glorious, temporary stuff

one hundred years of solitude: ok obviously this is a classic and i do wonder how much my enjoyment of it (and tbh most of the books on this list) was tempered by my lockdown circumstances but i... didn't love this. i didn't hate it, but i found the magical realism really jarring (i don't really love magical realism in general but sometimes it's well done and in this i found it always took me out of the scene), and i also don't love following unlikeable characters, and so many of these characters (almost all of the men) were unlikeable... anyway i know this is sacrilegious and i really didn't hate it but i was just expecting more!! sorry if this offends lmao

cleanness (garth greenwell): this was fine! his writing is good which i guess is why he's such a phenom (i told my parents i was reading this and my dad at one point was like, dripping with disdain, "oh he's certainly a ~literary darling~) but none of it felt revolutionary - actually it kind of felt like it was trying to find too much of the revolutionary in normal life, and failing. also i'm sure bulgaria isn't that bad?

priestdaddy (patricia lockwood): lockwood's writing is always a delight imo, but this wasn't quite what i was expecting - there was a lot of commentary on her father's behaviour, but very little direct engagement with him as a subject (which is maybe because it feels like he's impossible to talk to! but given he is actually a real life priest out in the world he must be talking to someone!). on the other hand her mother got a lot more attention, and the portrait of her was at times equally absurd as that of her father, but it was also pretty tragic at times, and i felt like the tragedy wasn't really reckoned with. patricia is only in her 30s, and this is a memoir - sometimes (often) the problems in our lives aren't resolved neatly, but it did leave me feeling a bit unsatisfied at the end of the book.

this is pleasure (mary gaitskill): this is a super short story about a #metoo incident involving a charming, boundary-less creep who gets accused of harassment by several young female colleagues, and a female friend who's been excusing his behaviour and waving off his peculiarities because of his charm. it's pretty thought provoking around the grey lines of #metoo - what acts make you beyond redemption ever, how can genuine redemption be possible once a public shaming has occurred.

blueberries (ellena savage): this sucked, don't read it. the first essay about returning to lisbon to try and find answers about the sexual assault she suffered there a decade ago was interesting in both subject and form, but in all of the rest it felt like she had ideas she didn't know how to land and theories she couldn't fully grapple with. i think it felt especially bad because so much of it was about melbourne, and when someone is writing poorly about something you're familiar with it can be hard to stomach.... anyway don't read these there's better essays out there.

on earth we're briefly gorgeous (ocean vuong): i think i already wrote about this but i had to read it for book club and i feel like ocean is an incredible poet but a whole book of prose poetry felt like Too Much, and i also thought the premise was really pretentious - what value exactly lies in writing this letter to your mother? just tell the story, why does it need that device? she's illiterate in both vietnamese and english, and also all the events you're recounting she was either present for, or are things your mother doesn't need to know about you (sex in the barn?). is reading about your trauma meant to be punishment for her inflicting abuse on you? certainly nothing in the letter is going to be healing for her? idk mothers deserve better than this.

tinker, tailor, soldier, spy (john le carré): le carré's a flop, i said it. jk because i think my problems were specific to this book (late in smiley's life/career, mostly looking back on past events and relying on you being familiar with the cast of characters already), so that's my problem for not realising it was so late in the series before reading it. but! why is there no dialogue! ugh. no tension!

homegoing (yaa gyasi): this was good, but i think it started strong and trailed off as it got closer to present day. i liked her second book, transcendent kingdom, a lot more though.

a wizard of earthsea (ursula le guin): part of my quarantine reading plans have been to try to read classics of genre fiction as a way to read things that are gripping and engaging, because my attention span atm is cooked, without needing to resort to chick lit. but i hated this! apart from the obvious internalised misogyny issues that i believe the series goes on to resolve, i just felt like there was no real world building? and also not that much character building? i don't know i just really didn't love it. i still want to read some of le guin's sci fi but i don't think i'll read the rest of earthsea.

the passion (jeanette winterson): i felt like historical fiction so i tried this, it was kind of a random choice but venice drew me in. it was kind of fun but mostly made me want other books about venice lol.

his dark materials trilogy (philip pullman), via audiobook: sometimes you have to listen to your favourite books from childhood as the only form of media that will spark joy! nothing else to say!