January Reading
What I've been reading, doing, loving in January
This is my monthly wrap up where I talk about some of my favourite things from the last month. Things I’m reading, enjoying, looking forward to—sort of anything floating my boat.
January is like getting a new piercing, but nobody notices. You make all these promises in your journal and they make the world feel sparkly for a minute. Just a minute. Quickly, the dust settles back down and it’s February.
I didn’t get a new piercing. I didn’t even think up resolutions. I was busy feeling things, and maybe that’s actually better.
Here is an overview of how my month went:
Got a short story published by 831 Stories!
, and it was so fun to do
They asked me to write something inspired by their latest release, Comedic Timing byI spent the first few days of the year in the UK and rung in the new year with one of my best friends I don’t get to see often
I chatted with
for his interview series Galley Brag (read it here!!)
We talked about booktok, the publishing industry and my insane literary hat collectionHad a huge disappointment when I bought my favourite blush in a new shade and hated it on me
Then I remembered you can return things at Sephora, but I also remembered I have return paralysis
Was featured in a USA Today story about the end of booktok (lol)
Got to see The Last Showgirl early and I really liked it! Watching it felt like reading a really great litfic novel
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:
Drive Your Plow by Olga Tokarczuk (tr. Antonia Lloyd Jones)
Going into this, I didn’t really know what to expect. After seeing Pedro Pascal reading this on the beach1 and Dua Lipa featuring it in her book club, I feel like it’s gotten a lot of buzz which I’m normally wary about.
At face value, this book is about a kooky woman living in a remote Polish village. She’s obsessed with astrology, she translates William Blake, and she tends to the sleepy hamlet while most residents have fled for the winter. When people around her start dying in mysterious ways, she gets involved with the investigation and becomes entwined in an increasingly weird series of events.
While this is a literary thriller, it also builds into so much more with layered commentary throughout. There’s a very potent discussion of animal rights and the value of all lives—not just human ones. The question of morality is also all over these pages. Who gets to be bad? Who gets to do bad things? Who gets to get away with doing bad things?
I really enjoyed reading this and finding out about Polish hunting culture. I’m excited to read more from Tokarczuk, and I’m sure she will continue to weird me out in all the right ways.
Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid ★
Note about My Year With Jamaica Kincaid2
I really loved this tender novel. It is a coming-of-age story of Annie John, a young girl living in Antigua. Through her eyes, we explore her relationship to her family, to her peers, to herself and to the island she calls home. I read this with
, who has already written brilliant thoughts about the novel in Martha’s Monthly!The story takes us through Annie John’s experience of growing up, from childhood into young adulthood. Kincaid navigates all of those changes with a precision that was so affecting.
One of the central tensions is her relationship with her mother. Minute shifts in their dynamic add up to a wide chasm without either of them really realizing it. While the novel tells Annie John’s story, I even felt a wrestling from the mother as she tries (in vain) to break generational cycles.
Out of the corner of one eye, I could see my mother. Out of the corner of the other eye, I could see her shadow on the wall, cast there by the lamp-light. It was a big and solid shadow, and it looked so much like my mother that I became frightened. For I could not be sure whether for the rest of my life I would be able to tell when it was really my mother and when it was really her shadow standing between me and the rest of the world.
p. 107, Annie John
Another piece of this that I felt strongly about was Annie John’s maturing. She grows up being disappointed by others every step of the way. Nobody can meet the expectations she puts on them. Nobody can see her in the way she wants to be seen. Nobody can know her completely. Reading those realizations dawn on her was so powerful.
I could go on and on and on… I will recap by saying this was such a banger for me.
Comedic Timing by
831 Stories is a really cool, modern romcom publishing company. So, when they asked me to write a short story inspired by their latest release (a queer story at that!!), I was so excited to say yes.
Comedic Timing follows a girl, Naina, who is in her early twenties moving from Chicago to New York. She’s trying to make her life shiny again, healing from a messy relationship and figuring out who she wants to be in a new city.
It has an exploration of queerness that I don’t think is talked about enough. Naina has the capacity for expansive desire, but what does it mean for her to be attracted to a cis man? It’s an all-too-real challenging of the way queer people see themselves and people see them.
I had such a great time with this novella and with writing a story inspired by it!
The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector (tr. Benjamin Moser)
This is my first Lispector, and I did not expect it to be so strange (positive). It’s a slice of a novel, only 90 pages, and is about a writer who finds himself focused on a woman’s story even though he doesn’t think she’s worth his time.
Who hasn’t ever wondered: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?
p.7, The Hour of the Star
There’s a meta exploration of storytelling in this that I really enjoyed. The idea that nonfiction is usually fiction to a degree because one person’s reality isn’t universal. Lispector speaks through the narrator here, addressing the reader directly to tells us many times that this is how he sees the world and this woman.
It drips with disdain in a way I found really engaging—sometimes it’s fun to lace up the shoes of a hater. Through this short tale, Lispector weaves in discussions of class and gender in Brazil. I’m excited to get to know her work more deeply because this was a great start.
Wandering Stars by
★This novel is a follow-up to There There, which I read at the end of last year and absolutely loved. I wish I had given this book more space from its predecessor, because I think it shines on its own.
We follow a large cast of characters who all have different depths of connection to their indigeneity. It starts at the Sand Creek massacre, and stretches forward into present day, mixing with the timeline and characters from There There.
There’s a very poignant exploration of ethnic cleansing and assimilation in this that shows the snowball effects of it. Tommy Orange also discusses trauma—generational and physical. Wandering Stars very directly presents a horrifying sequence of events leading into the reality for indigenous peoples today.
The writing in this and in There There is so gripping and reaches so deeply. I’m in awe of Tommy Orange’s talent, and will read anything he writes.
We Could Be Rats by Emily Austin
This is the newest Emily Austin that released just last week. It is exceptionally weird lesbian fiction, and nobody does that like Austin. I had a hard time reading this, but I did enjoy it—let me explain.
In We Could Be Rats, we follow a young woman who has decided she wants to take her own life as she is taking stock of her existence up until that point. A large portion of the book is rendered through suicide notes, which made it impossible for me to separate myself from that reality as I read. The discussion of self harm and mental health isn’t a bad thing necessarily, but was hard for me.
Midway through the novel things shift [no spoilers], and in the end I was back on board. It turns into a very layered and nuanced experience of sisterhood, which I loved. Growing up in the same set of circumstances as another person doesn’t always mean you have the same perspectives on that experience.
Emily Austin continues to impress me. There are no skips in her bibliography, I’ve loved every one of her works.
Pink Slime by Fernanda Trías (tr. Heather Cleary)
I kept seeing this novel floating in the hands of my TikTok mutuals last year, so I decided to pick it up from the library. I’m always very interested in the literary horror genre, and how writers manages the thin line between two very distinct styles.
This book is set in a city that has been ravaged by a plague caused by a climate crisis, but that is only the building blocks for an incisive character study. It reminded me of Severance by Ling Ma, which is a literary zombie apocalypse novel that isn’t even about zombies.
In Pink Slime, we follow a woman who is surviving as she navigates this new world. She is the caretaker for a boy, she visits her mother, she visits her ex-husband in the hospital, and she continues to exist despite the challenges.
The novel is claustrophobic, itchy, and talks about the fact that sometimes remembering can be worse than losing everything. What was there, what is left, and the unbearable weight of that gap. It also paints a devastating picture through collective grief and memory. Really impressed by this short punch to the gut.
Le straight park by Gabriel Cholette ★
Le straight park is autofiction inspired by a movement of reclamation that happened during early pandemic lockdown. A skate park here in Montreal was taken over by queer and trans people one night a week. It became a place to converge and celebrate community. Gabriel Cholette uses this as a diving board into his past and his experiences with the act of reclamation.
He deftly dissects relationships, the prison of masculinity, queerness, abuse, identity, and himself in these pages. This book is so queer and so Montreal, it made so much sense to me—some of which I can’t even explain. It also showcases an incredible ability with words, to play, to deconstruct, to build.
In Montreal, many of us have a complicated relationship to language. It is an extremely bilingual city, but language issues are at the forefront of many interactions and larger problems. This was the first book I’ve ever read where the bilingualism felt like an exact representation of my own relationship to bilingualism. It isn’t overexplained, it isn’t forced, it simply is.
Je cherche un mot en g pour décrire ce qui s’est passé, un autre mot que Gabriel, il n’y en a pas de suffisamment évocateur en français, les mots qu’il prononçait pour se faire pardonner fessaient fort, I was gutted, simply gutted and so fucking gay, mon homosexualité se définissait par ses coups.
p. 48, Le straight park
I loved this so much. I’m so excited that Gabriel Cholette is a writer I get to follow from the first pages of his writing. This is a french book that doesn’t have an english translation yet… sorry! But he has a first book that was translated last year: Scenes From the Underground.
On My Bedside Table
A dispatch from my bedside table and the books that litter it, hoping to be read soon.
Real Life by Brandon Taylor, a campus novel about a black academic scientist on a predominantly white campus (this would be a reread, and I’m cheating because I know I’m reading this with two friends this month)
Universality by Natasha Brown (out March 4th), a journalist investigates a twisted crime
Trivial Pursuits by Raven Smith, an essay collection from a hilarious and incisive voice
Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley, a young woman stumbles headlong into the failure of the justice system
Luster by Raven Leilani, a woman gets involved with a middle-aged man in an open marriage (this would be a reread for me)
Have you read any of these? Are any of these non-negotiables? Are any of them skippable?
What did you read and love in January?
Tell me what you think in the comments!
That’s been my month!
Until next time 🤠
Pedro Pascal on the beach reading a weathered copy of Drive Your Plow.
After I spoke about My Year with Jamaica Kincaid on TikTok, it was brought to my attention that she doesn’t have the same opinions as me in regards to the Palestinian genocide. So while I loved Annie John, I can’t in good faith continue this challenge of mine and discuss her books all year.
I’m going to be finding a new author soon, so stay tuned!
oooo lemme join you for a luster reread 👀
also, the piercings on the x ray is tres chic i would frame that
I'm so sad there's no English version of "Le straight park" - would LOVE to read something about bilingualism. I, too, have an interesting relationship with it. Also obsessed with a book being described as "itchy" - stealing!