My Year in Books 2015
(Or: Why I Stopped Reading Books Written By Men And Started Reading Books Written By Women Instead.)
Every year, I set the same goal: to read 50 books in 12 months. Until now, I’ve not once met that lofty target. Last year, the closest I’ve ever come to hitting the big 5-0, I narrowly missed with 46.
But that year I got closer than ever. In the spring of 2014, I got excited about reading novels written about and placed in Los Angeles: What Makes Sammy Run, Zeroville, Ask The Dust, The Day of the Locust. And so it went that after reading far more James Ellroy than anyone should ever have to read, Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays was a welcome respite in its feminine desperation.
A switch flipped. Why be made angry by what I read? In October 2014, I completely stopped reading or buying books written by men.
The fall of last year was an awakening. I discovered the magic of Clarice Lispector’s The Hour of the Star, the quiet despair of Jean Rhys’ Good Morning Midnight, the humor and grace of Nora Ephron, the poetry of Vivian Gornick’s Fierce Attachments. I started to wonder why I’d ever bothered to read such an impressive amount of stories written by men, from their alien perspective. Why in the world did I let myself grow up voraciously reading about Nabokov’s creepy erection and and Dostoyevsky’s tortured desires?
I abandoned much of the unread “canon” literature in my shelves, instead picking up novels that had long sat ignored. I found myself spellbound by Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs and Kate Zambreno’s Green Girl. I started ordering books written by, about, for women. I discovered publishing houses I didn’t even know existed. If I ever ran out of ideas, I scoured Amazon, Goodreads, The Millions.
And something curious happened: as I started reading exclusively novels written from a woman’s perspective, I started to read more often, and the closer I came to reaching my ever-elusive goal of reading 50 books in one calendar year. I ended 2014 with an ironic choice: Men Explain Things to Me, by Rebecca Solnit. I was four books short.
It is December 8th, and today, for the first time, I have reached book #50, and a little over 13,000 pages of text, far before the end-of-the-year deadline. This year I have learned more from (and about) literature than ever before.
One of the first books I read this year was Kate Zambreno’s Heronies, an impossibly compelling story that weaves together literary analysis and personal narrative. Zambreno laments the suppression of literary talents of the wives of famous authors. She spends special care detailing Zelda Fitzgerald’s tragic fate, and that of Jane Bowles, author of Two Serious Ladies, which I immediately read and admire.
I read Mary Karr’s The Liars Club, a memoir that is at times heartbreaking but somehow always funny. I read Mary McCarthy’s The Group, Jean Rhys’ Voyage in the Dark and Wide Sargasso Sea, Elizabeth Hardwick’s Sleepless Nights. Then, in the spring, I discover Anaïs Nin’s diaries. I read Volume 1 with rapt attention. At first I am happily oblivious to backstory, but soon I find myself simultaneously reading Deirdre Bair’s biography of the diarist.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin Volumes 2–7 soon follow, along with Nin’s lyrical, dreamlike novellas: House of Incest, Ladders to Fire, Winter of Artifice, Children of the Albatross, The Four Chambered Heart, A Spy In the House of Love. I start on her “unexpurgated” diary series, as released by her second husband after she died, but after Henry and June comes Incest and it’s just too much to bear reading Anaïs Nin recount sex with her father. I abandon Anaïs in July, go on a road trip and pack nothing else from my Nin collection.
It turns out Anaïs Nin is a tough act to follow. On a road trip to the Grand Canyon I read Dorothy Baker’s Cassandra at the Wedding, which seems trite, and Renata Adler’s Speedboat, which is impressibly readable but somehow forgettable. Then I discover Virginie Despentes.
King Kong Theory leaves me wishing I could get in a time machine and deliver it to myself as a teenager. I bring Baise-Moi on a plane to Israel and cry in front of strangers. I’m less impressed with Apocalypse Baby but read it quickly and with pleasure regardless. I brazenly read Michelle Goldberg’s The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World on a Tel Aviv beach. I’d published the story of my own abortion at Cosmopolitan a few months prior and it was shared on the internet 18,000 times. I feel powerful. Then I read Dorothy Parker’s Complete Stories, and I’m immediately humbled.
I return to Los Angeles somehow changed. My rape stories are finally published. I read Phoebe Gloeckner’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl, a half-novel half-comic about a young girl’s molestation which I consume wide-eyed in a single afternoon, and Aspen Matis’ Girl in the Woods, the true story of a woman’s post-rape hike from Mexico to Canada. Afterward, I seek out something I hope will be uplifting. Gloria Steinem’s new book, My Life on the Road, is the perfect antidote. It inspires and soothes me.
As the year winds down I read wonderful books: Irin Carmen & Shana Knizhnik’s Notorious RBG, Rebecca West’s The Fountain Overflows, Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, Joan Didion’s White Album. But nothing that would eventually compare to the power and style of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels.
A couple years ago, I might have scoffed at the Neapolitan Novels. Sure, they’re critically acclaimed. Sure, all your friends say they’re amazing, that they‘re a joy to read, that you ABSOLUTELY MUST READ THEM RIGHT NOW. But the titles are silly, perhaps a translation problem (The Story of a New Name? The Story of the Lost Child?), and the covers scream “Your boyfriend is going to make fun of you for reading ‘chick lit.’” But at the top of December, I dive in.
My 50th book of the year is the third book in the series, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay. In it, the two protagonists, narrator Elena and her lifelong friend Lila, are in their mid-twenties and each dealing in their own way with the Communist revolution in Italy. The women are each beaten down, anxious about the future, unsure, trying to fake it. Their love-hate relationship is wrought with tension, competition, and confession. When I finish Book 3 and move on to Book 4, I will vanquish a longstanding goal for the first time while speeding through the most engrossing, enjoyable series I’ve read since Harry Potter.
I’m proud of myself for meeting my goal, and yet I feel now that if at any year in the past I would have only known the joy that comes from reading the words of another woman, I would have realized it long before. And now that my love of reading has been restored to the pure, beautiful experience that first drew me in as a child, it might be time to stop keeping score.
