January report

February 01, 2021

New year, new platform!! As explained in the December report, I decided to bop on over here, to Substack, primarily because it’s what all the cool kids have done. I trust this first report of 2021 reached your inbox as effectively as any of the tinyletter reports did last year.

Now, onto the business of reporting on my reading. (Also, a surprise! In addition to saying what I’m looking forward to reading in Februrary, I have a list below of books I’m looking forward to reading in the first nine months of 2021).*

What I read in January:

Jessica Simpson, Open Book (2020)—Largely, I’m sure, due to the strength of the early aughts’ portrayal of Simpson as not a smart person, there’s been a general buzz about her memoir that goes, essentially, “it’s actually good??” Recovering snob that I am, I’ll admit that what’s got me to consider reading my first ever (?) celebrity memoir. And, if you can make it through the Jesus and troops talk,** you’ll find that Simpson is utterly charming, quite insightful, and a pleasure to spend time with!

Aside from that, what I took away from this book is that men are high-key trash! Specifically, basically every man she ever dated, but most particularly John Mayer. I cannot emphasize enough how monstrous he was to her?? Tommy Mottola also (though, like with Mayer, it wasn’t a surprise)—some of the things he said to young Jessica were breathtakingly cruel. This memoir is also a rich time capsule of the waning days of the Web 1.0 era, a startling reminder of how terrible people were and that corrosive cultural monopolies existed before social media platforms rose to prominence.

Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, A Kind of Freedom (2017)—Around this time last year I read Sexton’s second novel (The Revisioners [2019]), which, like this one, is set in New Orleans. I loved it! I also loved A Kind of Freedom, Sexton’s debut novel. AKoF is a compact (228 pages) saga that alternates between the stories of Evelyn, a bookish young woman in 1944 whose first love enlists in the army to join the war; Jackie, Evelyn’s daughter, as she navigates being a new, single parent in 1986; and TC, Jackie’s son, as he seeks to really begin his life in 2010, with a new job on the horizon and his first child recently born. Each character’s story is compelling, sometimes heartbreaking, and wholly their own, even as other characters (the main ones as well as their parents and siblings) also quietly develop in the unfolding of each distinct section. As in The Revisioners, Sexton not only tells a lovely and engaging story, but she also writes so beautifully and thoughtfully.

Chanel Miller, Know My Name (2019)***—I have so many things to say about this book, which is so good, and so worth reading, even if you might cry a lot (I did!!). The first time I read something by Miller, I didn’t know her name, as her victim impact statement about Brock Turner’s assault of her was published at a time when she was keeping her identity unknown. I remember crying as I read that, and thinking “this is beautiful writing” and “even if she wasn’t good at writing, what he did was wrong.” As I read her memoir of the assault, the trial, and its aftermath, I had so many more thoughts: I am grateful she’s here, I am grateful she wrote this, I am grateful I read this, I am delighted to find that she is funny, I think she is remarkable, I want everyone I know to read this, especially the men I know, I am so thankful she is still here, I am excited for her next book (whatever it will be), I needed to hear some of the things she said, I am glad she is healing, I am glad that judge got recalled, I am trying to reconcile wanting to abolish the prison industrial complex with wanting Miller’s assailant to have been imprisoned and for a long time, I kind of wish his garbage family could have joined him, but really I just wish that we could have a better and fairer world right now, one where men are taught not to assault women or where if they do they are held truly accountable, and where women don’t have to make themselves small, or worry about walking alone, or think about whether one more drink might mean the difference between making it home safe or being sexually assaulted, and that even if they do have that one more drink it is never, ever, ever, ever, their “fault.”

Kaitlyn Greenidge, We Love You, Charlie Freeman (2016)—I went off-list for this one, when the mood to read fiction and specifically a novel became something I could no longer ignore!! As usual, I went into reading Greenidge’s debut novel only knowing the barest plot outline: a Black family moves from Boston to the Berkshires to participate in an experiment to teach chimpanzees sign language. Well! This is a wonderful, weird, thoughtful, and suspenseful novel! I simply loved it (even if the ending felt a little abrupt). I don’t want to say more about what happens because I think it’s best to read it without knowing more. One thing I particularly, loved, however, was the evolving relationship between the sisters and how they navigated loving and kind of (and kind of justifiably and other times realistically bafflingly) really disliking each other!  

What I’m looking forward to reading in February:

Danielle Evans, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self (2010)

Alexis Schaitkin, Saint X (2020)****

Te-Ping Chen, Land of Big Numbers (2021)

Fang Fang, Wuhan Diary (2020)*****

What I’m looking forward to reading in 2021:

If you happen to click through to any of these and see something you like, I encourage you to smash that pre-order button or request your local library carry it, as it is my understanding that pre-orders and *m*z*n reviews are the only things sustaining authors in this dystopic hellscape we call the present day.
It should also go without saying that obviously none of this is sponcon because I am not an influencer.
Also, the month in parentheses=when it releases, not necessarily when I plan to read it.

Elizabeth Kolbert, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future (February)

Lauren Oyler, Fake Accounts (February)

Patricia Lockwood, No One Is Talking about This (February)******

Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun (March)

Gabriela Garcia, Of Women and Salt (March)

Christine Smallwood, The Life of the Mind (March)

Kaitlyn Greenidge, Libertie (March)

Helen Oyeyemi, Peaces (April)

Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (April)

Jhumpa Lahiri, Whereabouts (April)

Kristen Arnett, With Teeth (June)

Elizabeth Gonzalez James, Mona at Sea (June)

Zakiya Dalila Harris, The Other Black Girl (June)

Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch (July)

Katie Kitamura, Intimacies (July)

Rita Dove, Playlist for the Apocalypse: Poems (August)

Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You (September)

Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle (September)

———————————————————

*Shoutout to several readers who said they’d like to read such a list!

**My bf, who listened to snippets here and there whenever I was playing it in the kitchen, raised the really good question of what her political background is. She seems to be an old-school celebrity in the sense that she is not an “open book” about that kind of thing, but like, 53% of white women, so who knows? She also has a deeply problematic way of a) claiming native ancestry in her family, and b) equating that with the “witchy” insight of women in her family, so heads up about that (she doesn’t go on at length about it, but still).

***Book club selection for January.

****Book club selection for February.

*****I’m halfway through this book I “wanted” to read in January. It’s good so far, and a surprisingly breezy read, but it’s also sometimes not what I want to be reading, so I’ve been making my way through it in 40-50 page bits.

******Long-time readers know this will be a re-read for me.

Have you read any of these books? Do you want to talk about them? Is there a book you think I'd like reading? Reply to this email or smash that comment button! I love recommendations and conversations!If you know someone who'd like this newsletter, please forward it! And/or let them know they can subscribe here.