Booknotes 5.2

Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, by William Godwin, published 1798, nonfiction, 99 pages. One of the biographies mentioned in This Long Pursuit, it’s Mary Wollstonecraft’s husband writing after she died (just six months post-wedding) about her life. Quite good, short read, felt very human. Sad at the end, of course, with a fair amount of detail on Wollstonecraft’s death in childbirth.

Thin Air: A Ghost Story, by Michelle Paver, published 2016, horror, 161 pages. Read this for book group. It’s creepy and triggered my fear of heights. Not sure how I feel about the ending, though. A little abrupt, perhaps.

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, by Stephen Graham-Jones, published 2025, horror, 504 pages. Though horror isn’t really my thing, I quite liked this, particularly the title (which is what drew me in in the first place) and the triple layers of nesting and the diary format. Recommended if you like horror.

A Book of One’s Own: People and Their Diaries, by Thomas Mallon, published 1984, nonfiction, 293 pages. As one who loves reading diaries (published diaries, to be clear) and has kept one for the last several decades, I found this compelling and ate it up. Came out of it with a long list of books I now want to read. I also realized it’s been a very long while since I actually spent time reading any diaries (or letter compilations), so I’m working on remedying that.