The Black Unicorn (by Audre Lorde)

This is a collection of poems by Audre Lorde, who was a librarian, thus fulfilling the "Read a book by a librarian" category of the RHC.

I respect Audre Lorde tremendously, and there are some moving poems here - in addition to strong themes of Black (and queer) womanhood, the African pantheon, and brutality against Black Americans. But on the whole, I have to say her work is more abstract than I prefer. I am a visual person, and I like poetry with more concrete imagery than is offered here.  

I feel the same way about Amanda Gorman, to be honest. Too much abstract, not enough concrete.  Sorry Audre and Amanda; it's not you, it's me.  

An Extraordinary Union (by Alyssa Cole)

Read for the RHC categtory "a romance book that doesn’t have an illustrated cover." I'm not much of a romance reader, so this is one of the more difficult categories for me this year.  This book is about a free woman with an eidedic memory posing as a mute slave to spy for the Union, and a Pinkerton detective pretending to be a Confederate soldier, both loosely based on real people, against the backdrop of the Civil War.

Despite the setting, it doesn't have a sense of realism - really more of a frothy romance despite what you might expect. Alyssa Cole is a Black author and clearly she wanted to keep true ugliness out of it - of course many horrors are alluded to; still, how it plays out is absolutely a romance fantasy and not grounded in reality of the time and place. Ditto with the spy element - if you're fucking in the bushes and sleeping over at each other's places, and you are a white man and a Black (ostensibly enslaved) woman, you're pretty bad spies with zero sense of self-preservation!

I also am indifferent to sex scenes, which I know are the whole point of romance but, shrug, that's why I don't read them. A lot of people loved this novel though so maybe it's not them, it's me.  On to the next category!

Seattle Books

I visited Seattle for work last week and finished four books, pretty much all on airplanes, as is my wont.  Two for the ToB, one for the RHC, one for fun. Here they are:

The Extinction of Irena Rey (by Jennifer Croft) 

Read for the Tournament of Books, and probably my favorite so far apart from James in this somewhat underwhelming year so far.  It's got a sprinkling of Pale Fire (footnotes of an unreliable narrator who is allegedly translating a book written in Polish by a Spanish translator into English...) and Annihilation (gathering of semi-strangers in an uncanny landscape). This novel is about a group of translators who get together, kind of cult-like, to translate the magnum opus of a Polish author, who disappears, and things get weirder from there. It's one of those gems that the ToB helps me discover and it was a surreal read.

The (Big) Year That Flew By: Twelve Months, Six Continents, and the Ultimate Birding Record (by Arjan Dwarshuis)

Read for the RHC category of "a nonfiction book about nature or the environment." This is a Dutch birder who broke the global Big Year record and raised money for the Preventing Extinctions Program. His memoir is equally about birding and observations on conservation efforts (and the impact of climate change and deforestation) that he sees along the way.  I would have liked it to be more linear - he does a lot of flashbacks to his childhood that interrupt the narrative - but enjoyed it overall.

Colored Television (by Danzy Senna)

About a biracial author living in Los Angeles who gets drawn into the television industry.  I loved this until the halfway mark where the main character started making inexplicable decisions and I started getting annoyed because this is not how Hollywood works! I liked the unpredictability of the ending and my annoyance had ebbed by the end. Well written overall and would definitely read more by Senna.

The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy (by Elizabeth Kendall and Molly Kendall)

Whenever I drive by Lake Sammamish I think about Ted Bundy. I dipped back into The Stranger Beside Me and then followed some breadcrumbs to this memoir, which I didn't know had been rereleased and updated in 2020.  Kendall was Ted Bundy's girlfriend for many years and ended up going to the police no less than three times when she started to suspect his involvement in the murders.  Molly was her young daughter, to whom Bundy was a father figure. She first wrote the memoir at a time when she still talks about how part of her will always love him; she's traumatized and still healing.  The memoir is kept intact with a new afterword that talks about how she feels now, decades later. There's also a chapter from Molly that is unforgettably chilling and satisfyingly full of rage. Worth reading for true crime fans! 

Great Expectations (by Vinson Cunningham)

Vinson Cunningham worked as a staffer on the Obama campaign; the main character of this novel, David, is a young Black man working on the campaign of an unnamed politician who is obviously Obama. It melds fact and fiction into a story that actually maps in a few subtle ways onto Great Expectations, if you squint a bit.

I feel like I'm going through this year's ToB not really loving anything except, so far, James.  This is a fine read, and Vinson's prose is outstanding, but a little episodic and philosophical, lacking drama or plot, and not particularly compelling. I felt like I'd rather read Cunningham's memoir about his real experience vs. a thinly fictionalized version. 

Alaska Books

I spent a week in a cabin in Alaska; due to weather and flight delays, I also spent a whole lot of time holed up in the cabin and in airports and on planes. As a result, I finished a whopping nine books, so this might be a long post! This covers many of my favorite genres: litfic, young adult, speculative fiction, and Japanese mystery.

Asking for a Friend (by Kara H. L. Chen)

Cute YA about Taiwanese-American kids with complicated families who enter a business competition. In fact, the first of two books on this list about second-generation Asian kids! I enjoyed the depiction of Taiwanese culture and as a second-generation kid of immigrants (though not Asian immigrants) a lot of relatability in this one. Cute but not amazing.

Inspector Imanishi Investigates (by Seicho Matsumoto) 

I believe this was a new author for me that I got from a recommendation on Reddit.  Slow-paced, lots of minutia which I normally love, but but not enough balance in the other direction, and not enough excitement in the mystery. It's like "here is every detail about a very slow paced investigation, and the killer is the exact person you most medium suspect, and you'll discover that very slowly." Not a must.

True Love and Other Impossible Odds (by Christina Li) 

This was the one that made me cry.  It has lot in common with the first book on this list, as it also deals with the pressure of being the child of Asian immigrants. Bu it's a little more mature (the characters are college freshman), the romance is a Sapphic one (always a plus), and in general it was more affecting (I cried). Of all the YA books (or early adult in this case) on this list, this was by far my favorite.

James (by Percival Everett) 

I've been meaning to read this one since the summer, as it was selected for Camp ToB and is by one of my favorite authors. It's a high concept novel (a loose retelling of Huck Finn from Jim's perspective) and it's by Percival Everett, so of course it's a masterpiece. This will definitely make my end of year best books list and probably be in the 2025 tournament.  It's wonderful.

In the Orbit of You (by Ashley Schumacher) 

Another YA, with good chemistry and a nicely complex love story but an unsatisfying ending that didn't quite ring true. As an aside, I knew the Goodreads crowd would dislike this one because they get very mad when anyone is emotionally (or god forbid physically) cheating in a YA novel, but I cannot be the only teenager with the messiest love life. (A sample of my high school days: I cheated on my first boyfriend by kissing a hot guitar player at a party, he responded by bringing me flowers and forgiving me, which didn't make sense until I catfished him for fun only to discover he'd been having sex with his male best friend for years. We stayed together until I successfully convinced him he was gay. We've been best friends for over 30 years. That's high school for you!)  

Margo Has Money Troubles (by Rufi Thorpe)

I decided based on reading her ToB judgment last year that I had to read something by Rufi Thorpe and indeed, this novel is exactly as smart, fresh, quirky and funny as I expected. 

The Half-Life of Love (by Brianna Bourne) 

This was both speculative fiction and YA; the concept is that you get a twinge when your life is halfway over.  A lot of suspension of disbelief was required because they are scientifically investigating it as if it's some chemical thing but also apparently you're immortal before this happens? Like, what happens if you blow your brains out with a pistol? But it's a love story between a researcher who lost her baby sister and a teenage boy who's about to die.  I didn't love how the ending played out (not in terms of what happens, but in terms of how Finch doesn't get agency over his planned death) but it was an interesting high concept, and I liked September as a character and just generally pondering how we live our lives and what's important. Also I was on a bucket list trip (to see the Northern Lights) so led to some interesting contemplation about the purposes of a bucket list and why this trip was important to me.

True Letters from a Fictional Life (by Kenneth Logan)

I wasn't sure if the characters fell flat for me because I was tired from travel at this point, but my thoughts were echoed on Goodreads and the more I thought about it, the more flat it fell. It's about a sporty kid who's figuring out he's gay but I had a lot of problems with it: there's a lot of homophobic and transphobic stuff that is never challenged or addressed. It doesn't feel like in 21st century Vermont of all places there would be this many people using the f-slur, punching gay kids, assuming gay people are pedophiles, or panicking about gay people getting AIDS. Like the widespread regressive attitudes don't ring true. The romance is absolutely tepid. And I couldn't really visualize any of the characters so they all fell flat. A big miss for me.

Salvation of a Saint (by by Keigo Higashino) 

Last but not least, from the author of The Devotion of Suspect X, another Howdunit.  There was one part of the Howdunit that I figured out very early on; the other part was ingenious and I didn't. I loved the character of the female junior detective.  I loved the entire plotline and the unraveling of the mystery. Goes into my top tier of Japanese mysteries for sure, and a great note to end my vacation reading marathon on!

Leslie F*cking Jones (by Leslie Jones)

Okay, this is a book that is wildly different in audio vs. print. It's a short book that turns into a 19-hour audiobook because Leslie Jones riffs, expands on her stories, curses a lot, ad libs, and improvs her way through it. She laughs her ass off and also cries when recounting difficult moments of her life. It's completely authentic - she tells stories that include her stealing stuff during the L.A. riots, dealing with debilitating hemorrhoids, and regularly getting high with Kenan Thompson, among other things.

You have to be a fan of Leslie Jones and her style of comedy, but if you are, you can trust and believe (a Leslie-ism you will hear a lot) that this audiobook is an experience. (Also there are multiple shoutouts to John Ritter's comedy skills and so of course I love her even more.)

Life on Mars (by Tracy K. Smith)

My 18th Read Harder Challenge book is a collection of poetry by a Black author and Pulitzer prize winner, Tracy K. Smith. The category: an indie published collection of poetry by a BIPOC or queer author.

Sadly I did not get the hype about this collection. A couple of lovely poems in here (I particularly enjoyed "The Universe Is A House Party") but not my favorite; poetry either gives you transcendent chills or it doesn't; this collection didn't hit for me.  It did make me want to read more poetry though - it's been a while since I picked up a Best American Poetry collection, and I used to get them every year! 

(What the hell, just pre-ordered this year's edition.) 

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (by Isabel Wilkerson)

Book #17 in the Read Harder Challenge was The Warmth of Other Suns, and while I was reading it it also popped up as #2 on the best books of the 21st century, so that was very satisfying, (I've read 38 of those books, and thanks to Wilkerson, I've read the top 7. Very tempted to try and read all of the rest....)  

This is the story of the Great Migration of Black Americans to the North during Jim Crow, meticulously researched and very insightful.  It centers around three specific migrants (who settled in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago) but puts their lives in context of societal changes happening around them. I found context-switching between those three life stories a little challenging, honestly; I would have preferred a straight-up oral history covering dozens of people, not just three. But regardless, I learned a lot from reading this and really recommend it to all Americans for help understanding the forces that underpin race relations in America today. 

This was just not that long ago - Ida Mae, the migrant woman whose story is told and who began life as a sharecropper, ended up meeting Barack Obama when he was a community organizer in Chicago. This is a vibrant history that every American should know. Highly recommended.

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store (by James McBride)

I'm still working my way through the Tournament of Books shortlist, including this one by James McBride. There's something about McBride's writing that I find kind of... I don't know... twee? Artificial?Oprah's book club?

<a pause while I go to Goodreads and try to find someone who articulated this vague feeling on my behalf>

Okay here's one: "we are introduced to character after character after character who all have adorable folksy names and charming, convoluted, 'hilarious' backstories that involve star crossed romance, traumatic family histories, or hair brained schemes that resulted in the weird nickname they now have or the strange limp they're walking with and it just goes on and on and on until I thought I was gonna scream."

Yes, thank you Sara the librarian! It's too cutesy, and I felt the same way about Deacon King Kong, which I DNF after a couple hundred pages of folksy meandering.  I enjoyed McBride's memoir and I understand the appeal of the novel, but it's definitely not my favorite. 

Pleasure Activism (by adrienne maree brown)

Read for the category of "a book about activism" - note that activism is in the title, and the subtitle is "The Politics of Feeling Good, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing World."  But this is really a book about pleasure, particularly sexual pleasure, as seen through a queer, POC lens. It's a compilation of essay, poetry, interviews, and dialogue and really doesn't focus much on activism, at all. More about "activism" in the sense of activating pleasure. (Apparently the secret is being poly.)

So in terms of my expectations: I was hoping to learn more in here about how to infuse political activism with pleasure to sustain the fight, and help encourage others to take action by making activism pleasurable. When I realized this is really more about POC folks reclaiming their own pleasure, I was let down. But maybe this book was just Not For Me, and that's okay; it seems to have resonated with its audience.

That said, there is some great, profound stuff in here and I got a lot of out if. Some disappointing stuff (judgment about food, despite being explicitly body positive; a disability interview with an abled person) but some amazing essays by collaborators and brilliant thinkers (of whom brown is clearly one.)  It's the most "woke" book I've ever read, parsing its own language with multiple disclaimers and definitions and I can imagine some readers might find it overkill, but maybe it's necessary. 

There is an audience for this book but I think perhaps white feminists are not that audience. My final category in the challenge is "a nonfiction book about intersectional feminism" and I'm going to read Against White Feminism.  Maybe I'm already pretty good at pleasure, and am looking for more challenge.

Bad Fat Black Girl: Notes from a Trap Feminist (by Sesali Bowen)

I had to commute into the office last week for the first time in years, which made it a great opportunity to finally check out "an audiobook performed by a person of color of a book written by an author of color." This is read by the author, Sesali Bowen.  

Short review: this is great. I learned a lot about trap music and culture, and Bowen's perspective on feminism gave me a lot to think about and unpack.  I tagged this as memoir since she uses her own experiences to guide the reader through her ideas.

This quote from Goodreads captures it well: "If you want to challenge your ideas of what it means to be a feminist, particularly if you are steeped in white feminism that lacks intersectionality, I would recommend reading Bad Fat Black Girl." Same here. It's entertaining, erudite, queer, challenging, enlightening.