Review: If Beale Street Could Talk

If Beale Street Could Talk, James Baldwin; narrated by Bahni Turpin (Blackstone Audio 2016, orig. 1974)

First line: “I look at myself in the mirror. I know that I was christened Clementine, and so it would make sense if people called me Clem, or even, come to think of it, Clementine, since that’s my name: but they don’t. People call me Tish.”

This audiobook was another I came across when searching Libby for books narrated by my favorite narrator Bahni Turpin. I can reliably know when choosing a Bahni-narrated book that I will at least enjoy my listening experience, even if I have some problems with the book itself. But friends, I didn’t have any problems with this one.

If Beale Street Could Talk tells the love story of Fonny and Tish, best friends since they were little kids, taking baths together and goofing around. Now, at 22 and 19, they are kids no longer, as Fonny is in prison for a violent crime he didn’t commit and Tish is pregnant with his child. As Tish’s stomach grows and Fonny’s trial approaches, we slip back into the past, watching their relationship develop, watching as they decide to get married, struggle to find a loft that will rent to a young Black couple, hear of the horrors of prison life from a dear friend. The writing is so intricate, so delicate, that the reader could easily get lost in its prose, even though it’s less than 200 pages. Baldwin’s pacing is incredible, as he seamlessly switches between perspectives and timelines. I typically take issue with a male author writing a female narrator, but I didn’t once question it here, perhaps because Bahni so vividly brought Tish to life for me. Baldwin’s storytelling, through Turpin’s voicing, was simply gorgeous. I cannot believe that this book was written almost 50 years ago. It, somewhat devastatingly, feels like it could have been written today.

After finishing, I watched the 2018 Barry Jenkins film adaptation and thought he did a lovely job portraying Tish and Fonny and their families. Regina King as Tish’s mom is particularly well done. He captures the quietness and anguish of this story beautifully. Baldwin’s novel leaves the ending wide open, and if that is troubling to some readers, Jenkins provides somewhat more closure in his version.

I am so glad to have finally read something by James Baldwin and will definitely plan to read more.

Review: The Bennet Women

The Bennet Women, by Eden Appiah-Kubi (Montlake 2021)

First line: “‘What the fresh hell is this?’ EJ exclaimed, entering the common room through wisps of white-gray smoke.”

This book crossed my path as an Amazon First Reads choice last month, and I downloaded it on a whim, knowing only that it was a diverse modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice. And honestly, that’s all you really need to know going in: if you’re in to classic retellings or adaptations, if you gravitate towards #ownvoices books, if you like a diverse set of characters in terms of race, gender identity, and sexuality, I have a good feeling that you will enjoy this book as much as I did.

Set on an elite private college campus in New England, the Bennet sisters are only sisters in the sense of “sisterhood”, as they are residents of the Bennet House dorm, led by Black senior resident advisor EJ (the first letter of which, of course, stands for Elizabeth). The publisher’s description frames this as a friendship novel with three main characters, including EJ, Tessa (her Filipina friend who I think is supposed to mirror Lizzy’s friend Charlotte), and Jamie (EJ’s best friend who is a transgender woman, this novel’s Jane character). In some ways, that’s true, as the three women weekly meet for waffles and catching up, and some chapters are framed from these other character’s points of view, but most significantly this is the story of EJ and Will, the best friend of Jamie’s new beau. As any Austen fan will know, EJ and Will get off to a rocky start and proceed through a series of miscommunications and misunderstandings of the other before finally falling helplessly in love.

I loved the diversity in this novel for the fact that it featured many relevant aspects of those parts of those characters’ identities without that being the point of the novel. Jamie is transgender, which is a huge factor in her story obviously, but her transition happened before the novel begins and it doesn’t dominate her entire plot line. It’s a part of who she is. Similarly, Will Pak’s story is shaped by the fact that he is an Asian American actor who doesn’t want to be pigeon-holed into stereotypical roles, and yet that’s only an aspect of his character. EJ is a Black woman, but she is also an engineer, a former ballet dancer, an RA, a best friend, a mentor, a sister, a daughter. The diversity included felt seamless; important but not the whole story.

I also enjoyed tracing the elements of the original source material into Appiah-Kubi’s modern interpretation, and appreciated where she made different choices from her predecessor and how she cleverly revamped it for the 21st century. EJ felt very much in the same spirit of Elizabeth Bennet but was also entirely her own.

This one was fun, I stayed up way to late a couple nights reading it.

Review: Four Hundred Souls

Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019, edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain (Random House Audio 2021)

First line: “In August 1619, when the twenty “Negroes” stepped off the ship White Lion and saw the British faces, they didn’t know.”

Published the first Tuesday of 2021’s Black History Month, Kendi and Blain’s massive collaboration is one of a kind. The pair enlisted 90 Black writers and scholars to write short essays, personal narratives, and poems (all in just 3 to 5 pages) to tackle a 5 year stretch of time covering the 400 year history of African Americans. (The audiobook, which is how I consumed this, was narrated by as many voices, though most times different voices than the author that wrote the piece, drawing on some of the very best Black narrators and actors in the business.) Many of the writers names were familiar to me, such as Kiese Laymon, Mahogany L. Browne, Isabel Wilkerson, Angela Davis. Many more were not. Many of the topics they covered were familiar to me, such as the Civil War and the Harlem Renaissance. Many more were not. And that, I think, is what is so genius and so novel about this project: The same amount of space is given to the subjects and years which are taught in school curriculum (3-5 pages) as those subjects and years that are skipped right over, and yet, are real and critical parts of the history of this country. We hear about little-known figures that shaped futures and forgotten events that were covered up. There was so much that was new to me in this book. The variety of writing styles and subject matters kept the listening fresh and interesting throughout.

Despite the truly excellent audio production, I think I suffered from not having this book in my hands, as I’m a visual learner and my focus isn’t always there when listening to audio. I also, know, however, that if I waited to read this book in print, I might not have gotten to it anytime soon, and honestly, might have gotten stuck in its length. This book has so much to offer, and even though I did listen to its entirety, I feel like I only dipped my toes in. I think this would be an incredible text for a class to dissect, and could truly even be the foundation text of an entire course, as there is so much to dig into.

Review: Interior Chinatown

Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu; narrated by Joel de la Fuente (Random House Audio 2020)

First line: “Ever since you were a boy, you’ve dreamt of being Kung Fu Guy.”

This book is unlike any other I’ve read. In addition to being written in second person, it’s also primarily formatted as a television show script, and uses that format to fully immerse the reader in the strange reality centered in this story. Interior Chinatown is about Willis Wu, who has dreamed of being the ultimate role in Asian American acting: Kung Fu Guy. He’s grown up watching his parents fulfill various roles, such as Asiatic Seductress, Beautiful Maiden Number One, Wizened Chinaman, and Egg Roll Cook, but now are just Old Asian Woman and Old Asian Man. Willis is stuck at Generic Asian Man, as he is regularly featured in the cop procedural show, Black and White. And he’s willing to keep plugging along in that role, waiting for his big break, even as he battles countless microaggressions and full blown racism on a daily basis.

What is so unique about this book is also what made it a challenging read for me — although one that I definitely want to read again (a rarity for me) in the print format. Throughout the novel, I was never quite sure what was reality and what was the show. I thought it was just because I listened to the audio (that has SUPERB narration by Joel de la Fuente, by the way), but I am pretty sure Yu made it unclear on purpose. Reality blends into the fiction so seamlessly that the reader is left questioning who is the real Willis, and who is the Willis that mainstream America wants him to be. There’s a scene near the end when Older Brother is presenting an argument that is so beautifully orchestrated that I listened to it several times, and then just downloaded the eBook so I could read through it as well, and it does some explaining of this strange in-between-ness. I wanted to include just a little bit of it here:

Somehow, in two hundred years, every wave, every new boatload of Asians, still as fresh, as alien to this land as the first. This is it. The root of it all. The real history of yellow people in America. Two hundred years of being perpetual foreigners. … Give them what they feel is right, is safe. Make it fit their ideas of what is out there. Don’t threaten them. Chinatown and indeed being Chinese is and always has been, from the very beginning, a construction, a performance of features, gestures, exoticism. An invention, a reinvention, a stylization.

It’s no wonder to me that this book won the National Book Award for last year, as it’s got so much to say in such a small space, and uses every inch of that space to make something profound. Like I said above, I do plan on re-reading this one in print, because I know I need another pass at it to catch more of what he’s offering.

Review: When They Call You a Terrorist

When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir, by Patrisse Kahn-Cullors and asha bandele (Macmillan Audio 2018)

“Days after the elections of 2016, asha sent me a link to a talk by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.”

In this short, powerful memoir, narrated by the author, Patrisse Kahn-Cullors gives us not only the story of the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement, but also how she evolved to be one of the organization’s founding members. And while I expected (from the subtitle) for this to be mostly about BLM, I was surprised at how much it was indeed about her personal history instead. We don’t even get to BLM until chapter 11 (out of 16). Instead, we learn about Patrisse’s family growing up, about her two brothers, one of whom has severe mental illness and was in and out of the prison system, about her father, who she didn’t know until she was a teenager but grew to love and respect fiercely, and her relationships, both queer and straight. While she personally has not had family members killed by white police officers, she intimately felt the impact of each story that felt the headlines, as the men and boys and women victims reminded of her of her brother, her father, her best friend. As someone who was trained in community organizing, she knew she couldn’t keep silent, and Black Lives Matter was born.

I don’t usual make notes when listening to audiobooks, because I have nothing to highlight, but I did find myself placing bookmarks in the narration, so I could go back and re-listen to some of her points. I’ll include a couple of them below.

“It was easy to understand that when race was a blatant factor,” a friend says to me in a political discussion one afternoon. “Jim Crow left no questions or confusion. But now, that race isn’t written into law,” she says, “look for the codes. Look for the coded language everywhere,” she says. “They rewrote the laws, but they didn’t rewrite white supremacy. They kept that shit intact,” she says.

Chapter Seven: All the Bones We Could Find

At the moment Jim Crow’s back was broken, American politicians found myriad other ways, all legislated, all considered legal, to ensure that the terrorism that had always been primary experience of Black people living in the United States continued.

Chapter Thirteen: A Call, a Response

I mentioned in my previous review of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, that reading these two books simultaneously made the struggle of Black Americans particularly poignant for me, as the things Cassie and her family experience in Roll of Thunder in the 1933 are not all that different than the things Patrisse and her family experience in the past 15 years. As they mature, they both realize that they will likely be in constant fear for their brothers’, friends’, father’s lives at the hands of white neighbors, strangers, and legal system.

Every time I read or hear another example or story of the injustices committed against Black people in our country, I feel just astounded and shocked at the blatant unfairness of it. And I realize I’m going to have to keep reading and listening until it’s no longer astounding, because that’s my white privilege showing. I’m grateful that these authors are willing to share their stories with us.

Review: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred D. Taylor (Dial Books 2016, 1976)

First line: “Little Man, would you come on? You keep it up and you’re gonna make us late.”

After hearing that Mildred D. Taylor had published another book in the Logan family saga, I was intrigued. The first time I was introduced to the Logans was when my 4th grade teacher read Roll of Thunder aloud to us and we were all captivated and devastated by the story. I remember feeling very grown up when I almost immediately got the sequel, and marveled at how thick it was and how soft those paperback pages felt. But that was the last I knew of the Logans, and I’m now regretting that I never explored the other five or six books in the collection. Although, I am excited to go back now and see what I’ve been missing.

If there was a ever a book to deserve the Newbery medal, it is this one. It’s one teachers have used in classrooms for decades, and normally that would make me roll my eyes a little. I’m not one for using a Newbery award winner with kids because you think you “should” or for pushing an older title down modern preteen throats because it’s “a classic.” I think there is so much fabulous literature being written for kids today, and I usually advocate for those newer things. HOWEVER, upon a re-read, now as an adult who has worked with those who are the primary audience for this book, I truly understand why so many teachers still use this one, and could definitely see myself pushing another teacher to do the same. It’s. so. good. And completely holds up, almost 45 years later.

Cassie is the second child in a line of three brothers — Stacey (older), Christopher John, and Little Man (younger) — living with her Mama, Papa, and Big Ma in rural 1930s Mississippi. Although most of her Black neighbors are sharecroppers on former plantations, the Logans own 200 acres outright and have 200 more on mortgage, thanks to some good planning and hard work from their ancestors. But making those mortgage payments, plus having enough to live on, is still incredibly hard for them, and often they’re scraping by, adding cardboard to the bottoms of their shoes to block the holes and using one tablespoon of flour in a recipe that calls for two. Cassie’s parents are a model of conviction, and when the white owners of the local store attack a local Black family in a horribly violent way, they decide to lead a boycott by traveling farther to get their supplies, which doesn’t sit well with the largest landowner in the area, Mr. Granger.

I love this book for so many reasons:

• Cassie is a captivating narrator. She is the perfect balance between sass and naivete that allows the reader to learn about the things happening to and around her without condescension while also admiring her tenacity. She’s funny and spunky and brave and vulnerable and scared, and we can all identify with her in some way, which makes learning about the struggles and hardships people like the Logans experienced in the Jim Crow south all the more outraging and devastating.
• Each and every one of Cassie’s brothers: they are such individuals and their personalities are so perfectly crafted. Taylor shows us a group of siblings that love each other so much, yet still suffer the annoyances of dealing with them on a daily basis.
• David and Mary Logan are a beautiful example of marriage and parenting and what it means to live with certain defined values that dictate your every move. Reading this as an adult certainly gave me characters to emulate.
• Taylor doesn’t shy away from the hard stuff. There is so much to be angry about in this book. A lot of young readers might be learning about these truths for the first time through this narrative, and Taylor lays it all out for them. She uses the n-word several times, (for which she got criticism) but it is done so authentically and purposefully. She doesn’t hide the violence experienced by Blacks in the Jim Crow south (although it mostly doesn’t appear “on screen”), because, as she articulates through Papa’s voice, she knows young people deserve to know the truth.

I read this while I’m also simultaneously listening to When They Call You a Terrorist, by Patrisse Khan-Cullors, about the Black Lives Matter movement, and I was struck how easy it is to draw parallels between Cassie’s story and Patrisse’s, despite their narratives being some 75 years apart. I think this has made both stories all the more poignant and upsetting to me. Be on the lookout for my review of that title later this week.

I am so glad I revisited Cassie’s story, and am eagerly awaiting my next visit with the Logans. I’m hoping my mom can scrounge up that deliciously soft paperback of Let the Circle Be Unbroken on my childhood bookshelves. Although, I’d also love to continue the journey with the beautifully illustrated 40th anniversary editions by master painter Kadir Nelson. How gorgeous are those?

Review: Valentine

Valentine, by Elizabeth Wetmore (Harper 2020)

First line: “Sunday morning begins out here in the oil patch, a few minutes before dawn, with a young roughneck stretched out and sleeping hard in his pickup truck.”

In the early morning after 14-year-old Gloria Ramírez is raped and brutally beaten by a guy who picked her up at the Sonic the night before, she makes her way barefoot across the barren, unforgiving desert to a lone white farmhouse. Mary Rose, the very pregnant, soon-to-be mother of two, is who opens the door for her, setting into motion our story.

Each chapter of this novel is told from the perspective of a different woman or girl in and around Odessa, Texas, in 1976, including — in addition to Glory and Mary Rose — curmudgeonly Corrine, a recent widow and former English teacher; Debra Ann, the rough-and-tumble latchkey child who free ranges around the neighborhood; Ginny, Debra Ann’s mother who has driven away from Odessa without a trace; and a whole host of others. A few of them get multiple chapters, but many, only one. These women are so wildly different from each other, yet all centered in this place that is defined by the economics of the land and men that tend to it. Having read Friday Night Lights earlier this year, it was fascinating to get this other representation of Odessa from a female-centered perspective just a decade earlier. There were a lot of similarities: the racism, the class stratification, the bleak, almost suffocating environment.

Despite all these hardships and unrelenting hopelessness of their town, this story is one that is packed full of heart and, at times, true tenderness. It’s a story of how we care for each other, especially when those who are maybe “supposed to” care for us can’t or won’t. You know I love a novel with multiple perspectives, and loved how this one layered upon those perspectives, giving us glimpses of another character’s story that we won’t understand fully till the next chapter or explaining a question from the chapter before. This, along with Wetmore’s truly excellent writing, makes the novel propulsive, demanding that you keep reading, and on more than one occasion, it kept me up way past my bedtime.

I think I would have bought this one for that gorgeous cover alone, but I am so very glad that the story inside lives up to its exterior.

 

Review: Just Mercy

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, by Bryan Stevenson (Spiegel & Grau 2014)

First line: “I wasn’t prepared to meet a condemned man.”

This borrowed copy, underlined and written in by my dad, has been sitting on my shelf for years. I’ll be honest and tell you that when I picked it up last week, it was not because I was in the mood for it, but because I thought I should. Should because all the books stacked on my night table that I was planning to pick up next are written by white people. Should because I haven’t been to a protest or march yet. Should because when I did my diversity audit last week I was angry at myself that I had only read ten BIPOC authors this year, only six of whom are Black. “Should” is what finally had me picking up Just Mercy. The guilt. And maybe that’s not the best reason. (I mean, I know it’s not the best reason.) But no matter the reason, I did. And, oh how glad I am.

Just Mercy is part memoir, part courtroom drama, part social commentary on racism in America, and so much more than any one of those things. Author and lawyer Bryan Stevenson shares how he got his law career started by working an internship with the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee (SPDC) in Atlanta. After a disappointing first year at Harvard Law School, this internship suddenly brought into focus what would become his life’s work and passion: helping those who had been wrongly convicted and bringing them justice.

Much of the book centers around the case of Walter McMillan, who was accused and convicted of killing a young white woman in his hometown of Monroeville, Alabama (yes — that Monroeville… the one most widely known as the home of Harper Lee) and sentenced to death. So many things about McMillan’s case are ludicrous — the jury sentenced him to life in prison, the judge overruled to give death penalty; the only evidence was that of a “witness” who entirely fabricated a story placing McMillan at the scene; dozens of other people were with McMillan at the time of the crime at an event happening at his home. The list goes on. And yet, here he was, sitting on Alabama’s Death Row, with no hope of escape until the Stevenson’s new non-profit, the Equal Justice Initiative, stepped in.

Interspersed with chapters that focus on McMillan are chapters in which Stevenson shares about other cases and issues he’s encountered through the EJI. He describes the hundreds of children ages 13-17 who were sentenced to life in prison for non-homicide crimes; he gives us the stories of people with severe mental illness and history of trauma (over 50 percent of prison and jail inmates in the United States are those with diagnosed mental illness) whose illnesses were not taken into account in sentencing; he tells us about young women who find themselves sentenced to life in prison after suffering through a still birth. Injustice after injustice after injustice. It’s nothing short of infuriating.

Motivated by Stevenson’s work, I realized I had no idea about how capital punishment is being handled in my adopted state of South Carolina. From the SC Department of Corrections, I learned that of the 282 people executed since 1912, 208 of them were Black. For those of you without a calculator in front of you, that’s 74 percent, when the percentage of Black people currently living in South Carolina is 27 percent. I also learned that while there hasn’t been an execution since 2011 (because the DoC cannot get access to the drugs required for lethal injection and prisoners have the right to choose their method of execution), last year the SC Senate voted 26-13 to make electrocution the state mandated option if drugs were not available. Earlier this spring, the House Judiciary Committee voted in favor of the bill (although removed the language adding the firing squad back in as an option), pushing the bill onto the full House. In his book, Stevenson describes the horror of electrocution that makes it clear it is cruel and unusual, and yet here we are in 2020 voting to bring it back.

The death penalty is one of those issues that can always be debated (I see you, sophomore year speech class), but Stevenson brings up a point in his epilogue that more clearly states the Con side than I’ve ever been able to articulate:

“… Walter’s case had taught me that the death penalty is not about whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit.. The real question of capital punishment in this country is, Do we deserve to kill? … Mercy is most empowering, liberating, and transformative when it is directed at the undeserving. The people who haven’t earned it, who haven’t even sought it, are the most meaningful recipients of our compassion.”

Even if this weren’t a human rights injustice, as Stevenson clearly elucidates it is, capital punishment creates killers of us all. And while Stevenson is exhausted by the incredibly draining work he does that sometimes ends with his clients being executed anyway, he continues on because of that promise of mercy. His writing, his work, is an inspiration and certainly makes me want to DO SOMETHING with the mercy and privilege I’ve been given.

Join me, won’t you?

Review: Such a Fun Age

Such a Fun Age, by Kiley Reid (G.P. Putnam’s Sons 2019)

First line: “That night, when Mrs. Chamberlain called, Emira could only piece together the words “… take Briar somewhere…” and “…pay you double.”

Emira did not plan to be a babysitter at 25. But while the rest of her friends are building their careers, she somehow is still working a part-time typing job and babysitting three-year-old Briar Chamberlain three times a week. And yet, watching after Briar feels right, and she doesn’t see any real reason to change her situation.

But then late one night, when the Chamberlains are having a momentary crisis, Emira takes little Briar to the boujee grocery store near their house, where she is accused of kidnapping and is detained by the security guard until Mr. Chamberlain arrives. After all, she’s a young scantily-clad black woman in a very white neighborhood with a three year old white girl and it’s almost midnight. The only reasonable explanation is kidnapping, right? (Ugh.)

Although the rest of the book isn’t really about this moment, it is what starts the ball rolling. From this night she meets Kelley Copeland, who witnessed the scene and filmed it on her behalf, an interaction that eventually leads to them dating. Meanwhile, Alix Chamberlain, Briar’s mother, feels intense white-guilt for what happened to Emira, and makes it her mission to make her relationship with Emira more than just employer-employee. This book is a complex look at racism and class and motherhood, in the same vein as Little Fires Everywhere, and yet reads as quickly as an edge-of-your-seat thriller. I spent THREE nights last week up until midnight or later reading this, which is VERY unlike me (and made me VERY tired the next day). It also reminded me a lot of a modern day version of The Help, but written by an #ownvoices author and flipping the problematic white savior aspect on its head.

I think what I appreciated most about this book is the way Reid paints all of her characters in shades of gray. There is no certain hero or villain (although you are definitely rooting for one over the other at parts). For every time Alix made me cringe, I found another moment where she was incredibly relatable. For every time I wanted to cheer for Emira, I was given a moment that made me want to shout, “Oh, come on!” at her. Although, I take it back. Three year old Briar is perhaps the perfect child character I’ve ever read. There are no shades of gray there. Gosh, I want to hang out with her.

I devoured this book, and I’m still thinking about it days later. Can’t wait to see what Reid does next.

Review: The Holdout

The Holdout, by Graham Moore (Random House 2020)

First line: “Maya Seale removed two photographs from her briefcase.”

From what I can tell of the book world on the internet, people are struggling with their reading, despite all the “extra time” we all now have. (I put that in quotes, because many of us don’t in fact have extra time — all those parents out there, especially ones with full time jobs are feeling the extreme lack of extra time they have in comparison.) The constant stress of COVID-19 related news varies from being a barrage to just a never-ending simmer, and it’s hard to focus on words on a page. Bookworms everywhere are having to redefine their “normal” reading practices to help us get to that place we love where we get swept away in a story. Sometimes that means differing formats — audiobooks, graphic novels — and sometimes that means different genres than we normally pick. Enter The Holdout.

Once I started picking up more adult books again, I’ve generally centered on literary fiction — contemporary or historical — and non-fiction. But listen, those can be tough in times like these, which is why I chose to finally pick up my very first Book of the Month choice, The Holdout.

A courtroom drama/mystery, The Holdout flips back and forth between two timelines — one in 2009 when 25 year old Bobby Nock is on trial for the murder of 15 year old Jessica Silver — and 2019, when a docuseries is being made about the jurors who acquitted Bobby a decade ago, and how what seemed to be a open and shut case for the prosecution went wildly awry. Although we get perspectives from each of the jurors, the main focus is on Maya Seale, the one holdout on the guilty verdict, who eventually turned all 11 jurors to her side. But one of the 11 now says he has irrefutable evidence of Bobby’s guilt, and he’s going to reveal it when they all get together for the documentary’s reunion.

I think it’s best to go into this with as little information as possible — even less than what is on the jacket copy — and let yourself get swept up in the suspense and reveals along the way. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a mystery, and let’s be honest, they are so much fun. I think they might be my favorite escapist literature for this season of strangeness. They are compelling, engrossing, and don’t require a lot of world-building details, like my normal go-tos for escapist reading. I’ve got quite a few mysteries on my shelves to keep me busy for the next several weeks, so don’t be surprised if you see a shift in my reading habits. (That being said, old habits die hard, and I know I’m going to feel obligated to finish my library books before those eventually have to be returned, none of which are mysteries.)

This one is in the works for a Hulu adaptation, and I can’t wait to see it. Moore is an Academy-Award-winning screenwriter, so there’s no mistake that this novel begs to be seen, not just read.