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Morgan Reads
new reviews Wednesdays and Fridays fantasy, romance, non-fiction, and more
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How the Word is Passed - Clint Smith
Summary: An examination of how the history of slavery is taught—or not taught—at cultural heritage sites.
Quote: “The history of slavery is the history of the United States. It was not peripheral to our founding; it was central to it. It is not irrelevant to our contemporary society; it created it. This history is in our soil, it is in our policies, and it must, too, be in our memories.”
My rating: 4.5/5.0 Goodreads: 4.72/5.0
Review: Smith combines beautiful writing and clear analysis to paint a nuanced picture of how cultural heritage organizations deal with the history of slavery. Every chapter is rooted in Smith’s own experience of a site and the people who work and visit there. Smith is a clear-eyed, but compassionate observer and he presents a very human view of the successes and failures of education at these sites. From Monticello to Angola prison to the House of Slaves, each chapter presents a deeply personal experience that is used as a base for well-researched and compelling historical discussion.
The audiobook, read by the author himself, is absolutely fantastic.
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The Roommate - Rosie Danan
Summary: Cautious east coast socialite Clara Wheaton throws caution to the wind to join her crush at a house in LA only to find that he’s leaving for a tour with his band. While he’s gone, he’s sublet his room to Josh, whom Clara soon discovers is a famous porn star. Frank discussions about sex and pleasure soon turn into a business idea, but they also spark something more.
Quote: “Women need this. No. Women deserve this. Women need to know that their pleasure matters.”
My rating: 3.0/5.0 Goodreads: 3.57/5.0
Review: Fun, but a bit of a mess, this book is trying to do too much at one time. Trying to tackle stigma around sex work, class differences, the evils of the porn industry, advocating for women’s pleasure, and the burden of family expectations is difficult to do while maintaining a light-hearted sexy romance. Clara and Josh have chemistry, the sex scenes are proof of that, but there’s too much distracting from their romance to really root for their happy ending.
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Other Russias - Victoria Lomasko
Summary: A portrait of those living on the social and political margins of Russian society.
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My rating: 3.5/5.0 Goodreads: 4.27/5.0
Review: Simple and effective, this graphic novel clearly showcases the voices and lives of ordinary Russians. Lomasko’s art is perfect for its task, evocative and full of personality. However, while hearing the stories of Russians outside of the mainstream—including LGBTQ Russians, immigrants, political dissenters, and sex workers—is valuable and interesting, the collection doesn’t add up to more than a sum of its parts. There’s no overarching point that Lomasko is driving home, which keeps the book as not much more than an interesting read.
Read-alike: Though in a completely different format, Svetlana Alexievich’s Secondhand Time takes a similar documentary-style approach to the Russian people.
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The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharpe - Leonie Swann
Summary: When the group of seniors living at Sunset Hall receive a visit from the police about a murder, they’re relieved when the murder in question is different than the one they’ve just committed. However, when it turns out that both murders were committed using the same gun, they’re drawn into the investigation.
Quote: “I’m watching you! was what the gun was saying. I know what you’re up to! Maybe it was even saying: You’re next!”
My rating: 4.0/5.0 Goodreads: 3.52/5.0
Review: The strengths of this book are its unique point-of-view and its delightful cast of characters. Agnes is cynical, funny, and smart, and she also suffers from moments of disassociation and deafness that complicate her ability to solve the crime. Her fellow residents of Sunset Hall also have quirks born from old age, and all of them have skill sets that make them well-suited to solving crimes. The mystery becomes easy to solve relatively early on, but the investigation is fun and interesting every step of the way due to the charming, quite ruthless group of elderly people solving it.
#the sunset years of agnes sharpe#leonie swann#book review#book recommendation#mystery#murder mystery
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The Water Cure - Sophie Mackintosh
Summary: The three sisters Grace, Lia, and Sky have been raised in total isolation from men other than their father, taught to fear men and the outside world. One day, after their father disappears, two strange men and a boy wash up on their shore, asking for help.
Quote: “I understand that he is trying to shame me for my need, but unfortunately for him and for me I am totally shameless in this regard, I will demonstrate my need over and over for anyone who asks. I would take my strange and incapable heart out of my chest if I could, display it, absolve myself of responsibility.”
My rating: 3.5/5.0 Goodreads: 3.25/5.0
Review: Like Mackintosh’s other work, Cursed Bread, this story centers on the desire for love and affection and Lia’s longing for it suffuses the book. The generally sinister atmosphere of the island in combination with that longing creates a compelling mood, but the details of the story don’t often hold up to serious scrutiny. This is very much a vibes-based story. It isn’t clear whether or not this takes place in a near-future or alternate world or if the girls have just been led to believe in a very different reality. The uncertainty unbalances, sometimes in an interesting way and sometimes in an irritating one.
Content warning: abuse, self-harm
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Great and Horrible News - Blessin Adams
Summary: A series of case studies centering on violent crime in early modern England (roughly 1500-1700), covering crimes from murder and suicide, to conspiracy and infanticide.
Quote: “The early moderns were drawn to true-crime narratives because they touched upon fears tucked away in the darkest corners of their hearts: these are dreadful events that happen to other people, may they never happen to us.
My rating: 4.0/5.0 Goodreads: 3.88/5.0
Review: Full of interesting and well-researched history but never stiff or overly academic in tone, Adams perfectly balances true crime writing and history in this book. Each chapter reveals something unexpected and interesting about the early modern period through the lens of a true crime story. The stories are plenty sensational—often the only reason we know about them is that they were news in their own day—but Adams goes beyond the juicy details, showing the deeper significance of each event.
#great and horrible news#blessin adams#book review#book recommendation#true crime#history#early modern history#cw: suicide
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The Pursuit of William Abbey - Claire North
Summary: After he witnesses the lynching of a young boy in 1880s South Africa, Doctor William Abbey finds himself pursued by the boy’s ghost. The closer Langa comes, the more Abbey can see the truths in the hearts of those around him, but if Langa catches up to him, someone he loves will die.
Quote: “Only in the eyes of strangers do we see ourselves, and only in the hearts of men do we know the meaning of the words we utter as if they were truth.”
My rating: 3.5/5.0 Goodreads: 3.71/5.0
Review: Abbey’s curse creates a way for the reader to see deeply into the heart’s of characters, while also creating a truly horrifying narrative tension. There are parts of the book that drag and the almost pseudo-Victorian prose, while appropriate to the story it's telling, sometimes creates too much emotional distance between Abbey and the reader. Though his fear often feels very real, his love doesn’t. Abbey quickly gets recruited by the British government and North’s writing on colonization and empire also isn’t fresh or compelling; most readers don’t need to be told over and over again that the British Empire was bad. Still, the book provides an interesting and original perspective on the world during the 1880s to World War I as Abbey travels around it to escape his pursuer, and the ending is immensely satisfying.
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Wake, Siren - Nina MacLaughlin
Summary: The myths of Ovid's Metamorphoses, told from the point of view of the women, goddesses, and female monsters in the tales.
Quote: “Want is the only thing. One wants to eat the other. I want this to stop. Someone else wants it not to stop. Whose want wins? If we are basing it on duration, mine does. Because my want for it to stop does not ever end. If we are basing it on who gets what they want? His.”
My rating: 3.75/5.0 Goodreads: 3.81/4.0
Review: Like many adaptations, MacLaughlin sometimes clings too hard to her source material and the retellings can feel stale, as though they are simply the Ovid stories translated into modern English with a slight shift in narration. In addition, MacLaughlin’s narrative style often feels like it’s trying too hard to be casual and relatable. But some of the stories go beyond these flaws to engage critically with Ovid or to really bring home the horror of some of the concepts. These stories don’t make for happy reading, but when they work they are visceral, moving, and terribly real.
Content note: sexual assault and rape play a prominent role in most of the stories
Read-alike: Women and Other Monsters - Jess Zimmerman
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White Magic - Elissa Washuta
Summary: A series of essays where Washuta explores her relationship with men, alcoholism, the land she lives on, and her identity as a Native woman using the Oregon Trail video game, Twin Peaks, Fleetwood Mac, and magic.
Quote: “Colonization is not a metaphor for my body and I do not present what has happened to my body as a metaphor for colonization. But the violence done to my body was facilitated by colonization: dominance is central to the American creation story. By telling stories over and over, we give them life. By enacting narratives over and over, we give them limbs. A white man dominates a Native woman and keeps his world in order.”
My rating: 3.0/5.0 Goodreads: 3.79/5.0
Review: The essays touch on a variety of interesting and often heartbreaking themes but one breakup haunts most of these essays in a way that didn’t work for me. Much like hearing about other people’s dreams, hearing about other people’s exes can be a tedious experience. It’s a shame, because many of the essays have creatively weird slants to them that are really engaging—the essay using a claymation about the devil and Mark Twain as a framing device for instance or the essay where Washuta argues her life has parallels with Twin Peaks—but she seems compelled to return to the banalities of breaking up and moving on from what seems to have been a regular relationship. She’s a strong writer, so if the topic interests you, I recommend these essays.
Content note: abuse, alcoholism, sexual assault and rape.
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The Panda’s Thumb - Stephen Jay Gould
Summary: A series of essays on evolutionary biology, from the basics to more complex problems in the field.
Quote: “Ideal design is a lousy argument for evolution, for it mimics the postulated action of an omnipotent creator. Odd arrangements and funny solutions are the proof of evolution—paths that a sensible God would never tread.”
My rating: 4.0/5.0 Goodreads: 4.12/5.0
Review: Short, incredibly engaging essays make up this collection. Gould explains complex theories and academic debates in such a clear, light-handed way that reading about them becomes a lot of fun. The book is old, so some of its arguments may be out of date, but a lot of the core arguments are about the history of evolutionary theory and it corrected several basic misunderstandings I held about Darwin and Darwinism. My favorite essay, for example, was the one about Alfred Wallace and Darwin, which focused not on their rivalry like I expected, but on their close collaboration and where their theories differed.
#the panda's thumb#stephen jay gould#book review#book recommendation#evolution#evolutionary biology#nature
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On Savage Shores - Caroline Dodds Pennock
Summary: A history of the Indigenous Americans who journeyed across the Atlantic to Europe in the first decades after 1492.
Quote: “When we realise that there were thousands of Indigenous people in Europe from as early as the 1490s, it becomes impossible to dismiss them as insignificant oddities. Across Spain and Portugal, France, Italy, England, and the Low Countries, Europeans were meeting Indigenous people, as diplomats, performers, translators, sailors, servants, family members, and enslaved people.”
My rating: 2.5/5.0 Goodreads: 3.79/5.0
Review: There’s plenty of rich source material and fascinating stories of indigenous lives that make this book worth reading even though it isn’t well-organized. The arguments are unclear and the organization is all over the place. The chapters begin and end with thesis statements that seem to have little to do with the words in-between them. The book doesn’t have much of a central argument, either, mainly seeming to want to show that indigenous people were part of European life in the early days of colonization, which Pennock does do with beautifully detailed and compassionate examples. I will say that despite Pennock’s insistence that indigenous voices be centered in this narrative, she often falls on the crutch of European perspectives, which are better documented, sure, but don’t support the lens that she claims to be approaching this story from.
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The Pursuit of Love - Nancy Mitford
Summary: The story of the eccentric Radletts of Alconleigh, a large aristocratic family, as their children grow up in the years leading up to WWII.
Quote: “The Radletts were always either on a peak of happiness or drowning in black waters of despair; their emotions were on no ordinary plane, they loved or they loathed, they laughed or they cried, they lived in a world of superlatives.”
My rating: 4.0/5.0 Goodreads: 3.95/5.0
Review: This airy satire of British aristocracy in WWII and the years leading up to it has a subtle, intelligent bite to it. The Radletts are wonderfully over-the-top and they speak a dialect of their own; a breezy flow that is a pleasure to read. The book has all the usual pleasures of a society novel—there are grand parties, unwise love affairs, eccentric relatives—but beneath all the frothy delights, there is an uncurrent of sadness, the sense of a time lost forever, which adds depth to the novel and makes the ending feel like a perfect fit.
Note: The Mitford sisters—who served as inspiration for their sister’s novel—were deeply involved with fascism (and in one case communism), but serious political discussion is not part of this novel.
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Top Ten Reads of 2023
10. The Odyssey - Homer, trans. Emily Wilson
Wilson’s beautifully clear and compelling translation of this classic made me fall in love with the story all over again.
9. Ducks - Kate Beaton
A simple, quiet graphic memoir that depicts loneliness, sexual harassment, and the exploitation of workers without embellishment or judgement.
8. To Calais, in Ordinary Time - James Meek
So entertaining that it makes reading its pseudo-Middle English a breeze, this darkly comic story of a Medieval journey is both horrifying and touching in parts, providing a window into the foreign country of the past.
7. The Blacktongue Thief - Christopher Buehlman
Even with the perilously high stakes, this high-fantasy story about a thief finding himself caught up in world events is incredibly funny, largely due to its narrative voice. But that’s not all—underneath the jokes lies a complex and intriguing plot.
6. River of the Gods - Candice Millard
The story of the fascinating rivalry between two English explorers searching for the source of the Nile grows to encompass all the themes of Victorian-era colonial exploration.
5. The Hands of the Emperor - Victoria Goddard
The past matters just as much as the present in this high fantasy story, as Cliopher Mdang, who has been secretary to the emperor for many years, works to change the world he lives in. Relationships are the core of this story in spite of its epic scope—Cliopher’s with the emperor, with his friends, with his family, and with his homeland.
4. The Mountain in the Sea - Ray Nayler
A deeply moving story about loneliness and connection, told through a plot involving an android, sentient octopuses, AI romantic partners, hacking, and robot monks.
3. Fifth Sun - Camilla Townsend
This history of the Mexica or Aztec people made me rethink how history can be written. Townsend uses sources with as much creativity as historical analysis to create an imaginative, powerful narrative that centers the Mexica experience.
2. Piranesi - Susanna Clarke
An absolutely gorgeous novella that conjures a lovely and lonely world of a labyrinth with a single inhabitant, revealing a conspiratorial plot with perfect deliberation.
1. Boom Town - Sam Anderson
I have no interest in Oklahoma City or its history and yet this book drew me in and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. It’s not just the bizarre events it recounts—OKC’s theft of a basketball team, their founding within a single chaotic hour, the total destruction of the city’s downtown to make way for a new city that never came—it’s the way those events are told. Anderson links together the seemingly unrelated with a cohesive narrative that is as quietly tragic as it is bizarre.
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Honorable Mentions 2023
These are all books that didn't make my top 10, but that hovered just below that list.
Strange Beasts of China - Yan Ge
I don’t think this book of strung-together short stories was technically perfectly, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the strange, melancholy world that it conjured, where humans and bizarre beasts live uneasily together.
What Moves the Dead - T. Kingfisher
A creepy novella of fungi, the undead, and the decay of the aristocracy, this is gothic horror done really well.
Poverty, by America - Matthew Desmond
A targeted attack on policies and social behaviors that keep the poor poor in America. Not only does Desmond point out the issues with lightning clarity, he also offers direct, actionable solutions.
A Restless Truth - Freya Marske
It's rare that I read a sequel and even rarer that I enjoy it even more than the first book. High-stakes intrigue combines perfectly with fantasy and a heart-wrenching sapphic romance, all aboard an Edwardian cruise ship.
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Twyford Code - Janice Hallett
Summary: In a series of voice messages sent to his estranged son, Steven Smith details his quest to discover what happened to his teacher Miss Isles on a fateful school trip forty years ago. As Steven explores his past, he becomes involved in a greater mystery that had consumed Miss Isles, that of the Twyford Code, the conspiracy that a secret code was hidden in the books of WWII-era children’s author Edith Twyford.
Quote: “You must understand that two people may have different memories of the same thing. And both are correct.”
My rating: 3.0/5.0 Goodreads: 3.64/5.0
Review: Lots of fun, and even if not particularly brilliant, the mystery has layers that are trickier and more complex than they first appear. I was a little nervous about the promise of acrostics and codes-neither of which are my thing-but the reader has to do zero code-cracking on their own. All they have to do is follow along as Steve and then his son solve the mystery. Steve is a charming narrator, also more complex than he first appears. However, like in Hallett’s other work, The Appeal, the explanations at the end of the book are too long and the twist is overexplained. The first ten hours of the audiobook went fast, the rest far too slow.
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Wagnerism - Alex Ross
Summary: A sweeping cultural history of the influence of Wagner and the obsession with his work from his own time to the present day.
Quote: “In the face of a sacred monster like Wagner, what power do spectators have? Are we necessarily subject to the domination of his works, complicit in their ideology? Or, in embracing them, can we take possession of them and remake them in our own image?”
My rating: 3.0/5.0 Goodreads: 4.18/5.0
Review: Working with interesting and original material and full of intriguing ideas, this book is still something of a slog. A big part of the issue is the incredibly wide scope. Ross spends too much time explaining specific and complex ideas only to have to rush on to the next thing to fit it all in. The engaging human detail is often taken over by long explanations of theory. Some narrative strands were strong enough to keep me pulling forward—Wagner’s vile antisemitism and the constant refashioning of Wagner for political purposes were both interesting themes—but reading this book often felt like work.
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Black Sun - Rebecca Roanhorse
Summary: As the Sun Priest and her priesthood prepare for the winter solstice and simultaneous solar eclipse in the powerful, but divided, city of Tova, a young man with mysterious powers heads towards the city on a mission of revenge.
Quote: “It is said that crows can remember the faces of men who hurt them and do not forgive. They will carry a grudge against their tormentor until their deaths and pass on their resentment to their children. It is how they survive.”
My rating: 4.0/5.0 Goodreads: 4.20/5.0
Review: Refreshingly original world building based on the pre-Columbian Americas combined with a well-paced, many-layered plot make this an engaging read. The story successfully navigates multiple plotlines with different narrators, stretching across a large and diverse continent. A priest struggles to retain power, a young man faces his terrible destiny, a captain of a ship takes a risky job, and a warrior learns that his mother has been murdered; somehow these all come together beautifully. My one slight issue is with the narrators. They’re all very interesting but I had trouble connecting with them, perhaps because Roanhorse has a tendency to tell rather than show when it comes to emotions. This book had a satisfying arc, but it is definitely not a standalone, and I look forward to reading the sequel and seeing where the plot goes next.
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