My March and April in reading

I’m sensing a trend in my reading this year: several books one month, very few the next. We’ll see if the pattern holds up.

Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

Of all the Baldwin books I’ve read, this one was my least favorite. Which is saying something, because it was still really good. It’s the story of a young boy’s relationship with his minister stepfather and his exhausted mother, and the boy’s relationship with God and the Pentecostal church, with some backstory to explain how they all got that way. The language was beautiful, but I just didn’t find the plot as compelling as some of Baldwin’s other work.

Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America by Talia Lavin (narrated by the author)

This book is incredibly well researched. It is also terrifying and depressing—especially during a second Trump presidency. From Christian militias to rampant child abuse, Lavin explores the swift rise of Christian theocracy in America. An important read for understanding the current state of our nation, but also a troubling read. I wish I’d taken more breaks while listening to the audiobook—but I do recommend it.

LaserWriter II by Tamara Shopsin

Yes! You, too, can become wildly invested in a coming-of-age novel about late 1990s Mac repairs! The book tells the story of Claire, a 19-year-old who gets a job fixing Apple printers at a quirky, independent NYC repair shop, back when indie repair shops were a thing and planned obsolescence wasn’t as much of a thing. It’s absolutely charming.

The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica (translated from the Spanish by Sarah Moses)

I was looking forward to Bazterrica’s latest novel for two reasons: I loved her first book, Tender is the Flesh, and I love books about nuns. As it turns out, this is and isn’t a book about nuns, and I preferred Tender is the Flesh—but I still enjoyed this! The Unworthy is horror novel about a cult tucked within a post-apocalyptic novel. Our narrator has escaped the climate crisis-ravaged world and joined the Sacred Sisterhood, where she hopes (or doesn’t hope, as many crossed-out passages would suggest) to ascend to join the Enlightened one day. Her hopes change once a mysterious new girl joins the Sisterhood. The novel is meant to be a found document—the narrator writes with her blood and other impromptu inks on scraps of paper whenever she has the time. The book has excellent spooky vibes, but I could have used a bit more plot. Usually I wish books were shorter, but this one definitely needed to be longer.

Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera

Chandrasekera’s novel The Saint of Bright Doors was one of my favorites last year, so I was excited to dig into Rakesfall—but I didn’t realize what I was getting into! This is not a complaint. I’ve never read a novel quite like Rakesfall. The first word that jumps to mind is “multigenerational,” or maybe “reincarnation,” but the plot is actually neither of those things, just something adjacent to them. The main characters are Annelid and Leveret, who we first meet as kids in war-torn Sri Lanka. Real Sri Lanka? Imagined Sri Lanka? Both? Hard to tell. So then Leveret is killed by a demon, or isn’t—I don't really consider that a spoiler—and thus starts a journey through different lifetimes and generations and societies, as we follow Annelid and Leveret as different people and creatures, but sort of the same people. This novel made my brain do jumping jacks, and I enjoyed the mental exercise.

Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

I’ve been following Tingle online for years, but this is the first book of his I’ve ever read! (I’ll have to read a few classic Tinglers someday.) Bury Your Gays is a very fun horror novel wherein the obnoxious “bury your gays” trope is used both to terrify and torture the protagonists, and to defeat the baddies. Misha is a successful Hollywood writer, furious that the studio’s “algorithm” insists he kill off the gay characters in his successful TV show for maximum profits. When he refuses, a collection of the most ominous and violent characters he’s written come to convince him otherwise. It was a blast.

The American Way of Death Revisited by Jessica Mitford

I’ve been meaning to read this classic indictment of the funeral industry for a while now. First published in 1963 and later updated in the 1990s, Mitford’s reporting on the unethical (if not illegal) tactics of funeral directors and cemetery operators took the industry by storm. They really hated her for writing it at the time. I knew it would be fascinating, but I didn’t know it would be so funny. Mitford is a master of that wry midcentury style. Even if you’re not as into death research as I am, you’ll probably like this book.

Bride of the Tornado by James Kennedy

Yes to everything about this novel. It’s like if Twin Peaks took place in the prairies of the Midwest and the protagonist was an awkward teen girl instead of a chipper FBI agent. It has cults. It has extreme weather. It has small town secrets. It has teenage misfits. It has cats. It has first love. It has a tornado killer. What more could you want?