My September and October in reading

Genuinely the worst at book blogging this year. Figured I ought to catch up, now that it’s December. Ugh.

People with No Charisma by Jente Posthuma (translated from the Dutch by Sarah Timmer Harvey)

Picked this one up at a cute little bookshop in Utrecht when I ran out of reading material during my trip to the Netherlands this summer. It turned out to be right up my alley: the nonlinear coming-of-age story of an anxious young woman whose overbearing ex-actress mother is dying/has died of cancer. The humor is blunt, the sadness is gentle. And I especially appreciated that the “coming of age” part wasn’t limited to young adulthood. Some of us are coming of age well into middle age, okay?

The Cornbread Mafia: A Homegrown Syndicate’s Code of Silence and the Biggest Marijuana Bust in American History by James Higdon (narrated by Paul Boehmer)

Since I only moved to Kentucky a few years ago, I try to pick up some of state’s history every once in a while. I volunteer in Marion County sometimes, and people still talk about the Cornbread Mafia and their epic marijuana growing operation all the time. “My cousin was one of those Boones,” that sort of thing. The book is a little meandering, but overall entertaining and informative. If you enjoy true crime that lets you root for the criminals, this one’s a must-read.

Hard Copy by Fien Veldman (translated from the Dutch by Hester Velmans)

I picked this one up at a cute little bookshop in Haarlem when I ran out of of reading material ONCE AGAIN during my trip to the Netherlands this summer. It’s about a lonely young woman who works as a customer service employee and forms an indelible emotional bond with the office printer. I love office satires. I love inanimate objects as characters. This is a perfect combo of the two. So funny! And weirdly moving!

The Cover Girl by Amy Rossi

Full disclosure: I’ve known Amy for years, and I actually got to read an early draft of this novel. But I was so excited to finally devour it in its finished form! If you know me, then you know I’m a bit obsessed with the 1970s, despite the decade’s many flaws. Amy’s novel is about a young model, Birdie, who becomes a “baby groupie” and is legally adopted by her much older rock ‘n’ roll frontman paramour so he can take her on the road and keep her in his bed. (This is a thing that legitimately happened to teenage groupies in the 70s!) But we first encounter Birdie when she’s much older, long past her modeling prime and trying to come to terms with what happened to her. It’s a painful story, but also a compelling one. Go grab a copy!

A Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enriquez (translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell)

I’ve loved everything I’ve read by Mariana Enriquez, and somehow she topped herself with this collection of short stories. So strange. So frightening. Honestly hard to pick a favorite story, but I really liked the one loosely based on the real-life incident of a tourist’s mysterious death in a water tower atop a Los Angeles hotel. I’ve heard about Elisa Lam’s watery demise many times, but it was fascinating to see how Enriquez used it to build an entirely different tale.

Kill Your Darling by Clay McLeod Chapman

This was the first title I’ve ever read by Clay McLeod Chapman, and despite his status as a master or horror, it’s one of the saddest books I’ve read all year. Years after their teenage son’s murder, Glenn Partridge and his wife have never recovered. When his wife signs him up for a writing workshop at the local library, Glenn begrudgingly takes the opportunity to share his son’s tragic story. But how well did he really know his son? Yes, this was scary—but mostly it just bummed me out! Still worth reading, though.

Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor (translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes)

Now THIS is a novel. What a book! The story begins when a group of young children in a small Mexican village find the local witch dead—that’s the eye of the story’s hurricane. From there we roil from character to character, swirling and storming around the murdered witch, until the entire village is implicated in her death. Melchor’s writing is poetic, but brutal—and yet I never wanted to stop reading.

Nefando by Mónica Ojeda (translated from the Spanish by Sarah Booker)

A few years back I read Ojeda’s novel Jawbone and loved it, so I was excited to pick up Nefando. Told in interviews with various characters, this novel recounts the story of a disturbing cult video game and the three odd siblings who inspired and encouraged the creation of the game via their attempts to cope with their childhood abuse. This one was a little harder to follow than Jawbone, and somehow managed to be more upsetting than Jawbone as well, which is impressive! But I enjoyed the challenge, and I look forward to reading more of Ojeda’s work in the future.

Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk (translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary)

I love it when vampire novels are more than just vampire novels, and Marina Yuszczuk came through for me with Thirst. Part of the book takes place in the early days of Buenos Aires, where a vampire has recently fled to escape the perils of her European homeland. Part of the book takes place in modern day Buenos Aires, where a woman is watching her mother slowly die of a terminal disease. When the two characters encounter each other in a scenic graveyard, their lives irrevocably change. Really liked this one!

The Houseguest & Other Stories by Amparo Dávila (translated from the Spanish by Audrey Harris and Matthew Gleeson)

What if Edgar Allan Poe were a Mexican woman writing in the mid-twentieth century? You might get Amparo Dávila and her stories! These aren’t straightforwardly horror stories; they’re more like slice of life stories where weirdness seeps in around the edges. And many of her stories are about women and women’s fears—pregnancy and pregnancy loss, being approached by strange men and walking the fine line between paranoia and safety. It’s a shame this is the only collection we have of hers in English. I’d read more!