Poems
1. Snow on the Desert by Agha Shahid Ali
2. “Jerry wants to argue about the existentialists again” by Leslie Sainz
3. Document by Maggie Smith
4. on paper by Jacqueline Woodson
5. An Old Story by Tracy K. Smith
6. I Imagine the Gods by Jack Gilbert
7. Hinotama [“The ball of light rose piteously”] by Brandon Shimoda
8. 218 by Ricardo Reis translated by Margaret Jull Costa & Patricio Ferrari
9. The Laws of Motion by Nikki Giovanni
10. El Olvido by Judith Ortiz Cofer
11. The More Loving One by W. H. Auden
Prose
1. A House Without Windows by Nadia Hashimi
2. The Sea Cloak and other stories by Nayrouz Qarmout translated by Perween Richards
3. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
4. Long Shot by Kennedy Ryan
Wow, I feel like this past month has been the busiest time in a long time for me. I blinked and we are already halfway through March. Sorry for the delay, but I am ready to talk about all my reading for February.
Let’s start with a new phenomenon for me: a DNF review of a book. In my head, I will always get around to finishing a book. It may take a while, but I feel like I want to give books their chance. I was scrolling tiktok looking for book recommendations and trying to see which ones were available that day, on audiobook, on Libby. I am really cruising with audiobooks this year thanks to my new job. We can listen to music or books, or podcasts, whatever, all day. It’s great. I saw a book rec for a slow burn sports romance. Clearly I grabbed it right away and started it without questioning it. The opening scene hooked me. The characters were interesting and had palpable chemistry, it was starting with the eve of the NCAA men’s basketball final. Star of one team, gf of star of the other team. The writing was wonderful. Yes please. However, I didn’t make it past thirty, maybe it was forty, percent. I was already sus of some character choices, but decided to let them slide for what I thought was a great concept and beautiful prose. I googled what happens in the chapter right after I stopped, to see if the issue I was having would go away, but it would not. I looked more into the plot and found that it was the actual theme of the entire book. Domestic violence was hard to read about. But what got me to finally stop was how strange it was to read her pov chapters where she is literally fighting for her life, and then it would flip to him being like damn I wish she was with me and pining for her. The abuse is throughout the book, and the main characters do eventually get together, but at what cost. Not my style of book, so I decided to return it to the library. I do think if this plot interests you, you would like the book because it was very well written.
Okay, onto the three books I did finish in February. First up, A House Without Windows was set in Afghanistan and my first book for the Reads the World Challenge. This is a beautifully told story that jumps around from different characters and time periods to finally tell you how our main character, Zeba, was found holding her husband dead in her arms. We get to know Zeba and her family’s story, we get to know the women in Chil Mahtab, we get to know Yusuf, her lawyer, and slowly the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. I learned a lot about what it’s like to be a modern woman and to have grown up a woman in an ever changing Afghanistan.
The Sea Cloak and other stories was my next book in the Genre Challenge. A short story collection in translation from Arabic, Qarmout gives us fourteen different stories that all piece together what it’s like to be a woman in Palestine today. From refugee perspectives to life in the rubble to different generations and predictions on the future, we get insights into a place often misunderstood or misrepresented. Overall some stories stood out to me more than others and the writing varied, but perhaps that was due to the translation. It was a quick and impactful read.
The final book of the month was actually a book from my TBR list. Yep, clap your hands, I have actually been reading books from my TBR instead of just piling and piling books on there only to read random new ones instead. I still do that at an alarmingly disproportional rate, but hey, I’ve knocked off a few in the past few weeks! We Have Always Lived in the Castle was a fast, spooky read. I think it would be great for the fall or winter, but unfortunately we did not have winter this year in Denver. This story is about a family of shut-ins that hide away in the castle after a mysterious poisoning incident that killed some family members. Mental illness, ostracism, family dynamics, and dark neurosis as well as dark humor are explored in this novel. I just found out this author is the same author who wrote the short story we all read in middle school, “The Lottery.” She also wrote the book, The Haunting of Hill House, which I believe inspired that Netflix show. Needless to say she feels like a legend to me.
I’ll be talking to y’all very soon. Ciao, Word!
Book Goal Tracker: 8/40
Genre Challenge Tracker: 2/10
Reads the World Tracker: 1/10
Madeline Daily 