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Isabelle Shakesbookworm

@isabelleisabookworm

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Shakespeare Actor. Masters in Library Information Science. Lifelong Book Devourer.

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✨Overly Ambitious Fall TBR

We’ve entered the time of year where I crave Big Brain Big Books. This might look like large tomes, family sagas, historical fiction, prize-list books, classics, or others. The primary theme is that I want books I can sink into, books I can really chew over, books that make me think. Maybe there’s a subliminal back to school feeling driving this, but it’s absolutely what’s drawing me in currently!

Some of these books have already been read, making this SLIGHTLY less ambitious, but they all fit the vibe that I’m searching for this fall!✨

#isabelleisabookworm by @isabelleisabookworm

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2 days ago

✨Do you ever put a book on your tbr and then promptly forget everything about it? That was my experience with Candelaria this weekend. It initially came onto my radar thanks to @booksandlala early in the year, but I somehow managed to retain almost nothing of her description of the book. Photo inspiration came from @dishing.on.books whose awesome photos really reminded me of this cover!

We open with Candelaria herself, a grandmother in her 80s who feels a huge earthquake hit Boston and knows that she needs to go find her daughter and granddaughters. I initially was struck by some similarities to the set up of this book with Tilt, but those similarities didn’t last long. Because friends, if you can handle some gore and guts and body horror, this is a great Halloween book. I’ve spoken before about not being a horror reader, but loving the work of Isabel Cañas and her exploration of horror as metaphor for colonialism and while Candelaria is more abstracted and almost gleefully flippant in some of its voices, it does explore some similar areas. If you’re looking for a slightly humorous, weird-girl horror for Halloween, this might just be the book for you!✨

#isabelleisabookworm by @isabelleisabookworm

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9 days ago

✨What a gift to be alive at the same time as Min Jin Lee because whenever I read her work, I’m astounded by the timeless quality to her writing. The careful crafting of a community of characters, following families through decades is more reminiscent of reading classics than most contemporary authors. With American Hagwon, in particular, I was deeply reminded of George Eliot’s Middlemarch, another close examination of a community and their differing opinions on how to create a better world for their communities and themselves. Her writing has a quality of being deceptively simple, the language not overly flowery or showy, but unexpectedly rich and deep, like a broth that has been simmering for hours and hours.

This was also another slow, immersive reading experience for me, which is exactly what I want at this time of year. Being able to spend more time with the characters only enhanced the feeling of time passing within the story. And boy, oh boy, was I emotionally invested in these characters. As an eldest daughter, I especially loved our glimpses into Sonya’s life, but was grateful for every different voice we got. American Hagwon is a symphonic experience, offering if not empathy, at least some understanding for all of the lives it touches. And while I’m already excited for the next book in the Diasporic Quartet, all three of Min Jin Lee’s previous novels are so rich, they’re ripe for revisiting in the meantime!✨

#isabelleisabookworm by @isabelleisabookworm

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11 days ago

✨Happy 15th Anniversary to my beloved Book Riot!

While I haven’t been there for all 15 years, Book Riot has been part of my regular media diet since 2018 and I’ve received so many incredible book recommendations, been inspired to read harder, laughed out loud, and been that person who writes in to a podcast multiple times. And while Book Riot would be the first to tell you that there’s no objectively right or wrong way to be a reader, I am a better reader and my reading life is richer thanks to the work they do. Here’s just a small peek into some of the books and authors I’ve picked up over the years based on their recommendations. Cheers to the past 15 years and here’s to the next!✨

#BookRiot #isabelleisabookworm by @isabelleisabookworm

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15 days ago

✨This past weekend, my boyfriend took me to opening night for the Oregon Symphony, which was absolutely delightful and had me thinking about how much I love books that feature musicians as characters.

I often struggle to love books about theatre. It’s a world I know too well and so books that explore that world tend to either REALLY hit or REALLY miss. But (because of that background in the collaborative art of theatre), I loooooooove books about creative individuals coming together to make art. Creative partnerships and group dynamics are endlessly fascinating to me and when the type of artistry and creativity shifts away from one in which I participate to one of which I’m just a fan, I have a much easier time just enjoying myself and immersing myself in the story.

Are there any topics you’re too close to for easy reading purposes?✨

#isabelleisabookworm by @isabelleisabookworm

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16 days ago

✨This is a story about creativity and creation. A family story, with shared memory and the lightest dusting of magic, generations of women in Ayukta’s family have connected to each other by embroidering their descendants into their family tapestry, thereby passing on a gift to their daughters. In addition to their work with fiber arts, these women are painters, sculptors, sketchers, and activists, using their art to change the world on large and small scales.

And reading this book at this current moment in time, I didn’t need to be reminded by the book that this gift is only passed on to daughters, because the men in their lives didn’t need any additional power. But I was happy to receive the reminder that women are forces of creation and creativity. Whether their art is practical, decorative, for pleasure, or for protest. The creative force that brings life permeates through all aspects of these characters lives and extends past the blood relatives to whom they can pass the gift of the tapestry and connects their chosen loves, friends, and family as well. And so much of this book revolves around the concept of choosing to create in this way and whether or not it’s fair to pass on a gift you don’t fully understand yourself. The power is in having the choice itself.

As much fun as it is to be part of the discussion around big, buzzy books on this platform, I’m even more grateful when it brings books onto my tbr that I’ve never heard of before. That was very much the case with A Thousand Times Before, thanks to the marvelous @uvahoogirl ! Please pick this book up and reach out to me! I’m going to be mulling over the themes and connections in this book for a while to come!✨

#isabelleisabookworm by @isabelleisabookworm

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18 days ago

✨As a younger millennial who was watching the “Pick me, choose me, love me” era of Grey’s Anatomy in middle school, there is nothing more satisfying than reading about a young woman who picks, chooses, and above all LOVES herself.

Although Malas opens following Pilar in the 1950s, the heart of the book and the bulk of the story follows Lulu, a teenager growing up on the Texas-Mexico border in the 90s. Lulu is navigating deeply complicated family dynamics, including parenting her father, mourning lost family members, and finding new connections. And despite the difficulties Lulu has faced, she remains open hearted and curious about life. She was absolutely a protagonist to root for.

The other element of this book that was the most successful to me was the setting. Malas felt so deeply of a very specific place and time, which was super fun to explore. This is one I’d recommend if you enjoy a coming of age novel or love references to music in your books!✨

#isabelleisabookworm by @isabelleisabookworm

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22 days ago

✨One of my favorite required reading experiences in high school was Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima. And now I want to go back and reread it more than ever because I finally picked up another book by him and I really appreciated Serafina’s Stories as well!

A retelling of A Thousand and One Nights, in which Serafina is a young indigenous woman who is kidnapped along with many of her tribe members by the Spanish colonial powers. Serafina tells the Governor cuentos in exchange for sparing the lives of her tribesmen. Anaya’s writing is smooth and engaging and it’s fun to hear his takes on these fairytales and folklore, but the part that I most appreciated was the way he complicated the ending of this Scheherazade story. For a book that felt really easy to read, the ending was unexpectedly thorny, but in a way that felt right and I’m glad that he was willing to open up those questions and make this more than just a straightforward retelling.✨

#isabelleisabookworm by @isabelleisabookworm

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a month ago

✨The Disappearers is a study in the aftermath and effects of violence.

Marlon James dissects violence in all its various forms. The violence of man against man. The violence of society against man. The violence of disease against man. The violence of loneliness. The violence of intimacy.

And none of it is too much, because Marlon James is so smart and such a master of voice. Broken up into sections written in different narrative styles, James moves between narrators to focus on different aspects of the plot’s central act of violence. This allows the reader to fully experience all sides of the plot, carrying the heaviness with the knowledge that there will be a change, a moment to breathe, a chance to shift the weight of that burden from one shoulder to another.

In the hands of a less accomplished writer, a book like The Disappearers would be too much. But Marlon James is a modern master and The Disappearers is a remarkable book.✨

#isabelleisabookworm by @isabelleisabookworm

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a month ago

✨I love reading a novel by an accomplished playwright. It’s always fascinating to see how someone who has mastered the art of narrative primarily through dialogue (yes, stage directions are important and can be lyrically written, but as an audience member, the bulk of what we get are the words, as interpreted through other artists) must pivot and adapt to the form of a novel.

The White Hot by Quiara Alegría Hudes pivots in a really interesting way, as it’s primarily written as one long letter from a mother to her daughter, explaining the feelings that led to her running away from home for ten days, only to come back and give her daughter into the custody of her daughter’s father. What is a letter if not a monologue?

Both The White Hot and Hudes’ theatrical cycle The Eliot Trilogy are love letters of a sort to place and setting, but where the Eliot Trilogy is grounded in the community of a place, The White Hot explores the feeling of needing to get out. If you’re looking for a taste of Hudes’ theatrical work, I’d recommend Water by the Spoonful as a starting point. And if you’re looking for a quick, propulsive, immersive dive into one woman’s headspace (even as she can’t completely understand herself), The White Hot could be of interest to you!✨

#isabelleisabookworm by @isabelleisabookworm

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a month ago

✨I spoke a little about this experience in my stories over the weekend, but my day listening to Tilt as I walked through Portland deserves its place on the grid.

I put off reading this book for a long time because I was concerned that reading a book about “the big one” hitting Portland would hit (pun intended) too close to home. But this summer, as I spent hours walking around the city, I started to think that maybe I should lean into that concern. Not only did I want to read Tilt, but I wanted to listen to it while I made my own way home from the IKEA in Northwest Portland on foot. And what a singular reading experience it was.

In the past three years, Portland has become one of the homes of my heart, my chosen home, the home of a new decade, the home where I’ve built a life with family, friends, and love. And the route that I walked took me through so much of my own history in Portland that as I was reading this book, I couldn’t help but reflect on my own experience of “how did we get here?”

Yes, Tilt is a harrowing account of survival, but it’s also a love letter to Portland and making a home through disappointment and joy and change and growth. It’s a story about looking fear in the eye and choosing life and in this case, I’m so glad to have picked up this book in the face of my concerns. There’s something to reading books (and doing things… like moving to new states) that scare you.✨

#isabelleisabookworm by @isabelleisabookworm

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a month ago

✨Sometimes I read a book and the writing is just so beautiful that I want to live in the book forever. Which feels especially fitting for a book so concerned about time, how we make sense of the structure of time, how we define and separate time, and patterns that develop over time both intimately and ultimately.

Earlier this year, I spoke about reading Land and John of John in short succession and seeing connections in the themes surrounding fathers and sons. More recently, I’ve had a string of really great reads about mothers and daughters and Beginning Middle End might just be the best of the bunch. It picks up some similar themes as Valeria Luiselli’s precious novel, Lost Children Archive, commenting lightly on migration and who is praised and who is castigated for making the choice to leave their home country, but this book is much more interested in the story of one family, digging into their past and making connections between family history, mythology, archeology, and geology.

Time is linear, but time can be rewritten, in memory, in fiction, in history. And who is doing the writing? Thoughtful and thought-provoking, if you haven’t tried Valeria Luiselli before, I’m not positive this is where I’d recommend you start, but I absolutely recommend you give her a go!✨

#isabelleisabookworm by @isabelleisabookworm

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a month ago