month in reading

The Idiot
By: Elif Batuman ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

My best friend from high school recommended this one. 10/10.

The first laugh-out-loud book I’ve ever read. I’ve read funny books, yes, but nothing that made me laugh so spontaneously, yet so often. Dry, sarcastic — it felt like the personality of the character and the writer were one. And perhaps they are, though I know really little of Elif’s true self.

It’s a coming-of-age novel so it doesn’t rely heavily on plot. I find books that live by plot can lose me; I’d rather meander through situations and see how the character responds. Not aimless, just natural.

My only critique is that the love interest was unrelatable. I didn’t believe that his disinterest was a quirk, it was a flaw, one that made it difficult to imagine he could elicit feelings from anyone. The main character, however, was so the opposite, so raw in her thoughts and spiraling thought patterns. I would’ve been concerned for her had I not felt so in tune with her.

The Topeka School 
By: Ben Lerner ⭐️⭐️⭐️

A sort of stream of consciousness political commentary. Started out really strong, the structure and writing style pulling you through this sort of warped past/present. Weaving storylines that would converge later on.

But I think it got a bit lost. A bit contrived and overwritten.

I chose it because I’d heard it attempted to portray the generation of “privileged” white men who want for nothing but still construct obstacles to their own success. A generation that has no struggle and therefore has no purpose.

It was written in 2019 and the clever Trumpisms and callbacks to present day — they already felt tired. Perhaps I just don’t want to relive that era so soon, but it didn’t feel like it would age well.

The Book of Lost Names 
By: Kristen Harmel ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

An intriguing, captivating storyline. I’ve read The Nightingale though, All the Light We Cannot See, The Book Thief. There’s stiff competition for novels about WWII. And Harmel had a strong foundation — the underground world of forgers during the war — but it stopped there.

It was a story of ingenuity and resilience, but it felt rushed; there wasn’t enough time for the emotions of a moment to sink in. In contrast to The Topeka School, it was too plot-driven, too quick to pull the reader from one scene to the next. The characters were two-dimensional, the mother unbearably so. I didn’t trust the characters, not because they were unreliable, I just simply didn’t have enough time to know them.

A Court Of Thorns & Roses 
By: Sarah J. Maas ⭐️⭐️⭐️

I won’t get too deep with this one (terrible, I know). Another rec from my high school best friend, and it really shows we’re balanced people. The Idiot one day, then smutty fantasy romance novels the next.

I think this could have been more of can’t-put-it-down Hunger Games read for me, but it tried too hard. The main character is matter-of-fact, realistic, hardened, but the writing felt flowery and out of place. Had Maas kept it simple, written like the main character thought and acted, I wouldn’t have critiqued the writing.

I would’ve accepted it for the smutty, suspenseful, mildly predictable fun read that it was.

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