My Fave Five Books of the Last Year-Ish

I actually have eleven, so just consider this part one.

Once a week, my daughter goes to a gymnastics class that is right by the public library. This gymnastics class has a comically small area for parents to sit and watch which, to be honest, I think is by design because the teacher really doesn’t seem to like it when the parents sit and watch. Because I am a person who can take a hint, I usually decamp instead to the library while my daughter gallops around like a horse. (Not a judgement on her gymnastics skills, which are strong to medium strong, I am just paying a lot of money, apparently, for her to gallop around like a horse once a week. Useful skill to have, hope she remembers to add that one to her LinkedIn.)

Man, I love a library! I love the smell of the library, which is the same all over the world. I love the hush of the library, which is like this wonderful social contract we’re all tacitly agreeing to partake in, from the old people in the library to the young people in the library to everyone in between. I love the books in the library! (I mean, obviously—the books in the library are kind of the library’s jam.) But most of all, I love writing in the library, which is what I am doing right now. Writing in the library reminds me of being in college, when I would spend a lot of time writing in the library, at least when I wasn’t out being young and alive. Mostly what I would be writing in the library would be, like, a rousing essay on the poems of Christina Rossetti or whatever and not a dumb little entry into my dumb little Substack—also, this seems insane to remember, but I would be writing it longhand! On paper with a pen!—but the spirit of writing in the library is the same, and I love the feeling of it, even now.

[Today I was a few minutes late sitting down to write because I had to play a little trick on my sister first. Who among us hasn’t been late to something because they had to play a little trick on their sister first! My sister and I had been talking the other day about how amazing the “Lucky Day” section of her library is—how it’s always stocked with racks and racks of the hottest books that are otherwise a 14-week wait—and how small the one at my library is, like literally just a sad little table with a handful of books on it, often ones that have been out for quite a while. “Mine has White Teeth by Zadie Smith in the Lucky Day section,” I joked (the joke being that White Teeth, while an excellent book, came out 23 years ago and is not, shall we say, au courant.) “Yours has Moby Dick in the Lucky Day section,” she joked back (the joke being that Moby Dick came out….okay, you get the joke.) So today, before I sat down to write, I found Moby Dick on the shelves, put it on the Lucky Day table with the other books, took a picture of the table to text to my sister, and then put Moby Dick back on the shelves. I was positively chortling during this entire production. Excellent use of my rare kid-free time.]

Anyway! I am burying the lede here, because while I did want to talk about books, I wanted to talk about a few books I have read semi-recently and loved. In years past I have done this whole thing on Instagram where I post all the books I’ve read that year, which is usually around 50-ish, with pithy little reviews in a font that is mostly too small to see properly, but at the end of 2022 I just couldn’t be bothered to do that, and in 2023 I have been trying to stay off Instagram a lot more, and so the result is that I have been sitting on some pretty great books for some time. This means that several of these have been out for a while, so I am not giving you any particularly cutting-edge suggestions here (kind of like my library’s Lucky Day selection, burrrnnn). Still, if you’re looking to abandon every other responsibility in your life so you can immerse yourself in someone else’s, boy do I have some suggestions for you!

[I actually have 11 suggestions for you, but by the time I wrote out five of them, this was already super long, so I’ll just have to do the other six in another newsletter later!]

1. The Butterfly Lampshade, Aimee Bender
   I have read and loved everything Aimee Bender has written, going back to the late ‘90s. It’s odd because I’m not usually much of a fan of magical realism, but if you are going to allow a soupçon of magical realism into your reading material, nobody does it better than Aimee Bender. Her writing is just so exquisite that you will let her to do anything and you will like it! This novel tells the story of Francie and her relationship with her addict mother, among other things, and it is just totally heartbreaking and perfect. Like, the sentences are absolutely perfect. How does she do that? I would violently scam or gently maim someone to be in a writing class taught by Aimee Bender. Her writing is gorgeous and contemplative and almost ethereal. Her characters are so real that it’s difficult to leave them. I think about the “memory tent” basically every week of my life.
   
   2. Ghosts, Dolly Alderton
   Someone recommended this to me after I was singing the praises of Meg Mason’s “Sorrow and Bliss,” probably my favorite thing I read in 2021, and so I picked it up and I loved it! It’s funny and sharp and sad and the characters are just amazingly well-drawn (tell me you don’t have a Lola in your life! I very much have a Lola in my life.) It’s about how our friendships change and our parents get older and it’s a real “I laughed and also I cried” sort of book. I, in fact, did both — a lot.

   
   3. We Do What We Do In the Dark, Michelle Hart

   Ooh, I love a campus-based coming-of-age novel. Maybe because I’m also trying to write a campus-based coming-of-age novel? Except this one was wonderful and glorious and layered and mine is just….barely written and bad. Anyway, “We Do What We Do In the Dark” follows Mallory, a freshman in college, who has an affair with an unnamed female professor. Caveat that I usually find stories that include somebody’s mother dying of cancer a little triggering and this was no exception, but it was also so beautifully, authentically written that it was worth it.

   4. The Invisible Kingdom, Meghan O’Rourke
   I listened to this on audio from the library, and then immediately bought two actual copies when I was done: one for myself and one for my brother, who is a doctor, because I feel like this should be required reading for every medical professional who wants to understand their patients better. I’m not kidding when I say I pulled off the road twice so I could rewind and write down something she said (another good reason for buying an actual hard copy to keep.) Meghan O’Rourke writes so beautifully about her years-long experience with chronic illness, but the book’s power comes in how she marries the lyricism of her prose with a huge amount of research; it’s basically the best kind of non-fiction book there is: poetically written (she is literally a poet) and scientifically backed. While I was reading this, I was working on a story for The New York Times about how hard it can be to feel grateful for your illness; I reached out to Meghan to ask if I could interview her for the piece and she graciously agreed. She is as eloquent and smart on the phone with her kids running around in the background as she is in the book!

   
   5. Ghost Lover, Lisa Taddeo
   This might be my favorite Lisa Taddeo book, which is saying a lot because “Three Women” was phenomenal and “Animal” was mildly traumatic but also phenomenal, so this had some big shoes to fill. It’s a short story collection, which isn’t usually my fave, but I would honestly just read Lisa Taddeo’s grocery list. The only bad thing about this book is that each story ended before I was ready for it to end, and I wish they could all have just been their own standalone novels (which I would also have wanted never to end, tbh.) Lisa Taddeo is adept at writing believable friendships and my favorite story was the one where the two girls went to Puerto Rico, although honestly it was hard to choose a favorite because each one was even better than the last. I devoured this whole book on a plane. Absolutely delicious.
   
   
   [Okay, six more to come! I will try not to be so long-winded next time!]