My goal (as it is every year) of reading 100 new books is off to a rough start (as it is every year). In order to stay on track, I needed to complete 2 books a week, totaling 8 books for January.
I read these three:
#1: To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf
Moving in and out of four different states in two years certainly helped lighten the load of books I was carting around, but somehow my secondhand paperback copy of Virginia Woolf’s novel stuck with me. I bought it from the university bookstore for a course (heyooo English majors!) but never actually read it. Unlike some college students or humans in general who can make it through life without actually doing the work, I was not a skimmer. I was a full-on, annotating, sticky-noting, re-reading reader. I don’t remember why I didn’t read Woolf’s novel when it was assigned, but I’ve kept it with a sense of duty that “one day” I will read it and this month I did!
And I realized that the reason I probably didn’t read it in college is because it’s incredibly complex and boring. Woolf’s stream of consciousness style leads to some beautiful use of language, but the book is literally about a little boy at a summer home with his family who really wants to go and visit the lighthouse across the bay. Sure there’s also a lot about family dynamics and wartime and other things I’m sure I missed, but ultimately the style made it too difficult for me to keep up with Woolf’s dipping in and out of different perspectives and points of view. If you remain a good English major who loves the literary challenge, I say go for it. If not, I say there’s much better fiction out there.
#2: Bitchfest, edited by Lisa Jervis & Andi Zeisler
This book is an anthology of the top selections of ten years of cultural criticism from Bitch magazine, now Bitch Media, which I didn’t previously know existed (the book was a Little Free Library find). The book was published in 2006, so its included articles are a bit dated, but the contributors at Bitch have everything I was looking for in feminist-focused critical essays. They are articulate, witty, and diverse in representation and view point. I would especially recommend that every woman read “Urinalysis: On Standing Up to Pee” by Leigh Shoemaker, and that every man read “Dead Man Walking: Masculinity’s Troubling Persistence” by Brendan O’Sullivan, and that everyone read “On Language: You Guys” by Audrey Bilger.
#3: When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi
This compact book is a memoir written by a neurosurgeon after being diagnosed with lung cancer, and is published posthumously. I read it in pieces over the course of twenty-four hours, because the language was so easy and soothing to consume. Kalanithi was a gifted writer and surgeon, which provided a unique reading experience that was both analytical and intimate. In my opinion, the books heart-breaking flaw was that it was unfinished upon Kalanithi’s death, leaving some of the philosophical arguments he presents and moral dilemmas he faces half-explored and largely unanswered. But it is this very flaw that provides readers with a rare insight into the early stages of the writing process, of a human being wrestling with their thoughts and their life in words. We don’t often get to see the first draft of a piece of work, and as someone interested in both the craft and purpose of writing, I really enjoyed the glimpse, however brief, into Kalanithi’s unedited mind.
You can find all of these books, my ratings & what I’m currently reading on my Goodreads page.