it lasts forever because you read it
JANUARY BOOKS 📖
I always read the most in the beginning of the year. Typically this is because a. I have just gotten a load of good books for Christmas, b. I have lots of time, c. I’m broke after the holidays so what else am I going to do?
This year I’m trying to read consistently throughout the year since typically, I read almost nothing (outside of work reading) in the second half of the year — a habit I probably picked up in my school years. There’s usually a little flurry of reading activity as the days grow very short, but then nothing around the holidays — too busy! And a lot of people chew through books on the beach, or on vacation, but I have a hard time focusing on books on vacation — I want to just be looking around and observing, or writing about everything I’m seeing.
PS. funny that I got actually mad that Spotify kicked me out half-way through my listen of Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin, saying that I have used up all my hours. Ridiculous, I scorned Spotify. But that was before I realized that I have gotten FIVE audiobooks for free through Spotify this month. How can this be true?? Who is paying for this? My Spotify is still $8 a month… Is this worse than Audible (which is just Amazon)? Discuss:
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman (1995)
🎧 Audiobook through Spotify
I was pleasantly surprised to find such a singular voice in Jacqueline Harpman, who writes this heartbreakingly beautiful elegy to humanity from the perspective of a girl who has been cruelly dislocated from it. The narrator was raised in a bunker deep underground, she and her cohort of 40 women don’t know anything about their circumstances. How they got there, who guards them and what happened to the world they used to know all remain a mystery. This dystopian world that may or may not even be planet Earth is the only thing that the narrator, the only child in the group, has ever known.
Harpman’s brilliance is in her restraint as she teases the human psyche apart with a scalpel, and explores the question of what a human would be raised outside of society as we know it. It contains no generalizations, no stereotypes, and offers a refreshingly human take on the scenario. Just as this narrator has had only the inner workings of her mind to entertain her in this desolate world, so do we as the reader. Little happens in the way of plot in this novel, yet Harpman’s heroine keeps us on the very edge of our seats with baited breath.
101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think by Brianna Wiest (2016)
🎧 Audiobook through Spotify
Quite frankly I shouldn’t really count this one because I listened to a little less than half of the essays and then gave up. This book is so… dumb. I started this because I thought it was a compilation of many authors’ works, but in fact it is a 26 year old writing all 101 of these half-finished thoughts; each more unoriginal and full of boring platitudes about self-love than the last. I think the copy would be better served on the inside of a yogurt cup (or what was that kombucha company that had advice on the inside of the cap?). Just goes to show that you should NEVER take book recommendations from your local smoothie shop.
Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography by Roland Barthes (1980)
Surely Proustian comparisons have been made with Barthes before, but I was struck upon reading this the tender grief by which this book discusses memory and mothers. Still dissecting how these reflections hold up in a world where we all can be photographers, where the technology is no longer a barrier to the art form. Substack essay incoming 📝
Blackouts by Justin Torres (2023)
🎧 Audiobook through Spotify
Even though I listened to this basically straight through in one go while I was doing an extremely boring project at work, so many of its images stuck with me. This was stupid of me to listen to because this book is remarkable in its inventive multi-modality. But I didn’t know that at first so I just charged along, confused a bit and then realized that the Spotify page included a PDF where I could follow along with the photos, blackout poetry, and other scanned documents that are mentioned. Perfectly enjoyable as an audiobook but I would overall recommend getting the paperback/eBook.
This is a book thats queer AF yes! expect some naughty naughty scenes, but overwhelmingly it is also a book about mentors and elders — which for gay men are sadly few and far between because of the absolute decimation of an entire gay generation by AIDS. The documents and blackout poetry come from a real-life study called Sex Variants, which was based on the research of brilliant, queer journalist Helen Reitman (also known as Jan Gay), who conducted hundreds of interviews with gay and lesbian people in Europe and New York City in the 1920s and 30s.
Winter by Ali Smith (2017)
🎧 Audiobook through Spotify
Oh sisters! Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em (and if my sister is reading this, you’d freaking love this messed up book). I love this series so far, really emotionally intelligent, non-judgmental, and well, British. I’m being patient and reading them in real-time with each season in mind, so I’ll withhold my final analysis for summer, when I finish the quartet.
The Young Man by Annie Ernaux (2022)
How Ernaux won a Nobel Prize just by writing about having sex with men and illegal abortions I simply don’t know. But it is bloody brilliant. This one is about nostalgia and how, at 50, she relives her twenties through dating a man (mysteriously referred to as A) in his twenties. Her writing is so damn good, no wonder all her books are 180 pages… She doesn’t need much more to put into words something you’ve been struggling to articulate for your entire life.
When A.’s face was before me, mine was young too. Men have known this forever, and I saw no reason to deprive myself.
Right now I’m reading Alphabet Diaries by Sheila Heti, which has illuminated just how much writers like her owe to Ernaux.
The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942)
🎧 Audiobook through Spotify
Um, wow! What’s wrong with this guy??? 😳 Existentialist literature has never been high on my list since I am generally a person who overthinks EVERYTHING, feels FAR too much, is good at talking about how I feel, and always assumed I could not relate to existentialism’s grand-daddies. So I was deeply surprised that this book struck such a chord with me.
Caring is central to how I see myself, but my brand of caring is doing so in the face of nothing else really mattering. (Am I just an existentialist who has done therapy?) I care because I know that I have to create my own meaning in a world that is essentially random and meaningless. That we all are doing incredibly complicated mental gymnastics to find purpose here. Maybe this comes from having been deeply entrenched in Christian culture and then being ejected from it abruptly, forced to sink or swim, at a young age. Or maybe this is just a natural reaction to the everyday bonkers tomfoolery that is the Anthropocene.
The Positions of Spoons by Deborah Levy (2024)
My friend Sam said that this was like if Deborah Levy wrote a substack and I couldn’t agree more. You know when you love an author so much you say you would even read their grocery lists? Well this is basically that. A little under-edited, a tad rambley, but 110% Deborah and her crazy brilliant noggin.
Play it as it Lays by Joan Didion (1970)
Overdue. How does one read Miami before Play It As It Lays? This book illuminated so much of what is missing from sad girl lit. Maria is a deeply complicated character who has loved, lost and tries to be a part of society. She isn’t trying to come out on top, she’s just trying to survive. Although she seemingly doesn’t care about anything, Didion makes clear that she actually cares the most — and can’t reconcile the way everyone else is able to disassociate from the disturbingly superficial reality of LA in the 60s. I wonder how I would feel if I had not read this before Blue Nights and The Year of Magical Thinking — since knowing how intensely Didion has lost will never not influence how I read her.
Ledger: Poems by Jane Hirshfield (2020)
A Christmas gift from a dear friend 🤍 I liked:
She Breathes In The Scent
As the front of a box would miss the sides, the back,
the grief of the living misses the grief of the dead.
It is like a woman who goes to the airport to meet the planes from a country she long ago lived in.
She knows no passenger but stands near as they exit still holding their passports.
She breathes in the scent of their clothes.
Philosophy of the Home: Domestic Space and Happiness by Emanuele Coccia (2024)
This was certainly an interesting book with many merits based on its exploration of how the matters of the home contend with the matters of the exterior world. I was really looking forward to seeing how a man exposed this topic, but was overall, disappointed. The book is entitled “Philosophy of the home: Domestic Space and Happiness” yet the chapters have actually no mention of happiness, by the word itself or by theme, and instead are borderline memoir, with lengthy ruminations of Coccia’s personal life and his very male musing on the spaces and aspects of a home (which does not include any of the motifs that are inarguably central to domesticity [i.e. women, mothers] and homes [i.e. people, children, food and memory]).
Overall I enjoyed the affect of this strange book about Coccia’s life, but it delivered barely anything it promised based on the title, back cover contents, and introduction. As someone who did their thesis on how happiness is related to domesticity, I expected a bit more meat and well-thought out arguments. But maybe that’s why I studied sociology and not philosophy?
It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over by Anne de Marcken (2024)
This knocked me off my feet. I actually had no clue what this book was about and picked it up because I have an inalterable loyalty to Fitzcarraldo Editions, and because the back copy mentioned it having something to do with a crow (I have been researching crows for another writing project). I simply cannot recommend it enough — beautiful elegy to humankind, but not in a sweeping, abstract way, but in a heartbreaking and specific kind of homesickness. Also contains one of the most provocative and disturbing horror scenes I’ve ever read. I didn’t want this to end. For lovers of The Road by Cormac McCarthy, I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman, anything by Emily St. John Mandel. Most tender and coquette book I’ve ever read about a zombie…
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Love play it as it lays! I've always wanted to read "I who have never known men"! And I am cracking up at the absolute nerve of someone to title their book 100 essays that will change the way you think... and they're all by them. Insane ego haha