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January report

January report

Reading through the tears 🥹

February 01, 2023

I had A Month, to put it lightly! At first, it was hard to keep up with reading because I finally went and got myself Covid for the first time and it lasted a long time—0/10 experience, very much do not recommend.1 At the same time, our beloved cat became sick with what ultimately was diagnosed as a breathtakingly aggressive cancer. Between the time I recovered and the time we had to say goodbye to him, reading didn’t really feel like a priority, tbh!

Nevertheless, somehow I managed to read a few things, including this poem, which we always loved to quote to Gus because we really always would have rather looked at him than at all the portraits in the world, including the Polish Rider. RIP to my favorite reading companion!

Three pictures of the cutest black cat who ever lived. In the first, he sits like a merman next to a person's leg. In the second he is curled up like an all ball at the feet of a person reading a book. In the third, he sits in a window next to a stack of books, with the sun shining down on his tiny little face.

What I read in January:

Sabrina Imbler, How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures (2022)2—As I said when I nominated this book for Book Club, “there’s nothing I respect more than the ocean and the creatures that live in it.” Imbler is very obviously a fellow ocean-respecter, so there is a part of me that was always going to like this book. Indeed, in some of these essays, simply the way they write about ocean life is transcendent, with insights that feel truly revelatory. Sometimes it goes beyond even that, when Imbler connects their writing about a creature or an ecosystem to life here on land, among people. These moments are when the book, in my opinion, lives fully up to the hype of its heavyweight blurbs/reviews.

At other times, How Far the Light Reaches reads a little bit loudly like what it is—a debut book. I’m not saying this in a mean way! I think we can all agree that writing is hard and I’m not one to talk about quality as if I’m [INSERT ANY FAMOUS AUTHOR] reincarnated. That said—and I don’t think it was the nearly two weeks of Covid or the three weeks of pre-grieving my cat’s death, because the other members of Book Club independently came to the same conclusion—some of the essays are, well, essays more of the sense of “an initial tentative effort or the product of an attempt” than a “literary composition usually dealing with its subject from a limited or personal point of view.” Like, all of the essays deal with their subject from a personal point of view (of course!), but some felt a little more “underbaked” than others.

For those who consider themselves real non-fiction aficionados, Imbler’s debut is a must read. They are doing cool things with the form, things that to me seem like a departure from convention while still remaining understandable enough to audiences not familiar with ocean life, trends in essay form, or queer culture. Without undercutting everything I’ve said above, I read this book at a weird time in my life, so it’s hard to say how much my state of mind influenced my assessment—and maybe I’m just making this disclaimer because I feel bad about not having unreserved praise for How Far the Light Reaches! I think it’s an important book and I wish I’d read it at a better time.

Madeline Miller, Galatea: A Short Story (2021)—Being a certified member of Madeline Miller Hive, I had to read this short story in hopes it would tide me over until her Persephone novel comes out (maybe later this year???). Did I want ancient myth retold from the perspective of the woman in a voice that’s clear but not modern, really just about as timeless as timeless can get? Yes. Did Miller give me that? Of course she did.

Special thanks to Friend of the Report, Carissa, for this copy!3

Sigrid Nunez, The Friend (2018)—Nunez’s novel about a woman grieving the unexpected death of a friend (who died by suicide—major heads up!!) while also having to care for the friend’s Great Dane is to pets as Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) is to people.

When I first read The Friend in October 2019, I spent nearly the whole day on the couch, turning each page with dread, and squeezing Gus every time the unnamed narrator, refusing to rehome the dog but also facing eviction for keeping the dog, gives voice to her anxious reader by asking “Does something bad happen to the dog?”

I couldn’t stop reading, though. The book was too beautiful and meditative. It made me cry like . . . I couldn’t even remember the last time a book made me cry. You think the titular friend is the narrator’s human friend, the one whose death precipitates the narrator’s guardianship of the dog. And that is of course true on one level. But by the end it is clear, the “friend” is also the dog, and the novel has unfolded to become a powerful tribute to friendship and true love.

I wanted to read it again because it’s hard to put feelings into words, hard to process the loss of someone you love very much. I think it was probably hard for Nunez to write this book! But I am so grateful that she did, because she captures the range of ways we love the people and animals in our lives, and she shows us how we can keep loving and remembering them after they are gone.

Hiro Arikawa, tr. Philip Gabriel, The Travelling Cat Chronicles (2015/2017)—Don’t worry—this newsletter is not turning into an I Miss My Cat Report (at least for future editions). An unknown-to-them Friend of the Report sent this, one of their favorite books about cats, to me when they heard about Gus. I am so thankful for their gift, as Arikawa’s novel so sweetly complemented The Friend. Like Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962), it follows a dying man and his beloved pet across the country on one last road trip, illustrating the special bond people have with pets. Unlike Travels With Charley, The Travelling Cat Chronicles not only obviously features a cat (Charley is a dog), but is also narrated by the cat (!). As sad as the overall concept is (who wants to think about their mortality and the animal they’ll leave behind!!!), this novel is not a downer! Instead it is light, delightful, and filled with examples of all the silly and cute things that cats do. Arikawa’s novel is a cat book for all seasons, not just the sad times, but this month was the perfect time in my life to read it.