Buddy Read: Kin by Tayari Jones and a GIVEAWAY

Other novels by Tayari Jones:
Silver Sparrow
An American Marriage

One of my 2026 goals was to to do a buddy read and I decided a fun way to do it was to go local. Sarah lives close to me and she posted late in 2025 a list of books she wanted to read in the first quarter of 2026 and one of those book was Kin by Tayari Jones. It just so happened that I also wanted to read Kin, so we met up twice over the last few weeks and talked about it.

Sarah's copy from Book of the Month.

What we have here is the story of two black girls, both without mothers, who grow up in the small town of Honeysuckle, Louisiana. One heads off to college, the other heads off to whorehouses and smoky bars. But their lives remain interconnected as we follow them. 

I was a bit nervous to read this book because I heard it was about mother/daughter and sister relationships and that's a bit of a sore spot for me. But I like Tayari Jones so much that I decided to just go for it. 

Look, this book was so good. The characters are full and interesting and contradictory and make decisions that are both smart and foolish. They do dumb things in the name of love, they suffer from actions taken by others years before they were born, and they make you question what is right and what should cause shame. 

My favorite thing about Tayari Jones is her observational writing and how funny she can be. 

Consider the following:

This was Louisiana in 1941. We were colored. Something was always wrong. (location 184) 

I never did without. I was always tidy and well lotioned. (location 218)

“Don’t ever let no man murder you,” she said. “If you let a man kill you, I will not bring you flower the first.” (location 264)

Bobo had some strange short-dude magic that earned him panties for days. (location 991)

An “I love you” that is out in the world unanswered bedevils a space, like the ghost of a whore in Mississippi. (location 3473)

I used the word “motherfucker,” which wasn’t like me at all. But it’s the sort of word that, if you need it, no other word will do. (location 3856)

...he was as ordinary as a pan of cornbread. (location 4011)

"...He insisted on moving through the world penis-first. Bet he won’t do that again.” (location 4016)

...worked for his in-laws as a mediocre accountant. (location 4804)

I just feel like these are all funny - some in a dark way, but funny nonetheless - and point out real truths that you may or may not have even considered before. How come there are so many short dudes who have such crazy charisma? How do you know by looking at someone that they're a mediocre accountant? I don't know, but Jones captures all of it. 

Anyway, I liked this one so much. It took her seven years to write this book and I understand why. 4.5/5 stars

Lines of note:

I felt like a dump truck, chunky and sturdy. (location 390)

LOLOL. I don't know why, but her descriptions of people are hysterical to me. 

Luggage was one of the few hand-me-down items that became a little more dignified due to its wear and tear. (location 606)

Such great observational writing. 

In all these years, she had never said a word that would dirty the wash water. But secrets, apparently, she was good at. There with Miss Jemison, I struggled to decide if secrets and lies were twins, regular sisters, or just cousins. (location 729)

Ha ha. When I get my eyebrows waxed, my stylist always talks about how they should be cousins, not sisters. 

I didn’t even say she had died, because that was something a person did. A person lived; a person died. I said she was dead because that’s forever. That’s what she was. My mother was dead. (location 2950)

Active versus passive, right?

Like you, I always wanted a mother and I guess I have one now. And having a mother involves letting her down, or so it appears. (location 4451)

HA HA HA HA! Ain't that the truth. 

Things I looked up:

cuckabugs (location 388) - tiny, really tight naps on the back of someone's neck. They are very difficult to comb through and are usually shaved off - this might be the first time I've had to cite Urban Dictionary on my site

Maybe he was cute, in a Jackie Wilson kind of way. (location 548) - Jackie Wilson was a singer. He sang "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher."

siddity (location 617 and then repeatedly throughout the book) - Uppity, pretentious, stuck-up, conceited. Acting as if you are better than someone else. To "put on airs." Often preceded by the word "high." - Two for Urban Dictionary in this post alone. 

Jim Walter home (location 870) - Jim Walter Homes were "shell" homes, meaning the company would complete the outside so that the house was watertight, then allow the customer to finish the inside with their own labor. The company would also sell most of the inside materials, including sheetrock, insulation, doors and carpet to the customer and include them in the purchase. The result was very affordable mortgage payments, usually for 20 years. The only requirement from the company was that the customer had owned the land on which the house was constructed, meaning that in the case of foreclosure the company got not only a (potentially never-finished) house but a building lot as well. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, when mortgage rates went as high as 15%, Jim Walter offered 10% financing with no money down.

Dovey Roundtree (location 1764 and 4984) - an African-American civil rights activist, ordained minister, and attorney. Her 1955 victory before the Interstate Commerce Commission in the first bus desegregation case to be brought before the ICC resulted in the only explicit repudiation of the "separate but equal" doctrine in the field of interstate bus transportation by a court or federal administrative body. That case, Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company (64 MCC 769 (1955)), which Dovey Roundtree brought before the ICC with her law partner and mentor Julius Winfield Robertson, was invoked by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy during the 1961 Freedom Riders' campaign in his successful battle to compel the Interstate Commerce Commission to enforce its rulings and end Jim Crow laws in public transportation.

Raynelle Jemison is penning this letter on my behalf, because “Uncle Arthur” is bedeviling my wrists. (location 2049) - I don't know? Maybe arthritis? Gout? Urban Dictionary let me down. I suspect arthritis because of the Arth- connection. Anyone know?

Being a motherless child is so bad that they wrote a slavery song about it. (location 3457) - "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" is a traditional African American spiritual dating back to the era of slavery, often expressing deep sorrow and longing for freedom. It has been covered by numerous artists in various genres, including Mahalia Jackson, Eric Clapton, and Odetta, and is often used as a protest song. I am so ignorant about music and art! And birds. And trees. And geography. 

chichi birds (location 3521) - Chickadees? (There's a food truck called Chichi Birds Hot Chicken in San Antonio.)

LeMoyne-Owen (location 3897) - HBCU affiliated with the United Church of Christ and located in Memphis, Tennessee that had a total enrollment of approximately 646 students as of fall 2023

“CP Time.” (location 4485) - Colored People's Time (also abbreviated to CP Time or CPT) is an American expression referring to African Americans as frequently being late. Egads. 

Daufuskie Island (location 4473) - a remote, bridgeless South Carolina sea island between Savannah and Hilton Head, accessible only by boat (ferries, water taxis). Renowned for its Gullah history, pristine beaches, and laid-back culture, it is navigated primarily by golf cart. The Gullah (or Gullah Geechee) are descendants of enslaved Africans from West and Central Africa who developed a unique, preserved culture in the coastal Lowcountry and Sea Islands of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Due to historic geographic isolation, they retained strong African traditions in their language, foodways, arts, and spiritual practices.

mighty Zambezi hurling over a cliff (location 4945) - The Zambezi is Africa's fourth-longest river (approx. 2,700 km), flowing from northwestern Zambia through Angola, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique into the Indian Ocean. The Zambezi is known for the spectacular Victoria Falls

Hat mentions (why hats?):

Mr. Daniel held his stingy-brim hat in his hand. (location 554)

My aunt was fashionable in a baby-pink suit and netted pillbox hat. (location 1110)

He took off his hat, revealing an angry red line above his brows. (location 1175)

half-moon hat with a little silk flower perched over her ear (location 1232)

He shook his head and removed his hat (location 1695)

Now Bobo put his hat over his heart. (location 1697)

He sometimes tipped an imaginary hat and said, “Mademoiselle Mouse.” (location 2099)

He removed the leather hat. (location 2605)

felt hat to protect my hairdo (location 2719)

My mama swapped mine for a felt hat and a pair of gloves. (location 2838)

"...That’s why you will never see me with a hat on my head. I don’t care if it’s a funeral. Fuck a hat.” (location 2838)

The sidewalk was littered with playing cards, causing a lady in a brown hat to take clumsy steps to avoid touching them with her suede shoe. (location 3196)

 flat-topped hats with gold braid over the brim (location 4500)

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THE GIVEAWAY!!

Sarah and I met at a small town about halfway between our homes last weekend to talk about the book and go shopping at adorable shops. One of the places we went was to a bookstore. And this bookstore was having an event where you could buy a wrapped book with a description on it and decorate it with fun add-ons for an incredibly reasonable price. It's a fun blind date with a book sort of thing.

Imagine our glee. 

And the giveaway is this lovely package. 

Genre: Contemporary/Family Secrets
Age: Adult
Teaser: Fame, identity, and hidden history collide in unexpected ways. 

If you want a chance to win this beauty, fill out this Google Form by May 6. I just ask for your name and email with a bonus, non-required question for you to guess the title of the book. I actually don't know the title of the book and will not ever know unless the winner tells me. 

I'll email and announce the winner on May 8 and ship it out as soon as I can. I'll happily ship internationally, as well, so non-US folks can enter, as well. 

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Do you like Tayari Jones as much as I do? What do you think the secret book is based on that description? 

The Midnight Show by Lee Kelly and Jennifer Thorne

Sarah of the Sarah's Bookshelves podcast picked The Midnight Show by Lee Kelly and Jennifer Thorne on her podcast in the Spring Preview episode. Then she had the authors on an episode (episode 222). I ordered it from my library and it came in right away, so I must have been one of the first people to get it because the release date was April 7.

This book, told in a mixed media format, is a fictional oral history of The Midnight Show, a late-night sketch comedy show in the early 1980s. Madeline Cohen is a freelance author for The Rolling Stone who wants to write a cover story about the mysterious death of Lillian Martin, a comedian who rose to fame on the first seasons of The Midnight Show. We read mostly Madeline's interviews, but we also get press clips, emails, and transcripts. 

I've never watched a single episode of SNL and I was riveted by this book. It's really just an exploration of a creative workplace in the 1980s, filled with sexism, drug use, toxic relationships, and found family. Could I have done without the endless talk of drug use? Probably, but the book didn't glamorize it in any way, so it gets a pass from me. 

Much like in Good People, one of my favorite conceits is that none of the interviewees are not reliable narrators. It is so fun when the authors put two contradictory retellings of the same event right next to each other. The characters are complex and you start to figure out really quickly who is always telling the story to put themselves in the best light, who is tell the story to put Lillian in the best light, and who doesn't give a shit about any of it. Much like Her Many Faces, the book is centered on a woman, but we don't hear from Lillian herself outside of a handful of journal entries and everyone has a different perspective on who Lillian was and what her priorities were. It depends on who is talking if you think she's an introvert, a junkie, a super star, a victim, a beloved friend, or a thief. It's absolutely fascinating.

(Okay, fine. I saw the twist coming, but I actually like to think it's because I'm a good reader who was putting together all the clues that the good authors laid out for me. Or maybe it was too obvious. Regardless, what happened to Lillian to cause her death was not really the point of the book any more than listening to the Doughboys is about their restaurant reviews.)

Anyway, if this sounds like something you'd be into, you should read it! 4.5/5 stars

Line of note:

I will remind you once more that Wally Winters was a beloved star. We were three young women in 1980 who barely had our feet in the door, and the second you complain, that's all you are. You become the problem, not him. We were expendable, and we knew it. (page 109)

I loved the sections about overt sexism in the workplace. I mean, it's so complicated, isn't it, when you're a minority? 

Things I looked up:

Viola Spolin (page 15) - an American theatre academic, educator and acting coach. She is considered an important innovator in 20th century American theater for creating directorial techniques to help actors to be focused in the present moment and to find choices improvisationally, as if in real life. Her book Improvisation for the Theater, which published these techniques, includes her philosophy and her teaching and coaching methods, and is considered the "bible of improvisational theater." 

commedia dell'arte (page 15) - translates to "comedy of professional artists," is a form of popular theatre that flourished throughout Europe, particularly in Italy and France, from the 16th through the 18th centuries. It is characterized by masked stock characters, improvised performances based on pre-established plot outlines (scenarios), and a focus on physical comedy

Cantinflas (page 15) - a Mexican comedian, actor, and filmmaker. He is considered to have been the most widely accomplished Mexican comedian and is well known throughout Latin America and Spain

Radio Rochela (page 15) - a Venezuelan television sketch comedy and variety show, created by Argentine producer Tito Martinez Del Box

montsuki (page 94) - formal Japanese kimono adorned with one to five family crests, signifying the highest level of formality

opera seria (page 128) - Italian musical genre that dominated European stages from the 1710s to the 1770s. It is characterized by noble, historical, or mythological themes, featuring dramatic plots centered on virtue and duty. 

opera buffa (page 128) - genre of comic opera originating in Naples in the mid-18th century. It developed from the intermezzi, or interludes, performed between the acts of serious operas. Opera buffa plots center on two groups of characters: a comic group of male and female personages and a pair (or more) of lovers.

Jean-Michel Basquiat (page 162) - an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the neo-expressionism movement.

Basquiat's drawing of art critic Rene Ricard, Untitled (Axe/Rene) (1984)

Hat mentions (why hats?):

business hat (page 25)

floppy hat (page 64)

You know that expression "all hat, no cattle"? (page 65)

old hat (page 103)

there's one more hat mention on page 328, but I'm not going to write it because it's a spoiler

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How about these lovely epistolary novels I've been reading lately? Do you have a favorite in the genre? 

Ruins by Lily Brooks-Dalton

Other books by Lily Brooks-Dalton
The Light Pirate
Goodnight, Midnight

I have completely enjoyed the two books I've read by Lily Brooks-Dalton before (see links above). She writes climate fiction, but in a way that comes off as almost hopeful. So when I heard Ruins was coming out, I was immediately onboard and ordered it from my library as soon as I could. 

Ember Agni is going nowhere in her job as a professor of archeology. Her students don't like her, she doesn't like them, and she refuses to make nice with administrators. Her marriage is failing, she doesn't have any friends, and she's still thinking about that expedition she didn't go on years earlier. It's 3000 years from now and most humans have been pushed north to avoid the deadly heat. When one of her former students sends her an artifact (a tablet with a piece of fruit on the back - what could it be?) from Pre-Crisis, Ember is determined to prove that Pre-Crisis humans did have technology and developed societies. 

Ember is terrible. Really, really terrible. 

...she was struck by a sudden, arresting sensation that she didn't belong here, in this chair or this job or even this city. How had all of it happened? How was any of it hers?

The most obvious answers did not seem to fit the questions - she had left the Summit dig willingly, applied for a job at the university of her own volition, said yes when marriage was proposed, and so on and so forth. She made these choices freely and with care, but without knowing that all of it would lead her here. She couldn't' tell whether that was naivety or just how life worked. Shouldn't she know the difference by now? (page 20)

This is actually sort of fine. I mean, we all sometimes look in the mirror and wonder at how Teenage Us became Grown Us and how disappointed Teenage Us would be, right? But then.

"I don't know what I want," she finally said. And this was, in some ways, true and in some ways not. She wanted to be cared for and to care for no one. She wanted to have everything she needed and not be responsible for reciprocating any of it. (page 101)

This is not how the world works. I don't think feelings have to reciprocated, but I do think that if you want people to care about you, you have to care about them. Right? 

Anyway, we spend SO LONG with Ember as her life falls into (ahem) ruins that it's anti-climactic by the time Ember leaves for a trip on page 219. TWO HUNDRED pages of her wallowing in her misery instead of just deciding to leave. 

So what I'm saying is that if I had written this book, I'd have started on page 219 and just done a few pages of flashbacks for us to see what Ember's life was like pre-trip. Then we could have spent more time doing archeological things. Alas, no one asked me about pacing. 

I'm really sad that this one didn't hit it out of the park for me. 2.5/5 stars

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Passage of note:

Across societies separated by geography, language, and technological means, a recurring phenomenon emerges: the segmentation of time. The division of days, months, and years is rooted in celestial rhythms: the sun's arc, the moon's phases, the drift of the constellations. Calendrical systems are instruments of coordination, yes, but also of ideology: they encode assumptions about recurrence, continuity, and control. To standardize time is to assert its knowability. 

Still, periods of disruption - be they environmental, political, or epistemic - produce anomalies: lost days, doubled years, durations reset or abandoned or revised. These aberrations in the record can be difficult to detect. The question, then, is not only how time has been measured, but why certain measurements persist while others vanish. What, or who, sustains a calendar? (page 289)

I have so many issues with calendars. SO MANY. I hate them. That is all. 

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Hat mentions (why hats?):

There in the foyer, crowded by a selection of coats and shoes and hats that belonged to one or both of them...(page 179)

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Do you like cli-fi? What's your favorite? 

Good People by Patmeena Sabit

Good People by Patmeena Sabit came up on Sarah's Bookshelves as a book Sarah had liked. 

The Sharaf family looks like a real American success story. Rahmat and his wife Maryam fled Afghanistan and settled in Virginia. After a series of false starts, Rahmat has a lot of business success and the family becomes wealthy. They have two older children, a girl named Zorah and a boy named Omer, and two young children. But is the family really happy?

The book is told through interviews with friends, neighbors, and witnesses, along with excerpts from journalists and investigators, who tell the story of what happens to the Sharaf family. Public opinion sways back and forth and the book tackles issues of Islamophobia, assimilation, the immigrant experience, and, maybe most importantly, generational conflict in immigrant families. 

It's a propulsive read. Since the chapters are short, you feel like you're making a lot of progress fast and you just want to keep flipping pages to find out what happens next. It's an impressive debut novel. 4.5/5 stars

The author bio:

Patmeena Sabit was born in Kabul a few years after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. When she was a month old, her family fled the conflict and became refugees in Pakistan, joining the millions of other Afghans that had sought refuge there. They later moved to the United States and she grew up in Virginia. She currently lives in Toronto.

Lines of note:

Early in the afternoon it started to snow, flakes as big as my hand...(location 356)

I'm immediately suspicious of this person. Flakes might be as big as a dime, but not as a whole hand. This narrator is obviously prone to exagerration.

...think they understood then that you can never know even your own children completely, that all the love and time and effort and wanting in the world doesn’t guarantee they’ll always do right and stay on the right path. (location 1262)

AND

When a child goes bad, the whole world holds a finger to the mother and father. But how can you know? Look how many children born into pure evil grow to walk as angels among men. And look how some of the best mothers and fathers come to raise the devil’s own seed. (location 1482)

We're having an issue in our family and there's a lot of questioning of the parenting and it's really hard. Maybe it is the parenting? Or maybe it would have happened no matter what? It's hard and it's hard to know how best to support everyone in the situation. 

You know, we actually care about each other around here. It’s not like New York or Chicago or any of those big places where some poor soul dies all alone in their apartment and no one knows until six months later when the landlord breaks down the door and finds a skeleton sitting on the sofa watching The Price Is Right. (location 2756)

Just another opportunity for me to plug The Lonely Life of George Bell. 

We put a little bottle of water next to his bed every night, but in the summer he won’t drink anything but cold water straight from the fridge. He calls it fresh water. (location 2933)

I do this same thing. I also call if fresh water. I do not like to be reflected in an eight-year-old child. 

...I’ve woken in the middle of the night a hundred times and gone downstairs and thought the coatrack near the door was a robber. (location 4018)

Who hasn't? 

Things I looked up:

cecropia moth (location 851) - North America's largest native moth; females have been documented with a wingspan of five to seven inches or more

lorikeets (location 853) - small-to-medium-sized parrots known for their bright, multicolored plumage and specialized brush-tipped tongues used to feed on nectar, pollen, and fruit. Native to Australia and surrounding regions, they are highly social, noisy birds that often form loud flocks and live for 10 - 20+ years

Hat mentions (why hats?):

I remember it was taking us a long time to get through a reading comprehension exercise because her little brother and sister had found some party hats and horns somewhere and they kept running in and screaming “Happy New Year!” and blowing them in our faces and running off again. (location 1079)

Our girls went shopping at the T.J. Maxx or Marshalls or JCPenney and threw their hats to the sky when they could do even that. (location 1516)

The rest of us would try on the old-lady hats and fur coats. (location 1748)

Well, he must have known that his hat had fallen into oil from the second she turned her hot eyes on him. (location 2036)

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I sort of wish I had listened to this on audio since I feel like hearing the different voices would have been helpful. Have you ever listened to an epistolary novel? Do you like it? 

CBWC April 2026: Week 3

 It's Cool Bloggers Walking Club (CBWC) time! Hosted by Elisabeth, we're trying for ten minutes of intentional movement every day.

The story of CBWC this week is that it was raining/storming/tornadoing almost every night. I live in a river town and there's a lot of flooding.

Wednesday, April 15
41 minutes with Hannah this morning on a drippy morning - I wore flip flops
39 minutes this afternoon on an overcast day in the high 60s - I wore sandals

Thursday, April 16

27 minutes with Hannah on yet another drippy morning - I wore my winter boots mostly because they're waterproof and it's cold again

36 minutes this afternoon with Hannah after work

This is the riverwalk. Those stairs normally lead down to a sidewalk along the river. Now it's just river.

Friday, April 17

37 minutes with Hannah in the morning - It is glorious, but rain is forecast to be starting around 2, so we're enjoying our time outside while we can

Way back there on the right is the road I usually take to work. My guess is that I won't take this road again until summer.

Saturday, April 28

47 minutes with Hannah in the morning - Our house is safe, but almost all of our walking paths are flooded

31 minutes with Hannah and Dr. BB after lunch

12 minutes with Hannah around the block before bed

The building and entire parking lot of our nearby park are flooded. 

Sunday, April 19

37 minutes with Hannah this morning - the forecast said it might snow! It did not, but that gives you an idea of the temperature

20 minutes after lunch with Hannah and Dr. BB

17 minutes with Hannah before bed

Monday, April 20

40 minute walk with Hannah in the morning - it was so cold

52 minute walk with Hannah after work - Okay, fine. Hannah did a lot of  laying around and stick chewing, if I'm honest. But we walked around checking out the flooding situation.

13 minute walk with Hannah before bed

The sunrise this morning was spectacular.

Tuesday, April 21

40 minute walk with Hannah in the morning - What a beautiful morning!

27 minute walk with Hannah when I got home from work

20 minute walk with Hannah before bed

I don't usually talk about my workouts in CBWC updates, but today we did our fitness class outside and these dudes in a canoe wandered by where the riverwalk usually is. I took their photo and he shouted his phone number at me. When I sent it to him, he sent us a bunch of photos he took. It was such a small town moment.

This is the road I usually take to work.

This is the riverwalk. 

***************

Has anyone ever shouted their number to you from a canoe? What's your favorite of the flood photos?

A Couple of Days in Chicago

 As you know, I spent a couple of days with Bestest Friend in Chicago. 

We ate food. 

We drank beverages that we paid way too much for.

We went to a museum.

But, I think we can all agree that the most important thing I did was get my nose pierced. I've wanted to do it for years, but there's no time like the present, right?

We spent a lot of time on the bus. Fortunately the weather during the day was perfect. It was not so perfect at night, but who cares? We were tucked away in our Air BnB. 

*******************

If you've been to Chicago, what's your favorite thing to do there? If you've never been, what would you like to see or do there? 

The Latecomer by Jean Hanff Korelitz

I had never even heard of The Latecomer by Jean Hanff Korelitz until J wrote a review of it on her blog. I was dithering about my non-existent TBR and what list to put it on when I realized it was available as an audiobook narrated by Julia Whelan right away at my library, so I nabbed it!

There are two things about me that you should know before we go further in this review. Here's the quick and dirty background. Regular readers probably know both of these things, but this is a bit of necessary background for new readers.

1) I grew up in a household with parents who were hoarders. There was a path from the front door to the couch, the kitchen, and the bedrooms, but that was about it. There was so much crap jammed in the bathroom that I could not bathe on a regular basis. The kitchen was filled with food, but much of it was years old. I did the best I could in my own bedroom, but I would not infrequently come home to bags of things not intended for my use crammed into my room. 

2) I do not get along with my sister, my only sibling. 

**************

In The Latecomer, Johanna and Salo Oppenheimer have triplets, two boys and one girl. But it turns out that each of those triplets is horrible in his or her own way and they don't really get along. I felt so seen in the scenes of everyone living in a house, but not talking and just living separate lives. When the triplets leave for college, Johanna has another baby (the latecomer, natch). We follow the family in an inter-generational novel. 

There are themes of isolation, grief, privilege, race, and the ubiquitous plight of young people trying to find their place in this world.  

There is also a fair amount of talk about hoarding in this book. It's done sensitively (hoarders have a mental illness), but I still struggled through those scenes, flashing back to my childhood when I couldn't find clean clothing, to moving my mother out of the house she lived in when I was in college and grad school, and to cleaning out her cabin after she died. I still have two totes of unsorted through things in our guest room that I need to sort through. I listened to this book and immediately began cleaning my house and vacuuming and dusting and opening the windows. 

And the scenes with the siblings in a car who have nothing to say to one another? I felt it deep in my soul, but also? I wanted to not be hearing that scene. 

I have some beefs with this book. Of course I do. The book is called The Latecomer, but she's really not even in the book until the last 25% and she's not all that important. There's a character who is done dirty (#JusticeForEli). But, while I actively disliked every person in this novel, right down to the poor illegitimate child and dirtbag white supremacist, I also wanted to keep listening - to know what was going to happen to everyone in this family. It was well-paced and beautiful. 

It has not been since I read My Name is Lucy Barton that I have had such a visceral reminder of elements of my childhood that I would rather forget. 

4/5 stars

Lines of note:

...Harrison joined the swim team, mainly because he liked the fact that when he had his head underwater, people didn't talk to him. (Part 1 - Chapter 8)

Ha! Haven't we all been there? 

...being drawn deeper and deeper into the world of old houses and the mainly old people who lived in them. Houses stuffed with sadness, filled up room by room with sadness. Each enclosure silenced in sadness behind a closed door until the house itself was jammed and filthy. Some of the houses smelled terrible, some of them had owners who barely opened the door or spoke through a crack or slipped out and closed the door behind them...reeking of shame and fear. (Part 2 - Chapter 23) 

I have no words for this. 

There was no limit to what her brother Harrison could convert to pure assholery...(Part 2 - Chapter 25)

I actually audibly laughed at this line.

... so many families doing this together and the feeling of community was really overwhelming. (Part 3 - Chapter 31)

This is about a church-sponsored event. I feel this. I feel like it's so hard to create a community as an adult without church. I don't believe. I don't have faith. I am not envious of others for those things. But I am envious of a built-in fellowship of like-minded people at your fingertips. 

Things I looked up:

Stendhal syndrome (Part 1 - Chapter 2) - Stendhal syndrome is a psychosomatic condition involving rapid heartbeat, confusion, hallucinations, and even fainting, allegedly occurring when individuals become exposed to objects, artworks, or phenomena of great beauty.

Stendhal syndrome was named after Marie-Henri Beyle (1783–1842), better known by his pen name, Stendhal, who described his experience with the phenomenon during his 1817 visit to Florence, Italy, in his book Naples and Florence: A Journey from Milan to Reggio. When he visited the Basilica of Santa Croce, where Niccolò Machiavelli, Michelangelo and Galileo Galilei are buried, he was overcome with profound emotion. Stendhal wrote:

I was in a sort of ecstasy, from the idea of being in Florence, close to the great men whose tombs I had seen. Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty . . . I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations . . . Everything spoke so vividly to my soul. Ah, if I could only forget. I had palpitations of the heart, what in Berlin they call 'nerves'. Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear of falling.

Jennifer convertible sofa (Part 1 - Chapter 2) - Jennifer Furniture (formerly Jennifer Convertibles) is an American retail company, based in Great Neck, New York. I think it's related to Ashley Furniture HomeStores? The sofas just look like regular old couches? 

Diebenkorn ocean park paintings (Part 1 - Chapter 2) - Richard Diebenkorn is best known for the Ocean Park series of 145 landscape abstractions he began in 1967 after moving to Santa Monica, California, where he was inspired by his Ocean Park neighborhood. Numbered sequentially, the Ocean Park paintings are all tall, rectangular canvases, most of them divided by horizontal and vertical lines. Some seem to depict physical elements of landscape—the conjunction of ocean and sky or bands of colored clouds at sunset—while others imply more intangible elements such as space, atmosphere, or light. 

Ocean Park #24 (1969)

slab painting by Hans Hofmann (Part 1 - Chapter 2) - Hans Hofmann (March 21, 1880 – February 17, 1966) was a German-born American painter, renowned as both an artist and teacher. In his later works, Hofmann created works such as The Gate (1959–60), Pompeii (1959) or To Miz - Pax Vobiscum (a 1964 memorial after her death), that were loosely devoted to architectonic volumes and sometimes referred to as his "slab paintings." In these works, he used rectangles of sensual color that reinforced the shape of his consistent easel-painting format and sometimes suggested a modular logic, yet escaped definitive readings through areas of modulated paint and irregular shapes.

By Tate Gallery website. Copyright held by the estate of Hans Hofmann., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57772187 - Hans Hofmann, Pompeii, oil on canvas, 84.25” x 52.25", 1959.

Franz Kline (Part 1 - Chapter 2) -  an American painter  associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement of the 1940s and 1950s.

Kline, Painting #2 (1954)

Agnes Martin (Part 1 - Chapter 2) - a Canadian-American abstract painter known for her minimalist style and abstract expressionism.

Starlight by Agnes Martin (1963)

Andrew Crispo (Part 1 - Chapter 2) - an American art dealer and gallery owner based in New York. He later became involved in a number of widely reported legal cases. His legal history included a federal tax conviction, a sensational state criminal prosecution, association with one of New York’s most notorious homicide cases of the 1980s, later federal convictions involving threats against court personnel during bankruptcy proceedings, and dramatic civil litigation following the destruction of his Southampton home.

Ed Ruscha (Part 1 - Chapter 2) - is an American artist associated with the pop art movement. He has worked in the media of painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, and film.

Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1963, by Ruscha

Whitman, Grinnell, Roarke, Reed, Hendrix (Part 1 - Chapter 8) - Whitman is a private liberal arts institution in Walla Walla, Washington with an enrollment of about 1500. Grinnell is a private liberal arts college in Grinnell, Iowa with an enrollment of about 1700. Reed College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon with an enrollment of about 1300. Hendrix a private liberal arts college in Conway, Arkansas with an enrollment of about 1000. Roarke is made up for this novel. 

Johnson Museum of Art (Part 2 - Chapter 14) - Museum at Cornell in Ithaca, New York. 

Hat mentions:

None

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Have you ever read a book that brings up things from your childhood you'd rather forget? Did you know all these artists? Have you ever been to the Johnson Museum of Art?