Reading Update: July

Hallo, it's me, Laura King. The month started out strong with a visit to the Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI), which took place on First Fridays, a monthly event where you can visit the museum for free and listen to a talk or a performance from someone different each time. This month coincided with the launch of their new exhibition called Happily Ever After, which celebrates all kinds of Irish romance fiction, and there were speeches from the MoLI team as well as the curator Paige Reynolds and the author Emer McLysaght.

I took some inspiration from the exhibition and sought out some easier to read books to get me through a bit of a reading slump, with mixed results. I tried two new romance authors, one is a new obsession and one… is not. I read a couple of books that I felt I should have liked more, but they just didn't land, in very different ways. I also abandoned two books I'll probably come back to, and then read some really great books, so all and all a very mixed month!

Run Out and Read

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang

I absolutely loved Katabasis by R.F. Kuang, which is out next month. The book opens with Alice preparing for a trip to the underworld to rescue the awful Professor Grimes from the hell she accidentally sent him to so that she can defend her thesis and finish her PhD. The tone is often humourous with lots of cheesy humour and asides in what is a really dark book. Not only is it literally set in hell but its exploration of exploitation and abuse as well as burnout in academia makes for a rough read in places - it confronts the reader with it again and again, and I was really struck by how the book lures you in with the promise of these cool dark academia vibes only to pull the rug from you, just like it seems to be done with all the bright, ambitious young people in the novel.

Highly Recommended

Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis

After a few just-fine books, Fundamentally was exactly what I needed, a breath of fresh air, laugh out loud funny at some moments and devastating at others. Nadia moves from London to Iraq for what seems like her ideal job, working with the UN to deradicalise ISIS brides. It also comes at an ideal time, fresh after heartbreak - most recently via her great love Rosie, who showed her an exciting, hedonistic life she never knew was possible for her, and even more deeply, her mother's rejection of Nadia for not being the ideal Muslim daughter. It's no surprise as a fish out of water that she is drawn to the cheeky Londoner Sara, whose foul mouth and quick humour makes her seem incongruous to Nadia with the idea of the teenage girl who left England for ISIS. The book deals with a lot of different issues, most pressingly the realities of the lives of women under extremist, fundamental movements like ISIS, but also the burnout (at best) and corruption (at worst) in the agencies there to help them.

Just For the Summer by Abby Jimenez

I went from "this is like a made for tv movie, but it'll do" to "I don't think I can go asleep without knowing these characters will be ok" so quickly I don't even know when the change happened, I just know I am now an Abby Jimenez stan. I was completely at ease reading the opening pages of the novel, immediately understanding what kind of story I was reading - two strangers bond online over how their exes always seem to find true love after breaking up with them, and decide to date each other to cancel the effect out, and hopefully find true love after the summer they spend together while she is on a short term work contract in his town. AND I THINK YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS THEN. Jimenez throws a lot of obstacles in their way, which did feel shoe-horned in, but while the set up seemed forced the responses and reactions from the characters feel very authentic, and I was so surprised by how emotionally invested I was, and how sure I was by the end that these crazy kids would make it ok!

Ordinary Saints by Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin

On the night she first kissed another girl, sixteen and at an illegal house party, Jay's big brother Ferdia died in an accident. Ferdia was the golden son, a young priest and a beacon of hope for the future of the Church for his family and parish, and Jay never felt like she could live up to him - and that was before he died and his parents tried to make him a literal saint. Now, years later, while Jay has moved on with her new life in London, her parents are progressing their bid for canonisation for their beloved son, and need Jay's help. The book is very tongue in cheek, and the audiobook narration hits all the humourous notes perfectly, but its a very emotional read too. I thought the picture of the grieving family was so well drawn, and overall I think the novel is about the persistence of the ideas we have about our childhoods and our families and our history and how they follow us around as adults, but can never really make much sense outside of that family unit - or within it, for that matter.

Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Despite the audiobook of Carrie Soto is Back not being read in its entirety by my queen Julia Whelan (she does come in for some of the news clipping that ground the book in that weird almost-reality we know from TJR's California series), I thoroughly enjoyed it in this format and would really recommend.When the book starts, Carrie has decided in the 1990s to come out of retirement to take back her title for most slams and show everyone why she is still the greatest of all time. However, we quickly realise she is as famous for her unapologetic bad manner as she is for her unmatched game. On this reading I thought about celebrity and legacy, and how the drive to be "the greatest of all time", and to be remembered, means totally different things for different people. Such an exciting, fun read, and one that really helped me rediscover how much I enjoy tennis! (See also: the film Challengers last year).

Recommended

The Situationship by Abby Jimenez

This short story ebook ties in with Just For The Summer, set during the gap of time towards the end of the book and about Emma's best friend Maddy, and how she falls in love without meaning to, when she was mostly preoccupied with looking after her friend. It's very sweet and does feel like a throwaway scene at first, but by the end I was completely sold on the couple and Abby Jimenez as a writer.

There's No Turning Back by Alba de Cespedes

Alba de Cespedes' There's No Turning Back follows eight young women in 1930's Italy, making their first forays into adulthood and bonding over this brief yet significant period where they are living away from their family at the first time while studying in college, before they hope to go on to get married and have families. It's very ahead of its time so I wasn't surprised that it was banned by fascist authorities at the time, but I'm so glad it did find audiences and now new readers years later, because it breathes so much life into a very specific time when women were coming of age and going through such an important and formative life stage even as or despite the trouble that brewed around them.

Not For Me

Fix Her Up by Tessa Bailey

This is a borderline one for me, and I was going to post it to my Instagram as I read the whole thing and enjoyed it ok, but I don't think it's a particularly great example of the type of rom com I like to read. It's a small town romance about a returning baseball hero and the little sister of his best friend now grown up but struggling to be taken seriously. I actually quite liked the storyline about the woman banding together with other like minded women in the town to help each other be confident and achieve their goals, but I just couldn't enjoy the romance because I thought the man should be put directly in the bin. Also, the woman is literally a clown which unnerved me every time it was mentioned.

Everyone Still Here by Liadan Ni Chuinn

Liadan Ni Chuinn's debut collection is thoughtful and assured, focusing on quiet moments of stagnation or frustration, combine together to speak to a wider picture of life in Northern Ireland now, so many years after the Troubles but still very much in its shadow. Unfortunately I wasn't a huge fan of all the stories individually as I found it hard on the Netgally file to tell them apart, but I was really blown away by the first and last pieces, and then unfortunately I can't really speak to the others.

The Compound by Aisling Rawle

This was definitely pitched as a dystopian read, but it's essentially just Love Island. The book is narrated by Lily who wakes up in a desert compound next to one other woman, not knowing how they got there but accepting it as part of the reality show they signed up for. A lot of vague noise is made about ongoing wars that people are fighting in (which is happening around the world, conscription just isn't happening around the UK), and we are told Lily is motivated by her life of unrewarding work and living with her difficult mother out of necessity well into adulthood (this is literally true of lots of people, including in the UK). It's definitely an interesting look at celebrity and influencer culture in the current economic climate, but pretty surface level stuff - it's mostly just a trendy background for a thriller.

Did Not Finish

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

I'll definitely come back to this but definitely not on audiobook.

The Catch by Yrsa Daly Ward

I did read a good few chapters of this and was intrigued but really was not in the humour for it earlier in the month, again I might try go back to this soon.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you join me again soon for another installment of LauraEatsBooks.