What I Read | November 2024
Roxane Reviews November Edition
Happy last day of November! As an early Christmas present, here is Everything I Read Issue 2! Who would have thought?! Me! Because I started drafting this on November 8th, the day I finished Book #2 of November! In case you missed it, here is What I Read | October 2024.
The first book I started and finished in November was Long Island Compromise, by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. Two unimportant caveats: (1) I have not read and probably will not read Fleishman Is in Trouble, the author’s previous (and acclaimed) novel, and (2) I read about half of this novel, and listened to the other half as an audiobook. This was the first time I listened to an audiobook, and after hating on the medium forever, I have to admit I really enjoyed it! I’m excited about the world of audiobooks now, especially because I recently started biking to work instead of taking the subway and can no longer physically read on my commute. Back to Long Island Compromise… I unfortunately did not enjoy it as much as I enjoyed the novelty of an audiobook. Long Island Compromise follows the Fletchers, a wealthy Jewish family living in Middle Rock, Long Island. The novel opens on the patriarch’s kidnapping, and the subsequent too-many-pages delve into the consequences of the kidnapping on his extended family. I can absolutely get behind a family drama, after all, I’m a sucker for Russian literature, but I struggled with the execution in Long Island Compromise. Every single character is deeply flawed with no redeeming qualities in sight. They are all inherently despicable, anxiety-ridden, inter-generationally traumatized people with no interest in bettering themselves. Because of that, it makes it difficult to want to read about them for such long stretches, and in the depth with which they are written. The plot is straightforward enough but Brodesser-Akner goes back and forth in timelines and characters so much that it’s hard to keep all the different storylines straight, and to be fair, I didn’t much care to. I found her prose decent, though a little performative in a “I-have-an-MFA” way (though I have no idea if she does), and she will repeat, repeat, and repeat herself over and over and over again.
Like most people for whom reading is a hobby, a second but just as important hobby of mine is buying books. This ‘hobby’ has always been slightly anxiety-inducing and savings-depleting, because I buy books much faster than I read them. However, one of my favorite things to do when I’m anxious is to buy books… Do you see the issue here?
Separately, I have found that I have been gravitating away from pretty much anything that isn’t contemporary fiction lately. I have always prided myself in my eclectic taste, and it’s a shame that I haven’t been honoring it, shying away from anything perceived as unknown or difficult or whose synopsis I cannot remember. I haven’t even been enjoying most of the contemporary fiction I’ve been reading lately (see above), doling out more 2 and 3 star ratings than 4s and 5s. I knew something had to change.
Early November, in a fit of coffee-induced mania, I decided to list and number every single book I own and have not read. The process took me over an hour, and I arrived at the sobering conclusion that I have 276 books on my physical TBR, scattered around the various shelves and windowsills of my apartment. Another sobering conclusion: I probably own more un-read books than read books. I can chuck that up to the fact that I consistently give, donate, or sell the books I have read, but still!
You might be wondering why I’m spending a whole paragraph subtly bragging about how many books I own, but I promise there is a method to my madness (that’s a lie, there isn’t). I decided I will be using the list of books on my TBR and a Random Number Generator (which I will shorthand to RNG moving forward) to inform my future reads. The process is straightforward, and I am allowed to choose not to read a book picked by the RNG only twice before I have to accept the fact that this book is not for me, and donate it. For my first book, I wanted
to pick a number, but he didn’t answer my text fast enough, so RNG it was (probably better and less biased anyway). Drumroll!The RNG picked #203, aka Don't Feed the Monkey Mind: How to Stop the Cycle of Anxiety, Fear, and Worry by Jennifer Shannon. I’ll be honest, I did not want to read this. It’s been on my shelves since 2020, back when I was in the throes of my Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and my therapist recommended it as a helpful tool. One “fun” fact about me is that I refuse to read anything I am told to read (I never read the assigned readings in school or college…), and so my therapist’s recommendation had been collecting dust ever since I purchased it. I didn’t feel like I could go against the TBR x RNG challenge I had just set up for myself on the literal first try, so I reluctantly went to grab Don’t Feed the Monkey Mind. Thankfully, it was a short and easy read, and even pretty enjoyable (as much as self-help book about anxiety can be). I won’t spend too long reviewing this book, because it’s self-help, aka my least favorite genre to read or write about, but if you struggle with anxiety, it might be worth a read. The TL;DR premise is that accepting emotions and breathing are helpful techniques. Cool. Didn’t need to read the book because I’m on SSRIs now but in case I ever get paralyzing anxiety again, I’ll try to remember its existence at the back of my bookshelves!
Next up, I didn’t use the RNG because I needed to read Hum by Helen Phillips before the McNally Jackson Broken Dishes Book Club with Swati on November 20th. Also, guess what? I listened to about a third of it during a long bike ride in Prospect Park. Who am I?? (This recurring joke will only really make sense if you know me and my past hatred of audiobooks.)
I really enjoyed Hum, and as always, really enjoyed discussing it. I actually wrote up a full review/recap of the Book Club, which you can read here. Hum takes place in a disturbingly near dystopian future where capitalism and advertising run amok, climate change is much worse, but nothing is terribly different from our world, except the presence of kind and eerily sentient AI robots called Hums (in the Book Club, we briefly touched upon the title, how it sounds so much like Mum, and is the first three letters of Human, and is meant to inspire peace/comfort in a world that is very much not peaceful/comfortable). Hum follows May Webb, a mother of two struggling to make ends meet and to love and protect her children as best as she can. Despite the focus on AI and the catastrophic effects of late-stage capitalism, Hum is really a domestic novel about motherhood. All in all, Hum was a wonderful, moving, and smart book that I would recommend to anyone interested in the topics it touches on.
My next read was picked by
, since he missed the opportunity to do the first time around. I told him to choose a number between 1 and 275 and he picked #274, because of course he would. The last books I added to my TBR were all my unread issues of Granta and The Paris Review, and #274 was Issue 248 of The Paris Review for Summer 2024.
I was surprised and excited to find that it was on Goodreads, (though I probably shouldn’t have been because literally everything is on Goodreads), because I suffer from a serious case of “if you don’t rate something, did you even read it”?
Even though I wasn’t the most excited about having to read an outdated TPR issue back-to-back, the rules are the rules, and I’m so glad I did! I think reading TPR is a great way to keep a pulse on the (published) literary world, especially the international scene, as they often feature works in translation. I rarely love the poems, short stories, and art they feature, and always find myself gravitating towards their interviews and novel excerpts instead. Not surprisingly, this happened with this issue, too. I did, however, absolutely love The Oyster Diaries by Nancy Lemann, a short story about a woman grappling with her husband’s affair with a friend of hers and drawing parallels between her life and her father’s. It was brilliant, emotional, and very funny despite the nature of the topic (my worst nightmare, FYI). Other notable reads from this issue were the excerpts from Renee Gladman’s My Lesbian Novel, and Peter Cornell’s The Ways of Paradise, which I added to my (Goodreads) TBR (don’t fret) and can’t wait to read in full. As always, the interviews were my favorite sections to read. The Art of Fiction interview was with author Mary Robinson, who I had shamefully never heard of, and the Non Fiction one was with essayist Elaine Scarry. The interview with Scarry was particularly timely as I just read The MANIAC and watched Oppenheimer last month (another shameless plug for What I Read | October 2024), and much of her work is focused on the philosophy around nuclear weapons and arms races.
For my next read, I used the RNG again, and it drew out #90 / 274, aka The Aphorisms of Franz Kafka, which I’ve been so excited to read (along with his journals). As any self-identifying lit girl, I have a fond obsession for our favorite sad boy, and think about Kafka’s Letters to Milena, which I devoured two summers ago, at least weekly, especially his signature in one of his letters:
Yours
(now I’m even losing my name - it was getting shorter and shorter all the time and is now: Yours)
For anyone unfamiliar (me), aphorisms are short observations about “truths”. Kafka’s aphorisms were the most philosophical works of his I have read yet, and I am so grateful I picked up the edition I linked above because each aphorism was paired with illuminating and contextualizing commentary by his biographer, Reiner Stach. In part because of the format, Kafka’s aphorisms are particularly searing, concise, and dense. Most of them have to do with Good vs. Evil, the Fall, or other religious themes. As a fervent atheist, I had some trouble with some of his more religious ideas about the Last Judgment, but still enjoyed reading through Kafka’s brilliant thoughts and Stach’s brilliant commentary. The most interesting theories to me were Kafka’s idea that all humans share a “divine core” that cannot be divided, and his division of the world into a human, flawed one of the senses, and a divine one of the spiritual, and the ways the two worlds seep into one another within a single, human life. Some of the aphorisms I copied down, for a quick taste:
Aphorism 58:
The way to lie as little as possible is only by lying as little as possible, not by having the least possible opportunity to do so.
Aphorism 79:
Sensual love misleads up as about heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but because it unknowingly has within it the elements of heavenly love, it can.
Aphorism 109:
“It cannot be said that we lack in belief. The very fact that we live at all is an inexhaustible wellspring of belief.”
“This would indicate a wellspring of belief? Surely one cannot not live.”
“The incredible power of belief lies squarely in that ‘surely one cannot’; it takes on its form in this negation.”
It is not necessary for you to leave the house. Stay at your table and listen. Don’t even listen; just wait. Don’t even wait; be utterly still and alone. The world will offer itself to you to be unmasked; it cannot do otherwise; it will writhe before you in ecstasy.
My next read was once again McNally Jackson-induced, as I attended an Office Hours event with Paul Eprile, the translator of Fragments of a Paradise by Jean Giono. I wanted to and thought I would like Fragments of a Paradise more than I did, especially as it was reminiscent of Moby Dick, which I’m reading out loud to
at the moment. Fragments of a Paradise follows the crew of a sailing boat, L’Indien, as they embark for an expedition in various academic disciplines in the throes of WW2. Mostly, as the Captain makes it very clear, they are escaping from humanity and its perceived downfall.It isn’t possible that life can only be what we’ve experienced up until now. In spite of our scientific era and the advances we’ve made, it’s undeniable that we’re dying of boredom, of distress, and of poverty. I’m talking about a poverty of spirit and a poverty of spectacle. I’m not a philosopher: I suffer from boredom like everyone else. The vision of my fellow citizens simply arouses in me a feeling of scorn, so unbearable because of the isolation it instantly provokes. Other people feel scorn for the rest of humanity, of which I’m a part, and they’re just as isolated as I am. If I’m incapable of helping myself, I can’t see what help I could get from the inhabited lands.
There was a lot to enjoy in Fragments of a Paradise, and I was particularly moved by the numerous meditations on colors, angels, the senses, humanity, and the sea, as well as the poignant final paragraphs of the novel. However, I really struggled with the fragmented nature, although obviously that was a stylistic choice (see title), and felt it prevented the potential for any real cohesive depth. For example, I found it particularly bizarre that we only got introduced to the crew of the boat in the final chapter, after spending the entire novel deciphering who was who in the pêle-mêle of French and Basque names. Another “fun” fact: I reviewed the novel on Goodreads in my usual poorly-thought-out and chaotic way and was subtly told by the translator that he had read my review ahead of starting the event. I was mortified, to say the least.
My next read was my second DNF of the year. C picked #182 / 273, which was A Catalog of Such Stuff as Dreams Are Made On by Korean writer Dung Kai-Cheung, a collection of flash fiction inspired by trends popular in 90s Hong Kong. I’m not particularly partial to flash fiction to start with, and immediately could tell Kai-Cheung’s writing was not for me (only Murakami can get away with lewdly talking about boobs every other sentence), so I knew very quickly this would be a DNF. I stuck it with it until I truly could not read one more short, and instead offered it to a Korean friend of mine who grew up between Seoul, Honk Kong, and the US, and who I thought might enjoy reading the stories more than I did. I think Mel’s Goodreads review was spot on:
Taken as a collection, however, these stories get repetitious fast. For the majority of them the set-up is almost exactly the same: there's a girl, she's into a certain product, the product basically becomes her personality, this attracts a boy, they date, they break up. Maybe if you read just a few stories at a time this is palatable, but if you plan to attempt, as I did, to read this book straight through this becomes so taxing these very short stories don't seem so short anymore.
I decided to return to my trusted RNG and it drew #46: The New Fuck You: Adventures in Lesbian Reading, a collection of short stories by various writers edited by Eileen Myles and Liz Kotz. I have no recollection of where or when I purchased The New Fuck You, or how long I have owned it, but I’m so glad that it found its way on my shelves. The collection was full of diverse, unique, brilliant voices, most of whom I had never heard of and was delighted to discover. This isn’t a collection just for queer readers by any means, and anyone interested in reading biting, clever writing should give The New Fuck You a try.
I then read Liars by Sarah Manguso ahead of the McNally Jackson New Book Book Club with Sarah on December 6th. Overall, Liars read like a longer, less literary version of Jenny Offil’s Dept. of Speculation, but brought up even more visceral feelings of man-hatred for me. I was essentially seething while I read the entire book, and frequently felt the urge to read passages aloud to
just so he could maybe ~understand~ everything I am terrified of about being in a heteronormative relationship. I pretty much devoured the book, because 1. the writing was good and easy, and 2. I couldn’t wait to stop reading about someone so relentlessly awful. The narrator, Jane, who one can assume is really standing in for Manguso herself, narrates her 14-year long marriage to John (I was going to write that Manguso didn’t give a shit to give her characters good names BUT I actually think it’s intentional to show that Jane could stand in for the most average woman/wife and John could stand in for the most average man/husband, but I might just be inventing meaning where there is none…). The writing is dry, funny in a dark way, but the novel is way too long and gets old quickly. It’s hard not to wonder aloud every couple pages why she doesn’t just leave. Jane and Manguso give us very little background as to why Jane stays except that John is funny, and Jane suffers from a sunk-cost-fallacy, by which she feels she has already invested too much of her time to leave. John is a walking nightmare from the very beginning, gaslighting Jane, jealous of her successes, and weaponizing learned helplessness at every possible corner. Of course, he ends up cheating on her and divorcing her to be with his mistress. There were a few truly moving parts to the novel, especially when she becomes a mother and experiences unconditional love and care in a whole new way. The scene describing the loss of her cat also had me SOBBING for a long time in bed, thinking about my own cat and my anticipatory grief (even though my cat is barely 1 year old).