After several years of brain rot induced by the pandemic, this year I dug back into my summer reading with a vengeance. It has been my tradition to catch up on the independent reading that I miss out on during the school year over the summer, and I like to model good habits for the kids. (My own, and the students at the school where I work.) These days I’m a fulltime administrator and not teaching English at all, but I still like to set a good example. Also, I truly believe that reading literature elevates the soul and makes life worth living, and who doesn’t need a dose of that these days?
I started the summer with a vague sense that I would eventually get around to reading the second book in the Marlon James trilogy that began with Black Leopard Red Wolf (he’s calling it The Dark Star trilogy). Other than that, I just used my typical method of Googling “best books of 2022 so far.” You’ll note that four of the choices I made came from this New York mag Vulture article. I’m also lucky that my summer perch in the town of Wilmington, VT is well served by an excellent independent bookstore, Bartleby’s Books, and I picked out several books on whim while browsing their new fiction table.
Here’s what I read from late June to early August, in order, with a wee bit of commentary.
Sloane Crosley, Cult Classic. I enjoy Crosley’s Twitter presence, and I wanted to ease myself into the summer with something humorous, so this was my first book of the season. I’m impressed by Crosley’s observations of human behavior, but I kept hoping that the book’s supernatural element would eventually be revealed as a total fraud a la Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story.
Margo Jefferson, Constructing a Nervous System. The reviews described this as a new kind of memoir that blended autobiography and criticism, and indeed it does. I’m a jazz fan, and Jefferson’s sections on Ella Fitzgerald and Josephine Baker were right up my alley. If I were still teaching English, I would be interested in using this as a “mentor text” for a writing assignment.
Jennifer Egan, The Candy House. I read A Visit from the Goon Squad back when it came out, so I was excited to read the sequel. In truth, I don’t remember the first book super well, and as the reviews suggested, it didn’t matter. I can’t rave emphatically enough about The Candy House; I just loved it. Egan manages to provide the pleasure of reading fiction while also allowing you to see just enough of the machinery of her interlocking short stories. Your brain has to operate on several levels simultaneously as you read this. Among her many gifts, I especially appreciate the way Egan writes neurodiverse characters. Whether or not her depiction of them is truly accurate, I feel like I understand neurodiverse people better after reading fiction that brings them to life.
Julia May Jonas, Vladimir. This novel was on several “best of” lists, and I like books set within academia, so I gave it a whirl. The first two-thirds of the novel I loved, as we follow our protagonist around in her daily life. When she takes decisive (extreme!) action in the final third, things end badly, and it felt a little too Greek-tragic for me. Still, the themes Jonas explores are timely and likely to be on the mind of anyone working with students these days.
Ada Calhoun, Also a Poet. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this one, so I bought the Kindle edition rather than wait for it to hit the shelves of the bookstore. Calhoun writes about a New York that I know well as a fellow Gen Xer, and I grew up reading all of her father’s stuff. I must have torn through Also a Poet in less than a day.
Lee Cole, Groundskeeping. I became aware in the middle of the summer that I had only read female authors, so I decided to intentionally find something well reviewed that was written by a man in order to mix it up. I loved Groundskeeping and could have continued to live in Cole’s world for many more pages. Although primarily a love story, Cole does delve into the political divide of contemporary America with a gentleness that I appreciated.
Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart. I had already read the section of this that was published in the New Yorker, and it made me want to read more. H Mart itself is not really the focus of the book, but H Mart is very important to the international students at the boarding school where I work, and that’s how I got sucked in initially. Zauner’s book about losing her mother is heartbreaking, and she has an original voice.
Katie Kitamura, Intimacies. A vaguely art historical novel set in the Hague? Sign me up! Kitamura suffuses her narrator with so much doubt and uncertainty, with so many unanswered questions, that there is a paranoia that made me feel like this was the setup for a ghastly ending, but the novel just trails off with little resolution. Nonetheless, this is another world that I could have kept walking around in for another few hundred pages.
Marlon James, Moon Witch Spider King. When I finally gathered the strength to read the second book in the trilogy, I found it much more readable and less of a slog than the first one. Mind you, the first book was brilliant, and James’ fantasy setting (medieval Africa . . . maybe Ethiopia/Sudan?) is so alive and full of delights that I didn’t want to abandon it. Unlike the first book, this one is told in chronological order and asks less of the reader. There is still a ton of violence, there is still a ton of sexual content, but Sogolon is less of a vulgar protagonist that the Tracker. James has said that the three books in the trilogy will tell the same events from the point of view of three different protagonists, but in truth it is only the final third of this book that overlaps with the tale in Black Leopard Red Wolf.
Isaac Fitzgerald, Dirtbag, Massachusetts. The NYTimes review by Michael Ian Black made me think that this book was somehow going to advance my understanding of the contemporary American male, but it falls short of that hype. I enjoyed reading about Fitzgerald’s boarding school experience since I work in that world. The book feels like a collection of essays, though, and I would have preferred more connective tissue.
Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. The summer was winding down, and I had gotten through most of the books I wanted to read, so I picked this up because the independent booksellers seem to be pushing it. It was unexpectedly one of my favorite books of the summer (perhaps tied with The Candy House and Also a Poet). The novel is difficult to describe (two spectrum-y kids meet and cultivate a mutual love for video games which leads to a lifetime of collaboration), but it was more Gen X goodness that overlapped with my own life experience closely in some instances. Interestingly, Michelle Zauner and Gabrielle Zevin have very similar names, and they both have one Korean parent. This led to a micro theme within my summer reading. (Namely, Korean parenting styles and American kids.)
Dan Charnas, Dilla Time. My knowledge of hip hop is limited, but I dig Flying Lotus, and I knew he was strongly influenced by J. Dilla. I learned a ton about the revolution in rhythm that Dilla led from Charnas’ wonderfully well-researched book. I’ve done a lot of listening to music mentioned in it as well, and although I’m not becoming a hip hop devotee overnight, the group of musicians about whom Charnas is writing were hugely influenced by jazz, and the music they created often blurs the genres. I’m still working on hearing the elements of Dilla’s influential time feel as clearly as Charnas is able to describe them, and I’ve been watching YouTube videos since I finished the book to learn more.
I astonished myself by getting through thirteen books this summer, and in so doing I reminded myself of why I love reading in the first place. Books such as The Candy House, Groundskeeping, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow have a literary quality that takes you outside yourself and nourishes your spirit. Furthermore, several of these books featured Gen X points of view that are so specific to my experience that I feel that they are truly literature of my generation. The two books by quasi-celebrities (Zauner and Fitzgerald) were less masterful from a writing perspective, but I’m still glad to have read them. In fact, I’d recommend everything I picked up this summer to another reader. I don’t know if that is because the quality of these thirteen books is that high, or if it is because my bar has been lowered after two years of struggling to focus my attention in any sustained way. As my school year gets underway, I’ll have less time to read for pleasure, but I’m planning to reread The Candy House (at whatever pace I can muster) to try to catch everything I missed the first time.
ericafterschool 