So, I’ve made a promise I can’t precisely keep. This letter was supposed to be about the best things I read this year, and well, it is, but also, it isn’t.
I have a problem with deciding whether what I (me, specifically) read was the best or not. This isn’t to say that the things I read are bad, but I think it’s troubling to go out there and be like “ah yeah this shit is the absolute best, fight me” when my reading list has been guided mostly by my whims and my ability to finish something. So of course I finished a woman’s memoir on her time as a sex worker in a flat five hours, but I haven’t finished the brick I own on American geologic history. I don’t think I’ve read anything (aside from cookbooks) with a 2020 publication date, either. So, I think it’s stupid that I, with my tiny newsletter and small but mighty number of readers (hi, I love you), think I can dictate with seriousness that anything I read is a “best” or not. Maybe I’m taking this too seriously. Maybe I shouldn’t devalue my own opinions like this. OR, hear me out, it’s okay to take this seriously because books are important and your time is important. I don’t want to recommend something shitty that you’ll hate, and I don’t want to act like I have the clout to make pronouncements. But there’s more.
This year is the year I fell back in love with reading, after taking a long and strange hiatus. I have read more books, both fiction and nonfiction, in the past year than I have in the previous four. There are multiple reasons for this. Perhaps the most notable among them is my inability to focus on any one thing for too long, exacerbated by the extreme burnout that comes along with working registers in coffee shops. I’m not built for the emotional labor that comes with serving others in a high volume service setting. I think it’s de-humanizing for most people, actually, but that’s another essay. I mention this because it’s important for you to understand that I am incredibly out of touch with the modern fiction world. Ask me about the year’s top cookbooks and I can rattle off a list without thinking too hard. But I’ll be damned if I know what’s happening in any realm of fiction. The most recent work of fiction I read I thinkkkkk might be Haruki Murakami’s Killing Commendatore (it’s a mindfuck, I still don’t know how I feel about it), and that came out last year. But outside of Murakami, I have no clue what the kids are writing these days. I majored in dead white guys, alright? I’m still recovering.
So this brings me to a problem: I have this shitty list that I don’t feel confident about, of things I read this year that I think are best. Whatever that means. And like, this year, of all years, with its reckonings on race and its reckonings on what it means to be human in the face of capitalism, it seems really fucking stupid to put a list out there. The list doesn’t look like it should, for having been produced in 2020. I, the progenitor of said list, feel like I didn’t do enough work this year. I didn’t do any reading on how to create diverse and equitable spaces, at least not in books. I read merely one book on global warming, one book on microbial science, nothing exclusively exploring the ramifications of the exploitation of ourselves or our environments.
It has been a year of extremes. I’ve had extreme highs and lows. We’ve all had one. I found out I have PCOS the same day that we found out that Iowa City had its first handful of cases. Some time in April or May, we all found out with a cosmic horror that Ahmaud Arbery’s murder had happened a few months before and we didn’t know about it. Shortly after, George Floyd’s death reignited the smoldering fuse, and we all were brought to task for our failures to our Black sisters and brothers. Somewhere in there, food media blew up, and that wasn’t a bad thing. In late August, I converted to Eastern Orthodoxy; I almost fainted while being chrismated because one of my meds had just been upped and I wasn’t used to it yet. The election campaigns raged on, militants tried to kidnap the governor of Michigan, and several members of my family ended up with Covid-19 at some point after. My grandmother brought it home from the school she worked at, and we’re lucky she’s still here. Others have not been afforded the privilege of life. By now, as of writing, over 300,000 people have died in this country, and I’ll be damned if anyone seems to give a shit.
So yeah, forgive me if I’m having a moment where looking back on my list of books finished seems a little futile. Reading is supposed to be a source of enjoyment, I suppose, but at the same time, it’s work. And it’s not easy work, even if we want it to be. Reading is not, for me, a relaxing activity. In rekindling my relationship with it, I think I allowed myself to be a little lax in how I approach it.
When I was in high school, one of my English teachers gave us an introductory questionnaire. One of the questions, the only one I remember, in fact, was this: “Do you read for information or for pleasure?” This question actually pissed me off, because even then, I was reading Wikipedia articles for fun. I read information for pleasure, and of course, I was reading other things for pleasure as well. The next year I destroyed both Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice because the young adult novels I had been reading before simply weren’t doing it for me anymore. I think my friends and I also got obsessed with Candide in there somewhere, which, damn, what?? And a theater friend recommended Snow Crash; I believe it was the last thing I read before I lay my body upon the alter of the Humanities and was absorbed into the void. I craved knowing things, so academia was like a fever dream come true. I was thrilled to hear about the cuneiform mentioned in Snow Crash talked about in a scholastic setting. It was intoxicating to learn about the traditions that lead up to books like Wuthering Heights, these things that I’d read before without much thought. I discovered that my reading for pleasure was applicable to learning things in a very real way.
I think, sometimes, that I’ve lost that. That we’ve all lost that, a little. Four years is a long time to go without finishing a book. Austin and I have read a few of the same books this year, and we’ve done some talking about it, but nothing particularly rigorous or scholastic. To some extent, I think that form of reading is limiting, even exclusionary. Most people don’t have the time for that sort of reading anymore. I didn’t for a long time, until the world kind of fell apart and then I kind of fell apart. Maybe this is why book clubs are a thing: people want to connect with others about reading. This process takes pleasure and makes it informative; it gives people the chance to argue about the points a text makes.
Of course I want to sit here and gush about Laurus, or The Memory Police, or Sayo Masuda’s memoir. People love gushing about the things that they love, whether they want to admit or not. They’re phenomenal experiences and I want to share them with you. That was literally the point of my last newsletter. But, sometimes, I have to make myself step back. What we love is only a portion of what we are. I don’t want to be defined by my list of best reads, and really, honestly, I don’t think I have a good enough grasp on reading yet. I’m only just getting back into it. I hope you’ll understand why there’s no list today. Y’all are awesome people, I want to be upfront about struggles like this.
I don’t want to just produce another list because I got stressed out, because producing a new list itself was weirdly stressful as well. Writing’s just fucking stressful sometimes. It’s the other side of the reading coin, something that I’m only just beginning to return to in a meaningful way. Y’all have been here for a large part of that journey, and I really appreciate that. So thank you. Here’s to figuring shit out about reading and writing in the new year.
It seems like the existential crises come every few weeks which is probably normal for me at this point. I’m working on a lot of shit right now with myself; I’m generally feeling better, slowly but surely. Anyone who had done any sort of therapy knows that it’s not a straight line up. I hope that you’re looking at the new year with an emotion that isn’t dread! There’s a lot to be excited about!
I will not be sending out a letter for the rest of the year, but I plan to be back in the first half of January, starting on the 15th. I’d start on the 8th, BUT there’s actually a virtual Substack conference that day, and I’m attending it! I’m really excited to learn from people who are good at doing this so that I can grow and make your reading experience richer. The interim will be a kind of break where I take some time to refocus and figure out what I want this letter to be. I would LOVE some feedback! A lot of you have my cellphone number (which is the same as it’s always been) or know me on social media; feel free to pop me a message if you have constructive feedback (or, ahem, praise?). You can also leave a comment below or reply to the email. I’d love to hear from you! Have awesome holidays and a safe new year. I’ll see you in 2021. <3