The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery

5/5 stars

What's it about? Sy Montgomery makes friends with octopuses in this exploration of the soul and of the diversity of consciousness on Earth. A hug of a book that I was ready to dismiss but couldn’t help but admire for its spirit and openness to discovery.

How’d I find it? My spouse says this book was given to him to prove the cruelty of eating mollusks. It’s effective — you’ll never want calamari again.

Who will enjoy this book? If you’re constantly watching documentaries on Netflix or anything narrated by David Attenborough, this read is for you. A fiction readalike? The Overstory by Richard Powers or The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler.

What stood out? Montgomery inhabits her project by befriending cephalopods, learning to dive, and becoming entangled in the happenings of the New England Aquarium. I appreciated the memoir approach to consciousness as a subject. Blending personal experience and science, The Soul of an Octopus is a human book about something beyond our species.

Which line made me feel something? “Perhaps, I muse, this is the pace at which the Creator thinks, in this weighty, graceful, liquid manner — like blood flows, not like synapses fire. Above the surface, we move and think like wiggly children, or like teens who twitch away at their computer-phones, multitasking but never focusing. But the ocean forces you to move more slowly, more purposefully, and yet more pliantly.”

CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders

5/5 stars

What's it about? George Saunders mines the human condition in a witty collection with sprinklings of the dark consumerism and theme park background of Westworld. A masterfully executed first book.

How’d I find it? A friend who loves George Saunders gave my spouse this copy. I got to it first.

Who will enjoy this book? What are you waiting for? Saunders is an American treasure that always deserves a read. But, in the interest of following my self-imposed formula, fans of Nana Adjei-Brenyah, who studied under Saunders, will find inspirations for both Friday Black and Chain-Gang All-Stars in CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. Watchers of Black Mirror and Neil Gaiman should enjoy the book’s themes and humor.

What stood out? The writing is impeccable: irreverent, funny, and joyfully spot-on. You’ll be laughing out loud and thinking to yourself, “Man, he nailed it.” Saunders intuitively understands when to tickle the brain or strum a heartstring; the turns surprise and delight. The title story and the novella “Bounty” are particular standouts.

Which line made me feel something? The last paragraph of the story “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline” is perfection, but it would be unfair to spoil it. Here’s an excellent tidbit from “Bounty:” “Discipline and other forms of negativity are shunned. Bedtimes don’t exist. Face wiping is discouraged. At night the children charge around nude and screaming until they drop in their tracks, ostensibly feeling good about themselves. ‘We ran the last true farm,’ one of the kids screams at me. ‘Until the government put us out,’ the wife says softly. She’s pretty the way a simple white house in a field is pretty. ‘Now we’re on the fucking lam,’ says a toddler. Both parents smile fondly.”

Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky

5/5 stars

What's it about? Citizens of the town of Vasenka refuse to hear after occupying forces murder a deaf child. A powerful story of resistance, community, and the body weaponized.

How’d I find it? Kaminsky gave a moving reading at Folger Shakespeare Library in 2019 as part of the O.B. Hardison Poetry series, and I had to have a (signed) copy. In fact, the reading was so memorable that my spouse and I read large parts of the book aloud together.

Who will enjoy this book? Check out the poets featured in American Journal: 50 Poems for Our Time, also published by Graywolf Press. If you enjoy this brand of poetry, Deaf Republic will speak to you.

What stood out? The poems of Deaf Republic comprise one cohesive narrative, so while many of its poems can be savored solo, you’d be missing out on Kaminsky’s larger achievement. Yes, this is a book of poetry, but it’s also a protest, a play, a puppet show. Deaf Republic juxtaposes the experience of the citizens of Vasenka with that of people not in the throes of unrest (see the oft-quoted “We Lived Happily During the War” that opens the book), and evokes our responsibility as humans to speak out against injustice regardless of where it occurs.

Kaminsky also takes on in this project the illusion of silence — an “invention of the hearing” — and intersperses throughout the book illustrations of the signs that the townspeople use to communicate, functioning as lines or poems in their own right. Deaf Republic serves up poetic forms suited to a variety of performance: on the page, aloud, and signed.

Which line made me feel something? From “A Cigarette:” “You will find me, God, / like a dumb pigeon’s beak, I am / pecking / every which way at astonishment.”

When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut, translated by Adrian Nathan West

5/5 STARS

What’s it about? Though When We Cease to Understand the World defies easy description, think of it as a treatise about the responsibility of discovery and the cost of our species’ relentless pursuit of knowledge. Labatut takes on this theme through accounts of Fritz Haber, Karl Schwarzschild, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, and other luminaries as they redefined their disciplines, be it quantum physics or mathematics. Running through the book is an undercurrent of dread as scientific breakthroughs inevitably become tools of war.

How’d I find it? Shout out to Enoch Pratt Free Library for always having the hot titles available. I strolled in to pick up a hold and there this was, waiting.

Who will enjoy this book? When We Cease to Understand the World felt like a book by Milan Kundera, one of my all-time most beloved authors. Labatut’s blend of fiction and history, use of humor, and the slipperiness of madness and obsession hearken back to the Czech master. Fans of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer will also enjoy.

What stood out? Hot damn, this is a good one. Labatut picks apart the insularity of academic research by visiting great minds at work in the battlefields of World War I or at a sanatorium among convalescing patients, settings that highlight the loneliness and mania of genius. The blurry line between fact and fiction keeps the reader unsettled, uncertain — thoroughly effective in a book that feels like a warning.

Which line made me feel something? From the section “Prussian Blue:” “An ingredient in Dippel’s elixir would eventually produce the blue that shines not only in Van Gogh’s Starry Night and in the waters of Hokusai’s Great Wave, but also on the uniforms of the infantryman of the Prussian army, as though something in the colour’s chemical structure invoked violence: a fault, a shadow, an existential stain passed down from those experiments in which the alchemist dismembered living animals to create it”

Waterlog by Roger Deakin

5/5 stars

What’s it about? Roger Deakin recounts his adventures swimming the waters of Britain in this enchanting diary of nature, humanity, and longing for lost places. A fervent must-read.

How’d I find it? I read an excellent review by Leanne Shapton in Harper’s and rushed out to Solid State Books to buy a copy.

Who will enjoy this book? The following works and writers found in Waterlog offer the perfect readalikes: Robert Macfarlane, who authors this edition’s afterword; Tarka the Otter by Henry Williamson; and The Peregrine by J. A. Baker. I add to these Rob Cowen’s Common Ground, one of my favorite books.

What stood out? Witty and vivid, Waterlog is a book that makes you want to breathe a little deeper and love a little harder. The “endolphins” created by wild swimming — described by Deakin as a revolt against “the official version of things” — stir in me a desire to go out and explore for myself. This book sticks with you, tunes you into yourself and your environment.

Which line made me feel something? “Striking out into the enormous expanse of cold sea, over the vast sands, I immerse myself like the fox ridding himself of his fleas. I leave my devils on the waves.”

Biography of X by Catherine Lacey

5/5 stars

What's it about? In response to a flawed biography of her late wife, grief-wracked C. M. Lucca aims to set the record straight by investigating the secrets of her spouse, the enigmatic artist of many faces known to her as X. Do we need to know someone to love them? How does one reconcile their lived experiences with others’ truths? And do they matter? A form-defying novel that elegantly scratches at lofty questions.

How’d I find it? I stopped in at Kramers after pouring rain interrupted a walk and lo!

Who will enjoy this book? Percival Everett readers might like Lacey’s playfulness with form and sampling of media, as Biography of X is a veritable bird’s nest built from scraps of other artists’ work and interviews. Fans of A Handmaid’s Tale will be interested in the Gilead-esque Southern Territory of Lucca’s America. Looking for a read-alike? The closest in my repertoire is Delphine de Vigan’s Nothing Holds Back the Night, far less ambitious but equally beautiful.

What stood out? I respect writers who just go for it, who push their creativity into new and risky territory. Lacey does so much with Biography of X. Yes, it’s a love story, a biography, a widow’s lament, and a satire of the contemporary art scene, which would have been task enough. But Lacey also layers in a historical account of an America fractured into literal pieces by its politics, the perfect landscape for the book’s questions to marinate. The endnotes are a treasure trove, offering a peek into Lacey’s process. They reveal X as an amalgamation of Susan Sontag, Kathy Acker, and David Bowie, among other personalities, and a disparaging review of one of X’s books as an actual review of a novel of Lacey’s (“more depressing than The Bell Jar” — I laughed out loud).

Which line made me feel something? From the chapter “Sante Fe”: “I felt all our years together mounting up in me, full of things, full of words, positively saturated with sentences spoken that were meant to vanish immediately, or sentences spoken that were meant to stand forever, words we gave each other to explain ourselves, words that were misunderstood, words we stole, images we held in private, moments made significant to one and not the other or to the other and not the one, two realities pressed against each other, stupid impossible human points of view, views of nothing, conflicting views, incomplete views, impossible to reconcile, impossible to forget.”

Shrill by Lindy West

5/5 stars

What's it about? Lindy West reflects on the experience of being fat and female in America in a gem of an essay collection. Chock full of humor and darn good writing.

How’d I find it? As a nursing student, I am frequently on long drives between hospitals, campus, and home. Audiobooks get me through the commute. DC Library provided this one, entertaining me during traffic or while wolfing down lunch.

Who will enjoy this book? Fans of Mindy Kaling, Joel Golby, Rax King, and Jia Tolentino will appreciate, but probably most millennials as well? I feel like Lindy gets all my references.

What stood out? The essays "Death Wish" and "Slaying the Troll" deftly knit together wit, anguish, and sharp social commentary. You can also listen to West perform a version of "Slaying the Troll," in which she confronts an internet troll whose cruelty focuses on her late father, on This American Life. I honestly wanted to begin rereading this book the second I finished it.

Which line made me feel something? I have long struggled to pinpoint why certain jokes in comedy make me uncomfortable, and West lays it out expertly in "Death Wish:" "People...desperately want to believe that the engines of injustice run on outsized hate — stranger rapes in dark alleys, burning crossing and white hoods — but the reality is that indifference, bureaucracy, and closed-door snickers are far more plentiful fuels."

Light in August by William Faulkner

5/5 stars

What's it about? This masterpiece centers on a collision of strangers in Jefferson, Mississippi, the murder of a white abolitionist, and the resulting interplay of race, faith, and morality. Joe Christmas, an enraged and lonely orphan struggling with questions about his own heritage, faces the consequences of his violence. Young and pregnant Lena Grove learns the power of her beauty and helplessness as she pursues her child’s father, ensnaring a besotted Byron Bunch. Gail Hightower, the disgraced minister, offers counsel and judgment as he reckons with his failings. Told in flashbacks, conversation, and through the perspectives of minor players, such as the trigger-happy wannabe soldier Percy Grimm, the novel is an immersive experience of the Prohibition-era American South.

How’d I find it? This book has been among my belongings for so many years that I don’t even know how I acquired it. I certainly can’t remember buying this boxed set of works by Faulkner, whose face appears across the spines if you arrange the titles in the right order. Did my spouse blend Light in August into our books when we married? Perhaps I inherited it from a friend who moved away, a common occurrence when you’re the one in your social circles known as a shelter to all unhoused books?

Who will enjoy this book? Those who love Toni Morrison’s work, particularly Sula and Song of Solomon, and The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer should appreciate Light in August.

What stood out? Some of the most incredible writing I’ve read in a long time can be found in chapter 20, devoted to our final glimpse of Gail Hightower as he contemplates at dusk. Faulkner delves deep into his characters’ psyches as the story builds towards a brutal conclusion that cultivates page-turning dread. The novel closes with a much-needed serving of humor, a genius move by Faulkner after 400 pages of heavy.

Which line made me feel something? On being complicit in someone’s death and watching them die: “…upon that black blast the man seemed to rise soaring into their memories forever and ever. They are not to lose it, in whatever peaceful valleys, beside whatever placid and reassuring streams of old age, in the mirroring faces of whatever children they will contemplate old disasters and newer hopes. It will be there, musing, quiet, steadfast, not fading and not particularly threatful, but of itself alone serene, of itself alone triumphant.”

Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson

5/5 stars

What's it about? Anne Carson reimagines the myth of Geryon, a giant felled by the Greek hero Heracles, who steals Geryon’s cattle as one of the labors imposed upon him by the gods. Is this relevant to your reading? Not really, but it would be a shame to spoil any bit of this devastating novel in verse about love, longing, monsters, mothers, and seeing, so that’s all the context you’ll get. A masterful modern retelling.

How’d I find it? A Northeast Library book sale in DC scored me this read.

Who will enjoy this book? Autobiography of Red is a sumptuous treat for those who revel in ingenuity of form and lustrous language. Readers who loved Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, Ocean Vuong (particularly On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous), and Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad will appreciate.

What stood out? I was admittedly skeptical about this book, as I didn’t enjoy Carson’s Plainwater (I know, I know). But the knockout language of Autobiography of Red left me breathless. I can’t wait to read this book again and discover what new pangs the words inflict. Buy this book, revisit it, underline heavily. Never have chapter titles done such rich lifting.

Which line made me feel something? I’ll be chewing on this book for days (pity on whatever I read next), but this line in particular from the chapter “From the Archaic to the Fast Self” has me thinking: “Like the terrestrial crust of the earth / which is proportionately ten times thinner than an eggshell, the skin of the soul / is a miracle of mutual pressures.”

Bluets by Maggie Nelson

5/5 stars

What's it about? Maggie Nelson plumbs the depths of her obsession with blue, of color itself, and of grief over a lost love in a knockout work that defies genre. The result is reflection rendered, a meditation of a book that succeeds in creating an immersive mood, a mind state.

How’d I find it? I was late to work, hustling down the sidewalk after finding a hard-fought parking space, and passed a Little Free Library. Well, I didn’t pass it at all. I found this.

Who will enjoy this book? Fans of Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red, William Carlos Williams, and Emmanuel Carrère's Lives Other Than My Own

What stood out? What a book. A slice of brilliance that had just the desired effect: a tickle in the brain that had me mulling over the words like a worry stone. The numbered paragraphs (verses?) are peppered with references to works I want to read immediately.

Which line made me feel something? “...the blue of the sky depends on the darkness of empty space behind it. As one optics journal puts it, ‘The color of any planetary atmosphere viewed against the black of space and illuminated by a sunlike star will also be blue.’ In which case blue is something of an ecstatic accident produced by void and fire.”