What I liked reading this year
I have a lot of thoughts about the books I didn’t like reading this year. But I'm not bothered committing them here.
There's an opening scene in an episode of Fraiser with he and Niles come home from a restaurant and Daphne, I think, asks them how the meal was and one of the men says perfect except for one thing. She then says something along the lines of that being exactly the way they like it, and sure enough, they extrapolate. I think I watched that scene anyway.
However, saying some books I read were perfect except for one thing is very generous. Too generous. So, instead, here are a few things I’ve read the past eleven or so months I really enjoyed or thought about long after.
The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy
I was talking about miscarriage with a friend earlier this year as I was writing a feature about pregnancy loss. It was eye-opening and the phone interviews I conducted were… I can’t say fierce emotional tennis as it implies I experienced a fraction of the trauma the women who kindly gave up their time and privacy did. It was tough, and if you are an editor who commissions article with an intent to horrify and shock, try and facilitate some talk therapy for your writers.
I was telling my friend some of the stories I was putting in the article and we talked about how men aren’t really clued into a lot of what women are expected to go through. I said, flippantly, “The only miscarriage guys we know know about is Ariel Levy’s.”
It wasn’t a nice thing to say, because Ariel Levy is a human being, and the article she wrote a few years ago for The New Yorker about losing a wanted pregnancy on assignment in Mongolia is earth-shattering. But I was trying to get at my assumption that certain men need to have issues communicated to them by publications of grand record before they give a shit. “We need a New Yorker abortion or New Yorker pay gap,” we joked.
This memoir was a pick for my book club, and I gulped it in days. Which isn’t a usual habit of Book Club Jean. The book expands on the New Yorker essay, which comes late enough in the text, and looks at Levy’s keening marriage, biological clocks, and forgiveness. From the opening chapters, where Levy recounts how your twenties and thirties becomes a biological battleground, I was there. I’m witnessing a lot of change and shifting among the women I know. Scrolling Instagram after a bank holiday gives me a heart murmur. I imagine it only gets worse.
This, from the preface, got the highlight: “Until recently, I lived in a world where lost things could always be replaced. But it has been made overwhelmingly clear to me now that anything you think is yours by right can vanish, and what you can do about that is nothing at all.”
You can make plans, but the idea of perfect alignment is the shakiest ground.
Dirty Duet by Laurelin Paige
Paige’s romance novels could be described as taboo, so if you need smelling salts after a Starz show maybe don’t. I think her writing is amazing and her female characterisation- flawed, fucked up, self-aware, grown-up – is in a league of its own.
The plot starts out love triangle-ish, there’s a lot of focus on the heroine’s career – my catnip, and it’s super dramatic. Trigger warning, this one deals with rape fantasy as a way to overcome trauma. Sabrina Lind is a college freshman with a thing for a fellow student, a very wealthy good-time guy. His older best friend is her TA. Something criminal happens. Then something unethical. Years later they all end up working together in a massive advertising firm and it’s very clear no one has gone to therapy.
The first book is called Dirty Filthy Rich Men, which might give you a bit of a pause if you’re new to this sort of genre. But we’re living in a country where there is an athlete’s memoir on bookshelves around the country called Gooch. I think that should be a national conversation.
Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling! by Emer McLysaght, Sarah Breen
I cried in a hotel room and on an Aircoach reading this book. It’s so kind, so lovely.
Scribble Scribble by Nora Ephron
Being a fan of Nora Ephron isn’t a character trait, although the way some people go on you’d swear I’d have to give you first dibs on bone marrow if we’ve read the same books. Late last year I got around to watching the HBO documentary about her, Everything is Copy, and went back to her writing. This time I read beyond the personal essays and looked at her articles on media and the machine – the Scribble Scribble part. It sort of changed my life, philosophy, perception. She really didn’t give a shit. We talk a lot about she used pain and made great films, but I enjoyed exploring the critiquing claws. To be honest, letting all her writings permeate, I’d say if we met she’d have hated me.
I don’t think we have her sort in Ireland. We have people who report on media, social media users make healthy and necessary critiques of the Irish Times opinion article choices. But we don’t have Nora. Which is a pity, as during freefalls there are some great stories. But then, you could argue, are we too small a country for such behaviour? Can you get away with true honesty?
Here is some of her scathing typing on People magazine back in the day:
"I have nothing against short articles, and no desire to read more than 1500 words or so on most of the personalities People profiles. In fact, in the case of a number of those personalities—and here the name of Telly Savalas springs instantly to mind—a caption would suffice. I have no quarrel with the writing in the magazine, which is slick and perfectly competent. I wouldn’t mind if People were just a picture magazine, if I could at least see the pictures; there is an indefinable something in its art direction that makes the magazine look remarkably like the centerfold of the Daily News. And I wouldn’t even mind if it were a fan magazine for grownups—if it delivered the goods. But the real problem is that when I finish reading People, I always feel that I have just spent four days in Los Angeles. Women’s Wear Daily at least makes me feel dirty; People makes me feel that I haven’t read or learned or seen anything at all. I don’t think this is what Richard Stolley means when he says he wants to leave his readers wanting more: I tend to be left feeling that I haven’t gotten anything in the first place. And even this feeling is hard to pinpoint; I am looking at a recent issue of People, with Hugh Hefner on the cover, and I can’t really say I didn’t learn anything in it: On page 6 it says that Hefner told his unauthorized biographer that he once had a homosexual experience. I didn’t actually know that before reading People, but somehow it doesn’t surprise me.”
Those thoughts, they echo what I hear people say about certain internet personalites at the moment. You could tailor the above about a lot of them, just minor edits, and it could nail so much. Some might find it skin crawling that I equate social media accounts with magazine, but I would do that IRL. They have advertising, they are publishing, they have an audience. Some boxes are ticked.
Nothing they say surprises me.
You’ll find Scribble Scribble in an anthology of Ephron’s writing, Crazy Salad & Scribble Scribble.
