Some Book Actions: Resolving, Liking, Disliking, Finishing, Not Finishing...also Piling Up
I’m trying to only read books I want to read. But reading resolutions are hard to uphold.
I tend to read the big novels every year, both as professional responsibility (I write book reviews for The Boston Globe) and because, well, because I always have. But in the last few years, I’ve been increasingly dissatisfied with the new novels, even those most people seem to like, and last year was the worst.
Every year, LitHub aggregates the major best books lists into the Ultimate Best Books List which ranks the books according to how many lists they appeared on. In 2024, of the top 20 Ultimate Best books, I:
read and loved 3
read and liked 1
read and disliked 3
abandoned 3 (I hated two of these and the other was fine but I never got around to finishing it, which is something I do)
chose not to read 6 (mostly because I’ve gotten tired of the author or I read an excerpt1 and disliked it)
haven’t heard of 3 (mostly nonfiction)
started and am planning to finish 1 (it’s on my bedside table, waiting for me to finish my current library books)
You can analyze this data for yourself, but what’s salient to me is that I only loved three books (all novels)2 and I disliked or had no interest in eleven (including nine novels and one book of short stories). Not a great ratio and not that different from previous years.
I don’t know if the problem is the books or me (probably both), but this year I decided to break old habits, walk away from unhappy reading, and read only nonfiction and old novels. You could call it a resolution (but not a New Year’s resolution because it wasn’t).
Then a bunch of new novels that I had reserved from the library last year arrived this year, and I read them, which seemed reasonable (now I’m not sure why), but I didn’t like them and kept reading them, which seems ridiculous.
The Wedding People was totally made for me, what with the fancy hotel and the Victorian novels and the English professor, but it did not grab me - and yet I kept reading! Crudo, which is about neither oil nor raw vegetables, but rather Kathy Acker and marriage, was invigorating at first but quickly got pretentious and boring - and I kept reading! The Safekeep was unbearable but somebody said it got better, so I kept reading, and maybe it did but not better enough, especially because I guessed three of the four major plot points and, oy, the saccharine ending.
What’s even more ridiculous is that I stopped being a reading completist decades ago and am firmly committed to abandoning books I don’t like. But I’m wondering if I kept reading these because I’m actually anxious, perhaps even ambivalent, about not reading the Big Novels of 2025. What if there’s something really great and I miss it?? (Uh, I can read it next year.) What if I have nothing to talk about with my book people?? (Uh, I can sell them on the great nonfiction I’ve been reading - or listen to them talk about the novels I’m not reading and feel smug or note them for next year.) What if nobody wants to talk to me anymore because I’m no longer the go-to fiction arbiter?? (Uh…that will make me really sad, but at this point even I know the ridiculous barometer has gone sky high.)
Fortunately, during this mostly unfortunate reading period, I was also delighted by Tove Jansson’s Fair Play (1989!), which my daughter recommended and which I referred to in my head as the Moomin book, even though it has nothing to do with Jansson’s famous Moomins. Rather, it’s a set of short vignettes about two women (who are neighbors, collaborators, best friends, and possibly - likely? - lovers), art, aging, aggression, self-protection, movies, and travel, with the Scandinavian light, nature, and directness that I love in Norwegian novelist Vigdis Hjorth, who has lots of books not published this year.
EVERY YEAR THERE ARE SO MANY GOOD BOOKS NOT PUBLISHED THIS YEAR.
OK, my brief, miserable, and uncharacteristic detour into finishing current novels that I don’t like has actually re-resolved me to my resolution. Phew.
Now I have to decide whether I’m going to start by finishing Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavey to Freedom, or There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension, three of which are on my bedside table and one of which is in the pile of books next to my bedside table. Because along with my recent problematic bout of finishing books I don’t like, I also have a problem with finishing books I do like. However, I’m just going to ascribe that to the fact that there are so many good books competing for attention that it’s hard to read just one at a time. So I read a couple of books at a time, and then…some of them get finished and others don’t. Surely I’m not the only one who has this problem. Right? Right??
The Way We Live Now
I used to write a lot about politics and the way we live now, both in the media and on social media. But I largely gave up on the media during Trump I and Covid, when the speed of events and content creation increased to the point that by the time I had a minute to gather my thoughts it seemed like other people had already said it all too many times in too many places. In the aftermath of those years, I pulled back from social media too. But I still think about politics and the way we live now, so here are some recent thoughts:
1. In the last few weeks I’ve seen a lot of TV with ads - football and basketball games with my dad, a couple of shows on Peacock (The Traitors!) where my daughter has the tier with ads (which enrages me: subscription + ads?! what the hell?!), the Grammys - and I predict that ads will be an important benchmark for the Trump II ideological takeover. If a year from now all the ads are white people, we’ll know he’s way ahead.
2. Before the election, I thought Elon Musk would be out within months because Trump likes to be the guy on top. But so far Trump seems to be fine with Musk’s prominence, to the point where I wonder if Musk has something on him. Or maybe it’s just that Musk is sufficiently sucking up to pacify Trump’s ego. I still don’t see it lasting, but I’m thinking the way to accelerate Musk’s departure is to saturate all airwaves with Musk superlatives: Musk is the smartest, Musk is the best, good thing Trump has Musk to run this show. Maybe some banners flying over the White House. Libby suggests that the reporters could do it at press conferences: ask why Elon is in charge, ask why Musk’s hands are bigger than Trump’s, call him President Musk… I really think it could work! On the other hand, maybe Trump is secretly relieved that someone else is doing the work so he can just bloviate.
3. Speaking of which, what I think about Trump’s Gaza plan (people have been asking) is that none of it will happen (no invasion, no US takeover, no deportation of Palestinians to other countries) AND that he is opening the Overton window to Israel taking Gaza back and Trump and Kushner getting the coastal Gaza real estate deals that have always been their primary goal, the result of which will be more Hamas and more terrorism…which will enable Bibi to keep his war going and stay in power so US defense contractors, including Elon Musk, can keep making more money, i.e. an unfortunate unified field theory of greed, graft, war, and oppression.
4. Boston does not need its own carpetbagging billionaire spawn political leader. Fuck you, Josh Kraft and your Trump-loving dad (whom I once, long ago, respected).
Because we still deserve nice things…
I don’t think I would have watched Questlove’s SNL music documentary if Libby hadn’t said the opening montage was genius and she wanted to watch it again and again. That was pretty persuasive, so I watched it, and it really is all that. Then we watched the whole movie, which is a delight. Unfortunately, it drags after about an hour and a half, but really everything before then is so worth it: all that music, all those memories. And you can always choose to stop watching once it drags, even though I didn’t…
My main way of testing a book these days is to click “Read sample” on Amazon. It’s more efficient than ordering everything I might possibly want to read from the library. Also more community-minded, as the books remain in circulation for the nice people who will read them.
James, The God of the Woods, and Our Evenings
So interesting! I also loved James and liked but didn't love The God of the Woods. (I haven't read Our Evenings yet but I plan to.) The other small handful in the top 20 that I've read either didn't particularly work for me or, in one case, was something I put down after only ~20 pages. I'm reading Small Rain now--have you read it?
I agree with you on the Gaza front.
Watching the Questlove video when it was going around just reminded me of how hot the guy from Fine Young Cannibals was (maybe is, who knows, I'm not googling) and how I wanted him to play the lizard man in the film adaptation of Mrs. Caliban. To relate that to your post, my boyfriend bought 17-year old me that book (he inscribed it so now I always think of him when I think of that, which means I think of him when I see FYC). I wanted to read it because it was an it book of which I was somehow aware (how? Where on earth would I have read a review of that book? my parents were not book review readers). That made me think about how when I was young I read EVERYTHING without any discernment and so I read so much and so widely and finished EVERYTHING. But now I give things up fast. I mean FAST. I will even skip to the end. I will go read the wikipedia post. Like you,sometimes it's not because the book is bad but just because I'm not in the mood and given current events my mood (attention) is very picky and unpredictable.