What to Read When Everything is Everywhere All At Once
This newsletter really has it all (5 books in detail and 7 in brief, all linked through A24's hot dog hands movie).
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Happy Sunday. My vampiric tolerance of the sun has had me hissing at the weather gods, though not enough to prevent me from enjoying the return of stooping season. Just today, I procured several books and a painting from stoop sales (and one yard sale behind a brownstone, which had an impressive full bar!) before retreating to my coffin to enjoy a delectable raspberry croissant and some air conditioning. Hopefully you're eating something leafy for dinner to keep yourself feeling light.
Part One: Everything
Today's newsletter title is an obvious reference to A24's masterpiece of cinema, Everything, Everywhere, All At Once (2022). The genre-bending adventure follows Evelyn, a laundromat owner, as she learns that the world is so much bigger than she thinks: she must tap into her parallel lives across the multiverse to save them all. (If you've seen the movie, please read this perspective from pool pal Denise's advisor about what makes Everything Everywhere a deeply Asian American Film. If you're looking for a relatively spoiler-free description instead, The New York Times's rave review will do.)
After my second viewing of the film, I got to thinking about books that conjure the same sense of delight, wonder, and wonkiness that makes Everything, Everywhere so special. In terms of structure, The Wandering by Intan Paramaditha is an obvious choice: as a choose-your-own-adventure story, its literary form is like having the exploratory wonder of a multiverse in your hand. There are also clear sci-fi companions that can be sorted by sub-genre, like Recursion by Blake Crouch and Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel (time travel stories that hinge on a protagonist learning across time and space to fix a problem in their own world) and The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton (a time loop that requires close investigation to escape, not to mention a character named Evelyn). But one book I read recently contains the same emotional fluency of Everything, Everywhere as a key component to understanding the logic of its world.
The Space Between Worlds
Are you in search of a brutal, dry-humored, and queer sci-fi expedition through the multiverse? Read The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson. It starts on a version of Earth where travel throughout the multiverse has been made possible, with the caveat that one cannot visit a world where their counterpart is alive. Our protagonist Cara, who comes from society’s wasteland and longs for citizenship of Earth’s preeminent, futuristic city, can traverse between worlds because so many of her parallel selves are dead. Full of class warfare and elaborate, specific world-building, The Space Between Worlds "remained two steps ahead of my imagination, rattling it out of complacency and flooding it with color and heat." The web of relationships involved—and complicated by those held by parallel selves—is as intricate and fully-realized as the court politics and elaborate socioeconomic systems that define each version of Earth.
With unusual placements of plot twists, satisfying pacing, and romances that thread through every parallel life, Johnson has developed a truly unique experience that promises constant action for any would-be traverser. If my recommendation is insufficient, Mel noted it as the best thing they read in 2021; Sarah Rosenblatt also read it on Mel's recommendation and, last I heard, was thoroughly enjoying it.
Tasting Notes: Everything, Everywhere, All At Once (2022); Heather Christian’s Oratorio for Living Things at Ars Nova; funhouse mirrors; Mars.
Part Two: Everywhere
My recent reads are not thematically linked. Rather, they are perhaps more interesting in how different they are from one other. Let's dip into some other worlds, shall we?
The Fiction
Beautiful World, Where Are You? By Sally Rooney. I was pleasantly surprised by my first foray into Rooney's oeuvre, which is populated by "young, Irish, and globalized" hotties who philosophize about class politics between bouts of moody sex. Despite having some quibbles about the last few chapters—especially those that are set during the pandemic's early lockdown—I had a fun time observing the book's core foursome take impromptu vacations, host dinner parties, and cry in each other's arms while trying to define their relationships. I suppose this means I can finally wear my hard-earned Rooney tote, last summer's second-place clout-y merch after the Rooney bucket hat, while the rest of you watch the new TV adaptation of Conversations With Friends.
Honey and Spice by Bolu Babalola (out July 5, 2022). What a delicious, romantic little book. I adored inhabiting the perspective of university radio host Kikiola Banjo, who typically advises her classmates to embrace self-love and reject rakish advances from the seclusion of her recording booth before she stumbles into a fake relationship with an apparent player. Though I'm no lover of contemporary rom coms, Babalola developed the social circles and inner lives of the university's Afro-Caribbean Society with such depth and humor that it was a hard book not to enjoy (and it has exactly one very steamy scene, for the smut-lovers in the chat). Babalola’s writing felt fresh, young, and specific to each character’s experience, and the banter was immaculate.
The Nonfiction
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein. Rothstein's book discusses how state-sponsored segregation policies like redlining, rather than solely the actions of racist individuals, maintain the wealth gap between Black and white Americans. The section chronicling the history of public housing programs, which were initially developed to alleviate housing shortages but ended up destroying integrated neighborhoods to construct segregated public housing facilities, felt particularly salient in today's environment: in New York, one of the 10 most segregated cities in the nation, a recently-approved rezoning plan will include 950 units of affordable housing on land that is contaminated with coal tar and earmark a paltry sum for repairing existing projects. Rothstein's book analyzes how cities and states have upheld segregationist policies, sundown laws, and other de jure regulations that contribute to today's housing crises. It is a must-read.
A Molecule Away From Madness: Tales of the Hijacked Brain by Sara Manning Peskin. As I noted when I first acquired this book, I love a medical mystery. Unsurprisingly, Peskin's accounts of the strange and mysterious ways that neurons fire inside our weird human heads captivated me. She organized this book into discrete sections to showcase maladies caused by DNA mutations, malfunctioning proteins, and "brain invaders and evaders" that all alter the personalities of patients. Using a biological framework for her stories made Peskin feel like an empathetic textbook narrator observing the often ugly and confounding realities of illness. I wish more time was spent exploring the economic reality of receiving treatment for certain illnesses, however: for instance, while excising mutations via gene editing was discussed at length, there's not much description of cost or access. I'm mostly able to forgive this omission, since that would probably be a much longer book, but I think a larger acknowledgement of the limitations of the US healthcare system in particular is warranted.
The Rest
You Can't Be Serious by Kal Penn blends the pithiness and silliness you'd expect from a comic celebrity memoir with powerful insights on Hollywood's rampant anti-Asian racism and the US justice system during the Obama Administration.
The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd starts as a murder mystery at the New York Public Library's Map Division and, at some point, becomes a trope-y fantasy that underutilizes the stuff that makes maps cool.
Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park is a blunt and intriguing collection of stories about unglamorous living, sweaty trysts, bad relationships, and nicknamed STDs that is well worth reading.
Part Three: All At Once
I am currently reading The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka, a compact companion for the train or bar (see above); Luster by Raven Leilani on my phone to satisfy my hot sad girl craving; and The Making of Asian America by Erika Lee as an informative audiobook. Reading a few things at once lets me dart between tones and tales at my leisure, which I can’t do with much else, you know?
In the rest of my life, I’ve been lighting my watermelon and stone fruit candles; sneezing pollen during impromptu picnics; watching the Mets miraculously win; sampling Malai’s new swirl of Parle G biscuit and masala chai soft serve; eavesdropping on Cobble Hill Park’s regulars; and throwing my money at every lemonade stand and bake sale popping up in my neighborhood, among other things. Despite a constant news cycle that renders me speechless and sad, I hope you find sufficient distractions, too.
Would love a newsletter devoted to steamy scene metrics in books. What’s the average across books you’ve read in 2022? What counts as a steamy scene, and what makes two scenes distinct from each other? As a lover of smut and metrics, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for this one.