The Comfort of the Mediocre

I am on a streak of books I didn't really like. I just logged three 2.5-star reviews in a row into Goodreads. We're halfway through June and I haven't enjoyed a single thing. Normally this kind of streak would depress me. I would be desperate for a Very Good Book to make my life better.

But now? I'm fine with it, actually. Because right now things are A Mess.

When life is A Mess, when you are very stressed out, that can be the worst possible time to engage with a piece of art that is wonderful. It's hard to summon your fullest self, and that is what makes a book that you truly love the book you truly love. It isn't just the book, it's also you. (God this is so much the overwhelming theme of this newsletter that I am sure you are all sick of it by now, I'm sorry!) What you bring to a book, how you place it in your own life, that is the thing that's really magical.

So yeah, when you are stressed or exhausted or depressed or just generally going through it, that isn't when you want Greatness. That is when you want Comfort. And sometimes things that are just meh is the most comfortable thing possible.

Before you get all concerned, let me say that I am on the way out of my stress. It was always going to be a limited duration thing and the light is at the end of the tunnel. It is most of the way over. I am starting to feel like a normal person again. So don't get all worried about me. This is just life, right? We are all going through it at some point and sometimes you are going through it in a way that requires being vague because you are literally not allowed to talk about it.

Once in my 20's I was going through it, having a really rough time, and I spent a whole day watching a marathon of The O.C. It was perfect. It was a distraction, but it also didn't ask anything of me. More than that, it showed me all these people, people I should envy, but people who had problems much worse than mine. I was not under investigation by the SEC! I did not pass out from an overdose during an ill-advised trip to Tijuana! I had my own problems but it was weirdly helpful.

Lately I have been coping not just with books I don't like very much but also by watching Survivor. I watched the first two seasons (like literally everyone) and then never paid even a little bit of attention to it again. But in the last month I've worked my way through a few seasons. And there is something comforting about it in the same way as that O.C. marathon. Hey, I did not decide to send myself into the jungle with limited supplies and basically no skills with a bunch of people who were chosen by producers for maximum drama. I have a nice bed to sleep in at night! I have a house that protects me from the elements! I have a kitchen and plenty of food! I have air-conditioning! I have clothes and do not have to walk around in whatever scraps the aforementioned producers decided I should be granted. I didn't choose to put myself in this really awful situation on the very very long shot that I actually win a bunch of money. When it's much more likely that all I get is a lot less money, stuck in isolation for a month, a miserable experience that is literally designed to cause pain and discomfort, a variety of parasites, and a villain edit.

So yeah, my mediocre books have been fine. I finished them all even when I wasn't enjoying them. Because they weren't awful, they just weren't all that good. And if they'd been all that good, I would have felt like I was missing something.

Now that I'm on the upward swing, I'm feeling more optimistic. I can tell I'm feeling more like myself because I am back in my normal ughhhhh what is my next audiobook place. (Insert pause where I just spent 20 minutes finding my next audiobook, lol.) Pretty soon I'll even be wanting to dive into something Really Good again.

Overall this year is looking better than last year. I am not exactly back to 2022 numbers, but I am definitely on pace to be well ahead of 2023. But it's not just about numbers, right? The numbers are a data point but just part of the story.

And honestly, even though I have been reading books I didn't love for the last few weeks, the truth is this is great. I'm not feeling awesome but I'm still taking time with books. I'm reading mediocre books during the best possible time to read them! You can never escape them entirely, not if you read as many books as I do. So really this is great. And I've had some books this year I've truly enjoyed and practically devoured. Also great. Sure I tried to crack the system by reading eternally long audiobooks, but I have learned that the thing is the best audiobooks are the ones you really get pulled into. Doesn't matter how long they are. And that is always going to be lightning in a bottle, a thing you can't force. So I'll keep going through my endless cycle of Oh No What Will I Listen To Next and that's just part of it. Because you never know when the next magical one will hit.

Anyway. Let's talk about some June releases. I am reading into August right now, which feels great. I am not in danger of falling behind and I will get even farther ahead once we hit the quiet season. August and September are both chock full of horror novels. It isn't until October that it looks like I'll really get the big lit fic stuff and even that will have plenty of interspersed horror. (The big uptick of horror is a blessing and a curse, I have quit sooooo many more than usual.) But since we're talking horror, one of my favorite horrors of the year is a June release!

I think this may be Tremblay's best book. I like how willing he is to change it up, even if I don't always like the result. (I really didn't like his previous novel! But I don't hold it against him.) This book is an absolutely perfect ratio of vibes to plot. The vibes here reminded me of Universal Harvester and Night Film, books that both were heavy on vibes. But the plot is much more structured, has a lot more movement, and uses plenty of tricks of the trade. This book is creepy as hell, but it also has a great story that moves over a long timeline and pacing with a lot of momentum. I start to sound kind of dumb when I talk about it because I don't want to spoil details but it's just real good and I really dug it.

If you want a thriller you can tear through that is making an effort not to be like all the others, this is a great choice. Prickly, unlikable narrator. Definitely has some Gone Girl/Silent Patient feelings, and those are comps I don't make lightly. (But I'm so excited when the comps are correct, especially for two heavily-over-comped books like these.) Can it hold up to the end? Well, no. But it tries.

I was basically the only person who didn't love Liz Moore's Long Bright River and I didn't love The God of the Woods either. But I think it's better. And I have to admit that Moore is really good at pulling you into a story. For a multi-pov, multi-timeline complex character-driven crime novel you could do worse than this one.

If Emezi writes an adult novel, I'm going to read it. I always find them interesting, and I never know what to expect. I just looked at my own review of Little Rot and I'm embarrassed. I reviewed it like a regular novel and not like something by Emezi. I even said I hoped they would write something "more focused." This is very silly because the thing about Emezi is that their novels mostly challenge you and push you outside of normal expectations, you don't get normal beats, there is a real purposeful upheaval to their writing. To the extent this has a genre it's an erotic thriller, it is about sex and crime and danger, about what people hide and how people survive. It's intense and violent and, well, yeah. I'm gonna have to go apologize in my review for being so silly.

Love my Japanese golden age murder mysteries in translation! I admit that I felt like this one was dragging a little midway through, but it was so weirdly fussy at the beginning with two framing devices that I kept thinking there had to be something else afoot. And there was! I don't actually love locked room, but the real fun here is the kind of structural play that I eat up with a spoon.

Last but not least, another horror novel. As always the comps here are off. Not really a Get Out meets Parasite. Actually what this reminded me of most was Mother! and if you saw that movie I know what you are thinking but hear me out! The beginning of Mother! where it was actually really good and super uncomfortable before it became an exercise in absurdity and chaos. There is something so disquieting about people who have perfectly good manners on the surface but keep making requests that are more and more inappropriate. When done well it's a beautiful thing, and this book mostly does it well. It goes a little too cosmic and can't pull off the final act, but there's most of a very good horror novel here. (I think there's a movie planned, and you could absolutely make this the kind of movie that's even better than the book if you do it right!)

See you next month.