What to Read While The Fog Rolls In
I know you're only thinking about the Oscars at this point, but I have to send my missive anyway
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Hi there. I hope you’ve sipped something great recently, like an iced chai with pistachio milk or a soothing warm tonic of mashed ginger, turmeric, honey, and lemon. If those seem too hard to come by, a Manhattan Special vanilla cream soda will do.
What a fortuitous spring thus far. I visited the bookstore cats guarding Westsider Books, a historic shop with fabulous proximity to Zabar’s, and Logos Bookstore, which is famous for being used in the creepy Penn Badgley show You; savored La Vara’s back patio and tasty babaganoush with smoked eel; thoroughly enjoyed Turning Red (2022); read Steven’s fascinating piece about abandoned boats in New Jersey, because he is a big-brained journalist; spotted a string quartet in Brookfield Place promoting Bridgerton (happy season 2 release, to those who celebrate!); and listened to the new Rosalía album.
The Reads
I finished Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson, a multigenerational family drama in which two estranged siblings come together to learn the truth of their mother’s life through a shocking eight-hour voice recording played after her death. The book flits between the Caribbean, London, and California, with some detours along the way and each locale unveiling one revelation after another. Despite falling into historical fiction’s eternal trap–that all books within the genre revolve around a terrible but predictable family secret–I appreciated the emotional depth exhibited by many of the characters.
I also finished Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman, a choice I made solely based on the short length of the audiobook. Gaiman, who applies “rakish mischief and severe glamour to the Norse canon,” animatedly read the audiobook and served as a lovely companion for my morning walks to work over the Brooklyn Bridge. I felt enmeshed in the world of the frost giants during a particularly foggy jaunt, where it felt like the hammer of Thor could swing out of the mist and whack a scheming Loki from the sky at any moment. I didn’t know much Norse mythology prior to reading this, despite watching Thor: Ragnarok a million times and having the Vikings as my middle and high school mascot. (In sixth grade, they even split my year into “teams” named after gods including Odin, Tyr, Balder, and Thor; my team was named Orlog, or “war fate,” and we were the only team to be named after a concept instead of a deity. Do with that what you will.)
Last but not least, I finished the forthcoming Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel. I was drawn in from the start, given my proclivity for books about love, plague, and time travel. It follows a cast of characters strewn across centuries, all connected by a small event with big consequences for them all. Though I enjoyed the novel and all its weird time-y wime-y glory, I couldn’t help but feel at first like some characters had fragmented stories. To sate the craving for in-universe closure, I reached for St. John Mandel’s The Glass Hotel since I already read and enjoyed her book Station Eleven last year. Within 10 pages, my mistake became clear: the subjects of The Glass Hotel—a moneyed group of characters who lose everything in a Ponzi scheme collapse—are in fact the characters who I wanted to learn more about in Sea of Tranquility! Had I simply read the books in publication order, I would have probably enjoyed Sea of Tranquility even more. We’ll see if I agree with Steven’s review of The Glass Hotel after all.
Currently Reading
With that in mind, I’ll hope to report back soon on The Glass Castle. I am also reading the forthcoming book The Candy House by Jennifer Egan in an audacious display of not learning anything at all from my St. John Mandel mishap. The Candy House, which focuses on a future technology that lets users externalize their memories and make them accessible to others, is set in the same world as Egan’s Pulitzer prize-winning novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad, which I absolutely have not read. Thankfully this one has been described as “a follow-up that doesn’t remotely feel like a follow-up,” though I know that some characters are from the Goon Squad universe and there are probably some call-back references. I will live in blissful ignorance while I read it on my phone.
I am also currently reading two nonfiction books to appease the reality-focused folks in the house. I am reading A Molecule Away From Madness by Sara Manning Peskin and feeling extremely thankful for my good grades in AP Biology. I am also reading The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein. I saw him accept the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism back in 2018 and am glad to finally read his significant work.
Why am I reading four books at once, you ask? That’s because each book is read in a different medium: The Candy House is on my phone; A Molecule Away From Madness is in hardcover; The Color of Law is an audiobook; and The Glass Hotel, per my earlier snafu, is in paperback.
What Martin’s Reading
It’s Martin’s world and we’re all just living in it. He recently finished Exit West by Mohsin Hamid per my recommendation and, like me, enjoyed the audiobook quite a bit. He has also finally succumbed to my ceaseless harassment and is now reading The Likeness by Tana French. All of this, of course, is simply his way of placating me for playing Elden Ring for eons at a time.
That’s all for now. I am not engaging in any Oscars-related discourse today, so you’ll have to look elsewhere for that. I was distracted enough by the drama to delay sending this yesterday!! See ya soon.