What I'm Reading: 'The First Bad Man' by Miranda July

The First Bad Man was our February book club selection, but I wasn't able to get a copy from the library until it was much too late, short and quick of a read as it is. Instead I got the enjoy the surprisingly delightful experience of hearing my friends discuss it, which only whet my appetite to read it. There were many funny remarks that made me reflect on what my friends think about me, including "I'd recommend you read it -- but I wouldn't recommend most people read it," and "I think you should read it because you'd enjoy thinking about it and writing about it." 

They were all right -- I did really enjoy it and I was really anxious to blog about it. And I, too, would not recommend it to very many people. It is a very contemporary novel that somehow manages to make the normal and the mundane feel so extraordinary and grotesque. It reminded me of Sheila Heti's writing in its frankness about ordinary life. There is a constant tension in the characters, and as a reader you will always be wondering if they are decidedly strange and their actions macabre, of if you are just glimpsing the average internal life of an average human.

Miranda July is such a famous figure in certain circles, so I truly did not expect much from this novel, and I was completely blown away by it. The blurb from Hilton Als on the back cover helped, and I'm really anxious to read her short story collection now.

Black History Month for Adults: the New Classics

Black History Month is something every elementary school kid becomes familiar with -- along with figures like George Washington Carver (peanuts!). Most adults spend little/no time thinking about African American history, either in the month of February or any other time of year, but we should all view it as a good time to inject our reading with some much-needed diversity. Thus, my picks for great reads to celebrate Black History Month:

Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat -- A collection of lovely and stirring short stories from Haitian-American author Danticat. She is woefully underrated and someday will be one very required reading list, so get an early start.

Zami by Audre Lorde -- Lorde was a feminist, Civil Rights leader, and most significantly to me, a librarian. She wrote non-fiction and poetry and all of it is essential.

White Girls by Hilton Als -- Als is a theater critic for the New Yorker but his published books have a much wider breadth than that, and this book of essays is really terrific. He's a really great contemporary cultural critic and I only wish that he wrote more.

Kindred by Octavia Butler -- Full disclosure, I haven't read this yet but it's definitely on my list. Butler is one of the most significant science fiction/fantasy writers and advocates of the genre, and Kindred is about a twentieth-century Black woman who is transported to the early nineteenth century where she meets her ancestors, a white slave-owner and the woman he owned. Butler herself described it as "grim fantasy," but it's bigger and more complex than any genre term.

Open City  by Teju Cole -- You will be hearing this name over and over in the coming years, as Cole is one of the most significant African American writers working today, and his stuff has been published in every magazine/literary journal of any importance. Along with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, he is shaping the way the world views Nigeria during a time of significant turbulence and cultural change.

This Week in Books, Portland Catch-Up Version: Zadie Smith is a reading addict...

A Prayer Journal

By Flannery O'Connor

Apologies all around for missing the last two "This Week in Books" posts. I know you live for them. It was hard to keep track of what was going on in the world of books while prepping to travel, doing the travelling itself, and then recovering from travelling, but I'm finally back to normal, for a day, and then I prep for a weeked Up North. At the very least I did my best to accumulate some good links the past two weeks, and here they are:

Oprah! Zadie Smith! What they want you to read this summer! Her comments about reading and prison are particularly chilling because that was my primary takeaway from reading Orange is the New Black-- she got to read so many books in prison!

If you, like me, have Joan Didion fever this summer, check out this essay on Play It As It Lays  from Alice Bolin and The Believer. There is a short write-up on it over at The Millions as well, and they recommended it as one of this summer's "Burnt Out Reads."

Hilton Als reviewed the posthumously published Flannery O'Connor book A Prayer Journal. It's behind a pay wall but you can read the intro and if you're a NYT subscriber, you  can enjoy the whole thing (and maybe share some quotes in the comments? Just a thought). This combines one of my favorite contemporary essayists with one of my favorite female authors, so I might even consider paying to read it.

Here's a brief piece on book hoarding from the LA Times. I found it to be abysmally depressing, but that's just me. Also, I tend to read the books I won, so that might disqualify me.

Finally, the thing I am most excited about -- Matter and MSNBC.com are doing a public book club reading of Susan Faludi's recent feminist classic Backlash: the Undeclared War Against American Women, and have invited plenty of intelligent and inspiring female writers and thinkers to contribute (Roxane Gay, Lena Dunham, etc.). You can read along, tweet along, and read their lively discussions of each chapter.