What to Read When Martin Competes for My Subscriber Base
The answer is to simply read both of our ramblings :D
A sunny Sunday in New York, what a concept! I’ve seen plenty of fried-up daffodils and overbloomed tulips afoot lately, and even more cherry blossoms and their pretty pink imposters dotting the streets. I can confirm that the decadent and bloom-strewn From Lucie cakes are a delectable welcome treat to celebrate fair weather. Enjoy my time outside while it lasts.
The best news of the month is that Martin started his very own newsletter, Quantum Heap, where he'll be writing about whatever tickles his fancy. Most recently, it's crochet, his made-up game of Fingle, and reading books about science that whiz over my head.
It was a month of highs and lows, so we’ll focus on the highs (420 notwithstanding). Since Spring sprung itself upon us, I devoured lamb on a spit at Amanda’s Greek Easter; presented my mother with a very springy bouquet that had little bleeding heart flowers throughout; witnessed Agust D's first-ever solo tour on my birthday and lived to tell the tale; meandered through Industry City’s Japan Village for okonomiyaki and gashapon toy machines; visited The Drawing Center’s exhibit “Of Mythic Worlds” on purpose (abstract, interesting) and “Xiyadie: Queer Cut Utopias” by accident (delightfully explicit); ate many pistachio flatbreads from nearby Palestinian gem Al Badawi; napped with my parents’ neighbor’s cat; visited the blooming Brooklyn Botanic Garden; marveled at the best dressed crowd for Kali Uchis while dancing away a “silky evening” at Radio City Music Hall; and encountered the sublime Solely Tea’s secret boba counter past their shelves of sneakers. There were plenty of other memorable bites and nights, but I’ll keep those to my camera roll and cut to the chase.
Books I Bought
I made it through the first half of April feeling superior about my restraint in buying books. That all changed on an errant weekday jaunt through downtown Manhattan, which brought me to Three Lives & Company for The Employees by Olga Ravn, The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa, and The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim. After a failed trip east to Librae Bakery for a much-coveted Jerusalem bagel—the place was closed for a private event—I followed my feet all the way past the artsy Karma Books to Book Club Bar, with its welcoming al fresco seating and vintage lamps. (The bathrooms have been re-wallpapered to have pages from The Secret History, Rules of Civility, and Persepolis.) I bought How To Resist Amazon and Why by Danny Caine on my way out to sip their peppermint iced tea. Finally, the seasonal return of stoop sales brought me my greatest get yet: an old galley of Book of Goose by Yiyun Li, rounding out my dreams of only ever buying paperbacks unless absolutely necessary. I barely resisted the temptation to buy little matchboxes designed like books at Center for Fiction and killed time consulting The Strand Bookstore's staff picks without spending, but both were close calls.
Books I Read
It has been a low season of reading for me. I finally finished There's No Such Thing As An Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura, a novel I have been reading in spurts since 2021. It follows an unnamed protagonist who burns out from her corporate career and commences a string of odd jobs—emphasis on odd—to make ends meet. NPR describes it best as a “21st-century response to Herman Melville’s ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener.’ While Bartleby resists by staying put, the author's protagonist strives to redefine her professional preferences by submitting to a picaresque array of alternative vocations. Unlike Bartleby's inexorable trajectory from professional devotion to job burnout to eventual death, the heroine's meandering quest takes her down many rabbit holes, with her self-imposed exile — a form of liberation — as a connecting thread.” Each section of the book covers a new job, be it punching tickets at a park or writing ads for buses, and helps the protagonist discover how she values spending her time and what skills she wants to focus on in her eventual career. It's a great book for remembering that every job has its perks and quirks, which is sometimes all you need in order to keep clocking in every day.
On the other side of the books-about-work coin, I ripped through Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi, during which the protagonist is so tired of the men in her office expecting her to do admin and domestic office work that she lies and says she's pregnant to get out of it. The shift is instantaneous and absurd: by lying about a pregnancy, the protagonist is suddenly encouraged by the company to have a real work-life balance and focus on her actual responsibilities instead of the gendered, menial labor of making coffee and cleaning up after meetings. Seeing how far this lie can go is one of the great joys of the book, which I highly recommend, so I will leave my summary here. But know it is an extremely satisfying story to read, particularly during an office busy season that makes you tear your hair out.
And now, for the unlinkables
Otherwise, I commenced my annual romance binge early this year. Influenced by my friends in chorus who read Sarah J. Maas's A Court of Thorns and Roses series for the first time relatively recently, I gave the second book in the series my first re-read of the year. (I generally go in 6-month waves of reading bits from this book for serotonin.) Under Ash's influence, I also sped through Katee Robert's deceptively smutty Court of the Vampire Queen series and its related monsterlicious sexy books. (The Dragon's Bride and The Gargoyle's Captive were significantly better than The Kraken's Sacrifice, but The Demon's Bargain was probably the best of the off-shoots.) What's not to love about a series so deranged you can't put it down to face the real world?
Some might say it's a huge swing to go from reading literary fiction critiquing capitalism to monster love stories. But I would point out that this tendency of mine aligns with my general taste for extremes: I want my books to be plotless and bizarre tales of people losing their minds, or I want bonkers worldbuilding and clever conceits to carry me through to a satisfying ending. I do not enjoy much of a middle ground, which I have come to learn is considered upmarket fiction: books that have generally likeable characters with a smidge of depth, unchallenging plot resolutions, and endings that provide closure. I fall in the same camp as this post from The Biblioracle Recommends, which delves into more nuances between literary, commercial, and upmarket fiction:
As a reader, I seem to prefer my characters as either meat puppets or the fully-fleshed. That two-dimensional, in between place, tends to irk me as I feel manipulated by being asked to care about a construct, rather than invited deeply into the experience of someone else’s consciousness of the world.
I will either fully engage with the psyche of a character, or I will fully forget a character's name. There's no use in the in-between for me, which is where upmarket fiction lies.
And definitely this:
An upmarket book is unlikely to disappoint when it comes the expectations the novel sets for the audience. My favorite books are the ones that set and then challenge expectations and force me to grapple with that challenge...Perhaps another way of thinking about this is that a mainstream upmarket novel will deal with important subjects, but do so in such a way where the sides are clear.
Books that make me turn my own thinking inside out are books I love, whether it's the way I process my expectations for a story or significant issues I might not have thought critically about. I do not have a lot of time for moral binaries unless they are involving a fantasy land in which good must prevail over evil.
With that in mind, it makes sense that most celebrity book clubs read and promote upmarket fiction. They want to walk a palatable line of what makes both sides of things special. For me, that balance means the fun of the extreme gets lost. Give me the weird shit! Reese can keep the rest.
As is so often the case after I go through a plethora of romance novels, I am in a bit of a reading slump. Will I get it together and finally adhere to my book club’s latest pick? Is it time for me to read a book I purchased six months ago? Are my library holds going to wreak havoc on my best laid plans? Find out next time, I guess!