A Few Good Books

I usually include the books I have read in Unraveled Wednesday posts, but my book reviews have been getting longer for some reason. Adding them to an Unraveled Wednesday post makes those posts far too long, so long that even I wouldn't want to read them (and I wrote the darn reviews). Last week I finished three books, and wrote long(ish) reviews, so here they are in case you might be interested.

The first was Summer Solstice, which I know many of you have read. I wish it had a better cover (because I do judge books by their covers), but there you go. What marks the start of summer for you? For me, it's probably the summer solstice along with the first sighting of lightning bugs. This year, summer has arrived with a vengeance, with high heat, humidity, and that awful stickiness I dread.

"I try not to fight it anymore. I embrace the sweat, the damp at my back, between my breasts, the insect tickle of a drop riding the slide between the muscles that line my spine."

I can't quite bring myself to embrace the sweat like Nina MacLaughlin advises. This next quote rings a little more true for me:

"But my body likes the cold-dark half of the year so much more, that friction, when the heat comes from the inside, when we make the heat ourselves. And so, unlike the fruit flies, unlike the rhododendrons, the honeysuckles, the peonies, the turtles, the bears, the dahlias, the daisies, the tulips, and the corn, I go dormant for a while, slink into a sort of a hibernation. Let's talk again late August when we really start to notice less light and the shadows start to shift."

Summer does have its charms and one of them is that it does come to an end. This one was four stars for me. 

This book was a lot different from what I usually read, but I can't often resist the offer when a publisher pre-approves me for an advance reader copy. Told in dual timelines, Songs for the Brokenhearted tells the stories of Yaqub and Saida who are Yemeni and meet in an immigration camp in Israel in 1950. The second timeline is set in 1995 and deals with Saida's daughter, Zohara, who has moved to the United States but returns to Israel when her mother dies. We learn more about Yaqub and Saida as the book progresses, and Zohara learns more about her mother as she comes together with her family and clears out her mother's house. She has always had a distant and complicated relationship with her mother but begins to learn much more about her mother and the secrets she kept.

 This book dealt with topics I honestly knew very little about, such as Yemen, Yemeni immigrants and culture in Israel, the Oslo Accords, Yemeni women's songs, and "disappeared children" from immigrant camps. Parents were told that their children had died but thousands of them were actually adopted out. Ayelet Tsabari has written a novel that tells truly interesting stories, ones that many people have never even heard about.

"If we're only relying on written history, what stories do we miss? What happens to the stories of people who were illiterate? To marginalized communities? Whose stories are written in history books? And who decides which stories to include?" 

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book. It will be published on September 10, 2024. I also gave this one four stars.

Sarah recommended Piglet and I'm so glad she did. (Thanks, Sarah!) It's probably not a book I would have picked up myself, but I was drawn into Piglet's story as soon as I started listening. She is a 30-something cookbook editor engaged to Kit. He is seemingly almost perfect, and Piglet has arranged a seemingly perfect life, from preparing luscious meals to moving into an ideal home with Kit to leaving her middle-class upbringing behind (except for her childhood nickname). But cracks begin to appear, and 13 days before the wedding, Kit betrays her. Hazell has made a choice not to reveal exactly what that betrayal was. This bothered me initially, and plenty of reviewers have complained about it, but ultimately I think it helps to immerse the reader more completely by letting them come up with the worst perfidy they can imagine.

The book is structured chronologically, beginning 98 days before the wedding and leading up to the day itself and afterward. I'm not going to reveal the outcome, but this book packed quite a punch for me. It has a lot to say about expectations for women, those that we have for ourselves, style over substance, and hunger in all its forms. I was so enthralled that as soon as I finished it the first time, I started re-listening to the book for a second time. I'm glad I did because there were things I missed about Piglet herself from the very beginning. The descriptions of food are lush, the writing is adroit, and Lottie Hazell is an author I will definitely be looking to read more from in the future. Four and a half stars rounded up.

I'm not sure why I liked Piglet so much. Maybe because I was also given a not-so-wonderful food and size-related nickname as a child, and have only outgrown it now that my father is gone. Maybe because I often felt that there were many expectations (usually food-related) that I was never able to live up to. Whatever the reason, I thought it was a terrific book. 

And check out these different covers: 

UK cover

Australian cover

I'm not sure why the poor Aussies only get half an apple, and I really don't think it goes with the book. A big, greasy hamburger or stack of donuts is much more fitting. (The choice of covers and their differences is always interesting to me!)

What are you reading? I hope you have a good book or two lined up to help make your weekend a good one!