Reading, Writing, and Me

Laura & Emma  by Kate Greathead  Overview: Laura descends from American royalty – diluted enough that it doesn't come with all the privileges, only most of them. She works for the nonprofit that her family started and her lifestyle is greatly supplemented by them. She's not sure she wants to have a child at all until a surprise pregnancy changes everything. She decides to keep the baby and raise the child as a single mother. This book cover the 1980s and 1990s as Laura navigates New York society and raising a daughter without a partner in a world full of social pressure. In the most slice of life style possible, you come to see the trials and tribulations of not just one mother-daughter relationship but the web of various familial ties that surround Laura. Overall: 4 Characters: 4 While some might find Laura off-putting, I very much enjoyed her as a narrator. She's frank and says what other people aren't willing to. This aspect of her comes through most in her narra

On Beauty  by Zadie Smith Overview: Two academic families are at war in a college town outside Boston in the early 2000s. While the two husbands of the households – now forced to be colleagues at the university – are ideologically at odds, they largely prove to be fitting foils for one another. The various interpersonal relationships that evolve in and around the two families reveals both the best and worst humans have to offer as each family member is put under the microscope. Overall: 5 Characters: 5 This is a fantastic character study if I've ever read one. Seamlessly, a broad cast of characters that include two married couples and five children between them, as well as various friends and background characters, are brought into the fold in sharp detail. We spend time in so many characters' heads without ever getting lost. Each individual voice is maintained with a vivid, stunning clarity that doesn't waver through the entire novel. Whether it's the fifty-seven-year-

Excavations  by Kate Myers Overview: A constellation of women come together at a Greek archeological dig to reveal a crook and make sure that history is told accurately. Kara, Gary, and Elise have come back to a particular Greek site every year for a decade. Elise is a leader out on the dig, but her lack of degree holds her back from advancing in her career. Gary keeps moving along in his LiDAR specialty, and Kara has been promoted to running the lab and getting the coveted single room. This year, though, looks a bit different. Kara and Elise are barely talking after an artifact's demise last year, and Z, Gary's ex-girlfriend who once worked at the site before going to the corporate world, is returning. Instead of just being another year, Kara, Z, and Elise are tasked with coming together to uncover something sinister happening behind the scenes. Overall: 3.5 Characters: 3 We get to see the story unfold through the lens of four characters – Kara, Elise, Z, and Patty, one of the