Readers,
Happy Full Moon in Capricorn!
Here we are, in the thick of summer. How’s it going? How’s your stack of summer reading holding out?
I’m still steadily reading through my "CEASEFIRE NOW." reading list. I began curating this list back in January in response to Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda’s call for a worldwide week of strike. It is my attempt to learn from Palestinian perspectives and amplify Palestinian voices. Recently, I finished Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow.—poems by Noor Hindi.
But for the purpose of sustaining my capacity to witness and learn, share and amplify, I’ve discovered the need to “turn my fucking head” (to quote choreographer Deborah Hay). That is, I need to shift my attention and take in a wider spectrum of the human experience. Only then will I be nourished enough, and have context enough, to fully understand what I am doing and how to continue doing it.
If you’re searching for a read that will satisfy both your need for pleasure and your need to learn about the world within and without you—if you’re looking for a book to accompany your next beach day, pool afternoon, road trip, staycation, or simply to enhance your commute—I offer you "Turn Your F***ing Head:" Some Summer Reading Suggestions.
All Fours, by Miranda July
When a “semifamous” artist drives away from her husband, child, and home in LA, it is with a well detailed road trip itinerary designed to deliver her to New York City. But after thirty minutes on the road, she pulls off the highway, checks into a suburban motel room, starts hanging out with a younger (married) man, and departs on an altogether different journey.
Eventually, her “road trip” ends. The romance ends. She goes home, and she is devastated. But this isn’t only heartbreak: this is heartbreak magnified by the lack of hormones that is perimenopause. And the New York Times is calling it “the First Great Perimenopause Novel.”
And, perhaps—as someone who is staring down the pipeline at perimenopause like it’s the next big (biological) life event—this is the reason I devoured All Fours with fascination. But it is also an entertaining read simply because—in classic Miranda July style—it is told in the first person by an outstandingly quirky and curious character.
How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, by Jenny Odell
As she explains in Chapter 1, “The Case for Nothing,” after the US elections in 2016, Odell’s understanding of her online experiences began to break down. Referring to advertising-based companies she writes,
“It is this financially incentivized proliferation of chatter, and the utter speed at which waves of hysteria now happen online, that has so deeply horrified me and offended my senses and cognition as a human who dwells in human, bodily time…I know that in the months after the election, a lot of people found themselves searching for this thing called “truth,” but what I also felt to be missing was just reality…” (18-19; italics Odell’s)
My struggle with the pace of life on (and thus, off) the internet feels much validated by this book. It feels like the engagement of the parasympathetic nervous system after a few deep exhales. If you are human, and you use the internet, do yourself a favor: Seek out a copy of How to Do Nothing.
Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative, by Melissa Febos
“Writing is a form of freedom more accessible than many and there are forces at work that would like to withhold it from those whose stories most threaten the regimes that govern this society. Fuck them. Write your life. Let this book be a totem of permission, encouragement, proof, whatever you need it to be.” (XVII–XVIII)
Body Work is a craft book that is not a craft book. That is, it’s not a manual. It tackles the “emotional, psychological, and physical work of writing” as a memoir and essay collection. Drawing from her passage from aspiring writer to published author and professor, as well as her experiences in sex work, addiction, and recovery, with Body Work, Febos has written “a book about devotion to the practice of personal writing (XVII).”
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zebin
Two years ago, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow seemed to be on everyone’s “Best Books of the Year” list and a #1 bestseller by several different counts. The novel tells the story of Sam and Sadie—video game creators, artistic collaborators. As the back cover describes it, “It’s not a romance, but it is about love.”
I’m not a gamer—not even a “Literary Gamer”—but the character Neelay Mehta and his Mastery video game empire in Richard Power’s The Overstory wedged open my curiosity around the world of video games and their designers enough for me to take an interest in Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. Besides, I need an absorbing novel to round out my summer reading.
That’s it for me. What are you reading this summer? Have you already read any of the above? What did you think?
Hope to read you in the comments,
xKj
Thank you for all these recommendations!! I have read Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow as part of the book club I’m in. It had mixed reviews. I didn’t understand most of the video gamer world experience and still appreciated the story of the characters and their love, loss, and mistakes along the way.