January Book Club!

What is reading anyway?

Since last we spoke, I feel like I’ve only finished like, two books.

Actually, looking at Goodreads, I see that it’s more than that. I’ve read Michael Pollan’s Caffeine and Mallory O’Meara’s The Lady from the Black Lagoon in audiobook, which was an interesting couplet—as they’re both extremely personal explorations of the process of writing a nonfiction book, as well as being nonfiction books. One part personal essay, one part history. Fascinating to see them together.

The Pollan is a little bit fluffy and I don’t think sticks the landing with its thesis statement very well, possibly because it has a couple of conflicting thesis statements and it never resolves, to my mind, the tension between them. The O’Meara’s discussion of both the life of its subject and the way that women are erased from the history of art, thereby making every new generation of women act as pioneers all over again tie together much more neatly. Also, I happen to think Mallory is right.