March and April 2023 books

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Third reading March 2023. Still five stars but I don't love this book as much as I used to! Until this re-reading, I would have said this was one of my all-time favorite books. I'm not sure it is anymore and I'm also not sure how to feel about that! I suppose people change, including me, and I've also read like literally almost a thousand books since I first read this one so it's only natural that I'd encounter other books I like more. I also have a lot less patience these days for the ol' mild-wife-beating-as-a-character-trait thing that Dickens likes to do, which made Jerry Cruncher less fun than he ought to be.

But gosh darnit, Sydney Carton!!! Halfway through the book I was ready to DOCK A STAR from one of my all-time favorite books and then he came rushing in during that incredible final stretch of the plot, Mysterious Loner Dude-ing it up in the freaking BASTILLE and I was like oh yeah that's why I love this book!!

(Just not quite as much as I used to.)

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One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway by Åsne Seierstad
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Second reading March 2023. Made me sob again.

First reading November 2015: Perfection. This book made me sob. Not cry, sob. I am amazed at how the author turned what is ostensibly a book about a monster into a book about warm, intelligent, ambitious teenagers and the challenges they overcame and the good they accomplished before their lives were cut short. Masterfully done.

Edited to clarify: don't get me wrong, the bulk of this book, as far as page-count goes, is focused on a monster. Sometimes it was hard to wade through so much evil, though I did feel like Seierstad never sensationalized it or dwelt unnecessarily on the horror of it all. The magical part to me was that after finishing a book about a mass murder, I didn't feel dirty or weighed down or depressed. Instead, I felt the goodness and light and cheer of those murdered kids and their families. I'm still not sure how the author did it, but that's the effect I was left with.

View all my reviews The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime by William Langewiesche
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was introduced to Langewiesche's writing in 2016 via an article in The Atlantic about the sinking of the MS Estonia. It immediately became one of my favorite articles ever and I found myself re-reading it once a year or so (we take the ferry to Stockholm sometimes and reading about the worst that could happen calms me for some reason). So imagine my absolute joy (and outrage that I hadn't been informed!!!) when I found out recently that Langewiesche had written a whole BOOK about topics similar to that favorite article of mine! The connecting thread for the book is essentially "things that happen on the sea" - it's not quite just the shipping industry or maritime law, it's not quite just piracy, or shipwrecks, or shipbreaking, but all of those things. And the result is so fascinating and intensely readable (I finished this book in a single afternoon). He gives over more than one chapter to the MS Estonia and some of it is a repeat of that original article but there is also lots of new stuff!

View all my reviews Two Sisters: A Father, His Daughters, and Their Journey into the Syrian Jihad by Åsne Seierstad
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I sometimes wish Seierstad wasn't such a good writer. The way she's able to convey the descent into extremism, and a family's pain at losing their children...it's too much sometimes. This book is a good companion to Guest House for Young Widows - that book has a wider scope where this one stays focused on a particular family (for the most part).

View all my reviews Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun by Elle Cosimano
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This one took a little longer to get going but I had a really fun time reading it!

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