What are you reading in June?
This Pride Month, The A.V. Club gets Kink-y, says ¡Hola Papi!, visits the Sweet Gum Head, and more
Aux Features W.W. Norton
In our monthly book club, we discuss whatever we happen to be reading and ask everyone in the comments to do the same. What Are You Reading This Month?
A Night At The Sweet Gum Head: Drag, Drugs, Disco And Atlanta’s Gay Revolution by Martin Padgett
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, goes the maxim, and in A Night At The Sweet Gum Head: Drag, Drugs, Disco And Atlanta’s Gay Revolution (June 1, W.W. Norton), journalist Martin Padgett makes sure readers don’t forget. A difficult but necessary trip back in time, A Night At The Sweet Gum Head introduces readers to Piedmont Park—ground zero for Atlanta’s queer grassroots organizing. In 1969, just one month after the Stonewall Inn rebellion, queer Piedmont residents created the Georgia Gay Liberation Front, and in 1971, they held their first Gay Pride Parade. Focusing on the lives of two of those gay activists—John Greenwell and Bill Smith—Padgett spotlights the realities of a past when being out was still very much illegal. From the cops who conducted raids to the government that let AIDS decimate communities, Sweet Gum Head writes a chapter of queer history that was once lost to violent homophobia. [Shanicka Anderson]
¡Hola Papi! How To Come Out In A Walmart Parking Lot And Other Life Lessons by John Paul Brammer
When John Paul Brammer started his “¡Hola Papi!” advice column in 2017, it filled a void. It became a resource for queer people who needed advice, who needed healing, and who were just a little messy and loved to be in other people’s business. For his new memoir, Brammer leans into his now-signature style. He structures ¡Hola Papi! How To Come Out In A Walmart Parking Lot And Other Life Lessons (June 8, Simon & Schuster) similarly to his column—each chapter is prefaced with a desperate question. “¡Hola Papi! How do I make peace with the years I lost in the closet?” one reads. Another asks, “How do I let go of a rotten relationship?” “How do I overcome my imposter syndrome to live my life as an authentic Latino?” Brammer uses these questions to share anecdotes from his own life. He tells readers about his first time using Grindr. He recalls his first relationship with another guy. He writes of his struggles being a mixed Latinx man who never feels like he’s connecting to his culture enough. Brammer shares the evolution of his intersecting identities in bite-sized personal essays that are just as poignant, hilarious, and addictively readable as his column. [Shanicka Anderson]
King Kong Theory by Virginie Despentes
Virginie Despentes writes as if shouting into a crackling bullhorn. In King Kong Theory, the punk provocateur—whose 2000 film, Baise-Moi, was banned in her native France—doesn’t craft arguments so much as discharge a round of bold claims. Each sentence arrives with the surety of a truism, and Despentes gallops across their tough surface: “Powers granted by a sick state are necessarily suspect”; “Pleasing men is a complex art that involves erasing everything that concerns power,” etc. FSG Originals reprinted the manifesto in May with a new translation by Frank Wynne, and a lot has changed in the 15 years since it was first published, including the proliferation of once maligned propositions surrounding pornography, legal prostitution, and a woman’s anger—all of which the writer battles for here. But Despentes isn’t trying to convince people; she’s infuriated people need convincing. Any lack of nuance or true essaying or even her indelicate views on sexual assault (after she was gang-raped, Despentes found herself identifying with Camille Paglia’s assertion that women should accept rape as a risk they take when they leave the house) are counteracted by her sheer verve and spirit, which in addition to being filled with ire, is also rather generous. Sometimes there’s nothing more humanistic than saying, “Fuck this.” [Laura Adamczyk]
Girlhood by Melissa Febos
“Knowing we’ve been conditioned doesn’t undo it,” Melissa Febos writes in Girlhood, her third book of nonfiction. But deconstructing that conditioning at its most ingrained levels is a good step, and Febos makes reclaiming the female body the theme of this fierce and intimate collection. The first 200 pages read like dress rehearsals for “Thank You For Taking Care Of Yourself,” the essay where Febos’ blend of reportage and memoir come together for a feminist statement of stunning insight. Using Febos’ experience of being uncomfortable at a “cuddle party” as its springboard, the essay explores the gray area of unwanted touch, arguing that the lack of language to describe experiences that aren’t quite assault, but aren’t quite enthusiastic consent either, is indicative of a larger patriarchal project of holding women responsible for men’s emotions as well as men’s actions. “Thank You” prompted sense memories that I hadn’t thought about in years—the white tile bathroom where I attempted to shave my legs at age 12, a hand against the small of my back in a crowded bar—to flit across my consciousness, leaving me with a feeling that, like Febos’ essay, lives in a murky space between the unsettling and the sublime. [Katie Rife]
Kink: Stories, edited by R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell
Kink isn’t your average fetish-focused anthology. The collection features short fiction from more than a dozen writers—both emerging and more established—with most penned by queer people of color. While some focus on heterosexual relationships, including Larissa Pham’s “Trust” and R.O. Kwon’s “Safeword,” most of the stories focus on queer dynamics. Publishing their anthology with Simon & Schuster, critically lauded editors Kwon and Garth Greenwell bring a genre that was once fringe to a wider audience. What makes Kink so tantalizing is that the authors put their characters of color at the forefront, championing their desires; they’re the ones in control in these narratives. From the Black sex worker who has her white client lick her spit off the floor in Vanessa Clark’s “Mirror, Mirror” to the queer married couple that enjoys razorplay in Roxane Gay’s “Reach,” no fetish or fantasy is out of bounds. [Tatiana Tenreyro]
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Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer detective stories from (mostly) the sixties. Better than pulp fiction. I have all 18 of them on my Kindle to read on airplanes. I am supposed to be reading Thomas Levenson’s Money for Nothing, about the 17th century South Seas stock bubble and the origin of modern reserve banking. But that’s long, dense and has almost no chase scenes.
Currently reading a non-fiction book about the history of New Orleans, The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square by Ned Sublette. I live in south Louisiana and frequently spend time in NOLA and I’m fascinated its weird layer cake of history and culture.On audio, listening to Damien Echols’ Life After Death, read by him.Also read in June so far:A Cosmology of Monsters by Shaun HamillThe Decagon House Murders by Yukito AyatsujiSmall Fry by Lisa Brennan-JobsThe Book of Eels by Patrik Svensson
How did you like A Cosmology of Monsters? I came away from that book with with mixed feelings.
Yeah, that sums it up for me as well. Like, it was interesting, and it didn’t feel like a re-tread of stuff I’ve already read. But at the end I was kind of like “Well but really was all that?” Not really giving an explanation is an acceptable horror trope, I guess, but I always feel vaguely cheated when it’s employed.
Going by my Goodreads account:-Books I have read so far in June:The Shadow Rising by Robert Jordan (4th book in the Wheel of Time Series)The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. HarrowBooks I’m currently reading:Shadows of Treachery edited by Christian Dunn and Nick Kyme (22nd of the Horus Heresy Series)Inkblot – Volume One by Emma Kubert & Rusty Gladd (graphic novel)I haven’t read the Wheel of Time series before, so I decided that I’d make 2021 the year I addressed that particular blind spot as a fantasy fiction fan. I can already see the fractures in the narrative leading to the pacing issues that become notorious in the series, but at least in this fourth book, stuff is happening pretty constantly. It’s also very firmly establishing Perrin as my favorite of the characters.The science fiction/fantasy book club I’m a part of made The Ten Thousand Doors of January their book of the month for June, and I’m kind of glad that they did, because I certainly wouldn’t have read it otherwise. It’s a young adult “portal fantasy” novel by an author who tends to specialize in short stories. The book itself is larded with young adult tropes, but the prose itself is very good, with Harrow coming up with turns of phrase that are almost lyrical. The twists are mostly predictable but they do work well. Also, the pacing isn’t great as it’s quite languid per the other members of the book club. I didn’t notice that much, since I had literally just finished a Wheel of Time book, so I might be inured to slow paced books.I’m a sucker for the lore of the Warhammer 40,000 gaming universe in all it’s ridiculous grimdarkness, and am still slogging my way through the entire Horus Heresy book series. This 22nd book is one of the short story anthologies, and I generally like those. This is seven stories in roughly 400 pages and I’m still reading the first one.The Inkblot graphic novel is about a magical cat trying to disrupt time and space. As the blurb puts it: “The cat threatens to unravel the fabric of the universe, doesn’t care, and just won’t listen!” which makes it no different from any other cat…If I get through those before the end of June, next on the docket are Solutions and Other Problems by Allie Brosh, and The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson (The 3rd book of the original Mistborn trilogy).July will probably be a return to the Wheel of Time with The Fires Of Heaven by Robert Jordan…
I really liked Ten Thousand Doors, but it is languid in some ways. It seems to be a polarizing book, inspiring either love or hate from everyone I know.
The fourth book is where the Wheel of Time lost me, especially once I saw how many more books there were (plus, the series had not yet been completed when I started). Jordan’s world-building was amazing, and I loved the references to all sorts of folk tales, mythologies, and religions, but boy did he need a good editor.
I spent the first half of June rereading the Earthsea books; the original trilogy was a revelation to young Latina me, and I’m so disappointed I can’t get my 14-year-old into them. I’m now reading Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty, which is quite different to say the least, but enjoyable so far.
I liked Ten Thousand Doors too, but her next book (I can’t remember the title but it had Witches in it) was better.
That’s on my list, too.
Finally reading Das Kapital along with David Harvey’s companion book. It’s… slow going, and dense with a lot of references to other political economy books of the 1800s. Once it gets going it’s more straightforward though.
Also picked back up with James Ellroy after finishing the LA Quartet. Now I’m onto American Tabloid which has a lot of Ellroy’s best and worst tendencies in it.
Alastair Reynolds said Schisimatrix would melt my brain so I’m trying that, it’s ok so far but not mind melting.
I just started We Take Care of Our Own by Christopher Clancy. It’s kind of long but check out this plot: a secret government program takes veterans with PTSD and grooms them to become mass shooters at anti-war protests. Sick dystopian shit.
The best thing I’ve read recently was John Crowley’s Ka, which kind of felt like a hybrid of Watership Down, The Dark Is Rising, and Kafka. It’s about a crow who eventually learns to communicate with humans – parts of it are in realist mode, but others are not and it’s not always clear which is which. It’s the best of the four Crowleys I’ve attempted, I think.
On the other hand, I abandoned Gaiman/Pratchett’s Good Omens halfway through. I found the humor increasingly tiresome and one-note, and the wide-ranging nature of the plot made it hard to care much about any of the characters’ individual storylines. It reminded me of the Hitchhiker’s Guide books, but missing that central perspective character to ground the narrative and to allow for some emotional investment.
Interesting to see Virginie Despentes mentioned – I read the first two volumes of her Vernon Subutex trilogy recently, which I generally liked – I think the third comes out in English imminently. It feels very state-of-the-French-nation in a way that I can’t totally judge, but the individual characters are mostly interesting and I’m curious to see where the plot goes.
The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste interested me as it’s from an Ethiopian-American writer and is set during the Ethiopian resistance to Mussolini’s invasion in 1935, this being one of the preludes to World War II that tends to only receive cursory mentions in history books. I don’t think the book really lives up to the potential of exploring this, though, the biggest issue being that Mengiste’s prose style really tends toward overwriting. It feels like she wants every paragraph to be a standalone masterpiece, but as a result the whole is neglected, and the times when it comes to depict action, especially, are very difficult to follow. There’s also some literary affectations that feel artificial, particularly the recurring vignettes with Selassie as he observes the course of the invasion, where he spends most of his time ruminating on Verdi’s opera Aida (because this is a serious book, y’know!).After reading Octavia Butler’s Kindred a few months ago, and decided to take a crack at another of her most acclaimed works after coming across a copy of Parable of the Sower in a bookstore that was in excellent condition. The “Sower” books got brought up a number of times as feeling increasingly relevant in the Trump era, and having read the first it’s easy to see why people felt that way. In general I thought this was an improvement on Kindred in terms of prose style. Narratively I wasn’t entirely sure what to think of the format when I read the first chapter, but as it got going I was drawn in easily, and the story repeatedly shifts gears/directions in ways that keep you surprised. This sort of ground-level view of dystopian conditions is well-done, though in general I felt at times like the degree to which things had already fallen apart made it implausible that other institutions (like the federal government) were even still around.Finally, I read Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart, the previous year’s Booker Prize winner, a quasi-autobiographical account of a child’s life with his alcoholic mother in 1980s Glasgow. And yes, it’s as cheery as it sounds. The titular Hugh “Shuggie” Bain dwells in a blighted post-industrial area where almost every adult has some sort of chemical dependency and almost all the children are semi-feral, while his mother is in a spiral of alcoholism that has lasted most of her adult life. All of this sounds like pure miserablism, and it’s certainly bleak, but Stuart, in his novel debut, proves himself to be an able writer, and he somehow manages to make this all go down without seeming excessive.
I liked Shuggie Bain for the writing, but I didn’t like the end much.
I read Rob Halford’s memoir, Confess. I dug it, loved that there’s a Calgary anecdote (hustled by a cowboy hustler!), and was happy that he spent at least a little time on each album. Doesn’t allow him to go deep on them all, but jeez, Yngwie lost interest in talking about individual albums after #4.
Best Horror of the Year: Volume 12. About halfway through and it’s a really solid group of stories. Dolls! Dolls! Dolls! By Stephen Rebello about writing and filming of Valley of the Dolls. Lots of fun. On the Beach by Nevil Shute. Not bad but I keep wondering when something is going to happen. I guess the thing that happened happened before the start of the book. The Toll by Cherie Priest. Not bad but I set it down a couple weeks ago because it’s not much fun reading about fighting couples. I’ll pick it back up soon because I want to know where it’s heading.
So far this month, I’ve read Jurassic Park, which is very similar to the movie. I am forever grateful we got the Jeff Goldblum version of Dr. Ian Malcolm and not the book version. I’m currently reading the sequel, The Lost World, and so far it feels like its own thing, which is fun. Keeping with the theme, I hope to read the non-fiction work The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs soon, but up next is the fantasy novel For the Wolf.
There is Power in a Union by Philip Dray – The Epic History of Labor in AmericaThe Poison King – Adrienne Mayor
Yesterday I finished part 2 of Alan Moore’s Jerusalem. I knew nothing about it and didn’t have particularly high hopes, but turns out it’s pretty great. Life and death explored in four dimensions, bound up and intertwined through the history of an English town.Enormous in scale, it can be a little… much at times but it’s worth it. Part 2, a kind of adventure story for ghostly children, seems like it could be trimmed a bit and strains logic at points, but part 1 is spectacular. It’s a series of distinct but linked stories spanning generations telling of characters connected by family, geography, or both, each with distinctive voice and some relation to the higher planes and their angelic denizens.It’s reminiscent of Michael Moorcock’s excellent Mother London, intertwining stories threaded through history (of London in this case), intimations of time travel, psychedelic reveries. ML is not well-known but I will bet any money Moore has read it.
I don’t seem able to edit here (Thanks Kinja!). Anyway I start part 3 tomorrow.
These “What I’m reading now…” lists are typically bullshit. The books are always recent and oh-so-precious titles that are being pushed by P.R. machines. Nobody wants to brag that they’re reading a six year old James Paterson paperback they got for a quarter at the library book sale.
I’m reading A Desolation Called Peace — so far I think I like the first book in the series more. This one is more of a first contact and space war with weird aliens. It pairs strangely with Charlie Jane Anders’ YA book Victories Greater than Death which I’m listening to in audiobook form. At one point, both books had scenes where the main characters arrive at a devastated planet too late to prevent the carnage. I don’t do a lot of audiobooks, and the reader for this one has quite a high-pitched voice which at first I didn’t think matched the text, but she’s really good at doing voices for all the characters and her pacing etc. do match the book.Also I’m reading Noopiming: the Cure for White Ladies by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson for a book club at work. It is very interesting and the format of the printed book kind of plays with the text, there is a lot of whitespace. The author also released a video with some music to go along with the first part and it’s super evocative.