husband, her always-furious oldest daughter, her absent middle son, her broken life, and her relentless pain. At least, that's what the clues left behind seem to indicate. But the truth of what has occurred is horrible, terrifying, twisty--and absolutely fascinating. Don't Look for Me has disturbing echoes of Emma Donoghue's Room, and Walker's premise is often difficult to read and experience on the page. Our main protagonists are satisfyingly clever and resourceful, but they meet with plausibly complicated challenges, and nothing is too easy. There was a twist that I didn't see coming, and I thought it worked beautifully. Some of the wrap-up details near the very end felt a little bit unsatisfying, but resolving them cleanly might have felt too easy. I was intrigued by this book and flew through it in a day. 03 People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry Henry strikes the perfect tone for this wonderfully sweet, funny, friendship-based, romantic story that has lovely depth. People We Meet on Vacation made me laugh a lot--and got me a little teary in the end. In Emily Henry's newest novel People We Meet on Vacation, best friends and polar opposites Alex and Poppy are on their annual vacation. Poppy is impulsive and fun-loving, and Alex would generally rather stay home and read than seek out adventure. The pair has long been emotionally inseparable despite living in different cities--Poppy in New York and Alex in their small hometown. But two years ago on their vacation, something BIG happened. It threatened their friendship and continues to loom over everything between them. This was a will they/won't they story I loved. Some of the structure of having one character hold such emotional power over the other was frustrating because of the unlikely obliviousness required on the part of that character. But Henry strikes the perfect tone for this wonderfully sweet, funny, friendship-based, romantic story that has lovely depth. Henry's Beach Read was one of my favorite books last year, and it made it onto the Greedy Reading List Six Lighter Fiction Stories for Great Escapism. 04 The Ex Talk by Rachel Lynn Solomon Ursula unknowingly lives her life over and over again as Atkinson explores how choices large and small cause enormous repercussions for an individual--and sometimes for the entire world. Ursula isn't aware of the countless number of lives she lives. In Life After Life, Atkinson focuses on the character of Ursula, her relationships with members of her family, and details of life during World Wars I and II. This would be a captivating book even without the redoing-life element. But Atkinson's thrusting of Ursula back into her same existence as she shifts her circumstances slightly (with enormous repercussions); opens up her life to be bigger and more fulfilling (and often in these cases, longer); and develops inner strength, conviction, and self-assuredness--that's the real magic. I read (listened to) this immersive story about do-overs from Kate Atkinson at the recommendation of my wise friend Laura. I feared I'd get turned around in time by listening to the book rather than reading it, but narrator Fenella Woolgar's delivery kept me on track. I mentioned Life After Life in the Greedy Reading List Six Fascinating Second-Chance, Do-Over, Reliving-Life Stories. For my full review of this book, please see Life After Life. 05 Instructions for Dancing by Nicola Yoon This light fiction young adult novel offers (reluctant) romance, best friendships, dance lessons, glimpses into the future, a reimagined family structure, and lots of heart. In the newest young adult book by Nicola Yoon, teenaged Evie Thomas is reeling from her parents' divorce--and from her haunting secret knowledge that her father was seeing his girlfriend before he split with Evie's mom. So Evie doesn't believe in love or happy endings anymore. But then something really strange happens. Unexpected visions start overwhelming her. She's able to see the past and futures of the couples around her. But that's not all: Evie gets roped into taking dance lessons and inconveniently meets an incredible guy. Evie copes with loss and some heavy issues, but Instructions for Dancing was also romantic, sweet, fun to read (well, to listen to as an audiobook, which I did), and it focused on quirky friends, family loyalty, and looooove, all in a light fiction wrapping. For more summer reads, check out the Greedy Reading List Six Lighter Fiction Stories for Great Escapism. 06 The Manningtree Witches by A.K. Blakemore Blakemore's book--which is based upon witch hunts during the seventeenth-century English Civil War--is smart, shadowy and gothic, often infuriating, and consistently fascinating. In a small town in seventeenth century England, Puritanical fanaticism is opening the door for witch-hunting paranoia. Rebecca West is fatherless, without marriage prospects, and generally defiant--all of which render her vulnerable to suspicion and subject to the various, often harmful whims of men. The Manningtree Witches is smart and thoughtful, and the tone of Blakemore's novel is shadowy and gothic. Rebecca despairs at her situation, yet she is a wonderfully defiant and strong character--her mother is, dangerously, even more so. The Manningtree Witches is infuriating in its recounting of the horrific cruelties and tortures enacted against so many women at the time. But I appreciated the dark humor and strength Blakemore allows the formidable female characters in the book. If you like witchy books, you might also like Chris Bohjalian's witch hunt-focused Hour of the Witch or the titles on the Greedy Reading List Six Wonderfully Witchy Stories to Charm You.

Rachel Lynn Solomon's debut light fiction, The Ex Talk, incorporates a love of public radio, will-they/won't-they tensions, humor, heart, and some steamy scenes. In Solomon's The Ex Talk, Seattle public radio producer Shay Goldstein is in her late twenties, she's put in her time, and she thinks that her ideas deserve respect. So when young hotshot Dominic Yun shows up and, as a male, automatically has the ear of their misogynistic boss, Shay is beyond annoyed. The two soon find themselves driving everyone around them crazy with their constant bickering about anything and everything. Meanwhile, Shay feels that she's following all of the typical steps of becoming a grown-up: she has the job, she bought a (currently empty-feeling) house, and she keeps trying to settle down. Her widowed mother and her longtime best friend are each in love with wonderful partners, and Shay's beginning to wonder if she continues to leap into commitment with the wrong people because she's still reeling from the loss of her dad. When Dominic and Shay get talked into posing as exes in order to host a promising radio show about relationships, they're forced to get to know each other better in order to fake their past--but they actually open the door for a potential future for themselves instead. The Ex Talk is a fast read with lots of sexual tension along with some racy-steamy romantic interludes, and the book suited my summer reading mood wonderfully. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? If you like romantic, sometimes racy light fiction that offers character backstory, witty banter, and some satisfying heart, you might also try Emily Henry's Beach Read or People We Meet on Vacation, Christina Lauren's Soulmate Equation, or the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Lighter Fiction Stories for Great Escapism.

The Books I'm Reading Now I'm reading Bill Browder's Red Notice, which is nonfiction about the author's uncovering of corruption in Russia and the significant repercussions of doing so; The Guide, a new book by one of my favorite authors, Peter Heller, which picks up after the events of his book The River as main character Jack serves as a fishing guide at an elite but eerie Colorado resort; and The Ex Talk, Rachel Lynn Solomon's debut light fiction, which incorporates a love of public radio, will-they/won't-they tensions, humor, heart, and some steamy scenes. Which books are you reading and enjoying these days, bookworms? 01 Red Notice by Bill Browder The subtitle of Browder's nonfiction book Red Notice is A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice, and in it, Browder traces his path from Wall Street to the Soviet Union after its breakup--and the crimes, mysteries, and political machinations that he witnessed and uncovered. As Browder began to expose corruption in Russia, he attracted the dangerous attention of Putin, which put Browder's life in jeopardy. After Browder escaped Russia, he became determined to bring to justice those in the Putin regime who had tortured and put to death his trusted Russian associate and lawyer. His actions drew even more ire from Putin and those in his ranks, and Putin famously retaliated to Browder's attempts to identify those responsible for his friend's death by largely preventing Americans from adopting Russian children. My book club is reading this one. If you like nonfiction books that read like fiction, you might try the books on the Greedy Reading List Six Compelling Nonfiction Books that Read Like Fiction. 02 The Guide by Peter Heller A new Peter Heller book is out! A new Peter Heller book is out! The Guide is a literary thriller by one of my favorite authors, in which Jack (from Heller's book The River) is a guide at an elite fishing lodge in Colorado. After suffering a great loss in The River, he's eager to lose himself in nature and meet the needs of the boutique resort's clients. When he's set up as the guide for a famous musician, he baits her line, carries her gear, and sets her up for a successful fishing trip. But Jack is starting to realize that something dark and dangerous may be at work here, and that things are more complicated than they had seemed. I hope you'll join me in my adoration of Peter Heller's varied books, including his thrilling, character-driven story The River, the meditative yet decisively action-oriented The Painter, and his post-apocalyptic story The Dog Stars, which was a five-star read for me. I received an advance digital copy of this title courtesy of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and NetGalley. 03 The Ex Talk by Rachel Lynn Solomon In Solomon's Ex Talk, Seattle public radio producer Shay Goldstein is in her late twenties, she's put in her time, and she thinks that her ideas deserve respect. So when young hotshot Dominic Yun shows up and, as a male, automatically has the ear of their misogynistic boss, Shay is beyond annoyed. The two find themselves driving everyone around them crazy with their constant bickering. Meanwhile, Shay feels that she's following all of the typical steps of being a grown-up: she has the job, she bought a (currently empty-feeling) house, and she keeps trying to settle down. Her widowed mother and her longtime best friend are each in love with wonderful partners, and Shay's beginning to wonder if she's attempting to leap into commitment with the wrong people because she's still reeling from the loss of her dad. When Dominic and Shay get talked into posing as exes in order to host a promising radio show about relationships, they're forced to get to know each other better in order to fake their past--but actually the door opens for a potential future for them instead.

Wilson's bubbly personality comes through in these essays, and her show business experiences were interesting, but I often couldn't relate to her approach or experiences. Casey Wilson, actress (Happy Endings), comedian (Saturday Night Live), and writer, shares essays and memories, breathlessly told in whirlwinds of enthusiasm, frustration, or puzzlement as she works through feelings, shares her own often-uncontrollable tendencies (eating most meals in bed and aiming to spend significant time in the bathtub; her serious sugar addiction; her reliance on psychics and various gurus for unorthodox life guidance), and relates her pivotal experiences in show business and in her personal life. I enjoyed Wilson's performances in Happy Endings years ago, but when I began listening to the audiobook I didn't realize that the author was an actress from that show, and I had to do a quick search on the Internet to familiarize myself with who I was listening to. My initial cluelessness is no reflection on Wilson's book, and I'm generally game to read memoirs by people I know nothing about. But The Wreckage of My Presence didn't resonate with me. Wilson is so outlandishly zany, so dramatic and passionate, and so habitually silly that I couldn't generally relate to her or her experiences. She frequently focuses on her obsession with Real Housewives, the Kardashians, and other reality television and the lessons she learns from years of viewing these shows. Her experiences in television were interesting, and her account of coping with the loss of her mother and her fears about her son's development felt most real and affecting for me. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? If you like memoirs, you might try the books on some of these Greedy Reading Lists: Six Illuminating Memoirs to Dive Into Six More Illuminating Memoirs to Lose Yourself In Six Foodie Memoirs to Whet Your Appetite Six Powerful Memoirs About Facing Mortality

Lange's Irish family story centers around Sunday Brennan, who has returned home to her New York hometown where her own secrets--and others'--are exposed. In Tracey Lange's new novel We Are the Brennans, twenty-nine-year old Sunday Brennan wakes up in a haze. She's hungover and horrified: she was the cause of a drunk-driving accident in her adopted town of Los Angeles the night before. She's hit rock bottom and she knows it. Without other options, she skulks back to her hometown in New York. Five years earlier she'd abandoned her family and friends and anyone tied to her past, including her high-school sweetheart, but now she needs the support of people who truly know her. Will they take her back in without asking her to explain the reasons for her sudden disappearance? The longer Sunday spends at home, the more she realizes that her people need her too. As secrets become unraveled and threaten the solidity of all she thought she knew about her hometown and her big Irish family, Sunday must decide whether to flee again or to stay and find a way through the turmoil. This is a quick read, and I liked the extended-family loyalty and the revisiting of a seemingly ill-fated love. The villains in We Are the Brennans are largely easy to identify and to dislike. I found it interesting that within the almost mythological family that is based upon so much lore, the deceased mother is far from a martyr; her weaknesses and failings are laid bare. There's a minor mystery in the book, and Lange generally delivers resolutions that aren't always surprising but that I was glad to see coming. There's a final loose end and it seems assured that it will be wrapped up, but the specifics aren't laid out, and the very end of the story felt a little bit abrupt. I received a prepublication digital edition of this book courtesy of Celadon Books and NetGalley. Do you have any Bossy thoughts about this book? This is Tracey Lange's first book, and I look forward to future novels from her. Do you have books you love about Irish families?