Hey friends! I am a few days late but here with my monthly reading recap for May. And what a month it was - so many amazing books including a classic standout that probably has changed my brain chemistry forever and a number of books that looked at the complicated inner lives of older women. What a treat!
The month started on a supremely high note when after years of yearning, I finally read James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. The effect of it on me? I basically broke into a million little pieces and re-composed myself into a softer, kinder, truer version of myself.
The book included a paragraph that I found so moving and …. helpful… that I caught myself talking about it with anyone who would listen. In this passage, Jacques (an older gay man living in Paris and supporting younger gay man - sometimes in exchange for sex), talks to David - a young American who finds himself in a passionate affair with Giovanni - a beautiful but troubled Italian. David is torn between his passion for David and his internalized homophobia, his inability to imagine a life that allows of complete freedom.
“Love him,” said Jacques, with vehemence, “love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters? And how long, at the best, can it last? since you are both men and still have everywhere to go? Only five minutes, I assure you, only five minutes, and most of that, helas! in the dark. And if you think of them s dirty, then they will be dirty - they will be dirty because you will be giving nothing, you will be despising your flesh and his. But you can make your time together anything but dirty; you can give each other something which will make both of you better - forever - if you will not be ashamed, if you will only not play it safe.”
He paused, watching me, and then looked down to his cognac. “You play it safe long enough,” he said, in a different tone, “and you’ll end up trapped in your own dirty body, forever and forever and forever - like me.”
The heartbreak of being ashamed of yourself was a theme that threaded through a lot of my May reading and gave me the unique experience of feeling like my books were in conversation with each other. I wish I had planned it, so happy to have lived it.
Below are brief reader notes on everything I read.
Books mentioned:
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
Exhibit by R.O Kwon
The Life of the Mind by Christine Smallwood
Leaving by Roxana Robinson
The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez
On Earth we’re briefly gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Our strangers by Lydia Davis
The cost of living by Deborah Levy
Grief is for people by Sloan Crosley
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (slow reading in progress)
📚 Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin - David is a young American man living in Paris, trying to figure himself out. He is torn between his desire and fear for living against the grain of conventional morality. The book is so tender and compassionate, a canonical text on gay love. I knew it would be. I was, however, really surprised and moved by its commentary on love and relationships, more generally; on how entrapped women feel in the roles available to us; and, last but not least - the American drive to be happy. “Americans should never come to Europe,” says Hela - David’s lady-friend - “it means they can never be happy again. What’s the good on an American who isn’t happy? Happiness was all we had.” 💔💔💔
📚 Exhibit by R.O Kwon - A book about Jin - a married Korean-American photographer - who has had substantial professional success but is currently struggling to find inspiration in her work. At a big party, she meets Lidija, also Korean American, and a professional ballerina on hiatus from dance due to injury. Immediately drawn to each other because of their shared artistic and ethnic sensibility, they talk all night and Jin shares a family curse that she is supposed to keep secret for fear of setting her life on fire. They begin a passionate affair that has Jin questioning the very core of who she is, the love for her husband and the direction of her work. The book is sexy, sensitive, thoughtful, sharp and critical, but also so lyrical. I ended up circling so many unfamiliar words that described art making in parallel to religious worship that I ended up buying a real dictionary! That hasn’t happened to me in 20 years. If you are shy to read about kink, this book will push you… but I thought it was such a beautiful take on the unpredictability of desire and the journey of embracing all our parts.
📚 The Life of the Mind by Christine Smallwood (audiobook) - It’s taking me forever but I am dutifully working my wait through my list of books on motherhood that I shared last fall. The protagonist has a PhD in English and working as an adjust instructor at an unnamed NYC university. I don’t need to know much more about her to love her already but the book introduces us to Dorothy as she is on week six of bleeding from a miscarriage. Dorothy is not especially traumatized by her miscarriage as the pregnancy was not exactly planned. She thinks of it as an inconvenience, to her otherwise pretty boring life - she teaches classes she’s not excited about to students that she does not find inspiring and obsessively follows the social media updates of her more successful grad school compatriots. As someone who left academia much sooner than I expected, I found Dorothy absolutely intolerable and perfectly lovable. How does one live with the memory of a time when “wanting to do the job she had trained for did not feel like too much to want?” If you love women who tend to overthink everything, or you happen to be one of them (cough, cough)…. you will love this one.
📚 Leaving by Roxana Robinson - This was a super spontaneous book choice that was influenced by ’s recommendation. The book came out earlier this year and I knew I had to have it because Roxana Robinson is the author of a seminal biography of Georgia O’Keefe (my favorite painter). I’m apparently not the model fangirl because I had no idea that she wrote novels?! The story opens at the NYC opera where a 60 year old woman (divorced) runs into her college boyfriend (still married) and begins an almost immediate affair. 50 pages in, I had sobbed multiple times. I liked how tender this book was, lingering in the grey areas and the liminal spaces… exploring the consequences of the choices we make when we are young. If you need a good cry, this one is for you.
📚 The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez - I believe this was my first pandemic novel… and I appreciate that it was this one. I loved this quirky story about a 60+ woman living in New York City who gives up her apartment for a volunteer pulmonologist and moves into a friend’s place to help take care of their parrot. She is soon joined by the previous house-sitter, a college student who has been kicked out by his parents. For me, the book triggered an almost nostalgic feeling over the weirdness of that time and how open we all became to entirely too strange living arrangements and circumstances - getting stuck in cities for longer than expected, finding strange hobbies to pass the time, the immediate intimacy of experiencing such trauma with your neighbors. This will not depress you, I promise. I found it so heartwarming.
📚 On Earth we’re briefly gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (audiobook, read by the author) - I am embarassed to admit that I haven’t read this book sooner but also thrilled at the possibility that I may be the one to tell you - No. Really. It is THAT GOOD. Vuong tells a story of a Vietnamese family’s multi-generational journey from Saigon to Hartford, CT as they navigate conflict, domestic violence, immigration… looking for a way out of war to land into a land of multi-dimensional oppression. Vuong is an award winning poet and his narration of the story had me gasping for air. His prose is so melodic, his sensitivity for nuance and ability to capture the smallest flutter of a human heart is absolute astounding. I honestly don’t think of myself as a fan of LANGUAGE, I think of myself more as a fan of STORY. But listening to this book was a spiritual experience and I am now very curious not only about reading more of his work but also looking at other novels written by poets. Please let me know your favorites!
📚 Our strangers by Lydia Davis - After so many heavy books, I was in the mood for something lighter but because everything I had read earlier in the month was so fucking good, I was really nervous about choosing well. Light but GOOD was what I was looking for. Just in time, had announced her May Provocations and after a brief chat, we decided to read Our Strangers by Lydia Davis together. Lydia Davis is a singular writer. Her work is truly her own. I remember when I first read her, thinking…. What is this?! I didn’t know you could do THIS with a short story?! You very well can. Especially if you are as clever, funny and confident as Lydia Davis. I love her mind so much and I love that she just delights in her own eccentricity. This particular collection includes hundreds of tiny little short stories on aging, marriage, “stages of womanhood”…. It is so compassionate and kind but incisive. My favorite from this collection is titled Marriage Moment of Annoyance - Coconut and, in its entirely goes like this:
After many days, he said to her:
‘Could you do something with this coconut?’
Abra and I talked for about an hour and laughed SO. HARD. You can read a write-up of our conversation over at The Booktender. It was also amazing to connect with a fellow reader and go so deeply into a book together. It was honestly, the best book chat I have had in real time with a human in as long as I could remember. And, it may be my new favorite form of non-bookclub bookclub.
📚 The cost of living by Deborah Levy - My very first Deborah Levy and the second book in her Living Autobiography trilogy - a book she wrote in the aftermath of her divorce. Deborah Levy has a cult following and after reading this little book, I can absolutely see why. I can’t quite describe it but as I was reading her, I felt like I underwent a mind-melt and basically became her. Her worries and her triumphs felt like they were mine. When she gets annoyed with an older man on the Eurostar for spreading his newspaper and his food all over a table that he should be sharing with Levy and a younger woman, I felt acutely annoyed and protective of the younger woman. Like, I thought… I would know exactly how I would respond to this dickhead but the young girl… she’s still trying to be accommodating. I am not a devotee just yet, but definitely Levy-curious, for sure. If you have read any of her novels, please tell me which one to read first.
📚 Grief is for people by Sloan Crosley (audiobook, read by the author) - I heard an interview with Sloan Crosley in which she was talking about the book and, honestly, I wasn’t planning on reading it BUT.. The book is grief memoir after Crosley she loses her friend Russell Perreault to suicide. Honestly, the part of the interview that had me intrigued was when she mentioned that people have no idea how many books have become part of the culture because of Russell - a rockstar book publicist. Apparently, he is the one responsible for bringing Stoner back from the archives and as you know… I just adored that book. I didn’t love all of this book - the part about her apartment being burglarized and her quest to recapture her jewels - it felt really fluffy in comparison to the parts describing Russell, his personality and contributions, their beautiful work friendship and the painful changes in publishing that contributed to Russell’s death. The book really made me miss a time before social media when the allowable margin of freedom at work and public discourse was a bit wider.
In the addition to everything above, I am also still participating in The Age of Innocence read-a-long which is, honestly, a delightful way to experience an amazing book and I am about to jump into reading Mrs. Dalloway - the book group is hosted by Tasha. It is not too late to join us!
Favorite books of 2024 so far:
January - Foster by Claire Keegan
February - Small things like these by Claire Keegan
March - Stoner by John Williams
April - Clear by Carys Davies
May - Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
Some question for you:
Have you read any of my May titles? What did you think?
What was your favorite read this past month?
Please help me with recommendations for novels written by poets and favorite Deborah Levy novels.
Oh I like and trust your reviews because a few of these have been on my list and now I have a few more to add! <3 Enjoy your vacay and flight reading because I know I am going to enjoy mine!
I’ve been so curious about Exhibit! Definitely adding it to my reading list now ❤️🔥