ON THE SHELF: hitting bricks
a love letter to quitting, or all the things i read, but mostly DIDN'T read, in the month of february.
tw: brief discussion of sexual assault under the heading for we will not cancel us.
i recently met someone who’s like barely an acquaintance, a real friend of friend, who read like a hundred books last year. regardless of relation, this fact alone makes her one of the most impressive people i know. last year i wanted to read 24 books, two for each month, and made it only to 23, so just shy. this year, i will stay on schedule.
when i asked this friend of a friend how she managed to read so much, she said she doesn’t watch tv and has been reading both at work and while girlrotting in bed. but don’t you get into a slump? where reading is just NOT interesting? she said, “not really. if i’m not enjoying a book, i quit it and move on to the next.” beautiful.
i have such a love/hate relationship with things that are effective and yet so so simple. i think of emotions and internal life as something so endlessly esoteric and intangible, that it seems right for the solutions to Big Feelings be just as Big and complex. this is usually not the case.
the best dish i’ve ever eaten was at my old house in ann arbor, not at any fancy restaurant, and it was spring radishes thinly sliced on toast with fancy french butter and fresh bakery bread, salt and pepper on top. best bite on this green earth. the best way i know to immediately feel better is to shower, get some sleep, or cry about it even if it’s stupid (recommended in that order). the best way i know to calm down is the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding method. the best way to get out of your head is to make plans with your friends.
complex problems with simple solutions: there’s something kinda poetic about it.
reading is a lot of things, as i’ve said last time, but i’m lucky enough for reading to be a leisure for me, so why not treat it as such? there are plenty of things in this life to be suffered through, but reading doesn’t need to be one of them. this month, i’ve tried to perfect the art of quitting before i waste my time and energy of a book i know i won’t like. i’d say it’s gone pretty well.
books i did not finish
supper club by lara williams
reason i quit: really random fatphobia in the middle
boiling books down to how likeable the protagonist is one of my biggest pet peeves, but this got me wondering: what makes a good coming-of-age book if not a protagonist you want to see change? you don’t have to love someone, or even like them, to pray they get their shit together. even books where the protagonist becomes a worse person can be worthwhile if done well. however, i did not read enough of supper club to tell if anything was done well.
i felt completely neutral about roberta, the quirked up, lonely protagonist who likes to make dishes based on the movies she’s watched. roberta is the kind of narrator that is really popular in dark women’s fiction rn, in that she spends time telling us how she keeps thin and how much she cares about her appearance. but it’s like feminist because she’s at least honest enough to openly worry about it, right?
in a random exchange with a fat woman at a party, the woman dares to ask roberta about her cooking hobby, something they have in common:
It had seemed bold, but I couldn't understand why. My interest in food had felt like something that could be spoken about, but not made visible. I worked hard at keeping my weight within pleasing parameters. It seemed so crass, so unacceptable to be a woman who liked and was interested in food and who dared to look like she did.
there are similar protagonists in milk fed by melissa broder, my year of rest and relaxation by ottessa moshfegh, boy parts by eliza clark, a certain hunger by chelsea g. summers, and so on…
maybe that’s a bitter, bad faith reading of these characters, but i quite frankly don’t care. fatphobia is generally baked into our culture, so naturally it appears in fiction (covered and critiqued better by emma copely-eisenberg here). i just think it’s weird that it appears so often in dark women’s fiction, one of the few places female protagonists are celebrated for being unlikable. maybe it’s because having a fat female character in a story would make her default unlikeable? no need for her to also be a cannibal, or a horrible person, or sexually exploitative, or whatever.
as someone who has read every single one of the books above, and even liked most of them, i guess i’m willing to sit through the casual fatphobia for a good read. but to make room in your story for your character’s contempt towards fat people and it’s not even a GOOD BOOK?? good for you or sorry that happened but i’m not reading all that.
emergent strategy by adrienne maree brown
reason i quit: revolutionary, but not to me…
i love adrienne maree brown’s frameworks and her commitment to precise language. i’m also reading her fiction novel, grievers, about a woman navigating her mother’s death by a paralyzing illness that leaves the city of detroit quarantined. i really like it.
i have a harder time enjoying her nonfiction works. she’s bold in politic, daring the reader to imagine a world where we care and nurture each other within community. she calls us to rise above the late stage capitalism that says everyone should take what they can, damn the rest and it’s why she’s popular among fellow leftists. but she also talks around her points, couching them deep in theory, sources, and disclaimers before we can even parse the thesis statement. i dropped emergent strategy because i was familiar with the ideas she was presenting and didn’t feel i was learning anything new. i did, however read we will not cancel us, reviewed below, though i can’t say i enjoyed it much more.
keep moving by maggie smith
reason i quit: dizzying repetition made me feel like an insane person
this book falls under the genre i lovingly call “delusional self-help for white women.” it’s best characterized by the writer’s semi-recent divorce, girl boss white feminism, and a rallying call to action on behalf of the reader. like dark women’s lit, this is also a wildly popular genre with bestsellers such as big magic by elizabeth gilbert, untamed by glennon doyle, and (arguably - it’s a stretch) little weirds by jenny slate, which i also read this month.
i don’t want to disparage this genre too much, because it is actually refreshing sometimes to hear platitudes like “i can do hard things,” or “that life is gone so keep moving.” i have trouble not with it but with its place on the supergoop/wellness-to-troubling politics pipeline, though that’s a different article.
keep moving is in that genre, and it’s an example of a bad book within it. maybe it’s because i listened to the audiobook, but the repetition of the book’s title is more manic than meditative. this sounded like those motivational tapes that miserable, fictional housewives listen to between scrubbing kitchens and screaming into the garbage disposal.
books i FINISHED
this book is a series of heartfelt and goofy essays that read like a love letter to solitude. in it, comedian jenny slate grapples with the feelings that come up around being a daughter, a recent divorcee, a certified lover girl, a woman, a person who has lived and died a hundred times over, and general person in the world.
perfect for: lover girls, delusional self-help for white women enjoyers, former children who talked to the moon.
you exist too much is like if coming-of-age was for adults who find their lives untenable instead of teens not yet of age. lucy is a queer palestinian-american woman who is a serial cheater and sex/love addict with lots of mommy issues. the story cuts between vignettes of lucy visiting her family in amman and nablus, her time in rehab for sex/love addiction, and memories of her mother: the woman that kickstarted this whole shit show.
perfect for: unhinged bisexual women, anyone who has googled “avoidant attachment style” in the past 6 months, girlies with mommy issues
chuck palahniuk, the guy that wrote fight club, talks at length about extremely technical aspects of his writing process and favorite literary devices. he also talks about his time travelling, workshopping, and signing books as a famous, blue-collar author. blue collar in this context means “doesn’t have an mfa.”
perfect for: people interesting in writing craft, fans of fight club (or in my case snuff), anyone currently struggling with artistic block
disclaimer: i feel very strongly that you shouldn’t read someone’s writing advice books if you don’t enjoy their work.. i happen to like palahniuk but if you don’t like his style, you probably won’t like this book either.
polemic against cancelling. in this short treatise, brown argues that people in community need to learn to be accountable to each other, yes, but also to parse the difference between a misunderstanding, a conflict, and real abuse. while i wish she would have gotten deeper into potential solutions towards transformative justice, this was still a helpful tool for coming to operational definitions of terms that are used interchangeably.
perfect for: those in leftist circles, tenderqueers, communication nerds
she also touches on two of the things that i believe most right now:
we need language for describing harm outside of a legal context. there is a plethora of harm committed that, while not explicitly illegal, still deserves accountability. there’s also a sinister dynamic surrounding conversations about abuse and sexual assault that focuses only on whether the harm done was illegal, rather than what can be done about the wrong perpetrated. we need to question the avenues we have for doling out “justice.” if your only option for restitution is taking on the burden of proof, contending with the legal system, all while trying to process what happened to you in real time, and being re-traumatized at every point in that process… it’s important to acknowledge that’s not an option for everybody. we need better, more precise, more compassionate words to begin having these important conversations.
you don’t have to like everyone you’re in community with. so many people my age are trying to be more intentional in cultivating community but are too selective with who they consider a comrade. it’s not enough to only organize with people who are also queer college students, or the specific sect of communist that you are. there are elderly people, disabled people, and parents in your community. there are unattractive people, grating people, and people who don’t always say the right thing in your community. not everyone in your community needs to be your friend, and the more we realize that and contend with the conflict that crops up because of it, the stronger our organizing.
a note on timing
i’m not much of a romantic, but i do believe in kismet when it comes to books. i believe that the perfect book will find us at the perfect time, it just takes discernment and discipline not to force it (which i’m practicing). there have been countless times that i’ve had books sit on my shelf for years, unread, only for me to pick them up years later and find that it’s telling me exactly what i need to hear. those are moments where i’m sure reading is like magic.
for example, i needed to read the virgin suicides on the steps of my empty childhood home when we were in the process of moving. i needed to read the pisces after my first major breakup. i needed to read the bell jar as an angsty, depressed eighth grader.
february wasn’t full of duds per se, just books not of this moment. like maybe if i found emergent strategy in my uber-idealistic freshman year it would have hit different. if ever there was a case for quitting while you’re ahead, it’s this. the one that’ll change your life could be waiting while you’re slumping through a bad book you feel obligated to finish. might as well quit it.
as always, if you read this far, i love you. please accept my humblest offering: some geese spotted while exploring detroit’s historic elmwood cemetery.
