Best Books I Read For the First Time in 2019
- The April 3rd Incident by Yu Hua, trans. Allan H. Barr (2018)
Synopsis: A collection of short stories about conspiracies, ghosts, lies, and legends.
Borges meets Kafka via 1980’s China. I wasn’t really sure what to think of it, and I’ll probably have to read it again before I can say anything substantive, but it’s good, and definitely interesting. - Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch (2019)
Synopsis: A history of the Internet’s influence on language.
If you know just enough about Internet culture to be interested in this book then you’ll probably get a lot from it. Know too little and the examples she uses will likely be inaccessible; know too much and you’ll probably be bored. In either case, though, you might still find the analyses of the Internet’s effects on non-Internet interactions to be interesting, and even Full Internet People, to use McCulloch’s taxonomy, might not know all of the history.
That taxonomy is actually one of the most interesting parts of the book, and I think is indicative of just how different this work is than the dime-a-dozen Internet think pieces that make the rounds every year. McCulloch argues that Internet generations are defined not by age but by when they first got online, dismissing the “Internet native” as a myth that obscures more nuanced delineations. For example, Old Internet People may have started out as adults in the tech industry or as particularly nerdy teenagers, but what unites them is that they got online pre-World Wide Web, and likely have significantly more technical knowledge than users from later generations.
As a linguist, McCulloch’s approach is neither defensive nor accusatory, and it’s a refreshing change of pace. - Brute: Poems by Emily Skaja (2019)
Synopsis: A poetry collection remaking one’s identity in the wake of a broken relationship.
Honestly, this whole book would be worth it just for the line: “like the Magellan of any promised thing.” But there’s lots of other good lines in here too. - Congratulations, Who Are You Again? by Harrison Scott Key (2018)
Synopsis: A memoir about writing a memoir.
A memoir about the author working on their previous memoir doesn’t seem like an inherently interesting book, especially when I haven’t read the previous memoir or even heard of the author. But Key’s take on how to achieve a dream and what happens next is refreshingly grounded, and more likely to be relevant to your average dreamer than the usual “Here’s how I got famous and so can you” type of celebrity memoir. Funny, charming, and down to earth. - Dream of the Trenches by Kate Colby (2019)
Synopsis: A hybrid lyric essay/poetry collection about language, motherhood, and a bunch of other stuff.
Because I liked this book so much, and because I work at a bookstore where employees are encouraged to write about their favorite books in various contexts, I’ve actually written 4 different reviews of Dream of the Trenches. So, just for fun, I’ll include all of them here.
- The original Goodreads review:
Maybe it’s because I had to reread both of them in order get even 50% of what they were talking about, but I can’t help but think of Dream of the Trenches as a post-Postmodern counterpart to William Carlos Williams’s Spring and All. Though Colby isn’t writing a strident manifesto a la Williams, both works place the author in the world in order to view it from a specific vantage point, both are fragmentary, both involve repeating and evolving motifs, and both are ultimately in some way considering the act of writing that is producing them and the body of contemporary literature into which they are being introduced.
Colby, indeed, empowered by her relative (well, and explicit) lack of certainty, ventures even more broadly into areas of psychology, physics, and metaphysics, whilst tying it all back to the act of writing. And where Williams’s repetition is largely confined to ideas, Colby’s work is so steeped in the repetition of not just ideas but specific words that the repetition itself is one of the primary motifs. Certain keywords become so embedded in the text that the reader’s associations with them can no longer be separated from said text. Where Williams’s pronouncements and enactments are almost always separate, Colby’s text is simultaneous, acting on ideas even as it develops them, which in itself is an enactment of the main themes of the text.
It’s real good, is what I’m saying. - The “Best of 2019 So Far Staff Pick” version:
Part internal dialogue on the essence of language, part critical essay on everything from Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station to Nancy Milford’s biography of Zelda Fitzgerald, and all framed by a single road trip, Dream of the Trenches somehow meshes that all together into what feels like a remake of William Carlos Williams’s “Spring and All” for the 21st century. In place of Williams’s strident manifesto, Colby gives us a charmingly obsessive, self-conscious deconstruction, an intellectual fun house of recurring and recursing ideas, a post-Postmodernist treatise on the idea of its own existence. But don’t worry — though you may give your brain a few extra wrinkles trying to understand it, Colby’s wit and whimsy ensure you’ll at least enjoy the experience. - The 100-word edit for my “Top 5 of 2019 Staff Picks”:
What William Carlos Williams’s Spring and All was for modernism, Dream of the Trenches is for post-postmodernism. The title piece is part internal dialogue on the essence of language, part critical essay on several far-flung texts, part autofictional road trip diary. Colby gives us a charmingly obsessive self-conscious deconstruction, an intellectual fun house of recurring and recursing ideas, an indefatigably curious text which serves as a treatise on the idea of its own existence. Though I gave my brain a few extra wrinkles trying to understand it, Colby’s wit and whimsy ensured I at least enjoyed the experience. - The actual “Top 5 of 2019” version that I wrote after I realized that the original “Best of 2019 So Far” actually still existed on the online store page for the book and didn’t want to be caught plagiarizing myself:
Dream of the Trenches is a book I know I’ll keep coming back to year after year. Indeed, as soon as I got to the end I jumped straight back to the beginning. I was immediately drawn to Colby’s love of language and intellectual curiosity, and this book changed the way I approach my own writing. It’s an inspiration and a true joy to read and reread.
- The original Goodreads review:
- Flashback Hotel by Ivan Vadislavić (2019)
Synopsis: A short story collection about a parade, a wall, a statue, and Elvis.
With a combination of Barthelmean absurdity, Borgesian obsessiveness, and a musicality that, frankly, neither of them possess, this collection had me chuckling, scratching my head, and going “Hmm” from start to finish. - Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016 by Frank Bidart (2017)
Synopsis: I mean, it’s in the title. Topics include an Italian sculptor, a Russian ballet dancer, and the poet coming to terms with his sexuality.
Bidart is one of the most fascinating and challenging poets I’ve ever not given up trying to read. If I’m being honest, there are maybe twenty poems in here that I can honestly say I liked, but every poem is a lesson, and when they work it is staggering. I’m normally kind of nonplussed by typographical experimentation in poetry, but Bidart’s motivation isn’t avant garde for the sake of avant garde, and there were moments where I could tune into what he was doing. His histories and dramatic monologues (“The War of Vaslav Nijinsky,” “Ellen West,” the second, third, and fourth “Hour[s] of the Night,” to name a few), which can span well over 30 pages, are as impressive as they are emotionally devastating, and yet just when you think that he can only be really impactful in his long poems, you’ll find “Valentine” or “Rio.” If you write, or want to write, lyric poetry, or experimental poetry, or persona poems, or historical poems, you have to read this collection. - Hark by Sam Lipsyte (2019)
Synopsis: Follow the lives of accidental self-help guru Hark Morner and his crew of devoted followers.
This is the kind of oh-so-clever novel where I feel like I would probably hate a lot of the other people who like it. I might even hate Sam Lipsyte. But I really like this book. The worldbuilding is…erratic? But the characters are painstakingly (and occasionally painfully) nuanced (aside from richbro Nat Dersh and techbro Dieter Delgado), and it’s just so enjoyable to read and full of surprises and yeah, what can I say, this is a great novel. - Prelude to The Hollow Town by L.A. Salami (2018)
Synopsis: 72 pages of original verse, poetry & hand-drawn illustration by British folk musician L.A. Salami.
L.A. Salami’s lyrics bring to mind Dylan at his most verbose, and he brings that same style to his poetry, filling these pages with an abundance of internal rhyme, alliteration, sardonic wit, and poignant observations. - Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory: Stories by Raphael Bob-Waksberg (2019)
Synopsis: A short story collection about a wedding, a play, and a rock band that has superpowers (but only when they’re drunk).
There was no way I wasn’t going to love this book. Bojack Horseman is one of my favorite shows (sometimes my favorite show), and Bob-Waksberg brings that same absurd genius and heart to his short stories. That’s not to say there aren’t flaws in this collection. The whimsical but seemingly pointless typographical experimentation and the seemingly aimless wandering through so many different approaches to the medium mark this clearly as a first book, but the strong thematic throughline of relationships (romantic, platonic, and familial) keeps it from being disorienting. Many of the stories are also clearly written by a sitcom writer, with the structure of “introduce familiar premise, then establish an absurd twist on that premise as the main plot,” but those twists are interesting enough, and the stories strong enough, to keep it from feeling gimmicky. All of which is to say: of course there are flaws, but if there’s anything Bob-Waksberg’s work is meant to teach us, it’s that we can’t pretend our flaws don’t exist, but neither can we let them define us. At its best, to see yourself in his work (as you probably will) is to see a path away from those two extremes. So, love this collection in all its damaged glory, and I’m sure it’ll love you back.
Also, I highly recommend reading most if not all of these stories in the voices of the Bojack Horseman cast. A few suggestions:
“A Most Blessed and Auspicious Occasion” — Aaron Paul
“The Serial Monogamist’s Guide to Important New York City Landmarks” — David Sedaris
“Rufus” — Paul F. Tompkins
“Up-and-Comers” — Alison Brie
“You Want to Know What Plays Are Like?” — Amy Sedaris
“The Average of All Possible Things” — Will Arnett - Tap Out: Poems by Edgar Kunz (2019)
Synopsis: A poetry collection about growing up, difficult fathers, and what it means to be a man.
Kunz’s strong narrative style keeps you reading, but it’s his endings that make you stop to appreciate them. He seems to have perfected the cadence of the Platonic final couplet, so much so that even the poems that I didn’t particularly like still made me pause on those final lines. It’s so consistent that it almost starts to feel like a gimmick, but when it works it works. - Theory of Bastards by Audrey Schulman (2018)
Synopsis: In the near future, Dr. Francine “Frankie” Burk, following surgery that has rid her of lifelong pain but left her temporarily wheelchair-bound, travels to Kansas to begin a study of bonobos.
Part science drama, part character study, part romance, part post-apocalyptic survival narrative, all topped with a light yet inseparable sci-fi layer, Theory of Bastards really doesn’t give a crap about genre conventions and typical narrative structure. Schulman weaves these disparate elements together into an engrossing, constantly surprising page-turner full of wit and genuine humanity, despite being mostly about apes. - Three Moments of an Explosion: Stories by China Miéville (2016)
Synopsis: A short story collection about floating icebergs, underground card games, and a mysterious disease that puts the lie to the saying, “No man is an island.”
Walter Benjamin once wrote, “Actually there is no story for which the question as to how it continued would not be legitimate.” P. T. Barnum once said, “Always leave them wanting more,” which I guess is pretty much the same thing.
There’s a skill to not ending a story, and Miéville’s got it. He tends to leave us with a question or frozen moment of tension, and avoids that “meaning of life” moment like the plague. Even stories that seem like they have a very neat ending, like “In The Slopes,” actually just gesture towards a larger mystery. And when the endings are definitive, such as in “Säcken,” it’s not some comforting moral or fake profundity, though there are the occasional satirical pieces with bowtie endings—which, come to think of it, was another thing I wanted to talk about.
Miéville is super sly with his satire, to the point where I can’t always tell what’s pastiche and what’s not, and what makes it brilliant is that it kind of doesn’t matter, because he build these layers of absurdity into something actually meaningful. And on top of that, when the satire is overt, such as in “Dreaded Outcome,” it’s pretty damn funny.
Also, I want all of the fake movie trailers in here to get made into feature length films, especially “Listen the Birds,” because I really want to know what the heck is going on there.
Side note: according to the Goodreads reviews, this is apparently another Miéville book that, like Kraken, I love and Miéville fans don’t, largely for the same reasons. It’s becoming a worrying trend. I’m kind of dreading reading Perdido Street Station or The City & the City, but hey, maybe I’ll just like them even more. - The Wizard Knight (Books 1 & 2) by Gene Wolfe (orig. 2004)
Synopsis: A young American boy wakes up a mysterious new world. He is told that he carries a message from the Aelf, is given a magical string and the name Able of the High Heart, and is set on his way.
- The Knight (Book 1)
I’ve been reading fantasy pretty much since I could read. I don’t know if there’s a better genre to get a young kid into reading—certainly I was interested in little else for most of my childhood (at least until I started reading sci-fi, then it was a roughly 60-40 split). Sometime in high school I started to feel like the fantasy books I was seeing were getting real…samey. I got more interested in books without swords and sorcery, and eventually I pretty much stopped reading fantasy altogether, with very occasional exceptions. They just didn’t make me feel the way they did when I was a kid, and without that sense of wonder the flaws were too glaring.
Around the time I was weaning myself off fantasy, I attempted to read The Knight—twice. The first time, I got about halfway through before being distracted by something else (given the timeframe, I have a horrible feeling it was a Harry Potter book), and when I came back to it I had no idea what was going on. I started over, but it was an awkward mix of parts I remembered and parts that I didn’t. I felt confused and slightly bored, and gave up. (Also, I think at one point I maybe tried to read The Wizard, thinking that it was the first book [I mean, the series is called The Wizard Knight, so…], and needless to say that did not go well.)
On a trip back home this summer, I was going through old stuff when I realized I still had both books buried in a drawer, and I decided it was time to give it another go.
The brief review: This book made me feel like a kid again.
The longer review: I can understand why I was confused the first two times I tried to read this. It is a deliberately confusing novel, with the narrator frequently referring to things that haven’t happened yet without explanation, and the story skipping anywhere from a day to a year or more without warning (and that’s aside from the in-world time-skewing that happens because of the protagonist’s journeys between worlds). As a young ‘un I probably found this a bit too much to handle, but as an adult I absolutely love it. Fantasy novels are known for extensive worldbuilding and exposition, and in the worst cases these come in chapter-long info dumps. Wolfe doesn’t do that, instead giving us only the information our protagonist deems relevant to the story he’s telling, and leaving us to figure out the rest. Often we’re left to infer key plot elements from the subtlest action or bit of dialogue, and sometimes we just don’t, and can’t, know what’s going on. This makes for a gripping, unpredictable narrative where you have to constantly be paying close attention.
And that narrative is chaotic, too. This is no simple tale where the hero gets a quest, pursues it, succeeds, the end. We’re not even entirely sure what our hero’s main quest is (and for much of the story, neither is he). This is a book where the protagonist decides to go to a city, and doesn’t get there until four years and several adventures later—and the only reason he was going there in the first place was because a guy he knew died and the protagonist figured there’d be an opening at his job. That’s, like, level 1 of an RPG, and here it takes 17 chapters (roughly 25% of the book). Though the aesthetic of the novel very much evokes fairy tales and ye olde fantasy tropes, it frequently subverts those expectations, so that when, for example, our hero is forced to enter a Robin Hood-style archery contest, I legitimately have no idea what’s going to happen. It’s exciting and magical and I love it.
There are for sure problematic aspects of the novel, largely due to its foundations in the older conventions of the fantasy genre—our strapping male protagonist going around doing the chivalry to people and all the beautiful naked elves who are for some reason almost always women and are irrationally devoted to our hunky hero, that sort of thing. It’s probably enough to keep some people from enjoying it—I know at least one person who loves fantasy who I would definitely not recommend this book to, and if you know that that sort of thing is gonna be a problem for you, give this a pass. But also (spoiler about a main character ahead) there’s a scene where our hero reunites with the man who sort of raised him and who he thought was dead, but the guy’s blind now and our hero doesn’t reveal his own identity because it would be too much to handle emotionally and it is a heartbreaking moment. Also, there’s a giant talking dog that gets even gianter when he fights, and he’s SHY about it, and it’s adorable. The point being that there’s real heart here, and that combined with the subversive storytelling and exceptionally well-executed worldbuilding made this a joy to read from start to finish.
Also if you like Patrick Rothfuss and want to know why his narrator mentions a pirate battle but says he’s not gonna talk about it, this book is why. - The Wizard (Book 2)
Everything I said about the first book still stands. I did want to highlight yet another way that these books subvert the genre, which is that normally our hero collects epic items as they go, until at the end they finally have everything they need to beat the big bad (or they find out the real loot was inside them all along). But in The Wizard, Abel is more like a contemporary RPG character, trading out items, mounts, and companions on a regular basis, based on stats, space, or just the story making him lose a thing so he has to find something to replace it (e.g he loses his magical sword that was the primary McGuffin of the first book, and just gets another magical sword.) I’d be curious if there’s any contemporary fantasy that has really run with this idea; I don’t know if it would actually work if you took it any farther than Wolfe does, but I’d be interested to see it attempted.
Anyway, the main reason I felt slightly less satisfied with this one was the ending, which was kind of inevitable. The nature of the story was such that there was never going to be a super satisfying ending, and honestly the one that we get I probably would’ve been fine with if he hadn’t tried to implicitly tie in Arthurian mythos, which just seemed really forced and cheap. I know it’s petty to like a book less just because of one word on the very last page, but it left a bitter taste in my mouth that didn’t need to be there, so I think it’s fair.
- The Knight (Book 1)
Best Books I Re-Read in 2019
- Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace (2000)
Synopsis: A short story collection about a depressed person, an anxious author of belletristic prose, and brief interviews with hideous men.
I’m a white dude with a beard and a B.A. in English and I love David Foster Wallace, so yeah, I’m a bit of a cliché. But you know what? He’s a great goddamn writer, and his love of language is evident in every word. I understand that he’s not for everyone, that the pages of footnotes give some people a headache, that his self-referentiality can come off as self-indulgent, that his fascination with the titular “hideous men” might seem to some a bit fetishistic, and that a lot of assholes will not shut up about the fact they’ve definitely read Infinite Jest. But I also use copious amounts of footnotes (and parentheticals, and commas)—and em dashes; semicolons too. And I love when writers write about writing. And I think it’s valuable for men (especially some of the more toxic DFW fanboys) to read the title stories in this collection and recognize themselves in these interviewees. Because you will likely see yourself at least once—maybe, if you’re lucky, it will be a version of you from the past, but maybe not.
Also, he is funny. - The Hitchhiker’s Trilogy (Books 1-5) by Douglas Adams (2000 omnibus edition)
Synopsis: Following the demolition of Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass, now-homeless Arthur Dent is set on various adventures with fellow Earthling Tricia “Trillian” McMillan, Betelgeusian journalist Ford Prefect, two-headed President of the Galaxy Zaphod Beeblebrox, and depressed android Marvin.
If you want to know why this series is good, read other people’s reviews. I don’t think I really have anything new to add to that discussion. But I do have a theory. Now, this is probably just because I rewatched all of Community at the same time as I was rereading this series, but my theory is that rather than reading this as a series of books in the way that we usually understand that structure, it’s better to think of it as an NBC sitcom.
Most good NBC sitcoms spend their lifespan “on the bubble,” constantly wondering if this season will be their last. So they often end every season with a sense of finality, only to have to find some new arc, or even retcon a couple things, when they are miraculously saved for another year. Rereading Hitchhiker’s, it became very clear to me that Adams shared a similar mindset. Though the first book leads directly into the second, every other book in the series is pretty much self-contained, plot-wise, and has a full, satisfying ending. At the end of Mostly Harmless, the planet Earth and most of our main characters are permanently destroyed in all possible timelines—but that didn’t stop Adams from considering a sixth book, or indeed stop Eoin Colfer from writing it. Community handled this in pretty much the same way, just inverse: at the end of Season 5, Abed says that if they don’t come back next year, “It’s because an asteroid strike wiped out all life on earth—and that’s canon.” Read in this way, it becomes easier to forgive the series its inconsistencies and plot contrivances as just the necessary tools needed to jumpstart the next last story. Also it becomes easier to imagine it as a modern TV show though I honestly can’t think of anyone who would be a better Arthur Dent than Martin Freeman, who unfortunately is now a little bit too old to reprise that role. Ford Prefect would, obviously, be played by James Acaster—as far as I know no one’s proved that he isn’t actually an alien. (EDIT: Since writing this review, it’s been announced that they are in fact making a Hitchhiker’s TV show. I don’t know if that’s significant or not, just pointing it out. No casting decisions have as yet been forthcoming.)
Also, while some people (including the show’s creators and characters) choose to believe that Community Season 4 never happened, I choose to believe that Hitchhiker’s Book #5 never happened. Not because it’s not good—though it’s hard to decide what standard one should judge these books by given the significant tonal and stylistic shift over the course of books #3-#5, #5 is arguably the best in the series (or at least tied with #4)—but because it is truly, unbearably, unmitigatedly sad.
Also Zaphod Beeblebrox is the Donald Glover of Hitchhiker’s, but that’s neither here nor there.
Honorable Mentions
- Who Killed My Father by Édouard Louis (2018)
- Best American Poetry 2017 ed. by Natasha Trethewey, David Lehman (2017)
- Minutes of Glory by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (2019)
Certain of Eventual Failure 