all the books i read in march and what i thought of them
All the books I read in March and what I thought of them
I want to apologize to my readers because this blog post is unusually late. The problem may be that I have too much to do for school; the problem may also be that I now spend half of my free time constructing crosswords. I also want to extend my thanks to my friend Frank for bugging me to write this blog post.
I read five books this month. I have celebrated Passover 40% as many times in April as I have read a book in March. That's sort of frightening.
✨✨✨
The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between by Hisham Matar
rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
My professor kindly peer-pressured me into reading Hisham Matar's entire body of work. At the time of writing, I have read half of his full-length novels and, at the rate things are going, the next one I read is going to be fantastic amazing beautiful, and the one after that is going to be literally the best book I have ever read (from my sample size of two, the quality of each book I read is roughly double that of the last one).
I assume it's an isolating experience to lose your father to government-enforced disappearance and never be entirely sure that he's dead while losing hope that you'll ever see him again, but the author is very successful in explaining to the reader what it feels like to live with such uncertainty and bereavement. I hope it was cathartic for him. When the Libyan government taunts him with information about his father that they are clearly not intending to disclose, you almost feel the same glimmer of hope as the author. And as it becomes harder to believe that his father might still be alive, you almost feel the glimmer of hope slip away with him. Likewise, you understand the atmosphere of optimism during the Arab Spring, and you sort of forget that the Arab Spring ended poorly for Libya.
I really enjoyed reading about the author's extended family and I appreciated that no adolescents developed weird obsessions with their stepmothers.
I assume it's an isolating experience to lose your father to government-enforced disappearance and never be entirely sure that he's dead while losing hope that you'll ever see him again, but the author is very successful in explaining to the reader what it feels like to live with such uncertainty and bereavement. I hope it was cathartic for him. When the Libyan government taunts him with information about his father that they are clearly not intending to disclose, you almost feel the same glimmer of hope as the author. And as it becomes harder to believe that his father might still be alive, you almost feel the glimmer of hope slip away with him. Likewise, you understand the atmosphere of optimism during the Arab Spring, and you sort of forget that the Arab Spring ended poorly for Libya.
I really enjoyed reading about the author's extended family and I appreciated that no adolescents developed weird obsessions with their stepmothers.
✨✨✨
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
rating: ⭐⭐
This book is so much worse than East of Eden. I'm never going to recover from my disappointment. I was resistant to reading anything John Steinbeck wrote besides East of Eden because I was confident it would be worse, but then I convinced myself that the man who wrote East of Eden could never write anything that isn't good, so why should I be afraid? I should have been afraid. I was a wiser woman in 2022.
The main problem with this book is that none of the characters were interesting, and I didn't care about them. Casy is interesting; no one else is interesting. They had no personalities except suffering. There were too many of them. At various points, eight characters get taken out of the narrative, and nothing changes because they were just not important. Characters die, and I do not care. I made my dad read East of Eden because I'm a good daughter, and he complained that there was too much suffering to justify a bittersweet ending (my dad can only handle unambiguously happy endings that conclude books with minimal adversity), but he said he liked The Grapes Of Wrath because it was happier. So either my father is on drugs, or (more likely) he has no memory of reading this book. It is just tragedy after tragedy, man. and, unfortunately, I could not bring myself to be affected by any of it.
I really like John Steinbeck's narrative voice, especially in the little tangential chapters in East of Eden, but in The Grapes Of Wrath his personality hardly comes through at all. I think there is just too much dialogue. So much dialogue. If you are going to have that much dialogue in a book, you should make very sure that the characters' personalities make all of that yapping fun and interesting. I do think it's good dialogue. It sounds like real people talking. I guess my real complaint is that the characters just feel like cardboard cutouts of misery and good old-fashioned American grit that are meant to make us sympathize with the struggles of the Okies. This might be an interesting book for people who are not familiar with migrant workers who left the Midwest during the great depression, but I remember reading about them in elementary school. This book is not bad or anything; it deserves a higher rating by virtue of its objective quality, but I know John Steinbeck was capable of writing a vastly better book.
✨✨✨
In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar
rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
I’m not qualified to psychoanalyze the author of this book, but it was an interesting experience reading the three books he wrote about someone’s father being kidnapped because it seems to me like the memoir (or possibly his trip to Libya) actually helped him work through the experience of losing your father to government-enforced disappearance, and first two books (including this one) were failed attempts to process said experience. I think this because my professor tells me that his most recent book (My Friends) is about his friend. So he must have worked through his father’s disappearance enough to write about something else. Good for him.
Out of the two semi-autobiographical novels the author wrote about someone’s father getting kidnapped by the government, this one is much better. Anatomy of a Disappearance is trying to explain a very difficult experience using four characters and three events; it is a very minimalistic book, and it doesn’t work. You don’t really understand. In the Country of Men is much better on this front; the protagonist’s perspective is so much more vibrant, and the characters have interesting personalities, and I like the parallels between how the kid Suleiman acts and how his mother acts in much the same way in response to his father’s difficulties with the Libyan government. His mother is such an interesting character, and I really like how we learn so much about her childhood and why she turned out the way she did (depressed). I think the author wrote the clueless nine-year-old protagonist very convincingly, but Suleiman is sort of a strange character. He makes terrible choices, gives himself heatstroke, for no apparent reason, and he says things like, “without knowing why I did it,” “my foot acted seemingly of its own accord” sir you committed a felony. I’m sure I’m paraphrasing. Everyone in this book is sort of a bad person, or at least a detrimental person to know, but their interactions are very interesting.
I really think Anatomy of a Disappearance was a weird outlier where the author just forgot to write 70% of the book, which is why it feels empty and lifeless, whereas his other books feel exciting and alive. I assume My Friends is probably very good, although I will have to verify this claim at some point.
Out of the two semi-autobiographical novels the author wrote about someone’s father getting kidnapped by the government, this one is much better. Anatomy of a Disappearance is trying to explain a very difficult experience using four characters and three events; it is a very minimalistic book, and it doesn’t work. You don’t really understand. In the Country of Men is much better on this front; the protagonist’s perspective is so much more vibrant, and the characters have interesting personalities, and I like the parallels between how the kid Suleiman acts and how his mother acts in much the same way in response to his father’s difficulties with the Libyan government. His mother is such an interesting character, and I really like how we learn so much about her childhood and why she turned out the way she did (depressed). I think the author wrote the clueless nine-year-old protagonist very convincingly, but Suleiman is sort of a strange character. He makes terrible choices, gives himself heatstroke, for no apparent reason, and he says things like, “without knowing why I did it,” “my foot acted seemingly of its own accord” sir you committed a felony. I’m sure I’m paraphrasing. Everyone in this book is sort of a bad person, or at least a detrimental person to know, but their interactions are very interesting.
I really think Anatomy of a Disappearance was a weird outlier where the author just forgot to write 70% of the book, which is why it feels empty and lifeless, whereas his other books feel exciting and alive. I assume My Friends is probably very good, although I will have to verify this claim at some point.
✨✨✨
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
For me, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler is perhaps the most delightful book possible. I would maybe not recommend it to people who like interesting characters and exciting plots and creative worldbuilding, but I only like one of those things, so it’s okay. Throughout the book, the protagonist (you, because it’s written in the second person) becomes invested in a book that some external circumstance prevents him from finishing. In the process of securing a complete copy, he realizes that the book was published under the wrong title, and his allegedly complete copy is still incomplete, and also an entirely different book that he becomes even more invested in. This repeats for 260 pages. Sinister behavior is afoot. It is very convoluted, and you should just read it so you can still be confused. You also get to read the first chapters of all of the books that get cut off, because the author has written them.
On a more abstract level, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler is about what it’s like to be a reader. There definitely is commentary on the relationship between the reader and the author, but it feels wrong to talk about because I think the book really does not want me to think too hard about what it’s trying to say. Ignoring the sentence I just wrote, the protagonist falls in love with the character Ludmilla and gets her to join him on his quest to read a complete version of the various books they encounter, and I love how reading together transforms their relationship as well as the book itself. As in real life, reading a book concurrently with someone else is an expression of love, or at least an attempt to reach out to someone else to keep away the call of the endless void. Reading together and falling in love can’t be separated for Ludmilla and the protagonist. It may be clear from other things I have written or said that I am cynical about romantic relationships, but it could have been any kind of relationship, and the idea would be the same.
For all of its convoluted storyline, this book has a very uncomplicated and optimistic attitude. The protagonist and Ludmilla just really love to read; everyone around them has some kind of ulterior motive for their actions, but everything Ludmilla and the protagonist do is because they want to know how the story continues (or because of attraction to each other). The protagonist could be in prison and the main thing he wants to know is whether the library has a complete version of the last book he was reading. Every time I read this book, it reminds me how nice it is to be a reader. It’s really delightful!! Once, I did not know the answer to a question on an AP test, so I told the scorer to read this book instead of writing something relevant. I wonder if they read it.
In my previous review of this book, I expressed admiration for the character Lotaria (Ludmilla’s sister), who has a machine that reads books in minutes and creates a concordance from which she deduces the book’s general vibe and political agenda. I wonder what drugs I was on when I said that she was the “major appeal” of this book. How did I like her better than Ludmilla? I think Ludmilla is actually my favorite character in all of literature. If I had a kid, I wouldn’t, but if I did, I would name the kid Ludmilla, even if the kid was male. She is just a nice girl who likes to read. Both Ludmilla and the male reader are sort of everypersons, so you can really just project yourself onto them, but I like myself, so it makes sense that I project myself onto her and then adore her character. Every chapter, she says, “the kind of book I like to read is [style of writing Ludmilla enjoys],” and then the following book fragment is written pretty overtly in that style. I like repetition. In my life broadly, whenever something happens more than once, I really enjoy that. This is probably why I enjoy If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler.
Interestingly, I read this book for the second time while I had covid, and for the third time shortly after having had covid. That's sort of interesting. I think this book cures covid.
On a more abstract level, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler is about what it’s like to be a reader. There definitely is commentary on the relationship between the reader and the author, but it feels wrong to talk about because I think the book really does not want me to think too hard about what it’s trying to say. Ignoring the sentence I just wrote, the protagonist falls in love with the character Ludmilla and gets her to join him on his quest to read a complete version of the various books they encounter, and I love how reading together transforms their relationship as well as the book itself. As in real life, reading a book concurrently with someone else is an expression of love, or at least an attempt to reach out to someone else to keep away the call of the endless void. Reading together and falling in love can’t be separated for Ludmilla and the protagonist. It may be clear from other things I have written or said that I am cynical about romantic relationships, but it could have been any kind of relationship, and the idea would be the same.
For all of its convoluted storyline, this book has a very uncomplicated and optimistic attitude. The protagonist and Ludmilla just really love to read; everyone around them has some kind of ulterior motive for their actions, but everything Ludmilla and the protagonist do is because they want to know how the story continues (or because of attraction to each other). The protagonist could be in prison and the main thing he wants to know is whether the library has a complete version of the last book he was reading. Every time I read this book, it reminds me how nice it is to be a reader. It’s really delightful!! Once, I did not know the answer to a question on an AP test, so I told the scorer to read this book instead of writing something relevant. I wonder if they read it.
In my previous review of this book, I expressed admiration for the character Lotaria (Ludmilla’s sister), who has a machine that reads books in minutes and creates a concordance from which she deduces the book’s general vibe and political agenda. I wonder what drugs I was on when I said that she was the “major appeal” of this book. How did I like her better than Ludmilla? I think Ludmilla is actually my favorite character in all of literature. If I had a kid, I wouldn’t, but if I did, I would name the kid Ludmilla, even if the kid was male. She is just a nice girl who likes to read. Both Ludmilla and the male reader are sort of everypersons, so you can really just project yourself onto them, but I like myself, so it makes sense that I project myself onto her and then adore her character. Every chapter, she says, “the kind of book I like to read is [style of writing Ludmilla enjoys],” and then the following book fragment is written pretty overtly in that style. I like repetition. In my life broadly, whenever something happens more than once, I really enjoy that. This is probably why I enjoy If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler.
Interestingly, I read this book for the second time while I had covid, and for the third time shortly after having had covid. That's sort of interesting. I think this book cures covid.
✨✨✨
Quichotte by Salman Rushdie
rating: ⭐⭐⭐
I read this book because we were learning about the fatwa and assassination attempt against Salman Rushdie in my Islamic Law class. I hope that guy stabbing him did good things for his book sales (I borrowed Quichotte from the library). I would like to read the memoir about his assassination attempt, but I think I just have to accept that it won't be available to borrow from the library for several months. My professor (different professor) has met Salman Rushdie, actually. When he was a grad student, he organized a literary event and invited Salman Rushdie, not expecting a reply or anything, but Salman Rushdie did in fact show up at my professor's literary event. So my professor was acting as an usher for a lecture or something when next to him appears the person of Salman Rushdie. And my professor, with what social skills he possessed, decided that he should say something to his esteemed guest. So my professor said, hello. And Salman Rushdie said, hello. and my professor said, so how about that fatwa?
Aanyway, this was more enjoyable than Don Quixote! However it did not do the same fun thing where random people hijack the narrative for a few hundred pages because they are actually much more interesting than Don Quixote himself. In fact, this book sort of does the opposite because there are two separate storylines—fake Don Quixote as well as the author—and they mirror each other. Every story is Don Quixote. They have the same emotional difficulties and the same yearning, and I thought this was pretty cool because (just broadly in my life) I like it when things happen twice. But, on the other hand, for this reason I would have preferred this retelling to be closer to Don Quixote. It's possible it's a very faithful retelling, and I just forgot most of the details of that book beyond the plot summary.
My problem with this book is that the author's perspective is so much more interesting than Quichotte's perspective. Quichotte doesn't really get up to any fun shenanigans, he's just crazy. His craziness manifests in weird abstract speeches rather than tilting at windmills. Where were the windmills!! The family drama between the various brothers and sisters was very good. My other problem is, especially in terms of gender roles and the way the book talks about feminism, this book is so obnoxiously 21st century. Like, when the narrative updates outdated tropes, it is about as subtle as a plane crash. I think I would rather just read misogyny.
Aanyway, this was more enjoyable than Don Quixote! However it did not do the same fun thing where random people hijack the narrative for a few hundred pages because they are actually much more interesting than Don Quixote himself. In fact, this book sort of does the opposite because there are two separate storylines—fake Don Quixote as well as the author—and they mirror each other. Every story is Don Quixote. They have the same emotional difficulties and the same yearning, and I thought this was pretty cool because (just broadly in my life) I like it when things happen twice. But, on the other hand, for this reason I would have preferred this retelling to be closer to Don Quixote. It's possible it's a very faithful retelling, and I just forgot most of the details of that book beyond the plot summary.
My problem with this book is that the author's perspective is so much more interesting than Quichotte's perspective. Quichotte doesn't really get up to any fun shenanigans, he's just crazy. His craziness manifests in weird abstract speeches rather than tilting at windmills. Where were the windmills!! The family drama between the various brothers and sisters was very good. My other problem is, especially in terms of gender roles and the way the book talks about feminism, this book is so obnoxiously 21st century. Like, when the narrative updates outdated tropes, it is about as subtle as a plane crash. I think I would rather just read misogyny.
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