Set Adrift on an Ocean of Stories
The year is almost over, and so I want to talk to you about books. I had a really great reading year. Not all the books I read were winners, and in fact I became very frustrated with thrillers for a while because I kept choosing such mediocre ones to read, but of the 80 books I've read so far, 20 of them ended up on my favorites shelf on Goodreads. I think that's a record for me and I'm so happy about it.
I love books, which is not a unique feeling and will not come as a surprise to anyone because I talk about them constantly. I've even been considering the idea of turning this newsletter into, not exactly a book blog, but a newsletter where I still write personal things and theme them around what I've been reading, or around a specific book I feel relates to whatever I'm writing about. I think I need a slightly narrower focus than hope, because as much as I want to provide people little weekly glimmers of hope to sustain them through the bleak landscape of, you know, everything else, I feel like it makes it difficult to decide what to write about and it also limits the appeal of the newsletter. This isn't a definite change, just something I'm thinking about.
The point is, I love books. Reading is my primary form of escapism, and it's also emotional catharsis and a way to envision a better, more fulfilling life for myself and a helpful tool for processing my own experiences. And all of this aside, it's an exploration of the many and varied ways there are to write. I love to come across a sentence or a passage that stops me in my tracks because it's so beautiful or it so perfectly articulates a thing I've thought or felt or it opens me up to a new perspective I had never considered. Books are incredible and authors are incredible and thank God for them.
I've already written about a few of this year's favorites, like Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman and When You Hear That Song by Jenna Voris and Dear Emmie Blue by Leah Louis and Don't Let the Forest In by C.G. Drews and The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix and Next to You by Hannah Bonam-Young and The Book of Delights by Ross Gay. Actually, it seems like this newsletter might already be leaning toward a book theme without me intending it to. Now I want to tell you about a few others.
First, here are a couple of romance novels I really loved. It's a constant struggle for me, finding romance novels I enjoy, because so many of the tropes irritate me and too often the chemistry between the leads is so lacking that I don't believe in them as a couple and I don't care what happens with their relationship. I'm also very put off by many of the commonly used phrases in sex scenes. Honey and Spice by Bolu Babalola was an absolute joy to me. Both the narration and dialogue were very funny and I believed the banter between Kiki and Malakai, and the relationship unfolded at a pace that felt real and earned to me, and while these characters are early 20s college students in the most frustrating ways, they felt very grounded and I understood where their decisions came from.
The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary made me weep, and I would die for a romance that unfolds through letters because, I mean, nothing is more romantic to me than someone who has a way with words and uses that skill to woo me. I also thought the differences between Tiffy and Leon's narration styles were interesting and made the characters feel distinct from each other in a way not all dual POV stories do. And lastly, these were two radically different people who came together in a believable and satisfying way, and I appreciate that because I think that if done by a lesser writer, I wouldn't have believed the pairing would work. Trigger warning for a painful depiction of an emotionally abusive relationship, though.
Girls Night by I.S. Belle isn't exactly a romance novel, it's too furious and violent for that, but it does have deeply romantic scenes in it that felt a little voyeuristic to read because of their naked vulnerability. It's Fight Club with queer girls, like Bottoms if Bottoms was dipped in poison and set on fire, and I loved it and wanted to read it again for the first time as soon as I finished it. The No-Girlfriend Rule by Christen Randall made me cry so hard and I felt so seen and validated and it was romantic in the raised on fanfiction sense of the word, and Just Another Epic Love Poem by Parisa Akhbari is beautiful and aspirational because I deserve a writer girlfriend who will spend her life writing an endless poem with me.
Outside of romance, there were a couple of thrillers and horror novels that made the list. Such a Bad Influence by Olivia Muenter is extremely fun and silly and soapy, with a satisfying ending that made me mentally rub my hands together with glee, and I enjoyed it a lot despite the low average rating Goodreads users have given it. It's my firm belief that everyone on Goodreads is wrong except for me and people need to lower their expectations of thrillers to enjoy them. Tana French is quite simply one of the best in the thriller game and she writes books that are actually incredible, from a writing standpoint and a characterization one and a vibes one, and I loved The Hunter, the second in the Cal Hooper series. These books are slower and more introspective than her Dublin Murder Squad series, more character studies than outright thrillers. Liz Nugent is a new discovery for me this year and Strange Sally Diamond absolutely bowled me over. I was obsessed. I need more Irish crime writers in my life, is what I'm learning.
Not Like Other Girls by Meredith Adamo is billed as a thriller, and there is a mystery element to it, but that was the least interesting part of the book to me. I might do a whole piece about this, so let me just say here that reading it split me open in a precise and surgical way and I was jittery and shaky throughout, and it took me a week to be able to talk about it after I finished it, and definite trigger warning for sexual assault and its traumatic aftermath. I respect what it's doing so much and I really recommend it if you feel like you can handle it. It's validating, sometimes, to see a depiction of trauma that's so close to my own, even if I don't know that I'll reread it often because of how it made me feel.
The Blonde Dies First by Joelle Wellington is comfort horror in the best way. A cross between demonic possession and slasher, featuring characters who are obsessed with horror and know all the tropes, with queerness and a wonderful friend group and complicated sister dynamics. It's like this book was created in a lab specifically for me. It's very lighthearted and fun and I had a great time with it. We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer, on the other hand, is horror that is both a lot and not enough, dense and yet ambiguous in a frustrating way. I think this is why a lot of people didn't like it, but I did. It gave me actual nightmares and some of the imagery was so unsettling to me that I regretted reading it before bed. It started as a story on the nosleep subreddit, and it's one of the more impressive offerings to originate there. I definitely hope for more from this author.
This is enough, I think. It doesn't cover everything because there were just so many books this year, which is a testament to my improved mental health and ability to focus, but it covers a lot. I hope you've all had an equally good reading year, or watching year, or listening year, or year of whatever it is you're into. Sometimes, in the absence of positive life things or in the presence of negative ones, taking out these small shiny things and examining them can bolster you. That's the whole ethos behind this newsletter, I guess, and I really hope it's been successful. It has for me.
I'll leave you with this. As I wrote the bulk of this particular newsletter, I was on my couch with a blanket and a cat on my legs, a woodwick candle crackling away, and a virtual fireplace on my TV. The cat in these photos is not the cat who was on my legs, but he did enjoy the virtual fire enormously despite its refusal to put out heat to warm him. I have leaned so hard into cultivating maximum coziness in my home because there's so little of it out in the world right now, and I feel like I'm crushing it.
