Hannah
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Hannah ☆
HANNAH: It’s funny, that route you take to pick up a book. It’s not the linear cartography of choosing, say, a cheddar or laundry detergent. It’s circuitous, and as informed by mood as it is by all the other factors that have led you there:
1. It’s 36 hours until I set off for a four-day trek through Death Valley and I’m standing in Shakespeare & co. invoking some desert muse, asking that she choose my campfire reading for me. I think moonscapes, I think isolation, I think nothing too scary because rustling juniper and rattlesnakes are terror enough. I bypass some obvious choices –Yuri Herrera’s Signs Preceding the End of the World, Joy William’s The Quick and The Dead, and yes, Dune too– to pick up Gayl Jones’ The Birdcatcher. Maybe I’m drawn in by Ibiza, the sand, the heat, the hedonism. Or the lingering danger of a woman with a psychiatric compulsion to kill her husband. Or the immediate pleasure of Amanda, our blunt and funny confidante who narrates the tale. Really, I know I’m here, walking to the register, handing over my card, and sliding the slim yellow and blue volume into my bag for Gayl, a woman whose work – her career and personal life, too - is as unexpected and nonlinear as the route I took to find her and the one her book will accompany me on.
2. Joyce Carol Oates is stuck on the I-95. She’s an hour late for her conversation with Leila Slimani, maybe more. I’ve lost track because Albertine has excavated bottles of red from a pile of leftover party vino and distributed them among the waiting crowd. We’re not talking – the crowd with the crowd – as if breaking the silence would usher the end of the event, and Joyce would somehow know and make a U-turn at the nearest Exxon. We’re reading – the crowd with their books and on their phones – and all I have is the title I had purchased downstairs ninety minutes before: Mieko Kawakami’s Breasts and Eggs. So, I sit, and I wait for Joyce Carol Oates with just Kawakami’s Natsuko for company. She’s a writer, our Natsuko, and is being visited by her sister and unspeaking (but journaling) niece. Later, Natsuko finds literary success and fails to have a child of her own. There is an anxiety that vibrates through the book; it peaks when Natsuko contemplates motherhood and aging female bodies, but, largely, just maintains the baseline unease of being a woman in the world. There is no grand narrative here, no breathless arc, but there is brutal, beautiful honesty in these pages. It’s the kind of beautiful and brutal honesty that could make one blind to even the most prolific and tardiest of authors making an entrance.
3. I’m spending my summer weekends horizontal. That is, on a beach towel (when >90 Fahrenheit) or in recline on the roof (when <90 Fahrenheit). Too many Junes, Julys, and Augusts have been vertically toiled away. I’m living vicariously through books: I’m loving and hating my best friend (Andrea Abreu's Dogs of Summer); I’m sad and I’m travelling (Amy Liptrot’s The Instant); I’m an octogenarian and I’m murderous (Helene Turstern’s An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good). I’m also partying, hard, with Ashley Mears’ Very Important People. Mears combines human testimony with deep investigative journalism to expose the international nightlife industry as a conduit for exploitation and gross (in both senses of the word) displays of wealth. Her prose is elegant, her “subjects” are fascinating, and the inequalities that dance into her spotlight have consequences that stretch far beyond the velvet rope. I am alternately livid and languorous through Labor Day
Heather
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Heather ☆
HEATHER: It’s easy in this business to forget what drew us to the work in the first place: astonishment at the sublime gift a book offers. That a person would spend such vast amounts of time and care sharing the knowledge they’ve gained, transplanting ideas, images, and discoveries from their mind to yours is astounding. I was moved to remember the true labor of writing a book when I read Rachel Aviv’s STRANGERS TO OURSELVES: Unsettled Minds and the Stories that Make Us. I’m personally invested in how we think and talk about mental illness, and this provocative book shifted my perspective in ways I’m still sorting out—the sign of a conversation-defining work of nonfiction.
Following the same thread of savoring a book’s richness leads me to Robin Wall Kimmerer’s BRAIDING SWEETGRASS: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Most years there is one book I read in small sips over the course of the whole year, and this was my pick for 2022. Reading it became my morning meditation. I would often find the particular essay I sat with over coffee in a patch of sun in my kitchen dovetailed with whatever else I was reading—whether work from my own clients or essays by thinkers like Mariame Kaba who are invested in hope as a discipline. Kimmerer’s writing allows for a range of emotions in the face of climate crisis: deep grief and anger, and also gratitude, wonder and fortitude.
Any year of reading would not be complete for me without a novel, and Katy Hays’ THE CLOISTERS was brilliantly seductive, the kind of novel that had me slipping out of bed after midnight to keep reading while my partner slept. I’ve always been fascinated with the occult (as a teen I got in trouble for bringing my tarot deck to school and my witch phase may or may not be ongoing) and Hays uses the true history of art and mysticism to weave a shimmering atmosphere of suspense.
Marin
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Marin ☆
MARIN: 2022 was a great reading year: rich, varied, nourishing, and inspiring. There are still so many books I want to get to, all neatly shelved in my new book cart (I’m very proud of it, as you can tell)—I’m just itching to crack these babies open over the holiday break!
My first pick is undoubtedly HOW HIGH WE GO IN THE DARK by Sequoia Nagamatsu, a novel-in-stories following how society drastically changes in the years (decades! Centuries!) after the discovery of a melting permafrost that releases an ancient virus. I'm fortunate to have first read it when I was interning under Sequoia's agent, back in 2019 before it had even gone out on submission! This is the rare collection/novel-in-stories where every story stands on its own—each piece breathes life and expands the dimensions of the world Nagamatsu has created. The scope is absolutely crazy, btw! I reread the collection in one breathless go at the start of the year—curious to know what had changed/how it had changed from the iteration I read years ago—and have thought about it numerous times since. Yes, this is a pandemic book (not Covid, per se) but there is so much heart here. Emotional, imaginative, heart wrenching and compassionate at the same time, HHWGID is a beautiful tribute to our resilience, as well as of finding hope and humanity even in the darkest of times. I adored everything about this book.
I inhaled THE PLOT by Jean Hanff Korelitz on a hot July day, where even the heat couldn’t deter me on my mission of finishing the novel as quickly as I could. The novel follows a MFA creative writing professor (his writing career has unfortunately plummeted) who steals a book idea from his now-deceased student and claims a literary stardom many dream of, only to receive an email that says, “I know what you’ve done.” Twisty and oh so utterly satisfying, this was such an entertaining read that spiked up my heartrate.
Bora Chung's CURSED BUNNY is a short story collection I picked up just this past weekend (made it in time for this post’s deadline, phew!)—I couldn't resist after hearing Hannah rave about it + reading our very own Violet Kupersmith's review in the NYT. And boy oh boy, are you in for a wild ride with this one! Creepy, haunting, visceral, with a feminist edge to it—Chung takes on the patriarchy and capitalism with these stories, ranging from horror to sci-fi to fairytales. We have talking heads, a cursed bunny-shaped lamp, and more! Chung’s prose (and Hur’s translation) has a delicious restraint quality that drew me in and had me on the edge of my seat. I loved it I loved it I loved it!! I need more Bora Chung in my life!
And my last pick overlaps with Lucy, but I have to mention it!: TOMORROW AND TOMORROW AND TOMORROW by Gabrielle Zevin hit me right in the heart. I was unsure whether a novel about gaming could really work—I mean how does one write about a visual medium and succeed? But succeed she did! Reading it evoked nostalgia for a simpler time, of the many hours I spent playing on my Game Boy and DS. But it also beautifully captures the bittersweetness of growing up, of the messiness that comes with seeing your dreams turn into reality. Sadie, Marx, and Sam are all characters who have stayed with me long after the last page, and it's just one of those books you want to immediately read again after you finish.
Lucy
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Lucy ☆
LUCY: Last April, I went to the LA Times Book Festival (where Jackie Polzin won the Fiction Prize!) and on that Sunday, I went to see Karen Joy Fowler’s panel, which was titled, “Fiction: History Revisited”. The whole panel was packed with brilliant insights from all three authors, but somewhere along the way, they got to talking about the intersection of “genius” and “madness” (two terms I want to keep in quotes because they are deeply flawed and deeply subjective!). Benjamin Labatut, an author I’d never read before, spoke with such passion and eloquence on this topic that, without knowing anything about his novel, I went directly from the panel to purchase a copy of it. WHEN WE CEASE TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD tells the story of modern science through a narrative that shines its focus on a handful of influential mathematicians and physicists, as their work both breaks ground and builds upon the work of their predecessors. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever read before, and truly rocked me—I feel confident that I’m personally responsible for at least 14 of the paperbacks sold this year, since I won’t shut up about it!
In the late summer, I had a chat with an editor who happened to become the 4th person that year to recommend S.A. Cosby’s new novel, RAZORBLADE TEARS, with real insistence and gusto. I hadn’t read Cosby’s work before, but he’s not new to the scene by any means! And I’ve since read BLACKTOP WASTELAND, his previous novel, because it’s now so clear to me that I would (and do) love all of this man’s work. RAZORBLADE TEARS is the story of two fathers who are shattered by the murder of their gay sons, who were married to each other. Both fathers are ex-convicts and both of them had strained (at best) relationships with their now-deceased sons, so their sudden quest for revenge is as much about their internal shame and regret as it is about avenging this heinous crime. Cosby is not only a master of pacing and plot, he also manages to keep you completely invested in two VERY flawed main characters, and even more impressive, his fiction interrogates race, class, and misogyny without ever feeling remotely preachy or didactic. It’s art, masquerading as entertainment. That’s the kind of fiction I always love!
Then, right around October, I had my usual uptick in horror fiction because ‘tis the season. Two novels really stood out to me: LAKEWOOD by Megan Giddings and THIS THING BETWEEN US by Gus Moreno. LAKEWOOD is set in Michigan (which I know fairly well from my college years) about a Black college student who is suddenly in need of a serious cash influx, having lost her grandmother and discovered her mother’s mountain of unpaid healthcare bills. Against all of her better instincts, she decides to participate in what is billed as a medical research study on memory, but is (of course) a kind of modern ancestor of the unlawful and horrifying medical experiments performed without informed consent on Black Americans throughout history. As for THIS THING BETWEEN US, the horror isn’t as topical or as close to reality, but it follows a grieving widower who begins to realize that his wife’s death and the sequence of horrible events that follow it are the result of a malevolent force, which first manifests in their smart speaker (“Itza”) and then expands to devastating effect. But beyond the fact that it’s truly terrifying, THIS THING BETWEEN US is also really about grief, identity, and migration. The main character is grappling with almost as much inner turmoil as his external challenges—and he’s fighting for his life, so that’s saying a lot!
Sigh... I could add TOMORROW AND TOMORROW AND TOMORROW to the list, but everyone already KNOWS it’s brilliant, heart-breaking, deeply involving and basically a perfect book. My list is already too long! What a year for excellent reads.
Molly
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Molly ☆
MOLLY: I came to the magic of Susanna Clarke's writing very late. For whatever reason, I had never read her earlier novel, JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR NORRELL—I was always getting the names twisted up, Jonathan Norrell, Mr. Strange, that book, yeah, okay someday I'll read it. As for PIRANESI, Clarke's next novel after a fifteen-year wait, I happened upon the British trade paperback just a couple of months ago and frankly, I read it because my little airplane television wouldn't work. Having studied art history, which always comes with a smattering of architecture, I was drawn to Piranesi as a title, so that was a plus. Also, my paperback edition came with so many rhapsodic reviews, how could I NOT read this novel? I confess, I nearly stopped reading after the first page, which begins like this, "When the Moon rose in the Third Northern Hall I went to the Ninth Vestibule, entry for the first day of the fifth month in the year the albatross came to the south-western halls." I very nearly had a failure of fictional courage but I'm actually delighted that I pressed onward. All I can say about PIRANESI is that it is a reading experience unlike I've ever encountered. Piranesi is living in a house of several hundred rooms; the ground floor is pounding ocean waves, the first floor is filled with ancient, sometimes badly damaged classical sculptures, the top floor is open to the sky--it's a place of intoxicating beauty and menace. The birds, the netting, the mussel broth, the roiling sea!! "The Beauty of the House is immeasurable, its Kindness infinite." Dare I add that this novel is also deeply suspenseful, riveting even, with poetic and muscular prose?
Claire Keegan’s most recent novel, SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE is an incredibly easy book to love. First of all, even though the focus is on Bill Furlong, our hero, the novel is actually about the Magdalen Laundries, brutal asylums run by the Catholic Church in collusion with the Irish government for many decades, closed down as recently as 1996, tough to even compute just how recently. These laundries involved forced labor, baby kidnapping, physical abuse, theoretically designed to reform “fallen young women.” Back to our hero, Bill Furlong, let’s start with the meaning of “furlong”, I had to look this one up: it refers to “a furrow long” which is the distance (one-eighth of a mile) that an ox can could plough without stopping to rest. It’s a perfect name for this character because his conscience won’t let him rest until he grabs at the courage needed to upend his carefully curated life, a life as a coal and timber merchant, a life with his wife and their five wonderful daughters. At the Good Shepherd Convent, where Furlong delivers coal for the Christmas season, he encounters one of these young girls, deprived of her baby, he notices the breast milk leaking under her cardigan. Small things like these, indeed! This is a completely involving story, with a leanness appropriate to its subject. It’s also wonderfully Irish: “If you don’t slow down, you’ll meet yourself coming back”, Furlong advises his wife. Or here, Furlong says, “There’s a hurry on me, Mother,” to which the Mother Superior replies, “Then you’ll come in till the hurry goes off you.” Furlong addresses his youngest child, Loretta as “leanbh”. I don’t dare try to pronounce this word but it’s Irish for “baby”, so dear!
Speaking of courage, there is Tracy Kidder’s non-fiction book, MOUNTAINS BEYOND MOUNTAINS: The Quest Of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure The World. This isn’t a “new book” and therefore perhaps not quite so fashionable as the latest study on the woes of social media. It was first published in 2003 but remains as timely and vital as ever. I’ve read Tracy Kidder’s past books—AMONG SCHOOLCHILDREN and HOUSE—this guy cannot write an awkward sentence, he’s truly a master at the art of non-fiction narrative. Immediately involving, arresting, compelling—let’s toss out all those over-used adjectives and actually have them mean something! Still and all, MOUNTAINS BEYOND MOUNTAINS is even more extraordinary than Kidder’s usual extraordinary writing self. This is partly because of the charismatic genius Dr. Paul Farmer, who died earlier this year at the age of 62. For those of us who hesitate to get involved with whatever community is on hand, thinking we cannot possibly “make a difference”, read this book to become lastingly inspired.
Meanwhile, Mr. Kidder has a new book, coming your way soon enough this January. It’s called ROUGH SLEEPERS: Dr. Jim O’Connell’s Urgent Mission To Bring Healing To Homeless People. From what I can tell, even superficially, Tracy Kidder has done it again…more later, perhaps during my recommendations next year, this time, I won’t wait nineteen years!
I sifted back to the first year of this three-book recommendation tradition, it was 2020. The three books I selected, I wrote, “were all about different forms of female rage.” I cannot help noticing that this year, there has been a shift. Piranesi is a man, imperiled by his own vulnerability, but seeped in nurturing kindness. Claire Keegan’s hero, Bill Furlong, makes a decision of uncommon courage at great potential cost to his marriage and his family. Tracy Kidder spent years traipsing from Haiti to Peru, from Cuba to Russia and back again to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a heroic effort to bring to life the extraordinary work of Dr. Paul Farmer. There’s also Lydia Millet’s latest novel, DINOSAURS, which stars Gil, among the kindest men of recent fiction—not only that, but a man with a somewhat burdensome trust fund!
All of these men effectively sunder the notion of toxic masculinity, they each embrace the very best of our shared humanity.