February Reading
What I've been reading, doing, loving in February
This is my monthly wrap up where I talk about some of my favourite things from the last month. What I’m reading, enjoying, looking forward to—sort of anything floating my boat.
Here is an overview of how my month went:
I was selected by The Sunday Times to judge for their Young Writer of the Year Award!! It’s a huge honour, and I’m so excited to be part of it 😇
I spent a weekend in Paris because it’s just a train ride away
I’ve been working on a long form writing project!
More to come on this soon!!Mostly, I just kept sinking deeper into London and finding my way through the city. There’s so much to see and do, but I’m not letting it overwhelm me
What I Read
Below is a rundown of every book I read last month. I’ll be adding a star next to my standouts, like a starred review where a star isn’t a 1 to 5 scale, it just means good!
Before the written ramblings, here is a video version of my monthly wrap up if you’re more of a visual person:
Colored Television by Danzy Senna ★
When this book was coming out in 2024, I remember being so excited to read it. Then, as these things usually go, I forgot all about it because of how many stacks of books I have around my house.
The novel is the story of a writer, Jane, who’s been working on her latest novel for a long time. She feels the pressure from her artist husband, her children she wants to provide for, and her own pull to create. Between house sitting gigs, Jane falls into the Hollywood machine and starts developing a project for TV.
What unfolds from there is an examination of the commodification of identity, a clash of high/low brow art, and how quickly deceit spreads through a family. There’s also a very nuanced and dimensional exploration of being biracial.
I loved this. It’s sharp and shiny in the way all upmarket novels should be. Delicious writing and propulsive plot. Halfway through this novel, I remembered Danzy Senna is married to Percival Everett. This isn’t important, I just found it interesting given the artist couple dynamic explored in the book. Luckily, her talent allows her to stands on her own and I’m really excited to read more of her work!
Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi
I’ve never read anything from Helen Oyeyemi, and maybe this was a freaky place to start with her… Or maybe it would’ve been freaky regardless.
This novel begins as a gay couple boards a sleeper train for a long ride. Their love is comfortable, almost to the point where they are complacent. And then, the story gets slippery, confusing, twisted. It goes and goes and goes in so many directions, not in a way that is disturbing, just a little uncomfortable. Other characters and their hold on the two men, challenging reality and truth, memory, it’s all smashed together in this.
It reminded me of what I imagine riding one of these trains would be: Walking unsteadily through a long hallway and peering into a bunch of different people’s cabins, seeing parts of their lives.
The novel is whimsical, imaginative, skillfully executed, but it’s hard to say if I could give this one a blanket recommendation as it feels divisive (I’m even torn after reading it… I think I liked it, but I could be wrong). I’d happily read more Oyeyemi and get fully lost in her spiral.
It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over by Anne De Marcken ★
This book is marketed as one person’s very lively experience of the afterlife. It’s meant to be a bizarre yet sophisticated reality of what happens after we die. It is all of those things, but it’s also a zombie novel.
I can see how being clear about that would’ve done it a disservice, but I love that it presents this idea we’ve seen time and time again in a completely different way. Zombie but make it devastating literary fiction.
We follow an undead woman as she goes through her new reality, decomposing the days away, and trying to make sense of her hazy memories. It gripped me through gory depictions of decay, but kept me reading because of the depth of meditation on grief and loss.
It’s lyrical, original, elevated, somewhat abstract, and it blew my socks off. I love the idea that, even for the dead, grief lives on.
Going into it with very little expectations made the experience that much better, so if you’ve read this, I’m sorry.
Year of the Rat by Harry Shukman
This is the first of the four titles I read for The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award! It’s the only nonfiction book on the list, and it was a wild ride.
Year of the Rat is an incredible feat of investigative journalism. The author spent a year undercover in far right groups across England and beyond. He assumes a new identity and spends so much time with these awful people to learn what makes them tick, why they are the way they are, and how far-reaching these insidious groups can be. Part of it was diaristic through the experience of the author and part of it was this extremely researched alarm bell.
Reading this was scary, it’s so immersive and felt so close—well, it actually was super close as most of the investigation takes place in London. These are the worst kinds of people, mostly men, and what happens when they think they’re among likeminded people. It’s horrible.
Holocaust deniers, eugenics tech companies, race scientist, it’s all in here and it’s just wild.
Kitten by Stacey Yu ★ (Out August 4th)
I’m a huge fan of Stacey’s taste, and the way she talks about books. Luckily, all of that translates to her writing.
Katie is a recent college graduate who doesn’t have much figured out: her career, her friendships, her family, it’s all a murky question mark. Her boyfriend of just under a year does have a lot figured out. When he introduces Katie to his family cat, Silver, her infatuation for the animal shakes up her entire world.
This novel is sophisticated, peculiar, delicate, it’s like a piece of lace with the kind of pattern you feel compelled to commit to memory. Katie’s head is poured out onto the page with an intimacy typically reserved for a diary and she’s a narrator I won’t soon forget.
While the novel is about Katie’s obsession with a cat and the animal’s agency being so foreign to her, it’s also so much more: The embarrassment of being comfortable as a passenger princess, a complex look at feeling disconnected from your family, and the confronting reality of not feeling understood.
I can’t wait for everyone to read this! It’s going to be a must-read this summer, I can feel it.
Every One Still Here by Liadan Ní Chuinn
This is the second title I read for The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award! It’s the only short story collection and the only writer from Northern Ireland on the list.
The collection examines the legacy of The Troubles from the perspective of someone growing up in Northern Ireland after they’ve ended. Some of the characters didn’t live through this period themselves, but the weight of it comes across through the people and the places they encounter on a daily basis.
It’s direct, no frills, and doesn’t need to much to convey what being a ceasefire baby is like.
The personal and the political are woven into each other to deliver powerful blows. Mary is a story about a creative writing class and what it means to write daily life. We All Go discusses grief and the complexity of inheritance. Russia is an examination of roots through the story of adoptees living without an understanding of their tethers. My favourite story was Daisy Hill, a fiery depiction of stories being passed down and ends with the true accounts of violence perpetrated by British state forces.
This was a really specific perspective that I loved reading about, and was a strong piece of writing showcasing this part of history.
Le viel incendie by Elisa Shua Dusapin ★
This is a book I found while I was in Paris, and I was so happy to read it. I’ve wanted to get into Elisa Shua Dusapin for a minute (since her novel Winter in Sokcho made the rounds a while back). Note that there is an english translation of this that just came out (ok timing!!!!), it’s called The Old Fire.
When her father passes away, Agathe leaves her life in New York to return to her childhood home in the French countryside after 15 years of estrangement. She hasn’t seen her mute sister, Vera, in all that time and now both of them share close quarters while they prepare the house for sale. These women are essentially strangers, but have a shared past and shared trauma that resurfaces within the walls of the house.
This book is slim and the writing is pared back, but the intimacy we get to access makes those things work. The present-tense first-person narration was so evocative, each moment is examined and stretched to serve the many themes explored. Family, identity, connection, communication, it’s all challenged in Agathe’s life in New York, the one with her sister and the one relived through old memories.
My favourite part was the investigation of what it means to be part of a family when you’ve built your entire self outside of it—what does belonging mean when the choice not to belong has already been made?
I will be on the hunt for more Elisa Shua Dusapin because I really enjoyed my time with this one.
On My Bedside Table
A dispatch from my bedside table and the books that litter it, hoping to be read soon.
Lost on Me by Veronica Raimo (tr. by Leah Janeczko), part coming of age, part family dramedy about a young girl growing up in 1980s Rome
Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor, a black gay artist starts up a relationship with a former priest
Sons, Daughters by Ivana Bodrožić (tr. by Ellen Elias-Bursać), the interwoven stories of three people that investigates familial relationships
My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet by Misha Solomon, a narrative poetry collection that examines queerness past, present and future
Fire in Every Direction by Tareq Baconi, a queer coming of age that also tells the story of a Palestinian family fleeing the Middle East
Have you read any of these? Are any of these non-negotiables? Are any of them skippable?
What did you read and love in February?!
Let me know in the comments!
That’s been my month! Typos (if any) were made on purpose, obviously.
Until next time 🤠
Looking forward to your thoughts about Sons, Daughters! Ivana and Ellen are an amazing writer-translator duo <3
oooo now adding "every one still here" to the tbr list!