Reading post: July

It's the last day of July, so I'll do a reading post, even though I'm still working on my trip recap post (I'll save that for Sunday). In July the plan was to return to fiction, gathering up all the books that were previously on my January, February, and May lists that didn't get read then. The list thus had about 50 books on it, which was impossible, but I just worked along on it. However, since we took a 12-day road trip in the latter half of the month, I only managed to read a few of the books on the list.

Books I said I'd like to read

Lucky in the Corner by Carol Anshaw (2002). I really like Carol Anshaw, and this was the only one of her five novels I hadn't read. And I hated it. So disappointing! It's the story of a mother and her college-age daughter and their complicated relationship. The daughter, Fern, is a great character, liked her a lot. The mother, Nora, is a disaster waiting to happen, as we can tell from the first chapter, and then we get to watch the disaster unfold over the course of the book. Plus, the dog dies. I could barely finish it. I kept telling myself, it's only 245 pages, you like Carol Anshaw, just read it. And then I would read another chapter and feel sick to my stomach and be sure I couldn't bear to read another. Really not recommended (but I do recommend all her other books).

Long Bright River by Liz Moore (2020). I read Liz Moore's third novel The Unseen World a few years back with my book group and liked it, and always meant to read more of her. She had a big hit two years ago with The God of the Woods, and I still plan to read that, but in the meantime I found this on the shelf at the George Reynolds branch library, so I read it. It's about the opioid epidemic in Philadelphia, and two sisters at opposite ends of it, one a cop and one an addict who has gone missing. It was quite disturbing, but interesting too. At one point everything seemed to be going wrong and I was afraid it would end badly, but (spoiler!) it all comes out more or less right in the end. Very well done.

Jane (A Murder) by Maggie Nelson (2005). I wanted to read this book in June, but Prospector didn't deliver. Then suddenly in mid July, up it pops. Maggie Nelson's Aunt Jane (her mother's sister) was murdered outside Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1969 at the age of 23 (a few years before Nelson was born). At first she was thought to be one of the notorious Michigan Murders, but something didn't quite fit. In 2004, DNA from Jane's clothing was matched to an entirely different person, and he was put on trial, which Nelson wrote about in her next book, The Red Parts, and which I read a few years ago. But before all that happened, Nelson wrote this book, a collection of her poetry mixed with Jane's diary entries. It's very unusual and very moving. And of course, after finishing it, I had to go back and reread The Red Parts (which I own). Together they tell a fascinating but harrowing story.

The Search by Geoff Dyer (1993). Dyer's second novel, about a man searching for a woman's lost husband (at her request). I thought this was going to be a thriller, but it really wasn't. In the Afterword he says his Italian publisher referred to it as a "metaphysical thriller," so maybe it's that. Dyer explains that it's really an homage to Italo Calvino, especially his Invisible Cities, which I haven't read (yes, it's on my to-read list now). Anyway, I liked it at first, and then it got weirder and weirder, and I liked it less. I don't think I was supposed to have that reaction. I found it annoying that I couldn't tell what country he was in -- maybe the U.S., but none of the city names made sense, maybe somewhere in Europe, but the land he was traveling through was too big. I also kept thinking that it was going to turn out to be a dream. Maybe it was. I don't know. An interesting choice right before a road trip.

Books from the New Yorker's "Briefly Noted" reviews

Questions 27 & 28 by Karen Tei Yamashita (2026). OK, this isn't actually from "Briefly Noted," but I first read about it in the New Yorker, so I'm counting it here. I was on hold at the library for this book for a long time, and I finally got it at the end of June. It's billed as a novel, but it's a very unusual novel. I'd call it more of a fictionalized survey of notable Japanese Americans, beginning with Yone Noguchi's time in America (1893-1904) and continuing to the present day. There's a lot about the internment camps (the questions referred to in the title were part of the "Statement of United States Citizen of Japanese Ancestry" form that internees had to fill out, about their loyalty to the U.S.). I was familiar with many of the writers she discusses, such as Noguchi, Toshio Mori, Mine Okubo, and Lois-Ann Yamanaka, whose Blu's Hanging I just read back in May. But I learned a lot from the book too. Some of it is kind of clunky, often I wished she would be more clear, but I think it's an important book.

Other reading

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (2021). The book group book, suggested by Sally.  I kept putting off reading this, just not feeling it, not in the mood for science fiction, but when I finally started, OMG. So fun. It's very long, 476 pages, and the beginning was a little slow and some other parts dragged, but the part where he meets an alien -- oh, so fun, so fascinating, I couldn't put it down. I wonder what the book group will think of it? (we don't meet for another 10 days). After I finished it, Rocket Boy started reading it. Now I really want to see the movie, but of course it's no longer in theaters, so I'll have to wait until the library gets the DVD. Maybe by next summer?

Fierce Attachments: A Memoir by Vivian Gornick (1987). My older sister gave me a used paperback of this book for my birthday and I stuck it in my backpack to bring along on our road trip, just in case I got tired of all the fiction I'd brought. I ended up reading only this, none of the fiction. Go figure. Anyway, it's an interesting book about Gornick's fraught relationship with her mother. It's also about Gornick's relationships with men and other women, but all of that is wound around her relationship with her mother. I think the reason I didn't love it as much as a lot of people love it is that she didn't get along with her mother very well. I did not get along with my mother when I was younger, but after I moved away, went to grad school, my father died, all that, we got along extremely well. She was my best friend. So when I was reading this I kept thinking, oh grow up, do better, why are you still fighting with her? That's probably not fair. Mother-daughter relationships are very complicated and it's impressive that Gornick wrote such an honest book.