Mid Year Reading Update
Half the year is over and I thought I would do a little reading review so far! This year has been different from others because I’ve been reading with intention - to understand specific elements for the story I’m working on. That has meant reading a lot of classics that I always meant to get around to, rereading old favourites to look at the structure beneath it and abandoning a lot of books once I felt I got what I needed from it.
This year’s page count is 6576 and 27-ish books (I am unsure of how to count the ones I’m almost done with). The current count for the million page project is 185,471 (I recently was asked my count and said it was 170k because I have been SO bad at updating my google sheet and I’m going to try to be better from here on out so I don’t miss out on these opportunities to share a number nobody else cares about).
Anyway, onto the reviews. These all have spoilers and no synopsis.
The Covenant Of Water, Abraham Verghese
I’m not actually done with this book yet, although I started reading it at the end of 2024! I really thought that I would finish it when I went to Kerala over one weekend, but my mom took us to four temples on one day instead. Also this book is massive, so it was probably an unrealistic plan anyway.
But I love the span of the book - it reminds me of Vikram Seth obviously (reading ‘A Suitable Boy’ was a personal milestone when I was younger) but also of Gabriel Garcia Marquez - in the way myth and reality live comfortably together and families and the novel’s attention roves quite freely. I feel a deep and unwarranted connection with Kerala now and was so excited when someone called me ‘molay’ in the temple!
Never Split the Difference, Chris Voss
I haven’t read non-fiction in a while, and I found this book a bit repetitive (in the way that most good teaching books are) but I thought it was very interesting regardless. I don’t know how many of his tactics I can actually incorporate in real life, but I did find that thinking about them for a moment or two before going into negotiations did help me be far more strategic!
I’m especially trying to learn the tone and voice thing because I have a very high voice which I feel like does not serve me in business contexts, and because of a language barrier, my tone is not always correct either. My goal is to be able to slip into the local language in the midst of conversations the way my Dad does - it creates instant ease and familiarity - but I have no head for languages. But I think the sense of ease translates anyway, so maybe I can lean more on that than the vocabulary.
The biggest learning though was the stakes. Voss takes for granted that he cannot walk away from that negotiation. Once giving up is taken off the table, a lot of creativity comes in. I realised that for most of my life, I felt scared to ask for what I really want because it felt like imposing or being high maintenance and so I would just feign walking away instead. Which is so manipulative! I’m trying not to do that. I also know it comes from weird identity stuff because I don’t do that in business negotiations! I am able to push and bargain and all of that - so I have the skillset, just not the motivation in non-business settings.
It also made me think of my parents because they are amazing negotiators and they use all these tricks without having ever read this book.
Until August, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A lot of people were upset that this book - written at the end of his life, as he was struggling with dementia - was published posthumously. Frankly, I feel like the context is clear enough that his children were not wrong to share what they could of his last days with the world.
I really liked the protagonist! And the language of course felt like a warm afternoon in the tropics after you’ve eaten a gorgeous meal - exactly what I love about Marquez’s writing. The story itself didn’t feel complete, but it felt beautiful in that anyway. The cover was gorgeous - I know you’re not supposed to judge books by covers yada yada but come on! It was a straight shot of serotonin to the brain.
The Beauty of the Husband, Anne Carson
This was how I discovered Anne Carson and fell head over heels in love! 29 tangos, each with a John Keats quote before it. So beautiful. Requires the sustained attention of prayer is how I described it in my fawning reel - go follow the lighght instagram page if you haven’t seen it already!
I liked that here and in the Glass Essay, Carson has this kind of structure between a woman, her lover and her mother. I find that to be such an interesting construction! The two big loves of our lives? Or the most primal? I don’t know, but man she does it so well. Desire in it’s truest form in every line - I won’t say unapologetic, but even when apologising, it is with a coy look, knowing that nothing, not even virtue, stands a chance against desire.
Saving time, Jenny Odell
Man, the mind Jenny Odell has. I love her work - ‘How to do nothing’ was an essay I kept coming back to over and over again when I first found it. I am scared of birds and largely hate them but with Odell, I could read a whole other book about them! The depth and range of her attentions and how she is able to communicate ideas small and large to build a mosaic that reveals something hard to summarise makes it so obvious to me that she is an artist across mediums, who isn’t constrained by being a writer.
I wish I could live in the world the way she does. Read this book! It has so many interesting ideas and it literally shook my world up when I read it while drinking some coffee - I wrote about it here.
Good Material, Dolly Alderton
I don’t usually include books I didn't finish but I did this time because I fully do intend on finishing this, I just got caught up between my writing books. Also, because the writing was so good for a post breakup read! I was going through a breakup when I read it and I was like “Yes!!!!!” to every pathetic sentiment in this. Very cathartic. I love their first kiss, I love their characterisation. I really need to finish this!
Love and St. Augustine, Hannah Arendt
Arendt is my favourite philosopher - I say this while knowing she has all kinds of reservations on how she defines herself. And St. Augustine is my man - I read his “Confessions” for a classics class freshman year that rocked my world. I actually started thinking about the idea for “Lighght” and specifically the spatial understanding of time because of St. Augustine!
And what can I credit to Arendt? My love for footnotes, definitely. My belief (if not practise) in forgiveness as a philosophy, my understanding of the public sphere, the way she describes violence and power as opposites. I think of that all the time - what else we think of as equals that are actually opposites - a working hypothesis is communication and understanding as opposites.
This book might’ve messed me up though. I feel like maybe I should refrain from reading any more philosophy on love until I find the actual love of my life because I am already prone to extrapolating to the existential. But obviously, this was like crack to my brain and I was highlighting every sentence.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
A reread but to be honest I kind of forgot the first time around. Kundera is so good at the frame - it’s what I enjoyed most, the narrative itself felt besides the point for me. But of course, so much to be found in all the gestures - even the way she sleeps, her grasping hands. Are men really like this? I feel like he might be spot on, which is - well, I guess it is what it is.
I love this idea of the lightness of being contrasted to Nietzsche's eternal return and the weight it lends to each moment - that lightness is both unbearable and preferable. I could write about this idea forever, and I probably will since two of my substack posts already allude to it.
Bluets, Maggie Nelson
This book is where the quote that I use over and over again in the “Lighght” mood board comes from:
“199. For to wish to forget how much you loved someone—and then, to actually forget—can feel, at times, like the slaughter of a beautiful bird who chose, by nothing short of grace, to make a habitat of your heart.”
I felt after using this quote so many times, it was time for me to actually read the book. I loved the language and the moments of shard like clarity. I did not enjoy the structure, though I read it as a kindle so that might’ve been part of it.
Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson
Her more famous book - I found it hard to get inside this book because I kept looking for a frame and finding that it was shifting, but when I settled in and tried to just enjoy it, I did find it beautiful. I want to discuss the Helen and turning the author blind bit with someone who has a take on it.
There’s one scene where it starts with “Greyson, please” - it was so searing. She is such a master of her craft. Amazing - the whole set up and triad - first with his mother and then with the other guy. I can’t wait to reread this one.
Great big beautiful life, Emily Henry
I had to read the latest Emily Henry, of course. I was skeptical because it seemed like the Evelyn Hugo book, but I spent an entire sunday on it and didn’t regret it. Enjoyable and I always enjoy Emily Henry’s men.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh
A reread - for the protagonist without a name and also for structure. Since my book is about a character stuck in memories of a relationship, she is pretty constrained in the people she can interact with and what she can do. This book felt like a good read to understand how Moshfegh keeps it engaging even while the protagonist is mostly trying to sleep.
Reading it for structure was so instructive - how she moves with action and dialogue consistently - and how the other characters are constantly woven through - even though you leave with a feeling of the book being about very little action and the main focus is on the protagonist. On the second read the stuff about her parents was so much more devastating - when she remembers the objects of the house and thinks, ‘My mother. My father.’ Oooof. Gut punch.
Orpheus and Eurydice, Gregory Orr
I love Gregory Orr usually - this poem in particular:
Squander it all!
Hold nothing back
The hearts a deep well.
And when it’s empty,
It will fill again
But this book was disappointing to me. I keep returning to Orpheus as a central motif in ‘Lighght’ so I was excited to read this, but it fell flat for me.
Under the Eye of the Big Bird, Hiromi Kawakami
Still working on finishing this one, but the stories are so strange, like little rocks you turn over in your hand as you find them - I don’t want to rush it. I love the quietness of it all.
All Fours, Miranda July
I waited for this book so impatiently after ordering it because the sample had me hooked! What a ride. I was immersed all the way through - what a crazy, riveting woman and what a strange series of events. I read this book late at night in Bali, while on a trip with friends. That’s how good it was and how lame I am, but mostly it’s a compliment to the author. Bonkers, in the best way. I love the little salute thing with the husband.
Galatea, Madeline Miller
A reread of this tiny book, but lots of thoughts on it anyway.
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
Can you believe I haven’t read this before? I tried reading Mrs. Dalloway a while ago and I always thought it was this book and just got them muddled in my head. But I’m glad I did - it made me think of ‘My Year of Rest and Relaxation’ - the emphasis on being skinny, beautiful without trying and also insane and partly in New York - and I feel like it gave me the origin point of so many female protagonist books I’ve read where I keep asking myself where the self preservation and sanity of the protagonist is. The feeling of alienation she captures here is clearly the big inspiration for so many writers, and I feel like maybe I would have enjoyed this more if I read it before rather than after all the books it inspired.
Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes
Shipra gave me this book and initially it seemed so different from everything else I was reading but then it pulled me right in. I love the first person voice, I love how we see the shift in his internal state, in the insistence that he was human before as well. So heart breaking, some of the ways we come to understand what was done to him. I feel the father was let off a bit easy for the whole thing.
James, Percival Everett
Again, so different from everything else I was reading in the way it was written. It felt younger almost - maybe that’s me identifying it with my experience reading Huckleberry Finn though. I also started this around the same time as ‘Beloved’ by Toni Morrison, so the contrast made this feel so much lighter, more accessible.
I have lots of thoughts on the politics of language as it is presented in this book - Mark Twain's original use of vernacular English in Huckleberry Finn brought it to the canon! That was subversive! But then Everett positioning that vernacular as a farcical tool of those enslaved like James to fight back against the white people - like the "weapons of the weak" argument by James Scott is so clever! How they use language to obfuscate their reality, protect themselves etc. But then we also have to contend with the understanding that as a contemporary reader, we find James more sympathetic (or articulate or respectable?) because he speaks in the tones of the Western canon. A critique of us, because vocabulary shouldn't be the reason we respect him more as a human with intellect.
So much to explore here. I hesitate to make the connection to the “Flowers for Algernon” protagonist Charlie because it would be extremely racist to compare a mentally disabled man to the vernacular Twain writes in, but I am going to venture to make my point while establishing that I know vernacular languages aren’t wrong, they’re just outside the power structure of the western canon and therefore seen as inferior whilst not being inferior at all.
With Charlie, who’s IQ is 70 and has been mentally disabled his whole life, we start out with entries that are misspelt, incomplete - it feels like a personal vernacular. Then post the surgery that increases his IQ, we see the emergence of his intelligence through his improved spelling and writing - erudition becomes the turning point to everyone treating him as more of a human being. I feel like Everett and in fact James in the novel, are making a similar point to what Charlie observes - that before his surgery, people would openly discuss things in front of him, as if they didn’t need privacy because he wasn’t human. I feel like that’s part of what James is trying to teach the children too - how to lean into the assumption that they are less than human - to use that prejudice to their advantage and how to maintain that illusion for their protection.
I feel like I can’t do this point justice here and also I am TIRED. It’s been a good year for reading!
Here's my bookclub videos on some books I didn’t cover here:
On the Calculation of Volume 1:
Eros the Bittersweet
Martyr!
Keats's Odes: a lover’s discourse (also includes a bit on ‘A lovers discourse’ by Roland Barthes)
I am currently working on reading: Nightbitch, Heart Lamp (so sad! The first story stopped me in my tracks), It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over and finishing Beloved (Again, so sad. I have to take breaks.).
Reading multiple books at once has helped me focus on the structure and craft more, which I desperately need.
I want to get to 190,000 by August so I’m at 19% for my 29th birthday but that's 100 pages a day, which is hard to do while also trying to have a life and a job. So we’ll see. Bye!