Last Month's Reads
Last Month's Reads
Hi! These are two books that I read in January.
Happy Friday, dear reader! I apologize for my slight tardiness this morning - in classic fashion, I saved my editing for the very last moment. And that very last moment was pushed back slightly because I decided it was time to reinstate Friday Treat™. For those who don’t know, Friday Treat™ is when I bake a treat for breakfast on Fridays. Today we (royal we) did the frozen chocolate croissants from Trader Joe’s, which I recommend with my whole soul.
Then, as I was taking a pic of my croissants to share with my Instagram followers (and you), I realized I hadn’t taken a picture of this week’s books. So then I had to bundle up and head outside because I really insist upon natural lighting, and oh my god, it is freezing out there. Then I came back upstairs to do my final edits, and that brings us to the present moment. So, without further ado, two books I read in January:
I Miss You When I Blink by Mary Laura Philpott
Discerning readers may have noticed that almost all of the books I read and review are novels, so this delightful little collection of essays was something new for me. Well, not actually new - it’s been sitting on my bookshelf for almost two years now, since my sister gave it to me in a little book swap we did. If I’m being totally honest a large part of the reason I decided to finally read this book is so that I could stop thinking “god, I really need to read that and give it back,” every time I looked at my bookshelf. Kathryn, you’re finally getting your book back! Trying something new and introducing a little variety was also a motivator.
Although Philpott moves mostly in chronological order from one essay to the next, this novel loving girl definitely felt the lack of narrative thread. At no point while reading was I dying to find out what would happen next. However, about 10 essays in, I had decided that at the very least, I wanted to know Philpott better. Her voice - honest, funny, caring, self-effacing - shines through, and the way she drops in references to earlier moments and weaves threads throughout the collection made me feel like I understood her more and more as I read on. Like I was becoming her friend. She seems like she would be good company in real life - she’s good company in writing anyway.
I think that’s what it really comes down to. These essays were pleasant reading, mostly easygoing with some pearls of real wisdom sprinkled in. They’re kind of self-help-y but not preachy. There are moments of humor mixed in with moments of real depth and sadness. The praise on the back calls this book “a warm embrace” and “a book you’ll want to buy for yourself and every other woman you know,” and Ann Pachett claims that it made her cry. I’m not sure I’d go that far, personally. A lot of the book is about getting older (older than I am) and about motherhood too, so maybe I’m missing out on some of the emotional power because I haven’t experienced all that jazz.
My favorite parts were:
“This Guy,” the story of how Philpott met her husband - “The spontaneous existence of love where before there was none is the most insanely wondrous thing. It’s crazy magic” (84).
Her theory to explain why bad things happen in “Me Real:”
“When something unfortunate occurs, I tell myself it’s the less-bad thing I bargained with the universe for in exchange for something worst not happening. Like, if I miss my flight and can’t make it on a trip, I tell myself that in an alternate universe, I made the flight but the plane was infested with lice and I got a terrible skin rash, and that I must have made a deal with fate that if I could just be free of my lice-itch, I would give up the vacation.” (118)
“No Safe Place” and the idea that “one person’s more-sad doesn’t cancel out another person’s less-sad” (169).
Her relatable belief/fantasy in “I’m Sorry, Mindy Kaling,” that her policy of not bothering celebrities when she sees them out in public creates a kind of immediate connection between her and them - that they think “You’re obviously different from the rest. We should be friends” (260). I believe this too.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Back to the land of novels - I have so many thoughts on this book, I can’t decide where to start. I’m all a jumble! In a way, I loved it. I was pretty much hooked from the very beginning - blowing off all other responsibilities in the daytime hours and up until 1 or 2 am in the nighttime ones. Feeling that way about a book is always fun, so it gets immediate points there. That being said, I also found this book deeply frustrating! The two main characters drove me crazy. Likely, part of the reason I was so consumed by this novel is because I really liked Zevin’s style, both in the technical and narrative sense, but her characters SUCKED. This meant that I was tearing through it in the hopes that she would develop them into better more sensible people. When I got to the end and she hadn’t done that, I was disappointed.
The story centers around Sam Masur and Sadie Green, childhood friends, bonded by their love of video games. After a youthful falling out, they run into each other in college - he’s at Harvard, she’s at MIT. Their friendship quickly picks back up, and they decide to make a video game together. From then on out they, along with Sam’s college roommate Marx (who I actually loved, so I know Zevin is capable of creating a tolerable character), become the three musketeers of gaming. The plot follows the ins and outs of their professional and personal lives over the course of many years. There are more falling outs, reconciliations, secondary characters that come in and out of the story and many, many video games.
As I’ve already touched upon, I really enjoyed Zevin’s writing. I think she has a very appealing voice - simple, pleasant reading - intelligent but not pretentious. It’s straight to the point, but it never feels abrasive. In fact, early on in the book when Sam and Sadie are in college and reconnecting, Zevin is able to create a real sense of sentimentality without relying on overly sentimental language. I also never got bored, which speaks to the effectiveness of her writing because she definitely gets into the weeds about video games, the technology that goes into making them, the history of the gaming industry, etc.
I found her structural choices to be quite effective as well. The central arc that we follow begins in college and moves forward linearly from there. Vignettes from Sam & Sadie’s childhoods are interspersed, which helps to flesh out their characters. Also from very early on, there are interjections that allude to the future. Bits and pieces of interviews given by Sam or Sadie in years to come, game reviews from the future, or, most obviously, the first line of the book: “Before Mazer invented himself as Mazer, he was Samson Mazer, and before he was Samson Mazer, he was Samson Masur…” (3). These moments create a nice momentum and make the narrative voice more interesting than just a basic third person omniscient.
All that said, Sam and Sadie were deeply frustrating characters. They’re both sweet and likable and their intense platonic closeness is sweet too. The problem is, that closeness centers upon the notion that they know each other so well, they can leave things unspoken. It sounds endearing - they read each other’s minds and finish each other’s sentences. BUT they never ask personal questions that might make the other person uncomfortable, so it quickly becomes clear that they don’t really know each other at all.
Of course, boundaries are important in any relationship, but all of the obstacles that Sam and Sadie face in theirs spring from a fundamental failure (complete lack) of communication. In reality, this “mind reading” type of friendship doesn’t really exist. And I’m not being pessimistic - it’s okay that it doesn’t, but it means that to be really truly close to someone, you have to be willing to be vulnerable - to ask hard questions and to answer them. Still, their whole obsession with giving each other privacy would have been okay if they eventually evolved and figured out how to respect each other while still communicating. They never did.
There’s a lot more that I could say about this book, particularly now that I’ve got myself rolling, but I’m going to stop there. It was frustrating but ultimately, I was addicted to it. There were parts that made me want to shake the characters, the book and Zevin herself, along with some lazy, woke tokenism as is customary today, but the fun and clever and touching parts tipped the scale for me. Basically, I say read it! Also it seems like everyone and their mother is reading this book right now, and it’s fun to read something that lots of other people are consuming too. If you’ve read it or you read it in the future, let me know what you thought/think!
Big thank you to Gigi & Sophie Dick for giving me this book. Oh, and as someone who had to memorize Macbeth’s “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” speech in high school, the Shakespeare references were fun. Memorize more poetry!