In Friday’s newsletter, I shared a link to a reader survey, which I’d still love for you to fill out. (Please?) It’ll take two minutes, and there’s a chance it’ll lead to you getting better, more informative newsletters in your inbox each week — so what’s the downside?
In the survey responses I’ve gotten so far, there have been a few agreed-upon truths, and one is that you all want book recommendations and reviews. So I’m going to get in the habit of rounding up my recent reading in a newsletter that will drop in the first 10 days of each month. This first one is a relatively sizable download; I’ve been reading a lot to start 2024, and it covers two months, rather than just one. The theme so far: I’m really into books with green covers.
Books I loved:
“North Woods,” by Daniel Mason: It starts out slowly, and the ending felt trite — but the middle of the book was so stunning, none of that mattered. As a writer, I am obsessed with the concept of place; places are my favorite characters, and place — specifically, a cabin that grows into a sprawling house in rural Massachusetts — is the main character in Mason’s sweeping story.
“The Upstairs Delicatessen,” by Dwight Garner: I loved this one so much, I spent an entire newsletter expounding upon it.
“You Dreamed of Empires,” by Álvaro Enrigue: I have never read anything like this book. The fact that I even heard of it was kind of a happy accident; after reading “The Upstairs Delicatessen,” I started following Garner’s work at his day job — as the New York Times book critic — more closely, and on the day I first checked his author page, he published his review of “I Dreamed of Empires,” calling it “short, strange, spiky and sublime.” (I’m so picky about alliteration, and that, my friends, is alliteration at its finest.) “I Dreamed of Empires” is a small, self-contained (oh god, more alliteration, and worse) novel set over one day in 1519 in Tenochtitlan, right as Hernán Cortés has entered the city. The plot is darkly hilarious and clever, and I was humming right along, enjoying it, until about three-quarters of the way through, and which point Enrigue breaks the fourth wall. And from there, the book leaves clever in the desert dust. The last 30 or so pages are some of the best and most unique storytelling I’ve ever read.
Books I really liked:
“The Guest,” by Emma Cline: I’m going to go so far as to say I hated Cline’s first book, “The Girls,” which earned her a $2 million advance as a 20-something and came out in 2016. If you’re a millennial woman, you probably read “The Girls,” and even if you felt the way I did about it, there’s a good chance it stuck with you. Cline’s writing style is magnetic, which is why I’ve held onto my copy of her first book through multiple moves — and why I’ve read everything she’s written since. “Daddy,” a short story collection with a name that gives me acid reflux, was interesting and enjoyable and piqued my interest enough that I made sure to add myself to my library’s hold list for “The Guest” as soon as it came out.
This long wind-up is all to say: “The Guest” is great. I read it in two sittings, and the narrator’s voice is so clear and conversational, you’ll forget she isn’t a real person.
“The Silkworm,” by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling): In all media, I love a well-crafted whodunit, and the Cormoran Strike series, by none other than J.K. Rowling in disguise, delivers just that. I read “The Cuckoo’s Calling” years ago, right after it came out, and really enjoyed it, and I have no explanation for why I never picked up the rest of the series. Similarly, no clue what made me request this at the library — but with a trip to London and Edinburgh on the horizon, I’m glad I did. If you’re looking for a series you can read intermittently, as kind of a palate cleanser between more ambitious reading exercises, this is it.
“The Fraud,” by Zadie Smith: I love historical fiction — highbrow and lowbrow — and I love Zadie Smith, so this book was made for me. It’s humorous, dry and sent me down many a Wikipedia rabbit hole; I ended up being pretty amazed the extent to which this story was true to the historical record.
“The Wren the Wren,” by Anne Enright: This was my first foray into Anne Enright’s work, and I’m rarely unsatisfied after reading an Irish novel with an angsty female protagonist. Such was the case with “The Wren the Wren,” which I adored in spurts. At times, though, the plot dragged, and the characters’ lack of forward motion left me feeling similarly bogged down.
Books that kept me entertained:
“Come and Get It,” by Kily Reid: Reid’s first book, “Such a Fun Age,” came out to much fanfare in late 2019, and nearly everyone I know read it in the early days of the pandemic. The premise is interesting, but I didn’t quite click with the writing. With “Come and Get It,” Reid’s second novel, I was most drawn in by the cover design and again left a bit letdown. Here’s the problem: There was very, very little plot. The themes that lurked in the background of “Come and Get It” were thought-provoking, but the book felt like a long throat-clearing before a short spurt of action with very little payoff. It was extremely readable, though, and I was invested in the resolution for one of the two main characters.
Books I give only the most tepid of endorsements:
“I’ll Have What She’s Having,” by Erin Carlson: I went on a big Nora Ephron kick at the end of 2023, so I thought a book about Nora Ephron might be worth my time. “I’ll Have What She’s Having” focuses on the writer’s foray into Hollywood, and I love an Ephron rom com as much as anyone. “When Harry Met Sally” is a top-three all-time watch for me. So if I couldn’t get into the narrative of this one, I’m not really sure who could. Maybe you need to be more of a movie production buff to really buy into some of the details and minutiae.
“The Many Daughters of Afong Moy,” by Jamie Ford: Historical fiction meets futuristic dystopia in this generation-spanning story of love and trauma. I liked this book much more in theory than in practice, and the present-day and future storylines left me wanting something more.