I’ve kept a book journal since 2011. It’s haphazard, headlong, brutally honest, and composed in stops and starts. Sometimes I take the time to write lengthy, gut-level responses and sometimes (most of the time) I don’t—busyness and preoccupation with other writing projects are to blame, probably. I’ve never been too precious about it, which is, in the end, what makes it feel so pure (to me, anyway). Here are some of the juiciest fragments of my 2017 book journal, chronology preserved. My daughter was three-going-on-four, and I was teaching pretty regularly, and I was writing a lot of criticism and trying to finish my first short story manuscript. I read a lot of books on Buddhism and exactly zero books of poetry that year. Strange.
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Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson
Brooklyn, 70’s, motherless…lust and vulnerability, girlhood in general and Black girlhood in particular. Scattershot memories—book seems to be about memory itself, how it works, how it remembers, what, where, and why it remembers… are we to trust its ability to parse the past? “Another” promises a Brooklyn we haven’t seen before. That promise delivers, for sure. I like the bits about collective desire.
Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer
…hilarious and exactly what I needed. It tells the story of Jacob and Julia Bloch and their kids, Max, Benjy, and Sam and their dog Argus and Jacob’s father Irv. They’re conventionally unconventional, anxious, kibitzers, criers, moaners, naggers…all discontent in their own way, each searching for love and connection and flooded with to-do’s and unhappiness and pressures and failed dreams. Secret phone, “Other Life,” a game you “don’t play” but instead “live.” Crumbling marriage, dialogue is whip-smart, funny, and totally banter-y hilarious. Middle of the novel starts to sag…but I loved its manic energy…dogs, death, caring for the elderly, race, class, family, middle-income, marital struggles, parenthood, the overwhelming nature of the internet.
The Nix by Nathan Hill
(No journal entry, but I absolutely loved this book and read it again right after I finished it. I’ve only ever done that a handful of times in my life. I am very excited for his new one.)
The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind, ed. by Claudia Rankine, Beth Loffreda, and Cap Max King
(No entry but also loved this book.)
The Haters by Jesse Andrews
Blah blah blah. Really didn’t like this. The whole premise is ridiculous, completely unbelievable, and so meandering that I just don’t care what happens to these privileged spoiled brats. Abandoned this halfway.
(I don’t read much YA and I’m honestly not really sure how/why I decided to read this.)
Isadora by Amelia Gray
Enjoyed how Gray framed Isadora Duncan, not as someone who grieves like a normal person—or even that grief is normal… prose is a window into her soul…very Woolfian… roving POV: everyone wants what they want. Everyone orbits around Isadora, but she doesn’t really seem to care.
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Loved the first 300 pages and then stalled during the description of the rules of Hal’s game…it’s just TMI, IMO.
(Will I ever finish this?)
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
This is a deceptively breezy book about two lovers journeying through the seeming end of the world, a world of nativists and radical militants and the fight to recover an ever crumbling civilization and ambiguous political uprising. The all-seeing voice—“in those days” is a constant refrain—keeps you anchored…could read this as a history, a sociological study, and a chronicle of love/love-lost. It reminded me, at times, of One Hundred Years of Solitude, in how it handles time with its wide-open POV swings, which shift from Saeed and Nadia and move to a random character at the opposite end of the world, as if to illustrate “how they lived then,” changing morals, shifting grounds of tradition and cultural norms. There were a few word choices that really made me double back, one I can’t think of but need to find, a verb that characterized, described, and captured with brute force and gave me everything, in a way some use whole chapters to describe. “Cauterize” was the word…can’t find the sentence…fantastical doors and the presence of social media….migrants re-building their worlds…Will Saeed and Nadia stay together? Will they make it out alive? Will they find a peaceful corner of the world? Those major questions keep you reading. Beautiful, very smart, philosophical, meditative, and at times challenging. This’ll be around for a long time.
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Have you read any of these? Do you keep a book journal? I’d love to hear your thoughts. As always, please spread the love to your local libraries, independent booksellers if you can, or shop online at Bookshop. Thanks, as always, for reading.