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Month: January 2022

This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab

This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab

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Victoria Schwab (or V.E. Schwab) is a popular writer of supernatural and fantastical YA fiction. I read her Shades of Magic trilogy a few years ago because it was well received, but I was not particularly impressed by it and thought it was just okay. And then I read The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, which leans more into adult fiction, and I absolutely loved it. This made me decide to give Schwab’s other books another try, and so I read This Savage Song. Like the Shades of Magic trilogy, I thought This Savage Song was just okay. I think I need to move on from reading YA supernatural fiction.

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Bewilderment by Richard Powers

Bewilderment by Richard Powers

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Bewilderment is a novel that I think everyone should read, but I know they will not. For some people, it may seem like a strange book, but it tackles important subject matters, such as raising a child on the autism spectrum, raising a sensitive child who is very much aware of the problems with our world, climate change, mass extinction of animals, the erosion of democracy, and our bewilderment in the face of all this. It would seem like Richard Powers is prophesizing our future in Bewilderment, if it were not for the fact that what he writes about is very much happening right now.

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Family Trust by Kathy Wang

Family Trust by Kathy Wang

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If you have read and liked Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan, then you may like Kathy Wang’s Family Trust. I have read Crazy Rich Asians and I thought it was just okay. I really wanted to like Family Trust because it sounds like an interesting novel, but I thought it was also just okay (I guess I should not be surprised). My biggest problem with Family Trust is that nearly every single character, except maybe one, is not likeable and therefore I did not enjoy reading about them (the quote on the cover is a lie; this book was not a joy to read from start to finish).

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Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe

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If you have not seen it yet, I highly recommend you watch the TV miniseries Dopesick. It is about the opioid crisis in the US and how it was started by one family, the Sackler family, the owners of Purdue Pharma which is the maker of Oxycontin. Dopesick the TV show is based on Dopesick the book by Beth Macy. I decided to read Patrick Radden Keefe’s book Empire of Pain instead because it came out just last year and has been well received, and its focus is on the Sackler family rather than the opioid crisis in general. I was curious to know what has made the Sackler family so ruthlessly greedy that they do not care at all that they have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in the US alone since Oxycontin was introduced in 1996.

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My Top Five Reads of 2021

My Top Five Reads of 2021

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I cannot believe that 2021 is already over, and that 2021 turned out to be just as bad, if not worse, than 2020. But at least I got to read some great books last year. These are my top five books of 2021:

5. The Rose Code by Kate Quinn – another riveting WWII mystery by Quinn. I really enjoyed this one!

4. Matrix by Lauren Groff – completely not what I was expecting from Groff, but this novel was mesmerizing.

3. Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr – fantastic novel with three intersecting timelines, this one will be a reread.

2. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro – I will never forget Klara’s story. The world does not deserve her.

And number 1 is…

Fight Night by Miriam Toews! I cannot believe how much I enjoyed reading this novel. I actually laughed out loud, which does not happen that often when I read. Toews is a great writer!

There are reviews for all five of these books on my blog. Hope I have inspired you to read some of them!