Rabbit Hole #45: In/Out July 31-Aug. 6

I've decided to do just a quick reading snapshot each week so I can talk a little more about the books I've read, rather than just listing all of them at the end of the month. (I'm still going to do that, though, to keep track of my reading challenge progress.)  I've taken the idea from a Book Riot feature called Inbox/Outbox, which I highly recommend checking out. Be careful, though: you may find your to-be-read list growing very quickly!

Recently Purchased 

 Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home by Kim Sunee

Sunee was a Korean orphan adopted by a couple from New Orleans. After college she moves to Sweden, falls in love, and moves to France. Interspersed in the memoir are Cajun and French recipes. New Orleans, Europe, and food? Yes, please.

The Chaos by Nalo Hopkinson

A YA dystopian novel following 16 year old Scotch, a mixed race teen whose skin is being covered by an unremovable sticky black substance. Then her brother disappears in a bubble of light, and everyone in town starts changing. This sounds like a refreshing take on the popular dystopian genre.

Recently Finished

Villa America by Liza Klaussmann (3 stars)

I had really high hopes for this. I absolutely love the 1920s and the mischief and mayhem of the Lost Generation writers and their set. And while this did give me some of what I was looking for (the Murphys, Fitzgeralds, Picasso, Hemingway, Dos Passos, etc.), I felt let down. Other than the Murphys, the others were just caricatures, lacking the depth that made these individuals so intriguing. The connections between some individuals are also never explained (Dorothy Parker doesn't show up until the last 100 pages, and then she's shown as a beloved, indispensable member of the circle, even though she's never mentioned prior to that.) The use of letters in random spots also makes for some awkward reading, especially since Klausmann sometimes uses real letters, and then uses real letters but switches who they are to/from, or then uses fictional letters. It gets a bit messy. I do like the discussion of LGBT themes and how those relationships were addressed in the 1920s; although, I think she could have gone a bit further with that. All in all, a fun summer read, but not exactly what I wanted.

Currently Reading

The Round House by Louise Erdrich--This follows an Ojibwe woman in North Dakota who has been attacked and her 13 year old son who tries to unravel what happened.

The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi--I've read the first volume of this graphic memoir before, but never the second. Satrapi chronicles her life in Iran before, during, and after the Revolution (as well as her high school years in Vienna).

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander--I know I've been reading this for a while, even though it's not a difficult read nor a particularly long one. Because the information it contains is so important and so vital to understand our society today, I'm taking this one slowly. Hopefully I'll finish this upcoming week.