January 2022 books

The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us by Lucy Jones
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was so good! I loved how it combined a science perspective with a social science perspective - looking at the how/when/why but also the who/what next. If anything, I wanted this book to be longer and give more detail, but the author did a great job keeping things moving along. Very readable.

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Circe by Madeline Miller
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I read this book in essentially two days, but those two days were about a week apart. It caught (and every once in a while lost) my attention at different times for different reasons - come for the Minotaur, stay for the cuttingly accurate description of caring for a colicky baby! Minor goddesses: they're just like us.

If you've ever read Greek myths and been left wishing you had a bit more of each character's "why", then this is the book for you. It really fleshes the stories out and Circe is a character who I really appreciated getting to know well.

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The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Very charming! Is it weird that I, a straight, really enjoyed reading a romance novel about two dudes falling in love with each other? I hope not, because I found this one to be extremely swoony (also a bit steamy; you can absolutely skip those parts if you need to). It also has a fun reality TV setting/background that would probably be even better for someone who is into The Bachelor (I am not, but I caught most of the references in this book just because of cultural osmosis or whatever).

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Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was not at all what I expected it to be. It's not quite like (what I would consider to be) a standard non-fiction social-science-y book with studies and supporting anecdotes and a clear outline for policy changes or best practices. But it's not NOT that, either. It has some of all those things, and then a lot of illustrative stories taken from things that have happened the past few hundred years in the US, Germany, and India. The end result is extremely readable, even if it's a mostly uncomfortable journey.

Someone on TikTok a few weeks ago laid out a pretty good structure for how a K-12 US history curriculum could teach about slavery, based on how Germany teaches its schoolchildren about World War 2. And this book is basically that - peeling the layers of rewritten history (or just plain untold history) off of the facts and showing how the US thinks we don't have castes, but we totally do, and its in the BONES of our nation and society.

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If the Shoe Fits by Julie Murphy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It was...fine? I enjoyed this book well enough but I also had flashbacks to reading The Selection* (somehow The Charm Offensive - also set in a The Bachelor-esque show - did not have this effect on me). Ultimately, I think my problem is not so much with this book as it is with people (the book's characters) thinking they're going to find true, actual love in three weeks** on The Bachelor. And I just couldn't put that out of my mind.

*(The Selection was actually really fun; it's its sequels that are terrible. But that book takes place in a vague future version of society so it's easier to accept a The Bachelor-type premise. This book takes place in the present-day actual society we live in so I just had a harder time with it.)

**(I actually learned a lot about TV dating show logistics from The Charm Offensive and assuming that book was true to real life, THIS book has it all wrong. In If the Shoe Fits, episodes are filming and airing concurrently, immediately before the live finale, rather than being a few months in the can by the time the show airs. Just sayin'.)

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Miss Moriarty, I Presume? by Sherry Thomas
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm going ever so slightly cold on this series. There are a LOT of characters and a TON of backstory and if you don't remember every twist and turn of the previous books, GOOD LUCK EVERYONE ELSE. Still a solid three-star read on its own, and I suspect it would be even better if read right after its predecessors in the series.

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