Between the pages: December (+ retrospective)

Friends, it’s been a whole year since I started this project of mine, and this is where I bring it to a close. This was the first time in my life I have ever taken care to record and review each book I read. It was my resolution for the year, and one I hoped would help me keep up the kind of mindful and diligent reading I was so used to in school. And, ultimately, I think it worked. Throughout 2017, I read 54 books and wrote reviews for each of them here (though not always in a timely manner).

I had originally debated doing this project privately, in a journal or a Word doc. Ultimately, I’m glad I didn’t, because I ended up getting a lot of positive feedback from friends and family about it. People told me that they read a book I had reviewed here based on my review, or that I had inspired them to keep a list of what they read. Some people saw that I reviewed a book they loved (or hated) and struck up a conversation with me over it, and some gave me book recommendations based on something that appeared in one of my “Between the pages” posts. I ended up connecting with people over books, and not necessarily just people I was close with prior to this project. If you were one of those people, or even if this is the first monthly reads post of mine that you’ve read, thank you. You added a new dimension to my project, and made it more fulfilling than I could’ve imagined.

As for continuing the monthly reads posts into the new year, I’ll admit that it’s not a priority of mine. 2018 is already shaping up to be a very different year, and if everything works out the way I hope it will, I’ll be busier. These monthly reads posts are pretty time-consuming; they take at least a day, or sometimes two, and while I was able to make that work with my schedule last year I’m just not sure I’ll be blessed with that much free time this year. That being said, in order to keep the spirit of my resolution alive, I’m thinking I might post something more like a “book of the month” instead. If that sounds good, or you have a better suggestion, let me know! I certainly won’t be updating this blog on the progress of my 2018 resolutions (more flossing, less sugar).

I was also tossing around the idea of doing a sort of “awards” post for the books I read last year, ie. the best book I read, the worst book I read, the funniest book I read, the most life-altering book, etc., so we’ll see if I get around to doing that. I’m only giving myself until the end of January to do that, so you’ll soon find out.

Alright! Now that I’m done rhapsodizing, I’ll get back to business for the last time.

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December reads, in chronological order:

I, Claudius | Robert Graves

I was on a bit of a historical fiction kick when I picked this book up out from under the back seat of my car, where it must’ve fallen during one of the various times I’ve moved in the past year. Widely considered to be a classic and a prime example of the feats of this genre, I, Claudius is the first of a two-part series based on the autobiographical accounts of Roman Emperor Claudius, who ruled from A.D. 41-54. If nothing else, this has got to be one of the most well-researched pieces of historical fiction out there, which is saying something for a genre that requires it. It’s a dense work, and it was hard for me to really get into this book at first, but when I did get going it was hard to get back out. I, Claudius covers Claudius’ life from early childhood up to the assassination of Caligula and his resulting ascension to the throne, where the second book picks back up. I have no idea how detailed Claudius’ autobiographical works are, but I imagine Graves had to do a lot of creative work here filling in the gaps and understanding relationships between these fascinating and important historical figures. Claudius is one of maybe three characters who are actually likeable, the rest being power-hungry, murderous, deceitful, disgusting, or all of the above. If you enjoy historical fiction or have ever been interested in ancient Rome, this is a must-read.

Against the Day | Thomas Pynchon

I started the year with Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow) and I ended the year with him too, by no accident. As you may remember, or maybe I didn’t disclose too much in my review, I can’t remember… as you may remember, I struggled with Gravity’s Rainbow. And yeah, I’m not the only one, and I’d be really suprised to find a single person (Pynchon included) who didn’t struggle with it either, but I felt like that book kicked my ass. 70% of the time I had no clue what was happening, or who the characters were, and even though I was pretty sure I was supposed to feel that way and even though I let go pretty early on, I still felt like I was really missing something. Knowing full well that people take entire classes on this book alone, I realized I probably would’ve gotten a lot more out of it had I been reading it with peers (and a very patient professor). And since not many people have the time for or interest in reading a 1,000+ page novel in a month, I decided the next best thing I could do (besides read hundreds of analytical essays on the damn thing) would be to… well, read another Pynchon novel. Obviously, it took me nearly a year to amass the energy and willpower necessary, but I knew when I was shopping for $1 books at a local sale and saw Against the Day in all its phonebook-esque glory that this was how I’d be spending the remaining days of 2017. Remaining hours, I should say– I finished the book at 11:30pm on the 31st.

As it turns out, Against the Day was leaps and bounds more accessible than Gravity’s Rainbow. Sure, there were a lot of characters, but pretty much all of them are recurring and you get to know them fairly well by the end of the novel. Of course, I didn’t always know what exactly was taking place, especially in regards to the “Icelandic spar”: a material with “double-refractionary” properties that literally clones a person, from what I could make out. But! I did have a good grasp on what was going on, hmmm… 90% of the time, I’d say. And sure, there was weird sex, but compared to Gravity’s Rainbow it was vanilla as a golden Oreo.

The main characters in the novel are four siblings: Frank, Reef, Kit, and their sister Lake Traverse. Their father, Webb Traverse, is an anarchist outlaw known for dynamiting mines in support of unions. One day, he’s murdered by a couple of hired hands paid by Scarsdale Vibe (think Rockefeller level rich, and just as greedy). Frank and Reef set out to avenge their father’s death, while Kit leaves for college, and Lake knowingly marries one of her father’s murderers. Most of the story follows these character’s lives as they travel from Colorado to the ends of the earth, in some cases, meeting — you guessed it! — a whole host of other quirky characters along the way. Oh, and there’s this group of guys called the Chums of Chance, who fly around the world in an airship, carrying out the wishes of… people from the future? I think?

I gotta be honest: I’m not done trying to figure this book out. It revolves a lot around the anarchist movements that really caught on during the turn of the 19th century (when the novel takes place), as well as the new technological advancements (namely, electricity) that were revolutionizing the world, and the ways in which World War I changed war forever and foretold what was to come. The characters of the novel are all either running after something or running away or both. And that’s just the surface. Really, if you ever get around to reading this book, please let me know so we can talk about it. In the meantime, I’ll give you my favorite excerpt from the whole book to hopefully entice you into taking the plunge:

“It went on for a month. Those who had taken it for a cosmic sign cringed beneath the sky each nightfall, imagining ever more extravagant disasters. Others, for whom orange did not seem an appropriately apocalyptic shade, sat outdoors on public benches, reading calmly, growing used to the curious pallor. As nights went on and nothing happened and the phenomenon slowly faded to the accustomed deeper violets again, most had difficulty remembering the earlier rise of heart, the sense of overture and possibility, and went back once again to seeking only orgasm, hallucination, stupor, sleep, to fetch them through the night and prepare them against the day.”

So, you sold yet? I’m happy to say this book made me resent Pynchon less, and I love that I’m still trying to figure it out days after finishing it. It was the perfect way to bring the year full-circle (and restore my ego somewhere closer to its size pre-Gravity’s Rainbow).

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Thank you for following “Between the pages”! Happy New Year — here’s to more mindful reading.

Between the pages: November

Two books this month. That’s it! Could’ve been three, but I couldn’t finish one of them in time. November was busy; first, a week in Japan, where I thought I could easily finish multiple books on the long flights to and from Tokyo, but I foolishly assumed none of the in-flight movies would be worth watching/killing all of my time with. This was followed by frantically gathering paperwork to apply for a Really Great Employment Opportunity, preparing for interview for the Employment Opportunity, passing said interview, and frantically gathering even more paperwork in order to secure the Really Great Employment Opportunity during the post office’s busiest time of the year.

At first I was kind of embarrassed to be writing this post having only read two books which is half of why it took me so long to get around to doing this (the other half is, honestly, just laziness). But then I remembered that although I’m sharing this project of mine with the public, it was really never about proving anything to anybody. Nor was it ever about how many books I could read in a year. I’ve gotten comments from friends and family who’ve been following this project about how they’d like to read as much as I do or wish they could read as quickly as I do. And that makes me sort of sad, because while I like to share books/my thoughts on books with people, I never intend to make people feel like they don’t read enough (unless, of course, you’re like our current President and not reading at all, in which case you really aren’t reading enough). I just like reading and talking about books, and I wanted to share that with people — be they family, friends, or friendly internet strangers — who are willing to listen. Or, even better, have a conversation about these books with me.

The two books I read in November both happen to be recommendations from friends that I got when I reached out in a Facebook post a while back for suggestions on what to read. If you’re reading this and you made a suggestion and your book isn’t one of these two, please know that my local bookstore and library are very small and I did look for your suggestions but couldn’t find them. Chances are I will get around to them soon, as every one of the books recommended to me on that post piqued my interest, and I’m always looking for something to read.

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November reads, in chronological order:

The Disaster Artist | Greg Sestero & Tom Bissell

This is hands down the funniest book I’ve read all year, and a must-read if you’ve ever seen The Room and wondered “how in the hell did a movie like that ever get made?”. I would say all the answers are here in this book, but they’re not, as I’m not sure anyone will ever fully understand the writer, director, producer, and star of the film, Tommy Wiseau. Enough has been written about Wiseau that I won’t go into detail about him, and articles about him are even more widely available right now because a movie based on this book is currently in theatres. However, I will say that reading this book makes Wiseau a lot more human, which is better treatment than he usually receives from articles or videos about him. And fundamentally, aside from all the good laughs it provided, that was my favorite part about this book. Wiseau is undoubtedly quite the character, to say the least, and it’s easy to dismiss him as kind of a freak show if you’ve ever seen The Room. But after reading this book, and seeing Greg Sestero’s friendship with Wiseau unfold over the years, he becomes a sympathetic, albeit frustrating, and even sometimes inspiring person. More than that, this book offers a much-desired look behind the scenes at the making of this cult classic and the chaos that borne it and shaped it. If you’re looking for a quick read that’ll make you snort laughing in public (which, true story, happened to me on the Tokyo subway), this is the one. Though you should probably see The Room first.

Golden Hill | Francis Spufford

This book initially gave me whiplash; after just having read The Disaster Artist, I then tried throwing myself into pre-Revolutionary War New York City. Luckily, that’s the only complaint I can find about this book, and it’s no fault but my own. First of all, Spufford clearly knows his stuff, and his descriptions of young NYC are so vivid and alive you quite honestly feel transported there (which is an element of all great historical fiction). It follows the adventures of a strange Mr. Smith, who arrives in the colonies from England with an order for a large sum of money in his pocket. He won’t divulge any information about his past or his business being in the states, and that leads people to hate him, to lust after him, and something in-between that might be called befriending him, in one case. This is a book with so many twists and turns at such carefully placed intervals that eventually you come to realize that you and Mr. Smith will never be comfortable for long. I wish I could say more about this book without giving away what exactly these twists and turns are, but I will say that I’m convinced Spufford is a genius and if you enjoy historical fiction this should be at the top of your to-read list. Race factors into this novel in an interesting way as well, functioning not just as an obligatory background element. Golden Hill is a historical novel set in old New York that doesn’t shy away from the harsh realities of the time (slavery, white supremacist rallies, gender roles… wow, sounds like 2017, actually), but is ultimately a triumphant and riveting tale of a narrator so loveable and bright you almost forget you’re supposed to be suspicious of him.

Between the pages: October

Hi. Obviously I’m writing this much later than normal. Part of this is because I was in Tokyo from November 4th through the 12th, and the rest is due to jet lag/overall forgetfulness. I sort of wish I was posting pictures from my trip and raving about how much fun I had and how much I absolutely miss Japan with all my heart, yadda yadda, but here we are! It was my New Year’s resolution to do this every month of 2017 (kind of a weird thing to resolve to do in retrospect; also one that is increasingly irritating for me and probably even for you) and I’ve only got three more months of it, counting this one. So let’s get started.

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October reads, in chronological order:

The Sympathizer | Viet Thanh Nguyen

Lately I’ve been reading a lot of East Asian literature, but nothing from Southeast Asia. I guess I don’t really know where to start. While Nguyen was born in Vietnam, he is Vietnamese-American, which probably helped make this book more accessible to someone like me who would like to read literature written from a Vietnamese perspective but can’t find anything like that at her local bookstore. Nguyen’s experience as Vietnamese-American arguably informs that of his protagonist’s life as a split identity. Our nameless narrator is the son of a Vietnamese woman and a white colonist, his father being present in his life as a religious figure in the community but never being anything resembling a father figure to his son. Because he is mixed race, the people of his community largely reject him as being “too white” to be truly Vietnamese. Eventually, he lands a scholarship to study in America, and as a result, returns with a near-perfect American accent and mastery of the English language. Not much later, he becomes a spy for the Vietcong during the war and flees with an enemy general and his family to America during the fall of Saigon. In America, however, he is too Vietnamese to be seen as American; the reverse of the issue he had at home. Nguyen follows this character’s life through his conflicting actions and motivations as a spy and what that means for his friendships, resulting in a complex and nuanced look at race, war, identity, and human relationships. In a way, it’s sort of reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night, which I read and reviewed earlier this year. There’s so much going on in this book and I barely scratched the surface here, but this has to be one of my favorite books I’ve read during this project. As a side note, even though he’ll never see this, special thanks to the clerk at the bookstore who saw me grab this book off the shelf and then went and found a cheaper used copy for me to buy instead.

The Heart Goes Last | Margaret Atwood

Okay. I don’t like to do this, and maybe it’s because I haven’t really had to do this at all this year, but this was not a good book. I was given this book with the words “And by the way, you can keep it, I don’t really want, uh, need it back,” which should’ve been my first clue. I was expecting a lot after reading The Handmaid’s Tale last month and really enjoying it, but in comparison, this book felt like a million ideas crammed together, none of them ever being fully realized. It follows the lives of Stan and Charmaine, a young couple in a post-economic-catastrophe America, who are homeless and underemployed and longing for the life they once had. When offered the chance to live in a community called Consilience, gated and kept safe from roaming bandits, Charmaine jumps at the chance while Stan is a bit more hesitant. Even though the agreement to live in Consilience requires that residents spend alternating months living and working in the community’s prison, Positron, they sign on. The book sets itself up as a commentary on surveillance and Foucaultian ideas, but almost immediately drops off into a mess of chaotic plot points including sex robots, lobotomies, infidelity, investigative journalism, Elvis, and teddy bears. Every time you start feeling like you have a grip on the book, it thrusts you into something equally bizarre and underdeveloped. None of it feels intentional, or contributing towards some kind of post-modern conversation on narrative structure, which leaves a lot to be desired. Luckily, this was a quick read, and I was nearly racing at the end to free myself from its clutches.

Beijing Bastard | Val Wang

This book was recommended to me earlier this year by a former professor of mine, and by chance I stumbled across it in the “book club” section of my library. It’s Val Wang’s memoir of her post-graduate decision to leave behind her NYC home and live in China, where her parents and their parents immigrated from. Inspired by the documentary film, Beijing Bastards, Wang’s ultimate goal in China is to film a documentary. About what, she doesn’t know yet. Along the way, she gets a job at a small newspaper as a journalist, improves her Chinese, learns her heroes aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, gets multiple terrible haircuts, joins a group of charismatic expats, and eventually ends up filming a documentary about the lives of a Peking Opera family hanging on to their antiquated art. It’s a funny book with a coming-of-age theme, that also gives the reader an interesting look into Beijing as it prepared for years for the 2008 Olympics, and a China much different than the one Wang’s parents had left behind.

The Sun Also Rises | Ernest Hemingway

Can I be totally honest? English major aside, honest? I’ve never been wild about Hemingway. I read A Farewell to Arms on a flight from South Carolina to Washington when I was 18 and just never felt like picking up another Hemingway novel again. Maybe it was the fact that I was sitting in a middle seat next to two strangers, one of which was eating some kind of unappealingly pungent sandwich, but for a while I thought it was just because Hemingway and I never clicked. However, I needed a book to read this month and found this one that I bought at a library book sale sometime last year. I figured I wouldn’t have bought it if not for thinking I should probably give Hemingway another chance, a couple years outside of bratty teenage-dom. And honestly? I’m glad I did. Even though this novel is considered the quintessential novel of the Lost Generation, I found a lot of it to be relatable to anyone from my age group as well. It follows the lives of a group of young expats living in France as they travel to Spain for the bullfights (of course), and live their lives with the utmost cynicism, disillusionment, contempt, yet undeniable lust for life. Like everyone else who likes Hemingway, I enjoyed his prose style in the same way that I enjoy Robert Creeley’s concise poetic line: every word has a meaning and it speaks clearly and loudly and you’re super attuned to it. Basically: I really liked this book, and my Hemingway curse is gone, and I’d gladly read another work of his in the future, and I’m happy to no longer harbor this guilt and shame.

The Art of Racing in the Rain | Garth Stein

Think back to your formative years and a book that really moved you at that time (don’t say Harry Potter, please don’t say Harry Potter. Please take this moment to prove to yourself and others that you have read other books besides Harry Potter). For me, that book is The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. I loved it so much after I read it, I lied to my 10th grade English teacher and told him I’d never read it so I could do my final book report project on it (including turning in a journal full of reading notes taken on every chapter, necessitating a thorough re-reading). Well, I just recently actually charged my Kindle (don’t judge me on this; do judge me on how many parentheticals I use), and realized this book was on sale for $4 and thought to myself “Wouldn’t it be interesting to see if I still love it just as much now as I did back then?”. Make note of my mistake here and never do something so inconsiderate to one of your precious pleasant memories. Essentially, I was immediately underwhelmed by this book. I get that it’s written from the perspective of a dog, and thus it may make sense for the prose to be simple, but Natsume Soseki wrote three volumes from the perspective of a cat that are still hailed as some of the greatest works in world literature. Let me be totally clear, this is by no means a bad book. It’s heartwarming, it’s human (in a dog way), it’s heartwrenching but ultimately triumphant — it’s got everything most readers (whether they want to admit it or not) want to see in a novel. Albeit, the dialogue between the human characters is… not great to say the least. Corny at best. However, the fact of the matter is, something about this book really resonated with me when I first read it at 15, and that shouldn’t be overlooked. So, Harry Potter fans, I guess I owe you one, since your book actually holds up; but really, please read something else. Probably wasn’t my brightest idea to tarnish what was once a pure, fond memory of this novel, but what’s done cannot be undone (do you have to quote the really notable Shakespeare lines? Please help me stop inserting parentheticals).

The Hatred of Poetry | Ben Lerner

I was recently recommended a book by Ben Lerner from a friend and for the life of me couldn’t find that book at any library in my area, but I did find this one. And I thought it was fitting judging by the title, because I too, as of right now and possibly the last 6+ months of my life, fucking hate poetry. Or maybe I hate the institutions surrounding poetry. Maybe, but I hate poetry too. Obviously, if you’ve read this blog at all pre-2017, you know it was almost exclusively an online portfolio for my poetry. And have you seen anything this year remotely resembling poetry I’ve written? Maybe one, I think? Okay, well have you seen me read any poetry during this year-long project of mine? Let me save you some time scrolling: nope, not a one. So then along comes this book, in which Ben Lerner in what I now believe to be his infinite wisdom discusses why people hate poetry so much, including those who write it. In a nutshell, he argues poetry and poems are not the same, that writing poems is so frustrating because they never capture the ethereal Thing the poet is trying to portray. Lerner makes an interesting point in stating that even people who don’t read any poetry at all can usually tell if they’re reading a bad poem, and why is that? Because in some way, we all know what poetry is not, even if we have no idea what it is. And while a good poem will never be the True Poem we’re all searching for, we should stop resenting the good poem and start realizing how what isn’t there brings us that much closer to what the True Poem actually is. I’m paraphrasing a lot, and using a ton of language he doesn’t actually ever use, and part of that is because I’m a fool and didn’t take notes on this book when I should’ve, but before I end this review I’ll add that if anything has brought me closer to reading and writing poetry again, it’s this little book.

(Look at that! No parentheticals in that entire paragraph right there. What a champ. I deserve this one.)

Between the pages: September

September reads, in chronological order:

Lincoln in the Bardo | George Saunders

This much is true: Abraham Lincoln’s son, Willie, caught a fever and died tragically towards the beginning of the Civil War. Lincoln was so distraught about his favorite son’s death that he visited the mausoleum where his son’s body was laid to rest for several nights after the funeral to hold Willie and weep for him. This much is George Saunders’ imagination: Willie Lincoln gets stuck in the Bardo (yes, the Tibetan one) and a handful of equally torn spirits work to convince him to move on, despite the fact that they themselves haven’t been able to let go either. While the premise of this story is certainly enticing, the real genius is in the form. Saunders splices together bits of historical accounts regarding Lincoln and Willie’s death with his fictional chapters, with dialogue presented almost exactly like the quotes he pulls from his non-fiction resources. It’s unlike any other novel I’ve read, truly, and I’d recommend it to anyone. Especially historical fiction readers, as I think Saunders adds something to the genre that gives it a much-needed creative re-birth.

The Three-Body Problem | Cixin Liu

Liu is China’s most acclaimed science fiction writer, and for good reason: this book is masterfully inventive, exciting, and intellectually stimulating. The story begins during China’s Cultural Revolution, when a Chinese scientist makes contact with an alien civilization. In their message to Earth, the messenger from this civilization warns the scientist not to reply, for if she does, his planet will have no choice but to invade and conquer hers. Thoroughly disillusioned with humanity after experiencing the horrors of the Cult. Rev., she replies. If I go into much more detail, I might spoil the book, so I’ll stop before I say too much more. Aside from some rather cheesy, heavy-handed symmetry at the end of the book (you’ll see what I mean), I think Liu took a trope in science fiction and turned it into something exciting and fresh again, which is no small feat. It’s the first book in a trilogy, and I’m definitely invested enough to keep reading.

It Can’t Happen Here | Sinclair Lewis

Set just before the start of World War II, when Americans could still largely play dumb about Hitler’s atrocities in Europe, this novel follows the life of Doremus Jessup, who, aside from his name, is about as common as common men can get. He’s a middle-of-the-line, business-as-usual, white bread and butter kind of guy. He dislikes that Democrat running for President, Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, and much prefers Republican Walt Trowbridge, who’s just as milquetoast as Doremus. So when Buzz Windrip’s supporters start forming their own militia and wearing their own uniforms and threatening violence, and Buzz Windrip eggs them on, Doremus Jessup and his friends don’t really worry much about it because “Hey! It can’t happen here.” And by “it,” Lewis means fascism. Well, surprise? It can happen and it does happen. While the book is a little dated, understandably, and there were some disagreeable moments in there for me, it’s got one hell of a message for Americans in the Trump Era (or rather, a message that we should’ve gotten prior to the Trump Era that would’ve presumably made it so we’d never have to utter the words Trump Era ever, ever, ever). At one point, Doremus even realizes that it’s not even Buzz Windrip’s supporters’ fault that things are the way they are; it’s his fault, and the fault of all the other milquetoast white bread moderates who did absolutely nothing while all of this was brewing. Sound familiar?

The Handmaid’s Tale | Margaret Atwood

I guess I wanted to continue the theme of Dystopian Or Maybe Happening Right Now novels because I followed It Can’t Happen Here with this little warning sign. I don’t think I need to describe the premise of this novel; seems everyone knows about it (except me, who was the one person who wasn’t required to read it in high school), and it’s a TV show now. I will say that I liked it, and by liked it I mean I appreciated it because it was, admittedly, hard to read. Especially when I couldn’t stop thinking that there are (and there have been for eons) men in positions of considerable power who would likely love to live in a world similar to, if not an exact replica of, Gilead. Yikes. I can see why this is required reading in many high school classrooms although I’m sure that’s been challenged throughout the years because a simple Google search of this book’s title will result in several Concerned Conservative Parent associations fighting to ban this book from their poor child’s school. I guess it’s hard to look yourself in the mirror when your beliefs are so disturbing.

Between the pages: August

Well.

I’m exhausted.

This post will be short. Because it has to be, and I am still recovering from 4 weeks of intensive ESL teacher training that completely ruled my life for the month of August. Hence (hence? stop me from saying that ever again) why three of the four books pictured here are textbooks. Really, all I read independently this month was The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen so I’ll only be recapping that one here. I’m not even really sure how I was able to finish even one bit of independent reading last month but hey! I did.

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lol @ how half of this picture disappeared in the sunlight

August reads, in chronological order, which is a little ridiculous because there is only one book here, but I’ve got a format for these blog posts that I follow semi-religiously, so for the sake of continuity, let this slide just once:

The Corrections | Jonathan Franzen

I picked this book up at the same time I bought that DFW book last month, mostly because it was used and only $8. As it turns out, I think I might’ve enjoyed this one more than A Supposedly Fun Thing, probably because I never felt like Franzen was wasting my time (sorry, David). The Corrections is the most unfortunately realistic depiction of the American nuclear family I might’ve ever encountered in literature. Franzen bounces from the perspectives of the matriarch and patriarch, Enid and Alfred Lambert, to their three children, Gary, Chip, and Denise. By the end of the book, these characters were as real to me as my own family members, as Franzen doesn’t so much satirize Americans and Americanisms so much as he tells it exactly like it is, which makes you wish it was satirical. I’m still… unsure about the ending, though. I was expecting a bit more of a climax than what I got (ha, was that the point, Franzen?). Something along the lines of Zadie Smith’s ending to White Teeth (which remains, to this day, one of the most masterful works of literature I’ve ever read and probably ruined almost everything I read afterwards). But oh well, like I said, maybe that’s the point. Anyway, I had never heard of this book before coming across it at the bookstore months ago, which is surprising because it really is quite good, and I highly recommend it if you’re looking for a book that is #relatable (and written in a time before #relatable was even a thing–2001!).

 

Between the pages: July

You’ll have to excuse the fact that not only am I writing this days later than I should’ve but I don’t have all my July reads stacked on top of each other in one neat little picture like I normally do. July was my last month in Bellingham so a good part of it was spent packing everything away into boxes, including my books, and the first two books I read this month were leant to me so I had to give them back to their lenders before I left, so they all got split up, and thus I present to you three separate pictures (two my own, one via Google) of the books I read in July.

Ok! Enough! On to the good stuff.

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July reads, in chronological order:

Snow Country and Thousand Cranes | Yasunari Kawabata

You may remember Kawabata’s name since I read The Lake a few months ago. That was my first work of his, and this collection of two of his most famous works was my second (and third). “Snow Country” takes place at a ski resort and centers around a frequent visitor to the resort and the geisha he develops a relationship with. I’ll admit, I found this story beautifully written but not as interesting as “Thousand Cranes,” in which a young man comes to develop a relationship with his father’s mistress and her daughter whilst attending a tea ceremony with them after his father’s death. The tradition of the tea ceremony and its rich history make for an excellent vehicle through which Kawabata examines death and nostalgia and desire. Kawabata is subtle in a way that most authors I read certainly aren’t, which is probably why I find his texts both easy and difficult to read; they’re misleadingly simple, but actually require a great deal of close reading.

Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1979 | Haruki Murakami

How Many Murakami Books Can Alex Read in 2017? Apparently, quite a few. Like the previous book, this one contains two stories, the difference being that these two are related to each other. Hear the Wind Sing was Murakami’s first novel, with Pinball, 1979 serving as a kind of sequel (it follows the lives of different characters who appear in the first story but aren’t focused on). For someone who’s read my fair share of Murakami’s later works, these stories offered some insight into where his classic Murakami Moves originated. Nameless protagonists, Beatles music, jazz music, whiskey bars, and of course, women, abound here as they do in every other one of his books. While each story was fun and enjoyable in the same way that every other Murakami story is fun and enjoyable, my favorite part was his introduction to Hear the Wind Sing where he writes about becoming a writer and his life before he started writing. You can tell from the introduction how much of himself and his life lives on through every one of his many protagonists, and while my reaction to most of it was “of course, of course,” I found it pretty endearing.

Chemistry | Weike Wang

Ever since I read a review of this book in The Guardian I’ve been trying to get my hands on it, which apparently a lot of other people were doing as well, since it was sold out of my local bookstore for weeks, but alas, I finally managed to snag my own copy, which is great, because this book is great, and I think I need to take a breath here. Okay. All better. I could really learn a lesson from Wang, whose sentences are as incisive and condensed as lines in a Robert Creeley poem. Chemistry is about a young Chinese-American doctoral student studying–you guessed it–chemistry, and trying to reconcile her conflicted feelings about her long-term relationship with her childhood as the daughter of two Chinese immigrants. It’s a smart book, and one that I think anyone with commitment or intimacy issues can relate to. Actually, anyone who’s ever been unsure about anything in life can relate to Wang’s narrator’s struggles.

A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again | David Foster Wallace

This book came as a recommendation to me by someone to whom I had just admitted that I’d never read anything by David Foster Wallace. This, he said, might be a better stepping stone into Wallace than Infinite Jest–a book I’ve been thoroughly averse to reading after my clumsy, frustrating, and often demoralizing attempt at Gravity’s Rainbow at the start of this year. In many ways, I think he was right. The first impression you get from reading this collection of essays and arguments is “this guy is pretty goddamn smart.” The second impression you might get, and the one I certainly got, was “where is this pretty goddamn smart guy’s editor?” Some of these essays, I’ll be frank, are just unnecessarily long. Redundancies frolic with verbose (though sometimes, yes, amusing) descriptions of things I just can’t quite seem to care about and am simultaneously in awe of and concerned that Wallace even notices (such as, but not limited to, every motherf***ing detail about professional tennis). All that aside, there are some insanely good essays in here. One specifically, about television and the TV generation and watching and being watched had me nodding my head so emphatically I’m lucky I didn’t pull something. The last essay, in which he describes his experience on a Celebrity Cruise, is also quite entertaining, and will certainly strike a chord with anyone else who finds “curated fun” a nauseatingly depressing experience. Reading this book restored my confidence to one day read Infinite Jest, which is either a really good thing or a really bad thing, I don’t know yet, I guess I’ll find out. I’m still trying to figure out if Gravity’s Rainbow did more harm than good to me.

Human Acts | Han Kang

Like Kawabata, you might also recognize Han Kang because earlier this year I read what is probably her most famous work, The Vegetarian. Human Acts wasn’t Kafka-eqsue like The Vegetarian, but it was just as disturbing. The plot revolves around the 1980 Gwangju Uprising in South Korea, which was an absolutely horrific response to a pro-democracy, pro-labor rights movement and resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians at the hands of the military. Kang takes this painful memory for South Koreans and explores concepts like survivor’s guilt, the nature of humanity, and the duality of body and soul. Her translator notes in the beginning of the novel that Kang wanted to avoid sensationalizing the Gwangju Uprising as it is usually portrayed and instead wanted to remain almost morally ambiguous. She wrote the book based on the life of a young family friend who died during the Uprising, right after her family had moved away from Gwangju. It’s an incredibly powerful novel that was often so heavy I had to take a break from reading it just to regain my composure. Kang emphasizes the human element of the tragedy, choosing not to focus so much on the political side of things (although, one can argue, those two are irrevocably intertwined). As the Gwangju Uprising is something arguably the majority of Americans know nothing about, even though our own country is implicated in that tragedy, I’d say this is an important read for everyone. It’s also a good reminder to Americans that while we love to point out how cruel and inhumane life is for citizens of North Korea, life in the capitalist South wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows either.

Between the pages: June

The belatedness of this blog post is indicative of the Very Good Long Weekend I had at the start of July, which completely distracted me from essentially all of my obligations (including this one). I doubt anyone actually noticed this post is about a week late but because I can’t seem to begin any of these posts without some mostly unnecessary introduction, I’m pointing it out anyways.

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June reads, in chronological order:

The Complete Stories | Flannery O’Connor

This book was a collection of all of Flannery O’Connor’s published short stories, and it was actually given to me by a customer at my work last fall. I saw her holding it while I was bagging her groceries and made a comment about how I hadn’t actually read any O’Connor yet. She then handed it to me over the counter and said “take it, I’ll never read it and I was waiting for someone to give it away to.” So I finally got around to reading it last month and found myself thoroughly enjoying this first odyssey of mine into Southern Gothic literature. O’Connor’s characters are grotesque and often misguided, each of them coming to some abrupt, even fatal, moral awakening at the end of each story. Her most common subjects are Christianity, race, gender, and the intersection of the three. I enjoyed the first few stories the most out of all of them because, at a certain point, I became familiar enough with O’Connor’s formula to know what to expect at the end of each piece. For that reason, I might’ve enjoyed all of these stories more had I not read them in one marathon-like stretch, but they did pique my interest in this genre I was previously unfamiliar with.

Men Without Women | Haruki Murakami

For the first time ever, I read a *new* Murakami book the year it came out. I knew what I was getting into; once you read one Murakami book, it’s almost like you’ve read them all. He’s a one-trick pony but his trick is so good you keep coming back for more. If you’ve ever thought I was a book snob (and I know I sort of am), my return to Murakami time after time should be proof enough that, deep down, I’m as much a sucker for pop literature as anyone else. Men Without Women is a collection of short stories about, well, men without women. Or at least, men who have women enter and exit their lives in an impactful yet somehow ghostlike sort of way. He even has a story written from the perspective of the vermin from Kafka’s The Metamorphosis that wakes up one morning as Gregor Samsa, which is pretty fun albeit a little gimmicky. Aside from that story, this book lacked Murakami’s signature magical realism, which I missed quite a bit. Maybe that’s the biggest reason why I felt a little underwhelmed by it. Nevertheless, it’s a quick read and still pretty enjoyable if you’re a Murakami fan (and probably even if you aren’t).

The Death of Ivan Ilyich & Confession | Leo Tolstoy

About a year ago I read Anna Karenina and always meant to read more Tolstoy but didn’t until now. This book contains the short fictional work The Death of Ivan Ilyich, as well as Confession, which is Tolstoy’s essay on his relationship with God. Both pieces were written after Anna Karenina, and both are prime examples of Tolstoy’s obsessive existential crisis and fear of death. Ivan Ilyich is about the titular character’s sudden sickness and death, and his realization near the end of his life, from spending so much time with his peasant manservant, that though he thought he lived and accomplished and good life, all of the things he devoted himself to in his life (career, the comfort and fashionability of his home, climbing the social ladder) were ultimately meaningless when he was faced with his impending death. Confession is the true story of how Tolstoy also came to the same conclusion of Ivan Ilyich, and how he found his way back to a faith in God. Confession, while being a fascinating insight into Tolstoy’s mind, was also sort of upsetting because it is so evident how terrified Tolstoy is of what comes after this life. His belief in God seems about as faithful as Pascal’s Wager. I think that any reader can relate to Tolstoy’s conundrum, however, and maybe his obsession with death that eventually drove him to leave his wife and children will serve as a warning not to get too caught up in what happens after this life.

After the Quake | Haruki Murakami

I had an unspoken rule when I began this monthly project never to read the same author twice in one month. Obviously, I broke that rule with After the Quake; my second Murakami book in the month of June. This book was lent to me along with two others (one of them being the next book in this list) and since I’m moving soon I didn’t want to put off reading it and then have to return it unread. Like Men Without Women, this is also a collection of short stories, though I enjoyed this one quite a bit more than the other. Murakami wrote these stories after the Kyoto earthquake in 1995, and the earthquake is a sort of character in each one of them. I think the subject of the earthquake and all the universal metaphorical possibilities it presents make these stories much stronger and more meaningful than those in Men Without Women, whose underlying theme often comes across as tired, and whose stories veer into sentimentality too much for my taste. This collection also contains that magical realism element that Men Without Women lacked.

Kokoro | Natsume Soseki

Before reading this book, the oldest Japanese literature I had read was The Lake by Yasunari Kawabata. Kokoro was written right after at the end of the Meiji period, and it is considered to be a seminal work of “modern” Japanese literature (the Meiji period is considered the beginning of “modern Japan” by most historians). It follows the story of a young man who befriends an older, austere, unemployed but well-off man who he simply refers to as “Sensei” throughout the novel. The young man admires Sensei, so much so that he is willing to leave his father’s death bed when he receives news that Sensei has killed himself. The final part of the novel is written from Sensei’s point of view as he relates his life story to his young friend, explaining why he became a misanthrope and seemingly trying to dispel any idea in the young man’s mind that Sensei is someone to be revered. Soseki examines the characteristics of the Meiji period through his characters and the way they interact with each other/the world around them, while also teaching us quite a bit about the imbalances of human relationships in a way that was so profound I felt pretty choked up at the end of this novel. I’ll certainly be looking for more Soseki to read in the future.

Between the pages: May

This month’s worth of books was great, as usual, but there is one standout among them that I’d like to take a little more time with because I feel so strongly that it should be read by every American citizen. That book is North Korea: Another Country by Bruce Cumings, and I cannot stress enough that everyone should read this book, regardless of if you know a damn thing about Korea or even East Asia in general. It’s weird to start out a post like this but I wanted to draw immediate attention to this book in order to prevent its importance from slipping through the cracks amidst the four other books I read this month.

That’s not to say the others weren’t great! They were. I’ve yet to read a book this year that I didn’t like (maybe because I’m picking them out myself 98% of the time?). But please, if you don’t read anything else on this post, read about this book. It’s just that good.

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May reads, in chronological order:

Absurdistan | Gary Shteyngart

My first Shteyngart book was Super Sad True Love Story and it blew me away. I couldn’t imagine anyone writing a more pertinent political and social satire befitting the modern day (until I read Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, which in my mind is equally as masterful). Absurdistan was written prior to Super Sad, and follows the antihero Misha Vainberg, a Russian Jew, through his efforts to leave Russia and embrace American multiculturalism (which, for him, primarily refers to black culture, and not much else). As he’s trying to make his way to New York City, he makes his first stop in Absurdistan, a former Eastern Bloc country (though obviously made up for this novel). Upon arriving, a civil war breaks out, and Misha’s great American escape plan becomes a bit more muddied as everyone else concerns themselves with being on the winning side.

While this book was hilarious, and true to the Shteyngart style that I became so enamored with after Super Sad, I have to admit I felt like some of the satire went over my head. I think anyone from Russia or familiar with the lifestyle and culture of Russia and/or the former Soviet satellite states might have been able to enjoy this book more than I did, and since Shteyngart is a Russian immigrant, it makes sense that he would write something like this. Super Sad was more relatable (I hate using that word but I have no other way of saying this) for me, which is probably why I enjoyed that book more than Absurdistan. Nevertheless, this novel is worth a read for anyone who enjoys political/social satire.

North Korea: Another Country | Bruce Cumings

Now that I’ve really hyped this book up for you, here comes the “why.” In America, we get one side of the story when it comes to North Korea: our over-simplified, sensationalist account of why this country hates us and why we hate them. We berate the regime for their human rights abuses, their extreme ideology, the apparent hereditary succession of power, and herald these transgressions as our reason for not engaging them (all while we make oil and arms deals with the Saudi monarchy…). Most of all, we panic about their nuclear weapons program, all while laughing at the “ridiculousness” of their “insane” “child-like” dictator, Kim Jong-un (see The Interview). Cumings, an esteemed scholar of Korean history and the current Department of History Chair at the University of Chicago, essentially asks us all to empathize, not sympathize, with North Korea, and he claims the necessary ingredient in this recipe for understanding is a knowledge of Korean-U.S. history throughout the 20th century. Primarily, the Korean War.

When I was reading this book, and when people asked me what it was about, I asked them if they knew much about the Korean War. Almost all of them (except for my boyfriend, who has studied East Asian politics for years) said they didn’t. When I told them Cumings refers to it as “the forgotten war,” they all agreed. In my own experience, I can honestly say that if I hadn’t taken an interest in East Asian politics, I too would probably know next to nothing about the Korean War. It was never really discussed in any of my history classes before college. I knew it happened, but I couldn’t have told you when, or why, or what really happened on that peninsula. Yet I could talk pretty comfortably about WWI, WWII, and the Vietnam War, even though we dropped more napalm in Korea than we ever did on the Vietnamese. We committed heinous war crimes that we were never held accountable for. No one ever talks about it. At least, no one ever talks about it here, in America. In North Korea, the Korean War is still fresh on their minds. It informs every decision the DPRK’s government makes in terms of relations with the U.S. After all, the war never actually ended. An armistice was declared, but technically, it’s been going on for decades.

Obviously, I could talk about this issue all day, but I’m nowhere near as qualified or eloquent or witty as Cumings is, so I’ll leave it to him to tell the rest. This book is one of the most level-headed, unemotional, unbiased analyses of our relationship with the DPRK, and despite being written in 2004, before Kim Jong-un took power, its message is just as relevant (if not more so) today. Cumings encourages dialogue over saber-rattling, understanding over nationalism (disguised as patriotism), and discourages a reliance on information regarding the DPRK from any of the major news outlets. It’s a quick read as far as history books go, and well worth your time.

The Logic and Limits of Political Reform in China | Joseph Fewsmith

Okay, I’m no chump, I know this book probably sounds immensely boring, but if you’re interested in Chinese politics it’s probably one of the best books out there surrounding the topic of potential democratization in China in the near future. Plenty of China-watchers want this to be so, and unfortunately, Fewsmith’s analysis doesn’t really bode much hope in that arena. He looks at case studies of democratic practices that have popped up (experimentally) in small villages throughout China, as well as inner-party democracy, and tries to find evidence of the institutionalization of these practices. It is not enough for him that they are successful; he wants to see if they’ll last.

I’ve read several articles by Fewsmith but this is the first book of his I’ve read and I thought it was brilliant. He takes a rather technical issue and makes it digestible, and his argument is solid. It’s not an optimistic book if you’re crossing your fingers for China’s democratization, but I think he’d probably agree with fellow China scholar Andrew Mertha in that if you’re looking for liberalization or democratization, you might just be missing the forest for the trees. There’s a larger picture here, and while China may not be heading towards democracy, that doesn’t mean it’s not changing in other interesting ways (see Mertha’s incredible book China’s Water Warriors for more on this subject).

I, Robot |Isaac Asimov

Here’s a book I’ve been meaning to read for a while and never got around to it until now. The copy I have looks like its marketing towards young boys (glossy neon orange cover, cheesy drawing of a robot, silly tagline, etc.) and while this book could certainly be read and understood by children, I’m not sure I’d call it children’s lit. Asimov’s thought experiments are fascinating enough to keep a child’s attention but harbor a complexity that adults will appreciate. The book is composed of several different stories told within the context of an interview with a woman named Susan Calvin, a “robopsychologist.” I think most people are familiar with the premise of this book (maybe from the movie of the same name? Although I’ve heard they’re not really much alike) so I’ll keep this brief and end this with a recommendation: you don’t have to love science fiction to enjoy I, Robot. The issues that arise in the book are universal questions of humanity; questions that are already relevant in an age of growing AI technology which will only become more pressing as time goes on.

Totto-chan | Tetsuko Kuroyanagi

This was a rather weird book to end this month with, considering it is vastly different from all the others in both content and physical appearance. I picked this book up for a dollar last year at the library book sale and didn’t really know what it was about, nor was I sure I’d ever read it, but I’m so glad I did. Totto-chan is a creative nonfiction memoir about the author’s experience at a very unconventional elementary school in Tokyo during WWII. Kuroyanagi grew up to become, among other things, one of Japan’s biggest TV personalities, and credits much of her success to her experience under the guidance of the school’s headmaster, Mr. Kobayashi.

This book, even more so than I, Robot, is absolutely accessible to children with its simplistic prose and first-person narration from a child’s POV. However, I (and apparently many other adults around the world) have found this book to be meaningful as well. The headmaster’s understanding of children is inspiring and optimistic, and the fact that all these heartwarming events take place while a horrible war is raging in the background gives it a complexity unlike what I expected going into it. After finishing this book, I immediately thought of Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids by Kenzaburo Oe which I read last month; a book that also told the story of Japanese children’s experience during WWII, and one that was largely based on Oe’s own life. That book was, as I think I wrote before, essentially like Lord of the Flies, so it was interesting to get two very different perspectives of the same time period after reading Totto-chan.

Between the pages: April

My favorite month’s worth of books so far. I’m loving the freedom to read whatever I want, whenever I want, and I think I’m still reading as much (if not more) than I would if I were still in school.

That being said, I am looking for recommendations (I’m always looking, but now I’m publicly and openly looking)! I’ve almost read all the books I own and since I still have 7 more months of this year-long project (plus a lifetime of reading ahead of me) I want some new material. If you have a favorite book (or books) you think I’d enjoy, please let me know. I’ve been reading a lot of fiction lately and trying to read more East Asian literature as well as historical nonfiction, but I’m pretty much open to anything (just no YA, please).

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April reads, in chronological order:

Player Piano | Kurt Vonnegut

I’ve been making my way through Kurt Vonnegut’s repertoire for years now — since I was 17. Player Piano is one of those books I just never seemed to find at the store and then finally, last Christmas, it came to me as a gift. In true Vonnegut fashion, it combines humor with the essence of humankind’s seemingly suicidal foolishness, and it may be one of his books most appropriately labeled “science fiction.” It follows the life of Paul Proteus, son of an engineer and an engineer himself in a world where engineers are the new upper class citizens, machines do all manual labor, and everyone one else is either married to one of these engineers or they have two choices: join the military, or join the Recreation and Restoration Corps. Naturally, there’s some social unrest, and Paul finds himself on the rebels’ side, quickly becoming vehemently anti-machine and the face of the underground revolution. Player Piano, despite being written in 1952 (in addition to being Vonnegut’s first novel), speaks to a fear we still have today: with technology advancing as it is, and with robots becoming increasingly intelligent and capable, are we heading towards a world without work? And if so, is this a good thing? I think this book should be supplemented with this article by Derek Thompson for The Atlantic, which further explores these concepts.

The Vegetarian | Han Kang

This book has been on my list for a while now and I only recently happened upon it at a used bookstore in town. I had high expectations going in, and I can say happily that they were all met. While the story revolves around one Korean woman’s sudden and dramatic transition to vegetarianism, the woman herself is not one of the three narrators. Although all three narrators think she’s descending into madness, the reader has to wonder if it’s not those around her who are actually the most disturbed. This is, regrettably, the first piece of Korean literature I’ve ever read (most of my East Asian literature has been Japanese), and it surely won’t be the last. The Vegetarian is a quick read and a wild story, a callback to Kafka’s The Metamorphosis or the more bizarre eroticism in any Murakami novel.

A Tale for the Time Being | Ruth Ozeki

This might have earned a place in my heart as one of my favorite books. I first heard about it about a year ago when I was invited to a book signing/meet and greet that Ozeki was holding in town but the notice was too short for me to actually read A Tale for the Time Being and I didn’t want to roll into the event without even owning a copy of the book. Now, I sort of regret that decision, but I figure raving about this novel here will make up for my lack of support back then. The story begins with the diary of a Japanese teenage girl washing up on the Canadian shore, and progresses as the main character, Ruth, works to uncover the mystery of what happened to the diary’s owner and her family. This novel does some interesting work blurring the lines between reality and fiction, starting with the main characters named (and presumably modeled?) after the author and her husband. It’s a tender, often tragic, novel that I would recommend to anyone looking for an uplifting story. This is the first novel I’ve read in a while that I had any direct emotional connection to, which probably influences how highly I think of it, but I can’t imagine why any reader wouldn’t enjoy it as much as I did.

Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids | Kenzaburo Oe

Speaking of uplifting stories, this is absolutely not one of them. Think Lord of the Flies meets that gut-wrenching yet surprisingly optimistic manga/anime Barefoot Gen, minus any semblance of hope or recovery, and you’ve got this short early work from notable Japanese author Kenzaburo Oe. Inspired by his experience as a young boy in Japan during WWII, this story follows the lives of a group of reformatory school kids as they are shuffled from rural village to rural village to keep them out of cities targeted by American bombers. Eventually, they end up in one inhospitable village where a plague breaks out shortly after their arrival, sparking the evacuation of all adults/villagers who threaten to shoot any of the kids who try to follow them. The reformatory boys (plus one village girl, left over from the evacuation, one boy from the nearby Korean settlement, and a runaway Japanese soldier) must survive on their own in the bitter winter until the adults return. A tough read, Oe masterfully details the horrors of war while still holding his countrymen accountable for what transpired. While the children are the most sympathetic characters in the novel, it’s often disheartening to see how they may grow up to repeat the adults’ mistakes. It’s a quick read, but a rich one at that.

The Man Who Loved China | Simon Winchester

After Oe (and Kang, for that matter), I needed something a little lighter to round out this month’s reads. My boyfriend and I have had The Man Who Loved China sitting on a shelf of ours for a while now but neither of us had read it, so I figured it was time. I’m normally not inclined to reading biographies except on select occasions, so this one surprised me with how engaging it was. Winchester tells the story of Joseph Needham, a Cambridge-educated scientist who, after having an affair with a visiting Chinese biologist, falls in love with China; the language, the culture, and most of all, the history of science in the country. He eventually embarks on an adventure in China during WWII, when much of the country was occupied by the Japanese, making it as dangerous as it was exciting for him. He famously asked what is now known as the Needham Question: “Science in China — why not develop?”. Needham wanted not only to chronicle all the multitude of inventions that came from China long before we saw them in the West, but he also wanted to know why, around the 1500s, China stops being on the forefront of scientific discovery while such progress explodes in Europe. Needham’s story is a fascinating one, not only because he went on to publish the multi-volume Science and Civilisation in China, his life’s work that has never gone out of print, but because he himself is quite the eccentric character. A nudist in an open “modern” marriage, a devout Christian, speaker of multiple languages, fascinated by trains, and a Cambridge professor, he himself is as interesting as his project. As someone interested in China who itches to travel, I’ve been inspired by Needham after reading Winchester’s work. I don’t think you need to be interested in China to enjoy this book, but it certainly helps.

Between the pages: March

March reads! Coming to you, naturally, in early April.

I don’t know what possessed me but I read a lot this past month. Probably because reading offers a pretty nice little escape from the real world and right now the real world is stressful and all over the place so turning to books helps with that a bit.

You’ll notice it looks like I read six books in March, but it’s actually five. That’s because I forgot to include one of the books I read in February in that month’s blog post. Actually, I forgot I read it at all. In all honesty I’m not even sure if I read it in February but I do remember I read it in 2017 so it’s a safe bet. So yeah, just imagine Kawabata’s The Lake sandwiched between the February reads. Or don’t, I don’t care, I just need to account for it.

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March reads, in chronological order:

The Lake | Yasunari Kawabata

The fact that I forgot to include this book in February’s list is certainly not because it is a forgettable book. A more accurate statement would be that I am a forgetful person who reads a lot of really good books, and because I read this book in just a day while some of the others took much longer, there was a good chance I’d forget to include it in my list. Anyway, I’ve been trying to read more Japanese literature in the pasta couple years, and Kawabata was Japan’s first winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, so I’m glad I found this book at a library book sale for a humble dollar. The Lake is the story of the repulsive Gimpei, a man who stalks beautiful women, and gives us glimpses at his unhappy life. Kawabata switches effortlessly between reality and fantasy, leaving the reader as confused about Gimpei as they were upon first meeting him in a bath house at the start of the book. I’m struggling to describe this book with concision, but I’ll leave you with a nice little glimpse into Kawabata’s prose and his dark protagonist:

Just as Gimpei followed women, so his lies trailed behind him. Perhaps it is the same with crime. A crime, once committed, pursues a person until he repeats it.

The Prince | Niccolo Machiavelli

This is one of those “I read this so long ago I can’t say I really remember it so I should probably read it again” situations. Almost everyone has heard of this book; after all, its had a major influence on modern political philosophy since its publication in the 1500s. Essentially, it justifies the immoral actions of leaders in the interest of preserving order and gaining prestige.

And, moreover, he [the prince] need not worry about incurring the bad reputation of those vices without which it would be difficult to hold his state; since, carefully taking everything into account, he will discover that something which appears to be a virtue, if pursued, will end in his destruction; while some other thing which seems to be a vice, if pursued, will result in his safety and his well-being.

Wampeters, Foma, & Granfalloons | Kurt Vonnegut

I’ve been slowly but surely making my way through Vonnegut’s complete works and this one happened to be one I hadn’t read yet. It’s not a novel, but a collection of essays and speeches (plus one short work of fiction) in which Vonnegut’s usual dark comedy makes an appearance, although at times it seems even he deems the subject matter a bit to distressing to joke about. For instance, in his essay “Biafra: A People Betrayed,” he writes of the atrocities that took place during the siege of Biafra by Nigeria and his own experience visiting Biafra on an aid mission. While there are a few snide comments here and there, it is evident that he feels deeply connected to the Biafrans and mourns their defeat and suffering wholeheartedly. It is perhaps one of the most sincere pieces of writing from Vonnegut that I remember, aside from The Sirens of Titan, a novel that moved me so much I recall tearing up at one point.

Civilization and its Discontents | Sigmund Freud

This is a book I wish I had read long ago. I am familiar with some of Freud’s writings on psychology but not so much with his sociological work, which I suppose is where you would categorize this (although if you’re looking for a work of Freud’s where he doesn’t talk about the Id, the Ego, and the Superego, this is not the book for you). Freud is often the butt of the joke these days, and it seems no one really takes him seriously (often, for good reason), but this book deserves more respect than that. Freud seeks to answer why people joined together in this thing called “civilization” at all, and how civilization inherently creates discontent amongst those living in it (hence the title). If you have a bone to pick with Freud, you’ll probably find a few more in this book as well, but I will say it is worth the read and the arguments are worth consideration.

The Sellout | Paul Beatty

I borrowed this book on recommendation from a good friend and it’s gotta be one of the best American books written in the last twenty years. At its core, The Sellout is a racial satire that involves the reinstitution of slavery and segregation in a Los Angeles neighborhood. I don’t even want to say much more about this book other than get your damn hands on it right this minute. I will say that while it’s easy to tune out and laugh at Beatty’s jokes, the jokes carry a great deal of weight behind them and it would behoove (white) people to consider them beyond their immediate comedic value. Seriously, though, this book is a god damn treasure. I’ll be seeking out more of Beatty’s works to read in the future.

1Q84 | Haruki Murakami

Whenever I feel overwhelmed by the world around me, I dive into a Murakami novel. Chalk it up to all that magical realism, I guess. Anyway, I wasn’t really looking to add a 1,000+ page book to my reading queue at the end of the month for fear that I wouldn’t finish it in time to add it to March’s list, but the nice thing about Murakami is that he’s easier to read than Tolstoy or Pynchon (mostly Pynchon), so this mammoth-sized novel didn’t actually feel that long. All in all, I enjoyed this book. It wasn’t my favorite (that would have to be The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle or A Wild Sheep Chase), but it did what I needed it to do: take me in and offer me an escape. The first half of the book was brilliantly done, almost painfully suspenseful at times, but the pacing in the last half was off and the story started to stagnate and dragged me to the end. Sometimes I wonder who Murakami’s editor is and what exactly he edits out of these books because it often seems like he just checks for typos and calls it a day. Also, while I’m not against a good love story, this one was… well, corny. Really, really corny. The end of the book had me rolling my eyes more than once. That said, it’s still worth a read, and I wish I had just half the imagination that Murakami possesses.