Reading My Own Shelves

The year is winding down, and I've been thinking a lot lately about my spending. Unsurprisingly, with the pandemic that shall not be named, I haven't exactly been what one might call "frugal". Boredom and depressing doldrums of life being stuck indoors away from other people haven't made it easy to say no to whatever cute thing Instagram serves up while I doom-scroll the internet for the bajillionth time.

I typically never feel truly bad about buying new books, though I've come to a point where I've realized that the sheer number of books I have on hand would take me years to finish. And hey perhaps it's worth stopping for a second and taking a closer look at those before I dive into yet another Kindle deal. Plus, for me a physical paperback is worlds more enjoyable to read than a screen. I also feel like I may be missing out on a few big hits from a couple years back from a cultural standpoint. As someone inclined to the FOMO in general, I should probably do something about that. To get myself excited at the idea instead of just feeling sad and deprived, I started a shortlist of what I'd like to tackle next year. Are you planning to read any of these, or have you beat me to it?

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Baumeister
Circe by Madeline Miller
City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert
Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
The Lying Game by Ruth Ware
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Triptych by Karin Slaughter
Grown Ups by Marian Keyes
The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
The Belly of Paris by Emile Zola
Sing Unburied Sing by Jesmyn Ward
The Last House Guest by Megan Miranda
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Educated by Tara Westover
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
A Man Came Out of a Door in a Mountain by Adrianne Harun

Is this list maybe a bit too ambitious? Will I probably be buying new books by the first week of February? Will Instagram still be a hellscape of advertising by then? The answer to all of these questions is probably yes, but I'm willing to give it a try.

Comments

The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth

Photo by Tiko Giorgadze on Unsplash Thank you to NetGalley and St Martin's Press for the opportunity to read and review an advanced reader's copy of this book. The Younger Wife was a satisfying, fast-paced romp of a read. Sally Hepworth has become a reliable favourite for books that I can't put down! She has a way of writing dark subjects lightly, and her characters are always richly developed, full of flaws and quirks— which I love. I find with her writing, I never quite know how things will turn out in the end, and The Younger Wife was no exception. The book is told from the perspectives of Tully and Rachel, two adult sisters, as well as from the perspective of their father's new fiancé, Heather. Tully and Rachel's mother has dementia and is in a nursing home, so understandably, their father, Stephen, wants to move forward with life and has found love with Heather, who is notably younger than him, which doesn't sit well with the sisters. I found the characte

Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling by Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen

I haven't been so utterly besotted with a character as I was with Aisling in a very, very long time. I also think this audiobook may have broken some records on the number of times it made me snort laugh out loud with the endless Irish-isms, and the genuine hilarious earnestness of our dear Aisling. It's no secret that I love/am fairly obsessed with any and everything Irish. I'm Canadian as can be, but my paternal grandmother has roots in Ireland (and shared many of the cultural perspectives that came up in this book for the country folk, it turns out), and my mother's grandmother had family from Northern Ireland, I think. Anyway, like I said, I'm Canadian af, and so are my parents and their parents, so I'm certainly not claiming citizenship here or something. But I do think some very old family traits and traditions have made it down the line to the things we still find ourselves doing today. Additionally, many of my fond memories are due to a tiny, spritel

Tana French and Revisiting Broken Harbor

I first heard about Tana French back in 2014, and started with In the Woods, the first in her Dublin Murder Squad series. I was quickly hooked, as is to be expected when you're dealing with a writer as talented with atmospheric world building and complex, nuanced characters. As I'm wont to do, I rushed into her other books, Faithful Place, Broken Harbor, and eventually The Likeness. The Secret Place I didn't have until January 2015, and then after that it was The Trespasser, and finally The Witch Elm as they came out. In my early rush to consume everything she'd written, I found myself a little disappointed with Broken Harbor— the 4th in the Dublin Murder Squad series. Admittedly, having read it so long ago, and so quickly, there's a lot of the story that I no longer even remember. Our main crime happens in a small real estate development a ways outside of Dublin, which has been hit hard by the recession of 2008. It's half built and abandoned, except for those

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