Recent Reads
The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters
I picked up several of Waters’s books during the time that I worked at Penguin, and I randomly chose The Little Stranger as my introduction to her work. I expected this book, described as a “gothic page-turner,” to be suspenseful or as engrossing as Rebecca, but unfortunately it was neither. The book has all the elements of a winner: a crumbling grand old mansion, family secrets, romance, an alleged ghost, and plenty of tragedy, but it was at times a painfully slow read.
Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything, by Lydia Kang, MD and Nate Pedersen
On the surface, this beautifully-designed book was made for me: with chapters on lobotomies, corpse medicines and poisons, I should have loved it. But I quickly realized that I had already read entire books on most of the subjects covered here, so I found very little new-to-me information. If you’re just dipping your toe into the world of strange medicine and creepy cures, this book may be perfect for you. If you’ve already read everything there is to read about leeches and arsenic, you can skim or skip this one altogether.
The Witch Elm: A Novel, by Tana French
Toby, recovering from a home invasion, goes to stay with his uncle in a big, old family home. When a skull is discovered in the trunk of a tree, things get complicated. I have a love/hate relationship with crime thrillers—I hate not knowing what’s going on, but they feel like brain candy to me in between some of the heavier non-fiction books I read. Unfortunately, I never really connected with any of the characters in this book and the ending felt rushed. The resolution wasn’t satisfying and ultimately I was just sort of mad I invested so much time into this story with so little payoff.
The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, by Jane Wagner
Plays are meant to be performed, and I would be pay anything to go back in time and see Lily Tomlin on stage in a production of Jane Wagner’s extraordinary The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (either during its original 1980s run or the early 2000s revival). I can’t do that, of course, but I did finally see the film version, which was wonderful. Tomlin’s ability to portray a dozen characters without the aid of costumes or props is legendary—but while she is the more visible half of the Tomlin-Wagner partnership (personally and professionally), Wagner’s words are what make The Search so memorable. This infinitely quotable work is nothing less than life-changing, and I find myself thinking about it almost daily since I first read (and immediately re-read) it a few months ago.
Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster, by Svetlana Alexievich
I reserved this book long before the spike in Chernobyl interest due to HBO’s miniseries (which is excellent), and if you’re interested in first-hand accounts of the disaster this Nobel Prize-winning book is a great place to start. The basic facts of Chernobyl are widely known, but there’s no substitute for hearing the stories of people who were actually there. More than 30 years after the disaster, the long-term effects of radiation are still being debated but there’s no doubt that thousands of people’s lives were never the same—in often brutal and heartbreaking ways.
