Since May, which was the last time I posted a book review round-up, I’ve read (or started to read and gave up on — more on that below) almost thirty books. THIRTY. The experience of reading approximately six books a month for the past five months has had some sharp peaks and deep valleys, as you might imagine. Some of the books I read were fantastic, wonderful, absorbing, un-put-downable! Others, however, were real stinkers. Weirdly, it’s the stinkers, rather than the masterpieces, that are sticking with me as I sit down to write this, perhaps because it seems like there were just so many of them, and they were all so disappointing/maddening.
Given the quantity of books I’ve consumed over the past five months, I’ll not be writing reviews of each one. Instead, I’ve divided the books into four rough (and necessarily reductive) categories: Great Reads, Good Reads, Meh Reads, and Bad Reads. Instead of individual book reviews, I will let the categories do the talking. If you’d like any more color on any of these books, drop me a note or a comment here and I’ll tell you what I think.
Now, a brief explanation of my categories:
A Great Read, in my estimation, must possess excellent writing as well as a gripping plot (if fiction) and/or unique perspective/angle on its subject (if non-fiction). The experience of reading a Great Read is one of absorption. You look forward to reading the book, and while you’re reading it, you’re lost in its world. You want to tell people about it. You want others to read it so that you can share the experience of it with someone else. I will vouch for all of the books in my Great Reads category. They are, like I say, great.
Standards are slightly lower for Good Reads. A Good Read must be thoroughly enjoyable, with solid writing and/or a lively enough plot/story to make up for just pretty good writing. A Good Read is a book that you look forward to picking up, but won’t necessarily tell anyone about at a dinner party.
A Meh Read is just okay, either because the plot is sluggish, or the writing is not up to snuff, or both. A Meh Read, however, is not bad enough for you to actually stop reading. Whatever failures of writing or plotting or research they may contain, Meh Reads are not terrible or a waste of time, necessarily. They’re just okay. They’re the reading equivalent of a shrug. They’re meh.
Bad Reads, of course, are actively awful. Most of the books on the Bad Reads list landed there because the writing was so piss poor that I wanted to toss the book into a bonfire and dance around it while muttering dark incantations. As a writer who would gladly saw off an appendage — any appendage! You name it, I’ll saw it! — to have a novel published, it irks me, to put it lightly, that so many books with stupid, crappily constructed plots and lazy, hackneyed writing are getting published and purchased. And from a reader’s perspective, it’s endlessly frustrating that these horrid books are marketed to the unsuspecting public with bait like, “If you liked Gone Girl, you’ll love [Shitty Novel That Sucks]!” Here’s the thing: we all liked Gone Girl because it was fast-paced and twisty, with smart observations about male-female relationships, and Gillian Flynn can actually write. Yet somehow, any piece of dross that fancies itself a “psychological thriller” gets compared to Gone Girl, and we, the reading public, keep falling for it. Or, at least, I do, and I consider myself a somewhat discerning reader (although perhaps I shouldn’t give myself so much credit). Three out of the four books on my Bad Reads list are “psychological thrillers” that I was dumb enough to pay good money for. I only managed to get all the way through one of them (The Good Neighbor, which contained shockingly bad writing and enough loose plot threads to knit a winter sweater); the other three I gave up on in order to preserve my own sanity.
Great Reads
Among The Ten Thousand Things, by Julia Pierpont
Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget, by Sarah Hepola
A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara
My Documents, by Alejandro Zambra
Modern Romance, by Aziz Ansari
This Is Not a Love Story, by Judy Brown
Good Reads
Lost at Sea, by Jon Ronson
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., by Adelle Waldman
Sisterland, by Curtis Sittenfeld
The Splendid Things We Planned, by Blake Bailey
Hyacinth Girls, by Lauren Frankel
Eileen, by Ottessa Moshfegh
Pretty Is, by Maggie Mitchell
Drink, by Ann Dowsett Johnston
The Lifeboat, by Charlotte Rogan
Meh Reads
The Golem and the Jinni, by Helene Wecker
Luckiest Girl Alive, by Jessica Knoll
The Ice Twins, by S.K. Tremayne
Visiting Hours: A Memoir of Friendship and Murder, by Amy Butcher
In the Unlikely Event, by Judy Blume
How Should a Person Be?, by Sheila Heti
Days of Awe, by Lauren Fox
A Good Killing, by Allison Leotta
In a Dark, Dark Wood, by Ruth Ware
Bad Reads
The Good Girl, by Mary Kubica
Remember Mia, by Alexandra Burt
The Good Neighbor, by A.J. Banner
The Martian, by Andy Weir
