Guess Who's Back, Back Again
Some January Reads for You~
Hello, All! Long time, no see. Apologies for that, by the way. A combination of factors lead to me being all over the place for the second half of 2022, both in my life and in my reading habits. I went from reading six to ten books a month to maybe one and that doesn’t really help for a book-related newsletter.
But it’s a new year! And, more importantly, the Tournament of Books is coming up in a month or so and I always like to try and read all the entries before the Tournament. Which has gotten me back into my reading habit. Thanks, Morning News? So let’s look at the books I read in January to get read for the TOB~
Babel or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translator’s Revolution - R.F. Kuang
1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel.
Babel is the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire’s quest for colonization.
For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide…
I’d been meaning to read Kuang for ages as I’ve heard nothing but good things about the Poppy War books. Babel, a faux historical text that takes on the horrors of colonization via language and translation, is incredible at what it sets out to do. As a language nerd, the little asides and footnotes about language and translation were delightful, even as the story was frequently unsettling. It was well-written, absolutely unflinching in its point of view, and powerful. It’s one of those books where I know it’s capital g Good, I enjoyed it for the most part while I was reading it, but I also was very ready to move on to something else when I finished it. If translation magic as a genius metaphor for imperialism appeals to you, you should definitely check this out but it is also a lot.
Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance - Alison Espach
For much of her life, Sally Holt has been mystified by the things her older sister, Kathy, seems to have been born knowing. Kathy has answers for all of Sally’s questions about life, about love, and about Billy Barnes, a rising senior and local basketball star who mans the concession stand at the town pool. The girls have been fascinated by Billy ever since he jumped off the roof in elementary school, but Billy has never shown much interest in them until the summer before Sally begins eighth grade. By then, their mutual infatuation with Billy is one of the few things the increasingly different sisters have in common. Sally spends much of that summer at the pool, watching in confusion and excitement as her sister falls deeper in love with Billy—until a tragedy leaves Sally’s life forever intertwined with his.
Oh, I adored this novel. Written in second person to her older sister, the voice of the book so light and comedic that you swing between laughing and crying in mere sentences. It’s just incredibly clever, Sally’s voice is just perfect, and I was frequently reading passages aloud to whoever was near me while I was reading, even if it was just my cats. Swinging between dealing with grief and training bras and a poorly timed sofa purchase, I cared so deeply for these characters, especially Sally who was dealing with so much. This is something I would reread in a heartbeat and completely recommend.
Fabienne is dead. Her childhood best friend, Agnès, receives the news in America, far from the French countryside where the two girls were raised—the place that Fabienne helped Agnès escape ten years ago. Now Agnès is free to tell her story. As children in a war-ravaged backwater town, they’d built a private world, invisible to everyone but themselves—until Fabienne hatched the plan that would change everything, launching Agnès on an epic trajectory through fame, fortune, and terrible loss.
This took a bit to get into but I ultimately enjoyed it. One thing I love in fiction is a relationship that is utterly unfathomable from the outside but somehow sticks with you and Fabienne and Agnes are certainly that. Reading about them as children, their childhood game that had such grand consequences, and then the ultimate fallout was a journey. I also think this would make a great miniseries or movie with the right young actresses.
[Lydia Millet’s] exquisite new novel is the story of a man named Gil who walks from New York to Arizona to recover from a failed love. After he arrives, new neighbors move into the glass-walled house next door and his life begins to mesh with theirs. In this warmly textured, drily funny, and philosophical account of Gil’s unexpected devotion to the family, Millet explores the uncanny territory where the self ends and community begins—what one person can do in a world beset by emergencies.
This is a book where almost nothing happens and I realized slowly as I made my way through that I loved it. There are a few moments of plot but it’s really just about several people making a family out of living near each other and being kind to one another. There’s a lot more to it than that, especially when it comes to Gil dealing with ghosts from his past coming into his life and his quiet quest to find the person who’s been killing birds in his neighborhood but ultimately, it’s just about people supporting each other and helping them grow. And sometimes that’s a thing you just need to read.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin
On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom.
These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won’t protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.
I went into this with intense curiosity because the reviews have been great and all my friends have hated this. Never have I so gleefully hate-read a book. I needed to know what happened, eagerly turning the pages, but utterly detesting the main characters. There’s definitely a Ready Player One-esque flavor, name-checking popular video games of the last thirty years left and right. I don’t know if it’s because I know a lot of people who work in games and game development or that comics has a very similar vibe but I just couldn’t with pretty much this entire book. If you want something more entertaining, please read my pal Brooks’s review of it instead which I rewarded myself with when I finished the book.
Mouth to Mouth - Antoine Wilson
In a first-class lounge at JFK airport, our narrator listens as Jeff Cook, a former classmate he only vaguely remembers, shares the uncanny story of his adult life—a life that changed course years before, the moment he resuscitated a drowning man.
Jeff reveals that after that traumatic, galvanizing morning on the beach, he was compelled to learn more about the man whose life he had saved, convinced that their fates were now entwined. But are we agents of our fate—or are we its pawns? Upon discovering that the man is renowned art dealer Francis Arsenault, Jeff begins to surreptitiously visit his Beverly Hills gallery. Although Francis does not seem to recognize him as the man who saved his life, he nevertheless casts his legendary eye on Jeff and sees something worthy. He takes the younger man under his wing, initiating him into his world, where knowledge, taste, and access are currency; a world where value is constantly shifting and calling into question what is real, and what matters. The paths of the two men come together and diverge in dizzying ways until the novel’s staggering ending.
The short description of this book (Man meets college acquaintance while waiting for a delayed plane, listens to him tell the story about how his life changed after he saved a drowning man) sounded great to me. I started to read it and it was fine, almost aggressively so, but I wanted to know what happened. It’s a fairly quick read, I think I finished it in a day. And here’s the thing: I was pretty meh on it until the last paragraph, which was so unexpected and great, I dropped the book and went “What?” aloud in my office. So if you feel like reading an entire book for the last paragraph, it’s worth it! But I also wouldn’t blame you at all for thinking that’s a little too little reward for reading a whole book.
Manhunt - Gretchen Felker-Martin
Beth and Fran spend their days traveling the ravaged New England coast, hunting feral men and harvesting their organs in a gruesome effort to ensure they’ll never face the same fate.
Robbie lives by his gun and one hard-learned motto: other people aren’t safe.
After a brutal accident entwines the three of them, this found family of survivors must navigate murderous TERFs, a sociopathic billionaire bunker brat, and awkward relationship dynamics―all while outrunning packs of feral men, and their own demons.
THIS. BOOK. WAS. AWFUL. It’s trying to take the idea of a gender apocalypse (something that probably should have died out 10 years ago at least) and turn it on its head by making it about trans people. And sure, I support a trans person writing a trans story, 100%. But it’s just …. guys, it is just so MUCH. It wants to be so ~~edgy~~ that it is nigh unbearable to read. I was wondering if my being ace was maybe playing into it a bit (there is just so much sex, very little of it needed for plot) and mentioned in a group chat that I was reading this book and two separate people went “oh, I couldn’t get farther than twenty pages. Is it that eDgY all the way through?” so at least it’s not just me. With all the shitty books by hetero cis white men that get published all the time, does this book deserve to exist? Definitely. But oof, I did not have to read it.
That’s all the books for January! I’ve already read three books in February (and dnf-d one that I’ll talk about a bit) so until I get back in the mode where I can write more than monthly, I’ll be doing these end of the month round ups.
Meanwhile, nothing’s new in my life … yet? I’m working on some things that, alas, also got thrown a bit by the wayside in the past seven or so months. Fingers crossed I get all my ducks in a row to start making some big changes in the coming months. I also have a vacation planned in a few weeks with some friends that I’m very much looking forward to
This break hasn’t been completely nothing, though! I think I hinted in the last few newsletters before I disappeared that I started writing fanfic again? Well, since then, I’ve written over 100k words of fanfic. So at least I was writing something! Even if it wasn’t anything that I can get paid for. I also picked up a new freelance job with a manga publishing company checking translations so I am getting paid for that, at least.
Thank you all for sticking with me, despite the sad lack of updates! Remember that if you become a paid subscriber, you can pick a book for me to read! No one has taken me up on it yet (honestly, fair) but I am being GOOD now and WILL read it so feel free to email me one!
That’s all for January’s wrap up. Look forward to February’s with some more ToB books and maybe a handful for others. Until then, happy reading!