Happy Friday!

I’m thinking of repurposing Craig Ferguson’s old, “It’s a great day for America, everybody!” with, uhhh, something more realistic. It’s been a bad week. In addition to the tiring news cycle, a water pipe on my house burst the other night and gushed many many gallons water, so I lost about half a day to stress and phone calls and worry. On the bright side, everyone is okay. Not looking forward to receiving that bill, though.

Since I last wrote to you, I paid a visit to Chicago. I like it there! I visited for work but I was able to spend a day book shopping with my friend Rincey and taking in a White Sox (vs Angels) game.

Apart from that, I’ve been reading. Fancy that!
 

---

IT’S A WRAP

Last month, I mentioned that I’d developed a new reading pattern. I’ve since abandoned it (lol) in favour of attempting to focus on one novel at a time. (Except for the slightly-waylaid Moby-Dick project, which is currently running behind.)

I mentioned Outline by Rachel Cusk last month. I’ll have more to say about it once I have finished the series, which I still intend to do.

On the plane to Chicago, I finished The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. It was clumsy, unrealistic, and super fun. It was a great example of how much you’ll forgive a book for its blunders when it gets the action right. I found it entertaining.

On the plane back from Chicago, I read Normal People by Sally Rooney in its entirety. Some people are upset that it was long-listed but not shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize this year. I think Rooney is really bright and her strength is in making key characters come alive, fight hard battles, understand and misunderstand each other, and struggle with life in a semi-realistic manner. What she’s not so good at are the realities of class (which are broached, but rather monochromatically), visual description, and plot (to name a few). Sometimes a book is so good at one thing that the rest doesn’t matter. I’m not sure she’s quite there yet. But I did feel for Connor and Marianne and wish they could fix each other – so there’s that.

 

---

TOTALLY NORMAL PEOPLE

Next, I read My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfegh: a somatic tale for our time. The unnamed narrator has led a tragic young adulthood and wants nothing more than to drug herself into a sleepy stupor for a year before – she imagines – emerging a changed woman. I found a lot of what friends said I’d like about Moshfegh here, including unlikeable women and disgusting details. I was really taken with the premise and the pathos around the narrator and her friend Reva’s grief and self-destructive tendencies. There’s a deep sense of tragedy and a convincing layer of disgust and ugly emotions that I’ve seldom seen other authors tackle. Its ending is quite something, though I’m conflicted on how I feel about the author’s use of real-life tragedy as a canvas for her characters. I get the sense that if I read the author’s interrogation of her own ideas the whole thing might come tumbling down. I found the book engrossing, though.

Not-so-engrossing was Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, which I picked up in Chicago. I read Never Let Me Go some years ago and enjoyed it well enough, but having already learned the reveal, I was less enamoured with it than I might have been. Remains is a post-war tale of English country life narrated by a butler named Mr Stevens. His reflections on a bygone era are intriguing but subtle, and his consistently muted take on events kept my pulse low, to say the least. Stevens, straight-laced and reserved, is a difficult character to love. This is fine, but I was yearning for something a little darker and more traumatic than what I found. I think it is accomplished, but I didn’t find much to love here.

 

---

ON MY NIGHTSTAND

Right now… I don’t want to make this sound dramatic but I’m in the throes of newfound love. I’m reading a cult classic: The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt. First published in 2000, it gained a literary following before going out of print. In 2016, it was resurrected by New Directions. I’ve heard about it on and off for years, particularly as I’ve had her second novel, Lightning Rods, on my wishlist since I first heard about it.

For me, The Last Samurai is a truly enrapturing read. Some of the subject matter is going way over my head (I mean, a 6-year-old character has a better grasp on a simple explanation of the Greek alphabet than I do) but it doesn’t feel like it matters. All I know is that every time I pick it up, I’m utterly engrossed. I keep giving myself 5 more pages, 5 more pages, 5 more pages. Today, I was upset at a café at lunch as the too-loud blasting of Justin Timberlake was too far at odds with its magic. I’ll let you know how well it sticks.

 

---

TIL NEXT MONTH…

Your turn! What’s on your nightstand? Have you read anything that has really engrossed you lately? Tweet me and tell me about it, please.

Have a lovely weekend,
Nicola x

Happy Friday! Premature happy end of summer!

You may have noticed my absence in your inbox last month. (But probably you didn’t.) I had a small crisis of purpose. See, I’ve been eschewing online reading for other kinds, mostly books. In fact, I’ve finished 49 books this year; almost as many as I read in the all of 2017. It rather changes the purpose of these emails from “things I’ve been reading online plus a few books,” to, “here are some books I’ve been reading plus some digital pocket change.” If you’re fine with the latter, that’s cool, keep reading. If not… eek, sorry!

 

---

ON MY NIGHTSTAND

I’ve developed a new reading pattern lately. I used to have one fiction and one non-fiction book on the go at the same time (for the most part). Sometimes I’d have two novels in tandem, or I’d read 50 pages of one book, then read an entire other book before getting back to the first one. Lately, though, I’ve had a paperback book (novel, memoir, or essays) on the go, which I read in the daytime and evening, and a novel on my Kindle which I only read before falling asleep. It’s often not very fair on the night-time book, but I’m enjoying it. I’ve also got another novel going in the background right now. Oh, and Evan and I are reading Moby-Dick. So there’s that.

Currently, the daytime/evening book is Outline by Rachel Cusk. I began this one a good few years ago before realising it was the first in a trilogy (followed by Transit and Kudos), and without having heard much about its form. I’m glad I put it down because now reading the series feels like a little project. It’s unusual: it takes the form of a woman (we know she’s a writer and mother, and that’s about it). She’s in Athens to teach a class and meets her seatmate on a plane, an acquaintance, some students. She’s basically going around having conversations with various people – so it’s kind of like being talked at for pages on end. If you go into it without that knowledge, I imagine it’s a challenge to read. So far, I’m with it.

Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick is kind of going in the background. I started it about four times and it’s a collection of reminisces by an old lady. It’s pretty modular and I’ve heard you can pick it up and begin at any chapter, or jump around. So I’ve been reading one chapter every other day or so.

On my actual nightstand, on my Kindle, is my current book club read: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. The conceit is that it’s about a young journalist who has been plucked from obscurity by a Hollywood starlet and entrusted to sell her life story as a biography after the actress’s death. Really, the premise is just a device for a fictional Hollywood biography. It’s a bit messy and I’m mentally editing a lot of pointless sentences but it’s entertaining enough.

 

---

A ROUND-ABOUT LOOK

Here’s where we can get into some links and things.

A book I recently read and loved is The Idiot by Elif Batuman. It’s definitely not for everyone, as the mixed reviews you may have seen will prove. It’s pretty plotless, which some people have a hard time with (and is definitely a factor in slowing me down). It also made me feel deeply melancholy, not because of its central element of unrequited love, but because it reminded me so thoroughly of my first couple of years of university, bumbling along, feeling uncertain and overwhelmed, and slowly gathering an emotional vocabulary.

I saved this interview with the author for when I was done (though the spoilers are minor) and, like the interviewer, was taken with Batuman’s way of thinking.

Her piece about Japan’s Rent-a-Family Industry is also emotionally resonant.

Much of The Idiot, and Batuman’s work, has to do with lingustics and languages and immigration. On that topic, I also loved this piece about Maeve Brennan, The Story We Don’t Talk About: On Irishness, Immigration, and Race. It’s wonderfully observed and clearly argued, with a nice wee story to boot. I’m looking forward to reading her new essay collection, Maeve in America.

In related, Rebecca Mead’s recent piece about leaving America after becoming a citizen also resonated, particularly because if we chose to leave we’d be in similar circumstances.

 

---

ON MY SHELF

Finally, since it’s been awhile, I thought I’d round up a few books I loved reading over the past few months.

The Outrun by Amy Liptrot was an instant favourite for me. It’s often billed as an addiction memoir, but it’s rich in a sense of time and place, and turns into something of a returning-home and a travel memoir simultaneously. If you like your memoir with hints of travel and nature, this one is for you.

You may have heard or read me raving about Jenny Diski. She’s a firm favourite of mine. Recently, I picked up The Vanishing Princess, a collection of her short stories. There are a few threads in terms of style – a few subversive fairy tales, a couple of realist contemporary pieces, and some period (60s and 70s) stories. Almost all of them surprised me in some way and, rare in a short story collection, I got something from them all.

While reading up on Diski’s novels (of which I’ve read none, so far) I also came across this piece – Jenny Diski’s End Notes – which I’m assuming is one of the last interviews she gave. Like Heidi Julavits’ introduction to The Vanishing Princess, it gets to the heart of some of the things I love most about her writing in ways I’ve yet to learn how to articulate.

I’ve bored on quite long enough, so I’ll tell you about reading Moby-Dick another time, eh?
 

---

TIL NEXT MONTH…

Your turn! What’s on your nightstand? What do you think of this new format? Tweet me, won’t you?

Have a lovely weekend,
Nicola x