2025: July 5: Second Quarter Reading List

Second Quarter Reading Lists are much more fun than second quarter taxes. And paying taxes is getting more and more depressing, looking at what my money is now going to be spent on. So I'm taking us into a world of fiction for a few escapist moments.

Escapist? Pretty darn brutal, actually. 

Suzanne Collins, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2020) and Sunrise on the Reaping (2025).  Ella loaned me these, and now we have both read every Suzanne Collins, starting way back with her middle-years Gregor series (which I thought was excellent).  Ella thought these latest books, both prequels to the Hunger Games series, were written as gifts to fans (Ella had some good term for that which I've forgotten), and I think she's right. They felt more formulaic than anything else Collins has written, and Sunrise on the Reaping in particular was bleak as all heck. I think the 2020s finally caught up to her. 

 

Not in love with this cover design.

Zadie Smith, The Fraud, (2023). Surprisingly, this is the first Zadie Smith novel I've read. It was like two different books that never entirely gelled, and probably weren't supposed to. For a while I wasn't sure what I thought of it, and then I realized that I kept referencing it in conversations. So, fraud, I guess, it's relevant and sticks with you. Definitely worth reading and now I'm putting more Zadie Smith into the pipeline. 

Another slim vol. 

Samantha Harvey, Orbital (2023, and a Booker Prize winner). I read this shortly after another book with minimal plot and wondered if there was some sort of minor trend going on. Unlike that other book, this one holds together well, and it is just beautiful. It's more of an essay on humanity than it is a novel, but it still works as fiction. And it has an intriguing map that I poured over and flipped back to at nearly every chapter.

Such a pretty cover, hiding so much darkness.

Vajra Chandrasekera, The Saint of Bright Doors, (2023). Do not be tricked by the cover art or the title into thinking this will be some quaint adorable story. It is deep and dark and weird and went on long digressions through landscapes both barren and lush. I loved nearly all of it, almost up to the ending, which I found unsatisfying, but I don't know how one resolves a story like this anyway.

That cliff on the cover definitely represents something. 

Miranda July, All Fours, (2024). Miranda July is not like other people. We need more Miranda Julys in the world, if only to remind us that we're not generally honest about who we are or what we desire. She doesn't make it easy to be in her world, though. A friend strongly recommended this, and at first I resisted because the main character is remarkably unsympathetic and remains so through most of the book. Also there is a great deal of explicit and weird sex, so be warned. But there is also a payoff, and she writes about middle-aged women in a way that rides right past any finding-your-self-in-a-middle-aged-crisis genre tropes.

Ah, Le Guin, my favorite. Not my favorite Le Guin, however.

Ursula K. Le Guin, Lavinia, (2008). I was excited when I found this - Le Guin does a retelling of a female character from classic antiquity (in this case, the Aeneid), before it becomes a highly marketable publishing trend. It began with a very promising conceit, the relationship between Lavinia and the poet Virgil, who wrote about her centuries after she lived, but that relationship and its promise got lost in battles between the newly arrived Trojans and the long settled Latins, and I was disappointed overall.

Not sure who this Jenna person is we're supposed to be reading with, and I guess I could look it up, but do I really want to know? Oh dear, it's Jenna Bush.

Laila Lalami, The Dream Hotel, (2025), Michael brought this home from the new books section of the library for some reason then promptly discarded it after two pages. I picked it up, because it said Pulitzer Prize Finalist on the cover, and thank good she wasn't nominated for this book, because I would have lost what remaining faith I have in the prize industry. It over explains things to us, and her editor forgot to remind her to write the second half of the book. Again, is plot becoming passe in certain literary circles?