Just a few good books

Back in the saddle

One of many feelings I’m having post U.S. election is that we shouldn’t stop enjoying the things that make our lives sweet, the specific interests, the curiosities and pleasures that make us individuals and give a sense of fulfilment. It’s not necessary to sacrifice these things to live your values. Writing about books is on my sweetness list, and so is talking about books, whether virtually or in person, so let’s keep it up.

I’ll be sending out my annual reading round-up in December-January, but in the meantime, here are recent reads, six good books.*

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Where do you find the next book to read? My lovely mother-in-law (hi Barbara!) asked me this question given my sometimes odd finds, and it’s now something I’d like to ask all reader friends, too. My to-be-read pile comes from lots of different places: recommendations from friends, eavesdropping online (used to be “lit Twitter”, and it seems to be coming back on BlueSky), reviews in the NY Times and NY Magazine, random finds in used bookstores (some of which I’ve been toting around for years, unread), interviews with authors where they mention writers they admire, the “recommended by staff” displays in bookstores (these do work on me!), literary journals, when I come across a stand-out poem/essay/story…

I did realize my recent reading has been very heavy on titles from New York Review Books (NYRB). This is because I’m totally devoted to the press - anything they publish will be unique and well written, even if not to my taste - but also because they’ve been expanding in recent years, launching a comics imprint, and acquiring Dorothy, a Publishing Project, which is a fabulous feminist small press. They also have dangerous sales twice a year where the more books you buy, the more is discounted. So yes, 4 of the 6 recommended reads below are NYRB books in some way or another! But they’re all quite different, actually…

First, a recent release:

Sad Grownups by Amy Stuber (Stillhouse Press, 2024)

Just published in October, Sad Grownups is a short story collection that grapples deeply with our current reality. It’s substantial, both in length and depth of thought, as weighty as a good novel. It’s populated by women of all ages grappling with sex and sexuality, motherhood, America, family trauma... I admired especially the Stuber’s eye for detail - the single thing that will tell you so much about a character, a place, a relationship. If that sounds good, check out an interview I had the pleasure to conduct with the author about the collection for the Chicago Review of Books. (I know Amy from when we were co-flash fiction editors Split Lip Magazine, a fantastic online literary journal.) And order the book at Bookshop.org!

* Full disclosure, since 2024 went sideways for me, I didn’t get around to writing about my top 5 books from last year. Les voilà now, all recommended…

Me & Other Writing by Marguerite Duras, trans. Olivia Baes & Emma Ramadan (Dorothy, a Publishing Project, 2019)

A collection of Marguerite Duras’ nonfiction. I like, above all, that no matter what the genre or medium, Duras did whatever the hell she wanted. These essays don’t conform. Her voice is always the star element. The central piece in the collection is “Summer ‘80”, which started as a series of newspaper columns and became a unique form she developed - reflections on current events mixed with a fictional narrative she drew out, seemingly, as she went along. I actually wasn’t as taken by this one as the shorter pieces, which cover a wide range of subjects - film, crime, her mother, Yve St. Laurent… I feel guilty for not reading this work in French, but I can say the translation is solid, unobtrusive with a sense for rhythm and sound. (I have to say, though irrelevant to the contents, this is a beautifully designed book - the cover, the square shape, the quality paper, it’s a pleasure to hold.)

Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black: Collected Stories by Cookie Mueller (Semiotext(e), 2022, original 1990)

Browsing in the slick, white bookshops of contemporary art museums makes me feel cool for a minute, like I’m wearing an outfit that reflects good taste in art but is also not trying too hard (though I’m not, I’m not) and I have something to say about architecture (I don’t, I really don’t). I spotted this title at the hip bookshop at the Jeu de Paume in Paris, and it called to me like a familiar face, though I’d never heard of Cookie Mueller, a writer among the artists. I’m so happy I do know about her now: Baltimore native, muse to Pope of Trash John Waters, and later, photographer of downtown 1980s NYC, Nan Goldin. There Cookie was, writing through it all. This collection spans her entire short life. (Mueller died of AIDS in 1989 at age 40.) Many of the stories are autobiographical or straightforward remembrances, and the collection even includes her advice column for an East Village newspaper and previously unpublished stuff. There’s Cookie running into the Manson girls in Haight Ashbury, before they went to L.A., applying homemade tattoos to other rebel girls in Provincetown, doing unspeakable acts for the art of Pink Flamingos, go-go dancing in a New Jersey bar, scoring heroin in the night jungle of Alphabet City. I’d classify Cookie as an outsider artist in that she wasn’t formally trained as a writer, she just dove in. You couldn’t or shouldn’t or wouldn’t want to compare her to someone like Elizabeth Hardwick or Rachel Kushner or something. Her voice is straightforward, funny, tough, and compassionate.

Temptation by János Székely, trans. Mark Baczoni (NYRB Classics, 2020, originally 1946)

This was an impulse buy when the press was having a sale. It’s a massive novel (almost 700 pages long) about a young boy growing up in the deepest poverty in 1930s Hungary. He makes his way to the big city, Budapest, to join his young mother. He eventually gets a job at a fancy hotel and falls for one of the rich patrons there, among other misadventures. I was surprised by how propulsive and entertaining this rambling tale is - the protagonist has only reached age 9 in the first hundred pages or so, which would normally make me impatient and drop off, but the writing is fresh, unexpected, and so funny with that pitch-black Central/Eastern European sense of humor. Somehow, at the same time, the book slowly broke my heart. It will certainly erase any nostalgia for pre-WWII Europe the reader harbors. It verges on communist propaganda at times, and for good reason. It’s a deeply intimate and articulate account of living in the underclass, being treated worse than an animal, including as a child, no detail spared. (And in fact the author eventually emigrated to America, became a successful screenwriter and was eventually blacklisted for communist activities.) Completely absorbing.

I Used to Be Charming: The Rest of Eve Babitz (NYRB Classics, 2019)

A collection of Eve Babitz’s magazine writing from the 70s to the 90s, for when you’ve read all her books and just need more Eve Babitz in your life. I love her writing for its pluck and deceptively easy wit, and the way she is boldly, smartly, unapologetically feminine in her point of view. The pieces range in subject from Francis Ford Coppola, to the emerging art scene in South Beach in the 80s, to her love affair with ballroom dancing in the age of AIDS. Her writing is a comfort because she chooses love and enjoyment of life, though she didn’t exactly have it easy, and maybe it’s the struggles that silently buttress the seeming ease and fun. She even manages this effect in the title essay, which is directly about recovering from a terrible accident, a fire that almost killed her and changed the trajectory of her life.

Pretending Is Lying by Dominique Goblet, trans. Sophie Yanow (New York Review Comics, 2017, originally 2007)

I wish that I could find more books like this, but I’m not sure how. This is a graphic novella by a Belgian comics artist. A very simplistic synopsis: the first half tells a story of her adult relationship with a difficult father, and the second half is the story of the rocky beginning of her romantic partnership. After finishing it, I was left reflecting on the subterranean ways the two parts were connected and wanting to read it all over again. The art and text are inextricable and speak to each other in complex ways, together making something totally unique and electric - that thing that only comics can do, and what’s drawn me to the medium over the past few years. I was also inspired by how uneven it is. The author started this work and picked it up years later, and it’s clear from an abrupt shift in the drawing style and materials used. It’s not seamless or perfect on the surface, but it works; it’s maybe even this very uneven quality that gives it emotional heft. It feels precious (in the sense of uniquely valuable) and deeply human. It’s a short work, could be read in one sitting, and I’ve read it at least 3 times.

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Where do you find the books you want to read? Books you turn to for comfort in dark times?