"Trad Wife" by Sarah Langan

Can a terrible book really be a terrible book if you just CAN'T STOP READING IT??

When I first started reading this book, it wasn't long before I was breathing a small sigh of disappointment. I'm not sure what it was that bothered me: maybe the dialogue seemed a bit unrealistic, and the characters were only talking, not doing anything to ground them in reality.

But it wasn't long before I could not put this book down. I don't remember when exactly it happened, but it definitely happened. 

This is the story of Jenny Kaplan, a journalist in NYC who goes viral for a raw and honest autobiographical essay, then suffers the inevitable backlash. Her boss is forced to fire her, but lets her down gently by offering to send her on location to interview tradwife Mia Wright, influencer extraordinare from Black Swan Farm in Pennsylvania. A tradwife is just about as polar opposite from Jenny as you can get, but that's the contrast her former boss is looking for. Somewhat reluctantly, Jenny agrees to go.

At first glance, Black Swan Farm is beautiful and idyllic, and Mia is the perfect wife in a perfect family living a perfect life. Things are just a little weird. It's unsettling, and there's an undercurrent of tension, but these weird things that happen--they're just small things, maybe even misunderstandings. But the small things start to stack up. And by the last fifth of the book, it's become a full-on horror novel. Not my usual fare, but by then I was hooked. 

And I do like the cover! Despite the old-fashioned-seeming title font. It's like it's retro in a bad way. Although come to think of it, that's probably the whole point.

"The 100 Best Vacations to Enrich Your Life" by Pam Grout

For anyone who has tired of vacations that involve relaxation on a beach with a novel (which is not me, yet!), this book is full of ideas for unique and fulfilling things to do if you can get a few days or a week off work. It's divided into four chapters: arts & crafts getaways, volunteer vacations, brain retreats, and wellness escapes (though some of the suggestions would fit into more than one of these categories). 

I bought this book years and years ago (possibly almost 20) but had never read it until now. As such, I ignored the dollar amounts it lists for costs and fees. I didn't check on any of them, but I wouldn't be surprised if they've basically all doubled by now (or worse). 

For a lot of these vacation ideas, I found myself wondering: Why not just do these things close to home, on a smaller timescale? A lot of them are not necessarily location-dependent (as long as you can find people with know-how and supplies). The book does make a good point about this: doing new things while on vacation allows you to focus on them in a way you normally could not, if you were trying to squeeze them in between days at work and dentist appointments and taking out the trash. Also, even if you could do these things close to home, would you? It takes a certain amount of intentionality and motivation. Well, maybe this is how I ended up taking a brief wheel-throwing class at a local art space this summer?

Out of all 100 vacations suggested in this book, though most sounded intriguing and unusual, there were two that stood out to me as ones I might actually want to look into:

• Colby College Great Books Summer Institute: a week-long "in-depth discussion and workshop on six selected classic books" in Waterville, Maine. Alas, Google makes it appear as if 2025 was the final year for this!
• Immersive Spanish lessons at Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. From a satisfied customer: "I learned more Spanish in one month than I did in two years at my local community college." I never had the opportunity to be an exchange student. Maybe it's not too late!

"Une riviere verte et silencieuse" by Hubert Mingarelli

Prepare to be impressed. Rather than spending six years on my second book in French, it only took me just over six months to read this one! (Insert winky face here.) Never mind that at only 124 pages it was shorter than the first one; it wasn't that much shorter. 

I've read three other books by Hubert Mingarelli (all expertly translated into English by my favorite French-to-English translator who also happens to be the best French-to-English translator in the world as well as the best husband I've ever had), but somehow I only managed to blog about one of them. No idea how that happened. But A Green and Silent River is in a similar vein: brief, subtle, intense. Luckily for me, Mingarelli's books are written in simple, almost sparse prose. Unlike the others, however, this one is not associated with World War II. (Yay!)

AGASR (or URVES?) is told from the perspective of a young boy named Primo who lives with his father (as far as I remember, the existence or fate of his mother is never mentioned). The pair have fallen on hard times since the father lost his job at the local air-compressor factory, although they have a plan to make some money by growing and selling cuttings from the climbing rose bush that grows in their backyard. Occasionally the father is hired to do odd jobs like mowing lawns; Primo spends most of his free time roaming in the fields of tall grass behind the houses on their street. He creates a tunnel there for himself, grass stalks meeting over his head, his thoughts his only companion. 

This is a book that seemed so deeply rooted in reality that I wondered if it was autobiographical, or at least partially so. I can imagine a young Hubert as Primo. Unfortunately, Mingarelli's brief Wikipedia entry doesn't answer that question.

I think my next French book is about teenagers and possibly full of slang, so that may be a challenge. We shall see.