November's Spilled Milk
What I've been reading, doing, loving in November
Spilled Milk 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.
November flew by. It was hot and cold, bright and grey, so many extremes. I’m hoping for a more steady December.
Here is an overview of how my month went:
I spent a weekend in Upstate New York, which is the perfect fall getaway
Saw Wicked and haven’t thought about much else since… I can’t wait to see it again!
I’ve had the OBCR on repeat since 2004 when a random week-long-beach-trip-bestie, an older girl with bangs from New Jersey, made me listen to it
(Thank you, whoever you are… my mother literally doesn’t even remember your name. Also, sorry the only details about you I retained are your New Jersey bangs.)Had a Gift Guide video go a little viral on TikTok and some of the comments have been wild. The people outside of the bookish community on that app are really something!
My personal fave The Cringe Mountain climbing continues.
Even though I spent most of the month as a recluse, I managed to get sick twice. Never again will I take breathing through my nose unencumbered for granted.
The following is a list of some more things I couldn’t get enough of.
What I Read
Below is a rundown of every book I read in the month of November. 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:
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier ★
A gothic classic from 1938 that really thrilled me. It reminded me of a game of Clue with the spirit of an Agatha Christie mystery.
This is the story of a young woman who gets swept off her feet by a rich widower. After they marry, he takes her to his seaside estate where she will be living. The house, the people who visit it, and the staff who tend to it, all keep the memory of his late wife—Rebecca—alive.
The intrigue builds in really interesting ways, some of which I expected and others I was surprised by. In the end, the story is concerned with morality for all of its characters. Is anyone really good?
I’m definitely going to revisit this next winter—it feels like the perfect grey November kind of read.
Model Home by Rivers Solomon
I haven’t purchased a new release hardcover book in so long, but I caved for this one. Needless to say, my expectations were quite high and meeting them was going to be a difficult task.
Model Home is a haunted house story reimagined. It’s about three siblings who reconnect because their parents have just passed away in their childhood home, the house they’ve always felt was haunted.
I had a hard time with this book because that specific premise was so enticing to me (as mentioned above, enticing enough to pre-order a hardcover edition), but I don’t think it delivers on it.
Trauma, race, grief, class—these are the main themes being juggled throughout the story, but we, the reader, only get to grasp their breadth and how they impact the story with 10 pages left. I enjoyed the book, don’t get me wrong, I just think this exploration would’ve been more interesting by clueing in the audience.
The writing was really beautiful (which is true for other works by Solomon that I’ve read), and I’m eager to reread it without a marketing log line bread-crumbing me in the wrong direction.
Fathers and Fugitives by S.J. Naudé
This is another victim of the marketing log line, because it doesn’t really do what it says it’s going to do: a man has to fulfill his father’s dying wish of befriending an estranged cousin to get his inheritance.
In reality, this is the story of a journalist living a comfortable and successful existence in London, but he cannot decide what the point is—the point of everything. This book is split into five very different parts (each is like a short story) and follow him maintaining weird relationships, reconnecting with family in South Africa, and growing old. It is so bleak, I’m actually impressed with how stale it felt to read.
To me, the first part was the strongest. The narrator meets a couple of gay Serbs and essentially becomes their prey willingly. Reading this man understanding he’s being used and going along with it, even when it seems he may be in danger, was so fascinating.
The other parts drift, feel longer and less specific (kind of about fatherhood, but not really; kind of about belonging, but not really...).
I enjoyed reading this for the nihilism that isn’t even on the page, it was just the unwritten thesis statement of the novel. It left me feeling a bit hollow, which means it probably did what the author wanted it to do.
Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) by Hazel Jane Plante
This novel is part fictional memoir, part eulogy, part cultural encyclopedia, and so weird that it worked.
In every section, our narrator is telling the story of a friend that has passed and is alphabetically listing all the characters from a TV show that this friend loved. What we end up getting is a portrait of a person painted through love and grief. It’s all these little moments that make up their life together, their friendship, their kinship.
It explores transness, otherness, fandom, and weirdoness—Little Blue, the fictional series the book dissects, is a Lynchian fever dream. While it is very experimental, I don’t think it’s so weird that it doesn’t reach the reader, it has a heartbeat that cuts through all of the rest.
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai ★
This is a book I’ve had shoved down my throat so often I had to put it off because of the expectation. In the end, it was as good as everyone said it was going to be.
I need to preface this by saying that I have a hard time with AIDS-related media. Most of the time it feels exploitative to me or like a regurgitation, so for something to feel like a new perspective and lack sensationalism is really a feat.
The story is told in two parts: The first is set in 1980s Chicago as AIDS is starting to spread through a queer friend group, and the second is set in 2010s Paris as the sister of one of the members of the queer friend group is searching for her estranged daughter.
Most people have said that the modern timeline felt like a slog, but I don’t agree. To me, it showcases survival, and that was essential to paint the full picture of the AIDS crisis. The impact of that time continues to ripple.
The characters and their experiences feel so rich and full, it’s a really beautiful depiction of queerness and struggle. There isn’t much more I feel I can add, I really loved this book.
If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin ★
This is James Baldwin’s fifth novel, and the latest instalment of my Year with Baldwin series where I am reading all of his novels in a year.
I’m so glad to say I’ve found a new favourite.
The book follows a young couple dealing with a lot—Tish is pregnant, and her fiancé, Fonny, is in jail for a violent crime he didn’t commit. Throughout the novel, we get the story of their love, their families, and their experience with the criminal “justice” system in America in the 70s.
Something that has become clear by reading the rest of Baldwin’s books is that he was very interested in masculinity and manhood. This book, however, is so deeply about women. There are so many different nuanced women who really shine in this book. They are mothers, daughters, sisters, strong, soft, smart, and they overshadow every man on the page.
The court case that drives this novel made it such a smooth read, but also allowed the story to dig into so many different things. It’s a love story that is imbued with James Baldwin’s belief system. It touches on police relations, race, mass incarceration, immigration, shame, and family.
This is such a stunning book, I am so glad to have read it and know I’ll be revisiting it for years to come.
Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle
I borrowed this book from the library on a whim and went away for a weekend without another thing to read. In any other scenario, I’m not sure I would’ve finished it.
It’s the story of a screenwriter in Hollywood whose network asks him to kill off his TV show’s main characters. When he pushes back, his old fictional villains come to life and try to kill him.
The book is flashy, loud, doing too much intentionally, and all of those things can be fun… like a Netflix low-budget horror movie. Here, the book doesn’t quite get there for me because of the big reveal: AI as villain. I’m not a big fan of AI as the solve for the supernatural (or as a plot point in general) so this didn’t work for me as much as it could have.
This all comes down to personal preference, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the book per se. In the future, I will be sampling the books I bring on trips before leaving.
Bluets by Maggie Nelson ★
It’s always very hard to describe Maggie Nelson’s work, but this one is beyond. Lyrical, poetic, sort of memoir, sort of journal de bord, and also none of the above.
Maggie Nelson examines the colour blue in the natural world and also blue as metaphor, blue in people, blue as it pertains to her life. It’s grief, love, heartbreak, hardship, and also how they intersect with blue. She does it all so effortlessly. She is a genius.
The language is sharp and specific, it is unmatched. This is the kind of writing that inspires more writing. While reading, I found myself having ideas and feeling creative. Reading her pours so much into the well, I know I will return to this book again and again for years to come.
Reading Goals Update
Nonfiction & Poetry Collection: I’m going to say that both of these are fulfilled by Maggie Nelson’s Bluets. It’s definitely nonfiction and reads somewhat like poetry, so I think it counts.
My Year with Baldwin: I finished If Beale Street Could Talk and it is a new favourite! Only one book left in this reading goal, Just Above my Head.
HELP WANTED
If you’ve made it this far, thank you and also I need your help!
This year, I set out to read every James Baldwin novel and I’ve enjoyed that process so much I want to do something similar next year. If you have any suggestions of authors whose work I should dedicate a year to, let me know.
Here’s my criteria:
About 6 fiction books in the catalogue feels like the right amount to me (I’m sorry to Toni Morrison, I’m a completionist and 12 novels doesn’t feel possible for me)
Good writing lol
Queer themes or queer writer are a plus
Mostly literary fiction, but I’m open
Earlier in the year, I planned to tackle Zadie Smith because I’ve considered dipping a toe into her books for a while. Then she wrote a really shitty essay in the New Yorker about the Palestinian genocide, so I won’t be doing that.
Bad politics aside, her bibliography is an example of ticking most of the boxes.
On My Bedside Table
A dispatch from my bedside table and the books that litter it, hoping to be read soon.
Homesick by Jennifer Croft, an autofiction memoir that tells the coming-of-age of two sisters, one has a mysterious illness and the other is a language prodigy
Berlin Atomized by Julia Kornberg, a novel that follows three siblings from 2001 to 2034 through different major crises
All This Could Be Different by
, a narrator in her early 20s, fresh out of college and entering the workforce navigates queerness, friendships and moreOranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson, a semi-autobiographical tale of a young woman whose faith and newfound queerness are clashing
A Bright Ray of Darkness by Ethan Hawke, a rich white successful straight cis man struggles… Oh, but there’s Shakespeare! (I’m mostly interested to see if this does anything interesting)
Have you read any of these? Are any of these non-negotiables? Are any of them skippable?
Tell me what you think in the comments!
That’s been my month!
Until next time 🤠
Have had my eye on Model Home— Rivers Solomon really blew me away with Sorrowland so i’m looking forward to reading that one! glad you thought it was decent.
Re authors for next year, i’m going to hard recommend Gary Indiana. He’s changed my life and has an impressive body of work with some of the funniest, most poignant, perfect writing i’ve ever encountered.
now how did i miss this one.......... such a treat to read your favs as always <3 need to pick up the great believers once and for all! she's been teasing me on the shelf for years!