Fall Reading List
Rooney mania, what to read this season, and throwing your iPhone into the sea
Call it September as she slouches toward her final days, the latest Zadie Smith interview, or maybe just ennui around the upcoming election season, but this month makes me want to throw my phone to the sea and make off into the forest with a bag full of books (she shares on an app that requires said smartphone or computer decipher). It’s the inescapable feeling of this century: the constant barrage of information almost makes consciousness feel more slippery, more temporary, like nothing is real until it’s been parsed and colonized online, immortalized in fragments of photos and words.
I’m just finishing Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, which took me a while to get into, but now has my full attention and I just want to lie around and wallow in it. To ponder complicity, the notion of cultural memory, and what it means to live and love in spite of it all.
In another podcast I listened to this week with Sally Rooney, the interviewer asks the novelist how she regards the value of her work in a time of historical crisis. This question pokes and snarls at the jugular of any working artist/writer/creative. I do recall that I had to write an essay on this in college when I claimed my English major— a good teacher preparing us for the sharp teeth of the world ahead. I don’t recall what I wrote, but I wish that I could look back on it now. Today, I will tell you this: my urge to create and consume art in a time like this is to feel that there is meaning to my days; to understand the varied lives of others whom I might never meet or experience if not within the pages of a book. To turn away from the social mediums that are begging for time and attention and modifying our minds and read the story in full; to be allowed to wallow in it. So that, in doing so, I might navigate the world as a better human, a better mother, a better writer, and perhaps a survivor of this strange generation.
So, with that, on to the books.
Intermezzo, Sally Rooney
Obviously. This week marks the publication of perhaps the most anticipated book of the year. Is that safe to say? It’s at least safe to say that Rooney manages to engage the culture around her books in a way that I haven’t witnessed much during my lifetime. Her books are both propulsive and deeply astute—navigating the measures of life with what it means to be raised in a generation shadowed by financial, political, and environmental uncertainty.
Hailed as the first great “millennial writer” and a whole slew of other weighty titles that must wear heavy on the head, Rooney has delivered what many critics are calling her most “accomplished” novel. While I didn’t join the Rooneyheads’ thirsty attempts to get an advanced reader copy, I did preorder mine from my favorite Womb House Books and will wait like the rest of the normal people at my mailbox this week.
Creation Lake, Rachael Kushner
From what I gather, Kushner’s fourth book is about a 34-year-old American spy for hire. She’s a Berkeley dropout (in rhetoric so don’t be too hard on her), working under the assumed name of Sadie Smith (is this intentionally literally?) and has come to rural France to infiltrate a radical farming commune. Immediately adds to shelf.
Twilight Sleep, Edith Wharton
When I learned about Smith & Taylor—a new imprint from Unnamed Press dedicated to unearthing forgotten works including the likes of Edith Wharton, George Gissing and Victor Hugo—I was instantly besotted. Not to mention a Wharton that I haven’t read: Twilight Sleep. As a young child fed a healthy diet of Masterpiece Theatre by my mother, I read The Age of Innocence at a very tender age, assuming it was certainly the most logical step up from the Babysitters Club, and was quickly swept up in her sharp writing, portrayal of women, and signature ability to paint class.
Rather than introductions, each book features a conversation between two readers. For Twilight Sleep, editors Allison Miriam Smith and Brandon Taylor (author of The Real Americans) share a conversation in which Taylor states, “...the minute I came across the synopsis, I was like, ‘Edith Wharton wrote her own Great Gatsby?’” Personally, I think that’s all you need to know. It’s coming out on November 23rd. You can pre order your copy here and stay tuned for my full review; from the first sentence I was back with my girl and it felt so good.
James, Percival Everett
On the Booker shortlist and too long on my to-read pile, Everett does something so compelling (and perhaps necessary) with this novel: he takes the events of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and flips the narrative, giving us the voice of Jim, the novel’s enslaved runaway. Given the discourse that’s always existed around Huck Finn—and that we so often approach it in our early lives without our own historical scaffolding in place—I’m eager to revisit their trip down the Mississippi from a new vantage point.
Everett is also the author of Erasure, which became the Cord Jefferson film American Fiction. It was one of my favorite movies that year and I’m so interested to see how Everett will lend his (Jim’s) voice to this American tradition.
The Bog Wife, Kay Chronister
I think this is me trying to stay in the world of North Woods longer and also embrace, with reticence, the idea of spooky season. A decaying old house, the interwoven drama of a generational family, and a thinly veiled line between the real and the unreal? Ok, yes. A modern gothic that seems to harken Shirley Jackson and prompts descriptions such as eco-horror and Appalachian folklore has my attention. Available on October 1st.
Any Person Is the Only Self, Elisa Gabbert
Speaking of haunting. This book has been following me around like a ghost. For the past few months it has felt like everywhere I look, there it is: on nightstands, mentioned on substacks, hailed on reading lists, waiting for me out in the world. So I finally picked it up and tucked it in with my usual fiction friends. A necessary palette cleanser and opportunity for a different kind of thinking.
Small Rain, Garth Greenwell
I haven't been into an ICU since my mother died. I hope to not go into another one for a really long time. And yet. Garth Greenwell has asked me to come with him and I said yes.
Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman
Ever since listening to Zadie Smith on the Ezra Klein show, which I highly recommend, I can’t stop thinking about media theory. Smith famously does not own a smartphone and so ultimately their conversation turned toward our collective consumption of media and the very real notion of social media as a behavior modification system. I had a fantastic Anthropology professor in college that ultimately helped me shape my own theory around the media’s role in our human condition. We of course dabbled in the ideas of McLuhan and Postman, but somehow I managed to never fully consume Postman’s prophetic book from 1985, likely realizing that it might scare me to death, but lately, I feel ready. Spooky season indeed.
What are you reading this season? Anything you loved or want to chat about? Drop me a note here, and please let me know if you plan to read along. Friends don’t let friends read alone.
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