April report
Well, all that bragging about setting boundaries at work was bound to catch up with me, an IRL borderline Mr. McGill. I think I would have gotten away with it,1 too, if my partner and I hadn’t also decided to move to a new apartment on 2 weeks’ notice2 on top of a brutally busy period at my job. It’s times like these, when my days are so full, that I most cherish reading for its escapist elements. There were moments this month where it felt existentially imperative that I temporarily abandon my obligations in favor of curling up in a chair and doing some old fashioned silent sustained reading. And guess what? I have no ragrets about doing just that.
What I read in April:
Charlotte McConaghy, Migrations (2020)—This pretty book has been sitting on my “to read” shelf since, like, September? But the enthusiastic recommendation of my friend Emmalie inspired me to delay picking up any of the four books I’d said I was looking forward to reading this month and read this instead. I really liked it! McConaghy’s debut novel takes place in a not-that-distant future where the majority of animal species have become extinct,3 and follows its protagonist, an Irish-Australian woman with a mysterious past, as she attempts to follow the world’s last living Arctic terns on what is likely to be their final migration.
I feel like I bought this book when I was in a mini climate fiction phase but by the time it arrived I felt like it would be too sad to read. So I am grateful to my friend for bringing it back to mind because while it is indeed a bummer to think about how we are really just cooking this planet up and what will we do when it’s really finally too late, it is nevertheless useful to make ourselves think about such things. Also! This is also a bit of a mystery novel, which was interesting! In fact, I’d go so far as to say it was riveting!
Kaitlyn Greenidge, Libertie (2021)—Greenidge has written another novel like no other, that’s super compelling and smart, and wholly unlike her first novel. Before discussing it at book club, I knew that I was glad to have read Libertie, but I wasn't sure what else to make of it. I think that’s because it’s not primarily or first and foremost for people like me! And that’s not a bad thing! I think it’s also because dominant culture does not really allow for narratives about experiences Black people have—particularly ones about women in the time before, during, or just after the Civil War—to be about anything other than the experience of being enslaved. Greenidge’s novel, inspired by the life of a real woman, Dr. Susan Smith McKinney-Steward, and her daughter, takes place in the mid-nineteenth century Brooklyn settlement of Weeksville. The story itself is a fascinating coming-of-age tale that explores the many dimension of what it means to be “free.” As I said in book club, I would recommend this book to anyone. BUT! I would also require that they read it with other people so that they could discuss it as well.
Helen Oyeyemi, Peaces (2021)4—I think, when it comes to contemporary authors whose books I’d read no matter what, Oyeyemi’s fiction is on the far end of the experimental/weird spectrum for me. On paper, so much of what she writes sounds like something my provincial little brain would balk at, and in practice, there is increasingly much I don’t really understand about Oyeyemi’s stories, but I continue to love and stan her work!
In this new novel, which depicts an unusual train ride taken by Alex and Otto for their “non-honeymoon honeymoon” (to commemorate their decision to share a last name without being married), Oyeyemi, like in previous novels, moves between realism and, I guess it’s magical realism (??) so seamlessly that my primary mode of reading can be characterized as “just happy to be here.” It is bizarre how much it doesn’t bother me that I don’t understand so much of what takes place in this story. I think that’s because Oyeyemi writes so beautifully and is so thoughtful and funny. IDK I just trust her!
What I’m looking forward to reading in May:
Sanjena Sathian, Gold Diggers (2021)5
Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (2021)
Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts (2021)
Xiaowei Wang, Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside (2020)
Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (2009)6
Elizabeth Kolbert, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future (2021)
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927)
Have you read any of these books? Do you want to talk about them? Is there a book you think I'd like reading? Reply to this email or smash that comment button! I love recommendations and conversations!
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It=reading 4 books this month.
When you find The One, you gotta move fast!! And don’t worry, like my hero,* I still have my desk in front of a window. (*This is a bit. She’s not actually my hero.)
Let’s try that in the active voice: . . . where human choices (including the choice to be apathetic) have directly caused the permanent, species-wide death for the majority of non-human creatures previously living on/in land, sea, and air.
Book club selection for April.
Book club selection for May.
Technically, I’m looking forward to finishing this book, which I’ve been listening to for >1 month now, because it is good! But dense. So I need time to digest after listening every 1-2 hours.