The endless triumph of hope over experience: let’s see if I remember to list a single book?
This year, I’ve pledged (ish) to read my teetering long-term TBR before buying any new books. Let’s see how THAT goes?
OK, here we go:
- The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Thought I’d grab it hot off the press (1985), or at least before reading The Testaments and watching Series 6 of Elizabeth Moss. Prescient, terrifying, relevant. Not exactly like the TV series.
- An Inspector Calls by JB Priestley (1945). The speedy shame-read of a mum who didn’t pick it up before her kid studied it. Play written in the 40s, set in 1912: whose fault is it that a young woman died? Priestley politics.
- The Silent Twins by Marjorie Wallace (1986). How the bullied, vulnerable and largely silent Gibbons twins were studied and separated in 1970s Wales, before being sent to Broadmoor as its youngest occupants. Would have liked to read the twins’ own accounts, rather than a journalist’s use of their material.
- And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou (1986, poetry collection). Re-reading, beautiful.
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (1969), the first of seven autobiographies – also:
- Gather Together in My Name (1985),
- Singin’ & Swingin’ & Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas (1985),
- The Heart of a Woman (1986),
- All God’s Children Need Travelling Shoes (1986),
- A Song Flung Up To Heaven (2002), and
- Mom & Me & Mom (2012) by Maya Angelou. Global, timeless, important.
- How to Live When You Could Be Dead by Deborah James. Accessible “get on with life” advice, great to raise the profile of bowel cancer (@bowelbabe on IG, website).
- The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (2019). Set fifteen years after The Handmaid’s Tale. Chunky book full of very short chapters, told from the POV of three women. Excellent and disturbing, as expected.
- Without Warning and Only Sometimes by Kit de Waal (2022). Memoir of a Birmingham childhood in the 60s and 70s. Real, interesting, heartwarming.
- The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959). Subtle creeps and an abiding sense of loneliness. Infinitely better than the TV adaptation.
- The Method and Other Stories by Tom Vowler (2011, revised 2014) — short story collection. (I’m enjoying Week 1 of Tom Vowler’s short story course currently, whoop!) Dark stories; haunting, observant, and engrossing.
- Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe (2021). Non-fic drug scandal — opioids in the USA. Someone said, ‘You’re a scientist, read this!’ Gnawing my way into it.
- Rememberings by Sinéad O’Connor (2021) — autobiography; conversational, brave and generous; keep Spotify to hand for the immersive experience.
- A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (2015). Four friends in New York, one with shrouded ailments and disabilities relating to his abusive past. Haunting, with interesting philosophical questions on what makes a well-lived life, and the things we do to make one another feel safe — although for me, the extreme evil/good characters and hell/heaven social landscapes, with little between, lent an element of folk tale or theatre to the story, making it a definite fictional rather than immersive read.
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818). Kindle, also Spotify audiobook (narrated by Peter Noble). Epistolary gothic, written by a young, female author. Self-obsessed male narrator animates a creature from dead human parts, regrets it, and has a massive emotional sulk while what he calls a monster stumbles about feeling lost, trying to help people, getting hurt, and eventually committing crimes. Ghastly, sorrowful, great story — much to love.
- Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry (2022). I listened to the Spotify audiobook narrated by Perry himself, and read Kindle. Sad to think of someone that lonely, sad that he died young, and a sad indictment of a culture that prizes wealth and fame over companionship and compassion.
- What the Robin Knows by Jon Young — How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World (2013). Currently reading. Someone lent me this, thinking I’d understand it. I’ve always been someone who whistles to the birds in the forests, or watches the songbirds herald the cat or fox, so I think we’re all expecting me to enjoy it.
Short stories
- The Lottery by Shirley Jackson (1948) at The New Yorker — short story, 3400 words, The New Yorker. Dark and timeless with delicious lack of explanation, perfect for ruining one’s faith in humanity. Caused a stir on publication. (A good story to read before Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale). Read online or listen to an 18-min audio reading by AM Homes.
- Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx (1997) at The New Yorker. Exquisitely painful.
- Lucy Ignores Death by L Soviero (2020) at Smokelong. Haunting piece, literally. Magical realism that makes us wonder what we notice and fail to notice in the people around us.
- The Tree by Benjamin Percy (2018) in Short Fiction Journal. You think it’s going to be like The Giving Tree or Tattybogle, and then it’s NOT.
- Girl by Jamaica Kincaid (1978) at The New Yorker. Women raising women–for this to come from 1978, and still be relevant now, says too much.
- Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway (1927 collection Men Without Women). Chilling, more than clever.
- The Trajectory of Birds by Tom Vowler (2021) at Splonk. An exercise in empathy and perhaps hope.
- The School by David Barthelme (1974) at The New Yorker. Epic, so funny and bad.
- Chicxulub by TC Boyle (2004) at The New Yorker. On the vulnerability of humans and the relative sources of joy. Philosophically urgent and challenging — would we, the readers, have felt joy? Weeks later, this still haunts me.
- Tea At the Midland by David Constantine at the Irish Times (2010 BBC Story Award Winner, 2016 article). Yeah, won prizes and much acclaim. (Is it wrong to say the story didn’t touch me as much as Hills Like White elephants?)
- Reflex Fiction Winter 2022 prizewinners with judge’s report: Tonight He Is Alive by Emily Roth, Cuffing Season by Jeanine Skowronski, Sharps by Sarah Royston. All good flash.
Image by fotografierende from Pixabay
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