There Are Still Books

Well. I didn't mean to go away for 6 months. The last time I sent a newsletter was October 29. Soooooo I think you can make some assumptions there!

The world (and my brain) has felt rather hostile to a lot of things lately and that tends to have a negative impact on my reading. I've been in one of those streaks where I hate everything. But you know the thing about that? I always say "well I hated everything except..." and then I list like a dozen of the best books I've ever read in my life. And that has, in fact, been how it is. The highs of the last few months have been really ecstatically wonderful, but the doldrums around those highs can be hard to trudge through.

I did have a very rough start with 2025 books, and that was another reason this newsletter was hard to write. I usually have a few books to tell you about in a month, but I went on a very long streak where I had basically nothing to talk about. I liked two galleys that I read for the entire stretch of January through March. That is BAD. My Best of 2025 list sat totally empty for months and the first book I put in it was an April release. Yikes.

Things are better-ish. I think. For May and June titles there have been some hate reads and some disappointments, but overall I liked a lot of books and it feels like things have restabilized. I can't say whether it is me or the books. I never can.

But now I have the problem of having to tell you about the books I really really loved in the last six months and the thing is that I could write an entire newsletter about any of them. I could yap at you about any of these books for a very long time (and apologies to those of you I may have already yapped at, thank you for your service). I will have to keep it very short. A crime! Also my own fault! May I learn a lesson from it (unlikely).

It is worth noting that with two exceptions (Wang and Kitamura) I read all of these on audio. I think that is not an accident. There is something about audiobooks that makes a book feel like it is more of a part of my life, like I am experiencing it more vividly. More than once recently when I'm enjoying a book in print I am tempted to set it aside and pick it back up on audio instead.

These are in approximately the order I read them.

Weike Wang just keeps getting better. Her books are always unusual, interesting, introspective, with the kinds of complicated, prickly characters that feel like real people. Keru and Nate got together in college and have built a comfortable life together, and in this novel we see them over two vacations a few years apart. Each vacation is made a lot more difficult by intrusions from their family--his: rural Appalachian conservatives; hers: Chinese immigrants--and despite their efforts over their long relationship to ease these familial relationships, it stays complicated. May be Too Real for a lot of people. I tore through it.

Newsflash: Alan Hollinghurst, winner of the Booker prize, is a good writer! I actually put this down initially because I thought "do I need to read another historical gay novel by Alan Hollinghurst?" and this was a mistake because the answer was Yes I absolutely do. I had a little trepidation about this, but it was really nicely done and surprised me more than once.

You know I love a high concept highwire act. Gonna be one of those love it or hate it books, but I am firmly in the love camp. At a certain point I thought, "I have no fucking idea what is happening right now and I love it." I am probably going to re-read this one!

It's been 4 months since I finished this book and I still miss it. I added Same As It Ever Was to my to-read pile because someone gave it a good review but then every time I looked at it I thought, "Ugh, this looks boring, I do not need a boring suburban motherhood book." So I did not actually read this 2024 book until 2025. And then when I finally did I loved it so deeply, so truly. A great book for people who have been to therapy and are truly interested in the ways people can grow and choose not to grow. A very deep character study that is also just so fun to read, so darkly funny and sharp. I can't say enough good things, it made me so happy.

I somehow totally missed this book when it came out in 2023, and yet I ended up with a galley of it in 2024, that was so long that I couldn't finish it and had to come back to it on audio in 2025. Phew. So worth it, though. Yes it's over 600 pages (the Lombardo and the Hollinghurst are 500 pages, sue me) but it is really worth all those pages. Not gonna try very hard to sell this because it would feel grubby. The way this book ripped my heart out over and over again. Paul Murray is so good at this, it feels wrong. The Novel, man, it can really do some shit.

Once again, words fail. This book gave me FEELINGS. Set in rural South Dakota, it follows Erica--a closeted trans woman and high school teacher--who makes teenage Abigail her trans mentor. There are hijinks and there are life lessons, yes, but mostly I just cared so much. I wanted to spend every minute of my life with these characters. I am often like "bah who needs more coming out narratives" and then something will come along to show me how wrong I am and here it is. This is probably my favorite book of the year, it just wormed its way so deeply into my soul.

Third book on this list that I started in print and then came back to on audio. I tend to be pessimistic about novellas and story collections, and the first few pages were weird enough to make me think perhaps this just wasn't for me. Wrong! Glad I stuck with it. The titular short novel was a goddamn delight, and on audio I could really embrace the weird lumberjack setting and lingo, the reader is absolute perfection. And I loved the stories that bookended it, The Chaser and The Masker, which are very different but also had a similar kind of coming-of-age messiness that I really enjoyed. It's been a few years since Detransition, Baby and I remember loving it but I had forgotten the specifics. In this collection I remembered why I love Peters so much but also found lots of new things to love! Gender identity and sexuality are so central to all these stories, but in the kind of way that makes you realize just how much new opportunity there is in fiction when we crack open gender and let it cook. (Is that like 3 metaphors? Sorry. After a while it is hard to keep saying I LOVED IT in ways that make sense.)

Maybe, just maybe, I will get back in the swing of things. Because I actually have a few May books that I really enjoyed. And then a few more in June.

I am still doing lots of trudging, but every time I pick up a new book it might be the best thing I have ever read. Perhaps it is cheesy to find hope in just opening up a book, or maybe nothing is cheesy anymore and every earnest cringe emotion is actually hugely important.