Reading Wrap-Up: March 17-23, 2025

Currently Reading:

• Free by Amanda Knox - The fact that I studied abroad in Italy less than a year after Amanda's own saga there started is perhaps more wild to me now than it was at the time (I'm sure my parents must have been terrified!). I only started this a few days ago, but in these opening chapters, Amanda already has a strong voice as she reflects on coming of age and into her own behind bars in her quest to be exonerated for a murder she did not commit while the whole world watched.

• The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie - I must confess, I have only ever read one other Agatha Christie book and I wasn't wild about it. (If you're curious, it was And Then There Were None and personally it was hard for me to get invested in a story in which I didn't like any of the characters - no wonder they all ended up dead haha.) I picked this up at a used bookstore last year for $2 and so far, my impressions are much improved.

Finished Reading:

• I Hope This Finds You Well by Kate Baer - I love found or blackout poetry. I love the idea of taking the works or words of others and parsing them down into something completely new. In this collection, Baer takes comments, DMs, emails, speeches, sound bites, and all the rest and manages to transform words often of criticism and hate into messages of persistent, determined, unflinching hope. I found myself often "playing along," trying to guess which turns of phrase might make it from the original into the new piece and of course her choices were so much stronger than mine. This is one of those books where I immediately found myself wanting to read everything else she's ever written.

• The Isle of Ever by Jen Calonita - This first book in a planned series gives very much middle-grade Inheritance Games vibes. A girl finds out she is to get a grand inheritance, but first must solve riddles left behind by her ancestor by a very specific deadline determined generations ago. If she doesn't, it all goes to her family's longtime rivals. There's also a dash of fantasy here makes it ideal for younger readers willing to suspend the rules of reality for a while.

• Disney High: The Untold Story of the Rise and Fall of Disney Channel's Tween Empire by Ashley Spencer - Was this book written just for me?! It sure feels like it. I didn't have cable TV before junior high, but once I did, it was right around the time that Disney realized they might have something amazing on their hands with Disney Channel. I lived for Friday night DCOM premieres and was particularly fond of Lizzie McGuire. But what about the stars of these shows and movies? And what were the adults behind the scenes thinking? Spencer does a deep dive into the millennial madness and pulls away the curtain, shedding a light on how what is now nostalgia for so many was, in many ways, a bonkers business run by adults who knew a lot about profit but not always about being good people. This was fascinating.