What I was reading in August
Books Read
Commonwealth, Ann Patchett
Today will be Different, Maria Semple
The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
Take the Cannoli, Sarah Vowell
I took two days off work in August, but I was in New York and surrounded by love, and actually stopped working at 5 or 5:30 when I was working, so it felt like more. I also read so much so quickly this month and was amazed by how much longer and fuller the time felt. Commonwealth was my 6:00am airport treat to myself, a reward for having made it through the craziest work period of the year, and I bought it expecting it to maybe keep me entertained if I was awake for any of the flight. Instead, two middle seats and Patchett's propulsive story kept me awake all through both flights, and was all I was thinking about when a stranger occupied my conversation for the hour and a half commute to my parents' home from the airport. The annoyance I felt while talking to this stranger wasn't related to the invasion of my space or the expectation for social skills and interest (which tend to be the dominant flavors of my annoyance when talking to strangers)–it was related to the interruption of my reading time. I read it in two days, and don't remember the last book I read like that. I gave it to my Mom and told her to give it to my Dad and then my sister. There was something about the families, something about the structure, something about the writing. This book was a reminder of a former self, the girl who lost evenings and weekends in books and then sought escape in them a few years later. It was a reminder of the power and love that made me want to study literature in the first place. And it led to a flurry of reading.
Today will be Different is also about family and estrangement and the ways we act out the pains of being a sibling and a child and a parent, although with a completely different tone. My whole family boarded the Where'd you go, Bernadette? train at various points over the past year or two and this book was a gift for my dad, who couldn't ever get into it the same way and warned me as much when I picked it up from his dresser during my visit. I could see his point – it's a weaker story than Bernadette, and it felt like maybe the biggest problem was that it was rushed to print. It's hastily resolved, the story is a little saggy and maps a little too evenly to Bernadette. Still, I read the whole thing and enjoyed it, so why throw too many stones.
From Semple, it was a jump to Atwood. I had read Handmaid's Tale for the second-worst class of my college career and maybe hadn't read all of it then in my pettiness. I certainly didn't remember huge chunks of the story. I read this because my sister had just finished it and I wanted to talk to her about it, but it put me in bad moods whenever I finished reading for the day/evening and I didn't really want to talk about it. It felt so banal to say "well yep, this feels relevant and terrifying" every time we talked about it, but that's what we kept saying. Since finishing it, I've read a few interviews with Atwood, most tied to the television adaptation of the book but still focusing on this question of what's different from when you wrote the book to now? I'm in a bad mood just thinking about it now, so I'll focus on this – Atwood is so skilled at documenting Offred's documentation of the minute details of her life. She's so skilled at capturing the feeling of being stifled by sharing the obsessive documentation of ceilings and furniture. The numbness of repetition, the loss of identity through isolation. I could feel my body getting stiffer, more anxious, more afraid of drawing attention as I read. The crummy college class and my crummy college self didn't do this story justice the first time around.
I read Take the Cannoli because I had heard the radio version of one of the stories. Sarah Vowell used to be a big contributor to This American Life and her story about taking a road trip with her sister to follow the Trail of Tears is a big favorite – of the staff too. I heard the story during the TAL 500th episode celebration, where they pulled out their favorite moments. If you listen to the story, I think you'll be able to identify it pretty easily. But there's a lot more to Take the Cannoli, and Vowell is a skilled storyteller and it went by very quickly. A friend asked me about what I was reading and I tried to explain it and came up with "well, it's a collection of essays about one woman's understanding of what it is to be American?" which is not untrue, but could also be used to describe a lot of other books. But Vowell does it so well and she's so funny and dark and gets at the absurdities of America and the pain and horror and joy. She was recently on Nerdette, and talked about another quintessentially American moment she experienced and it felt related to Take the Cannoli and her entire body of work.
What are the themes of this month? Family? Generational shifts and similarities? America's brutality and America's gifts? Eh, okay, sure. It was just nice to have a month (and a couple of days) to just be hungry to read and not worry about connections or carry-overs. I imagine that will come, but in the moment it was nice to just reach for one book after another.