Let me clear, this is no way a humble brag that I was able to read some books over the summer. As someone who holds a BA in Literature and Society from the Vrije University in Amsterdam, one would assume I am devouring books on the daily. I am most certainly not. In my household, my husband puts me to shame, often reading multiple books at once, many of them hefty in academic jargon that it would take me hours or weeks to fully grasp certain paragraphs.
It actually takes me many days slowly reading each page before I attain any kind of flow. This is why I like the beach so much. I find laying on a beach gives my brain enough relaxation and decompression to actually focus on something like a book. The beach also gives me permission to just be inside of the pages without a sense of guilt or that I need to be doing something else. At the beach, I’m able to surrender myself and my imagination to the pages. I also get distracted easily and I have to reread many passages, especially when they are descriptive, in order understand what is going on.
As you can see from the photo, my summer reads thus far are kind of all over the place. I have no discerning taste for what I read. I’m like Goldilocks, trying to find what fits my mood, my schedule, my brain capacity, at the moment I am reading it. Generally speaking, if I can’t seem to get past the first five pages (or the first chapter) I will put the book down. If the chapters are too long I will stop and maybe continue at a later date or never return to it again.
Somehow, these books (plus a few others) hit the sweet spot and made the cut.
As an aspiring writer, a lot of the time when I read I’m also just genuinely impressed that these authors have been published. Sometimes, I’m also tinged with jealousy.
Looking at the selection of books I’m also struck that there is an imbalance between the genders. I’ll have to be mindful of that for my future reads. My partner once spent a period reading only female authors and I found that really commendable. Shannon Chakraborty’s book The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi was a very satisfying page turner. An adventure tale set throughout Africa with some magic sprinkled in, it gave a refreshing twist to the pirate genre with the protagonist being a woman captain. There was some nice queer-coded moments in there as well. It’s part of a series with the second book just recently published so I’m excited to dive back into that world, maybe in the winter months when I’m longing for some sunny adventures.
Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl was also a fun romp set in a dystopian future where Earth has collapsed and has become a part of a televised Galactic to-the-death reality show/video game for Aliens. For me, it was giving Hunger Games for the hungry gamer crowd. Some very witty dialogue that did make me chuckle out loud (and that’s hard to do). Dinniman has created a very distinct and recognizable voice in Carl. However, sometimes I did feel like I was in a long conversation with someone who was mansplaining an entire video game run to me. But it’s not over! The book ends with a set up for more books to come. I’ll also probably take some time before revisiting this world.
I took a hard left from the entertainment literature to read Stein’s Paris France. The book was published just as the Nazi’s took over France during the Second World War so the book has an ominous undercurrent while Stein describes Paris and Parisian people, their culture and sensibilities. Stein is very particular in how the uses words and syntax which made the text both reach and complex. I found myself reading passages over and over to capture its meaning. The writing lingers in a liminal space between prose and poetry and memoir. Her use of repetition in words and phrases and her cadence seems like the precursor to what the beatniks were doing in America. Fascinating read and a lovely ode to Paris in the midst of a tumultuous world at war - something that feels very present today.
I don’t know Ben Lerner’s works and I feel like as a literature scholar I should. Transcription falls into this new category of works where Covid and the pandemic makes an appearance. I imagine most books that take place present-day will be addressing this in their works in some sort of fashion (Moore and Szalay also write about Covid in their respective works of fiction). I read this book for a book club I will be attending later in September and I am very glad that I did. Much like Stein, Lerner has a very particular way of expressing ideas and feelings through images and language. I was impressed with the kind of mood he was able to sustain and whilst writing through shifting character perspectives. The book has a good way of making the reader feel slighting discombobulated and curious at the same time. There’s a lot that can be unpacked and discussed here: familial relations, false memories, plagiarism in Academia, masculinity. I’m looking forward to discussing it in book club.
Probably the most annoying read for me this summer was Moore’s Not Good Enough. A debut novel about a gay protagonist who attempts to pick up the pieces of his life after a sudden break with a boyfriend of nine-years, it’s a gay novel that’s just good enough to be published and something I wish I had written. Out of all the books this one sort of checked the beach-read box. There was a kind of airy, rom-com vibe to it, a book that felt easy to slip back into without any sort of heavy investment. If I’m being completely honest, I felt like the characters were all slightly off-putting and made me confront a lot of my own internal homophobia, in that the story reminds me so much of a messy youth that I am glad I’m not a part of anymore. Drinking and being in the throes of chaos is a being plot device here and the fact that the protagonist was prominently using Facebook as a millennial sort of took me out of the fantasy. But that could just be me - are millennials really using Facebook that much? What gave the book some gravitas was the ending which didn’t wrap everything up in a bow as I suspected it would. It was a serviceable book and Moore will certainly crank out more of these in the next few years. I wish I had written, though I really can’t stand these characters. I need a minute with myself to process why these characters irritated me so much. Perhaps it’s just too close to home (or a particularly time in my life that feels so far away at the moment). If you’re gay, you’ll understand when I say that this book is drama.
I was very curious to read Szalay’s Flesh because it was the winner of last year’s Booker Prize and during my BA I had a class about Publishing where we discussed a lot of about the industry, how it works, and what the literary world looks for in an Award-winning piece of writing. Flesh was the quickest read I had all summer, I spent a weekend reading it from start to finish, which shocked me because I really don’t read like that. I just love a book that can hold you captive in the first few sentences and then you’re just in it till the end. There is a simplicity to the book which is so hard to cultivate. Szalazy is not fussy in his writing and yet who knows the exact words and phrases to use to build a world in the reader’s imagination. This is a character study of one man’s life and the subtle and profound turns it takes just from choices that are both within and without his control. Szalay’s book asks us, does the flesh truly obey the mind? Are we really in control of our actions, our behaviours? I was very impressed by this book. It’s going to sit with me for a bit, which is a testament to the writing. I really hope they don’t fuck it up by turning this into a movie or a limited series for streamers, but why do I already feel like some dip-shit is already pitching it or workshopping it somewhere? Which goes back to my question about the Booker Prize: do books that win awards need to show potential for adaptation to the screen?