NNIR 02 - Ooh, look at this!

Books Read

Everything You Ever Wanted by Luiza Sauma

In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende

Ground State: Expeditionary Force Book #19 by Craig Alanson

PSA - Blog posts beginning with NNIR (Not Now I'm Reading) XX are my monthly reading wrap-ups. Less review, and more life with books, articles about reading, life, the books of that month, etc. Enjoy the tomfoolery.

If March was my reading reset, then April was my "ooh, look at this" reading month.

I picked up every shiny object from my library that my heart wanted, and thusly returned 17 of them. Not because they were bad. In fact, I intend to revisit all but two of the books I returned in the future. They just weren't the right thing at the moment.

It's like when you're not really hungry, but you want something. You have no idea what that something is, so you taste everything in your fridge and pantry, desperately hoping to find the thing you really want. But alas, you do not know what you want, and therefore cannot find it.

That's what I did with the library in April. I checked out so many non-fiction, LGBTQ+ rom-coms, and fantasy books that I felt like an entertainment and information glutton.

Note to readers who borrow ebooks and audiobooks from the Nashville Public Library: I am no monster. The moment I see people waiting for a book I've checked out and will not be reading for a while, I return it and place the book on hold.

After rejecting political stats and royal rom-coms, I ended up reading Everything You Ever Wanted by Luiza Sauma, which was a far cry from either genre I thought I'd be reading.

It reminded me a lot of Severance by Ling Ma.

I didn't find any of the characters remarkable, and while the story was dystopian sci-fi, it felt very current and believable. The likeness to our current state made the book eerie and uncomfortable.

I think about both of these books weekly.

After Everything You Ever Wanted, I wasn't satisfied. I wanted something else. Something light and whimsical from the 60s, perhaps.

In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan was mentioned on a book podcast that I follow called Life on Books. The book was only mentioned in passing on an episode, and I thought, "Interesting title. Let's see if the library has it."

Only moments later, I was reading sentences and paragraphs with a structure that felt lyrical. I was into it. It was different from everything else I had been reading.

Given that the book started with a description of a town that was built of and sustained by watermelon sugar, I knew I was in for surreal writing, but this book went from sweet and intriguing to dark and tragic very quickly.

Nothing gets resolved. The ending is abrupt. It just stops. No real resolution, no attempt to tie anything together. For this book, that tracked completely.

I went back to the fridge, as it were, for something rich and colorful: The Neverending Story by Michael Ende.

Now, this was more like it. Familiar adventure. Characters from my childhood. Perfect.

The Neverending Story was one of my favorite movies growing up. Somehow, I completely neglected to read the book.

I expected the book to be very similar, if not exactly like, the movie, and as I started reading, that's exactly what I got. Something very familiar and comforting. The dialogue was even familiar. The movie very closely mimicked the story, until I got to the end of the movie, which is actually the middle of the book.

The second half of the book is a whole other story. This book, in my mind, could have been split in half and turned into two books if the author had wanted to. It would've been very easy. But the second half of the book is, in my opinion, the much stronger and more poignant tale.

I don't want to ruin it for you, and it's very possible that The Neverending Story part two movie covered the second half of this book, but my memory fails me when it comes to that movie. I just remembered that the kid from Seaquest was in it. Anyway, worth a read.

The last book I read in April was book 19 in the Expeditionary Force series called Ground State. And yes, I did say book 19. It was really nice to get to hang out with these characters again.

I was lucky and started this series when 18 of the books had already been written and established. Getting back into outer space with Joe and Skippy was like coming home after a vacation with people who simply aren't like you.

We should probably circle back to the food metaphor, shouldn't we? While my April reading did not entirely satisfy me, I did get some nourishment, and I'm still not quite sure what it is I want to read next.

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