76. The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
I'm an infrequent reader of horror and it took me a long time to read my first Stephen Graham Jones book, but boy I loved Mapping the Interior and I decided to read this one. It was great! Amazing! But way more horror than Mapping the Interior, which means I learned (again!) that I "close my eyes" when it gets to the really gory stuff and ignore it, which can be considered a bit problematic considering important plot points are based on these events! But, but! I think this book is amazing! What happens when a group of friends violate a group and a cultural tradition? This book examines that. And I loved it! So fascinating! And the relationships between the friends, their families, and their surroundings (both society and nature)! Loved it!! Even though I "closed my eyes"!
77. Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin, translated by Chi-Young Kim, and read by Mark Bramhall, Samantha Quan, Janet Song, and Bruce Turk
This book is very much an examination of the role of a mother in a family and how they took her for granted and the rude awakening they all go through in the wake of her disappearance. The knowledge that they didn't really know her and that they just brushed past her without really seeing her value.
78. Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana , translated by Megan McDowell, and read by Tanya Eby
This short story collection is a ride with a range of stories from literary to horror to supernatural. Since it is a translation, it allows you a glimpse into a world that might not be familiar to you.
79. The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows by Olivia Waite and read by Morag Sims
This is a "sequel" to The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics but in that way of romance series where it picks up with a minor character from the book. It didn't grab me quite the way Lady's Guide did, but I did enjoy it and loved the bees and the fact the women were older (though I don't think that cover indicates that!!). It's still about women being empowered and finding their way through a patriarchal world and succeeding! So that's awesome!
80. The Mythic Dream edited by Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe
This is an awesome collection of myths reimagined by some incredible authors. Highly recommend it!
I've read 80 books and 61 were by woman, 15 were by men, 3 were anthologies by both women and men, 1 was by a nonbinary author, and 9 1/2 were translations. My year of reading lots of women and at least 12 translations is going well in that I've read mostly female authors, but the world is going through a pandemic and state sanctioned murders in the form of police brutality with a horrible man still at the helm and supported by horrible men in the Congress. In short this year has been really rough. What will this global health crisis leave us with? What changes will we make, not only in terms of the huge inequities of our health system where people of color and the poor (which let's face it- the system works really hard to ensure that people of color, especially black people, are poor) are more than extremely disadvantaged, but also all the other ways in which our society, our systems, actively damage people of color? Only time will tell. But I hope it is a greater sense of community, a need to care for one and another and support each other, not just people with the same colored skin as ourselves, not just people with the same sized wallet as ours. My naive? hope is all of this isolation leaves us wanting to lift each other up and not hold others down.
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