Book 11: Wild by Cheryl Strayed

I don't know why exactly I decided that I needed to read this book now, since it's not exactly a new book. It's also a style of book that was once dominant in publishing (memoir of How Someone Dealt with Trauma) that's become less common, and I had the thought that maybe when it felt less like the entire world was in one constant state of trauma, we had more space for equally real and valid individual traumas. Do we have the capacity for a memoir about how someone dealt with the unexpected death of a parent to cancer, given the global pandemic and failing democracy and climate change and war?

Possibly I don't have the capacity for that, but I still found this book fascinating. It's a book about a woman leaving her marriage, selling everything she owns and flying to California to hike the Pacific Crest Trail alone, despite the fact that she had done very little hiking (and no thru hiking), because it felt like it was what she had to do to process her mother's death. The author is so extraordinarily lucky; the degree to which she was unprepared for the reality of this task was very stressful for me just to read about, let alone experience. But it also made me think about how infrequently I do anything without doing everything I can in my power to be as prepared as possible, in order to not appear like I don't know what I'm doing (even when I don't), and how exhausting that is, too. It's also a book about a time that's totally different in many ways; it was published in the early 2010s, but her trek took place in 1995, when if you left for a hike like this, you were simply out of contact except for when you pick up your supply boxes at the small towns in between multiday hikes. 

It made me weirdly nostalgic for the '90s, an era which had its own laundry list of Bad Institutional Things (and which contain the seeds of many of the worst aspects of today's problems), but which also feels like a time when it was more possible to just do things! Anything! Try something else! This is less a "boy weren't things better in the '90s" reflection, because while I'd rather not live in a pandemic, I don't actually think that things were better or simpler or whatever. Maybe I'm just reflecting on the fact that I was never the kind of young adult that Cheryl Strayed was, for better or for worse, and it feels less and less likely that I will ever be that kind of adult in any age, and sometimes that feels like my own loss. 

(Also, I reread part of A Walk in the Woods, which is a book by Bill Bryson about his own ill-planned hike on the Appalachian Trail that same year, and which was undertaken for wildly different reasons, and boy is that a great compare and contrast of what it was to be a young white woman in the '90s and a middle age white man in the exact same time period.) 

Grade: A  

Book 10: A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske

Man I had such a nice time reading this book! It was one of those that I started and finished in one day, because I was so eager to see where the story went. 

This is definitely one of those books where the overall synopsis does a lot of the heavy lifting: if a story about gays in magical Edwardian England sounds like it'll be up your alley, it almost certainly will be. The slow burn of interest between Robin, a baronet struggling with providing for his sister after his sister's death, and Edwin, a magician whose power is small enough to be the black sheep of his magical family, is wonderful. I also loved the way magic works within the "normal" history of England, and how it creates an unequal hierarchy that leads to bad decisions by many characters. 

It's a rare book that manages to be equally interested in the romance (and sex!) at the heart of the story as it in the historical and magical worldbuilding; it manages to really nail both genres, and I'm so glad that it's the first book of a trilogy so I can spend more time in this world with these characters (and new ones as well). 

Grade: A

Book 9: The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting by KJ Charles

A big change of pace from my last book, quite intentionally! This was such a satisfying read, and one that I started at around 8 p.m. intending to only read for a couple of hours, and then I ended up finishing it all that night. 

This is a delightful regency romance that focuses on the marriage mart, and specifically on a beautiful brother and sister who are attempting to secure favorable matches with the appearance of gentility and connections while possessing none. Robin is yet another KJ Charles character in the mold of the likeable con artist, who is doing everything he can to help his sister secure a truly advantageous match. But it's a really interesting book that doesn't shy away from how ultimately unsatisfying a marriage like that would be, even with financial security, and not merely from the standpoint of enduring a loveless marriage for the sake of wealth: it takes seriously just how easy it is to make a woman suffer in a marriage like that, with no recourse at all. 

Robin is thwarted in his plans to marry a plain heiress by her uncle John Hartlebury (known as Hart), who can tell that Robin isn't all he seems but is also drawn to him. There's a disastrous evening of gambling that KJ Charles fans may find a bit familiar in the best of ways, but the connection between the two of them develops in a very different way, and I found the ultimate resolution to be really quite lovely. Hart's niece Alice is also a wonderful character, and this book delivered all of the best things for the characters who deserve them, and none for those who don't. 

Grade: A 

Book 8: The Ghost Road by Pat Barker

Boy, this book really fucked me up! Which isn't exactly unexpected, it's the final novel in a trilogy about WWI, so it's not a surprise that an anti-war novel would affect me like this. But it took me a long time to get through the final hundred pages, because I dreaded what was coming so much. 

This third book is about the process of Billy Prior preparing to go back to France at the end of the summer in 1918, intercut with Dr. River's memories of his childhood and family friendship with Charles Dodgson and his experiences studying death rituals in Melanesia. The narrative follows Billy back to France, using diary entries and a letter home as well as prose to tell the story of the final months of the war. He was assigned to the same unit as Wilfred Owen, who I knew just enough about as a historical figure to know that my dread was warranted. 

While Billy and the troops are at war, bored for 23 hours a day and then terrified for the other one, Dr. Rivers continues to work with injured men and contemplate his own role in the entire endeavor. Billy leaves his now-fiancée to head back to the front and loves and misses her desperately, while also sating his constant need with men and women when he can. And while I was prepared for more death and destruction caused by war, I was somehow not expecting the first appearance of the influenza pandemic, which was harder to deal with at the moment for obvious reasons. There's a lot to this book, and this trilogy, and it makes me want to both reread the whole series and to read all of the war poetry of this era and just a whole lot of history about this war and what led to it, but first I think I'm going to take a break and read some romance novels or something, because boy.  

Grade: A 

Book 7: Daybreak by Kate Hawthorn

A winter contemporary m/m romance! I had high hopes for this one, which involves a thirty year old widower who's certain he'll never find love again even three years after the sudden death of his husband, and a cute young grad student who's on a roadtrip trying to run away from every part of his life he can't deal with. That's a setup I am generally behind, including the classic car breaking down and there's only one mechanic who can help and no hotels around so sure, why don't you stay with me, but it never quite clicked for me. One way I know I'm not as invested in a romance novel as I should be is when I'm constantly questioning things, like what kind of cross-country roadtrip takes you to Burlington, Vermont on the way to New Hampshire, given the highway system in upstate New York and New England. But the main issue is that they both had too MANY issues, and the conflict as it were goes on for two long. This is a story that could handle being a novella much better than a full length novel. 

Grade: C 

Book 6: How to be Alone by Lane Moore

 This is another book I ended up taking out from the library as a result of a podcast, and man. It's not the easiest of reads? It's a book about trauma, and how the specific lessons you learn about love as a child and teenager stay with you, and how to create a life within that, if not exactly in spite of it. It's not a trauma porn book; while some of the elements of her experiences are specified, a lot of it is referred to rather than laid out for the reader's perusal, which definitely shifts the emphasis away from being one of the standard mid-2000s memoirs that were all anyone (or me in any case) read for a while. 

It's a book that feels challenging to me in a very 'well you just have to sit with this, you can't fix it even if you want to' way. The format is a series of essays, which could be read as individual pieces (and some of them were published that way), but for me the strength of the book is the cumulation of all of them. The weight of the last essay is built upon all of the rest. I'm glad that I read this book after I read Thanks for Waiting, because this is a book that doesn't have a neat narrative ending; this is a book about a woman who desperately wants a found family, and a soulmate, and to know how to have 'normal' emotional connections with people, and it doesn't end with her married and/or fixed. But it still ends in a place that leaves you with hope and a sense of possibility, rather than despair or a nice, pat narrative destination. I don't know. This book kind of fucked me up, and I'm glad I read it. 

Grade: A 

Book 5: Proper English by KJ Charles

Okay, so you know how there are some books that you keep thinking that you should read but never do because the timing is wrong or whatever? Sometimes I end up not reading books because of SPITE, and I'm very glad in this case that I was finally able to let go of it.

This is a prequel to Think of England, one of my very favorite historical queer romances, and for years we had been hoping for a sequel about the main pairing in that book, and instead we got a prequel about a different (but also delightful) side pairing in that same book. And basically, it took reading all of the Will Darling trilogy which gives us some glimpses of the future for the ToE pairing for me to let that go and be able to enjoy reading about Pat and Fen's origin story. I can say both that I am delighted I was finally at a point where I could read this for them, because it is a romp and a half, and glad that I didn't force myself to read it when I was still feeling bitter, because I think I would have ended up ruining it for myself.

This is another mystery at an English country house at the turn of the twentieth century, and this time our focus is on Pat, who is for the first time trying to figure out what to do with her life now that her eldest brother has married and she's no longer needed to manage the family estate. While there she encounters Fen, the superficially silly fiancee of one of her oldest friends who is hosting the shooting party, a match she finds extremely puzzling. She teaches Fen how to shoot, and the two of them become closer as they all deal with the brother-in-law of their host, who is terrible in basically every possible way. 

Pat's voice is wonderful, and the relationship that develops between her and Fen is truly delightful. The sex could have been hotter, if I am honest, but overall I had a great time reading this. 

Grade: B

Book 4: Subtle Blood by KJ Charles

 The third book in the Will Darling trilogy! I've had this book since it came out, but I had put off reading it in part because the second book didn't work for me as well as the first one had and so I was sort of afraid it wouldn't land, either. 

I am delighted to report that my fears were unfounded! I really, really liked this one - the relationship between Will and Kim had new and believable conflict, instead of what was for me a recycled loss of trust/proving his sincerity etc. arc in the second novel. I also really enjoyed the overall mystery, which was both pretty twisty and resolved in a way that felt both surprising and like it fit. It's a really good conclusion for this world, and its connection to the Think of England books was also very satisfying. (It was also an interesting book to read in between the second and third books of the Regeneration trilogy, given the setting and how big a specter the Great War is in their lives.)

If I have any complaints about this book, it's that the author has once again introduced a sex act Chekhov's gun, i.e., the characters discuss doing something together and it's a whole thing and then they...don't. In this particular case, before the topic came up I was perfectly fine with Will never bottoming, and the emotional resolution of them actually talking about their feelings instead of fucking about them was good and satisfying, and I know that even in romance novels the desire to zig instead of always zagging is appealing, but also it feels like narrative edging to me and not the good kind! You can give us the emotional resolution AND the dangled carrot of New Sex in a later scene! Sigh. Still, even with that minor complaint, this third book was good enough that I can now wholeheartedly recommend the whole trilogy without any major reservations. 

Grade: A  

Book 3: Thanks for Waiting by Doree Shafrir

One of the sources for new to me books (usually but not always nonfiction and memoirs) are the various podcasts I listen to. This was a book discussed on an episode of Longform last year, and it sounded pretty interesting and like it might be something of an encouraging read for me, a person who at times cannot believe she's in her early forties simply because I didn't have any idea that this is what being 40 (or 41 or 42) could look like. 

And well, it's KIND of an encouraging read in that way, but also not at all? The author is a very young GenXer, as opposed to be squarely in the no-man's land between the generations the way I am, and the main basis of her feeling like a late bloomer is that she wasn't married by the time her younger sister was, who also became a lawyer straight out of college, and I don't know! From a millennial standpoint her experience of grad school and chronically underpaid work in her twenties followed by good media jobs that were nevertheless unstable and fraught with sexism and old boys' clubs because: the media in her thirties followed by marriage and an eventual baby in her late thirties and early forties feels pretty standard! And I know that a memoir isn't about the technical reality of one's situation necessarily, it's about how it feels, but it was also the second book in a row that I read and had a feeling of....do I just not get how straight culture feels anymore. 

So yeah! A perfectly readable book, but not one that spoke to me the way I had anticipated or hoped for. 

Grade: B

Book 2: Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder

 The first book club book of the year! And for once, I have actually finished the book an entire day before our meeting, rather than twenty minutes before it begins. Progress! 

I have...mixed feelings about this book? Something? Like, it is definitely a book where I spent most of it feeling like I am much too queer for this story, but it's not just that. This is a book about a woman, who is only ever named "the mother," who is a stay-at-home mom for her 2 year old son while her husband ("husband") travels for the entire week most weeks, and she gave up her art career because it was impossible to manage the hours and the pumping and the everything with caring for her son, and of course her husband couldn't give up his job, because his job made the money, and so now she's living this trapped life while attempting to convince herself that if she just chooses this life, and chooses happiness and all that, it will all be okay. 

And then she starts to transform into a dog, and nightbitch is born. 

She finds a book written by an academic that explores women who transform into animals essentially across multiple cultures, which becomes something of a guidebook for her, and there's quite a lot of animal harm and death, and she navigates who she is as nightbitch while also getting to know the mommies of her town who are led by one of a dozen Jens, who of course is in a MLM for herbs, and there's a lot here and I get the point and I get the satire and I am just not sure I got much out of it being a whole book. I kept waiting for it to land more, or arrive someplace that would really hit me, and instead I kept feeling like, "well yes, of course she's an animal inside who's been denied her true self, that's the comp cishet game, also her husband was never good," and it is possible I am too....something for this book. I am unmarried, and I don't have children, and maybe I need to be or have one or both of those things in order to viscerally feel the truth of this book, or something. It is magical realism, and it is horror, but frankly I felt it could have leaned in a lot more to the horror of it all. 

Grade: B

Book 1: The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker

 The first book of the year! And boy, it kind of did me in. It's the second book in the Regeneration trilogy, and I think I may actually like it even better than the first one. But that may be because I have a better understanding of who these characters are now, rather than the inherent quality, and either way reading the second book made me want to immediately reread the first one. 

Part of what made this book hit so hard is that the focus is narrower; the protagonist is very clearly Billy Prior, who we follow through most of the novel. He's left the hospital for shellshocked soldiers and is now working for the Office of Munitions in London, helping the government spy on the pacifist movement. He's also having quite a bit of sex, some of it with a man named Charles Manning, who's an upper class officer out of the war with a leg wound. Another reason why I immediately liked this book is definitely that it's gay in a very different way than the first one. Pat Barker writes about bodies and how they fit together with such simple yet visceral language, and using that for both sex of all varieties as well as war violence as well as medical treatments is so effective. There's a common thread there that feels so grounded, which matches the character of Prior. He's grounded in his body, but his mind is split - he disassociates and blacks out, repeatedly, which also gives the book something of a mystery feel. 

Siegfried Sassoon and Dr. Rivers both come back as well, Sassoon after he's wounded in France. And he's also split, between what he told himself in order to accept going back and what the reality was. Dr. Rivers is also coming apart, even as he patches each of them back together. 

The women in this novel are also wonderful: Prior's girlfriend Sarah, who he only gets two days with, and two women from his childhood who are both convicted on trumped up charges of anti-war behavior. The book captures the division between civilian life and the front beautifully, and you see how unworkable the fracture was, what the people back at home had to believe, or else the only thing they could do was work against the war effort. But of course, from Prior's point of view, that didn't help any of the boys in France, either. 

I believe the first book in the trilogy was either the final novel assigned in a literature course I took, but we never got there in the syllabus, or it was required reading for a class I wanted to take but wasn't able to. Either way, I regret not having had the opportunity to study these books; there's so much in them that I actually want to be able to take the time with them and discuss them with others. But this will have to do. Onto the final one next. 

Grade: A

2022 Master List

 Well, we made it to 2022! That's...something, I suppose. And the vast majority of the books that had been on this list last year have also made it onto this year's list, along with the twenty or so that I've already added to my physical and digital TBR piles. I have been reconsidering the entire premise of this book blog in recent days, since it's not as if I don't have more books waiting to be added to this list, either by buying them or taking them out from the library. This is not really a decluttering task or anything like that, because there will always be more books than I have space, or time, for. 

But! My current justification for continuing a quest that I have never come particularly close to completing is that all of these are books that at one time or another, I either bought for myself or was given, and every year I've read at least one of them that's made me go huh. So that's the reason I've held onto this. And some of them can immediately be given away at that point, but there's still something nice about that process. 

The other reason I have decided to continue with this whole thing this year is that I would like to add activities that are more mindful to my days. A lot of these books will also be escapes in various ways, but I would like to be more conscious of what I'm deciding to spend my hours and days on, rather than the constant itch scratching of twitter and other endless scrolling distractions. That doesn't always need to be filled by reading, but overall I think I'll have a better grasp on my days this way. Will it work? Maybe! I'd like to give it a shot, at least. 

As always there is a list of other books I would like to reread if I can manage it as well; I expect that the first two months of the year will involve a lot of time indoors in my apartment, and if I manage things right I'm hoping to get out the gate running. So let's aspire to some reading. 

And here are the books!