Quick Lit July 2023 Archives

Birnam Wood

by Eleanor Catton

Eco-thriller meets Shakespearean tragedy in this new release from Booker winner Catton. Birnam Wood is the Shakespeare-inspired name of an idealistic activist group focused on guerilla gardening efforts. When their pragmatic leader crosses paths with a powerful American billionaire, he persuades her to enter into an unlikely but perhaps mutually beneficial partnership pertaining to land adjoining a national park. But neither party is willing to acknowledge its true aims, and the consequences could be deadly. This high-stakes, action-packed tale features environmental rights, big egos, privacy concerns, politics, and more. This is compulsively readable literary fiction. The jaw-dropping ending also makes this an excellent pick for book clubs: there's so much to talk about!

The Talented Mr. Ripley

by Patricia Highsmith

From the publisher: "An American classic and the inspiration for the motion picture starring Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow. It’s here, in the first volume of Patricia Highsmith’s five-book Ripley series, that we are introduced to the suave Tom Ripley, a young striver seeking to leave behind his past as an orphan bullied for being a “sissy.” Newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan, Ripley meets a wealthy industrialist who hires him to bring his playboy son, Dickie Greenleaf, back from gallivanting in Italy. Soon Ripley’s fascination with Dickie’s debonair lifestyle turns obsessive as he finds himself enraged by Dickie’s ambivalent affections for Marge, a charming American dilettante, and Ripley begins a deadly game."

The God of Animals

by Aryn Kyle

This is the book that has finally forced me to realize that I love a good horse book. Kyle's 2007 debut coming-of-age tale is set over the course of a blazing hot summer on a Colorado horse farm. 12-year-old Alice's world was upended when her older sister ran off with a rodeo cowboy. Now Alice feels like she's been left all alone to deal with the death of a classmate, her mother's ongoing depression, and her father's stress about the farm's finances. But when a new student starts taking riding lessons at the farm, that's when things really begin to change. Kyle draws beautiful and subtle parallels between life and horses as she shows us how Alice endures and changes over the course of one tumultuous summer.

A Quiet Life

by Ethan Joella

From the publisher: "In this beautiful and profoundly moving novel, three parallel narratives converge in poignant and unexpected ways, as each character bravely presses onward, trying to recover something they have lost. Emotionally riveting and infused with hope, “the soothing tone and warm worldview of this grown-up bedtime story will be good for what ails you” (Kirkus Reviews)."

True Biz

by Sara Nović

This story unfolds at Ohio's River Valley School for the Deaf, a boarding school where students come to learn and can count on the cultural richness of the deaf community being celebrated. When Charlie enrolls as a new student, she's never met another deaf student; her parents had kept her in traditional school for far too long, hoping her issues with hearing would simply disappear once they got her cochlear implants dialed in. Charlie knew that would never happen, and quickly makes herself at home in her new school setting, not knowing the school's very existence is actively being threatened. I knew little about deafness and the deaf community prior to reading this book, and ate up all the details about various facets of the deaf experience deaf author Nović wove into the story. I especially loved the audiobook narrated by Lisa Flanagan and Kaleo Griffith, with the sound of signing over the speech when ASL was being used. (Though I'm already planning my reread in print, because of the visual ASL component included in that format.)

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

by Jesse Q. Sutanto

This was a fun romp! This adorable tea shop murder mystery has serious Only Murders in the Building vibes and boasts a pleasantly large cast of (mostly) likable characters. When the titular 60-year-old widow awakes one morning to find a dead body clutching a flash drive on the floor of her tea shop, she calls in the authorities. (She doesn't want to, but her son convinces her she has to). But, unimpressed by their approach to the case and unconvinced they can get to the truth of what happened, she takes matters into her own hands, with delightful and chaotic results and a feel-good ending I didn't expect. This was a wonderful palate cleanser after a string of serious reads.

One Summer in Savannah

by Terah Shelton Harris

From the publisher: "It's been eight years since Sara Lancaster left her home in Savannah, Georgia. Eight years since her daughter, Alana, came into this world, following a terrifying sexual assault that left deep emotional wounds Sara would do anything to forget. But when Sara's father falls ill, she's forced to return home and face the ghosts of her past. While caring for her father and running his bookstore, Sara is desperate to protect her curious, outgoing, genius daughter from the Wylers, the family of the man who assaulted her. Sara thinks she can succeed—her attacker is in prison, his identical twin brother, Jacob, left town years ago, and their mother are all unaware Alana exists. But she soon learns that Jacob has also just returned to Savannah to piece together the fragments of his once-great family. And when their two worlds collide—with the type of force Sara explores in her poetry and Jacob in his astrophysics—they are drawn together in unexpected ways."

L’Appart: The Delights and Disasters of Making My Paris Home

by David Lebovitz

That subtitle! I love his recipes and especially his writing, which manages to simultaneously be interesting, informative, and laugh-out-loud funny. As Lebovitz fans have come to expect, this one combines stories about food and French culture mixed with a heady dose of philosophy-of-life.

Quick Lit July 2023

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summer reading starts May 16th