May Reading
What I've been reading, doing, loving in May
This is my monthly wrap up where I talk about some of my favorite things from the last month. Things I’m reading, enjoying, looking forward to—sort of anything floating my boat.
Years ago, I read a poem by my friend Victoria Montecillo where she reminds the reader that their heart can be soft like countertop butter. That image has stuck with me ever since I read it.
May had some challenges, and what was most challenging was remembering I could choose softness.
For you, for me, for others, for days with shitty weather, for moments of sadness, we can’t forget our hearts can be soft like countertop butter. Spread it on toast and take a big bite.
Here is an overview of how my month went:
Published a short story last week, it was inspired by the craziest text I’ve ever received seconds before a date
I had one of the best meals of my entire life at Casavant, here in Montreal. Highly recommend!
All I have been talking about is the new show Overcompensating (no, really: Exhibit A and Exhibit B)
Finally received my stick of butter bag (picture above) from le-febour, and I’m already obsessed
Started The Artist’s Way for the second time and I don’t think I’m going to last very long
While editing this, I decided I would stop The Artist’s Way 😇
Had a pretty medium reading month… The standouts are few, and the potential was not reached
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:
Like a Bird by Fariha Róisín
I read this book because billie black told me to, and I really liked it!
Like a Bird is the story of Taylia, a girl who grew up on the Upper West Side, as she is navigating life post-college. She is grieving her sister, and when something traumatic happens to her, she is disowned by her parents and kicked out of her home. On her own, she has to face the skeletons she shoved all the way to the back of her closet.
It’s sort of a coming-of-age, sort of a living document of grief, all with a through line of pressure and expectation. What I especially loved about this was how things are slowly uncovered. Sometimes this choice can feel like the Writer Writing but here it worked really well. You don’t get to know about the sister’s death in full or the traumatic thing that led to her being disowned, not until you earn it.
The author is a poet and it showed in the writing, I’m very excited to see what they do next.
Hotel World by Ali Smith
I have tried and tried to read Ali Smith and, until this one, have never finished a single novel of hers. What made this one stick? Probably grit, determination and the premise.
This is a novel, but really a collection of short stories, where each character is connected to a fancy hotel in an unnamed English city. There’s a staff member who died, her sister, a guest at the hotel, the receptionist, an unhoused woman on the street of the hotel. Each of their voices are singular and are blended together in a very interesting manner.
My favourite section has to be the spectre of the dead woman speaking to her own corpse, trying to understand how she died. This was the first chapter, which might explain why I finished the book. I chased this high and never found it again.
It’s not that Ali Smith is a bad writer, she’s quite good in fact! I think she just doesn’t reach me as a reader with how she choose to write. The style doesn’t quite work for me and the weirdness isn’t the kind I respond to. I’m glad I read this, but I don’t think I’ll be at the midnight release of her next novel.
Peuple de verre by Catherine Leroux
This is a novel in French that doesn’t have an English translation just yet. It’s a blend of dystopian, literary fiction and a strange dash of autoficition.
We follow a journalist who is tackling the housing crisis in a world where the unhoused are carted off into prison-like compounds. Once she finds herself in a compound, the narrator begins to document everything… or so she says.
This does a really interesting unreliable narrator thing where fabrication and reality start to blur, and we are confronted with lie after lie being uncovered. The past she writes about shows up in the compound and debunks her stories, and the therapist she speaks to weekly questions the diary she keeps. I will admit the charade got old because this happened over and over, and slippery doesn’t stay interesting for very long.
The end was my favourite part: The author finishes with a letter to the reader explaining her inspiration for the novel. The unstable housing situation, the fight to keep her home, being faced with the stark reality that we are so tied to the spaces we inhabit. Leroux has another novel that is sitting on my shelf and I may pick it up soon.
All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews ★
This book was so wonderful! It kept being recommended to me, and I finally listened.
Early 20s, post-college, figuring out life with a 9 to 5, that is how we find our narrator. She is a queer woman of colour living in Milwaukee getting tangled in friendships and relationships. It’s finding out what the Big Bad World really means: bills, responsibilities, struggle, pressure, and being able to make decisions for yourself (negative).
White people get to own their lives. They get to feel like their lives belong only to them.
p.124, All This Could Be Different
This also exceptionally renders the experience of being the child of immigrants and dealing with the realities of racism under white patriarchy. There’s a weight to her story felt throughout, her otherness constantly reflected back to her.
This is what it means, to come here as an immigrant. You are here on sufferance. You are a form of currency, not a person, and only a person has the right to desire, which is to say, to be difficult.
p.206, All This Could Be Different
The story really touched me. It’s messy and queer, full of grounded reality and, ultimately, hope.
Human Acts by Han Kang (translated by Deborah Smith)
This is my third book in my Year of Han Kang, and it was really great!
It is inspired by the Gwangju Uprising, a peaceful student-led demonstration in 1980 that turned violent when military forces shut it down. The event is shown through a kaleidoscope of perspectives, with different narrators and different timelines and different styles. There’s a young boy who died, his friend who watched, his mother, a woman who knew him, each talks about this moment in time and adds their colour to it.
The book dissects violence and its presence in human nature—why and how do people turn to violence? It also ties the events in South Korea to other massacres around the world, showing the meaninglessness of all this destruction.
It happened in Gwangju just as it did on Jeju Island, in Kwantung and Nanjing, in Bosnia, and all across the American continent when it was still known as the New World, with such a uniform brutality it’s as though it is imprinted in our genetic code.
p.140, Human Acts
There this weight throughout the novel that feels like survivor’s guilt. You feel Kang herself being ashamed of this moment in her country’s history, while also balancing the beauty she sees in her world.
Han Kang continues to impress me. I think the way her mind conceives of stories is fascinating. Unlike my Year with James Baldwin, which showed a clear roadmap to novel writing, Han Kang defies definition. She switches it up every chance she gets, and it’s keeping me on my toes.
Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong ★
This was brilliant!! It is a blend of memoir, essay, and cultural criticism, it reminded me of Ugliness by Moshtari Hilal, which I read earlier this year and also loved.
The author is the daughter of Korean immigrants, and she explores race (hers and the concept) in America today. She masterfully moves between memory and critique, social and personal. I was so taken by her very sharp and specific point of view. Cathy Park Hong, you are a genius!
I suspected that if a reader read my poem and then saw my name, the fuse of the poem would blow out, leading the reader to think, I thought I liked the poem but on second thought, I can’t relate to it.
p.42, Minor Feelings
All sorts of strands are woven together: stand up comedy, youth, motherhood, art, language. She also does a fascinating dissection of the nebulous place of the Asian identity in what feels like a Black/White binary in America.
Big brain. Big feelings. It’s like a long winding conversation that snakes together at the end. Cannot recommend enough.
Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner
I read this alongside Martha, in fact, I read this because of Martha. We both had never read a Ben Lerner book and she decided we should start with this one. This might also be my last Ben Lerner.
This book is about an American poet who goes to Madrid for a fellowship, and then just meanders about. He is listless, he lies, he does drugs, he’s apathetic, he sucks.
The best part of the book was the language play. There’s so much going on with translation and missed messages and turns of phrase. This was especially fun for me because I spent a summer in Spain learning Spanish (brag), so it was very interesting to read and remember that time in my life.
Reading this felt like having a carrot dangled in front me, but not quite being able to reach out and grab it. It’s as if there was something to it I couldn’t see. I finished this novel wondering what the point even was. Was there a point? Is there always a point to a book?
I have concluded that for me, yes, there should be a reason. And here, the narrator ends the book by saying: “Whatever. I’m leaving this place, I’ll never see these people again, who cares about any of it.” I’m paraphrasing, but you can probably understand why it’s left a sour taste in my mouth.
There’s a sequence where the narrator is at a poetry reading and the person before him reads with intention and passion, and he mocks it. He then goes up and butchers his reading, puts no care into it, and flops. This is what the book itself felt like to me, intentionally not caring.
I will leave you on this message I sent Martha about the author after reading:
Personal Attention Roleplay by H Felix Chau Bradley
Personal Attention Roleplay is a collection of short stories from a writer based in Montreal. I saw them speak at a book event last year, and finally picked up their collection.
This could only have been written by someone of queer experience. It is so queer. Not just in subject matter, but in tone, themes, form, approach. Each story navigates queerness, living under capitalism, obsession, race, and does it from a very unique POV.
A writer becomes obsessed with an ASMR vlogger, a young gymnast crushing on a teammate, a queer metal band, all the stories are weird in the most wonderful way. My favourites are: Maverick, Personal Attention Roleplay, The Queue and Surface Dive.
On My Bedside Table
A dispatch from my bedside table and the books that litter it, hoping to be read soon.
Memorial by Bryan Washington, a couple (or an approximation of one) is at a crossroads in their relationship.
Milktooth by Jamie Burnet, a 30-something queer woman falls into a toxic relationship while living in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.
A Language of Limbs by Dylin Hardcastle, set in the 1970s, in Australia, this explores first love, desire, queerness and friendship.
The Town of Babylon by Alejandro Varela, a queer man returns to his hometown and attends his twenty-year high school reunion.
Open, Heaven by Seán Hewitt, two sixteen year old boys are linked over the course of a year in the North of England.
Have you read any of these? Are any of these non-negotiables? Are any of them skippable?
Please tell me if I should read more Ali Smith or Ben Lerner. I have to know why you love them if you do!!
What did you read and love in May?
Tell me what you think in the comments!
That’s been my month!
Until next time 🤠
Memorial was good but at times I wanted more, please write about it when you read it. It's a great book and a wonderful tale of what it means to be a couple as well as cross cultural interactions, but left me wanting.
Lots to add to my TBR! I think I'm on round 3 or 4 of the Artist's Way and it's not looking good...one of these days surely I'll finish it?