January Stack

Chilly months mean long reads and cozy comics

Welcome to my first monthly stack! These will be a rundown of everything I’ve read over the month. Let’s dig in!

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

This novel follows an aristocrat on house arrest in a Moscow hotel from 1922 to 1954. While his country goes through drastic changes, he must define a life within the walls of the Metropol. I found this book so extremely charming and couldn’t put it down.

Delicious: The Evolution of Flavor and How It Made Us Human by Rob Dunn and Mónica Sánchez

The authors’ premise is that taste has been overly ignored in our studies of biology and anthropology. I learned a lot of interesting facts and stories reading this (for example, the same food tastes completely different to different animals based on what chemical elements they need nutritionally) but it never quite came together as a cohesive book for me.

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh

Listen. Is this a good book? No. Is it fun though? Definitely. I cruised through this and it feels like a cross between Ender’s Game, Hunger Games, and Into the Spider-Verse.

Erasure by Percival Everett

I’m now very fully in the Percival Everett fan club and delighted to discover he’s written over 30 books. This novel is the basis for the movie American Fiction (cannot wait to see it!). It follows a Black writer with a limited audience getting frustrated and writing a parody book full of offensive tropes of Black life, and then struggling with how it’s received. Both the story of Erasure and the writing were excellent, and the entirety of the “fake” novel is part of the book.

Sheets by Brenna Thummler

I’m slowly adding more comics into my reading, largely through the Hoopla app and linking my library card. I really loved the tone, story, and illustrations in Sheets, a comic about a 13 year-old girl trying to keep her family’s laundry business afloat and a ghost named Wendell struggling with his adjustment to death. It’s deeply funny, sad, and heartwarming, and I’m excited to read the other two in the series.

Going Infinite by Michael Lewis

This was well written and approached, but I was only moderately interested in Sam Bankman-Fried as a subject. Michael Lewis seems open-minded and fair in his coverage of the crypto exchange FTX and gave solid explanations of various crypto and trading concepts. The book follows the formation, huge success, and crash of the company ending in arrests. It’s a bit anticlimactic that Lewis’s take on “to what degree was it malicious fraud, incompetence, or boredom with details?” is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but, still interesting.

Taproot by Keezy Young

This comic was sweet and spooky and the illustrations are really pretty. The story felt only half thought out to me but I love the sentiment in part of the author bio: “She draws and writes the stories she wanted to see more of growing up—stories starring queer characters, brightness, a little creepiness, and a lot of heart.”

That does it for January! If I had to recommend just one book, it’s definitely Erasure. I’m leaning in to the ridiculousness I started and sharing the kitties’ picks too. Sazerac recommends Sheets because he adores warm laundry. Margot loved Going Infinite because she admires a fellow scammer.

What have you read/are you reading this month? Any recommendations?