The best and worst book I read this year

Let me start this with something nice.

The best book I read this year was The Warmth of Other Suns. It was the most annotated of all my reads, you would think I was trying to memorize the book in it’s entirety. It is well written and has the flow of a novel, even when considering this is a nonfiction piece meant to cover The Great Migration. The writer is so talented in her ability to portray the humanity and the life in the voices that she uplifted through the white noise that is American history. It made me feel so emotional, it taught me so much about American history and the black experience after the end of slavery and the fight for any semblance of equality that people are striving so hard for. This book puts into perspective so many other books, tv shows, movies, articles, conversations, and other facets of life that I encounter.

The worst book I read this year felt like it had a lot it wanted to say and could not get there. It was the antithesis of the praise I have for my best read. Maybe I would have enjoyed Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow if I hadn’t read this and all the other novels and nonfictions pieces that wormed their way into my thoughts in a more pleasing manner.

On the surface I should have enjoyed it, it tries to cover serious topics, it has an appealing cover and was recommended by a friend, it is long fiction piece of contemporary work that tries to bring a literary light to one of my passions - video games.  

It just wasn’t good. This is the first book I have read that was written by the author and it was enough of a trip where I am hesitant to give her another try. If I had to say anything good it was that I at least hated it so much that I rage read it all the way through hoping to find that redeemable quality that would change my bias. I didn’t.

Look I like a wordy writer, I am an Anne Rice fan. I read the unabridged versions of Stephen King books, and fucking was here for the Trashcan Man chapters and sections within The Stand. I do not feel comfortable shitting on another writer’s technique because I would hate for others to do that to me. But damn if this book didn’t make me think that she should have a hard-ass editor. A lot of the book was not needed. It was a drag. Entire chapters, characters, subplots, commentary, sections, and words within the sentences should have been cut.

It was not ground breaking. It did not give good commentary on what she thought she was doing (race, the me too movement, homosexuality, sexism, disabilities, depression, the current video game industry, heteronormative standards, how art and games are political). She inserts too many things and does not delve into it deeply enough.

Even though she is Jewish and Korean, her attempts to discuss appropriation, racism, and the unfair burden women have in partnerships comes off as maybe even more harmful than good. This isn’t a book that holds a mirror to current society to show us what we are looking past. Nor does it seem like it is a novel trying to visualize how these characters could take these problems with their current society and create a space for themselves. It left me wondering, why was it even written if not to be some type of wank writing exercise. I feel she might have known this too? Towards the end there is a section where her characters start to “Skip” the dialogue in the game and I could think was, “You are fucking with us. Even you want to skip through to your shitty end.”

Not to spoil it, but this was the more timid A Little Life: bougie friends whose center is someone else’s unimaginable trauma and identity, the tone of which is that you should pity these highly intelligent characters because they have emotional and physical disabilities that they suffer through life. As someone who has been privileged enough to not yet have a serious illness or accident, maybe I don’t know what I am talking about, but it comes across as condescending and ablest. 

Around the same part of the book, the author then takes out the happiness in an abrupt and startling way, just so she could say don’t forget America has a gun problem. But here is where I think this is due to bad writing. A Little Life is torture porn and a fantasy of rich but sad group of people in New York, it was engrossing even if it was at the expense of it characters, and in the end you know who the villains are. I then read her other book that was very similar in tone, The People in the Trees.Very similar in graphic abuse of young characters, but clearly a unreliable narrator in the style of Humbert Humbert. What I like about it more is that she is a talented writer, it was clear she was trying to talk about anthropologists - their abuse in the people and the lands. It matched up to what I had learned about how Yanomami and the monsters that came into their midst (Jacques Lizot). Are they hard books to read, yes. Are they controversial because of the abuse the characters face, yes. But I cannot apply that same energy to Gabrielle Zevin's novel, because Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow doesn’t even have that.

Finally, I have been unable to find direct sources that talk about the author’s opinion on the current events in Palestine, but from her writing I can’t imagine it would be good. There is a line in which a douche bag teacher who has started a relationship with his young student is lecturing her about not knowing about Israel (since she is a young American Jewish woman). I want to know what she is trying to say, especially because if any statement is clear from her book - it is that she seems to believe that creating something is political. I have a feeling that it will not be an opinion that I would respect, and one that focuses on hers and her families personal history while ignoring that racism and discrimination is not novel to one group of people. If I am wrong, and she does come out acknowledging that the Israeli state is as the expense of the Palestinians that are being displaced and killed in this long standing genocidal campaign against them, good for her because that is what I want to hear and I apologize for assuming otherwise. Maybe then I will give her another go.  

Most of what I read in November

Was good because it was written by diverse and BIPOC authors, or by an author that at least attempted to add clarity to the many issues we are facing today. I am trying to highlight this because while it was a fulfilling month reading wise, when it comes to writing: I myself, did not do shit. 

I fall into the trap each year thinking that I will partake in the goal of writing a book in November. It is in my opinion (probably due to my constant failure at the goal) that it can be hard for those to make the time if they are also in a stage in life where their family and work obligations are full time, it is unrealistic to expect people to be able to power through a novel. 

I mean I feel like I can’t find the time now, why do I think that I am going to get into a steady and completing habit of writing during the holiday months? I am being forced to leave the house for hours at a time once a week at this point, how can I recoup from that!?

At least I can counter my shame and self reflection on my writing goals, with my pride and intense reflection after nailing my reading goals. 

Pachinko - This Dickensian novel is an engrossing multi-generational tale that drew me in and convinced me that I could tackle some of the more denser reads that I would later pick up. I was able to learn more about how the Korean people struggled under annexation by following this fictional family centered around Sunja. 

I still haven’t watch the drama, mostly because I am struggling to stay up to date on the Real Housewives shows right now. I can accept that I am one of the sheeple who is running with the masses - about how the Golden Age of TV is done, while not putting in effort to stream anything. 

This novel is written by a journalist and it shows: from how the narrative is laid out, to the attention to details when describing the scene and living arrangements available to the characters, and from the interactions the characters have within their society. It is meant to humanize people in a time in which their plight was being ignored.

Never Whistle at Night - This is marketed as a dark fantasy anthology from Indigenous writers. I have been into this since I heard it was coming out, tried to avoid buying any new books, and then used Native American History Month in not a completely horrible way (even though it was my excuse) to buy the book. I tend to say that I am not into stories, but I guess I am not yet skilled at writing short stories myself. The people who can deserved, to be read. And this group of writers deserve to be read. 

I feel overall there is more of a horror tone to the stories, but they range in sadness and triumph and metaphor and reality. It is also, a most excellent cheat sheet for which other works by these writers I should be reading. 

“Limbs” was the most terrifying.

“Uncle Robert Rides the Lightning,” the most sad.

Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World  - This felt like a life changing memoir, not just for the man who lived the life and had the skill to tell it so well, but for me as a reader. I did not realize what he and others like him had to go through as an older queer black nerd, nor that the beauty he found in the natural world was one that would be so inevitable and compelling. The growth and strength in voicing what we should all know to be morally right or wrong, is what I am expecting off everyone, even the vapid pop culture stars on their successful redemptive tours (and even while knowing it is wrong to expect so much given the differences in circumstances, character, and determination). 

This is an amazing memoir that I plan to gift everyone in my life who might have a passing fancy to one of the many fancies this eloquent nature nerd has to offer. 

But also it is funny, it really is.

The Warmth of Other Suns - This book has been on my to buy list for a while, then on my to read shelf for a month or two, before I gave it the time it deserved and I needed. It took me a full two weeks to read, I was underlining and taking notes nonstop, feeling my mind and heart open. While the author focuses on three different archetypes during the Great Migration, with her research in those individual lives, and the lives of so many others, she comes off with a true Dickensian telling that should be required reading for all college students. 

This book is full of voices and does not shy away from the unspoken horror that America does not like to recall in its historical texts. This is a reminder, but also a conscious effort, to document a time period that is not to far removed from where we are now. There are still millions of Americans who can recall what they or their family had to go through when desegregation was ended in the South.

I feel pretty confident in saying that this may be my favorite book of the year. I hope that I will be able to read this several times before I kick it, I have a feeling it will be the book that rave about for years (until the next mind blowing text comes along).

Okay but back to the writing goal. I did write something, even if I did not accomplish what I set out to do. I made notes for new ideas. I trudged through one that I can’t work out of my head or out on the paper. I have a feeling that if I gave myself time, I could work through my frustration, complete it, and feel some sense of relief to be rid of it. But what do I know, except the lies I am willing to tell myself?