Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
Far be it from me to pit accomplished women against each other, but Jane Austen is no Edith Wharton.
Number 18: Jane Austen-inspired
Tag: the52bookchallenge
Number 40: A Book With Photographs Inside
Mermaids in Paradise
Lydia Millet
While browsing the shelves of the Fiction “M” section for something to include in this challenge, I came upon this cover. Since it combined pin-ups, pop art, and mermaids, I had to take a look. I was not disappointed.
Mermaids in Paradise was a lovely, absurd, sarcastic book about what would happen if mermaids were real. And what would happen is… not great. The book, however, is delightful!
Except for the last few pages which were… perplexing. But I think I liked it?
Regardless, I have read a lot of mermaid fiction over the years (even wrote some!), and what I love about it is how malleable the genre is. It is a strange idea that can unfold in many directions depending on the neuroses of the author. This particular book went with hard-edged cynicism, and the oeuvre is better for it.
It kind of reminded me of lesser-known Margaret Atwood classics like the Edible Woman, which is great, and everyone should read.
Number 4: Title Starting with the Letter “F”
The Family
Naomi Krupitsky
In a reversal of Get Rich or Lie Trying, where I read a book recommended by a YouTube video, The Family is a book that inspired me to watch a YouTube video (although without the explicit call to action, the book just reminded me of the video).
The video in question, of course, is the supremely entertaining Alice Cappelle’s explanation of why fiction is better than self-help.
The Family is better than self-help.
This is not to say that this historical crime-family fiction novel resembles self-help in any overt way, nor does it try to achieve the same goals as self-help books. And despite the plethora of terrible entries into the genre, I do have an issue with self-help as a style. But The Family is still better.
It’s a book that shares a lot of the same themes that self-help does: self determination, autonomy, the role of our upbringing in who we become, and it does it in a nuanced way. The varying viewpoints and third-person omniscient narration allows Krupitsky to make contrasting arguments within the same story, and allows the reader to come to their own conclusions.
Number 8: Involving the Art World
The Castle of Los Angeles
Lisa Morton
No one has ever sounded more like a native Los Angeleno in the year 2010 than the writer of this book, set in Los Angeles and published in 2010. I think it was the narration about the freeways that cinched it. And putting “the” in front of the freeway’s number. The vocal fry pretty much adds itself.
The setting felt realistic, is what I’m trying to say. Which is good, because The Castle of Los Angeles is a ghost story, so you want the world to be grounded in reality. And it was a good one, fun and unexpected, but not so long that you have to spend a bunch of nights with the lights on, jumping at every noise, until you finally finish it.
The Castle of Lost Angeles did get me thinking, if every place has a genre that resonates with it. LA would be horror. New York is rom-com (of course), Boston is heartwarming biopic, and all of the South stakes its claim to gothic romance, but California is the place for horror.
Los Angeles is creepy, it’s hard to pinpoint, but the movie The Craft does it well. This is a different creepy from the creepiness of the sunset district in San Francisco where Patty Hearst held up a bank, or the bone-like tentacle creepiness of the trees outside of Lake Tahoe where the Donner family met their fate. The whole of California has a haunted quality, distinct by region, but connected, part of a greater disturbing whole.
Sorry to get sentimental, I must be feeling homesick.
Number 14: A Character with Superhuman Abilities
Grimm Fairy Tales: Arcane Acre Volume 1
Pat Shand (writer) & Andrea Meloni (illustrator)
Graphic novels have gained quite a bit of legitimacy over recent years, so I’m not going to call them an under-rated medium. But what tends to get lost in the conversations about Alan Moore’s books is just how much fun graphic novels are!
It is the written medium that most resembles a movie, and of all the storytelling styles, I find it the easiest to get lost in. The way your eye flows from panel to panel feels more natural than paragraphs. It’s overall a more immersive medium.
Grimm Fairy Tales in particular is cute, and manages to pack a lot of world-building in a short amount of time. I enjoyed it and I’ll probably read the next in the series, but I wasn’t obsessed like I might have by an Alison Bechdel or Harley Quinn graphic novel (which clearly says more about me than the story itself).
Number 52: Published in 2022
Get Rich or Lie Trying: Ambition and Deceit in the New Influencer Economy
Symeon Brown
I know I was around for the rise of the influencer, yet I know nothing about them.
Their rise coincides with my young adult years, when theoretically I was paying the most attention, and yet I missed it.
Maybe my technophobia was to blame (I regarded iPhones with extreme skepticism as late as 2014), or the fact that hipster culture back then was not particularly glamorous. Our early-teen-aughts aesthetic was ironically ugly and thrifted from the worst Salvation Army’s in Ohio. We had graduated into an recession and we were angry about it.
But clearly some people were not, and they became influencers. Regardless of how or why I failed to notice them, they exist now, and they are here to stay (maybe).
So I read a book about them to catch up. All in all, I enjoyed this little treatise on the influencer. Sometimes I was depressed, sometimes I was horrified, but mostly I learned cool facts about recent history. For example, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter, Alicia Garza, has a masters degree from my alma mater. That was inspiring, unlike the rest of the book, which was more unsettling.
In conclusion, influencers are a menace to society, thank you for reading.
Ironically, I learned of this book while watching a Youtube video by influencer Jordan Theresa, who is clearly effective at her job, as she influenced me to read this book.
Number 1: A Second-Person Narrative
Bright Lights, Big City
Jay McInerney
I admit, I was skeptical that a novel written in second person would be anything but a gimmick, but I was wrong. It is actually quite engaging. It is also well-suited to a navel-gazey unreliable narrator (the best kind!).
But what you are left with is a premonition of the way your life will fade behind you, like a book you have read too quickly, leaving a dwindling trail of images and emotions, until all you can remember is a name.
To all the reviewers on Goodreads who wrote their reviews in second person, I salute you. It is a temperamental style, and you are braver than I.
Number 24: Addresses a Specific Topic
Shooting Star: The Brief Arc of Joe McCarthy
Tom Wicker
I did not know much about this era of American history when I began this book, but now that I’ve finished, I still don’t.
It is not the fault of the author, it is just that the subject is so banal, like evil. I fall asleep even thinking about it.
That’s why he was so successful.
Wait, was he successful?
It seems to me idle to argue that he was not a demagogue. If he enjoyed his success, he was not entirely sanguine about its cost in ruined lives and damaged careers.
That sounds successful to me.
Joseph R. McCarthy was a demagogue, certainly, but… he was also intelligent, energetic, audacious, personally generous… too avidly craving the affirmation of others, too recklessly seeking it in the battle he exalted, McCarthy too carelessly believed that the approval he won justified the means of its achievement… who fought desperately and with uncommon success to achieve the wrong dream.
Indeed.
Number 36: Recommended by a Favorite Author
The Heads of Cerberus: The First Alternative Worlds Novel
Francis Stevens
I admit I was not a fan of the last dystopian novel I read. So I went back in time a little to see what I could find. And lo and behold, the pioneer of the time travel genre herself, Francis Stevens!
I love science fiction for its timelessness. Despite, or because, it deals with the future, its tone has not changed much since it began. Sure, we aren’t still debating the morality of the microscope (like Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World), but the tension between skepticism of new technology and embracing it for the creative potential it unlocks is a consistent theme.
Heads of Cerberus was written in 1919, but it still feels current. I think part of the reason for this is because she does not try to imagine the technology that might exist in Philadelphia in 2118, which might read as silly today. Technology is stalled at 1918 levels, and society is the thing that is drastically restructured.
Stylistically, it works. Pulp entertainment at its finest!
Also, I took some liberties with the category. Rather than being recommended by a favorite author, The Heads of Cerberus was actually recommended by the Monster, She Wrote audiobook I was listening to. It has introduced me to some of my new favorites.
Number 45: A Book With Illustrated People on the Cover
Electric Arches
Eve L. Ewing
It must be said, I love poetry. It’s such a visceral experience. It’s much more exciting than reading a novel. Poetry absorbs you, it take you under. It’s the only writing style that gives enough credit to the form of the words themselves, and we should appreciate poetry more. Turning the pages feels like an adventure.
I saved some cornbread for you in the skillet on the stove.
I saved some cornbread for you in the skillet on the stove.
I saved some cornbread for you in the skillet on the stove.
I saved some cornbread for you in the skillet on the stove.
There is not much else to say except I loved it (which I suppose is a weird thing to say about something that covers so many heavy topics, but it made me feel, and that matters with art). Electric Arches is a great book, and I finished it all in one sitting. Also the cover is especially cool.
Kate's 52 Book Challenge 