from old blog: This is all to say: Lord help me if I do another "Goodreads challenge"

I read 35 books this year. That’s a lot for me: I blame the Goodreads Yearly Challenge. I “pledged” to read 30 books in 2022 and then became so obsessed with hitting my goal that I overshot it. In service of making it to 30 I found myself choosing books on the shorter side and the average length book I read this year was 250 pages. I’m one of those people who loves to hit a goal, but I’m also one of those people who loves a 250 page book…

But I don’t think I’ll do another Goodreads Challenge. I look forward to reading freely next year, no clock! My 1 goal is to finally—actually— read Proust. Anywei, since I was feeling the round-up spirit, here’s my list of 10-12 faves out of all the books I read this year. Listed in order of when I read them, not in order of how much I liked them. Books that were published this year are starred.

1. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark. “Sandy was never bored but had to lead a double life of her own to never be bored.” An absolute masterpiece that everyone should read. About the muse, the mentor, adolescence, art, womanhood, legacy! Miss Jean Brodie herself is iconic— the only fascist I would ever stan! Are you in YOUR PRIME like Miss Jean Brodie is?? Ask yourself that!!

I still can’t believe that I picked up this book AT RANDOM at Mr. K’s Used Books in Summerville, SC when I was there last December. AND that I had never heard of it before, despite it having been made into a film, a TV series, and a BROADWAY SHOW? God works in mysterious ways. THIS is the kind of IP that is OKAY to reuse over and over again…

1. The Girls of Slender Means also by Muriel Spark. After I read Miss Jean Brodie I was like “I must read everything Muriel Spark has ever written.” GoSM is perhaps the more “modern” of the two— take that however you want. It tells a symphonic story about a girls home in London during WW2. At the heart of it all is a Schiaparelli dress— isn’t that enough of a pitch? Spark can do no wrong, though later in the year I tried to read her autobiography Curriculum and I was bored to tears. I will try it some other time.

2. The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje. Not one of Ondaatje’s top-tier books but I don’t think I’ve ever something by him I have not been left mesmerized by. I found a copy at Other Books in the West Loop (the BEST bookstore in Chicago)— my favorite thing is finding some deep cut book you’d never heard of before by an author you already love. The English Patient is a masterpiece but I also loved Running in the Family, his VERY STRANGE dream fever about his mixed + verifiably nutty Ceylonese family. Cat’s Table is about an 11-year-old boy with a one way ticket from Colombo, Sri Lanka to England. It’s “about the magical, often forbidden, discoveries of childhood and a lifelong journey that begins unexpectedly with a spectacular sea voyage.” The truth is, a coming-of-age story set AT SEA is a genre that is soo difficult for me to say no to.

3. Dogs of Summer* by Andrea Abreu. I read an ARC of this because I was considering reviewing it until my summer got absolutely nuts at work and sadly never found the time to write about it. IDK how to explain this book: it’s like eating a bunch of Warheads at once just to feel something, it’s like giving your dog a Warhead just to see what happens, it’s like AIMing with your unrequited crush late into the night in the year 2003 when you still haven’t studied for a math test and already know you are going to fail. So much coming-of-age misdirection, longing and ache, a GREAT, gross, + bold novella. about a dysfunctional, borderline abusive preteen friendship between two girls growing up in Isla Canarias, Spain.

4. If An Egyptian Cannot Speak English* by Noor Naga. An upper middle class Egyptian-American moves to Cairo, where she begins a relationship with an Egyptian man from a village outside of Cairo. He’s… obsessed with her, but takes issue with her privilege. Sometimes you root for them, other times you are scared for everyone’s well-being. I don’t usually f with books that get too experimental with their structure (what a thing for me to say lol but it’s true) but this one completely works, especially if you’ve had the “pleasure” of being in an MFA writing workshop over the last five or so years.

5. The Unwritten Book* by Samantha Hunt.* Hated the almost twee NYT write-up on it, but oh man I loved this book. The longest most meandering essay-as-book that is as much about the future as it is about the past. The “plot:” after her father, a lifelong editor at Readers Digest dies, Samantha Hunt discovers an unfinished fiction manuscript in his drawer. She’d never known him to write fiction, and begins to try to decipher her father’s unwritten book (there you go) by drawing lines across life + death. When someone reads a lot and then turns around and writes well about what they read? Also my kind of book!!!

   

   

   Something about white lady writers from Upstate NY…xo

6. Meet Me in the Bathroom by Lizzie Goodman. I’ll explain! I am only including this book because it got me into The Strokes for the first time in my life. I feel like this is significant. Do I ACTUALLY recommend this book? If you haven’t read it already, you probably don’t need to read it now. Unless you’re inexplicably craving early 00s downtown New York-Mars Bar-Max Fish nostalgia. But see, if you’re the kind of person craving Mars Bar or Max Fish nostalgia, you’ve probably already read this book and you probably already had your Strokes phase. I am the anomaly here.

7. Motherhood by Sheila Heti. NGL, I find this woman (well, writer- I don’t know her as a woman!)… insufferable! But what can I say? She writes books that get me thinking! And she's great at endings. Not much to say about this book other than it was Good, Necessary. A refreshing perspective if you’ve been baby-pilled lately…

8. Everything I Need I Get From You* by Kaitlin Tiffany- I devoured it! It didn't make me feel any better about being a Swiftie, but it did make me feel a part of something big, monumental, radical even! When someone intellectualizes something that’s widely considered “low brow” or “trash?? You got it, MY KINDA BOOK! If you care about stan culture you should devour it too. Also, great cover. A book like this could have had a far worse cover, I feel like.

9. Notes on Apocalypse Now by Eleanor Coppola.- MAYBE my favorite book of the year after Miss Jean Brodie. A memoir that has it all — poise, breakdown, good Hollywood gossip, and — spoiler alert — an uncaged tiger on a plane flying cross-country with a bunch of Italian wives. If you want to know who FFC was having the affair with (spoiler alert kind of), DM me, because I have insider info that I stumbled upon at an otherwise uneventful dinner. Maybe the identity of FFC’s Apocalypse Now era-sidepiece is common knowledge if you’re “~*in film*~” but I’m not!! And BTW I think this book is out of print, but I found a beautiful first edition of it on eBay and you can do the same.

Francis Ford Coppola sent Eleanor back from the set of Apocalypse Now to get Christmas ready @ home.. being a wife in the 70s seems like it was just terrible, even if you were elite, even if you were rich.

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Thanks for reading stidrill didn't feel like pitching this anywhere!

10. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos. PROBABLY my third favorite book of the year after Miss Jean Brodie + Notes. Hilarious, smart, very short— you can read it in a day, if this is a plus for you. I can’t say enough good things about it. Also its author, Anita Loos? I’m naming my future daughter after her… you think I am joking. I went down a big Anita Loos hole after reading this book, and I am super looking forward to reading her out-of-print autobiography A Girl Like I this year.

BONUS

11. Georgia Under Water by Heather Sellers. I re-read this, perhaps my favorite story collection ever, over the last couple of weeks because I’m on some deadline and needed straight-to-the-vein inspiration. I will be shouting Heather Sellers’ praises from the rooftop FOREVER!! You may have heard of Seller's’ You Don’t Look Like Anyone I know, her memoir about being face blind (Yes she is face blind— IT MEANS SHE CAN’T DISCERN BETWEEN FACIAL CHARACTERISTICS! / Everyone looks the same) She’s one of the most unique writers I’ve ever read, at a sentence level yes, but also the way she perceives the world is… a… wonder. “FLA. BOYS,” the last story in this collection, is one of the greatest, most heartbreaking short stories about a traumatized teenage girl I have ever written. She is THE Florida writer, as far as I am concerned.

12. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by some dude named Cal Newport. I am ALLERGIC to self-help books in whatever format they come in, but I was down bad in February 2022 and happened to read this. Feb 2022 was rough… my focus was dead, I wasn’t writing, and I was spending so much time on Twitter/IG/TikTok/Poshmark/TRR/AliExpress I thought my soul and my purpose had just up and abandoned me. But then I read this book and I was like oh. All you (I) need sometimes is for a neurodivergent white guy with a very high IQ to yell at me about how the only way I’ll ever be able to focus on anything is if I train myself to. If you are down bad like I was earlier this year, I recommend this book. I’ve actually implemented some of his lil’ focus-making habits into my life and I don’t even hate myself for doing it, because I’ve had a very productive second half of the year, humble brag.

    

    You’ll notice the spine of EMMA peeking out of the corner… I also read EMMA this year and I’m glad I read it, I even sort of liked it, but I dunno what to tell you… she doesn’t make the top list… Jane Austen is just not for me

AND LASTLY- KIND OF JUST A FUNNY JOKE

13. For the lols I must share the last page of the first book I read in 2022, the very two thousand and two novel Three Junes by Julia Glass (2002). A professor recommended it to me years ago. I just found it soo funny that a book that won the NATIONAL BOOK AWARD ends on a rumination on the QUEENS MIDTOWN TUNNEL… like has anyone granted the Queens Midtown tunnel such literary immortality before…? This is just too funny to me, the Bridge & Tunnel girl that I am had to share.

Happy Holidays and if you read all of this wow, thank you!! I will be logging off now and avoiding reading challenges for as long as I can!! xoxoxo

Thanks for reading stidrill didn't feel like pitching this anywhere!