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?
The Undying by Anne Boyer
In Michael Martone’s 1991 short story “It’s Time,” a woman ravaged by radiation from her work in a clock factory picks raspberries in her yard. “I thought about sucking the raspberry into my mouth, straining it through what was left of my teeth,” Martone writes. “I found a pencil and a piece of paper to write this down. Each word fell on the page, a burning tongue.” There is a similar immediacy—spurred by bodily deterioration and mortality—in Anne Boyer’s The Undying, a meditation on illness and its debilitating cures. As in her previous books Garments Against Women and A Handbook Of Disappointed Fate, Boyer’s righteous anger rises to the fore within direct, precisely wrought prose, here prompted by her diagnosis and treatment of highly aggressive breast cancer (“Fingernails lifting from fingers hurt as badly as fingernails lifting from fingers should”; “Our genes are tested: our drinking water isn’t”). The book is one of resistance—not only against a capitalist system that saw Boyer still going to work, despite being so weakened from chemotherapy that she could barely walk, because she had run out of sick days, but also familiar manifestations of the breast cancer story, its clichés of epiphany and pink-ribbon inspiration. “People with breast cancer are supposed to be ourselves as we were before, but also better and stronger and at the same time heart-wrenchingly worse,” she writes. “We are supposed to keep our unhappiness to ourselves but donate our courage to everyone.” Near the end of the book, now among the “undying,” she says, “it was clear that when I was at my lowest, what I needed most was art—not comfort.” In turn, art, not comfort, is what Boyer has tendered here. [Laura Adamczyk]
The Year Of The Monkey by Patti Smith
Maybe it’s because she herself came into the world around New Year’s Day—a time of renewed expectations and possibility—but Patti Smith seems to live her days with inexhaustible hope. It’s part of why the The Year Of The Monkey, which follows the melancholy, chaotic year leading up to Smith’s 70th birthday, is so intriguing: Beyond her prolific and charming Instagram posts, the “self pictures” and set lists, what does the modern world look like to Patti Smith, shamanistic punk poet who still works the idealist anthem “People Have The Power” into nearly every performance? It is surreal, for one. In The Year Of The Monkey, time and reality are permeable, seasons and settings blurring as Smith travels down the California coast and back home to New York City, then to Kentucky and Europe for short stints. It’s not always clear where she will wake up, or when she does, who or what around her really exists; a talking hotel sign or a mysterious acquaintance named Ernest stand in for a host of uncertainties, filling silences on the road.
Smith’s world is increasingly lonely, too. In M Train, she wrote about the succession of untimely deaths of her husband, brother, and dear friend Robert Mapplethorpe. The Year Of The Monkey finds her reckoning with a new kind of loss: peers who are dying because they’re aging. It’s when she’s remembering these loved ones that Smith’s writing is most powerful—memorializing the late Sandy Pearlman and Sam Shepard with elaborate, shrinelike visions—and in stark emotional moments, like when she dazedly walks the streets of NYC on election night 2016. The Year Of The Monkey doesn’t attempt any grand political statement or “for our times” lesson, as marketing materials might’ve suggested. In her relentless curiosity and commitment to her craft, Smith offers an example of humbly, passionately doing what she can. “I’m just a writer,” she offers wearily to Ernest near the narrative’s end, “nothing more.” [Kelsey J. Waite]
Inside Out by Demi Moore
When a new celebrity memoir comes out, everyone usually cuts straight to the scandalous stories. In Demi Moore’s new autobiography, Inside Out, those anecdotes include her mistaken belief that she took Jon Cryer’s virginity (Cryer tweeted, “she was totally justified making that assumption based on my skill level”) and the post-partying 911 call that landed her in the hospital and back in the headlines at the age of 49. But Inside Out’s best chapters chronicle events before her famous husbands show up. Moore candidly reveals a multitude of painful stories from her past, starting with an extremely unstable childhood with her alcoholic parents. At times it’s not an easy read, but Moore’s unflinching sincerity usurps any sensationalism. As she puts it, in a typical example of the book’s winning prose, “Putting it all down in writing makes me realize how crazy a lot of it has been, how improbable. But we all suffer, and we all triumph, and we all get to choose how we hold both.” [Gwen Ihnat]
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I’m reading Without Remorse by Tom Clancy getting ready for the upcoming Michael B Jordan vehicle, and boyhowdy does it have some regressive views on women.
They’re doing Without Remorse? Interesting choice. I was disappointed by how different A Sum of All Fears was from the book, but in this case it’s probably best if they make a few changes.If done right, I could see it being a sort of John Wick or Taken knockoff. Been a while since I read it though.
I never watched the Sum of All Fears movie. It seemed silly that an actual terrorist attack between the book’s publication and the adaptation resulted in them changing the villains. I suppose that did make it seem less like a ripoff of Thomas Harris’ “Black Sunday”. Ben Affleck replacing Harrison Ford/Alec Baldwin as Jack Ryan was another reason to skip it.
sexts from your mom
Bill Bryson’s The Body: A Guide for Occupants will be the first *new* book I’ve purchased in quite some time; looking fwd to it!
I pre-ordered this last week. After AT HOME and A BRIEF HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING I decided he’s one of my favorite living authors. Takes a subject and just kills it totally, so enjoyable. I recommend ANYTHING he’s done, but his last 4-5 were really great.Also just finished the amazing THREE WOMEN Lisa Taddeo- inspiring and amazing deep dive into 10 years of “ordinary” women’s love/romantic/sex lives- and THE LIBRARY BOOK by S.Orlean, which got me reading all her others- RIN TIN TIN and ORCHID THIEF are in rotation currently. AMERICAN CARNAGE was an illuminating look at how the GOP sold its soul over the last 20 years and was one of the most informational political books I’ve ever read- it basically taught me how Trump took over the GOP and all the little monsters that helped move it to a place he could do so (the Tea Party, Freedom Caucus, etc). The back-room deals and betrayals and lies were such a surprise! (said no one, ever.)And as always I’ll be reading STATION ELEVEN in between all of them. One of my favorites from the last decade, and it gets better w/ each reading.
Finishing up China Miéville’s New Crobuzon trilogy with Iron Council. Audio, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson, read by the author. He has a tendency to take the shamees at their word, which I find frustrating at times since I’m pretty sure a lot of them did not have the innocuous intentions claimed in the aftermath of their Twitter meltdowns. But he’s not trying to write that kind of book, so I can mostly overlook it.Other books read this month: Recursion by Blake Crouch; Skeleton Crew (audio) by Stephen King; The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman; Paperbacks From Hell by Grady Hendrix; Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin; American Predator by Maureen Callahan; Violet by Scott Thomas. I’m on book #93 for 2019, so it looks like I will surpass my goal of reading 100 books this year.
I read Recursion on vacation last month and loved it. Better character development and emotional complexity than most page turning sci-fi, and I thought he had a novel approach to the time-travel puzzle box trope. Also appreciated how much bigger the book became in scope than the early chapters would indicate. PKD gets tossed around a lot but for once I thought he earned the comparison. Have you read Dark Matter, and is it any good?
I’d never read any Blake Crouch before Recursion, although I watched the first season of Wayward Pines. I liked Recursion enough to probably read more of his work in the future.
Dark Matter was a good time, I didn’t like it quite as much as Recursion though. Recursion dealt with somewhat similar themes as Dark Matter but had better characters and was more tightly written.
I’ve been thumbing through Skeleton Crew as well, an umpteenth reread. Some stories are a bit weak (hello, The Reaper’s Image) but Survivor Type’s unforgettable ending is still great, as is of course that of The Jaunt. I’ve actually been putting off Gramma though, it’s long been my pick for King’s scariest short.
I actually like “The Reaper’s Image”, I wish Stephen King wrote more of those kinds of “classic” spooky actually-short stories.“Gramma” is my absolute favorite King short, ever. In the audio version it’s read by Frances Sternhagen, and her reading of “Rooth! Bring me m’tea!” is exactly how I’ve always heard it in my head.
I think King wrote The Reaper’s Image when he was in college and it feels like that to me — the setup is fine but he hasn’t figured how to really tell this kind of story (there’s some annoying “I will tell you information you already know” in the dialogue) and his language is oddly florid. Uncle Otto’s Truck is in a similar vein of menacing inanimate objects causing trouble, but that has much stronger pacing and atmosphere I think.I don’t know if I could listen to a talking Gramma. Gaaaaaah, that shit’d haunt me.
Right now I’m reading Joe Hill’s Full Throttle, which has been excellent so far, then I’m going to read John Hodgmans Medallion Status, and then back to finishing John Cleese’s autobiography
I’m trying to read the “Repairman Jack” series by F. Paul Wilson (and specifically the ‘early years’ series) but his Libertarian shtick is getting old real fast. He also really, really has issues regarding Muslims. I think my father (70 years young) would enjoy them more than me. I’m also on book 2 of the American West trilogy by Michael McGarrity which is not bad, but feels like a lesser Larry McMurtry series. Also, if you’re a woman in the book associated with the Kerney boys you’re going to meet an early demise (at least so far into book 2)Lastly my ‘bathroom’ book (I always leave one in there) is “A Man Called Disaster” about Alex Chilton of Big Star fame (and the Replacements song). It’s not bad, but I think due to the reticence of the subject it feels like it’s missing more detail. Then again, he was a famously grouchy guy who genuinely could never understand why anyone even liked Big Star, so I’m sure the author had her work cut out for her.
I really like F. Paul Wilson’s short story collections, but I’ve had the same problem as you regarding his novels. I tried reading The Keep and one of the Repairman Jack books and gave up on both before finishing them.
The book wasn’t bad (I did finish it) but his politics are immensely trying. It sucks because he IS a good ‘story teller’ to use a Stephen King description. But he definitely demonizes folks who he doesn’t agree with.
Yeah, even some of his short stories had moments that made me cringe, but they didn’t linger long enough to really bother me. He is an excellent storyteller and his prose style is punchy and fun to read.
Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt.
Started reading Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson – loved her previous book, but having a little trouble getting into this one because the main character seems like a bit of an idiot so far. Got a plane ride to asia next week, though, so that’ll get me bored enough to power through and see if things pick up. Read a fun Kindle Unlimited series called I Bring the Fire, which is about Loki and the Norse pantheon in the modern world. It draws a great deal on traditional mythologies, but also treats modern “myths” like the comics & movies as equally valid, which produces a fun mix. Open to any suggestions on good uses for my Kindle Unlimited account. Mostly interested in sci fi, fantasy, and romance authors. Also looking for any romance author recs: faves are Tessa Dare, Courtney Milan, Alyssa Cole, and Lisa Kleypas.
I’m reading Wrestling with Wrodger Wrestling. It’s a satire about a territorial wrestler. The friends of mine that checked it out said it was like a mix of Airplane! and any number of biographies, so I’m excited to see what it’s about. Unfortunately it’s only on Kindle right now, but that’s fine.
Just started Doris Lessing’s The Sirian Experiments (third in her Canopus in Argos: Archives series). Interesting stuff so far although, like the other installments in the series, rather slow-paced and meandering. Amusingly, the narrator/protagonist is named Ambien II.
I am reading the Portable Joseph Conrad, A collection of stories by Andre Dubus, a book of the Gospels and the Federalist Papers
Reading White Teeth but I think I like it less than the other Smith novel I read, On Beauty, and I didn’t love that one either. I was hoping this would be the book that would turn me around on her work. We’ll see.
Hmm. I only got around to White Teeth a couple years ago, and liked it quite a lot. I’ve picked up copies of a couple of other books but haven’t gotten around to them yet. Obviously a quality writer, though.
Interesting. I was fairly ho-hum on On Beauty (although maybe my expectations were too high because of how much I love Howards End) but liked White Teeth a lot. It takes a while for all the different strands to come together, so stick with it.
Starting Beartown by Fredrik Backman tonight, just finished Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory.
Reading spooky stuff this October, because cliches are fun. Just finished We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury. Currently doing the audiobook of The Shining and the physical copy of It, both by King. Bill Bryson’s newest is queued up for my first book in November.
I made the mistake of striking up a conversation about a coworker’s copy of Why Nations Fail. Came into the office this week to find it laying on my desk, so I guess I’m reading that now? It’s actually pretty interesting/gruesome so far.
Tis the season for Robert Aickman. “The Hospice” is one of his best, about a guy who gets lost and takes refuge at the titular … establishment. Unsettling, at times cringingly funny, and an ending that is like stepping into a hole.
not splinter!
Late to the party on “Circe” by Madeline Miller, but as a mythology geek since I was in elementary school, I really enjoyed it. Picking up “The Song of Achilles” next week, but in the meantime also really enjoying Jon Ronson’s “Lost at Sea” from a few years back.
i’m reading “A Night In The Lonesome October” by Roger Zelazny, of course. It’s October!
Fittingly for October, I’ve been re-reading Joe Hill’s “Horns.” I really like how he makes giving in to one’s devilish desires feel evangelically righteous.
Recently finished reading Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower — I was surprised at how terrifyingly prescient it seemed to me. It can be so cynical and so hopeful all at once. “All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you.” This one will stick with me for a while.
I’ve also been following along with the good dog Snuff and co. in Roger Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October. It’s my first read through and it’s been thoroughly enjoyable! I really like the world-building. Every word seems so deliberate.