Happy Sunday!
I just got a spray tan, and reading doesn’t matter to me anymore.
Sorry!
I am simply glowing too much and looking too hot to write more than a few paragraphs.
You’re lucky you’re even getting a newsletter today!
She is multifaceted, but she is not God.
I should be in the sun! I should be parading around town in a mini skirt! I should be sipping a drink with a tiny umbrella!
Alas, I would never leave you completely empty-handed….
Onto the books
The theme of my May reading was“flagrant delusion.”
I read about:
A cohort of robots, which famously do not eat, opening a noodle restaurant.
A tradwife pretending to live like a pioneer woman so hard that she manifests herself back to 1855.
A musical theatre actress refusing to accept that she can’t sing.
A tabloid reporter insisting he’s not like other tabloid reporters because he felt empathy one time.
What a fun array of denial!
🤖 Automatic Noodle, Annalee Newitz ⭐️⭐️
A cozy, near-future sci-fi where abandoned food service bots start a restaurant.
I wanted a wholesome story about a gaggle of ragtag machines. I got a half-baked allegory about immigrants in San Francisco. I know that sounds cool, but it didn’t quite land. Partially because the characters felt stunted, partially because the immigrant-to-robot comparison is a bit weird in the age of AI. And, call me crazy, but I’m just not really looking for social issue commentary in my culinary robot books… If you’re interested in heartwarming robot books, I suggest these instead:
🐄 Yesteryear, Caro Claire Burke ⭐️⭐️⭐️
A tradwife influencer wakes up in 1855
What have I told you??? Time and time again, I scream into the void that I don’t like thrillers. And here we are!!! Swindeled again!!!
Yesteryear, at least, had an incredible premise. This book had the potential to be 5-stars. I love being in the head of an insane, morally corrupt woman! It’s my happy place. I know nothing else!1
For 90% of this book, I was transfixed. And yet… There had to be a twist.
This is the sin of thrillers!! No matter how great the story is, thriller writers can’t resist a “gotcha!” moment. They are the Aston Kutchers of literature. This could have been an amazing literary novel! It could have been a bleak portrait of an image-obsessed, right-wing woman! It could have been the coolest magical realism book ever!! Caro Clair Burke, why!?!?
🎭 She’s A Lamb, Meredith Hambrock ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
An absolutely psychotic Vancouver-based actress will stop at nothing to be the lead of The Sound of Music.
Just incredible stuff! This is the crazy theatre kid horror novel I didn’t know I needed. Jessamyn is the most unlikable character of all time. She orchestrates a novel-length crashout of epic proportions. The plot is basically this for 312 pages:
She’s a Lamb is Satirical. Uncomfortable. Hilarious. Campy. Bonkers. These are a few of my favourite things!
🐍Waiting for Britney Spears, Jeff Weiss ⭐️⭐️⭐️
A memoir from a tabloid writer who spent his early career following Britney Spears around LA
I’m torn about this one. Jeff has an indulgent writing style that only a man can pull off. I was completely immersed in this ostentatious, over-written, pop-culture period piece. Give me all of the eloquent prose about 2000s depravity!
That said, he spent a lot of time trying to convince us that he wasn’t really part of the papparazzi problem because, deep down, he knew it was bad.
He just didn’t have a choice, okay!?!? Someone was going to make a quick buck of Britney’s demise, and why shouldn’t it be him?!?
And, if it was him back then, why shouldn’t also be him right now!?!?
It’s all pretty icky, especially when he barely grapples with his own culpability in the book. Instead, he includes what I can only assume is an exaggerated moment at a bar where he apologies to Britney on behalf of America… I don’t buy it! Wrestle with it more! Take all that flowery language and toss it into your ethics!
Last Thought:
Epilogue
What did you read this month?
Anything I should add to my TBR?
“One thing about which fish know exactly nothing is water, since they have no anti-environment which would enable them to perceive the element they live in.”
Marshall McLuhan, War and Peace in the Global Village