2017 Book Report
Some books that I read in the last year or so and maybe you should too.
Sheila Heti — How a Person Should Be
HaPSB is a coming of age story of sorts — presented like a barely-fictionalized journal — full of the aesthetic, intellectual and philosophical musings of a young female artist trying to find her way in the world. Heti has a strong, funny voice and style for days, which somehow makes this not feel like a memoir (a genre I am typically allergic to).
It helps that Heti has a great (and supremely hip) group of friends who populate her world. But rather than simply adding color to the story, her crew also makes the book a poignant exploration of modern friendship.
[Side note: midway through the book you’ll stumble on one of the most breathless, gorgeous and, er, stirring erotic riffs on female sexual obsession that you’re ever likely to read. And trust me, I’ve read ’em all.]
The Goldfinch — Donna Tartt
I tried. I really did. I gave it 350 pages… but there were still 400 to go and, like, come on, homie, that’s just too many damn pages. (Anyway, I learned my lesson from A Little Life. Our time in the world is too short to finish too-long novels.) Despite a memorable cast of supporting characters, I didn’t feel particularly connected or interested in the narrator’s travails. Maybe his voice didn’t feel strong enough. Maybe the writing itself felt a little limp. I dunno. If you’re looking for scrappy narrators in windy novels, you might as well do Dickens.
All the Light We Cannot See — Anthony Doerr
Speaking of long novels, this one’s pretty thick. But the plot moves so swiftly and is so artfully woven that I could’ve read another 500 pages. And the language! My goodness. There’s gut-churning beauty on every page. For passages like this I am eternally grateful:
“We come into the world as a single cell, smaller than a speck of dust. Much smaller. Divide. Multiply. Add and subtract. Matter changes hands, atoms flow in and out, molecules pivot, proteins stitch together, mitochondria send out their oxidative dictates; we begin as a microscopic electrical swarm. The lungs the brain the heart. Forty weeks later, six trillion cells get crushed in the vise of our mother’s birth canal and we howl. Then the world starts in on us.”
Teaching a Stone To Talk — Annie Dillard
If you’re like me, you took Annie Dillard for granted. One of those writers you had maybe read in a creative writing class in high school, suspected was worth reading more of, but just kinda figured that if she was sooooo good why didn’t more people talk about her.
Well, guess what? People don’t talk about her because true beauty strikes us dumb.
More wisdom is packed into this collection of essays, that you could find on a hundred Tibetan mountain tops. Poetry and allegory and ecstatic insights into the divinity of nature.
Year of Magical Thinking — Joan Didion (Re-read)
Not my favorite Didion, but there was a death in my family and this felt like a good one to return to. Also, even a middling Joan Didion is better that 99 percent of the self-important hacks running around out there.
The Seekers Guide — Elizabeth Lesser
Kinda cheesy, but I ain’t even mad at it. It’s basically Modern Eastern-Leaning Spiritual Practice 101. But Elizabeth Lesser is pretty legit (she founded the Omega Institute) and the book offers wonderful teachings from a variety of great religious leaders and thinkers, helpful tools for developing and maintaining a regular spiritual practice and autobiographical tidbits that lend the book a refreshing authenticity.
Englightment Guaranteed!!!
Ghettoside — Jill Leovy
Ever since you watched The Wire you’ve been gamboling about, flexing your street savvy shorthand and waxing about the Shakespearean tragedy that is the American inner city. We get it: you’re sooo Baltimore.
Well, come on out to the Left Coast.
Ghettoside is a masterpiece of macro- and micro-journalism. On the one hand, it is a true crime detective story that intimately follows a murder investigation (and the very compelling detectives who execute it) in South Central Los Angeles. On the other, it is a deeply researched study of inner city violence and, specifically, black-on-black crime in America.
This is a beautiful, shattering book.
Dreamland — Sam Quinones
Same kinda deal as Ghettoside. A well-reported, supremely engaging and deeply troubling large- and small-scale portrait of the opioid epidemic in America.
As somebody from a tiny rural state that is currently being decimated by pills and heroin, it’s kinda hard not to feel like we’re fucked. But Quinones does a pretty phenomenal job of explaining how rural communities (and members of my close family) got hooked on Oxy and, later, black tar heroin and offers some hope for a brighter future.
A Little Life — Hanya Yanigahara
Ugh. Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy…?
The first hundred pages made me love this book. The last 10,000 made me want to drink hemlock syrup.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao — Junot Diaz (Re-read)
I’ll be reading and re-reading Junot Diaz till the day I die. He is the GOAT. The Numba One Chief Rocka. The Domican Don. Pick up his books. Read them all. Reflect and repeat.
Pulphead — John Jeremiah Sullivan (Re-read)
As far as I’m concerned, this is the best collection of essays in modern times. (Ever?) John Jeremiah Sullivan manages to carve deeply trenchant narratives from the unlikeliest of places in a voice even funnier and more nakedly emotional (also less abstruse and unnecessarily wordy) that his stylistic forebear, David Foster Wallace.
He writes about Christian rock concerts, Axl Rose, The Real World and his brother’s near death in the voice of a true authentic original.
Nixonland — Rick Perlstein
A lot of interesting parallels can be drawn between the social/political climate that gave rise to Richard Nixon and the world we’re living in now. A very engaging read.
The Underground Railroad — Colson Whitehead
This opinion probably won’t win me a lot of friends but, to my (admittedly dubious) taste, this book falls somewhere on the border of upper mediocrity & pretty goodness. So probably worth a read, but certainly not deserving of the mountains of accolades heaped upon it.
I like Colson Whitehead well enough and have read a few of his books now. But, like Dave Eggers, reading his books feel like settling. Like, I could probably do better if I had the patience and fortitude to keep looking for The One, but really we’re all just tired and lazy so why not reach for the closest thing that other people say is pretty good.
Additionally, I found the Big Conceit of the book to be kind of ludicrous. The underground railroad is REAL!?!? … Um. So what? There’s some pretty good writing and the topical matter is, of course, sad and terrifying and fascinating, but the rhetorical capital-t Twist doesn’t actually add much conceptual or narrative weight to the story. So, like, why do we need a Liberation Polar Express?
American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst — Jeffrey Toobin
Fun, fascinating, highly engaging account of a bizarre moment in American history. The backdrop of the post-revolutionary 70’s alone makes it worth the read.
Strangers in Their Own Land — Arli Russell Hochschild
Written prior to the election of Trump, this book (as well as Hillbilly Elegy, below) appeared on a bunch of post-November 2016 lists meant to educate the Coastal Elites in the unthinkable psychology of Everybody Else.
Hochschild essentially embedded herself in Lake Charles, Louisiana for five years and did a deep dive into the social, cultural and political landscape of the deep southern Right. The characters she encounters are so charming and complicated and compelling (and, at times, maddening), that you can’t help but feel connected to them even as you might also want strap them down in front of an endless Clockwork Orange-style loop of Jon Stewart-era Daily Show.
As Coastal Elite in Denial, I found this book to be a difficult, powerful, deeply frustrating lesson. And a necessary one. It should be required reading for every righteous liberal reTweeter and self-congratulatory poster of lefty bromides.
This is a story of a very different America from the one I know. But, whether I like it or not, that America is also my America.
(I’d add that the The Unwinding, from a few years ago, makes a wonderful companion piece to this book.)
Hillbilly Elegy — J.D. Vance
Meh. It was aiiight. I picked this one up because it was supposed to somehow elucidate the origins of the Modern Right Brain. But aside from some great anecdotes about rural Appalacian life, I found it to be a fairly bland read. But then, I’m not really a memoir guy.
For my money, you’re better off with Strangers In Their Own Land and The Unwinding.
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena — Anthony Mara
This is a sleeper masterpiece. I don’t know what more to say. Read this book and tell all your friends about it. Gorgeous language. Laser-honed plot. Fascinating world.
But BEWARE: The last 30 or 40 pages might just reduce you to a puddle.
Plus a couple of friends’ reading lists…