After a very long break, I am attempting a return to doing monthly book reviews/thoughts on books I’ve read. I initially stopped because I just didn’t have time to write thoughtfully, while also working on my own fiction and my day job. I’m going to try a more pared down approach going forward. That being said, here are the two pieces I read and have thoughts on this month – James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, and Ryōko Kui’s Delicious in Dungeon.

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin – I think this is the only time an ebook has improved my reading experience. The e-reader app I use doesn’t display page numbers for whatever reason, so it’s always a bit of a mystery how far into a book I am. When I got to the last page of Giovanni’s Room I didn’t realize it was the end of the story, and desperately hammered on the forward button thinking, “that can’t be it, this can’t be how we leave David. He has to find a way forward, the world has to unfurl itself for him just a little”

The book tells you from the beginning that Giovanni is dead, and the whole book is about the prison that homophobia creates, and David’s complete inability to escape that prison, so it’s not as if I went in expecting to reach a bright ending. This is a book that would have left me with a well-fitting sadness and unease regardless, but that failure to understand that I and David were at the end, coupled with the bleakness of the final scene once I realized I was truly at the end added an extra tremor to the way the book shook me. Never before have I been so stunned for a book to end.

Delicious in Dungeon by Ryōko Kui – I started reading this a while ago, but I am bad at keeping up with serialized works and fell off a little after the Red Dragon (a foolish place to stop reading). I’ve been watching the anime, and while I do think weekly releases is a better model than a whole season drop, I still got impatient and finally finished reading the manga.

The narrative craft on display is incredible. Everything, no matter how small a detail, circles back around to the core themes of the story; the necessity of eating and of eating well, the hard, immovable fact of the food chain, the double-edged nature of desire, both a necessity and a danger, and the power of the bonds formed over a meal. Even as the tone becomes darker, the jokes and funny nature of the opening never go away, and returning jokes are both heightened and more appreciated as the plot darkens. Similarly, jokes from early on make their way back as key moments of characterization, re-contextualized as intrinsic parts of a person as the story unwinds. It’s just great; a lot of fun, tremendously engaging, and a reminder to make something good to nourish yourself with, whether that be a meal, a friendship, or a story.