Books: First Quarter Review 2026

Wherein I fall in love quickly, plus I recommend a book I haven't even finished yet...

Books Read, Fiction

• All Systems Red, Martha Wells
• Cursed Bunny, Bora Chung ⭐️
• Drive A, Merritt Graves
• Intimacies, Katie Kitamura ⭐️
• Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke ⭐️
• Katabasis, R.F. Kuang ⭐️
• Swallows, Natsuo Kirino
• The Other Valley, Scott Alexander Howard ⭐️

Books Read, Non-Fiction

• Horizontal Vertigo: A City Called Mexico by Juan Villoro

Revisits

• Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
• One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
• Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi

Books Quit

• Heart the Lover, Lily King
• Murder Takes a Vacation, Laura Lippman
• The Eyes Are the Best Part, Monika Kim

The long awaited Katabasis read finally happened, and I’ll come back to it someday but basically I really really liked it and actually think it’s Kuang's best work. Not the most popular, or the most magical, but "best." We’ll save my full take for Super Book Club—a book club I hope to one day make that will go through its books in exquisite detail!

And having now read Intimacies, I’ve fallen for Katie Kitamura’s writing. Although I’ve only read this one book, I can only assume that the rest of her oeuvre is great and I’m ready to follow her to wherever she wants to take me. I’m glad I started with Intimacies, and can dive into A Separation next. The sad thing is that Kitamura wrote a 2006 travel memoir called Japanese for Travellers: A Journey Through Modern Japan, that I haven’t been able to get my hands on. (Edit: I found one for twelve bucks, gotta buy it asap!)

In fact, this first quarter of books was really about a few first loves. Reading the first story from Cursed Bunny really sucked me in, as the subject matter was both gross and engrossing—it involves a sentient poop. Yes, I said 💩 poop… The rest of the stories in Cursed Bunny were also quite excellent, enough so that I deviated from my Big Five reading plan to finish it.

A similar thing happened with Scott Alexander Howard’s The Other Valley, which so far I’m only 25% in, but will go out on a limb and say that it’s great. The premise already leaps off the page and the writing is enrapturing. I’ve had a few friends already give this a stamp of approval so I am mostly assured it will be a recommend. Of course, I’ve been tricked before but this has the feel of simple greatness. This is also our April book club book, so I’m very excited to finish and discuss it!

I already loved Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, and I had been waiting to dive into Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I had heard that the style of “Dr. Strange” (which is what I can’t stop referring to the book as) was quite different, and that it was a couple hundred pages too long. But frankly, I loved everything about it. Was I ready for a thousand page book to suck up my time? Not necessarily, but it was worth the ride. The thing that gets me the most about the book is the humor, which was not something I had been expecting. Every page was a delight and every interaction different than I would've guessed. In addition, I was thrilled to discover that the BBC had made a TV series of Dr. Strange, and I’m on EP3 right now.

In the interest of watching another TV series, Murderbot, I read All Systems Red—the book its based on. While All Systems Red was a novella length fun ride, I ended up not really liking the show that much. Still, if you want a quick sci-fi read that goes down easy, it’s not a bad place to visit.

And finally, we get to Merritt Graves’ Drive A, which I read about on Naomi Kanakia’s newsletter. It’s self published—not that that matters much—and I ultimately stopped about 70% of the way through, but it was quite good and captured my attention for awhile. The basic world of Drive A is that people have publicly traded shares of themselves and every action, interaction, decision, can be influenced by their current or future market share. Many years ago, there was a Facebook app called Friendonomics—which was a stock market for your friends—and the world of Drive A is exactly. Merritt has some very clever ideas in the book and a lot of the skewering of monetization of people is quite funny. Ultimately the book ran a little long so I hopped off, but I might return at a later date.

• Woman of Letters: This awards-nominated novel is pretty good (Oct 2025)
• Kirkus Review: Drive A, Merritt Graves

Note: The Samuel Richardson Prize (For Best Self-Published Literary Novel) that Drive A was nominated for, was Kanakia’s own award she started. Can anyone just start a literary award? Hum, interesting!

I recently started listening to Book Riot’s Zero to Well-Read podcast, and it left me wondering if certain old reads were still good. I’d been burned a lot lately by nostalgia movies that didn't hold up upon rewatch, so I thought I'd better revisit some books as well. I’m happy to report that yes, One Hundred Years of Solitude is still great! (The writing in chapter one drew me right back in…) Joy Luck Club is good! (I didn't recall the book at all...) I’m now ready to watch One Hundred Years’ Netflix adaptation and to revisit the JLC movie as well. I didn’t do a full reread of either book, but wanted to go far enough in to make sure I still liked them.

Also, on a recent vacation, Persepolis was lying around and I reread that. I had totally forgotten everything about it and it was so good! I don’t know what I thought Persepolis was about but I forgot everything. Then we rewatched the movie—which is great, minus the second third which drags a little. Basically, time to quality check old reads!

I also learned that one of my longtime book friends has rarely reread anything. That’s shocking to me! Are most of you out there not rereading stuff? Who are you?!

The Quit List 🚫

My biggest disappointment of the quarter was The Eyes Are the Best Part. I thought it would be more better, like way better, but the subversive stuff was not that subversive and I spent most of the book wondering if Kim had anything new to say. I guess I’ll never find out! What a great title and cover though.

Also, I discovered quickly that Lily King is not up my alley. Nope, nope! I wanted to know what all the hype was about but King’s writing was not for me.