Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid [Kindle, $13.99]

I made a note of this book after seeing an interview with Kiley Reid by Trevor Noah. Trevor endorsed her book, and I figure he knows good books.

Interestingly, it’s centers around a black babysitter taking care of a white child in a supermarket, where she is accosted by store security on suspician of kidnapping.

i started reading it before the most recent momentum from the Black Lives Matter movement kicked in; it turned out to be serendipitious reading material.

And interesting, and entertaining. Trevor didn’t let me down.

The Glass Hotel By Emily St. John Mandel

By the author of Station 11, which was fantastic.

This was a fine read. It had a story, but felt more like a collection of character sketches. I don’t mean that in necessarily a bad way, I stayed engaged throughout. The ending got a bit supernatural for my taste, in what was otherwise a very grounded novel.

The plot involves a Madoff-like Ponzi scheme and an isolated hotel, and the characters that inhabit both.

Worth a read, but try Station 11 first.

I liked it well enough to try some of her other works.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe: A Novel by Charles Yu

This is fine.

Definitely melancholic, and there’s interesting worldbuilding with a blur between time travel and inhabiting fictional universes, but father issues aren’t my topic of choice.

Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman [Kindle, $8.99]

Great book of short stories, I guess you would call them, each describing a potential afterlife. A writer friend recommended this, and it did not disappoint.

Funny, interesting, thought-provoking. 10/10, would read again.

The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia: A Novel by Mary Helen Stefaniak [Kindle, $9.99]

Loved this novel.

I came across it because I was taking an SAT practice test with my son, and one of the questions had an excerpt from this novel. The excerpt was probably the most amusing bit of writing I’ve ever seen in a standardized test so I needed to get the rest of it.

There’s some fun literary fugues going on in this book… a person tells a story about someone who then tells a story about someone who then tells a story and so on about 7 layers down. And then, when you’ve finished the book, you can visit the Baghdad, Georgia website, and go one level up from the novel. There are layers, people.

All in all, this is a rollicking, amusing, touching and well-written novel, probably my favorite this year.

I picked up the other couple works by Stefanick, and they did not disappoint either.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers Book 1) by Becky Chambers [Kindle, $6.99]

This was an alternative family sci-fi story, like Firefly. Put a bunch of different personalities in a small ship and watch them bond. There’s some decent world building going on here, but not enough that I needed to look for Book 2.

There is a decent message here about accepting different cultures, sexualities, etc.

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson [Kindle, $12.99]

An odd and interesting tale of children who spontaneously catch fire, and the nanny hired to take care of them.

I’m not sure what the author is trying to say with this story. Something about class, and wealth, maybe?

At any rate, a very engaging tale.