As many of you know, I have completed the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge every year since 2018 and this year I am making pretty good progress! However, I am now at the point in the year when I have tackled all the "easy" prompts and now I'm left with the ones I don't know exactly what my approach should be. The good news is that I have completed about 80% of the challenge! The bad news is that...well, you know. I haven't done the other 20%.
Here is what I need help with. Do you have ideas for me?
1) A book that features a book with a platonic relationship between a man and a woman. Honestly, I had two books on my maybe list and I DNFed one and I can't find the other one in my library systems.
2) A book about postpartum - I honestly can think of nothing less interesting to me personally, so it would have to be pretty compelling.
3) A book with a character who navigates infertility - Okay, maybe this is the something that's less interesting to me.
4) A book about birding - I have TRIED SO HARD in this category. I have DNFed the Christian Cooper memoir, The Comfort of Crows, and The Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love. I need a romance novel where the meet cute is when they run into each other because they're both using binoculars to watch a rare bird (if that's not in a romance novel, I give that idea away for free). WHAT IS LEFT TO READ?
5) A sapphic graphic novel - Surely there's one out there I haven't already read? The problem with this one is that the ladies on the Books Unbound podcast always recommend these and when I look at the lists of sapphic graphic novels, I've already read so many of them based on their recommendations. I don't count rereads for the challenge unless it's a requirement for a prompt.
6) A book that will make me want to travel to Italy - Look, if there's a book that makes me even remotely consider international travel, it would have to be pretty great. Do you know any great books set in Italy?
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All right, friends. What are your recommendations for me?
Ooh! I actually have a few titles, assuming you haven't read them already.
ReplyDeletePlatonic friendship: The Accomplice by Lisa Lutz
Want to travel to Italy: The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Armin
I just came up with ideas for 1 and 3 but they are Patchett and Strout, so I don't think you'll like them. Does it have to be postpartum depression or just the postpartum period? I kind of remember The Birth House as being okay but it was so long ago (like, twenty years ago maybe) that I read it, so, you know. Maybe? The Enchanted April is good, I liked Roman Stories, although I'm not sure if either of them would necessarily make you want to travel to Italy. But they are set in Italy, so there's that. I LOATHED Under the Tuscan Sun, but I bet you'll get a lot of recommendations for that. Wow, I am super unhelpful here.
ReplyDeleteLOL, I have Under the Tuscan Sun on my physical TBR pile. A blogger friend mailed it to me MANY YEARS AGO saying she thought I would love it and it has never spoken to me. I almost gave it away last year when I was getting rid of one thing a day, and I found her note in it, and gosh, she has since published three books of her own and then got really sick and died and I just feel obligated to at least try it. That’s a lot for a reply to a comment, right?
DeleteArg! I know there's a book they've talked about on Currently Reading that's a romance about birdwatching. Maybe Stephany can help with this??? And... is The Push by Ashley Audrain about postpartum? Have you read that? It's good!!! I'll keep thinking about #1.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile... I GOT YOUR PACKAGE!!! I love it so so so so much! THANK YOU!!!!!
I haven’t read a lot of graphic novels, but Blue is the Warmest Color would fit your need there, if you haven’t read it already.
ReplyDeleteThe platonic relationship could be the new Elizabeth Strout, The Things We Never Say, but I don’t think you love her stuff.
What about Jennifer Weiner, Little Earthquakes for postpartum. I think that’s an issue for one of the characters. And there may even be infertility treatment in there too, so it could be a two-fer.
Hmmm. The only book set in Italy that comes to mind is My Brilliant Friend. But you've read that one, of course! I can't think of a single recommendation for the other categories either. So why am I even commenting? Because you sent me a teeny tiny Anne of Green Gables, and it totally made my day!!!!! Thank you, Engie! That was super sweet of you! (The dolls all say thank you, too!)
ReplyDeleteFor postpartum I have a rec that I enjoyed but I have no idea if you would (it is very, very strange and certainly not for everyone): Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder
ReplyDeleteDoes it have to be fiction? Because I loved Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott, which is about both her being pregnant and also the postpartum period. And my brother, with no children nor particular interest in them, is the one who recommended it to me.
ReplyDeleteBirding books - H is for Hawk and Penguin the Magpie - both memoirs.
ReplyDeleteSet in Italy - The Glass Maker, The Birth of Venus. I enjoyed both of these. Maybe you'll book a trip to Venice after reading The Glass Maker!!
I liked The Big Year for birding. There is a movie about this book, funny and light.
ReplyDeleteCan you do one book for two categories? Four seasons in Rome, both Italy and postpartum categories (from male perspective).
DeleteOK and for the infertility - I only did google search - The Perfect Home. Male infertility, but its a thriller. Probably bad, but maybe OK for what you need. (This is Doris btw, I forgot to enter my details... <3)
DeleteSo many thoughts....
ReplyDelete6 - I remember going to Italy and reading Middlemarch and then realizing that there is a whole chunk of the book set in Rome and that was totally cool to me to be reading about Italy while being there. I also really liked E.M. Forster's Room with a View and Where Angels Fear to Tread, which are set in Italy - basically English people go to Italy and loosen up type novels. What about Stanly Tucci's recent memoir about Italian food? Or really, just read a Marcella Hazan cookbook... Though I agree - a book that makes you *want* to go to Italy is very different from a book just set in Italy.
4 - I just finished Lady Tremaine, and it has a huge subplot about falconry - does that count as bird watching?
5- A few years ago, the oldest and I read the graphic novel Jo: An Adaptation of Little Women - that would fall in sapphic graphic novel category, I think. It's a middle grade/YA novel, so not sure how sapphic it would read, though.
1- Have you read Rebecca Makkai's The Great Believers? There's lots of platonic friendships in there. I feel like it's hard to find male/female platonic relationships that aren't about the gay best friend. oh - The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa - is charming about a lady who cleans house for a Japanese professor who has memory issues.
3 - I feel like you need a book version of the podcast "The Retrievals" or some similarly scandalous IVF incident. Not sure what that would be, though.
I went through a phase where I read a lot of new mother fiction and I just cannot anymore. I get that post partum is hard, but I vacillate between feeling seen and not wanting to relive it. But.. if you are interested, some of the books I read were The School for Good Mothers, The Farm (Okay, this is more about surrogacy, so maybe better for #3), And Now We Have Everything by Meaghan O'Connell, Motherhood So White by Neferititi Austin those last two are non-fiction. Oh wait - a classic short story The Yellow Wallpaper.
For the post-partum, you could read "Her One Regret" by Donna Freitas? It's about a woman who goes missing in a grocery store parking lot and her baby is left there in a grocery cart. It seems as though she was abducted, but she had told a friend previously that she regretted having a child. So post-partum feelings are part of the book... That's also part of the book "The Burning Side" by Sarah Damoff, but there have been mixed reviews about that book (I really liked it, Birchie felt meh about it).
ReplyDeleteI'm not a romance novel guy, but hot damn, the birding concept is one that could be a big hit. (No, I'm not taking it on...I'm already committed to my OTHER blogging friend's action/adventure novel idea!).
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