Books I Read (and Loved) in March 2023
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How is it April already? It feels like cheating to already be opening the windows to let in the spring air, but I’m also just wildly grateful to be slowly sloughing off the winter depression. March was… long. I turned in some of the most personal work of my career and spent a lot of time with my partners and our cats, just trying to soak in safety and community and healing.
I also did a lot of reading, but most of it was for work and I can’t talk about it (yet). To that end, my list of books I read and loved in March is small, but mighty. Without further ado, here they are.
Dyscalculia
Sometimes, breakups shake to your core hard enough to create cracks all across the surface. If you’re not careful, you’ll shatter—no matter how hard you try to keep it together.
This poetic memoir by Camonghne Felix is raw, tender to the touch, and thick with scar tissue. As she navigates a huge breakup that results in a hospital stay, her path to healing means recounting and processing childhood trauma and past relationships. Felix frames this processing through her relationship with math, which is marred by dyscalculia.
Cerebral, sharp, and incredibly emotional, Dyscalculia is a gorgeous exploration of intimacy, bodily autonomy, psychiatric distress, and love. It’s near impossible to put down.
Hungry Ghost
Valerie Chu strives to be the perfect daughter, which in her mother’s critical eyes means staying thin. Under the pressure of meeting these standards, Valerie becomes bulimic and struggles to exist in spaces where she can’t reliably purge—such as the class trip to Paris, where the food is rich in calories. When a distressing phone call brings her home early, she struggles to navigate her eating disorder, her grief, and her toxic relationship with her mother as she looks to the future and determines her own path.
This young adult graphic novel is heartwrenching. Victoria Ying’s fine line work and focus on facial expressions and body language underscore the stakes of Valerie’s story and emphasize the acute horrors of harming yourself to stay safe. Ying’s dialogue is razor-sharp and perfectly timed, and Valerie’s inner monologue is as damning as it is devastating.
Hungry Ghost will be available April 25.
What We Fed to the Manticore
Our desire to understand the world through an animal’s eyes is strong, and in this debut story collection, Talia Lakshmi Kolluri attempts to tackle deeply human themes through the lens of nine animals existing in international settings. If we fear war, how does a loyal donkey feel about it? How do scavengers assist the dead?
These questions and more are explored in What We Fed to the Manticore, which is at turns crushing, uplifting, and maddening. It raises questions about identity, grief, belonging, and conservationism, allowing readers to bring their own interpretation to the text as we walk alongside the animals narrating each story.
Frankly, this book is just beautiful, and each page deserves to be savored.
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