Well, summer semester grades have been submitted, and I have a whole week before I need to start worrying about fall semester, so, as a little treat to me, I thought I might just put this month’s newsletter out on time for once (I can’t believe it either).
Everything I read this past month was great, which made the task of choosing favorites heart-wrenching. An arbitrary rule I’ve more or less had for myself is that I’ll generally do 4-ish longer reviews or so per month; otherwise I’ll never get these newsletters out and/or would end up spending all my free time writing reviews instead of reading more amazing books. So anyway, all of that to say: as I was going through this list, I initially wanted to review like 10 of them (and at that point would’ve had to do all 12 which just wasn’t looking feasible time-wise), so then I got ruthless with it and killed my darlings to get it down to a mere 4 longer reviews, out of a weird loyalty to my self-imposed principles (but then also did slightly longer microviews out of guilt).
So there you have it. What follows is a list of the 12 books I read in July with a (slightly less micro) microview of each, followed by longer reviews of the 4 standouts that I ended up choosing as my favorites.
Note: starred entries below are reviewed in more detail later.
The Books, in the order I read them (I think, anyway—I was bad at keeping track this past month, apparently):
The World Record Book of Racist Stories (2022) by Amber Ruffin & Lacey Lamar - Nonfiction
Excellent and depressing follow up to Amber Ruffin (Late Night with Seth Meyers, The Amber Ruffin Show) and her sister, Lacey Lamar’s, first book, You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories about Racism (2021), in which the authors tell stories about racist things that have happened to them, as well as other family members and friends, revealing how prevalent micro- and macroaggressions are in post-racial (lol) America. Highly recommend both books, though this more recent one is a bit darker and a little more intense.
Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional (2022) by Isaac Fitzgerald - Nonfiction (Memoir-in-Essays)
Brilliant collection of essays by Isaac Fitzgerald, friend of StoneWright Reads fave Saeed Jones (which is how I heard about this collection, because Saeed was singing Isaac’s praises, and I just love that so much), featuring one of the best opening lines: “My parents were married when they had me, just to different people.” Whew! From his experiences in the Catholic Church to his experiences as a former former fat kid, to his experiences doing porn, or smuggling medical supplies in Burma, or bartending, or being assumed to be a fellow racist because of a haircut, etc. Fitzgerald’s writing is deeply thoughtful and fascinating—I’m thinking of using the “When Your Barber Assumes You’re a Racist, Too” essay in my composition classes.
*Poverty, By America (2023) by Matthew Desmond - Nonfiction
A fresh and damning report of the way poverty is a more like a bad habit that we (all of us) can’t seem to kick than an insoluble problem. Eye-opening and full of stories that will make you want to change some things about your own life as well as in the systems around us.
After the Revolution (2022) by Robert Evans - Novel (Sci-Fi)
A very good self-published novel by a dude who does a podcast I like (Behind the Bastards which I discussed in my last bonus post here). Set in a future after a second civil war has fractured the U.S. into territories, we follow three point-of-view characters as a Christofascist state implements an unprecedented surge into the Republic of Texas. The most interesting (and sometimes uncomfortable/gory) parts involve post-humans with body modifications who live in a movable city with a crass name, as well as Evans’ clear-eyed vision of what an American Christofascist state might be like. A lot of violence and cursing and drug use, but totally gripping and fascinating and (hopefully) soon to be followed by a sequel. I listened to it chapter by chapter through a free (with ads) podcast version, but it is also available as a free ebook, all of which can be found at https://atrbook.com/. If you want to support Robert Evans as he writes the sequel, you can here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/After-The-Revolution-Sequel
Making a Scene (2022) by Constance Wu - Nonfiction (Memoir)
Thoughtful and well-written memoir from actress Constance Wu (Crazy Rich Asians, Fresh Off the Boat) about growing up Asian in America (one of the stories about a middle school teacher who unjustly accused her of plagiarism and stuck by it when confronted again by an adult Constance many years later still infuriates me every time I think about it), breaking into acting, having a public social media breakdown followed by backlash, while also dealing with private and compounding personal and relationship issues, endless examples small and large of racism and sexism, etc.
*Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma (2023) by Claire Dederer - Nonfiction
A brilliant and necessary exploration of the question: what do we do with the art, that we may have deep attachments to, of bad people? Timely and insistent on digging into the complexities and contradictions and one-size-can’t-fit-all idiosyncrasies of whose art we can forgive and whose we cannot, that goes places I never would have thought of (and I’m so glad Dederer did).
The Sense of Wonder (2023) by Matthew Salesses - Novel (Literary Fiction)
I first heard of Salesses when his craft book Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping (2021) made a splash in the literary world (which I still haven’t read yet because I’m an awful person), and so when I saw that he had a new novel coming out, I immediately added it to my to-read list, and I’m glad I did. Following a fictionalized Jeremy Lin-like NBA player (the only Asian-American in the league at the time) and his budding relationship with a producer trying to bring K-Drama to mainstream American production companies, the novel reveals the struggles and frustrations they both face to break through and be seen and heard in industries that tend to overlook or misinterpret Asian-Americans. When I started it and thought it was going to be a basketball-centric novel, I was hesitant, but Salesses drew me in quickly and I’ll be thinking about this novel for a quite a while.
Pure Colour (2022) by Sheila Heti - Novel (Literary Fiction)
This book is less a novel than an invitation to think more deeply about the world and the human relationships we fill it with. Describing the plot isn’t going to do this slim volume justice (a young woman goes to school to be a professional critic, develops a mild obsession with another woman, then begins a brief but powerful relationship with her, loses her father, and then becomes a leaf on a tree by a lake for a while). It’s pretty indescribable, but there is so much here that will make you pause and say, “Ah yes, I recognize this about myself/this world.” Told almost in a folkloric/mythological tone, the main thing that has stuck with me is the question of what it means to live in a soon-to-be-erased flawed first draft of the world, an idea that seems more and more feasible as heat waves and storms and fires get worse year after year.
Outline (2014) by Rachel Cusk (Book 1 of the Outline Trilogy) - Novel (Literary Fiction)
Another novel that doesn’t really feel novel-ish to me (and I did not realize it was part of a trilogy until I looked up the year it came out for this newsletter, lol; I will have to check out the others), which consists largely of the narrator having deep and revealing and engrossing conversations with people she encounters while on a trip abroad to teach a writing course. It feels (but I have not confirmed) like autofiction, something I’m mostly ambivalent about, but for this version, I was fully on board. The writing and depth and slice-of-life-ness we get about all of these relatively brief encounters is all brilliant.
Fiona and Jane (2022) by Jean Chen Ho - Novel-in-Stories (Literary Fiction)
I’m a sucker for a novel-in-stories, and this one is top notch (the first/only Goodreads review I saw by accident basically said “this book wasn’t what I wanted it to be, 2 stars” so I hereby throw shade at that reviewer). These stories each follow one or the other or both of the titular protagonists, two second-gen Taiwanese-American best friends who grow apart and come back together at various points of their lives. I think one of the things that bothered that reviewer was that these stories do not have a traditional epiphanic, things-are-now-resolved ending, but instead tend to end abruptly on the offbeat, which always left me pausing after each story to think about why it ended there and reflect further on what the story meant, and I loved that, but I understand why others might not. Other criticisms missed the mark more thoroughly (I’m not sure how one could claim these two characters are too similar for instance, and the friendship not being foremost in some stories feels real and natural to me). These characters are complicated and funny and flawed and make mistakes and fix some of them, and the whole book was brilliant. 5 stars.
*Red at the Bone (2019) by Jacqueline Woodson - Novel (Literary Fiction)
Cheers to Ally for the recommendation: this is the slimmest of novels (the audiobook came in under 4 hours; one can easily down it in a day), which makes it all the more incredible how Woodson packs the depth of story and characters into such a tight package. Following three generations of a Black family in Brooklyn (and Chicago, and Tulsa, and Oberlin, etc.), each new perspective masterfully adds layers of details onto these characters, connecting the Greenwood District/Tulsa massacre to 9/11.
*Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey through the Deep State (2023) by Kerry Howley - Nonfiction
Gripping examination of the absurdities of the national security apparatus, the over-classification of documents, the ways in which people have been flattened into misinterpret-able data, and the Kafkaesque labyrinth of the prison industrial complex, as well as the very human consequences of all these things, specifically illustrated in the person of Reality Winner, infamous (according to some) leaker of documents and brilliant and funny and kind daughter and sister.
My Top 4 (in no particular order):
Poverty, By America (2023) by Matthew Desmond - Nonfiction
I first heard of Matthew Desmond after his previous book, Evicted (2016), was chosen as the first-year book for the Georgia State University students I was teaching at the time (great pick, GSU!), which, if you haven’t read it, add it to your list, because it is brilliant and well worth it. In his latest book, Desmond tackles the bigger story of poverty in America—or, as the title says, “by America.” Because, as Desmond argues (quite successfully for me as a reader), poverty is not so much an unfortunate and unavoidable biproduct of living in a society, but a decision being made in big and small ways that all of us currently avoiding slipping below the poverty line are implicated in. Desmond will blow your mind with facts and figures, and then will put a human face on the data, discussing in a memorable section a man literally working himself to death to try to stay afloat being asked one day by his kid brother if the kid can buy an hour of his time with money he’s saved so they can spend a few moments together (that one especially wrecked me, maybe good to have tissues near at hand). Desmond then gets into some radical solutions and reframings, things we can do to help eliminate poverty in this country (the supposed richest in the world) with one of the highest poverty rates among wealthy nations. This includes ways to create attractive and amenity-filled affordable housing projects that resist the negative stereotypes that impacts rampant NIMBY-ism. This includes moving the subsidies that tend to go to those who need them least over to those that need them most (so yes, some of us would lose out on some of the things that make our lives easier). This includes removing stigma from receiving government assistance and making more people who are eligible aware of it. It’s a book that will make you sad and then rile you up and then give you a glimmer of hope, all in the best way.
Good quote: “‘Being poor,’ they write, ‘reduces a person’s cognitive capacity more than going a full night without sleep.’ When we are preoccupied by poverty, ‘we have less mind to give to the rest of life.’ Poverty does not just deprive people of security and comfort; it siphons off their brainpower, too.”
Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma (2023) by Claire Dederer - Nonfiction
Whew, the nonfictions I read this month are so good, and this is one of the so-good-est. I was ridiculously excited about this book whenever I first heard about it, and then I completely betrayed Ally, who had a lovely idea that we could read it together and talk about it chapter by chapter, because my hold on the audiobook from the library came through, and I devoured it in a day instead (sorry, Ally). I’m going to need to reread it, so maybe we can make that work…. ANYWAY, Dederer starts us off by talking about the films of Roman Polanski and how much they meant to her and how utterly icky that felt when she learned of his crimes (he pled guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor). What do we do with the art of the likes of Pablo Picasso, the music of men like Wagner, the films of the Woody Allens, or novels by Hemingways? Dederer is incisive in her attempts to weight her own pros and cons and think her way through the ways in which each of us may have different criteria for what makes some art forgivable and other art irredeemable. One of the more fascinating and unexpected chapters deals with the ways parents, but especially mothers, who are artists are often unavoidable “monsters” (to greater and lesser degrees) simply by putting their art ahead of their children (to greater and lesser degrees). Dederer weaves her own experiences through the book making it clear that she is no less implicated, no less torn, than we probably are about those particular monsters that have hit each of us hardest. It’s amazing that no one had written this book before, but, seeing the absence and realizing her own ability to do the subject justice, Dederer stepped up and gave us the book we needed. Pretty cool of her.
Good quote: “Consuming a piece of art is two biographies meeting: the biography of the artist that might disrupt the viewing of the art; the biography of the audience member that might shape the viewing of the art. This occurs in every case.”
Red at the Bone (2019) by Jacqueline Woodson - Novel (Literary Fiction)
As mentioned above, Ally recommended this book to me, after reading it for her book club, and then I just let it sit there unread for a long time before finally, *finally,* picking it up at the tail end of last month. Sometimes the mood is wrong, I dunno, but it was sure right when I finally got there. There is something so lovely about a small novel, the art of the novella. I’ve really loved most of the ones I’ve come across (Too Loud a Solitude [1976] by Bohumil Hrabal and The Atlas of Reds and Blues (2019) by Devi S. Laskar are 2 that come to mind), and this one fits neatly into that list. Opening in the year 2001 with a young woman’s debut to society, the novel lays the groundwork of the 3 generations Woodson presents to the reader: Melody, newly 16; her estranged mother and beloved father; and her grandparents who host the party that they would have hosted for Melody’s mother, had things gone differently. With each new chapter, Woodson adds layers to these characters, giving us their experiences and histories that made them who they are in this moment, and then showing us where they end up soon after as the planes hit the towers in New York City. She gives us the history of Melody’s grandmother, whose own mother lost her shop during the Tulsa massacre. We see the fallout of an unplanned pregnancy, a mother who finds she needs to be more than just a mother badly enough that she goes away to college for four years and then never quite comes back. We see the ripple effects of loved ones dying of cancer, and generational differences coming to boiling points. It’s an incredible book that is guaranteed to make you feel a bunch of feelings and reflect on your own choices while making you want to have more grace for other people’s choices. Quite the feat.
Good quote: “Guess that's where the tears came from, knowing that there's so much in this great big world that you don't have a single ounce of control over. Guess the sooner you learn that, the sooner you'll have one less heartbreak in your life.”
Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey through the Deep State (2023) by Kerry Howley - Nonfiction
Many of the stories Howley goes through in this book—about “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh or Edward Snowden’s exile or the star of the book, Reality Winner, being charged with leaking classified documents—were familiar to me, but at a remove. I remember the late night show jokes and takes, the general hubbub amidst politicos and commentators, and then the stories faded from conscious thought, with the people at the heart of those stories never quite being fully realized in my mind. I’m sure this is not an abnormal phenomenon: one simply can’t know and empathize with every person who fills each media cycle. So one of the little miracles that Howley performs in this book is making some of these news cycle castaways, like John Walker Lindh and Reality Winner (who I found I share a birthday with) especially, into more fully formed, well-rounded, and empathizable human beings. One of the most valuable things books like this can do is remind us that we’re never seeing the full picture, either of the names we see in chyrons or the glimpses we see on social media. The other thing this book did, which knocked my feet right out of my socks, was to illustrate the utter absurdity of living in a surveillance state. I used the word Kafkaesque in my microview, and I almost never use that word seriously (mostly I say it after I cough, because I’m a silly goose), but it absolutely applies here. One small example: during Winner’s hearings and trial, the defense ran into problems like not being able to look at the leaked document, because it was illegal to look at leaked documents, even though literally everyone else with an internet connection had access to the leaked document. Another example: the way that a joke text message between sisters can be used as evidence that Winner was a budding terrorist, especially after omitting the haha at the end. The way that the NSA collects data and metadata means that they know everything about us, but also Howley stresses that interpretation of data is what creates the story. Jokes to a friend or sibling when combined with idle Google searches and daydreams and journal entries can be interpreted myriad ways, especially when removed from context (or by cherrypicking the context). Add to that the absurdities of the prison system in which a mother and father have no idea where their daughter is being held for several weeks because she has been randomly taken somewhere too full to process new inmates, so officially, she is nowhere. And then when they do find her, finally, they spend half the allotted visitation time trying to find the entry to the prison and then following the pages and pages of rigid procedures that were given them to the letter, only to find out that information was all incorrect. There are so many beautiful lines and so many arresting details throughout this book, I cannot do it justice. It’s human and infuriating and illuminating. And it also reminded me that this travel mug Ally got me serves a scarily functional role (NSA, please take note):
Good quote: “With endless information comes the ability to take information from its context, to tell stories perfectly matched to the intentions of the teller, freed from the complex texture of reality.”
In Case You Missed It:
I guess I made it harder to miss it this time (because I accidentally sent it out to everyone like a normal newsletter, breaking my promise to only spam you once a month, max), but I did a bonus post this past month about the media I filled my relatively bookless May and June with—highlighting in particular the brilliant work of two of my friends (who got hitched a couple weeks ago) in their mockumentary webseries My Astronaut—which you can find here:
Cheers! Feel encouraged to share or subscribe below.