📚 The April 2024 Reading Stack
a moshfegh, a texas gem, an alaskan fable, modern wisdom, a WWII era pulitzer
The other day, I was talking about Point of View (POV) with one of the writers on this month’s stack. They said: “It’s a lot more work inventing different Points of view: different voices, ways of thinking, storylines, casts of characters, which all need to be equally interesting.”
The Point of View metaphor got me thinking both about writing and about life. All of their books have multiple POV’s, and I have a hunch most of mine will too.
It’s often much easier, and arguably better, to live our lives in one POV:
“I am an athlete”
“I am in tech”
“I am a Texan”
“I am a Christian”
Unfortunately, my callow, perseverating mind has never been much the fan of that model. Always sticking my unfortunately hungry, unfortunately emboldened hand in a half-million different buckets and rummaging around.
“I know the effort-to-reward ratio is lower than in a single POV book,” my writer-friend said. “But I think there’s a payoff when it’s done right.”
There are no hard-fast rule for storytelling but I think, generally, my friend is right.
Perhaps it’s part of our scattered, distracting modern world, or maybe it’s just a quirk of my own, but I don’t think I would ever be satisfied living from just one Point of View, just one concrete experience. It’s part of why I travel, why I write, and why, as you will see in two of the best books below, I love books that have multiple Points of View.
Now, the main attractions 📚✌️
Book #10 - The Son by Philipp Meyer
Runner up for the Pulitzer Prize in 2013, The Son is one of the better books I’ve read this year. And for my fellow Texans, it takes place in our backyard. The story follows three generations of the McCullough family:
Eli McCullough: Spring 1849, the first male child born in the newly established Republic of Texas, thirteen years old when a band of Comanche murder his family and take him captive. Brave and clever, Eli quickly adapts to Comanche life, learning their ways and language, answering to a new name, Tiehteti.
Peter McCullough: Eli’s son, Peter is a smart, sensitive, conflicted, progressive thinking 20th century Texan man who bears the emotional cost of his father's drive for power, and becomes the black sheep of the family
Jeannie McCullough: Eli's great-granddaughter, JA goes from a sassy, outdoorsy, mischievous young girl to a hardened, stately woman fighting to build her family empire in a man’s world that wants to see her fail.
Part epic of Texas, part classic coming-of-age story, part unflinching portrait of the bloody price of power, The Son is an utterly comprehensive, absorbing novel that maps the legacy of early American violence over an ambitious family as resilient and dangerous as the land they claim.
Extraordinarily well researched and riveting every inch of the way, The Son is worth the read.
Book #11 - Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
A few years ago, I attended a reading by David Sedaris and he called Ottessa Moshfegh “one of his favorite living writers”. This book marks my second read from Ottessa Moshfegh1 . The story’s main character, Eileen, is an unassuming yet disturbed young woman consumed by resentment and self-loathing, who tempers her dreary days as a secretary at a boy’s prison with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping from Massachusetts to New York City. She also, from time to time, shoplifts, stalks a buff prison guard, and cleans up her deranged father’s alcoholic messes. Here’s the end of the first chapter":
So here we are. My name was Eileen Dunlop. Now you know me. I was twenty-four years old then, and had a job that paid fifty-seven dollars a week as a kind of secretary at a private juvenile correctional facility for teenage boys. I think of it now as what it really was for all intents and purposes—a prison for boys. I will call it Moorehead. Delvin Moorehead was a terrible landlord I had years later, and so to use his name for such a place feels appropriate. In a week, I would run away from home and never go back.
This is the story of how I disappeared.
Mapped over a snowy New England landscape just before Christmas, Moshfegh succeeds in creating yet another train-wreck main character, so ridiculous and curious you cannot help but stick around to see what happens. Creepy yet not heavy handed, mesmerizing and well-written yet intensely funny, this modern author is proving that she belongs somewhere between Shirley Jackson and Vladimir Nabokov in her ability to enthrall and shock and intrigue. I’m officially team Ottessa Moshfegh 🫡
Book #12 - Inward by Yung Pueblo
This is my second read from Diego Perez who uses the pen name “yung pueblo.” He chose the Spanish words “young people” as is meant to convey that humanity is entering an era of remarkable growth and healing, when many will expand their self-awareness and release old burdens. From poet, meditator, and speaker Yung Pueblo, comes the first in series, a collection of poetry and prose that explores the movement from self-love to unconditional love, the power of letting go, and the wisdom that comes when we truly try to know ourselves.
I didn’t love Inward quite as much as Lighter, which I talked about last june, but the brief poems and essays are nice everyday reminders on how to be, how to heal, and how to change in the modern world.
Book 13 - All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Winner of the Pulitzer prize, All the Light We Cannot See is a stunning, beautiful, original story from the much told World War II era. It tells two parallel stories:
During the Nazi occupation of Paris, Marie-Laure—a blind twelve year old daughter of the museum locksmith—and her father flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.
In a German mining town, an brilliant, orphaned Werner Pfennig becomes enchanted by a new invention—the radio. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted by the Nazi’s to put his skill to use.
The novel interweaves the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, illuminating the ways people can, against all odds, do good unto one another. Though I did not love this beautiful, instant bestseller as much as my first read years ago, I highly recommend picking up a copy if you haven’t read it before.
Book 14 - Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart—he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm, she crumbling from loneliness and despair. It’s not until they, in a momentary flash of their old love, build a child out of snow that their real story begins. The next morning the snow child is gone, and they catch sight of a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees, hunting with a red fox at her side, skimming lightly across the snow, somehow surviving alone in the Alaskan wilderness.
As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear.
If you are a sucker for a good snow-scape, especially literary fiction laced with fairy-tale elements, Snow Child might fit nicely on your nightstand.
📚 Years ago,
In my early twenties I committed to a life of books, and that choice led me to view reading as a privilege and a practice. It occurred to me that no matter how much time I dedicate to reading, I won’t come close to getting through all the great writing out there. The realization freed me up to explore books of all kinds, not just the greats. Now, even as reading time grows more scarce, I pickup whatever sounds compelling, and write as much as I can manage.
Books are magic. Learning is magic. And my biggest wish is that you treat your mind with the books it deserves.
Ok friends. Go forth spend a few extra minutes this week with a good ole book. And please let me know if you have any particularly good books for me to read.
Cheers,
—J
The other, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, is horribly wonderfully painfully good