This is my book report!

I’m okay, I swear. It’s just that this pun has been playing on a loop in my brain for a month and a half and I’m hoping that sharing it here releases me from this sonic prison.

What I read in April:

Suzanne Collins, Sunrise on the Reaping (2025)—The last time I read a Hunger Games book in the Book Report era, I didn’t say too much about my relationship to the series. Maybe there isn’t much to say beyond: I was 25 (!), I was still a total brat about adults who read YA books, and I was stuck in Friend of the Report, Markee’s, apartment, cat-sitting during Hurricane Irene. Markee had left her kindle with all 3 Hunger Games books at her place and had said I was welcome to read them. She hadn’t ever steered me wrong (and she still hasn’t!!), so I overcame my prejudices and hopped right in. Naturally, I read all 3 books that weekend (not a brag!).

How could I not love a series that teaches children about timeless universal truths re: resisting fascism and authoritarianism? Suzanne Collins is like the anti-JK Rowling (pre- or post-black mold) in every way possible.

Anyway, she’s back at it again, opening this prequel with epigraphs from David Hume (2 quotations!!), George Orwell, and William Blake. The story follows the same beats in all the other novels, which is good because I don’t need Suzanne Collins to reinvent the wheel. The wheel is good.

I may have mentioned in earlier reports that sometimes, when it’s bad times, I like to engage with “feel bad” stories—your Melancholias (2011) and Parable of the Sowers (1993). Other times, I want the opposite. These days, I’m somewhere between the two. Sunrise on the Reaping, like all the Hunger Games books, is about a deeply unequal society that has children fight to the death for the wealthy’s “entertainment” and for everyone else’s punishment for ever daring to try to overthrow a fascist government 70-odd years earlier. Not light material, to say the least! But the book is not relentless and it of course features protagonists who do what they can to resist the system. This is all to say that it was an appropriate book for my in-between state, where I’m at once drawn to “feel bad” narratives that remind me of my present world, but also loathe to dwell in fictional worlds that too closely resemble what’s happening now.

Alba de Céspedes, tr., Ann Goldstein, There’s No Turning Back (1938/2025)—Speaking of fascism!! De Céspedes’s best-selling “experimental” novel of 8 women boarders in a Roman convent was recently translated into English by the translator of my favorite 21st century books.

Per the jacket, “considered experimental and revolutionary at the time, the novel was among the first to break with the traditional image of womanhood imposed by literature and society, and as a result it was censored by Mussolini’s fascist regime.” Remarkable how dangerous a story about women going to college and having extramarital sex could be!!

There’s (understandably) nothing explicit about the Italian regime, but there’s a smaller storyline that references the Spanish Civil War. Everything else, just women’s lives, baby, the everyday, the kind of stuff I can’t get enough of! I’m being serious. It’s a lovely novel about a period in life where societal expectations and individual dreams intersect. It’s not a unilaterally rosy narrative, but it’s also not bleak—some of the women end up achieving goals they didn’t even knew they wished for, while others end up happily and unhappily settling into familiar roles. I enjoyed my time with this novel.

Elizabeth von Arnim, The Enchanted April (1922)¹—Speaking of women in Italy, this sweet, British middlebrow novel about 4 women who are strangers to each other and just want to get away from it all by airbnb-ing² an Italian castle, was an appropriate read/listen during some gray April days.

As Book Club noted, there’s not too much to say about a book like this. I mean, yes, could a scholar of the period absolutely chew through such a rich passage as:

They could and I’m sure have. I won’t be explaining further on this topic, but I will say that if you watched The White Lotus and miss narratives about people who try to run away from themselves and their problems by going on a vacation, then you might like An Enchanted April!!

What I’m looking forward to reading in May:

Francisco Delgado, On Remembering My Friends, My First Job, and My Second-Favorite Weezer CD

Margaret Kennedy, The Feast (1950/2023)³

Katie Kitamura, Audition (2025)

I won’t promise more than that since I’m back on my bullshit (spending all my waking hours phone-banking and door-knocking for Zellnor).

1  Book Club selection for April.

2  Renting. These women didn’t live in our time but I got a kick out of realizing women have always wanted to escape with other women to a house with enough rooms for everyone to have their own bedroom. Girl trips!!

3  Book Club selection for May.