What to Read Between Wordles
3 mini reviews, many mini books discussed. Dovetails nicely with Wordle, a mini word game everyone seems to be playing.
Welcome to the first 2022 edition of Amateur Bibliotherapy, my newsletter about book-y things. Use this Google Form at any time to tell me about what you’re reading—you might be featured here or on my Bookstagram! I’m an affiliate of Bookshop.org, which means that I may make a small commission if you make a purchase through my affiliate links. That commission will be donated to Welcome To Chinatown.
It is a Monday that feels like a Sunday, which means my brainwaves are squiggling around in your inbox. What a choice you’ve made to engage with the dispatches from my hellmind!
Since giving some awards to memorable books I read in 2021, I’ve mostly been staying inside. I cozied up with my parents’ neighbors’ cat, who has taken a liking to a quilt in my childhood bedroom; ate kimchi fried rice in bulk; played Disco Elysium, a deranged murder mystery video game with an idiosyncratic system of anthropomorphic skills that talk to you while you solve and/or commit crimes; witnessed snowfall from the safety of a warm couch; watched Encanto (2021) and obsessed over Luisa and Bruno’s songs; benefitted from Connor baking some tasty milk bread; reorganized my overflowing bookshelves; and shared my Wordle results with the group chat since we’re all doing it. I’m sparing all of you from my incessant Survivor updates.
So… got any reading-related new year resolutions?
Not really, sorry. January’s reputation as a harbinger of unattainable resolutions has turned me off to the whole prospect. That said, I do like Reading Indie’s concept of listing out authors to read for the year rather than a set amount of specific titles. I know myself well enough to realize the futility of formalizing a reading plan, but picking out a few authors of interest feels like a good resource throughout the year.
Other than that, my 2022 reading will coalesce generally around the desire to read more intersectional literature and less contemporary fiction. I also would like to make myself read more of my book club’s book selections, but I know that’s a stretch!
The Books
In search of sanity while hibernating during Omicron’s heyday, I recently decided to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge instead of taking the subway into Manhattan. And what better way to incentivize an hour-long jaunt than adding a bookstore to the itinerary? Nestled in Chinatown just a few blocks away from the bridge is Yu & Me Books, the first woman-owned Asian American bookstore in the city. It’s a small space on a tiny slice of Mulberry Street that focuses on books telling immigrant stories and writers of color. There were five or six of us in the store, all masked up while looking through curated shelves, plus the store owner's dog sprawled out in the back. Once they get their cafe up and running, I am sure I will spend hours in there. On this abbreviated inaugural jaunt, I picked up Fantasy by Kim-Anh Schreiber, a cross-genre novel that intermingles memoir with criticism of the horror film House (1977); Fairest by Meredith Talusan, a coming-of-age memoir about class, race, disability, and gender; and The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo, my first read of 2022.
The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo is a spellbinding fantasy novella set in an empire that resembles imperialist China. It is the first of The Singing Hills Cycle, a set of connected novellas that follow a traveling cleric who records mysteries and secrets of Vo’s dazzling and atmospheric setting. As NPR said, “be prepared for subtlety and grace, but also for pleasure, for a working class perspective on momentous events, for ghosts and damp pine boughs.”
I liked it so much I immediately ordered its sequel, When The Tiger Came Down the Mountain. Though technically a standalone, the story still follows the same cleric on a winding journey north with a royal mammoth and its keeper. This time, however, they encounter three hungry and loquacious magical tigers with whom they must contend. I read it in one joyous sitting, given its faster pace than the first volume.
I also read The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey, which revolves around a brilliant but misunderstood scientist who learns that her husband is having an affair with her genetic clone. I thought it was okay, if a little predictable. It was also quite short.
You seem pretty into short stuff lately.
That’s right. Of late, I’ve been reading novellas. It’s true that this is because of my diminished interest in concentrating on anything, given the seemingly endless pandemic that continues to command my attention. But it’s more true to say that short fiction is often enchanting in its slender glory, delivering just enough story to envelop you in a world that compels you in fewer pages than expected. People are prideful about reading big tomes, but it’s not such a bad thing to relish novellas: sometimes the slimmest of volumes contain the sweetest of stories.
Of the truly tiny book variety, I am working on Parade by Hiromi Kawakami, a standalone successor to her bestselling book Strange Weather In Tokyo. I bought Parade without knowing that information many years ago. It’s ultimately a short folktale from the narrator’s childhood, who also happens to be a main character in Strange Weather In Tokyo. I picked it up in light of Kawakami’s latest release, People From My Neighborhood, but now I realize it will act as a portal into more of Kawakami’s bibliography.
I’m also working on The Trojan Women: A Comic by Rosanna Bruno and Anne Carson, a reimagining of Euripedes’s antiwar tragedy. Through Carson’s poetry and Bruno’s illustrations, the post-war Troy of Hekabe, Andromache, and Kassandra is rendered as a world of dogs and animals. It is beautiful and extremely weird. I bought it on a whim at Brooklyn Book Festival last year and now read a few picture book-size pages at a time to give myself a few minutes away from blue light screens.
I think that’s all for now. If you’re looking for me before my next dispatch, bribe me with some matzo ball soup and brisket from Mile End Deli to get me out of my blanket cocoon.