February was cold and gray and overall drab so I had plenty of early nights tucked up with a book. I see some sunshine in my future, but here are the books that have kept me busy for the past few weeks: 

Dead Dead Girls by Nekesa Afia: I bought this hoping for an engaging historical fiction/mystery mash-up. It has all the pieces to be a great book: a great setting in 1920’s Harlem, a strong female lead, an intense murder mystery and the classic genre trope of the police pairing up and clashing with a novice detective. It even starts out strong, with our main character rescuing herself and other girls from a kidnapping followed by a time jump to her dancing the night away with her girlfriend in a speakeasy. 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t come together in a satisfying way. The setting doesn’t feel as fleshed out as it could, with spaces often feeling a bit like set pieces. The body count is high, but we spend little time getting to know the victims. Similarly, our villain is evil but presented without any subtly, meaning I solved the mystery within the first 100 pages. 

Afia tries to tackle so many major subjects in this text (sexism, racism, classism, police brutality, institutional racism, family conflict, the problems of organized religion) her ambition for the small paperback is likely where it goes a bit off track. Another friend who read the book at the same time as me did express a desire to continue with the series to see if things improved because of the possibilities of the main character and setting, but with my bookshelf groaning under the weight of everything else I have yet to read I will probably just wait to hear what she thinks of number two.

All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker was an impulse borrow from the library audiobook system and I lost a whole weekend to the first section. Young teenager Patch is kidnapped when he interrupts an attack on the pretty, wealthy girl in their small town. His friend Saint leads the investigation to find him but that is only the start of the story. The writing and characterization is engrossing, but it is a very large book so I ran out of time on the loan before I could finish. I’m sure once my name comes up again on the hold list I will finish it, but if you are looking for a big story that spans decades and includes multiple mysteries and investigations and plenty of villains and mistakes and love and friendship and trauma, I’m confident recommending it to you before I’ve even read the ending. 

My list is shorter than usual, but that is because in between these mysteries I am in the midst of hunting a literary white whale… Ulysses by James Joyce. I am enrolled in an online course taking the book chapter by chapter, week by week. It’s engaging and the best way to follow Bloom and Stephen around Dublin without getting frustrated or overwhelmed, but it does mean the majority of my reading time is spent reading Joyce, annotations relating to Joyce, articles relating to the themes in Joyce… basically it’s mostly Joyce. The course is eighteen weeks long so I’m sure my reading list for the next two months will be similarly short but I am enjoying finally tackling this giant book that for the past few years has just been an intimidating doorstop in my home library.