They say nothing happens in the book world in August, but I know the truth: it’s Women in Translation month!
I’m not a bookseller anymore, but I’ve got the old itch to recommend a bunch of books that adhere to a specific theme or set of qualities. Imagine, if you will, that this Substack is the bookstore table where I have assembled all of these titles, and you will at least give them a passing glance on your way to the Colleen Hoover or whatever.
After this, should that Billy Eichner bit happen to you, you’ll be prepared.
Winter In Sokcho
I will keep this brief, because chances are that if you’ve spoken to me at all in the past year, I likely tried to recommend Winter In Sokcho to you. I love it’s sparse, moody prose. I love it’s David Lynch atmosphere. I love the deeply sinister undercurrent that hums like a dying neon sign.
The Slynx
I started the year living in Chicago, and in the depths of the absolutely miserable Chicago winter, I had a deeply stupid idea: I was finally going to dig into Russian literature. Russian lit has been a major hole in my reading knowledge for quite some time, so I decided to really immerse myself in it, and in conditions as similar as possible to those experienced by some of the writers. What I found in Tatyana Tolstaya was not the frostbitten streets of Leningrad, but a deeply weird, deeply funny story set in a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland. The Slynx took me completely by surprise, and I have thought about its ending (wherein the revolution to overthrow the government is just two people fighting a third person) at least once a week since I finished it. Loved it.
Last Words from Montmartre
More NYRB! Qui Miaojin was a Taiwanese writer, an unapologetically militant lesbian, and a towering figure of queer literature despite her death (self-inflicted) at just 26 years old. Last Words From Montmartre was the manuscript that she left behind after her death. It is a novel in letters, detailing two women’s awakening, decline, and breakup, but the reader is encouraged to read them in any order they deem fit, which is a frankly bonkers way to tell a story!
Annie Ernaux
Full disclosure, I work at the publishing company that handles Annie Ernaux’s work (at least in the US) but that doesn’t mean I don’t think she rules. Most of Ernaux’s work is drawn from the meticulous notebooks she has kept for something like 60 years, and they deal with the subjectivity of memory, the elasticity of time, age, and the general changes in the texture of life as time continues to progress. Reading her books truly is like getting to become her for a certain number of pages, which is sometimes fun, sometimes harrowing, but always unforgettable. Happening and The Years are the hits, but keep an eye out for her new one this fall, it’s good. (Also, we’re running a sale for the month of August, so these books should be discounted)
An Inventory of Losses
Okay, bear with me, this one is a little high-concept. An Inventory of Losses is exactly what its title suggests, twelve chapters that all focus on something that no longer exists. Sometimes it’s a place, or a species, or a painting, but the one thing they have in common is that they used to be, but now are not. The chapters vary extensively in tone and approach, ranging from travelogue to short story to non-fiction essay. It’s like nothing else I’ve ever read, ever.
Natalia Ginzburg
All rippers, no skippers. Just jump in anywhere. It’s incredible to watch someone with such an absolute mastery of their craft, and we should be grateful to read her.
Postscript—
I could have kept this going all day, but I’ll cap it at six. I have some (quite literally) big plans for the fall, including maybe doing some kind of read-along series on Miss MacIntosh, My Darling (all 1200 pages of it), a defense of the epigraph, and maybe I’ll get around to finishing Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet after Autumn nearly took my head clean-off.
Who knows what the future holds, certainly not me. I don’t know a anything about anything.
See you soon xoxo