March 2022 Reads!

In my twenties, I was very much a Type A, capital-S Striver. Everything was goals and plans and accomplishments. I have always loved books and stories and reading but let me tell you, for a while there I had a very unhealthy kind of Type A relationship with GoodReads. "You mean I can get likes and kudos and gold stars by PUBLICLY TALLYING the books I read and broadcasting them as ACCOMPLISHMENTS?? Say no more."

Eventually, though, that gets old. I still loved to read but I realized that there were times I was forcing myself to read and sometimes finish books just to watch my yearly count go up, and not because I was always enjoying it. Then came the thirties, and with them, permission to read when I felt like it and just sit on the couch and watch TV or scroll the internet if I didn't. Part of me felt so scandalized. "You can do this? It's allowed??" Something about it felt so wrong and lazy and I 100% embraced it.

And then (thank GOD) came the forties, and with it, The Great Panini (boo, no thanks). No one felt like doing anything they didn't absolutely have to. We as a society were constantly reassuring each other that we were going through a collective slow-motion trauma together, your job is to survive right now, no really, if ever there were a time it was completely acceptable to not improve oneself and do literally whatever you have to to avoid crippling depression and/or anxiety, it is now.

Friends, my lounging lazily on the couch post-work and -run watching TV or movies or scrolling the internet (sometimes both simultaneously!) achieved epic proportions. Abandon all goals, you say? Relinquish any and all sense of ambition? Done, done, and DONE. Any time I'd start to feel like maaaaaybe doing something other than repeatedly clicking "Next episode" or staring at my phone/browser window *might* actually be better for my mental health, my brain would yell indignantly, "BUT IT'S A PANDEMIC!! CIVILIZATION MIGHT LITERALLY BE ENDING!! HOW DARE YOU SUGGEST COGNITIVELY CHALLENGING ACTIVITY OF ANY KIND???" and ehhhhhh next episode.

But things are changing. Is the pandemic over? No; talk to me about that, maybe, when we don't still have hundreds of people dying every day in this country alone and I no longer have to worry about the variant du jour ripping through the immune-suppressed and -compromised and otherwise medically vulnerable folks in my community every few months or so. But things are changing in that I am no longer confined to my house. I can hug my friends. I can take a plane to see my family, even if that situation is still highly complicated by a gauntlet of rapid tests and uncomfortable questions about masks and vaccination status.

But....at some point I realized the panini-sized proportions of evening TV/internet binging had kind of stuck. Not for emotional survival reasons, but simply habit. And at some point towards the end of 2021 I realized that while ending my days with hours of screen time, with the entertainment equivalent of hundreds of empty calories, felt relaxing on the surface, it was actually making me more anxious. It was causing me to stay up later and get less sleep. It was filling my brain with information that seemed important but that more often than not just got me amped up about people and events and possibilities that I could literally do nothing about (beyond a very limited set of things I was already doing, such as voting, donating to worthy causes, being a good friend, etc.)

So when the dust of the 2021 holidays settled, I made myself a little suggestion. (I don't want to say "goal" or "resolution" because that makes it sound more high-stakes than it is, and something I have to worry about "being accountable" about and possibly failing at.) My suggestion to myself was to cut down on mindless end-of-day TV and internet binging and spend more time reading actual physical books. Which is not to say that we don't still sometimes spend evenings watching TV or movies or allowing ourselves a little mindless internet, but a lot of the time we instead finish our dinner TV watching (e.g., Chef's Table, American Dad, Last Week Tonight, etc.), take our dishes back up to the kitchen, and sit by the fire with books.

I've also found that this routine is much more likely to help me start to feel sleepy at a reasonable hour; at that point I feed the kitties, do my little nighttime routine, and get in bed and continue reading until I can't keep my eyes open anymore. (It doesn't usually take long!)

 

This month, I managed three whole paper books in addition to three audiobooks (which I mostly listen to while running or doing chores, though this month I've been into a bunch of podcasts as well).

(15) Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist (2004, 513 pages) (literary horror). Paper book. For the last couple years I’ve been on a literary horror kick, & this is one of those books that shows up over and over on various people’s lists, a vampire novel that follows the relationship between 12-year-old-Oskar (fatherless, awkward, fascinated with violence, and a bit of an outcast) and a centuries-old vampire child that goes by Eli. Intensely dark and quite graphically violent at times, yet so brilliantly and touchingly written that you often find yourself repelled by, intrigued by, and feeling sorry for the same character over the course of the book. Not a light read and not your typical vampire novel.

(16) Last Exit by Max Gladstone (2022, 400 pages) (dramatic sci fi/fantasy thriller). Audiobook. Uhhhh I don't even know where to start with this one, except to say it is AHHH-MAZING, oh, and also just won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, which is quite a feat. If you enjoyed N.K. Jemisin's The City We Became, you *may* have an inkling of the genre we're dealing with here. Elements of urban fantasy, woven together with Americana (and all it entails) and a bit of sci fi thrown in for good measure. Post-college, Zelda and four of her ivy league classmates, all existing somewhat on the fringe in their own ways, went gallivanting through parallel worlds (or 'alts'), using their mysterious "knacks" to beat back the black rot trying to destroy the universe. Then everything went wrong and Zelda's partner Sal (died? disappeared? something else??), and the rest of them disbanded, frantically trying to take up normal adult lives. Now ten years later, Zelda has no choice but to call her friends back together and try to find out what happened to--and maybe save--both Sal and the rest of their universe. The writing is breathtaking and it feels an awful lot like there might be a follow-up in the works.

(17) Exhalation by Ted Chiang (2019, 352 pages) (short stories, sci fi/speculative fiction). Paper book. If you've seen or heard of the movie Arrival, then you're familiar with Ted Chiang's work (and if you haven't, hooooly shit, go watch the movie!) as it's based on a science fiction novella of his called Story of Your Life. Exhalation is a collection of sci fi/speculative short stories that are by turns mind-bending, thought-provoking, heartwarming, and gut-wrenching. If you enjoy fiction that is both incredibly clever and emotionally/psychologically brilliant, Ted Chiang might be your guy.

(18) This is Not the Jess Show (This is Not the Jess Show #1) by Anna Carey (2021, 304 pages) (YA, speculative fiction). Audiobook. This is another one it's hard to say much about without getting into spoilers. Set in a small town in the the late nineties, the story follows seventeen-year-old Jess Flynn as she navigates a crush on a childhood fiend, overprotective parents, and her younger sister's terminal illness. Then things start getting weird--half the town struck down by a mysterious flu, her dog replaced by a mysterious doppelganger, and her friend acting flustered when an odd device slips out of her bag. I won't say I didn't see the twist coming, but I was surprised at how it played out. First in a series.

(19) Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith (1950, 256 pages) (crime thriller). Paper book. A classic crime novel! Two young men--Guy, a successful architect trying to end his troubled marriage, and Bruno, an alcoholic ne'er-do-well with a cruel but rich father--meet by chance on, you guessed it! A train. The two get to talking about their situations, and Bruno suggests they are set up for the perfect crime: Bruno could murder Guy's wife, and then Guy could murder Bruno's father, and the two would never contact one another again. They could arrange the crimes for times when the likely suspect would have a solid alibi, and no one would ever know they'd even met. Guy wants nothing to do with this idea but Bruno becomes more and more obsessed with it. A short read and a classic for a reason--Highsmith masterfully plays out both the logistical and psychological implications.

(20) Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson  (2011, 359 pages) (psychological drama). Audiobook. Due to an accident years earlier, forty-seven-year-old Christine has both long- and short-term memory loss, which resets each time she goes to sleep and wakes up. Each morning the stranger in her bed must introduce himself as her husband Ben and explain why she does not know who or where she is. She is also apparently working on recovering her memory with a doctor, but has apparently decided not to tell Ben about this, and has also decided to start keeping a secret journal to create a sort of external memory for herself, which she re-reads and adds to each day. Mystery, drama, and thrills ensue.

I hope something piques your interest! :)