It’s been a good spell since I’ve shared my latest favorite books. I’ve been reading a lot but it’s been a long slog of eh. As in too many so-so, unfinished books.
Maybe my book selector is off. Or my head rattled with outside life. Maybe the digital world really has ruined me for the long stretches of deep absorption that reading requires. Or perhaps novels are getting more dull and simplistic or, conversely, overly complicated?
Probably not.
Still, all is not lost. Bright spots still shine. Here are a few of my latest favorites:
FICTION
August Blue, a novel by Deborah Levy
I don’t always understand Deborah Levy, but I love her! Her writing makes jumps in time and tone, and leaps in thought, and I’m working to keep up. But always the prose is poetic, surreal, resonating truth and smart vulnerability.
Good line:
It was like pressing on a bruise. To be so helplessly chained to this old story.
Other Deborah Levy faves:
Swimming Home
Hot Milk
The Man Who Saw Everything
Spare, simple, subtle. Nothing happens, slowly, and yet it's an engaging novel that turns a simple apartment hunt into an exploration of a couple searching for more than a place to live.
Good line:
Whenever we talked about this time in our lives, we would be incredulous at our hospitality but also a bit mournful at our loss of curiosity. Our tolerance to listen to anything, to be engaged with the world without calculation.
Years ago I read Jane McCafferty’s novel One Heart and was wowed. But then I somehow lost track of this writer. Now, I’m back on the hunt to read all her work, and this book of short stories is a keeper. McCafferty makes writing seem effortless, with clear prose that is plain-spoken, and characters that are tender, aching, and true-to-life.
Good line:
I didn’t particularly like his style of conversation — it had that windblown quality, where you feel the person could be talking to anyone.
The title tells the truth. These stories are muscular with writing that punches, swings and lifts off the page. The first story in the collection, The Wind, about a woman escaping an abusive marriage, took my breath and held me captive. Way to set a tone!
Also, loved the Notes on each story, located in the back of the book. I’m not one of the purists who believes stories and poems should stand on their own; I love a backstory!
Good line:
I look around and can see it in so many other women, passed down from a time beyond history, this wind that is dark and ceaseless and raging within.
POETRY
Origin Stories: Poems by Sarah Teresa Cook
What a delight to find this beautiful treasure of a book.
The best poems make me want to write my own — and Origin Stories does just that — while also feeding an urgency to read more and faster.
From the hand stitched cover to each carefully considered phrase, this collection is authentic, examined, real, with a self-awareness that carries both wisdom and wounds.
Searching always for
the same answers: affect
versus effect, over-
watered versus under-
watered plant // Can-
not remember how to
mean what I mean / how
to see a different origin
beneath the same result
— from 36 YO FE W HX Anxiety Is Requesting Referral to Initiate BH Services
Read While You Wait, poems by Penelope Scambly Schott and Drew Myron
While hiking Dufur Hill recently, Penelope and I talked about the thrill of finding poetry in unexpected places: in parks, on busses, in bathroom stalls. Poetry should be accessible to all, we said. Let’s get poetry into the world!
(You’ve heard this before, right?).
And so we did.
Read While You Wait is a booklet of poems made especially for the waiting places: laundromats, hospitals, department of motor vehicle lines . . . the world is full of waiting.
The booklet is fun, no-frills, and free. Maybe you’ll find it the next time you renew your driver’s license or wash your undies. But why wait? Send me your address and I’ll pop it in the mail. Signed, sealed, delivered.
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The world turns on words. Thank you for reading & writing.
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