BOOK JOURNAL: January 2025
Six books this month: an effervescent romp of a novel set in Paris, a viral Dramione fanfic (iykyk), a lovely celebrity memoir, an eerie gothic novella, a Little Women retelling, and a sister story
A Note on Book Journal entries for 2025: Last year, I focused on one book at a time, but realized that so much of what I love reading personally is a round-up of my favorite bookworms’ reading lists. This year, my Book Journal entries will look a little different, as I’ll be taking a similar approach. Each month I plan to share a round-up of all the books I read from the previous month. You can still find all my previous Book Journal entries here and all my reads on my StoryGraph profile. In fact, if you’re on that platform, be my friend: @cassiemyatt! As always, I would love to hear from you, especially about what books you’ve enjoyed lately or your thoughts on any book I share. Happy reading, my friends! xo, Cassie
Total books this month: 6
Pétronille by Amélie Nothomb (my favorite of the month!)
The Third Gilmore Girl by Kelly Bishop (audiobook)
Manacled by SenLinYu (kindle)
1. Pétronille by Amélie Nothomb
I read Pétronille by Amélie Nothomb from cover to cover in one Korean Spa sitting. It’s the fourth Nothomb novel I’ve read, and my favorite. If you’ve ever chatted books with me over a glass of wine, you’ve heard me rave about this author. Belgian born, Nothomb writes in French—over the past few years, many of her works have been translated to English.
To set the scene: on the day I read this book, I sat in a row of naked women—one after another, each with a book balanced at eye level to avoid the hot pool water at chest-level. I was audibly giggling as I devoured Pétronille. The absurdity of the book matched the absurdity of my personal setting while reading it. And, I loved every minute of it.
This book is semi-autobiographical—the main character is a well known author whose name is Amélie Nothomb—but creative license is taken at random, especially the ending. The character Amélie meets an adoring fan and young author herself, who ends up being Amélie’s favorite drinking companion—re: comvinion, a word I didn’t know I needed, though I can’t confirm it’s an actual word. With an amateur working knowledge of latin, though, the readers assumes the meaning: a companion to drink wine with.
Without giving anything away—I went from giggling to laughing to gasping through funny tears at the end. It was a true rollercoaster of delightful prose. Cover-to-cover this book is like sharing a bottle of champagne with your favorite drinking partner—you know, the one with all the hilarious stories, off-the-wall ideas, chic as hell style, and laughs for days. Nothomb’s writing is precocious, precise, insightful, and hilarious. And this book was my favorite of the month.
If you love a precocious, sharp-witted, European style of book (in the vein of Annie Ernaux) and want the book equivalent of drinking a flute of champagne, this one is for you.
2. The Third Gilmore Girl by Kelly Bishop
*Audiobook: Audible version, read by Kelly Bishop
You don’t have to love Gilmore Girls to love this book, but you will adore it if you do. The Third Gilmore Girl by Kelly Bishop is exactly what I want out of a celebrity memoir—fun, heartfelt, and engaging. So often celebrity memoirs are obviously ghost-written and full of so much grandstanding it’s hard to remember why you picked up the book in the first place.
Bishop balances telling stories of her impressive career as a dancer and actor on Broadway with down-to-earth observations and insights into the realities of acting at the time. She doesn’t actually spend many pages of the book on her Gilmore Girls years, but those pages stood out. It’s obvious that she loved her time on the show, especially her relationships with Amy Sherman-Palladino (creator/writer), Lauren Graham (Lorelai), and Edward Herrmann (Richard). The tone and cadence of her character on the show—Emily Gilmore—peaks through her narration, like she’s a part of Bishop. The entire book was a quick listen, and an utter delight.
If you love a celebrity memoir that feels like having a warm mug of tea and yapping with your favorite aunt, this one is for you.
3. What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
I picked up What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher from a lovely little bookstore in Amarillo, Texas, called Chapterhouse Books—which spotlights GSRM, racialized, and displaced stories. I was drawn to the book by its cover—an obviously gothic, dark novella. The shop attendant immediately spied me spying the book and gushed over the first in Kingfisher’s Sworn Soldier duology. The gushing was so convincing that I (thankfully) picked up both books. The second of which is What Feasts at Night, which I’ll be reading soon.
I devoured this book on the plane ride back home from Amarillo. The amount of eerie action crammed into this 162 page novella is quite astonishing, and I was riveted. I didn’t realize until reading the acknowledgements after finishing that this was a retelling of Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, The Fall of the House of Usher. Very fitting that I stumbled upon a retelling, considering that our Dear Readers Book Club syllabus for 2025 is a year of retellings! There were gothic themes, a gender-queer MC, English countryside setting, and some mycology to boot.
If you like creepy, gothic stories, this is a wonderful duology to pick up.
4. Manacled by SenLinYu
Have you dipped your toe into the niche Harry Potter fan fic that “ships” Hermione and Draco Malfoy, i.e., Dramione Fan Fic? If yes, then it’s highly likely you’ve already read Manacled by SenLinYu. If not, are you interested in falling down the Dramione rabbit hole? It’s certainly not for everybody, but it is quite the funhouse-mirrored, riot of a time down here.
Some of you might know that my first foray into this subgenre was last year when I read Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Being in Love, a darling, light-hearted rom com fit for any Emily Henry/Harry Potter crossover fans. DMATMOOBIN is wonderful and sweet. But, reader beware: Manacled is not wonderful and sweet. Manacled is dark and twisty. In other words, it’s like DMATMOOBIN got thrown in a blender with Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and the most disturbing gothic story you’ve ever read, and then it was dipped in blood and trauma and served to the reader on an ornate silver platter. Like I said: disturbing.
The premise of Manacled is that Voldemort has won the war, Harry Potter is dead, and the Death Eaters run supreme enslaving muggle-born witches for reproductive purposes (a la Handmaid’s Tale). In other words, it’s disturbing and dark and hard to read at times, but the payoff is worth it if the dark bits aren’t too much for you. (Trigger warnings abound, so please exercise what my bestie Amanda calls intellectual self-defense before embarking on the journey into the depths.) This book was so popular that the author is currently set to release a reimagined version of Manacled via traditional publishing, called Alchemised (set to release in September of this year).
If you love a morally grey love interest, Dramione fan fic, and dark dystopian novels, this one is for you.
5. March by Geraldine Brooks
I yapped about March by Geraldine Brooks last month when I wrote a loving ode to the phrase “serpent-tongued” harridan. The reception of the book was quite polarizing among our book club members. Most of us (including myself) agreed that the quality of writing was stellar, but the handling of the Civil War content missed the mark.
Ultimately, I wouldn’t recommend this book as a preeminent text on Civil War-era content—this was written by an Australian-American white lady, after all. Slavery is a blight on the history of America, but America has always been a violent, racist country—an identity that we are currently seeing bubble to the forefront yet again. There are so many other books that are better suited for an education or true perspective. Please check out our Dear Readers Supplemental Reading for other, better books of that historical time, especially for more realistic perspectives from black authors on the horrendous, violent, and atrocious experiences black folks endured at the time.
I would recommend this book only for true Little Women fans. To boil it down: this book was about Mr. March and Marmee’s relationship with the Civil War as a backdrop (thus the less-than-stellar handling of the subject matter). The few chapters we get from Marmee’s perspective, in particular, really made this book a must read for me.
If you love Little Women, and have always wanted to know more about Marmee and Mr. March and the background of the story, this one is for you.
6. Shred Sisters by Betsy Lerner
I picked up Shred Sisters by Betsy Lerner in Elliott Bay Book Company (my favorite Seattle bookstore) in January and almost immediately started it. The premise was very promising—“a wry and riveting debut novel about family, mental illness, and a hard-won path between two sisters.” The writing was good, but not great. The depiction of the sister relationship was relatable, but not anything profound. The insights on mental illness and its effects on a family dynamic fell flat for me. Ultimately, for me, this novel lacked the grit and raw realness of familial relationships.
If you love a surface level handling of a sister relationship, this one is for you.
From Manacled:
“You’re like a rose in a graveyard,” he said, and his lips curved into a bitter smile. “I wonder what you could have turned into without the war.”
From Pétronille, on champagne:
I have a tendency to drink quickly, even when it's excellent. It's not the worst way there is to honor a good drink. No champagne has ever faulted me for my enthusiasm, which absolutely does not reflect a lack of attention on my part. If I drink quickly, it is also so that the elixir doesn't have time to get warm. And not to hurt its feelings: the sparkling wine must not get the impression that my desire is lacking in urgency. Drinking quickly does not mean guzzling. Just one sip at a time, but I do not keep the magic potion in my mouth for long: I tend to swallow it when its icy edge is still almost painful.
From What Moves the Dead:
“How do you do?” Denton said.
Ah. American. That explained the clothes and the way he stood with his legs wide and his elbows out, as if he had a great deal more space than was actually available. (I am never sure what to think of Americans. Their brashness can be charming, but just when I decide that I rather like them, I meet one that I wish would go back to America, and then perhaps keep going off the far edge, into the sea.)
“Denton, this is my sister's friend Lieutenant Easton, most recently of the Third Hussars.”
“A pleasure, sir,” I said.
I offered Denton my hand, because Americans will shake hands with the table if you don't stop them.
From March, from Marmee:
“You stifle me! You crush me! You preach emancipation, and yet you enslave me, in the most fundamental way. Am I not to have the freedom to express myself, in my own home? In the face of such insult? You call our girls your ‘little women’; well, I am your belittled woman, and I am tired of it. Tired of suppressing my true feelings, tired of schooling my heart to order, as if I were some errant pupil and you the schoolmaster. I will not be degraded in this way.”
From Shred Sisters:
My sister swims beyond the ocean crest, part-dolphin, part-girl. Gulls circle and fill the air. A cloud asks, what do you know? No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister.
From March, about Marmee:
I had learned the meteorology of Marmee's temper: the plunging air pressure as a black cloud gathered, blotting out the radiance of her true nature; the noisy thunder of her rage; and finally the relief of a wild and heavy raintears, in copious cataracts, followed by a slew of resolutions to reform. But the dark cast of her expression told me we were still within the thunderhead, and as I approached she confirmed this by raising her voice to me.
From Pétronille, on museums:
What I cannot abide in museums is the ponderous pace people feel duty-bound to respect. I am the sort who goes through at a brisk pace, incorporating whole vast prospects with my gaze: whether it is archaeology or Impressionist painting, I have tested the advantages of my method. The first is that I am spared the atrocious “guide-book effect”: “Admire the good-natured aspect of Sheikh al-Balad: don't you feel you met him at the market only yesterday?” Or: “Litigation is opposing Greece and the United Kingdom over the Elgin marbles.” The second advantage is concomitant with the first: it makes it impossible to chat about what you've seen on leaving the museum. Any modern-day Bouvard and Pécuchet would have the wind taken right out of their sails. The third advantage, and not the least important as far as I'm concerned, is that a brisk pace prevents the onset of the dreaded museum backache.