Wednesday Reading Meme

What I've Finished Reading

Rosemary Kirstein's The Steerswoman, which I quite enjoyed! Rowan, a wandering steerswoman - that is, a woman who has devoted her life to solving intellectual puzzles; sort of like a jack-of-all-trades scientist person - teams up with warrior woman Bel to solve the mystery of some odd gems that have appeared across the land. I love unlikely team-up stories, and it's especially rare to get them about two women, so I quite enjoyed this even though the mystery aspect didn't really hold my fancy. Mind, I like the idea of an intellectual puzzle as the driving force of the book; I just didn't feel Kirstein quite pulled it off. But perhaps that will improve in later books.

I also read Jean Kwok's Girl in Translation, because I am a hopeless sucker for books about young immigrants who come to America and struggle to adapt to their new environment. The Secret Voice of Gina Zhang is probably my all-time favorite in this regard, although I quite like Thanhha Lai's Inside Out and Back Again too. It occurs to me that the Kirsten American Girl books are also a variation on this theme.

Girl in Translation is an adult book, and it's emotionally a bit rougher than the books listed above; Kimberley, the heroine, works in a sweatshop, and she and her mother live in a horrible cockroach infested apartment. But it doesn't (in my opinion) descend to the level of misery porn; Kimberley's life is tough, but it's not an unending stream of gloom. (Her best friend Annette is a particular bright spot.) And it's incredibly readable: I read the whole thing in a day because I couldn't bear to put it down, even though really not all that much happens.

What I'm Reading Now

I've been reading Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption on my lunch breaks at work, and it's so compelling that I've actually been getting impatient on my days off because I want to read more of it already! But it's probably a good thing to have it cut up into half hour chunks, because as compelling as it is, it's also exhausting: it's about how the American prison system (and particularly the Alabama prison system; but really the whole prison system) is a mess of misery and injustice and general awfulness.

I wouldn't call it a depressing book, not least because Stevenson seems to be a font of optimism who still believes in the possibility of reform after decades of working with this hellhole, but it's heavy stuff and definitely easier to read in small doses. But definitely worth reading if the subject interests you.

I'm also poking away at John Marsden's Letters from the Inside, an epistolary novel, but it - like all the other Marsden novels I've read - is not quite grabbing me. (I read about half of his Tomorrow, When the War Began series as a teenager before finally allowing myself to give up. How could vigilante teenagers fighting invaders fail to grab me? But they did.) But it's very short, so I'll probably finish it in hopes that the letter writers' voices will eventually become more differentiated.

What I Plan to Read Next

I added so many books to my to-read list this week, it's kind of ridiculous. Everyone is posting about great books they're reading! littlerhymes wrote about a nineteenth century novel called Miss Marjoribanks that sounds right up my alley - Lucilla Marjoribanks takes over the social life of her small town, like a militant but kindly Flora Post who has invaded Cranford! With only the best intentions, of course.

And ladyherenya posted about Elizabeth Wein's newest book, Black Dove, White Raven, which is about a pair of mid-twentieth century girl pilots (this is clearly becoming Wein's genre. I have no objections) and also sounds amazing.

But I've already gotten Alif the Unseen from the library, because asakiyume posted about how much she's enjoying it, so probably I will read that first.