by Barbara Pym

Takes place in 1970s England and features four 60-something office workers on the verge of retirement.

My main takeaway is how much aging has changed since the 1970s. These people are presumably in their 60s, and they seem OLD. They act and think like my mother-in-law, who is 85.

For much the book I honestly struggled to keep track of who was who, because the two men spoke so much in the same voice, as did the two women.

I felt very glad that things ended on a hopeful note for at least two of the characters. Go out and LIVE, people!

by Sayaka Murata

One more data point proving I really don’t like Japanese fiction. A promising conceit: a look into the mind of a neurodivergent woman who only feels comfortable at her convenience store job, where she understands all the rules. Things take a bizarre turn.

by Jan Dutkiewicz & Gabriel Rosenberg

https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/books/feed-the-people-review-in-praise-of-the-supermarket-be2d9d10

A food book with a twist, geared towards improvements to the food system that can scale and actually make a difference. There’s a guilt-inducing chapter about going vegan. There’s a chapter about school lunches and SNAP programs. There’s a chapter about unionizing food workers that I mostly skipped through. There’s a chapter about ditching the demonization of “ultraprocessed” food. The vegan half of the two-writer team really wants us to embrace meat substitutes, which of course are “ultraprocessed.” I’m just not sold on that. 

by Caro Claire Burke

This was fantastic. It’s about a woman who is a “tradwife” “influencer” on Instagram. She pretends to have a perfect life with six kids on a ranch in Idaho. Then suddenly she seems to be time-warped into what life would REALLY be like for her if it was 100 years ago. And then…

by Jess Walter

A book club pick which I didn’t like. It was violent and ugly. One of a genre that I call the “Isn’t Everything Terrible” genre.