My Summer of Reading

This is what we call a “buzzy” book. I can’t even remember how I first heard about it—I just remember multiple people around me mentioning the title, and then there’s the cover. Disregard that adage about books and their covers—you can at least judge that this book has a healthy budget. There’s something about the aesthetic that says “money.” Someone thought this book would do well, and those seals say it has. The Ministry of Time follows a British agent chosen to be a bridge between the story’s present day and the distant past from which expats of sorts are plucked thanks to a time travel device. The motives behind the Ministry’s meddling are as unclear as the agent’s developing relationship with one Commander Gore, transported from a doomed 19th-century voyage to the Arctic. I don’t tend to read books because they’re buzzy and that’s why I chose this one. I wanted to shake things up a bit and find out if I would enjoy it as much as others have.

Moon of the Crusted Snow was one of my favorite books of 2018, and I read it in one sitting. I had to believe the second book in the series would be as gripping, and I’m happy to report that it was. I just finished Moon of the Turning Leaves and it was stellar. Do not sleep on this book or Moon of the Crusted Snow (I do recommend reading that book, which is about novella-length, first). These books about an Anishinaabe community surviving a post-apocalyptic world are thrilling page-turners that also get you in the feels and serve as reminders about the importance of community and working together for a better future.

Did Yume Kitasei publish another book only one year after the publication of her debut? I am shook. I guess SFF thrillers are where it’s at for me because I tore through Kitasei’s The Deep Sky and was so ready for another twisty space journey with this author. This next (unrelated) book features a heist and I am powerless against heist stories. Here’s hoping Kitasei gives us another complicated main character to follow across the stars. In this romp, an art thief has to choose between saving an alien civilization and humanity, racing through strange lands in search of an even stranger artifact.

Bad Cree by Jessica Johns was one of the books that saved me from the dreaded reading slump last year, and horror is near and dear to my heart, so I had to choose at least one novel in the genre to read this summer. Can you tell I’m a sucker for a great cover, and wow what a dread-inducing sight. I haven’t seen one more deliciously creepy since Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw. This sapphic paranormal tale about a young woman with a gruesome spirit companion speaks to the child in me who wanted to befriend the Cryptkeeper.

This is perhaps my most uncertain book selection, not because of the author, whose work I love, and not because of the premise (the undead performing magical tasks?? Yes, please). It’s the length, my friends. I have the audiobook and it’s almost 24 hours long. It’s been a minute since I read a really long book, mostly because I have limited reading time and, due to the nature of my work, don’t have the luxury of spending a bunch of it on one book. But one of my goals this year is to read smarter, not faster. If I can find a way to occasionally fit in the wonderful, leisurely, immersive reading experience that made me a book lover in the first place, I’ll be golden. This book seems like a good exercise to get me there.