Books – Page 2 – Megin Jiménez

February 4, 2018

2018 Reading List

Books I’m excited to read this year:

Sheila Heti, Motherhood (coming in May 2018)
Heti is playful, restless, and does something different with every project. I loved How Should a Person Be. This is a “a fictional meditation on motherhood. The thirty-something narrator, surrounded by friends contemplating children, grapples with whether she wants to do the same.

Deborah Levy, The Cost of Living (coming in July 2018)
“A ‘working autobiography’ that comprises thoughtful dissections of life as a woman.

Morgan Jenkins, This Will Be My Undoing (just published)
“A collection of essays by Morgan Jerkins focused on ‘living at the intersection of black, female, and feminist in (white) America.’ Jerkins tackles topics from Rachel Dolezal to Sailor Moon and black female sexuality.”

(Quotes and recommendations above come from this fabulous list of 2018 books by Estelle Tang: http://www.elle.com/culture/books/g14486179/best-books-2018/)

Mary Beard, Women and Power: A Manifesto
“In this brilliant book, the classicist charts misogyny from ancient Greece and Rome to today, and issues a clarion call that it is not women but power that must change.”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/22/women-and-power-a-manifesto-by-mary-beard-review

Natalia Ginzburg, Family Lexicon (translated from Italian)
Autobiographical novel of her anti-Fascist family during the rise of Mussolini. Originally published 1963.

James Baldwin essays.
I have a book of his collected essays I’ve dipped in and out of, but I’d like to make a more concerted effort. He is so brilliant and prescient.

Nuestros más cercanos parientes
Anthology of Venezuelan short stories from the past 25 years. For my translation quest.

Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book
A sort of journal from 10th century Japan, written by an aristocratic woman of the court, a document not only of life at the time, but also proto-prose poems and flash fiction.

Javier Marías, Corazón tan blanco
Marías is a gap in my reading. This is his celebrated 1997 novel.

Virginie Despentes, King-Kong Théorie
French former sex worker, punk-anarchist, writer and director of rape-revenge film Baise Moi ruminates/fulminates on pornograpy, prostitution, economics, power structures, etc.

Rebecca Solnit, The Mother of All Questions
Solnit’s most recent book, “further feminisms”.

María Belmonte, Peregrinos de la belleza
I picked this up randomly at a fantastic art/design bookstore in Madrid called Panta Rhei. A study of writers over time whose life was changed by a visit to the Mediterranean, including D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Patrick Leigh Fremor, Lawrence Durrell.

Elsa Morante
Book to be determined. her name came up several times via last year via my reading of Alberto Moravia (her husband) and Elena Ferrante (who admires her writing). Book to be determined

Elizabeth Hardwick
Book to be determined. She’s in a generation of women writers and poets who were overlooked in favor of their male counterparts (e.g., Norman Mailer, J.D. Salinger, Truman Capote, Philip Roth, Robert Lowell (her husband), Bukowski, John Berryman). I would include her in the company of Mary McCarthy, Elizabeth Bishop. Don’t know much about her work, but interested in finding out.

NB: I realize this list skews heavily towards literary white ladies, and not on purpose… But these are the books that have crossed my path and made their way bedside. I do try to be more diverse in terms of who I follow and read online. I usually try to read at least one history book per year, haven’t found this one yet – maybe will pick up SPQR again (Mary Beard’s massive history of the Roman empire).

January 27, 2018

2017 Reading Round-Up!

I made it before the end of January! My annual round-up and entirely personal ranking of books I read last year, based on: level of language thrills, new thoughts, angst/joy/love when reading it; how long it will stay with me; how enthusiastically I would press it into your hands or buy a copy for a friend. I read 25 books (abandoned 5, see below). This list includes nonfiction and fiction only. (I did read poetry, but don’t include as I don’t read poetry cover-to-cover. It’s more like periodic scavenging to satisfy some spiritual craving I find in a poem or two. I also know too many poets to rank poetry books!):

Some quick stats on the 25 I finished:

Fiction (novels and short stories): 12

Graphic novels: 2

Nonfiction – memoirs, personal essays and interviews: 9

Nonfiction – history, biography: 2

I read authors from: USA, UK, Italy, South Africa, Pakistan, Canada, South Korea, France. Five in translation.

Books by women: 16 (62%)

Books by men: 10 (38%) (one got counted twice as it was a man interviewing a woman)

Years of publication span from 1954 to 2017

Despite the fact that I’ve always been a hungry reader of fiction, and am learning to write it myself, I was surprised to find my favorite books I read last year would be classified as nonfiction. I’ve been asking myself why that is – it’s partly a testament to the difficulty of writing fiction that will stick around with the reader. I think it also has to do with the times – I consume so much media, I’m requiring books to get straight to the point rather than taking the time to ponder narratives and metaphor (I’m sorry to admit). I could blame the internet, etc., but there are ways to preserve your concentration. My feeling in the “current climate” is that I want to know what a writer has learned: be direct, we don’t have much time!

I noticed my description of my favorites all included a physical reaction on my part. I think that’s what I’m chasing, an actual shift in my body, which I know is a tall order, and not anything you can categorize. There’s also the not-insignificant development that the memoir and essay genres have fully blossomed in the past 10 years. It’s also an exciting time in that regard.

The books I abandoned:

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado – this debut collection of short stories got a lot of buzz last year and seemed right up my alley, but I couldn’t get into it. Read about half.

Partir by Lucía Baskaran – Part of my search for an untranslated book in Spanish that will inspire me to bring it into English. This felt very much like a semi-autobiographical first novel. I wasn’t too interested in what happened and put it down – it sounded like a journal (young woman having doubts about her current relationship, alternates with the telling of her move to Madrid to study acting). Read about half.

La acústica de los iglús by Almudena Sánchez – See above. Highly recommended by a Madrid bookseller. A talented young writer, slim collection of short stories. Surrealist, sad. I read about half of it.

Corazón tan blanco by Javier Marías – I was enjoying this well enough. Not sure why I set it aside, will give another chance. I read about a third.

The Third Sex – A non-fiction book about transgender culture in Thailand, written by a UK professor who lived with a transgender performer and her family for a year. I got about halfway through and must have lost interest. It’s an interesting world, but I wasn’t keen on the writing style (a bit corny).

Without further ado, my 2017 books, with apologies for any typos, and for inconsistent graphics:

July 10, 2017

2016 Books, Part 1

litbits:

I read the fewest number of books this year since I began recording my reading in 2011, another thing to blame on The Election. I consumed massive quantities of news articles, think pieces, petitions, and rants. I also subscribed to the New Yorker again, an unexpected reaction to living abroad (it’s more charming when you don’t live in New York).

Anyhow, this is the bottom of the list of my year in reading. Ranked in terms of how they affected me – images left, insights sparked, language bedazzlement renewed…

13. The Underground Railroad (2016) – Colson Whitehead

Unpopular opinion ahead, as this was one of the most celebrated novels of the year: I would have preferred to read about this subject of the novel in non-fiction form. Whitehead is passionate and eloquent on his theme, which is so explicitly slavery in a historical context, rather than the fictional characters he creates. His interest is in the way attitudes towards slavery and treatment of African Americans shifted by state, based on the laws, economy and historic moment. The main character has a too-contemporary attitude and ability to synthesize that feels beyond her moment in time. Uneducated and illiterate (until she teaches herself to read), she’s relentlessly atheist, and is able to extrapolate views on complex issues like the need for solidarity with native peoples, the reproductive rights of mentally ill slaves, and the horrors of the middle passage. While I took in the points, I wasn’t convinced it was the character who thought them. Similarly, manifesting the underground railroad as a physical rather than the real metaphor it was in history casts doubt on any real details he includes. (A novel like Beloved, on the other hand, is character-based, delving into the psychology of having a child while enslaved, and is effective in that sense. The clearly fictional aspects, like the magical realist touches (ghost baby), enhance the understanding of the people that Morrison creates, rather than casting doubt on the historical reality of slavery.)

Origin: Purchased new at Utrecht bookstore after unanimous Toastie book club vote.

14. The Circle (2014) – Dave Eggers

It captures the relentless cheeriness and blind optimism of the tech industry, blithely ignoring the sinister implications of inventions like tiny cameras, constant connectivity, and the destruction of privacy. I liked best the inclusion of the main character’s private moments kayaking alone, a more subtle nod to the way such moments are becoming more and more scarce. Also the descriptions of online activity – the constant need to react to the primitive emotional needs of a virtual audience. As a piece of fiction, it lost me in the last third, with heavy-handed metaphors (the Mariana Trench animals), the sudden escalation of the plot (Annie character), and the obliviousness of the protagonist (part of the point, but her stupidity was frustrating).

Origin: Gift from bookworm friend Shannon.

15. Unsuitable for Ladies: An Anthology of Women Travellers – Selected by Jane Robinson (1994)

An anthology of travel accounts by women, across centuries and countries. The excerpts include accounts from a Mormon missionary in Switzerland, an ambassador’s wife in Turkey, pilgrimages to the Holy Land, rich ladies on the Grand Tour (in Italy). It’s organized by continent, very fat, and the excerpts usually quite short, so it’s only a taste of each writer. In a search for comprehensiveness, the distinctive voices are lost. Though there are some fascinating journeys, you leave them too soon and you’re not tempted to read the whole book (I didn’t).

Origin: Random purchase at a used bookstore in Gent.

16. The Talented Mr Ripley (1955) – Patricia Highsmith

I saw the film first and it rather tainted my reading of this book. The characters and their relationships were more fully developed in the film; the sexual tension between the two men runs higher and the girlfriend (played by Gwyneth) smarter and more volatile. The film is also so scenic and lush, a European fantasy, while the book is more internal, a tour inside the mind of a cold-blooded murderer, in a thriller sort of way. I wasn’t particularly inspired to read the rest of the series.

Origin: Boekenzolder, the free book warehouse in Leiden, picked up by Dan as we as we had just watched the film.

17. PornoBurka (2013) (en español) – Brigitte Vasallo

Read as part of my search for a novel I won’t be able to resist translating into English. It looked promising as it takes on very-now issues like the gentrification of cities (in this case in Barcelona), and their citizens reckoning with a new age of multiculturalism and clash of cultures. But in this novel, the parody goes so far that it’s not sure what it’s parodying anymore, or maybe what the point of the parody is. Every group and character becomes a target, to the point of being offensive (feminists, gay men, etc.), though I think the intention is the opposite. The absurdity is stretched so far it doesn’t hold together at the end.

Origin: Fantastic big bookstore in Barcelona

18. Fates and Furies (2015) – Lauren Groff

This was listed as Obama’s favorite book of 2015, possible proof the government lies. Otherwise I would say I don’t trust Obama’s taste in fiction. Although a lot of people liked this book. I did not. The protagonists are rich and beautiful and irresistible to all mortals. It features not one but two private detectives, a stolen painting, a secret abortion AND a secret baby, etc. while purporting to offer insights about marriage amid references to Greek tragedy. Writing that consciously tries to be interesting via curious metaphors (e.g. her armpit hair was like a baby bird’s nest), amid what is ultimately a schlocky plot.

Origin: Toastie book club selection, purchased at ABC Books in The Hague.

Books in Progress

Not abandoned! In progress!

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome – Mary Beard

230 out of 536 pages. I shouldn’t have put this down, should have kept plowing through while I had momentum. A nice balance between scholarly and secular. I was enjoying it for the way it raised questions about Ancient Rome rather than providing pat answers. I will finish it!

Origin: Impulse buy at Heathrow airport bookstore following a flight delay. Had been eyeing it for some time at various bookstores.

A History of the Lowlands

Another history book. But this one soooo dry. But with good tidbits if you’re paying attention. Therefore: not abandoned yet.

Clases de Literatura – Julio Cortázar

Again, I was enjoying it but put it down and became distracted with something else. A transcript of a lecture series Cortázar gave at Berkeley, with insights into his stories, development as a writer, influences, etc.

Books Abandoned

Don’t Let Me Be Lonely – Claudia Rankine

I love Rankine’s genre defiance, her use of images, her rawness. However, this was the second time I abandoned this book out of a fear of being launched into a depression.

All of 2016 is going up now!

January 25, 2017

2016 Books, Part 1

I read the fewest number of books this year since I began recording my reading in 2011, another thing to blame on The Election. I consumed massive quantities of news articles, think pieces, petitions, and rants. I also subscribed to the New Yorker again, an unexpected reaction to living abroad (it’s more charming when you don’t live in New York).

Anyhow, this is the bottom of the list of my year in reading. Ranked in terms of how they affected me – images left, insights sparked, language bedazzlement renewed…

13. The Underground Railroad (2016) – Colson Whitehead

Unpopular opinion ahead, as this was one of the most celebrated novels of the year: I would have preferred to read about this subject of the novel in non-fiction form. Whitehead is passionate and eloquent on his theme, which is so explicitly slavery in a historical context, rather than the fictional characters he creates. His interest is in the way attitudes towards slavery and treatment of African Americans shifted by state, based on the laws, economy and historic moment. The main character has a too-contemporary attitude and ability to synthesize that feels beyond her moment in time. Uneducated and illiterate (until she teaches herself to read), she’s relentlessly atheist, and is able to extrapolate views on complex issues like the need for solidarity with native peoples, the reproductive rights of mentally ill slaves, and the horrors of the middle passage. While I took in the points, I wasn’t convinced it was the character who thought them. Similarly, manifesting the underground railroad as a physical rather than the real metaphor it was in history casts doubt on any real details he includes. (A novel like Beloved, on the other hand, is character-based, delving into the psychology of having a child while enslaved, and is effective in that sense. The clearly fictional aspects, like the magical realist touches (ghost baby), enhance the understanding of the people that Morrison creates, rather than casting doubt on the historical reality of slavery.)

Origin: Purchased new at Utrecht bookstore after unanimous Toastie book club vote.

14. The Circle (2014) – Dave Eggers

It captures the relentless cheeriness and blind optimism of the tech industry, blithely ignoring the sinister implications of inventions like tiny cameras, constant connectivity, and the destruction of privacy. I liked best the inclusion of the main character’s private moments kayaking alone, a more subtle nod to the way such moments are becoming more and more scarce. Also the descriptions of online activity – the constant need to react to the primitive emotional needs of a virtual audience. As a piece of fiction, it lost me in the last third, with heavy-handed metaphors (the Mariana Trench animals), the sudden escalation of the plot (Annie character), and the obliviousness of the protagonist (part of the point, but her stupidity was frustrating).

Origin: Gift from bookworm friend Shannon.

15. Unsuitable for Ladies: An Anthology of Women Travellers – Selected by Jane Robinson (1994)

An anthology of travel accounts by women, across centuries and countries. The excerpts include accounts from a Mormon missionary in Switzerland, an ambassador’s wife in Turkey, pilgrimages to the Holy Land, rich ladies on the Grand Tour (in Italy). It’s organized by continent, very fat, and the excerpts usually quite short, so it’s only a taste of each writer. In a search for comprehensiveness, the distinctive voices are lost. Though there are some fascinating journeys, you leave them too soon and you’re not tempted to read the whole book (I didn’t).

Origin: Random purchase at a used bookstore in Gent.

16. The Talented Mr Ripley (1955) – Patricia Highsmith

I saw the film first and it rather tainted my reading of this book. The characters and their relationships were more fully developed in the film; the sexual tension between the two men runs higher and the girlfriend (played by Gwyneth) smarter and more volatile. The film is also so scenic and lush, a European fantasy, while the book is more internal, a tour inside the mind of a cold-blooded murderer, in a thriller sort of way. I wasn’t particularly inspired to read the rest of the series.

Origin: Boekenzolder, the free book warehouse in Leiden, picked up by Dan as we as we had just watched the film.

17. PornoBurka (2013) (en español) – Brigitte Vasallo

Read as part of my search for a novel I won’t be able to resist translating into English. It looked promising as it takes on very-now issues like the gentrification of cities (in this case in Barcelona), and their citizens reckoning with a new age of multiculturalism and clash of cultures. But in this novel, the parody goes so far that it’s not sure what it’s parodying anymore, or maybe what the point of the parody is. Every group and character becomes a target, to the point of being offensive (feminists, gay men, etc.), though I think the intention is the opposite. The absurdity is stretched so far it doesn’t hold together at the end.

Origin: Fantastic big bookstore in Barcelona

18. Fates and Furies (2015) – Lauren Groff

This was listed as Obama’s favorite book of 2015, possible proof the government lies. Otherwise I would say I don’t trust Obama’s taste in fiction. Although a lot of people liked this book. I did not. The protagonists are rich and beautiful and irresistible to all mortals. It features not one but two private detectives, a stolen painting, a secret abortion AND a secret baby, etc. while purporting to offer insights about marriage amid references to Greek tragedy. Writing that consciously tries to be interesting via curious metaphors (e.g. her armpit hair was like a baby bird’s nest), amid what is ultimately a schlocky plot.

Origin: Toastie book club selection, purchased at ABC Books in The Hague.

Books in Progress

Not abandoned! In progress!

SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome – Mary Beard

230 out of 536 pages. I shouldn’t have put this down, should have kept plowing through while I had momentum. A nice balance between scholarly and secular. I was enjoying it for the way it raised questions about Ancient Rome rather than providing pat answers. I will finish it!

Origin: Impulse buy at Heathrow airport bookstore following a flight delay. Had been eyeing it for some time at various bookstores.

A History of the Lowlands

Another history book. But this one soooo dry. But with good tidbits if you’re paying attention. Therefore: not abandoned yet.

Clases de Literatura – Julio Cortázar

Again, I was enjoying it but put it down and became distracted with something else. A transcript of a lecture series Cortázar gave at Berkeley, with insights into his stories, development as a writer, influences, etc.

Books Abandoned

Don’t Let Me Be Lonely – Claudia Rankine

I love Rankine’s genre defiance, her use of images, her rawness. However, this was the second time I abandoned this book out of a fear of being launched into a depression.

March 27, 2016

Last Year’s Books, part I

Better late than never, posting for my friends who enjoy book lists. (MK, looking at you to post yours, too!). A round-up with quick takes on all the books I read in 2015. In order of their impact on me at the time.

12. The Folded Clock: A Diary (Doubleday, 2015) – Heidi Julavits

This book is a lot of fun, although the premise a bit gimmicky/misleading. Julavits clearly wrote this for publication, I wouldn’t call it a diary. There is still a withholding process, and the confessional feels bloggy, the last difficult veil is never pulled away. However, it’s thoroughly enjoyable and I loved the actual physical book – a soft, fabric-like cover. Highlights were her accounts of her obsessive friendships, and her relationship to the biography of Edie Sedgwick over time.

13. A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube (NYRB, 2005 ed., originally published 1977) – Patrick Leigh Fermor

Parts of this are delightful, and parts I was slogging through. The slogging could be owing to my relative ignorance about European history and architecture, as Fermor is a fiend on these two subjects, going very deep. Otherwise, it’s a charming account of his trek across Europe in the 1930s, sleeping in barns and castles, partying, reciting Shakespeare, meeting old counts, witnessing the coming dark times in Germany firsthand.

14. Just Kids (Ecco, 2010) – Patti Smith

A semiannual New Year’s tradition. The book offers permission to draw, collage, write, worship dead artists, without apology.

15. Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery (Vintage, 1997) – Jeanette Winterson

Art-affirming insights, and it made me want to read all of Virginia Woolf. At times off-putting because of Winterson’s early onset crotchetiness (dismissing all pop culture) and defensiveness. I think she’s deliberately taking up Gertrude Stein’s voice (in the mode of proclaiming her own genius) and Virginia Woolf’s opinions (e.g., trashing Joseph Conrad for not being a native English speaker).

16. Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids (Picador, 2015) – Meghan Daum, ed.

A big range of writers and views. I thought about a third of the essays were stellar (by Pam Houston, Sigrid Nunez, and Jeanne Safe), the rest a bit repetitive, the piece by by Lionel Shriver was downright offensive (I’m still drafting a rebuttal in my head). The hilarious piece by Geoff Dyer was my favorite. Terrible title, btw.

17. Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag (Riverhead, 2014) – Sigrid Nunez

Another angle, another glimpse of the fascinating, difficult and brilliant woman that was Susan Sontag. Her views, habits, influence. What an intense and strange arrangement, one that would have been difficult to resist in your 20s – sharing an apartment with your boyfriend and his mother, your boss, Susan Sontag.

18. Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers (Imperfect Publishing, 2008) – Leonard Koren

This book is always popping up in arty bookstores. I was intrigued by the idea of wabi sabi (appreciating the process of disintegration, that which is made of earth, asymmetrical… it’s complicated). The book was much shorter and simpler than I thought, although it seems to presupposes some knowledge of the tea ceremony ritual. Feel justified in loving a crumbling wall, the skeleton of a leaf. How would this relate to text/words/poetry?

19. Goodbye, Columbus (1959) – Philip Roth

Roth was a gap in my reading. The worried aunt was my favorite character in this. Overall, its time seems to have passed (the little black kid at the library, the Jewish princess, the wise-beyond-his-years young writer – do we need them anymore?).

20-21. The Walking Dead, Books 1 & 2 (2009) – Robert Kirkman

I couldn’t get into this series. Perhaps I’ve absorbed the zombie thing via cultural osmosis, but it didn’t seem to offer anything new.

BOOKS ABANDONED

Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller (~20 pages)

An attempt to re-read this after hating it in college, because of the strong endorsement from Anais Nin. Not sure when I’ll ever be in the mood, though.

Primera memoria – Ana Maria Matute (~50 pages)

Perhaps to return to, an account of the Spanish Civil War from an adolescent’s perspective.

Chéri – Colette (~30 pages)

Another “to return to”, was not in the right place for this world of courtesans and finery…

Sicily: An Island at the Crossroads of History – John Julius Norwich (~100 pages)

I purchased for a trip to Sicily and carried the damn heavy thing around, but didn’t get too far. I will return to it!

January 18, 2015

The 2014 Book List, Part III

The stirring conclusion to my 2014 reading…

In 2014, I read 20 fiction & non-fiction books. Here are numbers 1-8 ranked in order of my own most subjective preference. Not necessarily in order of literary greatness, but in terms of my enjoyment of the book, whether it dazzled me with language, or made me think new thoughts, or made me want to make things, or stayed with me long after I read it, or made me feel something, or all of the above.

A couple of asides:

– I’m a little chagrined that my 2014 Didion obsession coincided with this Didion-cultural-moment thing that culminated recently (the Céline ad, the consequent think pieces in The Awl, The Atlantic, another strange one in The LA Review of Books). (Oh jesus, I just spotted another one in The Cut I haven’t read.) It felt personal and intense (as writerly obsessions tend to feel), for reasons that had to with the writing itself rather than whatever Didion the person happens to signify (contrary to what The Awl essay seems to suggest). (I avoided, for example, A Book of Common Prayer, as I, as a Latin American, wanted to avoid a white-lady-abroad account of a made up Latin American country.)

– I’m wondering if the dominance of the big novel is finally fading? Not just with me, but generally, out there? Perhaps our time requires a different genre? Didion is one of many writers that I have found most compelling, exciting, masterful, needed now, whose best work is not the big novel. Others include: Grace Paley, Alice Munro, (short stories); Sontag (essays); Renata Adler (experimental novels, I guess); Anais Nin, Violette Leduc, Sheila Heti, Mathias Viegener, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Eileen Myles (hybrid journal, autobiography, memoir type stuff)…

Anyway, the list:

1. Madness, Rack and Honey (Wave Books, 2013) – Mary Ruefle

A compendium of her wise and brilliant lectures, primarily for readers and writers of poetry. Ruefle is so funny if you’re paying attention, like someone with a quiet voice who is acerbic and witty, but overshadowed by the loudmouths in the room. I especially loved the essays, “My Emily Dickinson,” “On Beginnings,” “Poetry and the Moon,” and the title essay.

2. The White Album (1979) – Joan Didion

Slouching Towards Bethlehem is maybe overall a stronger collection, but “The White Album” is an essay I couldn’t recover from. I read it at least three times. The form resembles the message. Disparate pieces, fragments, including her own anxiety and paranoia, create the unsettling picture of 1968-1969.

3. My Struggle (Vol 1) (2012 in US, 2009 in Norway) – Karl Ove Knausgaard

There has been a lot of focus on how the tediousness of the everyday functions in Knausgaard’s project, but I think the books would be better off without that element. For example, this volume became truly powerful and moving in the last third, when he has to deal with the death of his father (not a spoiler), both the physical and spiritual details of it. That is, when something actually happens. The details, however exhaustive, serve a function. The father has been a long shadow from the first image in the book, a truly artful structure. I felt it viscerally and closed the book permeated with the experience.

But it could do without the 70-page account of buying beer and having a lame New Year’s Eve when he was 15… I also love his philosophical meanderings, thoughts on modern life, which are also not part of the tediousness. I’d like to see them as stand-alone essays (for example, the digression about the mystery of visual art, why a particular painting might move you, or another about 17th-century vs. 21st-century consciousness).

4. My Life in France (2006) – Julia Child & Alex Prud’homme

This book is an argument for making the bold move. Julia Child didn’t start cooking seriously until she and her husband moved to Paris when she was in her late 30s (still “very young” as she charmingly puts it). They had had adventures in China and Sri Lanka, both working for the State department. They later lived in Marseilles, Germany, Norway, and found elements to love in all of those places .Her voice in this book is enthusiastic, but also no-nonsense, crisply descriptive. It makes you want to love life, live your life, love your partner.

5. The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) – Joan Didion

I was afraid of this book, as if coming closer to the stroke of tragedy running through it would open the door to tragedy; funny, this is the sort of “magical thinking” she’s examining. I liked this best as a portrait of a solid marriage. Happiness is described through detail, without commentary.

6. Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968) – Joan Didion

My favorite pieces were the “personals” – “On Keeping a Notebook,” “On Self-Respect,” “On Going Home.” “Goodbye to All That” is unforgettable. I found the title essay sort of pearl-clutching. I realize her point was to bring a different, sobering take on the Haight-Ashbury scene, but the lens was too small, or too filtered through her own darkness, perhaps?

7. The Group (1963) – Mary McCarthy

This struck me as a brave act in its time, so frank and unapologetic about women’s perspectives on sex, sexuality, social classes, work, power relations with men. It’s also expansive, in contrast with the compression favored by a lot women writers. It becomes an implied declaration that it’s all worth writing about, expansively, that such matters should indeed take up some room. Vivid, carefully drawn characters. A different take on New York in the 1930s – these characters inhabit the rich stratosphere above the Great Depression.

8. Play It As It Lays (1970) – Joan Didion

Not a word out of place, and it could not be more bleak. I love this length for a novel (about 150 pages); Didion has said she prefers novels that can be read in a single sitting.

January 3, 2015

The 2014 Book List, Part II

In 2014, I read 20 fiction & non-fiction books. Here are numbers 9-15 ranked in order of my own most subjective preference. Not necessarily in order of literary greatness, but in terms of my enjoyment of the book, whether it dazzled me with language, or made me think new thoughts, or made me want to make things, or stayed with me long after I read it, or made me feel something, or all of the above.

9. The Flamethrowers (2013) – Rachel Kushner

The first half of this novel is a great ride: sexy, compelling and exquisitely, carefully written. Big and bold, and most fantastically from the point of view of a young female artist navigating the 70s art world in New York, a strong outsider. It is dazzling and blinds you to some of the structural problems with the novel, or maybe the experience allows you to forgive some of the contrived turns and slow-fizzle ending.

10. My Struggle (Book 2) (2013 in US) – Karl Ove Knausgaard, trans. Don Bartlett

I was resistant to the whole idea of this project. (From the New York Times review : “Why would you read a six-volume, 3,600-page Norwegian novel about a man writing a six-volume, 3,600-page Norwegian novel? The short answer is that it is breathtakingly good, and so you cannot stop yourself, and would not want to.”) I generally admire and seek out brevity in novels and plays written in the 20th century and after. So much can be done in 200 pages (see Marguerite Duras’ The Lover, for example.) A big demand on the reader/viewer’s time must be justified. I also felt strongly that a woman with a similar project would never receive the sort of attention Knausgaard has gotten. (Katie Roiphe wrote a piece about this in Slate. (I’m surprised to be linking to a piece by her.)) But I realized these were not good reasons not to read it. My curiosity was piqued every time I flipped through it at the bookstore, and I was interested in its experimental approach to plot and genre – so much of what I’ve enjoyed in recent years doesn’t fit in a clear category (The Diary of Anais Nin, How Should a Person Be by Sheila Heti, Speedboat by Renata Adler, Violette Leduc’s memoirs, etc.)

I didn’t find the second volume (which is embarrassingly subtitled “A Man in Love” for U.S. audiences) as powerful as the first (ranked higher up on my list), and it didn’t make me want to read any more of the series. It explores his sudden move to Sweden and start of new life. Falling in love, having children, feeling trapped, as a writer, and feeling love and a new sort of fulfillment at the same time. The daily frustrations and tedium of child-rearing, the inherent conflicts with a dedicated intellectual life. In a way, this was like reading something from the future because it’s set in Sweden and house-husbands are commonplace, which was entertaining. One of my favorite scenes is his enraged and humiliated attendance at a baby rhythm class taught by a hot young instructor.

He breaks the essential rules meted out to beginning writers: don’t include scenes that don’t propel the action; ensure that every word is necessary. I read many reviews seeking to justify the tediousness – the boredom is part of the point, or the excruciating detail is what makes you feel like you’re living there with him. I sort of understand this, but I can’t say it wouldn’t be good if you cut that daily-life stuff out. I enjoyed it best when he dug deep, the philosophical digressions on the contemporary consciousness vs. the Baroque sensibility, on what it means to write, on the mysterious way you are either open or closed to a poem, etc.

11. The Berlin Stories (1945) – Christopher Isherwood

A collection of two novellas, The Last of Mr. Norris (a single narrative) and Goodbye to Berlin (a series of sketches, all with the same narrator, which inspired the musical Cabaret). I almost wish I had encountered the two works separately because I wanted the second half to be like The Last of Mr. Norris and was a bit disappointed when it wasn’t. Mr. Norris was so funny – witty, absurd and dry in only the way the British can be. Great characters in both halves, extremely vivid, like the stiff aristocrat who wears a monocle, is into body-building and enjoys English adventure stories of shipwrecked boys in a pervy way. Goodbye to Berlin has a bigger emotional range and made me think of the continuity of certain aspects of city life across the ages (dive bars, class divisions).

12. Ghost World (1997) – Daniel Clowes

Brings back in full force the extreme smart-ass, sometimes super-funny, sometimes really mean spirit of the late stages of high school. I got the feeling this started as a weekly and the plan for a graphic novel came later, as not much happens for a while in the beginning, although it’s fun (the girls hanging out, going to the weird diner), and all of the action comes quickly and heavily at the end. Visually very funny, too.

13. The Jaguar Smile (1987) – Salman Rushdie

Rushdie’s non-fiction account of being a visiting writer in the hopeful, Sandinista-led Nicaragua, recovering from civil war (pre-Satanic Verses and next-level fame). He’s a charming and sympathetic narrator and gives a vivid account of politicians, poets, midwives, children, in various regions of the country. I read this while visiting Nicaragua and it was a good way to learn a bit of history; it was also interesting to see all of the changes that have taken place since Rushdie was there. I liked that his frame of reference is another part of the “developing world” (India/Pakistan), and many aspects of Latin American life are familiar, while issues like hunger and poverty are more acute in some ways where he’s coming from, a refreshing departure from the usual Western-person-abroad travel literature.

14. The Voyeurs (2012) – Gabrielle Bell

Second time I read this collection of confessional, very Brooklyn comics, including an account of her relationship with Michel Gondry. I enjoyed this more the second time around as I knew what to expect and lingered in the artistry a bit more. (The first time I was surprised by how emotionally raw some of them are, examining depression and anxiety in a way that brings you close.) I often think of one particular comic about the meaning of compulsive e-mail checking, what it is you’re wanting from a new message.

15. Run River (1963) – Joan Didion

This was my year of Didion, I couldn’t get enough. This is her first novel, before her lean and rhythmic style had fully developed, which was interesting to see. What remains most clearly with me is her protagonist, Lily, so clearly drawn – passive, distracted, frail, but at the same time calculating somehow, driven by sex. In a Paris Review “Art of Fiction” interview, Didion said someone had described her novels as romances; this pleased her and she agreed to some degree, which is funny, but I think there’s also something there. The plot is a secondary concern and problematic in some ways, especially the ending, but it is a first novel, after all.

June 27, 2012

Books being read on the Manhattan-bound L train

…this morning. If everyone gets a Kindle (shudder), how will I be able to conduct random samplings of the Brooklyn reading public?

In the order seen:

Inventing Reality: Physics As Language

Dance Dance Dance – Murakami

The Omnivore’s Dilemma – Michael Pollan

Fifty Shades of Grey