Bookshelf: Reading During a Pandemic

When we first closed Inn operations back in March, like most people, all I read was the news. Obsessively, compulsively. I looked for answers and explanations and some kind of a timeline I could peg my business life to. As the #BlackLivesMatter movement exploded I followed along just as hungrily for information and ways to help, for perspectives that would crack my own open. I’ve also been writing. All of which is to say that my book reading has been erratic and impulsive and fitful. I’ve started and set down more books in the past few months that I ever had before. But with me the entire time has been Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann.

I started it approximately 1,000 years ago and am still reading it because it is approximately 1,000 pages long. I’m not joking. About the page count that is. Look at this EFFING TOME:

The actual page count is 988 and honestly, if I’d written it and gotten that close to 1,000 I’d probably be like, “Hold up, I’ve totally got twelve more pages in me. Brb.”

It’s an audacious book. Not just because it’s long, but because the whole thing is basically one sentence. That’s right, no paragraphs, no chapters. And it’s all the interior monologue/ stream of consciousness of a woman in Ohio going about her day with her kids and her catering business.

I vacillate between loving it (the genius! the insight! I feel so seen! I should read more things that challenge me like this!) and despising it (the tedium! how dare she make me read this much nonsense!). On balance, I am enjoying it enough to be fully committed to finishing it.

Stray: a Memoir by Stephanie Danler is brutal and brilliant and I’m not just saying that because I got to know her a little when she was one of our Artist Residents at the Inn back in 2015. It’s a look at her tumultuous relationships with her alcoholic mother, drug addicted and mostly absent father, and a married boyfriend she refers to only as the Monster, but it’s also so much more. It’s poetry for one. I just love her way with language. It’s the kind of book I had to read with a pencil in hand because certain passages could NOT just sit there NOT underlined.

You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington by Alexis is Coe wins Best Title of anything I’ve read recently. Though it could also be called Never Forget George Washington Personally Enslaved People, and that was probably my favorite aspect of the book— Coe’s refusal to gloss over or try to contextualize in any positive way the fact that he did that.

I really enjoyed Creature by Amina Cain, so I was very excited for Indelicacy. It was dreamy and strange, which is just what I was hoping for. The kind of book where halfway through you’re like, wait, what era is this even taking place? It’s about class and friendship and the language is just so precise and delicious.

I’ve come to realize that it’s usually a mistake for me to read a short story collection all in one go. It’s like going to a party and eating loads of finger foods and on your way home you find yourself full but somehow still hungry for one big meal, do you know what I mean? So I’ve been pacing myself through Karen Russel’s Orange World and I’m so glad because the space I’ve made between each story allows them to grow and linger in wonderful ways. I just love how unabashedly STRANGE they are. The Prospectors and The Tornado Auction have been my favorite.

I’ve followed both these gals on Instagram for a while and right when the Pandemic first hit I bought The Upside of Being Down by Jen Gotch and This Will Only Hurt A Little by Busy Philipps and read them back to back and it felt like hanging out with very gossip-y, self-help-y, girlfriends of a kind. At times I felt a little stuck in the muck of their middle school memories, and the chatty tones back to back was too much for me by the end but 100% my fault for reading them together. Just as I finished them, Jen Gotch stepped down from her company for inexcusably racist behavior which was a reminder that even folks who are doing “good work” in one area (ie mental health) can be failing terribly on another front. On the flip side, I have very much admired just how much Busy Philipps has stepped up her political activism and used her celebrity to amplify other voices of the BLM movement in particular.

Less by Andrew Sean Greer is about a middle aged man who travels around the world rather than accept an invitation to his ex-boyfriend’s wedding. It was funny and escapist and smart. The kind of thing that feels deceptively light when you’re reading it— what someone might undersell as a “guilty pleasure” just because it’s pleasurable.

I am on team I Love Anything By Rachel Cusk. I waited to read A Life’s Work because it’s about early motherhood and I was worried it would feel a little too on the nose for me but it was PERFECTION. Gosh she’s brilliant. And insightful. And such a clear writer. Another book I had to read with a pencil. Little Labors by Rivka Galchen has been my favorite book to send parents-to-be, but I’m gonna have to put this one in the mix now too for sure.

I’ve read all of Ottessa Moshfegh’s novels and been disturbed but engrossed by every one of them and Death In Her Hands was no different. I also personally love an unreliable narrator. Don’t really want to tell you more and spoil it.

Little Weirds by Jenny Slate delivered on being weird and was additionally pretty delightful. I found myself wondering if it’s the kind of manuscript that would have seen the light of day were it not written by a celebrity (surreal memoir told in very short chapters), but that ultimately didn’t make me enjoy it any less.

I F*CKING LOVED Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby and I think EVERYBODY SHOULD READ IT. Goddamnit she is funny. Like so funny I cried while laughing too many times to count. Just go read it. In fact, go read everything written by her.

I’m only realizing now as I wrap this post up that clearly I felt the need for some ‘familiar faces’ during these completely unfamiliar times. A solid SIX of these books are the second, third, or even fifth books I’ve read by these authors. There are worse ways to cope of course.