Everything I Read This Summer

While I didn’t get nearly as much reading done as I wanted to over the summer, I was still able to get through quite a few books. Here are brief, reductive reviews of all of them:

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck: My family made fun of me for choosing this as my beach read, but it was beautifully written enough to be worth it.

Year’s Best Science Fiction 14: Like most anthologies, is was pretty hit-or-miss. Some stories were fun, some were excellent, some were boring, a lot seemed weird purely for weirdness’s sake.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman: By the end of it I was nearly moved to tears with nostalgia for six hours ago, when I had started the book.

Neon Green by Margaret Wappler: It’s basically about aliens, suburbs, and the 90s, and doesn’t treat any of those the way you’d expect (well, maybe the 90s).

Nine Tales of Terror by Edgar Allen Poe: Maybe I’m not as easily scared as the first readers of these stories, having been desensitized by much less subtle forms of horror, but the elegance of the writing hasn’t lost anything with age.

Zot!: Sometimes the chapters tackled deep moral and personal issues of hope, death, freedom, and the nature of reality. Other chapters featured two characters in a room, talking about whether they wanted to have sex or not for sixteen pages. And then there was that chapter where everyone got turned into monkeys and just sort of went with it. All in all, it averaged out to a pretty good comic.

Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link: The title story made me feel exactly how I felt discovering Avatar: The Last Airbender when I was eight. It’s rare for literary fiction to bring such a specific, unique emotion to the surface, which makes me appreciate it all the more.

White Noise by Don Delilo: The only distinctly bad book I read this summer. Satire can be powerful, but for it to work the writing has to be legitimately funny. Similarly, novels can only be powerful so long as we give a damn about the plot or characters or anything besides whatever pretentious code the author is hoping will get us to smirk at.

1984 by George Orwell: An excellent palette cleanser for White Noise. Finally: a novel ideas where you actually care about the characters or the plot (or the ideas, for that matter).

The Green Mile by Stephen King: It might be that I grew up with five church services a week, but the Jesus metaphor came off as a little on-the-nose. Still, it was a well told story all the same.

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee: I didn’t enjoy it as much as To Kill a Mockingbird, I didn’t agree with it as much as To Kill a Mockingbird, but I think I learned more from it than To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s easy to decide whether or not we should kill an innocent black man, it’s harder to decide whether we can ever forgive people who think we should. 

Small Gods by Terry Pratchett: How did it take me this long to find Terry Pratchett? Easily the funniest thing I read this summer, and it entertained some religious questions I’ve been mulling over without ever getting too dark. Also, it’s sort of like something else I’ve written.

Sula by Toni Morrison: An excellent refutation of binary thinking, wrapped up in characters and plot worth caring about. People say Edina High School focuses too much on writers of color (a ridiculous argument in its own right), but so long as Toni Morrison isn’t required reading, they really haven’t gone far enough.

What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell: I’m so glad I went to his reading before starting on his book. The language is beautiful in its own right, but even more so when you know how he’d say it.

Lost at Sea by Bryan Lee O’Malley: This captured so many little things that I’ve felt deeply but have never seen depicted so honestly in fiction. Also, cats steal souls, apparently.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides: Among other trenchant observations on young adult life, Eugenides writes: “English was what people who didn’t know what to major in majored in.” Yeah, like I needed a reminder.

The Sculptor by Scott McCloud: This book put me on the brink of an existential crisis about life and art. I’m not sure if that’s a recommendation or not, but hey, some people like crises.

Loverboy by Victoria Redel: My teacher at the New York State Summer Writer’s Institute wrote this one. After listening to all her rules for how to write well, I expected to find some catharsis when I found out she didn’t follow her own rules. But, somehow, she actually did.

And, in case anyone’s curious, here’s the haul from birthday-presents, New York State Summer Writer’s Institute signings, and garage sales that I’m hoping to get through soon: 

Animal Farm by George Orwell, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain*, Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell**, Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, Chango’s Beads and Two-Tone Shoes by William Kennedy, Metaphysical Dog by Frank Bidart, The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt, and The Grata Book of the American Short Story.

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* I got those four at a garage sale last week for a quarter each. When I tried to buy them, the lady running the place cackled, “What kind of middle school boy reads Sylvia Plath?” When I told her that I was actually a rising junior in college and an English major, she replied, “What kind of English major hasn’t read Huckleberry Finn? What are you, a foreigner?”

** I’m almost done with that one, actually. Nearly every book I read this summer had a romantic plot or sub-plot of some kind, but none struck me as deeply as that one.