March report

Well! It finally happened, a month where the Book Report is literally THE book report, meaning in all the 31 days of March (minus the 6 hours I lost between Daylight Saving Time and springing forward to GMT from EDT [spoiler alert: I’m writing this intro from London]), I managed to read to completion only 1 book.

Maybe if I hadn’t opted for a plane movie or for eating the most delicious burger in New York1 with Friend of the Report, Carla, or for shopping for things I didn’t really need at Muji and McNally Jackson two days before my flight, I might have finished the very good 423-page Birnam Wood (2023), but alas, I only made it through 300 of its pages before today.

What of the rest of the month? I read the majority of this issue of the New Yorker,2 which is rare for me! I read my beloved Tabs. I read a lot of stuff for my job, which suddenly became bafflingly and unreasonably busy. I also read a lot about London, desiring this time around to get a little culture in between shopping, eating, mudlarking, and watching my favorite tv show.

What I read in March:

Jacqueline Harpman, tr. Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men (1995/2018)3—Oooo! When is the last time I read a book so intellectually stimulating that it had me out here ANNOTATING in the margins?

This speculative novel, which may or may not take place on a different planet, is 2 things at the same time:

1. A story about 39 women who remember a life before their benign imprisonment in an underground bunker + the one woman who was too young to remember her past, and how these women build a new life once they are free of the bunker, and

1. An incredible allegory for existence/consciousness itself. No disrespect to Plato and his cave or Camus and his stranger, but I Who Have Never Known Men is what philosophy teachers should assign in their 101 courses.

The narrative is told by the youngest woman as an account of her life from her earliest memories to the time after she became the last woman on her planet. I cannot emphasize enough how masterful Harpman is at asking philosophical questions like “what does it mean to be human?” “what is learning? what motivates it?” “what is knowledge? what do we do when we don’t have it but we want it? “how is an individual both an individual and also a piece of something larger?” “what is meaning? who creates it and how?” while also NOT making this read like a textbook.

One could read I Who Have Never Known Men and treat it simply, ignoring all the juicy prompts for thinking about existential matters, but would you want to?? This is not a book that leads to despair OR hope. Or maybe it does lead to despair unless you’re a sicko like me who got HYPE when she realized Harpman was floating the idea that human existence is an administrative blunder, a misplaced and then forgotten file.4

What I’m looking forward to reading in April:

Eleanor Catton, Birnam Wood (2023)

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1861)

Sharon Dodua Otoo, tr. Jon Cho-Polizzi, Ada’s Realm (2023)

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847)5