everything I read in February and March

There was lots of fiction set in Ireland, plus the best book I've read in years, a tiny, perfect novel published in 1994.

Lately: I can’t get enough of Samin Nosrat’s buttermilk-brined roast chicken recipe. Here in D.C., we had a solid two-week period where I was able to get outside and grill, and I loved having marinaded, grilled chicken around for sandwiches and salads. Then it got cold and rainy, and that’s been the status quo for a week — so I’m roasting chickens like it’s January. … I’m also making what may be my favorite Smitten Kitchen recipe for dinner tonight: southwestern pulled brisket. We’re moving in less than a month, which means I need to do an audit of my freezer and start using stuff up, and tonight’s brisket has already lightened that load. … One final recipe thought: Make yourself some pimento cheese this weekend. The Masters is on, after all. I don’t really use a recipe anymore; I just wind up making some hybrid of Molly Baz’s version from “Cook This Book” and this New York Times recipe. The key is extra-sharp cheddar, and I love using piquillo peppers instead of pimentos.

everything I read in February and March

I never found time for a February books recap last month, which may have wound up being a good thing considering how little I read in March. I made it through exactly three books in 31 days, not exactly shattering land speed records — which means a March recap would’ve looked pretty pathetic. But here it is, lumped in with February, appearing downright respectable. (I will now pause to remind you all that you should never stress out about how many books you’re reading. If you like reading enough to worry about it, that means you’re reading more than enough.)

Let’s go to Ireland … and stay awhile

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray: Being devoted to my local library — and being an obsessive user of its hold feature, which lands me on waitlists for the most popular releases — makes me utterly disregard the books living on my shelves at home. The books I once purchased excitedly at a bookstore, only to bury under stacks of pages wrapped in plastic film. There are due dates! There’s pressure!

“The Bee Sting” got buried. I bought it, giddy, at Topping & Company in Edinburgh last spring. It was out in paperback in the U.K. but still only available in hardcover in the U.S. I was going to read it immediately and gloat in my softcover glory. And then … I didn’t. What was I thinking?

The Irish family whose story unfolds like a series of swerves and avoidable crashes in “The Bee Sting” is like no other family I’ve ever encountered in literature. They’re all carrying secrets, some consequential, some ridiculous. And they make no sense as a unit — not at first, at least. The story, which bounces from the present back to the early days of the parents’ relationship, is both an act of gorgeous writing and an assembly of puzzle pieces. The present action is bizarre and occasionally infuriating, but suddenly, as the gaps fill, it all makes sense.

Trespasses by Louise Kennedy: “The Bee Sting” is long, but I didn’t want it to end — so much that I couldn’t quite bear to leave Ireland when I finished the final page. Lucky for me, my library hold on “Trespasses” had just come up, meaning I could stay across the pond, even though I had to rewind 50 years or so to the time of the Troubles.

“Trespasses” is a quiet book, and small in scope. Its details are meticulous. You will learn about curtains and the patch sewn on the back of a pair of jeans. You will be able to picture everything, even if you might find yourself deep in Wikipedia trying to understand the ins and outs of the Catholic/Protestant divide in Northern Ireland in the ’70s. I didn’t mind the minutiae, and I found the conclusion satisfying, if predictably sad.

New releases

Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld: One of the (many) great things about working in a bookstore is the access I get to advance reader copies (ARCs) of books. As a longtime fan of Sittenfeld’s writing — “Prep” rocked my world when I was 17; I had the exact belt depicted on the cover — I couldn’t wait to start this one, and I loved it. The characters in the short stories were mostly middle-aged women in the Midwest, and the humor was sharp. A fun bonus: The final story, the longest in the book, picks up with the protagonist in Prep as she returns to school for a reunion.

I’ve recommended this book over and over to women at the store who seem to be in the Sittenfeld demographic — that is, millennial and Gen X women who linger by the literary fiction tables — and more times than not, I’ve gotten the same answer: I love her writing, but I don’t do short stories. I’ve had to smile and nod and point them toward something else, but let me take a quick moment now to suggest that if you love an author’s novels, you will also love their work in smaller bites.

The Fact Checker by Austin Kelley: There’s a flip side to the ARC euphoria, though: Publishers send a lot of them, and it’s really hard to tell what’s going to be great. Also, if a book is predicted to be a bestseller, it might need less marketing in ARC form. It’s already been discovered. Which is to say: Sometimes you pick up a dud.

This was that. I had high hopes for this mystery centered on a fact checker at the New Yorker. I spent a summer fact-checking at Sports Illustrated in 2011, and I’ve got all kinds of nostalgia for the world of New York magazines, which I glimpsed right as it began to crumble. I thought that would be enough to capture my attention, and at first it was, but the story fell flat for me. I lost all sense for where it was headed and what the protagonist was even searching for, and I wasn’t the least bit sad to close it after the final page.

Dream State by Eric Puchner: There’s a whole stack of new releases from the first quarter of this year that I’ve been itching to read, and Dream State was at the top of it. (Also on that list: “A Gorgeous Excitement,” which I’m in the middle of right now, “Dream Count,” “Playworld” and “Confessions.”)

It’s a family saga, set off by a borderline unbelievable event: A woman meets her fiancé’s traumatized best friend as she begins the final set-up for their wedding. Improbably, they fall in love, and she leaves her perfect-on-paper relationship for the kooky, troubled friend. The story follows that couple and the jilted fiancé, and it also tracks climate change in Montana, where the story is set. I didn’t always understand the characters’ motivations — or feel they were acting rationally — but I still couldn’t put the book down, couldn’t wait to learn what happened next. I walked away from the story feeling depressed and frightened for the future of our planet, and I’ve spent the days since I finished oscillating between loving “Dream State” and wishing I could forget it.

I’ll Come to You by Rebecca Kauffman: This book landed on my to-read list because of its cover. The blurb didn’t hurt, either: It’s a story of overlapping narratives about a family going through various traumas: dementia, infertility, navigating life after a shocking divorce.

“I’ll Come to You” is a book about regular people. They’re not that interesting. Their anxieties are usual, their flaws predictable, their fears understandable. They live small lives and drive old cars and fill out weekly budgets. And for that, it’s notable. I loved how real these people were, how I never had to strain to understand why they did what they did. But at times, that made the story fall flat. Of course the father-to-be is anxious. Of course the future grandmother, fresh off her husband leaving, is frazzled and overcompensating. Not much in this book surprised me, and that was okay — but I can’t imagine I’ll remember much about this story arc in a month or two.

This book changed my life

Who Will Run the Frog Hospital by Lorrie Moore: This book. THIS BOOK! I’ve been vaguely aware of Lorrie Moore for awhile; she’s regarded as one of the greatest writers of her generation who’s gotten relatively fanfare or fame. And I don’t quite understand how, or why. How has she not gotten more acclaim? Why isn’t everyone reading her?

Her sentences are perfect. My copy of “Frog Hospital” is full of scribbles and exclamation marks, marginalia that hint at my excessive crush on her style of writing. I’m a sucker for a coming of age story about a teenaged friendship — which this is — and as a bonus, it’s told from the most gorgeous state of remove.

This was good, but it didn’t change my life

Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano: Napolitano’s most recent novel, “Hello Beautiful,” is one of my favorite books of the past five years. For a while, I’ve been meaning to dig into the rest of her canon, and I started last month with “Dear Edward,” the book that made her famous. It’s about a plane crash and the young boy who’s the lone survivor — an improbable premise that will seem utterly reasonable by the time you’re on page 10. It’s also unspeakably sad.

Napolitano’s books will make you cry, but they manage to avoid anything resembling a sappy trope. Maybe the ending of “Dear Edward” felt a bit too neat, but that was okay; the affection I felt for the characters made me want them to find some kind of tangible resolution.

Another book on motherhood

Matrescence by Lucy Jones: If you’re considering having a baby — or past the point of consideration and actually cohabitating with one — I cannot recommend this book more. It’s beautifully written, a blend of memoir, analysis of the political economics of motherhood and science journalism. My favorite parts were the one-page descriptions of how different organisms give birth and multiply, which left me utterly in awe of the fact that the universe exists.

Skip it

The Searcher by Tana French: I love a whodunit, and I’d never read Tana French, so I figured it was about time. (Maybe my compulsion to read books set in Ireland was also to blame.) The premise seemed interesting enough: A retired Chicago cop moves to the Irish countryside and gets roped into investigating a disappearance. But in practice, I felt like nothing happened in this book. There were too many secrets, to many oblique references to the past. Withholding is fine if it serves a story — but this book felt like a series of pointlessly withheld details. It took an eternity for the action to begin, and once it did, it raced toward a conclusion that felt downright predictable.