Read:
The Night Ship – Jess Kidd
The Garden Party & Other Stories – Katherine Mansfield (Century Hutchinson, 1988)
Let us be True – Erna Buffie (Coteau Books, 2015)
The Sleeping Car Porter – Suzette Mayr (Coach House Books, 2022)
She Who Became the Sun – Shelly Parker-Chan (MacMillan Audio, 2021)
The Friend – Sigrid Nunez (Penguin Random House, 2019)
Telling Secrets – Frederick Buechner (Harper San Francisco, 1991)
Wilder Girls – Rory Power (Delacorte Press, 2019)
Yellowface – R. F. Kuang (Harper Collins, 2023)
Did Not Finish:
Scandal – Shusaku Endo
I’ve admired Endo’s writing every time I’ve read him and I could certainly find a lot to admire here too. It was the content that made me stop. There was one particularly stomach-churning revelation that convinced me to put the book down and not pick it up again.
Fortune’s Bazaar – Vaudine England
I was really excited about this history of Hong Kong but it just wasn’t as readable as I’d hoped. It felt more like a list of names than any sort of narrative.
Currently Reading:
The Sweetness of Water – Nathan Harris
In Praise of Good Bookstores – Jeff Deutsch
I Am Homeless if this is not my Home – Lorrie Moore
2023 GOALS:
Books Read: 55/100 (9 read in June)
Translated Works: 5/15 (Scandal, translated from Japanese)
Books I Already Own: 13/30 (The Garden Party, The Sleeping Car Porter, Scandal, Telling Secrets, and Wilder Girls. All either thrifted or found in Little Free Libraries.)
Books From the TBR pre-2020: 7/20 (Let us be True from 2018)
Current TBR: 210 (previously 213)
Thoughts:
I’ve obviously let certain things slide (book reviews) in June but I read a lot and I’m really pleased with having finished 9 books this month. June has been both busy and long and keeping to my regular reading times has helped keep some of my sanity through it. The 15 Books of Summer Challenge has also helped a lot (more on that to follow).
Standouts this month were The Night Ship, Telling Secrets, and Yellowface. She Who Became the Sun and The Friend were both audio books that I chose because they were available on the library app, not because I had them on my TBR. Both were fine but neither blew me away. I do hope to catch up on reviews in the next weeks so I’ll limit my thoughts here.
What’s Next:
More of the 15 Books of Summer! Here’s my list:
June
Telling Secrets – Frederick Buechner (non-fiction)
The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield (short stories)
Wilder Girls – Rory Power
The Sleeping Car Porter – Suzette Mayr (Canadian)
Scandal – Shusaku Endo (translation)
July
The Parables of Grace – Capon (non-fiction)
Of Love and Other Demons – Gabriel Garcia Marquez (short stories AND translation)
The Tiger’s Wife – Obreht
Curiosity – Thomas (Canadian)
Sun House – Duncan
August
The Cocktail Party – T.S. Eliot
The Catch – Fairbrother
The Flanders Road – Simon (translation)
The Glass-Blowers – Daphne du Maurier
Travels with my Aunt – Graham Greene (non-fiction)
I feel good about my progress thus far. I read (or made a good effort on) all 5, as well as 4 other titles. July will likely be another busy month and I’m not sure yet if that busy-ness and time away from home will translate into reading time or not.
As well as the July challenge titles, I hope to read a couple of the authors who will be at our local Writers Festival in August – particularly Fire Weather by John Vaillant and Bad Cree by Jessica Johns. I have a couple of airplane flights in July so I’m tempted to buy myself a brand new book.
Karissa Reads Books 
What a great month of reading! Just a heads up, Of Love and Other Demons is actually a novel–but it’s very short, and also very striking; I would recommend it!
You’re right! It’s clearly a novel! No idea why I thought otherwise except that I must have mixed it up with another book on my shelves. I love his work though so I’m still looking forward to it.
Oh good! It’s one of his strongest I think
Why are you flying in July? I hope the Canadian wild fires don’t affect your flight plans.
I am spending a week in Ontario with my dad and my brother. That’s where my dad is from and somewhere he really wants to visit once more while his health allows. He can’t travel alone so we are going with him.
As far as I can tell, the wildfires have actually been more disruptive for American air travel than here I. Canada. Definitely something to keep an eye on though.
Yes, I actually cheered on Friday because the air quality was “Poor.” For several days it had been “Very Unhealthy.”
Oh man, that’s such a weird dystopian thing, isn’t it?
YES.
What did you think of The Garden Party? I feel like Katherine Mansfield is an author I’ve seen a lot recently and I’m definitely tempted.
I hope you have a good trip in July!
I was surprised by how many of the stories in the collection I had already read. She must have been included in a lot of school anthologies! I didn’t realize I had read The Garden Party story before. I liked it and the rest. They all felt rather sweeping – broad strokes of a life without a lot of commentary. It felt like Mansfield trusted her readers, which I appreciate. It’s easy to see her influence on modern short stories.