Bookish Thoughts

  The Dark Interval is a series of letters of condolence that the poet Ranier Maria Rilke wrote to various friends over his life. Each is addressed to someone who has just suffered a loss, whether of a spouse, a parent, a sibling, or a friend. Each attempts to console the survivor while Rilke explains his view of death. I found this collection to be, of all things, affirming. Which was really unexpected. This passage, in particular, really spoke to me: ...you must continue his life inside of yours insofar as it was unfinished; his life has now passed onto yours. You, who truly knew him, can quite truly continue in his spirit and on his path. Make it the task of your mourning to explore what he had expected of you, had hoped for you, had wished to happen to you. If I could just convince you, dear friend, that his influence has not vanished from your existence. When Kevin passed, I set about trying to finish his unfinished business. I moved forward with house projects we'd bee...

This was a good primer on racism and how to talk about it. On identifying it, especially the more subtle and insidious forms and interrogating yourself. Oluo does a good job of balancing personal anecdotes with larger known patterns to show both how widespread these attitudes and how they affect individuals. I'm glad I read it, and I wish I'd written this months ago so I remembered more of the specifics. But it's probably worth reading (this and other, similar books) again and again until those lessons sink in completely.

I really ought to have taken the time to write this back when I finished this book. The main reason I maintain this book blog is to help me remember what I read. The act of writing about a book, coupled with the ability to go back and read it, keeps this all fresher in my mind. But now it's been almost two months since I read Lindy West's second essay collection, and I'm struggling to remember the specifics of the book. All I'm left with are general impressions. Lindy West is superb at articulating her rage, a rage I often share but have a harder time talking about. I think it's her comedic background that makes her so adept at words, at being able to say so much with so little and make incredibly cutting and precise observations. At the same time, she has an incredible amount of compassion for people who disagree with her, or who have even hurt her. She's good at teasing out small victories without losing sight of the bigger picture. And she does an incredible ...

My favorite thing about Ursula LeGuin's work is how hard it makes me think. I don't always agree with her, but in reading her arguments I find I have to sharpen my own. I usually come out of her books either having my mind (slightly) changed or feeling much more secure in my own beliefs. It's a fantastic experience. It's also a ton of work. This collection of essays was much more accessible and easier to read than her fiction tends to be. In most cases, she's distilled her ideas into 4-ish page essays. It's a great way to engage with her thoughts without having to do all the work that, say, The Left Hand of Darkness , requires of you. I really liked these essays, which were mostly ruminations on the end of life, as she came to the end of hers. I only wish there had been a few more about her cat, Pard. But I suppose I can always go to her blog for more of that content.

Rebecca Solnit always makes me feel better about the world at large. Her essays deal with heavy, depressing subjects. These latest are all about various crimes that seem baked into the very DNA of America. But she's also always able to pinpoint how things are getting better, and give me hope that things will continue to get better. The crimes Solnit discusses in this book aren't the sort that are traditionally talked about as crimes. The longest essay by far is called "Death by Gentrification" and it uses a case study to dive in to the ways the historic neighborhoods are being broken up and becoming more dangerous for the minorities who have always lived there, because of a perceived threat on the part of the new, white, wealthy residents and the system that backs them up. She also looks at the ways various voices have been silenced over America's history, the things we choose to celebrate and memorialize. And of course it all comes back to Trump and the backw...

I saw The Reason I Jump  on The Daily Show back when I still watched The Daily Show (back when Jon Stewart still hosted it), so it's been years that this book has been floating around in the back of my head as something I should read. And then I found it at the library's used book sale and snapped it up. My impulsive book purchases are rarely quite as impulsive as they seem. This book was written by a thirteen-year-old, nonverbal, autistic boy in Japan. He explains his day-to-day life to a neurotypical audience, in a effort to make himself and people like him better understood. All he really wants is understanding and patience and the opportunity to have a fulfilling life where he isn't constantly pitied and made to feel like a burden. This was more of an interview than a story. Actually, it was more of a questionnaire, with Higashida briefly given answers to a bunch of questions. These are interspersed with a handful of short stories. The book was interesting and insig...

I haven't actually listened to much (any?) of Jim Gaffigan's stand up. I mostly know him from his stint on My Boys , which I really liked when it was airing and re-watched several times when we first got Netflix. His mostly this cultural presence whose existence I've absorbed through osmosis. I always recognize him, and I see him more than I expect to, but I never really seek him out. And so his memoir, sitting on the shelf at the library used book sale, was just a spur of the moment grab. I recognized his face, and I enjoy his humor more often than not, and it looked like a quick read, so I figured I'd give it a shot. I basically got exactly what I was expecting. Gaffigan is a father of five, and his book (co-written with his wife) is basically about that. He complains about being a dad. Finds humor in the weird things kids do. Complains about being tired all the time. Finds the humor in his exhaustion. It wasn't anything I was terribly unfamiliar with (though ...

I love advice columns. There are a lot of reasons. Good, practical, applicable advice is certainly part of it. I like having concrete tactics and actions to fall back on in difficult situations. But there's also a weird combination of solidarity and smugness. I like reading about some problems and knowing that I'm not alone. I like reading about other problems and feeling better about my own life. At least I'm not as stupid as some people out there. I think it all comes down to that human connection, conveniently packaged into bite-sized articles. When I'm dealing with a tricky problem - practical or emotional - one of my go-to problem solving methods is to write a letter to an advice columnist. I never send these letters. But the act of writing the letter is beneficial. What's the most succinct way to describe the problem? What information is relevant and what really isn't? What sort of answer am I looking for? A big part of the process is deciding who I want...

When the world gets hard, when it seems like politicians don't care or that progress is being eroded away, when I feel myself giving in to anger and despair, I turn to Rebecca Solnit. She never fails to make me feel better. Her essays give me perspective about how far we've come in a remarkably short time. They give me a sense of solidarity that helps me raise my voice and continue to fight. She reminds me that despair is for lazy people, and we have to work for hope, but it's worth it. This collection opens with an extended rumination on silence and all the ways it harms us. Then there are several shorter essays, including "Men Explain Lolita to Me". This essay was actually my introduction to Rebecca Solnit several years ago, and I've re-read it several time. It was a treat to come across it again. Solnit's essay collections are all slim, but they pack an incredible punch. She just released a new one, and I'm excited to get my hands on it (though ...

Rebecca Solnit is probably my favorite essayist at this point. I don't agree with everything she says. In fact, my experience of reading her is similar to my experience with LeGuin. It's like having a conversation with a mentor. Someone who has decades more experience than I do, but with whom I can disagree. Someone who gets me thinking. I'm actually coming around to Solnit's definition of hope and it's reliance on not making any assumptions about the future. I still need to believe that things will get better, but Solnit's definition demands action. I've said before that Octavia Butler taught me, in Earthseed , how to hold despair and hope together in my heart and choose hope. Solnit teaches me again and again what that decision means and how to keep making it on a daily basis. This collection of essays was actually written when W was president, shortly after we declared war on Iraq. In some ways that feels like a simpler time, though that could just be...

To celebrate their tenth anniversary, Tor.com released an e-book collection of selected essays from the past ten years. I like tor.com, and the book was free, and I needed something new for my phone, so I downloaded it. I'd already read about half of these essays, but I was happy to read them again. They celebrate science fiction and fantasy. Most of them celebrate specific things about specific works. For the most part, the essays were fun and quick to read, and a lot of them gave me a new perspective on something I don't think about all the time. I did skip two of the essays. There was a long one about Galadriel that just didn't interest me. If I cared that much about Tolkien's elves, I would have managed to read The Silmarillion  by now. And I skipped one about The Raven Cycle . It was basically a love letter to the series, and it looked like it was going to be spoiler-heavy. Since I'm hoping to read that series sooner rather than later (although let's be...

Mara Wilson is one of those child actors who hit puberty and more or less disappeared. For a while it felt like she was everywhere, though she really only had a couple of big movies. But man were they big movies. Matilda  and Mrs. Doubtfire  were definitely staples of my childhood. And then she grew up and I grew up and I honestly didn't give her much thought until she resurfaced in the public eye a few years ago. She didn't make a big splash the way she did as a kid. She wasn't even really acting this time around. She was writing and becoming active on twitter. I started reading some her work and admiring her more. And then she wrote one of my favorite articles on the-toast (about Rizzo and Sandra Dee) and once I realized that I knew I had to get my hands on her book. Reading her essays was a joy. She's a fantastic writer with a subtle humor that I really appreciate. The book runs the gamut from growing up on film sets to dealing with mean girls in high school to le...

I have been slow to fall in love with Ursula K LeGuin. I struggled with Earthsea (which I actually want to revisit now). I ultimately really enjoyed  The Left Hand of Darkness , though I had a hard time with the middle of it. I loved  The Dispossessed . And I actually really liked LeGuin's intro to my edition of The Left Hand of Darkness . In the wake of her recent death (and because I loved The Dispossessed  so much), I wanted to read more of her work. And her non-fiction seemed like the next logical move. I have to say, this was a bit of a mixed bag. I really enjoyed some of the essays. Others fell flat. A third of the book is book reviews, mostly of books and authors I'd never heard of. But the books I had heard of are ones with a special place in my heart, so now my to-read list has once again grown bigger. An aside, one of the reviews is for a collection of short stories by Italo Calvino that had been translated from Italian. They seemed interesting and quirky. A...

This book was basically perfect, and not just because I managed to read the entire thing during one of Gavin's naps. It's been a long time since I inhaled an entire book in one sitting, and it was a good feeling. Men Explain Things to Me  was expertly constructed, allowing the essays to build off of and inform each other. Each essay is preceded by an oil painting by Ana Teresa Fernandez. In the middle of the book, Solnit includes an essay about one of these paintings and the series that it's from. It helps clarify why she chose to include this artist's work, which speaks to the goal of the book. Perhaps it's a bit on the nose for Solnit to spell out her intentions like that. But essays, unlike fiction, need to be crystal clear. I hadn't read the titular essay in total before picking up this book, though I had read a later spin on it,  Men Explain Lolita to Me , which was published after this book. Despite this, I remember when the original essay was publishe...

Mindy Kaling's second book of essays is just as light and smart and quick and fun as her first book. This one focuses more on her adult life, and particularly on her time working on The Mindy Project . Kaling talks about work and her attitude towards working hard (which I deeply disagree with, but I'm also not as successful or driven as she is). She talks about dating and fashion and not being traditionally thin, especially by Hollywood standards. And she does it all with her trademark humor. I'm not sure I would ever want to be friends with Kaling. She's a very intense person, and it would be a lot for me to handle in person. But she's exactly the kind of person whose work I enjoy, and who I'm confident will continue to produce funny things.

This isn't a book so much as an extended essay. Framed as a letter to his teenaged son, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about what it means to be black in America. About the boundaries he had always assumed were firmly in place in his life and the ways he's grown past them. About friends he's made and friends he's lost and his anger at the injustice that seems to plague everyone he knows. About his hopes and fears for his son and the things that he both does and does not want to change. This wasn't written for me, but it's one of those pieces that it's important everyone reads. It's probably even more important that the people it wasn't written for read it. It provides a very different view of America than the one I've had my entire life, one that needs to be integrated if we're ever going to make this country great. That said, there were things I could identify with deeply. The way college can help you find your tribe and expand your worldview, ...

After reading this book, I want more than anything to be friends with Lindy West. She's smart and articulate and funny in a very specific way that I associate with Mallory Ortberg and the-toast. But more than that, she's kind. She's kind in a way I aspire to be, always believing the best of people and willing to talk to them and seeing the victories in small, incremental changes. This book was billed to me as a collection of essays, but it flows so much better than most essay collections. The transitions are seamless, and it's almost a memoir. West's writing is so personal and passionate, her personal so politic, that it's hard to distinguish between the two. She lays herself bare as a way of forcing her opponents to acknowledge her humanity. And that certainly takes a toll, but she does it with such grace that you almost miss how hard it is for her to be so naked and raw all the time. West writes about being a fat feminist, and all that entails. She details...

Terry Pratchett is easily my most-read author. A lot of that comes down to him being so prolific, though that would hardly matter if he weren't also entertaining. If he didn't make me confront the hard questions and look at them from another perspective. A Slip of the Keyboard  is the first book I've read by Sir Terry that was not set on the Discworld. (He's written 40 of those, and I've read 39.) It's not even a work of fiction. It's a collection of essays spanning his entire career. The first section is about the process of writing and being an author. The second section is more autobiographical, about Terry's childhood. The final section, titled "Days of Rage" is mostly about his Alzheimer's diagnosis and his work advocating for assisted death in Britain. The book got a bit repetitive at times. The writing spans several decades, but it's clear that there are some concepts that have stuck with him forever. The idea of fantasy as j...

If you frequent certain corners of the internet, it seemed like Roxane Gay was everywhere this summer. She released her novel An Untamed State to huge critical acclaim. I saw two different online book clubs devote their time to reading it as soon as it came out. Shortly thereafter, she released a collection of essays called Bad Feminist . Both of these books made it on to the New York Times Bestseller list. I first heard about her because I began reading The Rumpus , where she was a contributing editor, right around the time An Untamed State came out. I hadn't heard about her before, but it wasn't long before I was seeing links to her writing all over the place . Then one of my favorite sites, The Toast , announced that she would be running their first vertical starting in mid-October. I knew that I had to seek out more. I picked up Bad Feminist because it seemed easier than An Untamed State . The latter is about a women who is kidnapped, assaulted, and raped. It ...