Book Report #01

Summer Fridays

Hi y’all,

This ain’t a listicle, it’s an email with columns, baby! I’m trying something new today, so let me know what you think.

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Spotted: On the L train to Manhattan, a man wearing khaki shorts and airpods, reading a hardback copy of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. He had a Lululemon bag between his feet and wore a shirt that said, “Everyday Hustling” in the style of the plastic Thank You bags. Plus a woman in a long navy blue dress and sandals reading a paperback of The Song of Achilles. On the G to Boerum Hill, a balding hipster in a groutfit reading a paperback with a painting of a mournful woman on the cover. I couldn’t make out the title, but it was something like “The ___ of ___.” Not very easy to Google.

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This week, I recommend that you organize your books by the year that you read them. Sorry y’all, the rainbow shelf organization is lame. Obviously books are decorative and aesthetic objects, but like, come on. Have a little respect.

Instead, show your narcissism in a less conspicuous way. Quietly, make your reading diary public. Have one shelf dedicated to books from your childhood, from high school, from college, from early adulthood, and so on, progressing through the years.

Take pleasure in seeing how your taste has evolved. Remember books not only for their content, but for where you were in life when you read them. Consider how your life-stage might have informed your reading of the book, and vice versa.

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This week on the internet…

I really enjoyed this article in The Outline about the decade of “sore winners.” This paragraph really made me reflect on the way I write my own reviews:

To the extent that events like GamerGate were about criticism, the demand was for “objective” criticism that would be purely descriptive: this works like this, that works like that. If you like this, you’ll like that; for those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like. Criticism in this instance would function a bit like reviews of lipstick: what you need to know in order to decide whether or not you wanted to consume a product. (What’s the staying power, is it moisturizing, and so on.) The desire for the legitimating stamp of art was to shut down critical scrutiny (sometimes for pragmatic reasons), not encourage it.

…and the Twitter drama du jour:

Apparently, the author of the tweet wasn’t making the argument that “listening to an audiobook isn’t the same thing as reading” here (good, cuz that’s a whole ‘nuther can-o-worms). He’s saying that writers don’t have to engage with literature in any way, at all. Mardoll has already deleted the tweet, but if you wanna check out the pile-on, just search “writers read” on Twitter, but it’s mostly predictable and kinda boring. This tweet wondering why audiobooks don’t have subtitles made me laugh, because, like the Big 5 publishers, I have another name for “audiobook subtitles:” the book.

For the uninitiated, most book drama on Twitter is, uh, pretty stupid, but I’m always impressed by a spat that leaves everyone who touches it looking worse for the wear.

And, fwiw, it’s okay not to read, y’all!!!!! It’s not a moral failing, I promise. In fact, “reading is ableist” sounds a bit like the position the “sore winner” may take—considering what qualifies as “good” sales numbers for books these days.

CRIT @CRITWorks

you do have to read books to be a writer. specific books, too, not just any books. I know which ones but I'm not telling

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I’ve asked Brooke Bourgeouis—cartoonist for esteemed outlets like The New Yorker and The Drift, as well as the queen of board games—to tell me what she’s reading:

I’m currently reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. It’s the kind of book where I missed its moment (the bestseller lists) and its second moment (the movies), so it’s unlikely I’d have picked it up, if not for the debut of an “aging-blockbusters” book club I started with my best friends.

It’s interesting to read it now, because the “alt-girl” protagonist isn’t all that alternative when read in the cold, weird light of the 2020’s. In fact, the whole book is a strange dive back into the early 2000s, discussing sexual assault pre-#MeToo, while the leading male character cooly wades through a sea women who find him irresistible. (It makes sense that they cast Daniel Craig.) All that said, I get the hype, and I’ll definitely read it until the end to find out who killed Harriet.

Sounds like fun to me!

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I’m really loving Edith Wharton right now (read my preliminary thoughts on The Custom of the Country over on Insta) so obviously The Age of Innocence has worked it’s way up my list. And because nothing’s better than a controversy or a comedy of manners, Persuasion is up there too. Relatedly, I’m really feeling like I’m due a re-read of Madame Bovary.

Obviously, I’m giving shorter writing a shot. I’m going to keep publishing my super long reviews, but I want to try to write something I can commit to weekly. We will see how it turns out.

Let me know what you think, or if there are any columns you would like to see! Comments are below.

xoxo,
Book Notes