Book Log 2023

1. Managing Expectations: A Memoir in Essays by Minnie Driver (started 1/4; finished 1/9): B+ This book is all of 276 pages, with a lot of paragraph breaks, making it an easy, quick read—and my first Book Club book of the year, which I had to read last-minute before our January meeting, thus necessitating a six-day break from the novel I was reading, very much enjoying, and about halfway through. This was a huge gear shift, too, which is why it boggles my mind how anyone can read multiple books at once as a common practice. I prefer to read one book at a time. But, once I got into the vibe of this one, I found Minnie Driver to be a surprisingly gifted writer, and now, if she were to write another one, I would read it without needing the recommendation that resulted in our reading this one (Steve from Book Club was particularly enamored with this one when he was reading it in November, and I said I would be happy to make it our next selection). Admittedly I didn't find it quite as funny as Steve seemed to, but I did find it an engaging mix of humor and poignancy, and in particular, incredibly well-structured writing. I found every one of these ten essays a deeply satisfying read, particularly upon their conclusion. Minnie Driver, it turns out, is rather skilled at sticking the landing, right down to the essay with which she chose to close this book.


2. The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber (started 12/14; finished 1/16): B This book took me a full month to complete, which to many might not seem impressive, but for me, it was still a book I felt like I just couldn't put down—I just had a lot of distractions from it, from a bevy of holiday events and activities, to a full week pause on it to read the latest Book Club title (that being #1 on this list). The Book of Stange New Things was recommended to me by Laney, who had just finished re-reading it, and knowing she found it compelling enough to read twice, combined with the fascinating premise, quickly piqued my interest: this is about a near-future Christian missionary traveling to a faraway planet to minister to its native inhabitants. In the end I had somewhat mixed feelings about this book, given how I constantly wanted to pick it up and keep reading, in spite of all I found implausible about it: this inhabited planet has a stunning lack of biodiversity as presented here, with all of three animal species ever even mentioned (weird vicious duck-like creatures; some type of flying insect that feeds on corpses; and the humanoids of  deeply modest yet higher intelligence with a rather primitive way of living). The "whiteflower" crop that the natives of the planet cultivate into a wide variety of different types of foods, depending on when it's pulled out of the ground in its growth cycle, does little to compensate for this issue. I have a hard time accepting a developed society existing in a world with all of four known living species of any kind, the obvious idea that other regions of the planet may have plenty of other life notwithstanding. It bugged me that these things were rarely, or in many cases never, discussed by the characters. Instead, there is a huge focus on this minister protagonist, Peter, experiencing steady breakdowns in email communication with the wife he had to leave back on Earth, where environmental and political and societal disasters are increasing exponentially. In spite of all this, I loved the characters—human and "Oasan" alike—and found it to be a grippingly vivid journey, even if my suspicions of danger among the Oasans proved unfounded, thereby resulting in an ending I found a bit anticlimactic. My favorite meta detail about this reading experience, which people reading digital copies did not get, was the gold edging of the pages of the book, a clear physical reference to actual Bibles.


3. The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green (started 1/16; finished 2/8): B+ This delightful nonfiction collection of essays by the novelist who wrote The Fault In Our Stars (as well as seven other books) ends each essay with a five-star review some random aspect of the "Athropocene," or modern human era, from CNN to viral meningitis to the Notes app, and I give this book four and a half stars. 


4. Under the Skin by Michel Faber (started 2/8; finished 2/25): B+ An allegory about factory farming that sometimes is a little on the nose, still deeply compelling as it shifts the perspectives: what we think of as humans (ourselves) are the harvested "animals" (here called vodsels); and the word "human" is used in the narrative here at lot—but it gradually becomes clear that the narrator, and her cohorts, are aliens secretly living on Earth referring only to their own kind when they use the word. It can be disorienting as the reader, but that is the point, and effective. The central character here, a female who has been shaved of her natural fur and surgically altered in the face, chest, spine and limbs to resemble a "vodsel," spends a lot of solitary time driving along Irish back highways, finding hitchhikers and bringing them to a hidden farm processing plant as soon as she is able to discern whether they live a solitary enough life not to be missed when they go missing. The trick Faber pulls here, in his debut novel and still easily his most well known, is in getting the reader to empathize with her, this literally figure who functions as predator to the very species reading the novel, as she grapples with her own daily frustrations, and more crucially, with how her opinions of "vodsels" and their worth as living beings are eventually challenged. This is a truly unique novel with an unparalleled point of view, if occasionally slightly clunky in execution. If nothing else, this is a novel I will not soon forget, and which I found difficult to put down. 


5. It's Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution and Future of HBO by Felix Gillette and John Koblin (started 3/3; finished 4/7): B+ There's something unavoidably disappointing about a detailed account of a subject whose evolution is so up-to-the-minute: HBO was very much in the headlines this year (and last year) after the Warner Bross Discovery merger. Hell, in the very next month after I finished this book—on May 23—HBO Max was rebranded as "Max." It's Not TV was published in May 2022, which means that, although it covers every similarly momentous change in HBO's history up to that point, none of the seismic shifts you might expect such a book to cover from 2022 are included. That's not to say I was inherently disappointed in this book, mind you: I want to be clear. I really enjoyed reading it, and getting a definitively detailed background into what I still consider the premium channel / streamer with the highest-quality content on offer, something I have felt for a long time. Anyone with an interest in such things, especially given its own shortsighted missteps in its long history, should read it and will enjoy it. It just also comes with the caveat that any book about something still so actively changing and evolving is by definition going to feel incomplete. The more time goes by, the less up to date this book will feel. So read it now! (Even though by the time you read this very blurb about it, it will be over a year old.)


6. Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat and TearsOscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat and Tears by Michael Schulman (started 4/8; finished 5/14): A- This book could hardly have been more tailor-made to my tastes. It's as though Michael Schulman woke up one morning and had an epiphone: I know—I'm going to write a book just for Matthew! Oscar Wars is divided into eleven chapters, each devoted to a different, famous—or infamous—chapter in the history of the Academy Awards. They are by and large presented in chronological order, starting with the inception of the Academy in the late twenties and ending with "envelopegate" at the 2017 telecast. Oscar Wars has something in common with It's Not TV, in that it covers an entity that is still actively evolving—due to print deadlines, the infamous Will Smith "slap" from the 2022 telecast barely gets a mention in an afterward—but this one still has more of a sense of urgency in its reading, as so much of the Academy's rich history so directly informs where it is today. Not only that, but this history is both broader and juicier; I particularly enjoyed the chapter on the 1951 Best Actress race between Gloria Swanson (Sunset Boulevard), Bette Davis (All About Eve and Judy Holliday (Born Yesterday); and the chapter about the infamous 1989 telecast. "Envelopegate" being still in such recent memory made it an especially delicious read, but I was riveted by it all, from the chapter on how the disgusting Harvey Weinstein managed to get Shakespeare in Love to beat out Saving Private Ryan in 1998, all the way back to the extended period of blacklisting screenwriters for being suspected communists in the late forties and well into the fifties.

If Oscar Wars has any weakness, it's its white author offering what feels like bullet-point overviews of racial nuances in the 2016 race between La La Land and Moonlight, as well as things like "#OscarsSoWhite" and the Academy reckoning with its history of exclusion on gendered and racial lines. To be fair, this puts Schulman a bit between a rock and a hard place, because a book covering a history spanning an entire century cannot by definition do much more than summarize such things, but those very same summaries underscore the need for deeper dives into those specific issues. That aside, though, I read this book with absolute relish from start to finish.


7. Portrait: The Photographs of George Platt Lynes 1927-1955 by George Platt Lynes / Two Palms Publishers (started 6/27; finished 7/2): B

Every place I could find online that referenced this volume of photographs by almost-famous photographer George Platt Lynes lists Lynes himself as the author. But, considering Lynes died of lung cancer at the age of 48 in 1955, and published by Twin Palms Publishers in 1994, that seems a little misleading. The book, 132 pages all but about seven of which are dedicated to the photographs themselves, is one of several that have been published over the years but the only one I could find carried by the Seattle Public Library after I discovered his incredible visual work via the fantastic documentary Hidden Master: The Legacy of George Platt Lynes, playing at this year's Seattle International Film Festival. I then found a couple of other titles dedicated to Lynes that I sent in to the library as suggestions.Because, honestly, while the photography in this book is absolutely fantastic, I was a little disappointed by its, in retrospect, evidently deliberate distancing from not just Lyne's homosexuality, but his vast array of homoerotic fine photography—something the documentary had very much focused on. The very first photograph in this volume, of a clothed George Balanchine flanked by a nude Nicholas Magallanes to the left and a nude Marie-Jeane to the right, is subtly provocative—and almost no other photo in the book matches that vibe. The only other one featured in the book that matches it, or arguably surpasses it, is a shot of a clothed White man with three, artfully posed naked Black men—and there is a lot to unpack regarding Lynes's contexualized racial progressiveness in the forties versus how some of the photos might read today.It almost feels unfair to count this as one of the books I "read" this year, when it featured fewer than ten pages of actual text. But, here we are; I've counted it, and it's a literal bound book, after all. And yes, I took five days to finish even this one, but that's only because I picked it up briefly three different times, and otherwise spent time savoring the best of the photos. Still, I look forward to finding a more recently published volume that directly addresses the sexuality, of George Platt Lynes himself; of the subjects of his photographs; and of the artistic expression of the photographs. This book hardly gets there. 


8. The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry (started 5/14; finished 7/26): B This was another Book Club title, but I had been a part of selecting it as, after it was suggested, I argued that perhaps we were just enough past the covid-19 pandemic to handle a read like this, and perhaps be able to compare notes, both in regards to how people coped with and responded to a lethal pandemic in 1918 versus 2020, and the degree to which we could actually say 1918 prepared us for 2020 (honestly? not much—people forget a lot after a hundred years, and thus about four generations). I'd have been interested in this pretty much any time outside of the middle of covid-19 (when it would have been way too close to home), actually, just because I have a lifetime of fascination with natural disasters, for which I think this arguably qualifies. That said, taken on its own merits, I had a great deal of ambivalence about this book, which had sections of insanely dull content and other sections that read like part one of Stephen King's The Stand (and were thus riveting). To call this book well-researched would be an understatement, but if you were to divide it up into quarters—very broadly speaking—I'd say the middle two quarters of it are what made it worth reading, as that was all about where infections started, how they spread, how authorities either attempted and failed to respond to it, or willfully ignored it and thus made it worse, and how the 1918 pandemic was massively exacerbated by its coinciding with World War I. The first places the virus spread like wildfire were in insanely overcrowded military cantonments. But, a lot is also written about the American cities where civilians were hit first and hardest, most notably Boston and especially Philadelphia. Once I got to those sections, the book became a comparatively easy read, a real page-turner. It was the other sections that were the challenge: the first ninety pages are so are where John M. Barry frontloads the narrative with a truly dense history of medical professionals of the era and their forebears, how radically medicine changed both in the couple of decades previous to the 1918 influenza pandemic and in the couple of decades after, and the surprising degree to which those recent changes actually made doctors far more prepared for such a global event than they might have been otherwise. About fifty of the final 65 or so pages, then, are similarly dense with history of where the doctors and medical researchers went in the wake of the pandemic, very little of it written engagingly. The final breath of fresh air in the book is in its Afterward, written in 2017, speculating on our preparedness and how we might cope with an inevitable next pandemic. The author clearly had no idea how close we actually were to the next one—literally just a couple of years. That part is a fascinating and surreal read, closing out a book which, in the end, is by turns riveting and boring as shit.


9. Lessons from the Covid War: An Investigative Report by The Covid Crisis Group (started 7/29; finished 9/1): B Apparently I am a glutton for punishment, so right after reading a detailed account of the 1918 flu pandemic, I decided to see what was maybe a consensus book regarded as one of the best, if not the best, book about the Covid-19 pandemic. After weeding out books at the tops of several lists that turned out to be written by right-wing nutjob "skeptics," I came upon this book, with 34 credited writers—including John M. Barry, who had written The Great Influenza. I really like the premise of this book being that we should have had a Congressional commission for a 9/11 Commission-style report on Covid-19 and never got one (talk about stunningly shortsighted), and so this group of experts came together to create the next-best thing by putting together this book. On the one hand, this book is far less dense, shorter (at just under 300 pages), and reads far more easily than The Great Influenza did. On the other hand, the details shared here are far more broad in scope, otherwise focusing on, as the title suggests, lessons learned from the many things done wrong and the few things done well in response to a 21st-century pandemic. This means there are no gripping stories of death and danger in this book, like there was in the middle section of The Great Influenza. As a result, this book is kind of more blandly academic in tone, as opposed to getting into what actually happened from the start and how we got here—to be fair, a lot of that remains unknown, thanks to the virus having begun in China and China's unwillingness to share those details. Maybe one day those details will be better revealed and we can get a book with a better narrative. Or, I can find another book about covid to try and read after a while.


10. Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach (started 9/11; finished10/2): B+ I generally found Packing for Mars to be a delightful read, if disappointingly lackluster in its final chapter, "Eating Your Pants: Is Mars Worth It?" It reads much more like an epilogue, briefly contemplating the possibilities. Why tease us with the details of research on a years-long mission to Mars—it's literally in the title of the entire book—and then only provide limited concrete information on assumptions made by researchers in the sixties? I want to know what the logistical and moral quandaries are with this kind of endeavor, and how they compare and contrast with those of "merely" getting to space, and the moon! Most bizarrely, the closing line of this chapter—and book—answers the question of "Is Mars worth it?" with basically, "We're going to waste resources anyway so why not!" And I had been enjoying this book so much up to that point, the reason for which I would still very much recommend it. I would just include a warning about the surprisingly uninformed, downbeat note it ends up. But! Up to that point, all the chapters cover specific things regarding space travel we all want to know about but no one else has reported on with such delightful irreverence—using the bathroom in space; sex and procreation in space; eating in space; not to mention things like weightlessness testing on parabolic flights and motion sickness—it's great fun to read. I laughed frequently. Roach also covers plenty of things we haven't considered (thanks to being preoccupied with things like eating and pooping), such as the psychological effects of extended periods in confined spaces with just a few other people, none of whom can bathe properly. Or many, many everyday things that are completely upended in zero gravity. Mary Roach approaches all this stuff with both an inquisitive mind and a slightly bent sense of humor, which is very much my style. I just wanted more about the actual hypothetical mission to Mars referenced in the book's title.


11. The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune (started 9/2; finished10/3): A- Where to begin, with all the ways I loved this novel? Not since reading Kira Jane Buxton's Hollow Kingdom in 2019 have I been so utterly delighted by a work of fiction, particularly one with a deliciously bent sense of humor. It has been perhaps even longer, not since reading David Levithan's Two Boys Kissing have I been so moved by a work of queer YA fiction. Has there ever before been a single novel that did both at once? No, I don't think there has. If I had any complaint about The House in the Cerulean Sea—and it barely counts as one—it would be that I wish it spent a little more time with its world building, particularly on the part of the government bureaucracy its protagonist, Linus, works for, in the Department In Charge of Magical Youth (DICOMY). On the other hand, this could be seen as a narrative strength, as instead of a protagonist fated with saving the universe, this is the story of an ordinary government worker charged with assessing an orphanage housing six of said magical youth—including a hilariously dark, six-year-old AntiChrist named Lucy (short for Lucifer). All of the other children, which range from a tentacled blob learning he doesn't have to be the monster under the bed (he dreams of being a bellhop) to a forest sprite, among others, are equally multidimensional. I love that there is literally an AntiChrist character in this book and he's just one of six kids who are all given equal air time in the narrative. But, by far my favorite detail is this: Linus is gay, a fact that is never more than incidental—the characters all face many challenges, including metaphorical ones of bigotry, but this is a world in which sexual orientation is as normalized as anything. Even better, Linus, the gay protagonist, is a shy, unassuming, portly, middle-aged man. Arthur, the ward of the orphanage, is tall, stick thin, self-assured, and also gay, it gradually becomes apparent. Their love story is far from the overall focus of the book, but rather just one charming subplot among many. I loved this book more the further I got into it, and marveled that such books exist for young readers today, a thing I could not have fathomed when I was young.


12. Aristolte and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz (started 10/3; finished 10/7): A I adored this book. It is hands down my favorite of the books I read this year, and maybe my favorite novel I have read in over a decade. And: what a perfect novel to read right after The House in the Cerulean Sea. Shout out to queer YA fiction! I know it's a cliché in regards to beloved novels, but I truly wish this book were longer. My heart aches to be back in its world, so specific and vividly realized, from the point of view of a Mexican-American teen in El Paso, whose loving parents understand him before he understands himself. Whose deep friendship forged over the summer, and then the years following, becomes something he doesn't want to face or acknowledge. I didn't even know about this book, beloved by many of its readers, until I saw the film it was adapted into and released in the late summer of this year. I even chose the film in an unusually arbitrary way: no mainstream releases were playing that I had not already seen, and I happened to see this compelling title, and my interest was piqued when I read the brief synopsis. I went to see it, felt it was an imperfect movie, and yet I was still deeply moved by it. I learned only after seeing it that it was based on a novel and I immediately placed a hold on it at my local library.This book is very dialogue-heavy, with many very short chapters. This means a lot of blank page space, which in turn makes it a very quick read. It's ostensibly 359 pages, and I read it in four days, lightning-quick for me—I usually take weeks, often months, to finish a book. I could not put this one down. To say it warmed my heart doesn't even do it justice. I would still recommend the movie. There are reports of a woman at a TIFF Q&A demanding an explanation for the absence of certain lines from the novel in the film, which betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how successful adaptation works. There are some things done in the movie that I actually like better, but the movie does have its flaws. I find it to be lovably imperfect. The novel, though—no notes. I love every part of it. I want time to pass so I can read it again and feel as though I am experiencing it for the first time. And, oh, to have had a novel like this to read when I was fifteen! It could have changed my life. And at that age I woudn't even have picked up on nuances I appreciate now, such as the truly unique element of the loving parents who completely accept their queer son. His parents aren't perfect either, but their flaws exist in other places. What a wonderful, beautiful thing, queer storytelling the way it should always be.


13. Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere by Maria Bamford (started 10/7; finished 10/20): B+ The thing that is inherently unfair to this book is reading it right after finishing a novel I loved more than any other in a decade: even as a very enjoyable book, it is by definition a bit of a comedown. And yet? I achieved a rare feat indeed with this book: I started it not long after checking it out of the library and finished it within two weeks—well within the three-week checkout window, so I neither had to renew it (not possible since, of course, it's very popular and there are 121 other people waiting for it) nor did I have to keep it well past its due date in order to finish it! I am feeling very accomplished here.As for the book itself, it's a truly unique reading experience, as is the great Maria Bamford's standup comedy that is a) not everyone's cup of tea but very much mine; and b) the sole reason I even know who she is. This book is nowhere near as hilarious as her standup though, again by definition: it's a (largely) comedic exploration of her lengthy and complex journey of mental health. People with complex mental health issues will probably really relate to it; the best I can do is sympathize, as I do not have these same experiences. I still found it a very compelling read—refer again to how unusually quickly I finished it—and would absolutely recommend it to anyone, mental or not.


14. Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road by Kyle Buchanan (started 10/20; finished 11/5): B+ I'm eager to say that Blood, Swest & Chrome will be compelling even to readers who have not seen Mad Max: Fury Road, but I'm honestly not sure. I did see the movie—I've seen it multiple times—and I would not argue with anyone calling it the greatest action movie ever made. And I knew a lot went into the making of it, but I had no idea the breadth of its backstory, which dates back decades, includes multiple false starts, and gives truly new meaning to the term "passion project." I devoured this book, loved the descriptions of extended weeks of principal photography in Namibia, and even lapped up the relatively subdued accounting of tensions between the two lead actors. Reading this book, structured as an expertly edited oral history from interviews with over a hundred people involved, just made me want to watch the movie yet again. If you love this movie or if you love cinema in general, presumably it will do the same for you.


15. The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim Defede (started 11/5; finished 11/15): A- I was 21 years behind the curve on this one—it was first published in 2002—but, I heard a passing reference to it on a podcast: there's this great book out there about the town of Gander, Newfoundland, whose roughly 10,000 population was doubled by diverted international flights that were not allowed to enter American airspace the morning of September 11, 2001. More specifically, it's about the above-and-beyond kindness of the locals, who banded together to do whatever they could to ease the fear and frustrations of passengers who were stranded there for up to five days. I thought: that sounds fantastic! And indeed, it was. Defede went to Gander and conducted countless interviews, which could only have covered a fraction of the passengers and flight crews who were forced to land there. It must have been a massive exercise in editing, to get the book down to a lean 244 pages. There were 38 commercial flights diverted there, an usual number for the town's size, for fascinating reasons related to the town's history (read the book!), and this account follows the most interesting people, the best anecodtes, from that truly unique set of days. I was regularly moved by Defede's narrative, notwithstanding the sprinkling of references to defiant American patriotism, which likely read as quite justifiable in the year after the attacks, but to some people (me), haven't necessarily aged well. Defede wisely avoided any exploration whatsoever of the geopolitics that informed those terrorist attacks, and kept the focus on the confusion and exhaustion of the passengers, the bottomless well of empathy of the locals—many of whom opened their homes for passengers to shower, or in some cases stay—and the connections, friendships and relationships that formed as a result. I could not get enough of this book, and wished it could have included many more stories. Someone should have made this into a miniseries.


16. Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World by Benjamin Alire Sáenz (started 11/15; finished 12/6): A- I so adored Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, when it ended, I ached to stay in its world. If only I could see where these two boys in love go from there! And then, on the very day I finished the book, and I went to Goodreads to post my review of it, I discovered there was indeed a sequel—published pretty recently, in 2021, a good nine years after the first novel. Well, here I am, able to consume both of them within weeks of each other. As to the question of wanting a book you deeply love to keep going, often when that actually does happen with a sequel, there comes an element of: be careful what you wish for. And I have to be fair, there are stretches of Waters of the World that had me inching closer to feeling that way. Much of it strains plausibility, the dialogue is often stilted or doesn't quite ring true—but the fact is, those same things were true of the first novel as well, and in both cases, there is such a beautiful purity to the storytelling that it more than makes up for the minor flaws, especially when considering these are books written for youth and young adults. These two novels combined make me yearn for the kind of content I never had available when I was young, and leave me moved that it's there for queer youth today. The ability to see ourselves in art truly cannot be underestimated. In the acknowledgments section at the end of this book, Benjamin Alire Sáenz comments on how much was "left unsaid" in the first book, and how increasingly dissatisfied he was with that, which was why he was compelled to write this one. The story here directly addresses both AIDS and racism in a way the previous book all but ignored—but which I was not compelled to judge, because sometimes a simple love story is all that's needed. (I was admittedly a little struck by the first novel being about gay kids in the eighties and it barely mentions AIDS, and how the film adaptation clearly took inspiration from this sequel and included more background references to it.) Furthermore, the first novel ends with Ari coming to the very realization that he's in love with Dante. Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World picks up right where the first book ended, the opening page right from the next morning, and it's a natural progression for a story about the discovery of love to evolve into the complexities of same-sex love in the modern world. There have been some complaints about how much of this book is absent Dante, who goes to a different school as Ari. Ari is the narrator though, and it's less about the two of them than it is about Ari's journey, both as a young man in love with another young man, and as a young man growing up, learning to be open with other people, forging close friendships on his own terms. This really is Ari's journey, and these are all vital steps to coming of age. Some might also balk at some of the plot turns in this book, in which Ari moves through late-eighties El Paso discovering how much his friends and family love him no matter what. I chose not to balk at any of it, because ultimately, this book is a fantasy, and the kind of fantasy that is good for readers, particularly young ones, where in at least one universe, things work out for the queer kids. There's a particular chapter in which Ari urges a classmate to come out to his friends at a party, and I have really mixed feelings about how it plays out—there's something to be said for letting someone come out on their own terms and only when they're ready—but still, it moved me to tears. Between that and a tragic occurrence in Ari's life, this book made me cry two or three times. By the end of it—and this is a much longer book, 538 vs the first one's 359 pages, written in the same style though so still a quick, breezy read—all of my mixed feelings about how this book was constructed melted away. I just loved both Ari and Dante, imperfect and beautitful, just as I loved this imperfect but beautiful book. Given how much it had to live up to, in the end I felt it met the expectations incredibly well.

Book Log 2022

1. Minoru Yamasaki and the Fragility of Architecture by Paul Kidder (started 12/21; finished 3/30): B This might be the most academic book I have ever read. And, much like Because Internet last year, it took me a good three months to finish it—a bit longer even, for a book that's all of 251 pages long. I got the last third of it so done on the flights to and from Louisville for my trip there in late March, having started it in December, plus having renewed it at the library twice, then being forced to return it and check it out again, and then renew it twice yet again. And this was not because I was disinterested in the book; it’s a matter of putting myself in circumstances where I have the time and the lack of distractions—such as, say, a cross-country flight. And I certainly didn't want to give up on this book, which the library literally added to their collection at my request (a first for me!) after I learned of its existence in the wake of the 20th anniversary of 9/11 in September 2021. The subject of this book has special significance for me, a longtime and huge nerd about skyscrapers, as Minoru Yamasaki was a graduate of University of Washington, grew up in Seattle, and designed, among countless other structures around the world, iconic skyscrapers from coast to coast: the collapsed Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, first completed in New York City in 1973; as well as Seattle's own building on a pedestal, Rainier Tower, completed in 1977. He also designed the Pacific Science Center, originally named United States Science Pavilion, at Seattle Center in 1962. He also designed Seattle's IBM Building (now just called 1200 Fifth), finished in 1964. This clear local-architect connection to the World Trade Center and the 9/11 tragedy naturally piqued my interest, and the anniversary coverage in 2021 made me aware of this, very new book. It reads a lot like something someone might read in a college class (although an architect friend of mine was bemused to learn that author Paul Kidder is a philosopher and not an architect himself) but I did still find it interesting and engaging—especially the last third or so, which included a chapter dedicated to the changing attitudes about the WTC design, particularly before and after the collapse of the Twin Towers. That said, it connected to a particularly niche interest of mine, and I can't imagine many other non-architects like myself having a great deal of interest in it.


2. A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries 2003-2020 by David Sedaris (started 3/30; finished 4/30): A- There's hardly anything different I can say about this book that would be different from what I said about its predecessor, Theft by Finding: Here is a book with no narrative arc whatsoever, and the amazing thing about it is it's still easily one of the best books I've read all year. ...[This book] is a genuine triumph of editing, a showcase of Sedaris's best and most acute observations, and his satisfyingly caustic humor. I laughed out loud on nearly every page of this book, which might be even better than some of his deservedly celebrated collections of essays. And that's really saying something. I could not recommend this book enough. The only difference, I suppose, is that these diaries from his later years betray a bit of a crankier disposition, but given the amusingly pissy disposition of his youth, that's hardly a leap. The man is a hilarious delight either way.


3. Ten Steps to Nanette by Hannah Gadsby (started 4/30; finished 6/7): A- It takes some time to fully appreciate the structure of Ten Steps to Nanette, which seems on the surface to be about how Hannah Gadsby prior life experiences of repression and trauma led to her ability to fashion those experiences and trauma into the work of art that was her 2018 standup special Nanette. Just as she did with the live show, however, she expertly holds the reader's perceptions in her very capable hands. In the end, it becomes increasingly clear that this book is largely about her exceedingly complicated relationship with her mother, a narrative so capably woven into the telling of all the other stuff that it culminates in an emotional gut punch that I am certain was very much by design. Everything about this book's writing, its storytelling, and its arc is by design, and deeply satisfyingly so; I did not feel manipulated, but taken on a journey by a person in meticulous command of her craft. This is hardly surprising, given how precisely constructed the live show was—what is fascinating to read is how much of a messy struggle it was for her to get it to that point.


4. The Library Book by Susan Orlean (started 6/7; finished 7/7): A This book is utterly delightful. It's been a good five years, at least, since I enjoyed a book so thoroughly—it connects so many threads of things for which I have personal passion. And I don't even have a particular passion for books, broadly speaking! And that's the case for nearly every one of the incredibly fascinating subjects of this book. But, I do have a deep well of passion for the existence of public libraries themselves, not to mention all of these other things the book touches on, while relating them specifically to the Los Angeles Central Library building, constructed in 1925: architecture; urban development; population growth; statistics broadly speaking; hidden gems, particularly in cities as unfairly maligned as Los Angeles; civic pride broadly speaking; and perhaps most significantly in this case—disasters. There was a fire in 1986 that destroyed twenty percent of the library's books and other rare contents, a lot of it irreplaceable; an accused arsonist whose guilt was never proven both because of and in spite of his notoriously pathological lying; a years-long recovery process for the barely recoverable books damaged by either smoke or water; and both before and after that event, a long history of truly fascinating individuals who served as the City Librarian, whose lives and details Orlean spends a good amount of time on, weaving in threads of the national history of public libraries in the United States and how they came to be what they are today. I have long had a deep well of love for the Central Library building constructed in Seattle in 2004, and after reading this book am kicking myself that I never visited the Los Angeles Central Library during the five years that Shobhit lived in that city—even though I was downtown many times. It now has its own modernized-yet-complementary eight-level wing that was added in 1993, capping off seven years of recovery and restoration after the fire. It will be at the top of my list whenever I visit Los Angeles again, all thanks to this book about libraries, librarians, and the one library that has arguably the most fascinating history in the U.S.


5. Feral Creatures by Kira Jane Buxton (started 7/7; finished 9/4): B After four nonfiction books read up to this point in the year, I had a hankering or a novel, which I don't read often and feel I should read more of. In my endeavor to come up with ideas for a fun novel to read, I recalled loving the Seattle-based apocalyptic bent-comedy novel narrated by a shit talking crow named Shit Turd, Hollow Kingdom, in 2019. So, I looked up that novel on Amazon to see what similar novels the website had to recommend—only thereby to discover this sequel had been published just last year! I was thrilled and could not have placed a hold on it at the library any faster. . . . Well. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy this novel, and delighted in how often it got me to laugh out loud. Still, the facts that I finished Hollow Kingdom in 19 days, and it took me nearly two months to finish Feral Creatures, are still clearly illuminating. Although this novel ends with a sort of "Wild Animals Battle Royale" extravaganza that feels a little like a replacement for something a little deeper, it's still wonderful just to be back in S.T.'s universe. As such, to this day I would recommend Hollow Kingdom to absolutely anyone; I would only recommend Feral Creatures, on the other hand, to those who are already huge fans of the first novel, and particularly its characters. This is somewhat like sticking with a TV show that's started to lose just a little bit of its steam because you have such affection for its characters.


6. The World's Worst Assistant by Sona Movsesian (started 9/4; finished 9/14): B+ After it took me two full months to read Feral Creatures, which I did genuinely enjoy in spite of it being predictably inferior to the novel to which it was a sequel, finishing The World's Worst Assistant in ten days almost felt like a stunning achievement. Except: to say that this is a light, breezy read is an understatement: it's only 272 pages long; it has far fewer words per page on average; it has cartoon interludes and mock-script interludes that create pages with even fewer words to read. In terms of any challenge to reading comprehension, this might as well be a children's book. On the other hand, if you are a fan of Conan O'Brien (as I am), or particularly a big fan of his podcast Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend (as I am), then this is a definitively entertaining read, equally touching on both O'Brien's own charisma, star power and self-effacing humor, as well as Movsesien's own, very distinct sensibility that has rightly won her fans in her own right. If you have little to no familiarity with either of these people, I'm sure this book would still be a fun read but it wouldn't be quite the same. This one is very much for the fans, for whom it definitely has its rewards.


7. Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing by Melissa Mohr (started 9/21; finished 10/12): B+ If you have any level of intellectual curiosity and you love swearing, this is the book for you. And given that this tracks history of offensive language dating all the way back to ancient Rome, the fact that it was published nine years ago hardly qualifies it as "dated" (one or two things that might be phrased slightly differently were it published in 2022 notwithstanding). In fact, fascinatingly, Holy Sh*t examines the two different meanings of "swearing" (the sacred and the profane), how one or the other has shifted in priority of offensiveness depending on its usage over the centuries, and how they have been related to each other over throughout. I did find the portion of the book covering the many centuries of the Middle Ages somewhat dull, just as I have always found any history of the Middle Ages to be, but thankfully, you can take the word "Brief" in the title quite literally: this is only about 250 pages, a brisk, overall fascinating read, a lot of it uniquely amusing. Especially when considering, for example, graffiti on the brothel walls in Pompeii.


8. This Is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan (started 10/12; finished 10/20): B This book started with great promise, which lasted through the middle of its three sections, and then very much fizzled. Pollan focuses on three psychotropic plants here, in the book's three sections: opium; caffeine; and mescaline. The opium chapter may be my favorite, as it reprints and recontextualizes a piece Pollan had published in Harper's magazine in 1997, when the "War on Drugs" was in a radically different place—seeing added commentary from 2021, plus restored portions that had been cut from the original Harper's piece for legal and safety reasons, was very fascinating to me. The middle section, on caffeine, is nearly as fascinating for inverted reasons: instead of trying a drug for the first time, he wrote most of this piece while quitting caffeine cold turkey, and tracking the effects of withdrawal from this drug partaken regularly by 80% of the world (and I approach this material from the point of view of that other 20% who doesn't drink coffee). The final piece, on mescaline, was ultimately a disappointment: a self-indulgent account of a white man eager to experience an "authentic" sacred ceremony that uses the plant, even though by definition it could never be authentic, given his position as a white man experiencing the substance for the first time, not to mention the woman conducting the ceremony not even being Indigenous herself. Pollan spends a lot of time in this section hand-wringing about "cultural appropriation" only to do a version of exactly that; why he couldn't just partake in the substance on his own cultural terms, as he did both the others in the book (which have their own histories of sacred ritual, after all), I did not understand. That said, the man is a vividly descriptive writer and when his pieces work, they were very effectively. I just found his approach in the end to be misguided, which is unfortunate for it to have been the book's ending section.


9. The Submission by Amy Waldman (started 10/22; finished 11/4): B+ I couldn't tell you how long this novel had been on hold for my account at the Seattle Public Library—definitely not quite as far back as when it was first published in 2011, but quite possibly I'd had the hold paused for more than half the intervening eleven years. It had been a long time, which accounts for some minor elements of the book that have not aged particularly well, notably the idea of a white woman writing from the perspectives of both entitled White characters as well as marginalized people of color, particularly Muslims in post-9/11 New York City. The book's many accolades and awards from its time (which it would not at all likely receive today) notwithstanding, this largely accounts for my giving it a B+ in spite of it being arguably the most compulsively readable book I had read so far this year. (I only read two other books this year in less time. Sona Movsesian's The World's Worst Assistant, which I read in 10 days, really doesn't count, given its many cartoon interludes makes it a quick read even by slow-reader standards. And I only managed to read Michael Pollan's This Is Your Mind on Plants in eight days because I forced it, budgeting daily pages in the face of a Book Club deadline.) I finished The Submission, a novel about a blind contest to design a 9/11 memorial two years after the attack only for the winner to wind up being a Muslim man, in a solid two weeks—quick by my standards, especially considering it was not for Book Club and I had no looming deadline; I simply kept feeling compelled to pick it up and read it. The best kind of book. I read nonfiction by far the most often, felt like reading a novel again, and simply perused my longtime-paused holds at the library and finally selected this one. I was very glad I did, and rather wish now that I had read it a long time ago. I remain curious as to what specifically Muslim critics may have thought of this book, but setting that aside, the ensemble cast of characters struck me as quite vividly drawn all the way around.


10. Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris (started 11/4; finished 11/10): B+ I let too much time go by and didn't realize until I finished The Ministry for the Future that I had not dated when I finished this one! Well, I know I was starting on that one at least by November 11 so I guess I have to guess November 10. So, about a week for this book: a very easy, quick, often funny and often poignant read, as always with David Sedaris's collections of essays. Although I still have to say his diary anthologies are my favorite, I quite enjoyed this one, which revolves largely around the death of his father, the one of his parents he was not particularly close to. Sedaris's perspective is always uniquely compelling and often hilarious; I'm basically a broken record about him at this point—if pressed to choose a favorite writer, I would likely say it's him.


11. The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson (started 11/10; finished 12/13): B+ It has been a long, long time since I read a book this long (in this case, 563 pages) in so short a time—barely more than a month, just shy of five weeks. Let's say an average of 113 pages per week. And that's without ever budgeting pages per day, the way I had to in order to finish both Holy Shit and This Is Your Mind on Plants so I would be finished with the latter in time for our first nonfiction Book Club meeting with coworkers! (In fact, those two books were a combined 640 pages read in 30 days, averaging 21.3 per day, except that in the end, when I finally realized I needed to budget page reading, for the last week and a half or so I was reading 34 pages a day. With Ministry for the Future I only had to average just over 16 pages a day, but that's way more than I usually ever averaged prior to this year. I'm calling it a win: more prolific reading, without having to force myself into it.) Anyway, the point is, I could not put this book down for long, and it became a staple of both my bus and train rides to and from work, and virtually every half-hour lunch break at work. I hardly read it while at home, and still managed to finish it far more quickly than I really expected to. This is a novel of "speculative fiction" regarding climate change effects in the near-future of coming decades, and how world governments respond to it, but particularly an international agency—that being the book's title—borne of the evolving Paris Agreement and starting with little to no real international authority, but with growing authority and effectiveness over time. The opening chapter is especially grim, detailing a heat wave in India that kills 100 million people; I feared what the rest of the book might bring after that, but nothing thereafter is quite a grim, precisely because that grim event becomes a sort of international inciting event, finally getting governments to start making real changes in response to climate challenges. And this book, although it does have a protagonist who is returned to every few to several chapters (that being Mary, the head of the titular Ministry), it functions largely as a fictional oral history, many chapters narrated by a nameless figure accounting for this or that event or action—one major climate catastrophe or another, or one of countless countermeasures. For example, pumping Antarctic glacier melt through wells dug to their depths and brought up to refreeze at their surface, to slow the pace of their sliding across land, thereby buying years of time. It's all very fascinating and meticulously researched. Everything included in this book is immediately plausible, which is alternatingly unnerving and hopeful.