everything I read in August
I am on a tear the likes of which my Goodreads hasn't seen since 2020. And there's so much good fiction to tell you about.
Lately: If you’re looking to this newsletter for food, I can understand that you might be starved. And I’m sorry! I really am. It’s possible that I have a slightly one-track mind, and right now, it’s on the fiction track. I’ve been putting little thought into cooking, plopping dinner plates in front of Jesse and announcing, “I have no idea how this will taste! I wasn’t even paying attention when I added spices!” I have, however, been reading essays and fiction in ever spare minute I can muster and writing at least 2,000 words a day. Maybe someday the nonsense flowing from my fingers to this computer screen will face the world. In the meantime, this newsletter will just keep being a vehicle for my whims. … But I do feel an itch to cook something fun, for the first time in a while. Maybe I’ll celebrate an off-the-clock NFL Sunday by making something elaborate — that is, if I don’t choose to spend the entire day running around my house, cackling with pure joy about my freedom.
Do you want to read a book in a day or two and be left wholly satisfied?
Bear, by Julia Phillips: Phillips’s debut, “Disappearing Earth,” was the best thing I read in 2020 — and I read a lot of books that year.
Goodbye, Vitamin, by Rachel Khong: I read Khong’s most recent novel, “Real Americans,” in May and loved it. It was sweeping and intergenerational, whereas “Goodbye, Vitamin” is a close look at one nuclear family over a period of just a few months. It made me laugh on one page and tear up on the next, and the narrative voice was so clear; Ruth felt like someone I might’ve met, someone I knew.
Do you want to laugh but also be dazzled by the writing?
Look Alive Out There, by Sloane Crosley: My Sloane Crosley binge continues (and will continue into next month’s round-up, too). In July, I read her second essay collection, “How Did You Get This Number?" It ended up being my least favorite of what I’ve read from her; I enjoyed it, but I found myself thinking, over and over, that I couldn’t wait for her voice to … grow up a bit. (Maybe that’s unfair; she was 32 when it published, and when I was 32, I was sitting on my hands, refusing to buckle down and actually focus on my own book idea.)
“Look Alive Out There” is exactly what I wanted. It’s funny, dark and uniquely empathetic, which most of Crosley’s writing is. The essay about her decision to freeze her eggs left me crying on an airplane that was about to take off, texting my husband as quickly as I could before I lost cell service. Having dabbled in the world of fertility preservation — albeit under different circumstances than Crosley’s — I viscerally felt so much of what she described. That meant a crashing recognition that the worries and ambivalence I experienced were not unique — and then a tidal wave of relief.
I just remembered I put this book under a subhead about laughter. And I stand by it. I just can’t be sure you all share my sense of humor.
Long Island Compromise, by Taffy Brodesser-Akner: When I tell you I spent all 442 pages giggling and then furiously typing turns of phrase I admired in my notes app — well, I don’t think that sentence fully conveys how often I snorted, or how jealous I am of Brodesser-Akner’s ability to write a book that plays like a movie in readers’ minds. (Maybe that’s why I didn’t love the TV adaptation of her first novel, “Fleishman Is in Trouble.” I liked it better when it played on a projector in my brain while I was reading.)
So this book: It’s about a family in the aftermath of the patriarch’s kidnapping. Brodesser-Akner wrote about the real-life kidnapping that sent her off on this manic romp in the New York Times over the summer, and in retrospect, that piece felt like a perfect feint. It made it clear the story was not actually about these family friends of the author — but I expected more similarities, and the well-crafted lunacy of the book hit even harder as a result. Read it. Read it, read it, read it.
Do you want to feel vaguely uncomfortable for hours on end while simultaneously being unable to stop reading?
All Fours, by Miranda July: When I was 23, I went to go see the movie “Black Swan” with my mom, and as I read “All Fours,” I kept thinking about very specific discomfort I experienced in that pitch-dark theater, knowing my mother (knowing anyone else, for that matter) was watching alongside me. That’s kind of what it felt like to read “All Fours” — you’re on edge and you’re confused and you’re screaming for this woman to do something else, anything other than what she’s doing. The only other thing you should know about this novel is that I loved it.
Are you looking for a quiet, thoughtful essay collection?
Graceland, at Last, by Margaret Renkl: I’d been meaning to read this collection for a while, ever since I started coming across Renkl’s work in the New York Times. As someone who grew up right past the northern edge of the South, I make it a point to try to read about America’s most confounding (and often maligned) region from a nuanced perspective — and that’s Renkl. She’s at her best, I think, when using nature as a lens, and the essays that focused on flora and fauna and the animal kingdom were my favorite in this book. A good number of words are devoted to politics, and Renkl’s opinions are smart, well-reasoned and delivered with more grace than I can usually muster — but that was, for me, where the book dragged, in part because the people who run this country have only continued to lose their minds since these pages went to press.
Can you bear with me as I write quickly about one book I didn’t particularly enjoy?
Pearce Oysters, by Joselyn Takacs: The subject of this book grabbed me immediately: A family of oyster farmers faces their worst fears when the Deepwater Horizon oil spill reaches their waters. The rest of the synopsis hinted at a slightly soap operatic narrative arc, but I thought the story might excuse any excessive drama. Unfortunately, it didn’t. The characters weren’t quite believable, and the plot had one too many twists. But what really frustrated me were the instances when the author got a bit sloppy with details. For instance, the book is set in 2010, and we know the main character’s age at that point — yet he’s said to have won a state championship in high school basketball at a time when he’d have already graduated. Maybe my brain is wired to be extra aggravated by those types of slip-ups, and maybe I’m being uptight, but alas — I am who I am.