writer | author of Cake Time
Can science be sexy? Yes, in stories by Michelle Ross! I wrote a review of her new short story collection, There’s So Much They Haven’t Told You, for The Rumpus.
Here’s a little excerpt:
In the first story of this collection, a girl learns the shocking truth that the world is made of atoms, that “when you get right down to it, it’s all just studs and holes.” Later on the school bus a boy whispers seductively into the girl’s hair: “Man, what else don’t you know?”
Read the rest at The Rumpus!
Brief reviews of books by contemporary authors I read this month — along with photos of what I ate while reading. The list is ordered by the level of my enjoyment:
Riverine: A Memoir from Anywhere but Here by Angela Palm (Graywolf, 2016)
“I was well acquainted with the sensation of exterior isolation and interior energy, of the power in that juxtaposition.”
*
A girl grows up in a poor rural Indiana town, in love with the sweet boy next door — who ends up killing two people while strung out on heroin and gets sentenced to life in prison. Two kids, a childhood romance, two divergent paths, a lifetime of desire, unanswered questions, longing — This memoir gave me all the feels! I’m so honored to have gotten the chance to read with Angela Palm at Book Soup earlier this month!
There’s So Much They Haven’t Told You by Michelle Ross (Moon City, 2017)
“There is a part of me that knows I probably won’t feel so good about this in the morning, but for now I’m spinning with desire. It’s like I’m all tentacles, a giant squid. Give me, give me, give me.”
*
My full review of Michelle Ross’s short story collection is now up at The Rumpus! Enjoy —
The Neighborhod by Kelly Magee (Gold Wake, 2016)
“Sometimes the girl did things without questioning why she was doing them, even though she knew the thing she was doing was exactly the kind of thing she should question.”
*
Kelly’s book is full of modern myths and fairy tales and surreal events in quiet neighborhoods and small philosophical moments. It was so fun reading with her at Village Books in Bellingham — Thanks to all who came to the event!
Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016)
“Achieving the extraordinary is not a linear process. The secret is to show up, do the work, and go home.”
*
This gigantic tome is mostly words of wisdom from inspiring people Tim has interviewed on his podcast. The above quote comes from Coach Sommer — and it reminds me to just write every day, without worrying about the end result or what will happen with the writing —
The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes (Knopf, 2016)
“In this book, the focus is specifically on the role of sugar in our diet…. It implies that populations or individuals can be at the very least reasonably healthy living on carbohydrate-rich diets, even grain-rich diets, as long as they consume relatively little sugar.”
*
I’m glad Gary Taubes has gone from advocating low-carb to just low-sugar in his latest book! I personally need moderate healthy carbs to feel good, have energy, support adrenals & hormones — but refined / processed sugar is something else. The Case Against Sugar is still a bit extreme, making the case that sugar’s a big factor behind not just diabetes and obesity but also dementia, cancer, and other slow developing diseases…. In any case, it’s a pretty motivating book if you’re trying to cut down on the white stuff —
Adventures in Property Management by Chelsea Werner-Jatzke (Sibling Rivalry, 2017)
“The building began to reek of us and the pheromones drove the dogs wild.”
*
I got to read with Chelsea at Stories in Echo Park earlier — Thanks to everyone who came! — then read Chelsea’s chapbook of stories: It’s a moody yet hilarious narrative about the manager and inhabitants of a building whose owners are distant and unresponsive — leading to apocalyptic consequences!
.
Assisted Living by Gary Lutz (Future Tense, 2017)
“I’ll let my life live me.”
*
Gary Lutz’s slim chapbook is poetic and wry, with four stories focused mostly on the aftermath of divorce. It’s short enough to read over an acai bowl!
Power Made Us Swoon by Brynn Saito (Red Hen, 2016)
“We are the hours. The hours are us.”
*
Brynn’s poems feature a witty woman warrior — and touch everything from the legacy of Japanese internment camps to the lulling power of television. I read with Brynn at Diesel Oakland earlier this month, along with the author of the next book —
Birds of Paradise Lost by Andrew Lam (Red Hen, 2013)
“But everyone’s ruled by some kind of desire.”
*
Andrew Lam’s stories center around Vietnamese immigrants in the Bay Area — sad stories of suffering, cultural conflict, and small moments of connection.
Dietland by Sarai Walker (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015)
“I spent my days tiptoeing around food, the way one might tiptoe into a baby’s room while it’s sleeping.”
*
I picked this one up for The Edison Book Club. This novel’s about an obese girl called Plum who’s dieting and planning on a gastric bypass — who meets a mysterious group of women waging war against the diet industry. It’s painful to see Plum’s futile dieting efforts, which goes in a clear starve-binge starve-binge cycle — You want to shake her and say, girl, you can’t lose weight by starving yourself! While I was glad to see a book written from the perspective of an empowered large woman, this book’s unrelentingly negative portrayal of basically all men really troubled me, among other issues with character and plot.
___
Get more and more timely book reviews from me on Instagram.
Brief reviews of books by contemporary authors I read this month — along with photos of what I ate while reading. The list is ordered by the level of my enjoyment:
Slow Days, Fast Company by Eve Babitz (Knopf, 1977)
*
“So the artists in Los Angeles just don’t have that burning eagerness people expect. And they’re just not serious.”
*
Eve Babitz’s book is a sort of ode to LA — a perfect read for a slow day wandering around the sunny city. Eve goes on many strange, fun adventures, from a trip to Bakersfield with a random grape farmer guy who likes her work to drunken threesomes to a blank weekend in Palm Springs. I loved this novel about LA and men and other loose, listless, lazy liaisons.
Sorry to Disrupt the Peace by Patty Yumi Cottrell (McSweeney’s, 2017)
“Like most normal people, my life force ebbed and flowed, ebbed and flowed.”
*
Patty’s novel is about a 30-something woman in NYC — who goes to her adoptive parent’s home in Milwaukee when her adoptive brother suddenly commits suicide. It’s sad and moving and also funny and wry — and reminds me a bit of another McSweeney’s novel I read earlier this year that also centers around a sibling’s suicide: All My Puny Sorrows. Patty’s hilarious in person too; go see her read on book tour!
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (Knopf, 2016)
“Tell a lie long enough and it will turn to truth.”
*
This sweeping saga follows the two Ghanan sisters — separated across continents by colonial rule and slavery — through generations. I really admired the ambition of Yaa Gyasi’s novel — spanning indigenous Ghanan cultures, British colonialism, American slavery, coal mining, heroin addiction, dissertation writing. It’s amazing to think about how much the world has changed in just a handful of generations.
The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan (Penguin, 2016)
*
“And you know what happens when a bomb goes off? The truth about people comes out.”
*
Karan’s book tells the story of a bombing in Delhi — following both victims and perpetrators to examine the beliefs and motivations and history and religion and economic factors and life’s strange twists that result in radicalization and violence. The Association of Small Bombs really interconnected many different issues that often aren’t explored together in discussions about terrorism and violence. I really enjoyed the finely drawn psychology of the characters — it’s an important read for our complex times.
The Education of Margot Sanchez by Lilliam Rivera (Simon & Schuster, 2017)
“I spend my waking hours figuring out my future–what to wear, what to say, how to say it.”
*
Lilliam’s YA novel stars Margot, a teenager who ran up $600 on her papi’s credit card to buy cuter clothes — gotta invest in that fashion Instagram account! — then gets punished by being forced to work at the family supermarket in the Bronx. Margot struggles to fit in with the in crowd at a private school where she’s the only Latina. She’s caught between two worlds — of fashion, ambition, and cultural expectations. Lilliam and I read together at the latest Angels Flight Literary West salon!
13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad (Penguin, 2016)
“Sometimes a pity will even bloom in my heart for that small, hunched, pedaling figure.”
*
The self-loathing and loneliness and resilience in this book is unrelenting — The protagonist Lizzie constantly evaluates and judges the appearance of the women around her — and of course turns those judgmental eyes most harshly on herself. Mona Awad’s book shows a world where women are in constant battle against their bodies, each lonely woman in a psychological cage of her own making, created by harsh self-judgement and cold evaluations of others. It’s a way of seeing the world that I’m intimately familiar with — and glad to have left behind. Overall, a touching, incisive read.
The Wangs vs. The World by Jade Chang (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016)
“And what is any artist, really, but someone who doesn’t mind being an asshole?”
*
Jade’s novel follows a wealthy Bel-Air Chinese-American family — that suddenly goes broke in the financial crisis. One of the main characters in this novel is an avant-garde artist who’s sort of Koons / Murakami-esque in the ways she plays with commercialism and commodification of art. She was my favorite and most interesting character. I picked up this book when Jade read at Jillian Lauren‘s Story+Soul Salon —
Big City by Scot Sothern (Stalking Horse, 2017)
“Sometimes story books are like real people but more exciting and sometimes just being people is more exciting than storybooks.”
*
BigCity is a parody of a Western — starring a cute bear, a gunslinging amputee, a powerful female fighter, a filmmaker, and other colorful characters. It’s violent, bawdy, and imaginative — it’ll jar you out of your comfortable sense of reality.
___
Get more and more timely book reviews from me on Instagram.
Brief reviews of books by contemporary authors I read this month — along with photos of what I ate while reading. The list is ordered by the level of my enjoyment:
Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh (Penguin, 2017)
“Curious girls get what they deserve.”
*
If you haven’t read Ottessa Moshfegh’s stories yet, treat yourself to them now. No one writes self-loathing and disgust quite the curiously addictive way she does. One of the things I love about Ottessa’s writing is her precise, unsympathetic physical descriptions of people. I really admire her panache in taking on writing about people that are difficult to write about — the mentally challenged, the predatorial, the physically deformed — in an unsentimental, matter of fact way. This is my favorite short story collection probably since Mary Gaitskill’s Bad Behavior.
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin (Dial Press, 1956)
“Women are like water. They are tempting like that, and they can be that treacherous, and they can seem to be that bottomless, you know? — and they can be that shallow. And that dirty.”
*
Giovanni’s Room centers on two young guys that have a confusing affair in 1950s Paris. It’s about love and shame and desire and self-loathing — it reminds me of Garth Greenwell’s What Belongs to You, which I also loved. The book also has deep feminist underpinnings about female identity at that time — how much it’s defined in relation to men, how dependent it is on male acceptance and approval. I loved every page of this book and am looking forward to the discussion at The Edison Book Club March 1!
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews (McSweeney’s, 2015)
“I googled: can writing a novel kill you? And found nothing useful.”
*
This novel is about two sisters: a famous pianist and serial suicide attempter and her less famous and less suicidal writer sister. Despite the topic of suicide, the love and boisterous closeness in this funny, messy family was warm and sweet. Also, one of the sisters is often called Yo (short for Yolandi) by her sis — and I often call my own sis Yo (short for Yo-El)…. So basically this novel is about me, which is how I read most novels.
Children of the New World by Alexander Weinstein (Picador, 2016)
“You can’t get rid of memories; you can only try to ignore them.”
*
If you love Black Mirror, Children of the New World is like a literary equivalent. Each story tells the tale of a different dystopian future — many having to do with the intersection of technology and memory — how false memories could be created by virtual worlds, how our experiences change if we can give others open access to our memories. Other stories portray life post ecological disaster — like a new ice age freezing up most of the US. It’s a chilling read — especially if you’ve just read Naomi Klein’s climate change book like I have.
Green Girl by Kate Zambreno (Harper Perennial, 2014)
“Sometimes she narrates her actions inside her head in third-person. Does that make her a writer or a woman?”
*
I picked up Green Girl on a whim at the AWP Conference. This novel is about a listless, dissolute, and slightly self-destructive American girl who’s moved to London to try and forget a guy who jilted her — but is still unhappy, working as a perfume sample girl at Horrids and getting wasted and hooking up with guys she doesn’t even like for reasons she can’t put a finger on. It captures a poignant mood — one between desire and becoming and disappearing specific to young adulthood.
Grace by Natashia Deon (Counterpoint, 2016)
“Money keeps you from paying for things with your life.”
*
I’d put off reading Grace for a few months because I feared its heavy topics (slavery, rape, etc) were more than I could handle when I was already despondent about current politics. The book stars 15-year-old Naomi, a slave in 1840s South, who escapes the plantation — to end up at a Georgia brothel. Some themes are resilience and hope in the face of oppression, fear, racism, and violence. But there’s also a lot of love in this book — and a happy ending — and, yes, frightening parallels to socioeconomic problems that still plague us today.
The Most Dangerous Place on Earth by Lindsey Lee Johnson (Random House, 2017)
“How was it possible to go through life so blind, so I afraid?”
*
I read this novel a while ago, but my long review went live on The Los Angeles Review of books this month. Read all my thoughts on this novel about spoiled Californian kids there: “To Be Young, Rich, and Screen-Addicted: Lindsey Lee Johnson’s The Most Dangerous Place on Earth.”
Every Anxious Wave by Mo Daviau (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2016)
“The future made us older, but our wisdom was dubious.”
*
An ex indie band member turned bartender finds a time travel wormhole in his bedroom. That’s the premise for Every Anxious Wave, which I picked up because I met the author, Mo Daviau, who’s the writing coordinator at Vermont Studio Center where I did a residency earlier this year. If you love indie rock, wry love stories and time travel tales, Mo Daviau’s novel melds all three into a sweet, lighthearted read.
This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate by Naomi Klein (Simon & Schuster, 2014)
“I denied climate change for longer than I care to admit…. I continued to behave as if there was nothing wrong with the shiny card in my wallet attesting to my ‘elite’ frequent flyer status.”
*
There’s nothing quite like reading a well-researched and passionate tome about pending environmental disaster while sitting in a plane that’s spewing tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. I started Naomi Klein’s book while flying to DC for the AWP conference — and while the text would be worrying under any circumstances, I found it extra anxiety provoking considering what Trump’s done to the EPA.
Her overall argument is that if we’re going to have any chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change, we must stop valuing GDP growth over everything else and instead “place value on those things that most of us cherish above all — a decent standard of living, a measure of future security, and our relationships with one another.” The odds are stacked against us though: International trade laws hobble local environmental efforts, many enviro nonprofits greenwash even oil companies (The Nature Conservancy in fact drills for oil in Galveston Bay! And has been for a decade a half!), no techy magic bullet solutions exist — and we as individuals are reluctant to pay serious attention to the issue of climate change. We’re in the midst of discussing this book at the Current Events Reading Group.
____
Get more and more timely book reviews from me on Instagram.
Visit Los Angeles Review of Books today, and you’ll find on the front page a new book review I wrote — “To Be Young, Rich, and Screen-Addicted: Lindsey Lee Johnson’s The Most Dangerous Place on Earth.”
Here’s a little excerpt:
Although the teens in The Most Dangerous Place on Earth never grow up enough to contend with a world beyond their own lives, the novel effectively highlights the perils of sharing anything personal or meaningful today. Anything you say or do can be uploaded onto Instagram, dissected on Twitter, ridiculed on Facebook — the private has become public in a very different way.
Read the rest at Los Angeles Review of Books!
Brief reviews of books by contemporary authors I read this month — along with photos of what I ate while reading. The list is ordered by the level of my enjoyment:
The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante (Europa, 2013)
“Did I keep my feelings muted because I was frightened by the violence with which, in fact, in my innermost self, I wanted things, people, praise, triumphs?”
*
I loved and could so relate to Elena, the protagonist of this novel, who keeps so much of her feelings and desires hidden from others. Simultaneously I often felt infuriated with her — at her inability to speak up when she was wronged, to ask for what she wanted. The domestic violence — and the women’s expectation and acceptance of it — in Ferrante’s novel is a fascinating and disturbing look at the culture of a small Italian town. It’s beautiful and violent and full of dramatic sweeps of feeling. I loved this book — and it ended in an emotional cliffhanger, so I can’t wait to read the next in the series. Earlier: My microreview of My Brilliant Friend, the first of Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels.
Army of One by Janet Sarbanes (Otis Books, 2008)
“Writing is not a solution, I tell them, writing is the putting into words of a problem.”
*
I especially liked the epistolary stories in Janet Sarbanes’s collection Army of One. There’s an email exchange between a cheery nine year old girl and a rather surly aunt — who reveals obliquely she once slept with the girl’s father. There’s a communal journal where all the petty bickerings of a polyamorous commune come to humorous light. Through the collection the stories touch on art and writing, war and politics, money, freedom, and that pesky and elusive goal of self actualization. Highly recommended — I feel more people should know about this tiny book from a tiny press.
A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Jonestown by Julia Scheeres (Free Press, 2011)
“It was far easier to condemn Jones’s victims than to comprehend them.”
*
A Thousand Lives is a scary and fascinating read — It seeks to answer a compelling question: Why did close to a thousand people follow a religious leader — despite his descent into alcohol and drug abuse and psychosis — to end up committing “revolutionary suicide” in the 70s? What attracted them to what most would call a sadistic cult? Julia Scheeres looks at some of the very positive aspects of Jim Jones’s church: the message and practice of racial equality, the acceptance and care for the many dispossessed ignored and rejected by the rest of society. This book was a serious page turner, all the way to its thrilling and very violent end.
Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones (Bloomsbury, 2015)
“To the suburban kids hooked first on pills, heroin fulfilled the dream of the adventures they’d never had in their quiet towns. Part of heroin’s new appeal was that it kept them at the edge of a hazardous yet alluring dreamland.”
*
This book is a trip to read. Dreamland reveals how changes in medical treatment of pain got huge numbers of people hooked on OxyContin — and how those people ended up turning to black tar heroin en masse when crews from a small Mexican town figured out a business model to deliver the drugs cheaply, quickly and conveniently right to the addict. Dreamland is about America’s opiate epidemic, but also about so much more: the sweeping economic changes that happened in the rust belt as a result of offshoring, the entrepreneurial spirit and innovation of small town businessmen in Mexico, the heavy impact of poorly cited and understood medical studies, the fatal consequences of shame and silence. I read this book for Skylight Books’s current events book club, and loved being part to the passionate discussion at the meeting. Earlier: 6 Book Clubs in Los Angeles to join in 2017.
Ninety-Nine Stories of God by Joy Williams (Tin House, 2016)
“What she wrote was not important. It was the need that was important.”
*
I read this sly, funny, and surprising book by Joy Williams in a day. The 99 short stories run the gamut — some are like parables, others like folklore, and yet others political commentary — on topics ranging from the Unabomber to feminism. It’s great to read in tiny bits — or all in one sitting.
Neon Green= by Margaret Wappler (Unnamed Press, 2016)
“Sometimes I try to talk to people and I fail. I fail to say the things I really mean. Which in the end means I was only moving my lips around a series of sounds.”
*
Neon Green is at first a novel that seems to be about a family of four living in a Chicago suburb in the 90s who win a lottery to have an alien spaceship visit their backyard — but ends up being a family drama about coping with the illness and death of a parent. Along the way there are environmental lessons about the state of our planet — tied in with emotional lessons about love and memory. Overall, a sweet, heartfelt read.
The Ask by Sam Lipsyte (Picador, 2010)
“I loved people, all people, except for the ones with money and free time.”
*
I picked up Sam Lipsyte’s novel because it happened to be in my studio when I arrived for my residency at Vermont Studio Center. It’s follows a guy fired from his fundraising job at a mediocre arts college — who gets rehired to get money out of a rich friend from college. I enjoyed the many moments of humor — but for some reason the plot didn’t quite pull me in. Kevin Sampsell says Lipsyte is one of his top 5 fave authors though, so I’ll be giving another one of Lipsyte’s books a try later this year —
Sparrow by Kim Todd (Reaktion Books, 2012)
“How do we treat the insignificant, the overlooked, outside our windows and within ourselves?”
*
Kim Todd’s Sparrow is a slim book with everything you ever wanted to know about the little bird: the different types, the history — in real life as well as in literature and art — and the environmental issues it faces today. The quote, which is from the introduction to the book, piqued my interest. The book doesn’t quite answer this philosophical question, but I did enjoy seeing how a simple bird could be seen as a microcosm for examining broader sociopolitical and artistic concerns. I picked up this book because Kim and I were residents at The Anderson Center together last summer, and I’ve since wanted to read her work! Earlier: My Writing Residency at the Anderson Center.
The Two-Family House by Lynda Cohen Loigman (St. Martin’s, 2016)
I picked up The Two-Family House because it was a pick for the West Hollywood Women’s Book Club. It’s about two Jewish families (the fathers are brothers) that start out happily sharing a house in Brooklyn in the late 40s — but are ripped apart by a family secret. The secret? The wives switch their kids at birth, so the one that already has daughters gets a son, the ones with sons a daughter. This “twist” is revealed lateish in the book — but I’m really not giving any spoilers because everyone in the book club figured out the switch after like chapter 1. Which is to say — I found this book predictable, formulaic, and rather bland — but I really enjoyed talking about books and meeting other women at the book club! Earlier: West Hollywood Women’s Book Club: Women connect over books by women
___
Get more and more timely book reviews from me on Instagram.