was so excited to see this in my inbox! your newsletters have been so instrumental in getting me back into reading properly -- there really is nothing else like watching someone model a deep, abiding love for literature to get you excited about literature again.
some of the books that have been helping me ease back into reading: cormac mccarthy's the road (just so compulsively readable, so spare and beautiful, and also so tender for a mccarthy novel??) & seth dickinson's the traitor baru cormorant (really fascinating anti-imperialist hard fantasy centered around a young lesbian from an island nation who works within the empire that colonized her home, aiming to take it down from the inside...) & currently buried in many half-finished books but... one of the most exciting ones so far is allen bratton's henry henry (a contemporary reimagining of shakespeare's henriad, delightfully gay, with an eye to the various abuses of hereditary aristocracy).
ernaux is going on my infinitely expanding to-read list!! i love how ardently you engage in comprehensive scholarship of an author's life work & the cultural/social context in which they worked.
I feel VERY touched by this comment—thank you!! There is a very personal and selfish function that these newsletters serve for me (as a way to practice handling language, as Lydia Davis would say, but also so that I can actually remember what I'm reading and how I felt about it). But obviously no one writes publicly if there isn't some small, furtive desire to be read and to connect with people. I'm really happy to know that my newsletter is also a positive force in your own reading life!
On McCarthy: I've only read Blood Meridian, but really want to read more…I find his reputation as a bro writer kind of funny, because he is also so intensely poetic and sentimental when he writes about landscapes!
Also fascinated by your description of Henry Henry now…I moved to London relatively recently, so I feel like anything set in/around London is especially enticing. (I finished Anita Brookner's The Latecomers last night and was very, very charmed whenever the characters were rushing around London's streets!)
I haven't read hard fantasy for ages but remember being annoyed, years ago, by how much YA fantasy I'd read that was very royalist and very much about preserving old power structures…but surely this is something that's changed in the many years since I stopped reading it…
i have the same gripes about most fantasy!! i.e. how pervasive royalist power structures & also, like.. biological-/racial-determinism are. but i've found seth dickinson's writing extremely refreshing (albeit a little bit tedious at times) because his fantasy worlds feel ideologically built off of something like james scott's seeing like a state (interested in complicating & adding polyphony to narratives about people-groups)
i also think it's really funny that mccarthy is known as a bro-y writer LOL. i've had conversations about him with white straight men for sure, but also, young queer women of color, where we're both like -- oh my god if i could write like him for even a moment i would give anything.
feeling the same wrt to stories about folks rushing around london! not london specifically, but I finally read brideshead revisited this year & there is something so compelling about continental grandeur in various degress of decay... thanks for the nudge towards latecomers too, will keep it on my to-read shelf :)
My tried and true method for dealing with reading issues is indeed to just read smaller books. You end up racking up a bunch of simple wins and eventually you get inspired to tackle a bigger project. I also try to zero in on smaller books when I'm gathering reading in bookstores, because I have this consuming voracity for more books than I can read, and i start to feel bad about the time and space and money. smaller books take up less of all.
Middlemarch in paritcular i think is nearly impossible to finish without making it a dedicated project; for me, anyway, I would not have finished it without a book club i'm very passionate about with a friend.
Yes! I feel there's something about the momentum of just finishing ANYTHING…and then the pride and satisfaction from finishing one book creates more energy for the next one.
I am supposedly book-clubbing Middlemarch with a friend…we are both very behind! but I need to get back into it, especially since I suspect we are now texting each other less out of GUILT
Thank you for sharing this list and your thoughts on Ernaux's work as well reading ruts. I was in a bit of rut in 2024 but have gotten out of it this year and it's Substack's like yours that have helped keep me inspired. I am going to read Ernaux now as this read this on the day I finished my second Vigdis Hjorth novel (which I really enjoyed and followed my reading of 3 amazing Han Kang novels). I also found that getting a Kobo reader has helped me as I have read 8 books already on it in the few months since the kids got it for me on my birthday. I am now balancing physical books (to support some of my favorite book stores such as Yu and Me Books in NYC) as well as books via the New York Public Library on my Kobo (it has allowed me to read some that I may not have bought physically).
Philip, thank you so much for this really kind and thoughtful comment! It's great to hear what you've been reading—I'm a huge, huge Hjorth fan (and would love to do a dedicated newsletter about her) and she's actually one of the main reasons I read so much fiction now. I read almost exclusively nonfiction until I encountered her Long Live the Post Horn!, and was amazed that a novel could be so powerful and moving and relevant to a lot of political/psychological anxieties today.
I might be visiting NYC soon for work, so will have to stop by Yu and Me!
I work with middle-schoolers. We recently asked the group what their favorite story was; Hunger Games was the most common answer (right up there with Harry Potter, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings...), so I decided to give the series a re-read. It's been surprisingly therapeutic to dive into the dystopian world I was so obsessed with as a teenager, and at the same time, it's been interesting to see how I react to the book now versus then.
This is a great tactic (going back to a childhood favorite with a lot of positive associations attached). You're reminding me of this very memorable retelling-of-Arthurian legends series that I read in middle school, by Gerald Morris (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Morris) that I actually revisited in the early days of COVID. It also felt very therapeutic and cozy, and I was surprised by the psychological insights in it that felt very…mature, actually; like clearly a product of Morris having lived a full life and wanting to put some hard-won lessons into his books.
I also remember being obsessed with this excellent young adult series that was loosely about ancient Greek city-states, but with magic involved, of course (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Queen_of_Attolia)…I'm saving my re-read for when I really, really need comfort
I'm in a bit of a rut now going through the same thing you experienced--reading 50 pages here and there, losing interest, losing attention. Reading your substack articles makes me excited to read more without fail though! I'm hoping to dive into something good soon.
I'm both sad and happy to hear that it's a relatable feeling…and I do hope that it eases up and you can find a book that you're genuinely hungry to read!
Worship her. Teach her. Long hauled her for the big N and then felt chuffed of course that `I have such impeccable taste. Thank you for this. Funnily I’ve been working on a piece on Happening…
haha, I felt the same way—when she won the Nobel I was halfway through Getting Lost (her 3rd or 4th book that I'd read?) and felt very pleased to already be familiar with her work!
(though it's really just because I am a devoted reader of Fitzcarraldo…)
please do share your Happening piece when it's out!
thank you so much for reading!! I think The Years obliquely references some events that are central to her other books (though the play does this much more, by intentionally installing scenes from other books into the narrative)
but maybe what's most distinctive about The Years is that it feels like her masterpiece—the artistic project and point of view that so much of her other work is growing towards, especially in how she uses subjective/personal aspects of her own life to comment on French society and 20th century history more broadly
So much goodness here. I Who Have Never Known Men was my pick for getting over an indecisive/unmotivated moment and it truly got me back on track. And...just finishing Middlemarch now! Took about 10-11 weeks as a tandem read.
I loved how absorbing I Who Have Never Known Men was…amazing to sit down and knock out a book so quickly, after weeks of agony!
I need to get back to Middlemarch—a friend and I are doing a very slow 2-person book club (and constantly getting interrupted by our other research/writing projects!)
I felt similarly about Perfection! My short review:
There is a profound and formally established disconnect between the observations of the omniscient narrator and the putative inner worlds of the couple, Anna and Tom. The conceit of the novel is that by omitting dialogue and any window into their minds, the narrator describes the tensions between their earnestness and cynicism via materiality instead - e.g., the couple feast on viands of social media "likes" that accrue on images of them feeding refugee victims. But by eliding Anna and Tom's interiorities altogether, Latronico perhaps errs too far on the side of his thesis statement and concocts situations that render his characters as mere props. Halfway through his novel, I am becoming less convinced of his project.
your description of how "the narrator describes the tensions between their earnestness and cynicism via materiality instead" feels very apt—and I do agree that the result is that the characters feel curiously vacant and empty! they definitely have anxieties, nerves, desires, fears…but they are not very strongly rendered
Thank you for compiling this list! Shorter novels and novellas have been underated for so long. I was in a dry spell last year (with a whopping total of 7), and Seanan McGuire single-handedly pulled me out of it with her Wayward Children series that I read earlier this year. I really just needed help with getting the ball rolling and feeling some sort of accomplishment, and now I’m back on reading longer works and feeling more myself as a reader.
I Who Have Never Known Men was a fantastic read, too. I’ve recommended it to several friends with mixed success, but I’ve had very thoughtful discussions with those who have also enjoyed it.
Thank you for this! I saw a film version of Happening and a theatrical production of The Years, but have never actually read Ernaux. Going to use this as a guide!
I’ve been in a little book slump myself for a while and agree about reading smaller books helping ! I read A Psalm For The Wild Built, Tuesdays With Morrie and Paladin’s Grace all in the last month and the range and tone of the stories are really refreshing. I definitely would like to look into The Years next the themes you mentioned sound super interesting
was so excited to see this in my inbox! your newsletters have been so instrumental in getting me back into reading properly -- there really is nothing else like watching someone model a deep, abiding love for literature to get you excited about literature again.
some of the books that have been helping me ease back into reading: cormac mccarthy's the road (just so compulsively readable, so spare and beautiful, and also so tender for a mccarthy novel??) & seth dickinson's the traitor baru cormorant (really fascinating anti-imperialist hard fantasy centered around a young lesbian from an island nation who works within the empire that colonized her home, aiming to take it down from the inside...) & currently buried in many half-finished books but... one of the most exciting ones so far is allen bratton's henry henry (a contemporary reimagining of shakespeare's henriad, delightfully gay, with an eye to the various abuses of hereditary aristocracy).
ernaux is going on my infinitely expanding to-read list!! i love how ardently you engage in comprehensive scholarship of an author's life work & the cultural/social context in which they worked.
I feel VERY touched by this comment—thank you!! There is a very personal and selfish function that these newsletters serve for me (as a way to practice handling language, as Lydia Davis would say, but also so that I can actually remember what I'm reading and how I felt about it). But obviously no one writes publicly if there isn't some small, furtive desire to be read and to connect with people. I'm really happy to know that my newsletter is also a positive force in your own reading life!
On McCarthy: I've only read Blood Meridian, but really want to read more…I find his reputation as a bro writer kind of funny, because he is also so intensely poetic and sentimental when he writes about landscapes!
Also fascinated by your description of Henry Henry now…I moved to London relatively recently, so I feel like anything set in/around London is especially enticing. (I finished Anita Brookner's The Latecomers last night and was very, very charmed whenever the characters were rushing around London's streets!)
I haven't read hard fantasy for ages but remember being annoyed, years ago, by how much YA fantasy I'd read that was very royalist and very much about preserving old power structures…but surely this is something that's changed in the many years since I stopped reading it…
i have the same gripes about most fantasy!! i.e. how pervasive royalist power structures & also, like.. biological-/racial-determinism are. but i've found seth dickinson's writing extremely refreshing (albeit a little bit tedious at times) because his fantasy worlds feel ideologically built off of something like james scott's seeing like a state (interested in complicating & adding polyphony to narratives about people-groups)
i also think it's really funny that mccarthy is known as a bro-y writer LOL. i've had conversations about him with white straight men for sure, but also, young queer women of color, where we're both like -- oh my god if i could write like him for even a moment i would give anything.
feeling the same wrt to stories about folks rushing around london! not london specifically, but I finally read brideshead revisited this year & there is something so compelling about continental grandeur in various degress of decay... thanks for the nudge towards latecomers too, will keep it on my to-read shelf :)
My tried and true method for dealing with reading issues is indeed to just read smaller books. You end up racking up a bunch of simple wins and eventually you get inspired to tackle a bigger project. I also try to zero in on smaller books when I'm gathering reading in bookstores, because I have this consuming voracity for more books than I can read, and i start to feel bad about the time and space and money. smaller books take up less of all.
Middlemarch in paritcular i think is nearly impossible to finish without making it a dedicated project; for me, anyway, I would not have finished it without a book club i'm very passionate about with a friend.
Yes! I feel there's something about the momentum of just finishing ANYTHING…and then the pride and satisfaction from finishing one book creates more energy for the next one.
I am supposedly book-clubbing Middlemarch with a friend…we are both very behind! but I need to get back into it, especially since I suspect we are now texting each other less out of GUILT
Thank you for sharing this list and your thoughts on Ernaux's work as well reading ruts. I was in a bit of rut in 2024 but have gotten out of it this year and it's Substack's like yours that have helped keep me inspired. I am going to read Ernaux now as this read this on the day I finished my second Vigdis Hjorth novel (which I really enjoyed and followed my reading of 3 amazing Han Kang novels). I also found that getting a Kobo reader has helped me as I have read 8 books already on it in the few months since the kids got it for me on my birthday. I am now balancing physical books (to support some of my favorite book stores such as Yu and Me Books in NYC) as well as books via the New York Public Library on my Kobo (it has allowed me to read some that I may not have bought physically).
Philip, thank you so much for this really kind and thoughtful comment! It's great to hear what you've been reading—I'm a huge, huge Hjorth fan (and would love to do a dedicated newsletter about her) and she's actually one of the main reasons I read so much fiction now. I read almost exclusively nonfiction until I encountered her Long Live the Post Horn!, and was amazed that a novel could be so powerful and moving and relevant to a lot of political/psychological anxieties today.
I might be visiting NYC soon for work, so will have to stop by Yu and Me!
I work with middle-schoolers. We recently asked the group what their favorite story was; Hunger Games was the most common answer (right up there with Harry Potter, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings...), so I decided to give the series a re-read. It's been surprisingly therapeutic to dive into the dystopian world I was so obsessed with as a teenager, and at the same time, it's been interesting to see how I react to the book now versus then.
This is a great tactic (going back to a childhood favorite with a lot of positive associations attached). You're reminding me of this very memorable retelling-of-Arthurian legends series that I read in middle school, by Gerald Morris (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Morris) that I actually revisited in the early days of COVID. It also felt very therapeutic and cozy, and I was surprised by the psychological insights in it that felt very…mature, actually; like clearly a product of Morris having lived a full life and wanting to put some hard-won lessons into his books.
I also remember being obsessed with this excellent young adult series that was loosely about ancient Greek city-states, but with magic involved, of course (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Queen_of_Attolia)…I'm saving my re-read for when I really, really need comfort
I'm in a bit of a rut now going through the same thing you experienced--reading 50 pages here and there, losing interest, losing attention. Reading your substack articles makes me excited to read more without fail though! I'm hoping to dive into something good soon.
I'm both sad and happy to hear that it's a relatable feeling…and I do hope that it eases up and you can find a book that you're genuinely hungry to read!
(and thank you for reading and commenting!!)
Worship her. Teach her. Long hauled her for the big N and then felt chuffed of course that `I have such impeccable taste. Thank you for this. Funnily I’ve been working on a piece on Happening…
haha, I felt the same way—when she won the Nobel I was halfway through Getting Lost (her 3rd or 4th book that I'd read?) and felt very pleased to already be familiar with her work!
(though it's really just because I am a devoted reader of Fitzcarraldo…)
please do share your Happening piece when it's out!
Me too! That’s how I discovered her. I just blindly used to buy fitzcarraldo books
Excellent article on Ernaux. I have read The Years so far and absolutely loved it. I am wondering if it is a composite of some of her other books.
thank you so much for reading!! I think The Years obliquely references some events that are central to her other books (though the play does this much more, by intentionally installing scenes from other books into the narrative)
but maybe what's most distinctive about The Years is that it feels like her masterpiece—the artistic project and point of view that so much of her other work is growing towards, especially in how she uses subjective/personal aspects of her own life to comment on French society and 20th century history more broadly
So much goodness here. I Who Have Never Known Men was my pick for getting over an indecisive/unmotivated moment and it truly got me back on track. And...just finishing Middlemarch now! Took about 10-11 weeks as a tandem read.
I loved how absorbing I Who Have Never Known Men was…amazing to sit down and knock out a book so quickly, after weeks of agony!
I need to get back to Middlemarch—a friend and I are doing a very slow 2-person book club (and constantly getting interrupted by our other research/writing projects!)
I felt similarly about Perfection! My short review:
There is a profound and formally established disconnect between the observations of the omniscient narrator and the putative inner worlds of the couple, Anna and Tom. The conceit of the novel is that by omitting dialogue and any window into their minds, the narrator describes the tensions between their earnestness and cynicism via materiality instead - e.g., the couple feast on viands of social media "likes" that accrue on images of them feeding refugee victims. But by eliding Anna and Tom's interiorities altogether, Latronico perhaps errs too far on the side of his thesis statement and concocts situations that render his characters as mere props. Halfway through his novel, I am becoming less convinced of his project.
your description of how "the narrator describes the tensions between their earnestness and cynicism via materiality instead" feels very apt—and I do agree that the result is that the characters feel curiously vacant and empty! they definitely have anxieties, nerves, desires, fears…but they are not very strongly rendered
I need to check these books out.
please do!! and thank you for reading 💌
Thank you for compiling this list! Shorter novels and novellas have been underated for so long. I was in a dry spell last year (with a whopping total of 7), and Seanan McGuire single-handedly pulled me out of it with her Wayward Children series that I read earlier this year. I really just needed help with getting the ball rolling and feeling some sort of accomplishment, and now I’m back on reading longer works and feeling more myself as a reader.
I Who Have Never Known Men was a fantastic read, too. I’ve recommended it to several friends with mixed success, but I’ve had very thoughtful discussions with those who have also enjoyed it.
Annie is a great one to teach when writing on trauma…..completely opposite style of say Didion
What do you think of Yiyun Li?
I’ve only read one of her books— not a huge fan but that doesn’t mean she’s not a good writer. I’m just very particular.
Thank you for this! I saw a film version of Happening and a theatrical production of The Years, but have never actually read Ernaux. Going to use this as a guide!
I kind of needed the last push to dive into Ernaux, this was it! Excellent article and absolutely sold me on each book!
I’ve been in a little book slump myself for a while and agree about reading smaller books helping ! I read A Psalm For The Wild Built, Tuesdays With Morrie and Paladin’s Grace all in the last month and the range and tone of the stories are really refreshing. I definitely would like to look into The Years next the themes you mentioned sound super interesting
Thank You! We need to read completely in these times.♥️