books I read this month / thoughts

Everything I Read in December 2023

Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food by Fuchsia Dunlop (interesting, long and slightly repetitive at points if you are reading it straight through)

Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden by Camille T. Dungy (good)

Mother, Nature: A 5,000-Mile Journey to Discover if a Mother and Son Can Survive Their Differences by Jedidiah Jenkins (horrible)

Alice Sadie Celine by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright (boring)

The Beautiful and the Wild by Peggy Townsend (bad)

The Crow Trap by Ann Cleeves (good)

The September House by Carissa Orlando (fun)

My Name is Barbra by Barbra Streisand (so detailed!)

A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars edited by Erin Sharkey (ok)

Eyeliner: A Cultural History by Zahra Hankir (okay but uneven with how in-depth the chapters—why did Amy Winehouse have the same treatment as another entire culture?)

The Couple in the Photo by Helen Cooper (fun)

The Other Guest by Helen Cooper (fun)

All the Little Bird-Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow (thoughts)

The Sleepwalkers by Scarlet Thomas (I worry about her personal relationships)

The Weekend Retreat by Tara Laskowski (ok)

One-Hit Wonder by Lisa Jewell (not good)

The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino with Alexander O. Smith (Translator) (people really hyped this up and it was fine but not amazing)

I Promise It Won’t Always Hurt Like This by Clare Mackintosh (solid)

Everywhere an Oink Oink: An Embittered, Dyspeptic, and Accurate Report of Forty Years in Hollywood by David Mamet (he sure thinks he’s great!)

Endangered Eating: America’s Vanishing Foods by Sarah Lohman (makes dates sound very appealing)

The Divorce by Moa Herngren and Alice Menzies (Translator) (sad, frustrating how her in-laws just dropped her like that)

What Remains by Wendy Walker (did not make a lick of sense)

Only One Survives by Hannah Mary McKinnon (fun)

The Other Mothers by Katherine Faulkner (messy)

The Lies We Told by Camilla Way (enjoyable)

A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djèlí Clark (my husband is reading this now! It was cute)

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Bonus review for The Cookie That Changed My Life and More Than 100 Other Classic Cakes, Cookies, Muffins, and Pies That Will Change Yours: A Cookbook by Nancy Silverton and Carolynn Carreno

and another bonus review for Snacking Bakes: Simple Recipes for Cookies, Bars, Brownies, Cakes, and More Book by Yossy Arefi

I read 340 books this year! Not counting cookbooks except the one I wrote.

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