Kim Nguyen Love

Media Designer and Communications

Readings

Our Wives Under the Sea Julia Armfield 3 Stars Definitely not the right moment to be reading this book about a woman who comes back from a deep see craft failure. A few of the blurbs hailed it as a love story. And, sure, it does repeatedly return to the romantic beginnings of the central couple, but the book goes in a few different directions, most moodily eerie. I wanted more of the mysterious events of the sinking, but the book insisted on being more obliquely about the relationship between two people I didn't actively find that compelling. 7/30/23

Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield

August 10, 2023 Kim Love

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Bliss Montage Ling Ma 4 Stars I love stories like these, grounded mostly in the world we know, but with a single element turned on its side. It's metaphorical, often, or mostly so, enough to see our reality with just a little more clarity or nuance. All these stories feature relationships with constraints, which is a description I suppose could apply to all relationships. But these have very specific constraints, starkly manufactured to evoke a mood, and the lens the author brings to these tales really works for me. 7/30/23

Bliss Montage, Ling Ma

August 6, 2023 Kim Love

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Jackal Erin E. Adams 3 stars I read a very similar book in When the Reckoning Comes. Both deal with a Black woman’s homecoming to her small, southern (read: racist), hometown for the wedding of her white childhood best friend who turns out to be not quite the ally she needs. And of course there are weird, possibly supernatural, things afoot. The throughline of how trauma has followed her is the compelling part of the story, which makes the actual suspense pieces a bit of a slog. 6/16/23

Jackal, Erin E. Adams

June 22, 2023 Kim Love

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An Immense World Ed Yong 5 stars Good science writing is my jam. What I love about this book is its science, of course, but from the perspective of a journalist, a writing professional, self-tasked with investigating the topic and distilling it to something that’s actually engaging. And not just the science is laid bare here. The scientists themselves get some of the journalistic treatment which makes them entirely human. No, scientists aren’t infallible, swayed only by demonstrable facts as if their choice of profession makes them inherently reasonable (looking at you NdGT). 6/16/23

An Immense World, Ed Yong

June 17, 2023 Kim Love

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How High We Go in the Dark Sequoia Nagamatsu 4 Starts A pandemic/apocalypse story (aren’t they all now?), but really just a way to highlight the necessity and beauty of human connection. As a card-carrying introvert, this makes me deeply uncomfortable. But yeah, if/when the world does break down so completely as it does in this book, I can see myself rolling through all the emotions and phases that are laid out by the characters here, and craving the real or engineered contact that they create in the aftermath of such comprehensive loss. It really is a lovely book. 5/28/23

How High We Go in the Dark, Sequioa Nagamatsu

June 12, 2023 Kim Love

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The Swimmers Julie Otsuka 4 Stars For the first half of the book I kept trying to decipher the code of what the crack represents, and kept leaning towards the socio-political. Is it partisanship? The social divide over climate change? The politicization and polarization of identity? As the book moved into a more personal story, I tended to think of the crack as a personal rift, one that, while living through its appearance, you can only witness it from a remove, with apprehension and anxiety, whether or not you’re actually helpless to stop its growth. 5/28/23

The Swimmers, Julie Otsuka

May 28, 2023 Kim Love

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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow Gabrielle Zevin 4 Stars I don’t know that I can say this was THE most readable book I’ve encountered, but it certainly went down smoothly. As self-propelling a story as I’ve ever read. It’s a sort of Ready Player One for adults, using the story of video game developers to explore human connections, examine people whose backgrounds and personalities are actually developed enough to inform their characters and actions. 4/9/23

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin

April 21, 2023 Kim Love

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Starry Messenger Neil deGrasse Tyson 2.5 Stars Ugh. I find myself, at least once every chapter, OK-Boomer-ing Neil in my head. As in, “OK, Neil, there’s no justification for an atheist harshing an astronaut’s Christian mellow.” Or “OK, Neil, the fact that the universe (and beyond) is immense totally makes social justicing an irrelevant annoyance.” I get that he thinks, reasonable even, that it’s superior to actually use science and reason as the basis of things (legislation, personal ethics, political actions, social policies, you name it). But he fails to acknowledge that even science and data can and always have been bent to the strongest personalities in the room. And Neil’s is always the strongest personality in his room. 4/9/23

Starry Messenger, Neil deGrasse Tyson

April 17, 2023 Kim Love

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The Q Amy Tintera 4 Stars Sometimes when I’m reading an audiobook, I just assume at the spelling of names (as opposed to just assuming at their pronunciation when I’m reading-reading a book). In this case, I thought it odd that a character would be named Lenin. Lennon, the character’s actual name, made a whole lot more sense. The book itself was an engaging post-apocalyptic trek through a lawless land. YA adventure at its finest. 3/26/23

The Q, Amy tintera

April 5, 2023 Kim Love

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Our Missing Hearts Celeste Ng 4 Stars I hadn’t realized this book would be set against a dystopic backdrop. But it’s one just a couple tiny missteps away from our world today, so close an alternate reality that it hardly feels imagined at all. The timing is apt. The everyday evocation of the threat of Chinese apps, Chinese drones, Chinese viruses, pandemic stories of Asian Americans targeted with racist violence. The one thing our wildly divided politicos and public can agree on is the untrustworthiness of China, with our Dem President positing on what he’d do “if China threatens our sovereignty,” like a movie cowboy swaggering against the The Bad Guys. 3/28/23

Our Missing Hearts, Celeste Ng

March 29, 2023 Kim Love

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