Previous installments of “This Week in Reading” can be found here. Most recently: French Women.
I had a particularly good week reading things, so let’s start with my favourite thing: recommending a debut volume by a female author. I never get to do that, because I almost always read new things after they’ve been out for ages and ages and then no one wants to discuss them with me any more.
Samantha Irby. Meaty. Do you read “bitches gotta eat”? WE CAN WAIT. GO.
If you haven’t read it, the grossest and sweetest and funniest of blogs, you may still have read her essay “My Mother, My Daughter” in The Rumpus, which is wrenching and perfect and deeply kind. I read it when it came out last June, and wept snottily for an hour, and have thought about it at least monthly since. We can also wait while you catch up with that.
Okay (looks both ways warily), I didn’t want to include a sample of “bitches gotta eat” until after the jump, because it’s SAUCY, so proceed now at your peril. How should you have sex? Here are two things:
1 create some motherfucking ambiance. oh, i know. all you need is a half-inflated air mattress and a quiet corner of an abandoned warehouse to get your dick hard, sir. and that’s cool, but i’m not seventeen anymore. i’ma need some soft lighting and a spotify mix called “bedroom jamz” or an old jodeci cd on repeat or some shit. i need clean sheets and a pillow to support my head. you kids can have sex on park benches and the folding table at the laundromat, but after a certain age the mood and the surroundings have to be right. want to know where i lost my virginity? ON A WASHING MACHINE IN THE BASEMENT OF MY SISTER’S APARTMENT BUILDING. twenty years ago that was an acceptable circumstance for me. but i have arthritis now, homie. i’ma need you to have a nightstand i can leave my water bottle, potassium supplements, icy hot, prune juice, orthotic inserts, reverse mortgage paperwork, reader’s digest, worn cardigan sweater, and room temperature soup on.
2 let’s make on-top-of-clothes sex a real thing finally. i’m so fucking lazy. if i ever have sex again the only position i ever want to do it in is this one i read in cosmo called “saucy spoons.” erotic instructions: lie on your sides with him behind you so you’re both facing the same direction. push your butt toward him as he enters you. put your hand on his and show him how you want your clitoris to be touched. have him alternate between there and your breasts. THIS SOUNDS PERFECT. if a dude would agree to only fuck me this way while i 1 read my kindle and 2 just pull my nightgown up around my waist i will marry him. real talk. submit your applications, gentlemen.
Love her, and Meaty is great. It’s not a huge departure from the essays that a Samantha Irby completist like myself or Thomas Pynchon would be familiar with, but if it had been a volume dedicated to the intriciacies of campaign finance reform, I would have been deeply disappointed.
It’s good that Meaty was so fun and life-affirming, because Tom Kizzia’s Pilgrim’s Wilderness: A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier really messed me up. It’s wonderful, it’s like Under the Banner of Heaven, but it will eat your soul. Never have I finished a book and been so pantingly grateful that the author tells you what all the protagonists are up to now. I needed to know people were okay. And Kizzia manages to achieve the correct balance of self-insertion, I think, as someone who was a mover of events, in addition to a journalist, as well as letting the story unfold itself.
Next week, we’re going to have to talk about Francesca Segal’s reimagining of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence as a tale set in modern-day Jewish London society. I’m not done yet, but I’m having a much better time than I expected. Now, what are you reading? And what is your favourite single line from “bitches gotta eat”?
Works Referenced:
Samantha Irby, Meaty (Indiebound | Amazon)
Tom Kizzia, Pilgrim’s Wilderness: A True Story of Faith and Madness on the Alaska Frontier (Indiebound | Amazon)
Francesca Segal, The Innocents (Indiebound | Amazon)
Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (Indiebound | Amazon)
Related Posts:
Tags: reading with nicole, samantha irby, this week in reading, tom kizzia
OK PLEASE make her write something for here because I love her.
“do i hope he gets disemboweled by a grizzly bear with acid-tipped claws? SOMETIMES. will i ever let that dude halfheartedly mash his genitals against the inside of my thigh again? OH HELL NAWL.”
WE ARE CURRENTLY IN THE PROCESS OF BEGGING HER
TELL HER I LOVE HER.
AHHH I didn’t know she had a book coming out, that is MAGNIFICENT. (Also, my local bookstore does an online order thing that is super dangerous for me because I can choose to pick it up in store and just put in my name/email/phone number instead of having to dig out my wallet. Terrible for my budget and my groaning bookshelves.)
I am halfway through Middlemarch and I feel like the point of the thing has entirely passed over my head and is somewhere around Jupiter. My English professors would be so ashamed of me.
speaking of such things, I wonder if some day The Toast would run a book swap? maybe on a Secret Santa model? book-surprises/exchanges in the mail?
My shelves also groan, and I like to prune now and then, good stuff, just stuff that I might not reread and that my apartment no longer holds… It’s easier to motivate to give a book up when you know it would be going to a good home.
on-topic: Samantha Irby is great.
I would love a book swap! I also have a weird “good home” requirement for books that are perfectly fine, sure, for someone, but not the life-giving favourites I need to keep around forever.
hmm, we could do a little swap on our own. if you’re still feeling game, email me at my semi-anonymous email account, raw.cooked at gmail dot com, and we can set it up?
You two could also look into paperbackswap.com. You list the books you’re willing to swap, search or create a wishlist for ones you’d like, and then it all happens magically. Magic includes going to the post office.
Hang in there with Middlemarch. I do remember some halfway-through doldrums, but by the end you realize the point is LIFE. REGRET. EVERYTHING.
I just bought the Penguin drop-caps Middlemarch in hopes that having a really pretty edition will make me more likely to read the whole thing (probably I will be less likely to, because it is heavy).
I read The Casual Vacancy recently – JK Rowling’s first adult novel (not the recent pseudonymitus interruptus detective novel). I thought it was much better than I had gathered from the various compare-and-contrast with Harry Potter reviews I’d read, but it was also way more emotionally devastating than I expected. Who’s read it? What did you think?
I liked it less when I first finished it, but it has stuck with me in a deeper and deeper way as the months have gone on.
i really liked it, too and totally agree about the emotional devastation. i still think about random parts of it sometimes. the writing was beautiful! i, too, was surprised, cause i had read mostly negative reviews. i guess people just didn’t like that it wasn’t the same as harry potter (which i also love, no hate for hp!)
I was incredibly anxious by the time I finished it, which I almost didn’t because it was upsetting me. (Yes, I’m that person that would rather read fun, nice, happy things)
However, I read “The Cuckoo’s Calling” and enjoyed it much more.
I’m that person too, and I think if I’d realized how upsetting it was going to be, I wouldn’t have read it. But I’m glad I did. I feel like it must have been frustrating for Rowling – like she was trying to say some serious things about what she thinks about the world she lives in but reviewers couldn’t really engage with the substance because they were too distracted by trying to decide whether it was better or worse than Harry Potter. Which is like deciding whether Niçoise salad is better than peanut butter brownies.
I’ve been reading it for almost a year now which is peculiar because I am adoring this book. I just keep stalling out for several months at a time. I’m making myself finish it before I can let myself read The Cuckoo’s Calling which I’m REALLY looking forward to so hopefully that will provide some incentive to keep at it.
Doesn’t she do regular readings? Chicago: we should go!
Oh fer chrissake, why am I failing so badly at finding upcoming readings.
She often does the live lit shows. I saw her at Guts and Glory a few months ago, and I’m pretty sure she just did Story Club.
Don’t worry, guys. I’ve been re-reading Angle of Repose, because I wish to ruin a pair of contact lenses, and also to claw my face off with feelings.
This week I have been reading The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate. This is the first Mitford thing I have ever read. I am ecstatic. I want to get a flighty border collie and name it Bolter.
Also, thanks to a previous commenter, I have been saying “Do admit” to myself constantly this week.
Pilgrim’s Wilderness sounds WONDERFUL, in that soul-eating way. I’ve been on a bit of a “terrible situations treated with dignity” kick lately, which is an uncomfortable place to be reading. (Highlight: Julia Scheeres’s book about Jonestown.) I’m putting PW on hold now!
I’m reading Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan. Yes, I found out about the book through that God-awful Fox News interview that went around the Internet a few weeks ago, and the book is excellent. He tells the story of first-century Jerusalem, and Jesus’s role in it, beautifully. Highly recommend.
Is this a good place to ask for audiobook recommendations? I’m driving from the Bay Area to LA for Labor Day weekend, and I could use some listening material!
CALL THE MIDWIFE dude
(Is that a book?)
yup, it’s a memoir. Jenny in the show is supposed to be the author.
I have all the audiobook recommendations. That’s my one and only wheelhouse.
– Beatriz Williams A HUNDRED SUMMERS – perfectly narrated, great engaging characters a lot of fun to listen to, sweet story
– Sedaris & Gaiman both have recent publications they’ve narrated, and both are super at narrating their own work
– Jess Walter’s BEAUTIFUL RUINS – totally entrancing narration by Eduardo Ballerini, and the story’s a sprawling beautiful time, has that old Hollywood glamor
– If you want to run yourself right off the road, Jenny Lawson or Tina Fey narrating their non-fiction will crack you up.
– Oh, if you want something depressing but all-about-the-human-spirt-and-stuff, Laura Hillebrand’s UNBROKEN is my all-time go-to for that.
Pilgrim’s Wilderness is great! I mean I’m the target demographic because I’m obsessed with both Alaska and cults, but still, it’s great. Also, I saw Tom Kizzia read from it and he signed my book and he seemed like a very nice man.
Ohmigod. I haven’t been able to keep up with my internets for like six months, so I’m way behind on everything I love (except The Toast and other tweeted things, because Twitter is easy to follow on my phone and I have a starry-eyed crush on Ms. Ortberg’s account there). bitches gotta eat is at the very top of my list for September archive spelunking — which means I had no idea THE BOOK was out already. Seeing it here made me all stupid excited for her, as if she were a real-life friend of mine and not just a writer I admire. That’s some high-grade blogging witchcraft right there. She’s so great.
Under The Banner of Heaven didn’t eat your soul? I’m doing something wrong, here.
EDIT : UGH WHY AM I ALWAYS A DAY LATE? STUPID JOB.
So… I had actually never heard of this woman before and I clicked on the link to her blog. Such a delight.
I’ve been reading it for almost a year now which is peculiar because I am adoring this book. I just keep stalling out for several months at a time. I’m making myself finish it before I can let myself read The Cuckoo’s Calling which I’m REALLY looking forward to so hopefully that will provide some incentive to keep at it.