Redhead Said
Redhead's Reading
After graduating college, I noticed that I had a lot more free time and a lot fewer reading assignments. After years of collecting books from numerous places and always assuring myself that, “I’ll read them one day,” I decided that book reviews would be a great way to work through my collection. Since then, it has become a way to hold myself to an achievable reading and writing goal; at least one book and one post per month, and I have been consistent since 2021.
With these reviews, I like to share what stood out to me and made me think, give proper credit to the authors, and hopefully give readers a way of finding new books.
I hope you enjoy these book reviews for your own enjoyment and possible reading list inspiration. I’ll warn you if I spill any spoilers, I promise!
2024 Books
January- Second Act
Author: Danielle Steel
Pages: 304
Three words: repetitive, obvious, sweet
Quote: "He wondered why he didn't love her. She was perfect in many ways, intelligent, interesting, well-traveled, glamorous, charming when she wanted to be. He enjoyed her company and was used to her, but there was a part of him she never reached, and he knew she never would. He was never sure how sincere she was, and no matter what happened, she never touched his heart.”
February- Rebecca
Author: Daphne du Maurier
Pages:
Three words: elegant, unsettling, detailed
Quote: “I wanted to go back again, to recapture the moment that had gone, and then it came to me that if we did it would not be the same, even the sun would be changed in the sky…”
March- In the Garden of Beasts
Author: Erik Larson
Pages:
Three words: immersive, revealing, political
Quote: "'Nowhere have I had such lovely friends as in Germany,' she wrote. 'Looking back on it all is like seeing someone you love go mad- and do horrible things.'"
March- Eight Perfect Murders
Author: Peter Swanson
Pages: 304
Three words: dissatisfying, entertaining, narrative
Quote: “'What choice do I have?' she’d finally said.
'You could leave him.'
She shook her head. 'I’d rather wait for him.'
'Even if you have to wait forever?' I said.
She nodded in response.”
April- Empire Falls
Author: Richard Russo
Pages:
Three words: homey, slick, lively
Quote: “Slow, Tick decides. Things happen slow… Just because things happen slow doesn’t mean you’ll be ready for them… 'Slow' works on an altogether different principle, on the deceptive impression that there’s plenty of time to prepare, which conceals the central fact, that no matter how slow things go, you’ll always be slower.”
May- Double Blind
Author: Edward St. Aubyn
Pages:
Three words: routine, scientific, questionable
Quote: “And yet, despite this over-attainment of his teenage grandiosity, he still didn’t feel as if he had arrived at his destination.”
June- Bright Young Women
Author: Jessica Knoll
Pages:
Three words: natural, current, bingeable
Quote: “I stood staring at the freshly made bed, thinking about how much of my life I’d spent feeling simultaneously like a child and the only adult in the room. Why couldn’t people just do their jobs? Why was it that I could rely only on myself?”
July- A Woman's Life
Author: Henri Rene Albert Guy de Maupassant
Pages:
Three words: reflective, disillusioned, charming
Quote: “You see, life is never as good or as bad as one thinks.”
August- The White Woman on the Green Bicycle
Author: Monique Roffey
Pages:
Three words: doomed, honest, political
Quote: “Win her. Maybe he could. Not with his songs or dancing or poems, no, bollocks to that. He would write, write. Write something which might actually matter, for once.”
September- A House for Mr. Biswas
Author: V.S. Naipaul
Pages: 560
Three words: slow, difficult, anticlimactic
Quote: “Time would never be dismissed again. No action would merely lead to another; every action was a part of his life which could not be recalled; therefore thought had to be given to every action: the opening of a matchbox, the striking of a match. Slowly, then, as though unused to his limbs, and concentrating hard, he had his evening bath, cooked his meal, ate it, washed up, and settled down in his rocking chair to pass - no, to use, to enjoy, to live - the evening. The house was unimportant. The evening, in this room, was all that mattered.”
September- Transcendent Kingdom
Author: Yaa Gyasi
Pages: 288
Three words: reconciliatory, heavy, mysterious
Quote: “I think we’re made out of stardust and God made the stars.”
October- Frankenstein
Author: Mary Shelley
Pages:
Three words: unexpected, picturesque, introspective
Quote: “A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquility of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved, Caesar would have spared his country, America would have been discovered more gradually, and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.”
November- The Picture of Dorian Gray
Author: Oscar Wilde
Pages:
Three words: suggestive, periodic, dramatic
Quote: “Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you.”
November- The Housekeepers
Author: Alex Hay
Pages: 368
Three words: secretive, imaginative, equivocating
Quote: “'You know the rules. If you need to make someone feel small, so that you can feel tall…'
Mrs. Bone recited the rest. 'Then, my goodness, my dear, you’re no person at all. Quite right. I taught you that myself. You should all listen to that, my girls.'”
December- The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
Pages: 400
Three words: biographical, complex, binegable
Quote: “‘I’ve spent a very long time learning how to…spin the truth,’ she says. ‘It’s hard to undo that wiring. I’ve gotten too good at it, I think. Just now, I wasn’t exactly sure how to tell the truth. I don't have very much practice in it. It feels antithetical to my very survival. But I’ll get there.’”
December- Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk
Author: Kathleen Rooney
Pages:
Three words: relatable, proper, hopeful
Quote: “A motto favored by the ancients was solvitur ambulando: It is solved by walking. Sometimes, I might add, by walking out.”
December- A Christmas Carol
Author: Charles Dickens
Pages:
Three words: short, moral, otherworldly
Quote: “‘It is required of every man,’ the Ghost returned, ‘that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world - oh woe is me! - and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!’”
2023 Books
January- Tales from the Cafe
Author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Pages: 256
Three words: repetitive, sweet, easy
Quote: "When spring begins, however, cannot be pinpointed to one particular moment, There is no one day that clearly marks when winter ends and spring begins. Spring hides inside winter. We notice it emerging with our eyes, our skin and other senses. We find it in new buds, a comfortable breeze and the warmth of the sun. It exists alongside winter."
February- The Daughter of Doctor Moreau
Author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Pages: 320
Three words: unexpected, exciting, fantastical
Quote: “‘I don’t want anything to change,’ she said.
‘It’s inevitable.’”
March- Dizzy City
Author: Nicholas Griffin
Pages: 384
Three words: illuminating, complex, unresolved
Quote: “It made Ben want to weep to think that their friendship had not lasted out the war. They were all right that night in the open, in the shell hole; they’d been laughing, hadn't they? They’d been friends again… Why had such an unhappy memory etched itself so deeply? Why only the cruel words and not the love they had felt for each other?”
April- Jane
Author: Dee Wells/Alberta Constance Chapman
Pages: 317
Three words: outdated, unexpected, sentimental
Quote: “It seems extraordinary too the way everything important happens by accident. Not little things. Little things you can control. You can find the right pink sandals to go with the pink dress. You can test-dye a bit of your hair before you shove your head in a bucketful. You can phone for a weather report before you go out sailing. You can even wait for a better invitation before saying yes to the Creep-Bores’ dinner party.
But with big things you don’t get a chance or even a choice. It was only because he’d missed a train to Cambridge that Franklin was at that party where I met him. And I hadn’t even been invited; I’d just gone with somebody who had. I still don’t know whose party it was or what it was for, or anything, and yet those people and their party changed my whole life. If it hadn’t been for them, I wouldn’t be lying here on the floor now getting drunk and thinking about going to live in Dayton. Jesus. And some people believe in free will.”
May- City of Light
Author: Lauren Belfer
Pages: 512
Three words: expressive, hopeful, dissatisfying
Quote: "And when I rise in the gray shadows of dawn, a cooling breeze coming through the open window, my hair flowing around me, my nightdress loose, my body warm beneath it, I gaze in the mirror and see myself for what I am: a woman of feeling, desire, even beauty. Then step by step I create the person I must be: The warm, free body becomes corseted and covered with a high-collared navy-blue dress; the flowing hair is twisted into a tight bun; sturdy shoes take the place of bare feet. What do I hide? My joy, my memories, my dreams of those I've loved and what they might have been, my mind harkening back to the time when I knew them still."
June- World's Fair
Author: E.L. Doctorow
Pages: 304
Three words: narrative, plotless, historical
Quote: “He loved the great city of stone-it made him catch his breath and laugh. I understood, studying him, that his mind made a design of it. There was the appearance of it, which I knew, a dazzle of noise and disparate intention, jackhammers punching holes in the street, cars and trucks flowing past obstructions, yellow cabs with their skylights, double-decker buses, the great liners in the harbor blowing their basso horns; but in reality all of it was somehow arranged, it was a place of accommodation for human desire, it supported the diverse intentions of millions of people simultaneously, and he knew that and gave me the confidence to understand it and not be afraid.”
June- The Notebook
Author: Nicholas Sparks
Pages: 272
Three words: derivative, fast-paced, heartfelt
Quote: “And I learned what is obvious to a child. That life is simply a collection of little lives, each lived one day at a time. That each day should be spent finding beauty in flowers and poetry and talking to animals. That a day spent with dreaming and sunsets and refreshing breezes cannot be bettered. But most of all, I learned that life is about sitting on benches next to ancient creeks with my hand on her knee and sometimes, on good days, for falling in love.”
July- The Wedding
Author: Nicholas Sparks
Pages: 336
Three words: sequential, sweet, optimistic
Quote: “But love, I've come to understand, is more than three words mumbled before bedtime. Love is sustained by action, a pattern of devotion in the things we do for each other every day.”
July- The Smart One
Author: Jennifer Close
Pages: 432
Three words: relatable, realistic, perceptive
Quote: "Child, listen. You're on a journey. You didn't like the way life was going, so you're rewriting your own story. That's what you have to do. You don't see it now, but this is the most important part of your life. If you don't like the story that's being told about your own life, you've got to change it. You've got to tell a different story."
August- The Space Between Us
Author: Thrity Umrigar
Pages: 336
Three words: cultural, sensational, cruel
Quote: "So this is how a heart breaks, Bhima thought. This is how cold, how delicate, how exquisite it feels, like the high-pitched violin note on the classical music records that Serabai played. Bhima wanted to hug Maya and kill her, to rescue her and destroy her, all in the same explosive moment."
August- Fiona Range
Author: Mary McGarry Morris
Pages: 432
Three words: emphatic, rushed, dramatic
Quote: “She stared at the diffusion of light on the windowshade. Beyond a distant affection she felt nothing. Nothing but complete self-disgust. She was a fool. Her days had been wasted in empty places, her energy spent on troubled people who could never love her.”
September- Behold the Dreamers
Author: Imbolo Mbue
Pages: 400
Three words: dynamic, insightful, unexpected
Quote: “'It’s the fear that kills us, Leah,' Jende said. 'Sometimes it happens and it is not even as bad as the fear. That is what I have learned in this life. It is the fear.'”
October- Golden Hill
Author: Francis Spufford
Pages: 302
Three words: archaic, mysterious, political
Quote: “He had believed till that instant that he hated her, but to hate a strong enemy, full of resource and will, is to continue to admire, after a fashion, especially if what you hate you also find beautiful.”
November- Poe & Fanny
Author: John May
Pages: 336
Three words: fictional, doomed, lively
Quote: “Amazed by how many ways he could find to say essentially the same thing, he tried to vary the structure, but almost always it came down to the same message: 'Hurry back; life is dreadful without you.'”
December- Blue Rise
Author: Rebecca Hill
Pages: 304
Three words: honest, reflective, emotional
Quote: “I am here because my life doesn’t work, and in taking the thing apart and putting it back together again, I don’t seem to find enough pieces. I think it’s possible I may have left some of them here. I think I have come here because this place may have a piece of my puzzle.”
January- The Shack
Author: William P Young
Pages: 256
Three words: heartbreaking, uplifting, revolutionary
Quote: “...don’t forget that in the midst of all your pain and heartache, you are surrounded by beauty, the wonder of creation, art, your music and culture, the sounds of laughter and love, of whispered hopes and celebrations, of new life and transformation, of reconciliation and forgiveness. These also are the results of your choices, and every choice matters, even the hidden ones.”
February- Scandalous Women
Author: Elizabeth Kerri Mahon
Pages: 304
Three words: witty, surprising, telling
Quote: “In five thousand years of recorded history, from the ancient world to the present day, women have caused wars, created drama, defied the rules, and brought men to their knees.”
March- A Bend in the Road
Author: Nicholas Sparks
Pages: 432
Three words: foreshadowing, emotional, romantic
Quote: “Where does a story truly begin? In life, there are seldom clear-cut beginnings, those moments when we can, in looking back, say that everything started. Yet there are moments when fate intersects with our daily lives, setting in motion a sequence of events whose outcome we could never have foreseen.”
April- The Time Traveler's Wife
Author: Audrey Niffenegger
Pages: 537
Three words: nonlinear, suspenseful, heart-wrenching
Quote: “‘This. For so short a time. How can we sleep this time away?’
‘We can be quiet together, and pretend… that we have all the time in the world.’
‘And every day we shall have less. And then none.’
‘Would you rather, therefore, have had nothing at all?’
‘No. This is where I have always been coming to… And when I go away from here, this will be the mid-point, to which everything ran, before, and from which everything will run. But now, my love, we are here, we are now, and those other times are running elsewhere.’
-A.S. Byatt, Possession”
May- Heads by Harry
Author: Lois-Ann Yamanaka
Pages: 311
Three words: native, familiar, vibrant
Quote: “To make everything exactly the way I wanted it was the challenge... You hear me, Toni? The challenge. And in the end, I look at my work. Was the best I could do.”
May- A Woman of Independent Means
Author: Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey
Pages: 276
Three words: native, familiar, vibrant
Quote: “Our lives are all on loan and none of us knows when the mortgage will fall due.”
“Life is our only defense against death.”
June- True Believer
Author: Nicholas Sparks
Pages: 322
Three words: mysterious, descriptive, unlikely
Quote: “As unlikely as an event might seem, as long as it is theoretically possible, it more than likely would happen sometime, somewhere, to someone.”
July- Our Hearts Were Young and Gay
Author: Cornelia Otis Skinner
Pages: 195
Three words: descriptive, humorous, reflective
Quote: “...and the date June 10th, the year of our Lord I shan’t say which, because Emily and I have now reached the time in life when not only do we lie about our ages, we forget what we’ve said they are.”
July- One Italian Summer
Author: Rebecca Serle
Pages: 272
Three words: inviting, sincere, unexpected
Quote: “The understanding that she is gone now… She will not call. She will not hold me anymore, her arms enveloping me in her certainty, her presence. There is so much life ahead to lead without her, and she is gone.”
“I hope you find the peace and confidence it takes to trust where your path leads. Remember, it is only yours. Others can wave and cheer, but no one can give you directions.”
August- The Ragged Way People Fall out of Love
Author: Elizabeth Cox
Pages: 203
Three words: confusing, emotional, charming
Quote: “If he had a diary (which he knew he would never have), he would put in it things he did each day but wouldn’t write down anything he thought about. He would never put his thoughts on paper, even if he kept it locked. So as Franci read to him, his ideas about physical bravery changed, because he knew he could not measure up to her kind of courage.”
September- The Little Paris Bookshop
Author: Nina George
Pages: 392
Three words: unexpected, sympathetic, adventurous
Quote: “I wanted to treat feelings that are not recognized as afflictions and are never diagnosed by doctors… The feeling that washes over you when another summer nears its end. Or when you recognize that you haven’t got your whole life left to find out where you belong. Or the slight sense of grief when a friendship doesn’t develop as you thought, and you have to continue your search for a lifelong companion. Or those birthday morning blues. Nostalgia for the air of your childhood. Things like that.”
October- The Silent Patient
Author: Alex Michaelides
Pages: 323
Three words: brilliant, inticing, informed
Quote: “I keep feeling the need to get out of the house. When I’m around other people, even if it’s only the bored waitress in here, I feel connected to the world somehow, like a human being.”
October- American Psycho
Author: Bret Easton Ellis
Pages: 399
Three words: monotonous, horrible, reflective
Quote: “An hour later. We’re still debating. We have canceled the reservation at Kaktus and maybe someone has remade it. Confused, I actually cancel a nonexistent table at Zeus Bar. Jeanette has left her apartment and cannot be reached at home and I have no idea which restaurant she's going to, nor do I remember which one I told Evelyn to meet us at. Van Patten, who has already had two large shots of Absolut, asks about Detective Kimball and what we talked about and all I really remember is something like how people fall between cracks.”
October- Homegoing
Author: Yaa Gyasi
Pages: 300
Three words: familial, meaningful, genuine
Quote: “The need to call this thing “good” and this thing “bad”, this thing “white” and this thing “black”, was an impulse that Effia did not understand. In her village, everything was everything. Everything bore the weight of everything else.”
November- The Woman Inside
Author: E.G. Scott
Pages: 325
Three words: tragic, vengeful, mysterious
Quote: “I pause on the picture of my twentysomething-year-old self momentarily to marvel at the beauty of my own young body, and regret not appreciating it while I had it.”
December- Christmas Everlasting
Author: Nora Roberts
Pages: 315
Three words: cheesy, satisfying, resemblant
Quote: “He'd picked up an affection for scuba and white sand, but had never felt that a palm tree replaced a pine at Christmas.”
“Nell didn’t believe in running if walking would get you to the same place.”
December- Silent Night
Author: Mary Higgins Clark
Pages: 177
Three words: suspenseful, touching, just
Quote: “But the blinking lights, the sounds of carols, the ringing bells of sidewalk Santas, and the generally jolly mood of the crowd gave an appropriately festive Christmas Eve atmosphere to the famous thoroughfare.”
January- The Devil in the White City
Author: Erik Larson
Pages: 447
Three words: historic, surprising, local
Quote: “... the exposition was Chicago’s conscience, the city it wanted to become.”
February- Then We Came to the End
Author: Joshua Ferris
Pages: 400
Three words: casual, funny, realistic
Quote: “Our scope was infinite, our reach almighty, our knowledge was complete. Goddamn it, sometimes it felt like we were God. Was it such a blasphemy? We knew everything, we had terrible powers, we would never die.”
March- Women, Work, and the Art of Savoir Faire
Author: Mireille Guiliano
Pages: 272
Three words: reassuring, informative, honest
Quote: “Controlling one’s fears and anxieties by not letting them dictate premature decisions is part of a solid professional skill set. And especially in tough economic times, fear has the tendency to try to pull us by the nose, something that’s hard to fight, but being aware of it helps.”
April- Nevermore
Author: Harold Schechter
Pages: 336
Three words: imaginative, accurate, mysterious
Quote: “Here, I reflected dully, is the gruesome confirmation of an all-too-dismal truth: that nothing in the realm of supernatural terror-not the doings of demons nor the depredations of ghouls-can surpass the atrocities visited regularly by men upon their fellow-beings.”
May- The Dive from Clausen's Pier
Author: Ann Packer
Pages: 432
Three words: sad, provoking, unexpected
Quote: “What was it about fashion ... It was less about beauty than about transformation. Who would I be in a turquoise paisley slip dress and beaded sandals?”
June- Post Grad
Author: Caroline Kitchener
Pages: 320
Three words: honest, accurate, abrupt
Quote: “In his book Emerging Adulthood, Jeffrey Arnett, professor of psychology at Clark University, identifies 'self-focus' as one of the characteristics that makes the period between adolescence and adulthood so unique.”
July- Eight Hundred Grapes
Author: Laura Dave
Pages: 288
Three words: inviting, fun, uncertain
Quote: “Synchronization: The coordination of events to operate in union… Not fate, my father would add. Don’t confuse it with fate. Fate suggests no agency. Synchronization is all about agency.”
August- The Island of Lost Maps
Author: Miles Harvey
Pages: 408
Three words: informative, historic, intriguing
Quote: “Perhaps this explains why our culture uses cartographic and geographic language to express notions of sin and virtue. We speak of a moral compass. We describe good people as following the straight and narrow. We say sinners lost their way, lost their bearings. And in our fables of maps and money, characters are constantly torn between sticking to the path of righteousness and wandering into the wilderness of the soul…”
September- Savannah Blues
Author: Mary Kay Andrews
Pages: 416
Three words: charming, believable, vengeful
Quote: “Tal had never seen me the way I really was. Maybe now I could see myself.”
October- Best Friends
Author: Martha Moody
Pages: 512
Three words: shocking, emotional, transportive
Quote: “You can gussy them up with all the pretty rationales you want, but most major life decisions are whims.”
November- The Lost City of Z
Author: David Grann
Pages: 352
Three words: informative, interpretive, dramatic
Quote: “Fawcett could never take the final leap of a modern anthropologist and accept that complex civilizations were capable of springing up independently of each other. As a result, while some anthropologists and historians today consider Fawcett enlightened for his era, others, like John Hemming, depict him as a “Nietzschean explorer” who spouted, “eugenic gibberish.” In truth, he was both. As much as Fawcett rebelled against Victorian mores- becoming a Buddhist who lived like an Indian warrior- he could never transcend them. He escaped virtually every kind of pathology in the jungle, but he could not rid himself of the pernicious disease of race.”
December- Priestdaddy
Author: Patricia Lockwood
Pages: 352
Three words: real, unscripted, funny
Quote: “The desire to describe voice, gesture, skin color, is a desire to eat, take over, make into part of the pattern. I am happy every time to see a writer fail at this. I am happy every time to see real personhood resist our tricks. I am happy to see bodies insist that they are not shut up in this book, they are elsewhere. The tomb is empty, rejoice, he is not here.”
2020 Books
August- Dirty Girls Social Club
Author: Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
Pages: 320
Three words: relevant, engaging, relatable
Quote: “Why can’t there be one single guy out there as committed as all of us?”