My book reading has really ramped up of late. Here are four more that I recently finished over the past few months:

• Gilead by Marilynne Robinson – It was beautifully written, and I understand why it won so many awards—but I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it. I don’t normally choose to read books that deal so heavily with religion. It felt like a book I’d have been assigned in college, and like the ones I read back then, I suspect a lot of it went right over my heathen head.
• The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi – My first ever Scalzi, despite “knowing” him from Metafilter and social media for years. Basically a fun action movie, sort of the opposite of Gilead. This was loads of plot and world building, and it didn’t matter so much that I could barely tell the characters apart. A nice palate cleanser!
• Circe by Madeline Miller – Ohmygosh, I absolutely loved this and devoured it. It reminded me in a way of The Mists of Avalon, the sense of centering and humanising a female character who had been reduced to a one-dimensional evil sorceress in the original texts. I actually had to stop myself from reading the ending on the flight to my grandmother’s funeral, because I knew it was going to wreck me and I wasn’t in the right mindset for it. It’s so good. It actually inspired me to start reading a translation of The Iliad and to request Miller’s Song of Achilles book from the library.
• All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1) by Martha Wells – Not gonna lie, I picked this one up because of the upcoming show with Skargård. Thankfully it’s pretty good! I blasted through it in my single day of travel chaos, and it kept me from getting too stressed waiting in airports and on runways. The story is pretty simple and straightforward, but the world building is well done and the plot well-paced. The ending surprised me a bit, so I’m excited to see where the series goes. Already requested the second one!

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