Some thoughts about the books I read in May and June 2022

The worst book I read recently was Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which provoked a landmark obscenity trial in the UK in 1960. Some critics think D.H. Lawrence’s writing style was influenced by his tuberculosis, which he died from two years after publishing Lady Chatterley's Lover. Apparently, tuberculosis can cause a heightened emotional state and also impotence, which matches up pretty well to my personal beef with the book: I found the prose insufferably flowery and the characters flat and annoying.

The best book I read recently was probably Passing by Nella Larsen. The book was so tense and readable and concise. Klara and the Sun was good too – I like speculative fiction that has disorienting, unobtrusive world-building, where the reader has to figure out over the course of many pages how exactly the setting relates to present-day Earth. Klara and the Sun did that really well.