My February & March in reading

I have been slacking on my reading blogs. I’ll have to cover February (many books) and March (few books) in one go.

Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri (translated from the Italian by the author and Todd Portnowitz)

I’ve been reading Jhumpa Lahiri since college, when I was assigned The Namesake in a sophomore year postcolonial lit class. Normally I love her work, even though it’s more realist than I typically prefer. But this short story collection was not my favorite. While it’s impressive that she learned Italian and then wrote these stories in Italian, I wonder if something was lost in the translation back to English. Though the book is, as usual, full of immigrant stories—all immigrants who live in Rome, in this case—the prose seemed plodding, and the stories overly simplistic. I would still recommend that you read Jhumpa Lahiri’s work, but you can skip this one.

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.

People have been recommending this book to me for roughly one million years—but my friend Margot finally loaned it to me, so I was forced to dive in. And it was totally worth it! A prominent psychiatrist, van der Kolk details his decades of work studying the causes of trauma and how it literally embeds itself into our bodies, creating physical and mental problems. While he may be slightly too opposed to medications for my taste (I’m a citalopram girlie for life), I appreciate how supportive he is of alternative treatments, from eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) to yoga to drama classes. And it’s so important that someone of his stature actually calls out the epidemic of child abuse and its horrific impacts in this country. Trigger warnings for everything, obviously—though he discusses the various traumas very plainly and never lingers in the details. His prose never becomes overly academic either, which is a plus.

Scorched Grace: A Sister Holiday Mystery by Margaret Douaihy (narrated by Mara Wilson)

First, let me say: I love nuns. I was raised Catholic, and though I am very much no longer Catholic, I have always appreciated these groups of women who get together and just…do actual work in the community, as opposed to the more traditional male hierarchy. Consequently, I also love novels about nuns! And Scorched Grace is no exception. Don’t be fooled: this is not a cozy mystery. This is a brutal mystery investigated by a queer nun with a troubled past. Sister Holiday is not always likable. She’s arrogant and makes stupid mistake after stupid mistake when someone begins to set fires at the small New Orleans Catholic high school where she teaches music. But what great literary detective isn’t arrogant? I did call the twist early, but it didn’t ruin my enjoyment of the book. And Mara Wilson’s narration was excellent.

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy (narrated by the author)

Holy shit—I’m glad her mom died, too. I listened to this audiobook on the drive back from Chicago after my birthday, and while I worried it might be too painful given my own mother’s relatively recent death, it wasn’t. First of all, McCurdy is a hysterically funny writer, despite all the horrors she experienced as a child actor. And while my mom certainly had problems, she was an angel compared to McCurdy’s nightmare of a mother. (Content warning for emotional and borderline sexual child abuse.) I was a bit too old to witness McCurdy’s run on Nickelodeon, but I am so glad she escaped and that she’s getting help—and that she wrote such a vulnerable memoir, which will help so many others. I hope she keeps writing, too. She’s enormously talented!

Night Animals by Yusef Komunyakaa (artwork by Rachel Bliss)

In this brief poetry collection, Komunyakaa literally describes animals—in a strange, defamiliarizing but beautiful way, of course. And most of the poems are paired with art from Rachel Bliss, whose work tightrope walks between the real and the surreal. I usually read poetry before bed, and this was the perfect collection for that time of day—turning out the light and spotting Komunyakaa’s nocturnal creatures in the shadows.

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

Yeah, I don’t know how this was my first time reading The Fire Next Time, either. Baldwin’s prose is simultaneously elegant and cutting, and this book—which comprises only a letter to his nephew and a single essay—feels as relevant now as I’m sure it did when it was published in 1963. (I wish it felt significantly less relevant by now!) While he obviously addresses race in America with great insight, my favorite quote in the text was about death: “Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death—ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life.” The truth of the statement took my breath away.

The Book of Love by Kelly Link

I firmly believe Kelly Link is one of our greatest living authors, and I’ve never had any reason to criticize her work: until now. An ubiquitous short story writer, The Book of Love is her first novel. It took her a long time to write, and I am surprised that in all that time, her editor(s) didn’t work with her more closely on pacing. The novel takes place over a span of only a few days—and you feel every solitary second of them. The book just drags. That said, other aspects of the novel bear Link’s best qualities. The characters? Astonishing. The dialog? Understated and funny. The entire concept of the plot? Quietly bananas. It feels like she tried to expand a wonderful short story into a novel and struggled under the weight of all those extra words. And yet, if she wanted to write and publish another novel, I’d still read it!

Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke

As someone who works remotely for a large corporation, I thought this novel was hilarious. Written in the form of Slack messages, Several People Are Typing tells the story of poor Gerald, whose mind gets trapped inside Slack through a spreadsheet-induced mishap; with the help of his coworker Pradeep, he must engage the Slackbot in existential battle for his freedom. The book is very funny, and the ending is surprisingly sweet. It’s a quick read, too. I recommend it.

The Rain Artist by Claire Rudy Foster

Based on a short story, The Rain Artist is a dystopian cli-fi adventure featuring Celine Broussard, the world’s only remaining umbrella-maker due to permanent drought. After one of her wealthiest clients is murdered, Broussard must both flee New York City and prove her innocence with the help of her formerly criminal assistant and a young pregnant woman. The plot is exciting, but my favorite part were Foster’s descriptions—juicy and vivid. The book is the first in a series—I can’t wait to see where the story goes.