Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Favorite Non-fiction of 2018!

Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore by Elizabeth Rush
This book is equal parts gorgeous and terrifying. It’s a travelogue, a memoir, and most of all, an incredibly powerful piece of journalism about the eroding effects of climate change on our coastlines and coastal communities. Reading it felt like looking over Rush’s shoulder as she traveled to each devastated coastline location, discovering again and again the damage being done by rising sea levels-- the homes being lost, the lives being lost, the ecology being forever changed.

She mixes her reporting with first person accounts from people living in the locations she covers and her own personal story to create something really unique, truly compelling, and deeply vital. (Plus, gorgeous, eminently underlineable writing.)

What a gorgeous book this is. Smarsh's prose is damn near poetry and her family story is both crazy and all too normal an experience for the "white working class" farm families in the heartland of America. 

Smarsh pulls some real wisdom about class and income inequality and prejudice out of her own history, yet is never remiss in pointing out that Black people in poverty had it much worse than families like hers. Her voice is strong and clear, nostalgic but realistic. You come away from the book really liking her, which is not always the case with memoir. She’s smart and strong and a formidable writer. I loved it.

I absolutely could not put this book down once I started it. I carried it from room to room. I read it in the car while my husband was driving, which is pretty rude. I read it on a boat! Like while someone was water skiing! Seriously! It’s just the nuttiest story, and Carreyrou does a great job of bringing all of the craziness to life.

You may have heard about Elizabeth Holmes, the 19 year old Stanford dropout who started a blood testing company with a novel idea—test people for diseases with just a drop of blood, instead of a whole needle-full, and get their results in mere moments. It sounded great, and lots of venture capitalists and companies agreed. 

Unfortunately, she couldn’t make the tech work. The team behind Theranos made so many bad decisions, compounded by wild hubris and a psychotic need for complete control. And greed. And blind ambition. It’s nuts they got as far as they did. 
I AM OBSESSED WITH THIS BOOK. I could not put it down. It was actually a problem. 

So, I was ages 6-16 during the 90s—old enough to know what was going on but not old enough to really get it. I knew about Nicole Brown, Monica Lewinsky, Lorena Bobbit, Murphy Brown, and Britney Spears. I knew the names and a rough idea of why people were talking shit about them but HOLY CRAP THE 90s WERE CRUEL TO WOMEN. These women were called bitches and no one saw a problem with it. Yarrow pulls all of these pieces of 90s cultural ephemera together into a cogent argument— “empowerment” was on the rise but so was the commodification of “girl power.” Women were making strides in business and politics but sexism was still rampant. The appearance was of progress but the reality was the same old shit. And the media had a lot to do with it. This book is so fascinating, entertaining, and compelling as hell. 

So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo
OKAY, WHITE PEOPLE. PICK UP THIS BOOK. BUY IT. READ IT. BE BETTER. Oluo has done us a HUGE service by writing this book. She addresses all the ways white people are getting race wrong, all the ways we are still talking and thinking about it wrong—affirmative action, white privilege, intersectionality, police brutality, microaggressions, and more. She explains what it is, how we can talk about it, why it’s important, and how we can be better. She gives examples of racist encounters from her own life—so not only is this a guidebook, it’s also a very personal look at Oluo’s life. (She’s amazing by the way.) Even for someone who thinks they are a great ally—you will come away with notes on how you can do better. 

My biggest takeaway—when you get something wrong, apologize and do better next time. Don’t be defensive. 

Well this book is 100% certifiably NUTS. It’s also an absolute must read if you are fascinated by conspiracy theories and the people who believe them/make them up. The subtitle makes it sounds like it’s a grand history about Truth in America, but it’s totally not. It’s just one nut’s story. It does say a lot about America and why some people believe what they believe, despite how ludicrous it is (I’m looking at you, Flat Earthers) and that makes it very relevant for today, “fake news” and Fox news and all. 

William Cooper is probably not someone you have heard of, though if you have? WEIRD BUT OKAY. He published a book with an obscure press called Behold a Pale Horse in 1991 that has gone on to sell 100s of thousands of copies—right wing nuts, rappers, and prison inmates are the most rabid fans. Which yup, that’s an odd group of people. Cooper had a crazy life and he believed some DEEPLY INSANE THINGS. This book is X Files come to life. I could not put it down or stop talking about it. (Ask my husband.) 

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays by Alexander Chee
This essay collection absolutely blew me away. I loved every minute of it. It’s the perfect thing for writers or aspiring writers, or readers who love to know how the sausage is made, how stories are pulled from a life, how that life remains intact and protected despite it. Chee is both a phenomenal writer, and I assume from this book, a gifted writing teacher. 
Through his essays, he takes us from his life growing up in rural Maine to college where he impulsively applied to be in Annie Dillard’s writing class, and what he learned when he got in. It’s about his life as a gay man, in San Francisco during the early 90s when AIDs was like a crashing wave. (His piece “After Peter” is one of the collection’s strongest and absolutely wrecked me.) He writes about his time at Iowa, learning how to craft stories, and his experiences as a cater waiter, most notably and wildly for the Buckleys. I loved his pieces about his rose garden and learning to read tarot. Uggghhhh it’s just sooooo goooooooooood. Read it.

This book could not be lovelier. “Wait, isn’t it about a library fire,” you ask. “Like, just tons of books going up in smoke? Wait, are you one of those sickos who burns books? Why do you work at a bookstore? Wait...why...do...you...work...here. What is going on. Where is the fire exit.”

OKAY YES TECHNICALLY IT IS ABOUT A GREAT BIG AWFUL LIBRARY FIRE. But really, it’s about books and the people who love them. It’s about the goodness and needfulness of libraries. It’s about how the Los Angeles library system came into being, the leaders who made it what it is today (many were wonderful strong women), and the resiliency that was required to bring it back from the worst library fire in American history. And because it’s Susan Orlean, it’s fascinating— full of history you didn’t know you needed and written in the style of your coolest best friend telling you an unforgettable story about a strange thing that happened, oh, and also, about herself. 

Sunday, December 9, 2018

Favorite Fiction of 2018

Fiction:

Our Homesick Songs by Emma Hooper

This novel is a homesick song of its own, written about a town on the coast in Canada on the verge of slipping away. Finn, a young boy who lives there with his sister and parents, until his sister runs away and his parents take turns leaving to work at the logging camps, will do anything he can to save his town, and his family. Finn’s parents, Martha and Aidan, have a beautiful love story of their own—met and fell in love, he a singing fisherman, she a mender of fishing nets, lured to the water by the sound of his voice.

It's a lovely story of a family, coming together, falling apart, and coming together again, laden with sweet sentimentality, populated with indelible characters you will love, and written in dreamy prose. I love it so much I just want to squeeze it. *squeezes book* *book squeezes back* *shoot is this book alive*

Florida by Lauren Groff
Such a stellar collection of stories, all centered around Florida—the place, the idea, the VIBE. Groff’s writing is just so freaking perfect, and a few of these stories left me absolutely motionless. (I think my favorite is “At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners,” which is one of those incredible short stories that spans decades and yet is only 29 pages—a year is a paragraph and you feel that somehow you learned every pertinent detail you needed to know through her spare sentences and the ending is absolutely perfect.)

If you enjoy being totally stunned by magical writing, this is the book for you. (And when you’re done, read Fates and Furies and Arcadia and by all means read her New York Times “By the Book” interview in which she NAILS THE DAMN PATRIARCY.) She’s an absolute treasure. She’s our Alice Munro y’all.

Severance by Ling Ma
What would you do if you were the only person left in New York City? Why would you stay? That's what the group of survivors, headed for "the Facility," where they can shelter together and begin to rebuild after a catastrophic pandemic, are wondering about Candace Chen when they find her passed out in a Yellow Cab on a deserted highway in Pennsylvania. The story circles back to the beginning of the outbreak of Shen Fever, to Candace's experiences in China, and how she found herself alone on the 34th floor of an office building in Times Square, ransacking her coworkers' desks for face cream and Ramen.

It's funny, thoughtful, crazy suspenseful, and so well written. I couldn’t stop thinking about. Still haven’t. I loved it.

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
This is suuuuuuuch a beautiful book. Makkai captures the AIDS epidemic in Chicago just the way a good ally should—with compassion, outrage, honesty, and huge amounts of research and acknowledgements. It feels close to her heart. She has also written just a dynamite story of friendship, love, innocence, and betrayal among a group of friends at the center of the crisis. It’s also a story of art and the long shadow of memory. Oh and then there’s a whole other storyline too, about motherhood and forgiveness and not being able to forgive, and PARIS. It’s all weaved together seamlessly and beautifully, with lovely writing and indelible characters.

It’s a full story with a big cast of characters, one to curl up with. It’s heartbreaking, yet also joyful. I loved it.

The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon
You know that thing where it feels like a writer is trying to impress you with their word choice? I’m not just talking straight up thesaurus abuse, which is bad enough, but that thing some writers do where they just try to twirl together interesting sounding verbs and phrases and similes until the sentence doesn’t even hold water anymore? WELL R.O. Kwon is so dang good at writing that I marveled at her gorgeous word choices and sentences (linden trees in a cemetery “raised their limbs in hallelujah”) yet I didn’t lose the thread of the story in the marveling. You could underline every sentence in this book. It’s just perfect.

And that says nothing about the story, which is also a wonder! Religion, both losing it and finding it, love, the losing and finding, the shackles of family and the freedom of being on your own. It’s about faith and fear and passion. It’s everything.
 
Washington Black by Esi Eduygan
This is an incredible novel. It does SO much. Reading it, you will be entertained and delighted, have your heart broken, be pissed off and shamed anew at the damage we did to Black people through slavery, educated, and utterly swept away by the narration.

Our narrator, Washington Black, “Wash,” is born into slavery on a plantation in Barbados. He’s protected by Kit, a hard woman who has a soft spot for him. She promises that when they die, they’ll be returned to the homeland, Africa. But before that can happen, Wash is chosen as the manservant to Titch, the younger brother of their cruel master. Though Titch benefits from the slave system, he doesn’t agree with it. When Wash is about to be implicated in a crime, Titch takes him and they escape in his flying machine, the balloon they have been working on for months. Their journey takes them around the world, working on scientific discoveries and running from the slave catchers. It’s an adventure story, a coming of age novel, a slave narrative, all in one. The writing is excellent and the story will take you on a journey you won’t soon forget.

She Would be King by Wayetu Moore
This truly important novel tells the story of the making of the nation of Liberia, not from the point of view of American politicians but from the unique perspectives of a Vai witch who cannot die, a freed slave with incredible strength, and a young Jamaican man with the power to become invisible, who use their gifts to save their people. It is poetic and gorgeously written, crazy powerful, and a stark reminder of the injustice of slavery and the will to survive. The only challenge I found was wanting to read it both quickly, because of how compelling it was, and slowly, to savor the prose.

Comparisons can be made to Homegoing, for its epic sweep of history that spans the US and countries in Africa, and The Underground Railroad, for the its touch of magic realism, but She Would Be King is truly a singular work of brilliance.

Scribe by Alyson Hagy
This truly peculiar (in the best possible sense!) novel of a woman living in a... pre-industrial post-apocalyptic future? ...an alternative history past?...who knows? whose mysterious skill is writing letters for people, letters that somehow say the unsayable, is holed up alone in a farmhouse when a stranger appears. Her life, as they say, will never be the same. Can she trust this man? Does he deserve her help? Dare she let him in?

This novel is fascinating, unsettling, and mysterious, with one of the best endings I've read in ages.

Friday, December 7, 2018

Stef's Favorite Books of 2018!

What a year of incredible books. Every year seems to be better than the last, doesn't it?  I didn't read as many small press books as I wanted to, but I am keeping to my goals of reading mostly women and POC, aka basically the only books worth reading. (Yeah I know, two white men made my list but damn, those books were goooood.) I told myself that in December I would start reading 2019 books but you know I'm just going to desperately try to finish all the books I started and didn't finish this year...it's a stack of about 30 books. Wish me luck.

I tried to narrow my favorites of 2018 down to five of each, but that just wasn't possible. Too much goodness. The next two posts will have my short reviews for each book. 

Fiction:
-Our Homesick Songs by Emma Hooper 

-Florida by Lauren Groff