arden's asides

april and may 2025 reading journey

In the first week of April, my husband left me and reading was the last thing that I felt like doing. Grad school had already messed up my relationship with reading once before and I was worried that I wasn’t going to be able to summon the motivation to get back to it again. In April, I read a few picture books and graphic novels, but I was not able to get back to novels until May because they took so much more energy and concentration to be present. There are still other hobbies that I am gravitating toward more strongly right now, but I am relieved to be getting back to this part of my life.

Since I read these books over the span of two months, I don’t necessarily have sweeping thoughts about all of them, but still wanted to document them for posterity’s sake. Since writing is another hobby that I have been longing to come back to, I think this is an important part of my healing journey.

  1. A House at the Bottom of a Lake by Josh Malerman

This had been on my reading list for a while since Kayla from BooksandLala has always listed it as one of her favorite horror-but-not-quite-horror books. I devoured this book in 1.5 sittings, but I probably could have finished it one. The chapters are short, the prose is simple, and the story and atmosphere were really intriguing. From other reviews, I know a lot of people didn’t gel with the story focuses too much on teen romance, but I thought it was a relatively realistic representation of teen love that was reflected in their shared obsession with the house itself.

I do understand why some people quibble with labeling this as “true” horror, but I’ve also been reflecting a lot over the past couple years on distinguishing books about hauntings vs books about horror, and I think this one lines up with the former. There’s certainly overlap between the two, but I think that hauntings can be unsettling and confusing without necessarily inspiring fear within us. That’s also part of why it worked for me: I relate to being haunted - the anxiety, hyperfixation, romance - far more than I do of being horrified. The real world horrifies me far more than fiction, but both have haunted me in various ways.

  1. xxxHOLiC Omnibus 10-17 by CLAMP

In early April, I binge-read the last few volumes of this series. Even though I already knew parts of Yuko’s story from reading Tsubasa, but it still caught me off-guard to experience it from this perspective. There were some narrative elements that surprised me (such as the passage of time), and I do wish that the last volume was a bit longer. I wanted to know about Watanuki and the people in his life, this new normal for them all. But I was enchanted by this world in unexpected ways, and plan to read Rei eventually.

  1. Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey

This is a classic picture book that I remember seeing at the library all of the time growing up, but I never actually read it . McCloskey’s artwork is in such an iconic style and the tale about this pair of duck parents trying to find the perfect space to raise their family was very charming.

  1. I Am Perfectly Designed by Karamo Brown and Jason “Rachel” Brown and illustrations by Anoosha Syed

I picked this one out from my picture book TBR because I’m a big fan of Anoosha’s illustrations. The story itself was also really sweet - a celebration of difference and the bond between father and child. Definitely recommend this one.

  1. A Day So Gray by Marie Lambda with illustrations by Alea Marley

The art style of this one was adorable, but the story was just okay. I like the concept about tension between the two kids - one who is struggling with pessimism, and one who is brimming with optimism - but I think it’s message about perspective was maybe a little too simplistic.

  1. Tsubasa: WoRLD CHRoNICLE #3 by CLAMP

This was the first thing that I read when the break was official. It was a good ending to this short cycle, but it left me wanting more of these characters. I’m not sure that CLAMP will be returning to this world any time soon.

  1. Animal Ark books 11-16

I tried to push my way through reading the next set for my retrospective series, but I just was not in a good head space for it. In April, I made it through book 13 (Hamster in a Handbasket - a mixed bag) and then read three more in May. I’m on the last book that I need to finish before my wrap-up blog post, so stay tuned for my thoughts on this set of stories.

  1. Mismatched by Anne Camlin and illustrated by Isadora Zeferino

A month passed without reading anything so I picked up this graphic novel since that’s historically what I have needed for a good reading reset. This is a queer re-imagining of Emma by Jane Austen where the main character, Evan, is a teen matchmaker and makeup influencer who takes it upon himself to help out the new transfer student, Natalia, who is still navigating her own identity. Evan is certainly a flawed character and I do think that he internalizes the criticism that he receives, but I also notice the hallmark of YA stories where things get wrapped up a bit too tidily for me in the end. For example, in Clueless, there’s a much bigger confrontation between Cher and Tai (the Evan and Natalia counterparts) that felt much more realistic, especially to encourage Cher to reflect on her behavior. Although there is a confrontation between Evan and a different friend he had a falling out in place of this, I still would have liked to see even more come of it - not even just for Evan, but the other people involved, too.

  1. Kafka and the Doll by Larissa Theule and illustrated by Rebecca Green

I saw this at a local indie bookstore and borrowed it from Libby later on. Very sweet story inspired by real events, with some key changes for a contemporary audience. Green’s art is beautiful, and this is a good tale for tackling loss in multiple ways. I could see myself buying a copy of this one day.

  1. The Influencers by Anna-Marie McLemore

Despite my best efforts (a few chapters and poems in different books here and there), I fell off reading again in May. After a lot of podcast episodes, and listening to the same album on repeat, my hold became available for McLemore’s first adult novel. It was the fastest that I had read anything in a couple months. Even though the style, tone, and genre are so different from their usual novels (YA, magical realism, steeped in folklore and fairytales, blooming queer romance), I really enjoyed this departure and look forward to McLemore exploring writing for an older audience more in the future.

The novel is divided up by the hours, days, weeks, and months after the homicide of influencer extraordinaire May “Mother May I” Iverson’s second husband, August. We rotate focus between her four daughters (April, twins June and July, January), a mysterious man referred to as “Luke Sweatshirt,” and a chorus of fans actively trying to piece together the mystery of what happened. Who murdered August is one of the least interesting questions as we learn more and more information about what really went on behind the scenes over the decades of Mother May I’s family vlogging.

Often when I read contemporary books about influencers, I find myself cringing really hard, but McLemore has clearly done their research and isn’t just sprinkling out tried clichĂ©s or empty critiques. Its biting and textured in a way that you’re only able to describe if you watched these kinds of mommy blogger stories unfold in real time. I especially enjoyed hearing the parasocial perspective of the fans - a collective often referred to as “we who grew up watching the Iversons” - including those whose perspectives shifted as more information came out and those who held steadfast and protective of the family in a combination of longing and jealousy.

  1. When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo

Craving something short and speedy, I picked up Vo’s second entry in the Singing Hills Saga. I liked the first book more overall, but this one was still very enjoyable and I marked quite a few passages that I want to copy down into my commonplace notebook.

  1. Immaculate Conception by Ling Ling Huang

After a few more rounds of Animal Ark, I wanted something a bit more challenging to read so my hold for Huang’s sophomore novel came out at just the right time.

Natural Beauty was full of horrific body horror, but Immaculate Conception has a lot more existential horror. The body is certainly a contentious site, but this book asks us to grapple with the beginning and end of our identity, what shapes who we become in life, to what degree we can or would want to alter who we are (especially medically), and what is like to see and be seen from the eyes of another.

The story focuses on the relationship between Mathilda and Enka, two artists who meet in a prestigious program and become deeply entangled in one another’s lives. The novel is filled with envy, obsession, legacy, motherhood/creation, technology/nature. There are so many issues that are resonant with the themes in this novel (money’s influence on art and technology, the rise of AI and its impact on art ownership and creation, reproductive rights) but its interrogation of humanity itself is what I found myself circling around frequently. What makes one human? How does art prompt us to interrogate being human? In what ways does technology encourage and trouble this interrogation? Are we losing what it means to be human?

I can see myself coming back to this book again in the future to reflect more on some of these thoughts, but I highly recommend it for anyone fond of her first book and sci-fi/speculative fiction in general.

DNFed

  1. Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman

There are a lot of books that I set aside because I could not bring myself to read consistently, but I do not see myself returning to Malerman’s most recent novella. The child narrator’s impact on the writing style, while inventive, was too much for me, and I found the dialogue from the adults even less believable. They would often sit at the narrator’s bedside while they thought she was asleep and talk in a very unnatural, weird way about all their secrets and problems. There was one line from the mom that completely took me out of it and that’s when I decided to return the book early - about one third of the way in.

On My Active TBR

Thank you for reading! ʕᔔᎄᔔʔ

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