Interior Chinatown (by Charles Yu)

This is an innovative and metatextual novel in which our protagonist, Willis Wu, lives in Chinatown, where a cop show named Black and White (starring two detectives, one Black and one white) is continually running. Wu plays roles ranging from GENERIC ASIAN MAN to DEAD ASIAN MAN to (the pinnacle of his aspiration) KUNG FU GUY.  This conceit allows the author to examine the ways in which Americans of Asian descent have been pigeonholed in America, and other complexities of navigating the culture as a Chinese-American.

I loved this. It's a disarmingly fast read (much of it in script format) but has a lot of depth and wit to it. As you may guess, it's also wildly original.  I heard about it via the Tournament of Books, but it also won the 2020 National Book Award.

Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Fall of WeWork (by Reeves Wiedeman)

This book scratches a bit of the same itch as Bad Blood, about Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes. Adam Neumann, megalomaniacal CEO (who is besties with Jared Kushner, so that tells you something) somehow convinces people to give him billions of dollars for a company that doesn't make much money, and then spends it on ridiculous shit. He and his equally insufferable wife talk a lot about being spiritual and "changing the world," apparently by getting as rich as possible and then buying stuff for themselves.

When WeWork faces public scrutiny, it falls apart and Neumann is forced out. Of course, the people who really suffer are the employees he exploits; he and his awful wife are still rich and I'm sure he'll find plenty of assholes to shower money on him in the future. You read this and end up thinking I knew capitalism was broken, but damn, it's really broken.

Definitely read some of the articles (or watch the inevitable documentary) about this douchebag, because the details are fun. (He flies to one of his five mansions in Hawaii to surf, which involves being pulled out into the waves on multiple jetskis, films himself with a drone as he surfs, and then hangs up a giant print of himself surfing in his office.) Oh and do I even need to mention the company is a cesspit of sexism?

Even from the beginning, looking at the cover, I was like "there's something about this guy's face I don't like." By the end I knew it qualified for the Read Harder challenge in the category of "book with a cover you don’t like." I hope this guy ends up in jail somehow, but I'm not counting on it.

My Beloved World (by Sonia Sotomayor)

For the RHC category "memoir by a Latinx author," I selected Sonia Sotomayor's memoir. It covers her childhood and ends with her achieving her lifelong dream of becoming a judge; she deliberately does not cover her time on the Supreme Court or talk about her jurisprudence.

I enjoyed spending time with Sotomayor and learning more about her and Puerto Rican culture, although like most political memoirs, hers not as candid as it could be. I also wished we could spend more time with the adult judge Sotomayor; instead, this really is mostly about her childhood and upbringing with a view towards inspiring young people who grow up facing similar hardships to follow in her footsteps. 

This quote is in the introduction, and it ultimately sums up the lesson of this book for me: "Experience has taught me that you cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. Their real value is in stirring within us the will to aspire. That will, wherever it finally leads, does at least move you forward. And after a time you may recognize that the proper measure of success is not how much you've closed the distance to some far-off goal but the quality of what you've done today."

Breasts and Eggs (Mieko Kawakami)

This is "a non-European novel in translation" for the Read Harder Challenge and also a selection from this year's Tournament of Books. On top of all that, I loved it! It's like the litfic trifecta.

This book is described as a "psychological novel" concerned with the bodies of women. It focuses on everything from breast augmentation to fertility, from asexuality to the creative process. I loved the style, the characters, and the Tokyo setting, which reminded me of what it felt like to visit there. 

I really like the description of "psychological novel" and I think that's a style I really enjoy. There's something reminiscent of The Wings of the Dove or My Year of Rest and Relaxation or The Remains of the Day. This very interior, meditative approach that is still so compelling. Luster was like that too, except less successful overall. But the interiority is something I enjoyed there too.

This is one of those finds that would have passed me by without the Tournament of Books, and one reason I love participating every year.  Not perfect, but my favorite read of the year so far!

Transcendent Kingdom (by Yaa Gyasi)

Gyasi's follow-up to the incredible Homegoing, and equally beautifully written.  Our main character, Gifty, is a Ghanian-American (like Gyasi herself) and a neuroscientist who is studying patterns of addiction in mice after her family has been impacted by addiction.  There is also a focus on the complex relationship between Gifty and her mother, who has depression, as well as an exploration of the tension between her childhood evangelical faith and her scientific principles.

As the novel approached its ending (my Kindle was like "92% complete!") it felt like none of the plot strands would be resolved and I was getting nervous about Gyasi sticking the landing. It ends on this lovely moment of ambiguity (maybe too much ambiguity) but then suddenly there's a jump ahead in time and an epilogue that feels out-of-place as well as too neat. So I have to say the ending subtracted a star from me, as it didn't find the perfect middle ground between too resolved and not resolved at all. But I love Gyasi's writing and am excited to read whatever she publishes next.

The Lightning Thief (by Rick Riordan)

This is the beginning of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, which Mina has been really enjoying and begged me to read. Overall I had fun reading this book; I'm a huge fan of Greek mythology and this take on it is extremely clever. However, the novel is very fatphobic and it bummed me out.  Here are some examples of how three characters, all villains, are described:

“Gabe had put on weight. He looked like a tuskless walrus in thrift store clothes.” 

“[Clarisse] wore a size XXXL” “She had three other girls behind her, all big and ugly and mean looking like her…” “Her ugly pig eyes glared” 

“We got shoehorned into the car with this big fat lady… she looked like a blue jean blimp”

I found this blog post, which talks about problems with race in the series too (spoilers at that link) and indeed it is also a very white world. I want to read more of the series because of how much Mina likes it, but now I'm too depressed to do it. 

If someone knows Rick Riordan can you tell him that fat people are not, like, grotesque creatures? And also maybe diversify your world and hire a sensitivity reader next time. Thanks.

Luster (by Raven Leilani)

There is a lot to love about this novel. I can't think of another novel with a Black protagonist that I have read that is so interior (somewhat reminiscent of My Year of Rest and Relaxation). At the same time, Edie's race and gender are ever-present and addressed in subtle ways that feel completely authentic. The writing is luscious and poetic.

At the same time, it sags somewhat in the middle. Nothing actually happens for a long time, and the characters behave like characters in a novel, not like real people. Towards the end I was thinking it didn't add up to much, but the ending chapter is extremely strong, and this saved it somewhat for me. Looking forward to the discussion about this in the Tournament of Books, where it's going up against another book I'm interested in, Interior Chinatown.