currently reading: Crudo by Olivia Laing
books finished:
Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder
The Address Book by Sophie Calle
books abandoned:
Liquid Rules: The Delightful and Dangerous Substances that Flow Through Our Lives by Mark Miodownik
An Orphanage of Dreams: Stories by Sam Savage
Your Black Friend and Other Strangers by Ben Passmore
A Handbook of Disappointed Fate by Anne Boyer
Tales for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
Bad with Money: The Imperfect Art of Getting Your Financial Sh*t Together by Gaby Dunn
Hey you,
I was going to write up a whole thing about how maybe it would be helpful or interesting or inspiring for you, my dear friend, to read about how many books I abandon in any given week or month. I would've had a whole conceit about how it was like, a look behind the scenes or something—something along the lines of "this is how many books I have to start to read 100+ books per year"—but you're smart enough to see through it and also, I don't feel like writing it. Anyway, the truth is if I didn't talk about the books I abandoned this week I wouldn't have very much to talk about.
Sorry for being the kind of boring person who writes a boring disclaimer but: I am absolutely not saying the books I abandoned this week are bad. Most of them are probably even good. What I am saying is—I'm very tired. I'm very tired and don't have the normal adult amount of patience.
Liquid Rules was nice enough, but the conceit—"set over the course of a flight from London to San Francisco"—started grating on me by the second chapter. Miodownik started by talking about the kerosene that powers jet engines, and then starts to talk about (I think) the drinks served on a plane, and what was once a cute idea felt very contrived in practice. Just talk about liquids, Mark! You're really good at it on your own. You don't need a plane!
An Orphanage of Dreams gave me a feeling that I've never had reason to put into words before. When I'm reading short stories that venture beyond the realm of realistic fiction I get this heavy trapped feeling, like I need to start looking for windows and emergency exits. I can't stand not to know the parameters of the world I'm in, for one thing, and it seems annoying and Sisyphean (Sisyphean-lite, okay) to have them disappear and then have to work to re-establish them every few pages. Still, I don't know why it's a trapped feeling, or why it's so heavy. I have a lot of little hang-ups and blind spots (preferences, they're sometimes called) like this, which is one of many reasons you should get your book recommendations from more than one source.
Your Black Friend and Other Strangers is a collection of Ben Passmore's comics and some of the comics (like the titular ones) are great, but others are, you know, less great. In my opinion! (This is why I'll never be a proper book reviewer.) There were passionate political messages followed by like, dicks and aliens, which, see hang-ups and blind spots above.
Anne Boyer seems like a truly talented writer with a lot of wonderful insight, but in her essay collection A Handbook of Disappointed Fate she threw around the words "poet" and "poetry" with such abandon that I just couldn't. She did not define them; you are just supposed to know what poets and poetry mean in this context. This context being, for example: "I have a problem this time in Kansas City because I have no longer refused poetry. Because what I come from now is poetry, and poetry is also my city, and poetry is a city whose citizens have a tradition of admiring from and colonizing the suffering or tragedies of others." I liked the gesture, the idea of examining the role poetry (and art in general) has played in idealizing Americana, or things beyond saving, or both. But "poetry is also my city"? I don't have time to deal with that right now!
Tales for the Time Being is told in part through the diary of a Japanese teenager, Nao, and in part through straightforward third-person narration about Ruth, who is the book's protagonist and also probably the author. (Definitely the author.) Nao was great, and if the whole book was written in that voice I would be writing a different tinyletter right now, probably. But the parts of the book that followed Ruth, Jesus Christ—it was like she had no faith in the reader whatsoever. In the diary, Nao hinted several times that she's suicidal, and just in case you as the reader missed every single one of those clues, Ruth is there to think to herself, "While the girl hadn't come right out and said she was going to commit suicide, she'd certainly implied as much." Or: her husband, Oliver, will have an improbable bit of dialogue about how there are "eleven great planetary gyres" just in time to keep the storyline moving. It made me so mad. When I was working at literary agencies probably my main piece of advice was: give the reader credit! (But not as much credit as Anne Boyer.)
I bought Bad with Money because I wanted to learn what an FSA and a tax-deferred annuity are. It turns out an FSA is a flexible spending account (I could explain a little more if you really wanted me to), but I still don't know what a tax-deferred annuity is. The book doesn't talk about either of these, which I know not because I read it but because after I paid for it and brought it home I noticed it had an index I could check. Also, apparently the book is more of a memoir-guide than what I'm looking for, which is a financial guide with curses in it for someone very stupid. Realizing that I'd bought a book I didn't actually want but hadn't really bothered to do the research about was a perfect manifestation of me being bad with money. (I am kind of sad to live in a world where I'm supposed to learn about tax-deferred annuities.)
I have just started Crudo by Olivia Laing. (Obviously.) Maybe a book without a plot is just the thing I need.
Are you reading anything good?
Your friend,
Smalls