July Books Report

I fell in love with Nick Hornby‘s way of documenting his reading life through the bound collections of his "Stuff I've Been Reading" columns for The Believer.

They don’t pretend to be a critic’s review; they’re simply a dispatch of how the book found him — what he was doing, how he read it, what he thought of it, what resonated and what fell short — and I just found them so charming.

Though he’s still writing them (thereby making any attempt to steal his format unnecessary), I thought, “Why not try it?” Write the sort of stuff you’d want to read, they tell you.

And so I shall.

Books Consumed:

The Outsider, Stephen King

The MANIAC, Benjamin Labatut

Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver

Ascension, Oliver Harris

The Ending Writes Itself, Evelyn Clarke

Biological War: A Scenario, Annie Jacobsen

It must be stated plainly: July was not a great month for the physical act of reading in its classic sense. Sharp-eyed readers who already are familiar with Hornby’s columns (or those unfamiliar but both curious and savvy enough, in equal measure, to head over to The Believer Magazine to check out the O.G. version) will notice a deviation from his form: I labeled mine “Books Consumed,” not “Books Read.” It felt necessary because upon reviewing my list, I realized I hadn’t read a single one of these books with my eyes; they were, without fail, audiobooks, every single one of them.

With my confession thusly made, I’ll turn to the books themselves. Gun to my head, I couldn’t tell you why I picked Stephen King’s The Outsider. Perhaps it was a manageable audiobook length. Perhaps it was the murder mystery. Whatever it was, it reminded me of the only other King book I’ve read (Mr. Mercedes), during Book Club with Courtney: As know-nothings, we just tried a title. Before long, I felt myself pulled along by the story but not much enjoying the prose and unsure how I felt about the side character of Holly Gibney. So imagine my surprise when I find myself similarly pulled along by the story (aided by a great audiobook narrator performance) only to find Holly showing up again. Dammit to hell, Stephen; you win! She’s charming; she’s a good detective. Do I like her any more after this one? Not really. But the lesson I should have learned from the first King book has now taken root: Stick to the classics — make it Carrie, It, The Shining, Misery, any book as old as I am (or older).

The MANIAC is hard to describe succinctly. It's a tripartite novel made up of sections about (loosely): theoretical physicist Paul Ehrenfest; mathematician and all-around genius John von Neumann; and professional Go player Lee Sedol. The first and third sections are relatively short, and if anything could be said to be the main focus of the book it would be von Neumann and artificial intelligence. The fascinating part, for me, was how much of the biography of the main characters (as well as others) was accurate. They were creatively packaged and, at times, confusingly so, but the amount that I learned from this book, the amount of things I ended up searching for and learning about, was immense.

Demon Copperhead was the book that derailed Book Club. Courtney couldn’t put it down, but I found myself struggling to pull myself through. Not for any deficit of the book; it was just as brilliant as advertised. It was the proximity to East Tennessee, which felt close to home (and literally was home for three years of law school)—the struggles Demon faced, the places he inhabited, the people he knew, they all felt a touch too familiar. No, nobody in my life struggled to the extent he did, not with drugs and substance abuse or abject poverty so deep it hurt, but a rural, blue-collar life felt under the microscope in an uncomfy way. As I watched him crawl from one tragedy to the next, I felt for him and countless neighbors I never knew. Another fantastic voice performance propelled me along so my distractions that derailed me the first time could not. It was a fabulous experience, but so painfully sad at times that I must have looked crazy, wincing in pain while perfectly fine otherwise, save for the AirPods in my ears.

Oliver Harris was brought to my attention by the TV-focused podcast The Watch. The hosts raved over the quality of these modern spycraft novels. I remember reading the first in the series that introduces Elliot Kane, the British spook too handsome to be George Smiley and too grounded in reality to be James Bond, a while back, and I remember enjoying it. But it was dense with facts and plot lines, and I struggled to gain momentum in it. Listening to the second In the series, Ascension, was a much more propulsive experience. I’m not sure that means it was a better book; in fact, I’m fairly certain I liked it less. But, as is the theme of this month of book-listening, the voice actor made a huge difference. At the end of the day, there wasn’t a ton of what felt like classic espionage in this one; it was more of a mystery. Kane goes to a remote island after a young girl disappeared, and basically he helps figure out what happened to her. There are, of course, more complicated plot devices and characters that make it more involved, but at its core, it’s a stranger-comes-to-town-and-solves-a-crime story. Very Jack Reacher-esque. Just as satisfying.

The Ending Writes Itself is without a doubt the most rip-roaring good time in this list. It was a blast to see a pair of writers—V.E. Schwab and Cat Clarke—join forces to craft a Christie-esque locked-room-style story that also skewers the publishing industry. A renowned mystery writer invites numerous mid-list authors from various genres to his island for what's supposed to be a writing retreat, only surprise! he's actually dead. (He's not there or anything; it's just been a secret his editor/publisher have been keeping because his latest book is due to release soon.) The writers have a challenge: Write the final 10,000 words to his latest novel draft, and whichever is deemed the best will get a fat wad of cash and a multi-book deal. There are twists and turns and tropes galore, but what I found most entertaining was the snarky insiders' commentary on the publishing industry as a whole. The authors take aim at genre, at criticisms of genre, at book deals, at publisher expectations, at reader expectations, and much more. It simultaneously made me want to write a novel and terrified to ever send it out if I could ever manage the task.

Annie Jacobsen’s Biological War: A Scenario is nightmare fuel, plain and simple. I was excited for this one after being thoroughly captivated by Nuclear War: A Scenario last year. The two scenarios are a coin toss of terrible endings for the world. The biological option perhaps more terrifying because there aren’t as many institutional and mechanical limitations. I love the way she takes numerous instances from the past and crafts them into elaborate what-ifs that are strung together. Yes, at times it feels like too much, too scripted, but the reality is these things have happened, to some degree, and it's a very short stretch of the imagination to think they couldn't play out just like her scenario. How to describe the scenario — hmm, well, think of it this way: The COVID-19 pandemic was preschool compared to Jacobsen's hypothetical-but-highly-plausible graduate seminar of a scenario.