Favorite books 2021
1. Patricia Lockwood, No One is Talking About This - as an internet addict and pro-abortion parent this novel was deeply relatable, and left me in a puddle of tears. On the internet: “To be involved in a consensual hallucination of normalcy is much worse than being mad.”
2. Miranda Popkey, Topics of Conversation - sultry dialogues from the wine cellar in this formally inventive 2020 novel. Like when the Reality TV camera pans away and you still hear the drama, only the drama is real.
3. Avner Landes, Meiselman: The Lean Years - the story of a man who works at a public library and wants a better parking space. A young Joel & Ethan Coen should bring this to the screen. Made me think about the word circumambulation, the deity the sentence. I read this novel when I thought I was dying from OG covid and felt okay about it being the last book I would read.
4. Christine Smallwood, The Life of the Mind - a study of ambient grief, and an urgent reminder the mind/body problem is a woman’s issue. Textbook for writing in the close third person. I guess that’s the life of the mind.
5. For Now, Eileen Myles - minor work but still Myles for now. Read this lying on my back on the floor, wishing I was as cool as Eileen Myles.
6. Brooks Sterritt, The History of America in My Lifetime - deeply funny and moving quest for a man doing an impression of himself. Tender and over too soon, like the late Brahms on the turntable. Read this at the River House. Killed a few mosquitos with it, but not enough.
7. Lauren Oyler, Fake Accounts - This I-do-this-I-do-that novel reads like a true friend, an honorary ex-boyfriend. Choicest first word: consensus.
8. Greg Grandin, From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America - A cogent survey of this well-known story that America was like, Iraq was pretty boring—it gave us swell Kathryn Bigelow flicks but little else. So Donald Trump is like: gals, gather round my wall. I’m bringing Indian Country back on the inside where it belongs. America roars.
9. Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable - read this 2016 book in Cafe Luigi on Clark Street. Things aren’t looking so good for the planet but at least we’re getting good works out of it.
10. Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody - This “novel” written over decades is a smarmy mess at times, and a reminder that the prophet is also the servant. Felt like I was at the right age to read this, three years younger than Kerouac when he died. Read this at Calo Ristorante and the Farm House.
11. Gary Indiana, Do Everything in the Dark - Eternally under-the-radar 2003 New York novel about la vie bohème. Wish I would have read this right after college. Read it this year, tanning on the deck, waiting for a plane crash.
12. Charles Valle, Proof of Stake: An Elegy, a longer poem about coming to terms with life after death. Read this during a hard day at work and it made me feel better.
13. Jon Lindsay, Body High - Instant Classic medium cool LA novel. Stupendous editing. Belongs on that shelf near the register so I don’t steal it.
14. Raven Leilani, Luster - Hard, like a cracked diamond. The first debut novel I’ve read since publishing Jenny in Corona that I like as much as Jenny in Corona. Rode the bus for no reason to concentrate on this one.
15. Kate Zambreno, Heroines - You’ll never look at “Once Again, to Zelda” in the same way. Read this at the pool and in the pool.
16. Gary Lutz, The Complete Gary Lutz - One of those books where you learn the word “wibbling” means “speaking or writing vaguely at great length.” Read this at the dining room table under a banker’s lamp.
17. The Old Testament Book of Samuel - one of the first novels, they say. The story within that most typifies how I feel about society right now is when David comes leaping and dancing home from the wars, like he just bought back his stocks, and his wife Michal stands in the doorway hands on hips, muttering, what the fuck is he so happy about.
