November Reads and Life Updates

Hiiiiii I read 14 books this month and here they are!

I also: WROTE A BOOK AND SUBMITTED IT TO A CONTEST you can read the stuff I sent in here if you’re interested it’s about what if Hatsune Miku was like a doll that lived in your house and you made music together and fell in love. If you want to read it chapter by chapter I'm also posting it on a webbed site where no one is reading it because I haven't showed it to anyone I actually know yet. I want to see if it could magically become popular just because it's good and not because I have some followers somewhere, idk.
Also I left a comment on this post if you want to say nice things about me anonymously.
Anyway, onto the books!

Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind by Molly McGhee

Okay that’s a 0 for 2 on “surrealist speculative fiction about the horrors of having a job” I’ve read this year (first being Flux). I didn’t like Jonathan, didn’t understand what was happening (I may just be even stupider than Jonathan I guess lol) and I didn’t like how... claustrophobic it all felt? Like why was he having to clean the dreams of the 3 people he interacts with? It also felt like. A screenplay more than a book, honestly. Or a comic script. Heavy on the visual descriptions and light on other sensory details. Not my thing sorry!

Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell

I stole this from the B&B my girlfriend and I stayed at in Boston over Thanksgiving. This was a lot of fun and only occasionally embarrassingly early-2000s. Her messiness was a lot more interesting than today’s hyperpolished influencer types. It had that Nora Ephron’s Heartburn “cool aunt pouring you an endless glass of wine at the kitchen island while she tells you her life story” feeling. I think if I’d read it earlier in the month it would’ve influenced my WIP even more.

The Default World by Naomi Kanakia

I finally made use of my other library card and found this there! I really wish Kanakia would make her protagonists just a little more likeable. Please. For me. But there was a lot of funny stuff in this one and the general world made sense to me, and it was a fun ride for the most part.

Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Succession but they’re Jewish and have different traumas than the guys on Succession. Some parts were very very funny, but idk I think it was too long for me overall.

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

I read this for Lebanon from the Storygraph Reads The World prompts because I’d heard of it and it was available through Gutenberg. It felt like a transcript of a sermon. It made me want to find a video of someone performing it like one.

The Husbands by Holly Gramazio

This ruled. OP being a game designer completely tracked, the cyclical nature of the Husbands felt very video gamey to me. I made like three predictions for the endgame and none of them happened, which was a pleasant surprise. I like where it did end up, and I liked how it got there. It was funny and interesting! Both of those things!

Girl Juice by Benji Nate

Finally read the full collection after years of seeing random out of context strips and I don’t know how improved it is by being in a collected form. I liked the short story at the end the most. I think I prefer Nate’s longform narratives to her single-page gags.

Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke

I described this book out loud to my friend and she said “this sounds like it was made in a lab for you” and she was right. It even has gay people! I read this in half an hour and loved every second of the experience.

Much Ado About Nada by Uzma Jalaluddin

I missed the Persuasion references because I haven’t read that one and did not pick up on many Much Ado references if they existed. Overall it was fine, I guess. I kind of wanted more humor though.

Luster by Raven Leilani

I Get It Now. Every single book review/essay I’ve read that negatively compares other sadgirl lit books to Luster was right. Luster did it better than everyone else. Every word is so carefully chosen. It’s funny, it’s deliberate, it’s thoughtful. This rules.

The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing by Merve Emre

I feel justified in my dislike of the MBTI now but also I understand why it is the way that it is.

I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue

Less epistolary than I thought it would be from the premise. I should have taken the Eleanor Oliphant comparison on the back as a warning. Overall quite miserable up until the end.

Loyal to the School by Angela Brazil

Anthropologically fascinating but not as homoerotic as I was expecting from a book where the main character is named Lesbia. I mostly read it because the main character was named Lesbia, and it was on Project Gutenberg.

The Housemaid by Freida McFadden

I stole this from the free table at work and read it at my girlfriend’s friend’s wedding. The twist was deeply predictable, the writing was eh. If nothing else it was a very fast read.