Book Blog: May 2023
Wow, May brought sunshine and a return to reading on our deck again, oftentimes with Miss Astrix on my lap or trying to sneak down the stairs when she thinks I’m not watching (I am). I’m also counting down to my next trip to Powell’s, my favorite bookstore in the whole world. In the meantime, here are the best of the 12 books I read this month.
Fiction
By the Pricking of My Thumbs (Agatha Christie): In the fourth installment of The Tommy and Tuppence mysteries, the crime-fighting duo visit Tommy’s ailing aunt and start to hear challenging stories from the batty old ladies at the retirement home. Then Aunt Ada dies — and her housemates disappear or die too. As always, Tuppence can’t leave it alone, and decides to investigate to see what has happened and to make sure this old lady is safe. It goes downhill from there.
The House in the Cerulean Sea (TJ Klune): I thought this book *had* to be overrated, but it was an incredibly charming story about embracing your differences and letting others be themselves. Linus is charged with doing a report on an isolated orphanage and the six magical children that live there to make sure they are both safe and the nearby village is safe from them. Analytical and not at all in touch with his emotions, Linus tries to approach this from an unbiased perspective — but obviously this doesn’t go to plan. What a fantastic and lovely book.
One True Loves (Taylor Jenkins Reid): I *could not* put this book down and I was sneaking in any chance I could get to read some pages. Jenkins Reid really tugs at the heartstrings as she shares the story of Emma, a woman whose husband disappears just short of their first wedding anniversary. Despite waiting for his return, Emma finally moves on, and moves home and reconnects with a high school friend. She and Sam fall in love, and the book opens with Emma receiving a call from her presumed-dead husband, Jesse. Yep, he’s alive. This book really sang for me because the characters were multi-faceted and interesting, and yeah, it was a great love story with a more complex sort of love. I’m really starting to love TJR’s books!
Non-Fiction
My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me (Jason B. Rosenthal): His wife wrote a NY Times column about him less than two weeks before her death from cancer, encouraging his future wife, wherever she was, that her husband was a wonderful guy. Rosenthal’s book shares a short version of his love story with his wife, her cancer diagnosis and death, and how he adapted and adjusted afterwards. Rosenthal’s writing is honest and open, if a little unpolished, and I thought it was nice how he moved through different experiences and didn’t stay on one for two long. Mad props to him and his family and friends for sharing their story and encouraging discussions about end-of-life care, death, and grief.
Flying Blind: The 737 Max Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing (Peter Robison): In the early 2010s I had a chance to get a VIP floor tour of Boeing’s Everett, WA plant by someone from the company in a job parallel to my own. When we returned the favor and invited a small group of folks to our office, they said, “WELL, if you make mistakes, a website crashes. If we make mistakes, planes crash.” It was such a snippy, arrogant remark that I thought was just an anomaly.
Welp, this book put all of that to shame as Robison digs into the culture at Boeing that evolved over time to favor profits and expediency over safety, leading to two preventable crashes of the new 737 Max in 2018 and 2019. That this was a known issue and was buried so that pilots could “train” for the new model on an iPad to save time is disgusting. The book does get a little technical at times, but I found it compelling and well-written.
One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway (Asne Seierstad): This heartbreaking book details two terrorist attacks perpetuated by a Norwegian man in Norway in 2011 — the bombing of the prime minister’s office and the murder of youth at a political camp on a nearby island. The book, translated from the Norwegian, reads a bit stilted at times (and a little long), but it is a definitive account that looks to uncover the motivations of the killer (currently serving 21+ years in prison) as well as the stories of the victims and survivors. There were moments, especially the detailed accounts of the attacks, when I had to set down the book to cry.
Leaving you with some summer style (below) thanks to a project to scan all of our family photos. You’re welcome.
XO, Sarah
