This month, I started auditing a writing class that also involves a lot of reading, and that shows up in this list. As you will start to figure out, there’s definitely a theme.
No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us by Rachel Louise Snyder
I saw recommendations for this after the Stacks Pack book club’s chaotic choice of Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us. I have not read it, but I gather that domestic violence is part of the plot, and Snyder’s book was recommended as a more realistic portrayal. Sobering stuff.How Not to Kill Yourself: A Portrait of the Suicidal Mind by Clancy Martin (reread, school)
I love this book, which is kind of a weird thing to say about a book about suicide, but I think he expresses things so well. I will say that some of it is graphic so for me it would not have been great to read while I was feeling really bad, but I recommend it with just that caveat.The Right Kind of White: A Memoir by Garrett Bucks
This was interesting, but I wanted more from the author.Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri
Big Story Bookstore posted a picture of a bunch of contemporary Japanese authors while I was out in Bend so obviously I had no choice but to buy all the ones I had yet to read. This was one. In my experience, there’s a sort of weirdness and also a sort of restraint in the contemporary Japanese literature I’ve read, and that’s on display here.First Love: Essays on Friendship by Lilly Dancyger (audio)
This was not what I had expected - it was a bit more memoir-y than I’d anticipated - but I enjoyed listening to it and got a bit jealous of Dancyger’s ability to build a creative life.The Writer’s Notebook II: Craft Essays from Tin House
Good stuff in here! I especially enjoyed the essay about comedy by Steve Almond.This is Amiko, Do You Copy? by Natsuko Imamura
This was not one of the Big Story books, but I bought it at another bookstore in Bend, Roundabout Books. It too had both weirdness and restraint. I liked it, but felt like something was missing.
Notes Made While Falling by Jenn Ashworth (school)
A memoir about medical trauma. The structure of the book is really interesting.Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron (school)
Someone probably should have given me this book in high school.All Fours by Miranda July
Wild stuff in here!Hey, Good Luck Out There by Georgia Toews
Georgia Toews is Miriam Toews’ daughter and I wanted to see how much of a nepo baby she was. Not too much of one! I liked this and think it stands on its own merits - not as good as her mother’s work, but it’s just her first book.One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey (reread, school)
What a profoundly male book! It was interesting to me that it’s not the electroshock therapy that does McMurphy in - it’s a lobotomy. The image I recalled from the book when I read it earlier, and the part of the movie that’s repeatedly referenced, is shock, and the book absolutely crackles with electricity references.Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America by Elizabeth Wurtzel (reread, school)
Maybe it’s that I’m now middle-aged and tired, but I found this whole thing tiresome and wanted her to just chill out and make some positive changes. Not at all how it read when I was much younger! There’s a weird bit in the 15th anniversary afterword where Wurtzel seems to claim that she invented the memoir???Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen by Suzanne Scanlon (school)
I really liked this one - she plays with form and structure in it in a very effective way.Emma by Jane Austen
made me do it. I enjoyed it, but wouldn’t say I found it particularly compelling, which is probably because I have tunnel vision and read so much contemporary literary fiction.
I read this for a book challenge and becauseThe Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang (school)
This was really, really good. I wrote a little bit about it in my last post.An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison (reread, school)
A useful memoir, but the really funny thing is that in the book she references a niece who’s an avid writer, and then in the acknowledgments she references that niece, Leslie Jamison, and I went, “wait, is that the same Leslie Jamison?” Yes, it is.The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel (reread)
This is the one thing I read from 2020-2022 that cut through the haze I was in and I wanted to know if I still got that feeling from it. I did.The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (reread, school)
It was fine.
Trust by Hernan Diaz (reread, school)
I read this when it was new. I missed the page with the table of contents and got very confused and didn’t care for it all that much. This time I knew the structure and I loved it.Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot (school)
This is one people love but I didn’t get into it.The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde (school)
This was really interesting to read. She articulates things about illness so well. And she coins the term “self care” but she’s not talking about manicures and pedicures, she’s talking about doing things like going to the doctor.Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life by Alice Wong (school)
I expected more of a memoir than a scrapbook of essays but it was pretty interesting.What Doesn’t Kill You: Life with a Chronic Illness - Lessons from a Body in Revolt by Tessa Miller (school)
Crohn’s disease sounds terrible!Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham (audio)
This book was amazing! So interesting, and he manages to build an incredible sense of suspense, which is a feat given that those of us of a certain age watched Challenger blow up live from school classrooms. Highly recommended!