The words exist, if we know how to listen
What's on my shelf right now + a Reading Challenge update
February 11, 2024
Happy Sunday, travelers! Today’s post is a book update with a few titles that have held me through the sloshy, icy January and into these sunny frigid days. At the end are my reading challenge picks for this month and next. <3
Still Born, by Guadalupe Nettel
It has taken me years to get to Nettel, and not for lack of trying. While in Nashville, I drove to my local bookshop and decided now was the time. I got the last copy, so I’ll take that as a sign.
A weekend later, I was sitting on the tarmac for two hours waiting for our plane to be de-iced (remember that snowstorm that came over Nashville? My flight back to Connecticut was for that day…). After the road and airport chaos, everyone on the plane had a quiet stillness. I read and read and read. By the time we took off, I didn’t even realize how much time had gone by because of this novel.
The plot centers around two women in their thirties, friends who meet in Paris and later reunite in Mexico City. One is so adamant she does not want children that she has her tubes tied, and recommends the procedure to her friend during wine night. But her friend surprises her with a life update of her own—she wants to have a baby and is trying to conceive. The pregnancy affects every character in visceral, profound ways. The story unfolded outside realms of expectation. Highly recommend.
A library copy of After the Winter is on my nightstand right now in its Spanish version. We’ll see how long it takes me, but I’m thrilled I understand it!
To Shake the Sleeping Self, by Jedidiah Jenkins
This month, I had a reading breakthrough. For years, I could not for the life of me get into audiobooks. It’s not a big deal, so I just let it go and checked books out from the library. But I loved the idea of its convenience, especially for long runs, cooking, and car rides.
That all changed this month when I noticed tons of audiobooks were on Spotify Premium. I gave this one a try and wow. I think I’ve found a rhythm — I can do memoirs read by the author, but it can’t just be anyone. It has to actually translate to a good audio experience.
If you’re an audiobook skeptic, try Jedidiah Jenkins’ memoir To Shake the Sleeping Self. When he turned 30, he rode a bicycle from Oregon to Patagonia. It’s an adventure in every sense of the word.
Honor, by Thrity Umrigar
I read this book for the January reading challenge category: read a novel set in India. I already read Umrigar’s The Museum of Failures for a freelance gig, and Honor sounded really interesting to me.
The story centers on an Indian-American journalist who has a tense relationship with her home country. To help a friend, she flies back to India to cover a story of an honor killing in rural Hindustan. Two Hindu brothers, angered because their sister married a Muslim man, burned down their house attempting murder. But she survived. This is her story.
This novel is so sad, but also so important. It’s better than The Museum of Failures. Honor is Umrigar at her best.
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
I must admit, I ran from this book for years. But I decided this Black History Month is the time. There was just something about the premise I found too difficult to cope with, because half my ancestors were enslaved. I also know this is how I want to encounter Black history, partly my own history. The pages of a novel are where I feel at home, so what better place to be when things get tough?
The plot goes something like this: an enslaved woman, Sethe, chronicles her life in antebellum Kentucky into her current life, post-Civil War and in Ohio. Her home is haunted by the ghost of someone she lost under incredibly difficult, complicated, frankly effed-up circumstances.
I bought this copy of Beloved in summer 2018, took it all the way to Ukraine, brought it all the way home, then brought it all the way to CT.
This one will probably be a heavy emotional experience for me, which I do plan to share once it’s over. Just in case you want to read some Morrison, this is what I’ve chosen to get back into her work. Maybe it’s calling you, too.
If you want to read a different Civil War-era book, I recommend Tracey Rose Peterson’s Night Wherever We Go. It was one of my top books of 2023.
Omeros, by Derek Walcott
I read part of this epic poem for my comparative literature class. If you’re curious, the comparison is ancient Mesopotamian and Mediterranean lit with contemporary Caribbean.
This is one of the Caribbean picks.
Omeros is Derek Walcott’s masterpiece. Set in his home of St. Lucia, the epic is a vague retelling of The Iliad and The Odyssey. I read excerpts for class and then bought my own copy.
Out of the pages I’ve read so far, I can tell you this man spins words like gold thread as if it were nothing. And his plot is very visceral, candid, real about the history of this island. Love, love it.
February & March Reading Challenge Picks
February: Set in a rural place
My pick: The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver
This novel is set in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, back when it was called “Congo” (which is what the characters call it). A missionary family from Georgia is sent to this community as evangelists.
As I read, this quote comes to mind (and I say this as a divinity school student):
“Most religious people live with shuttered windows, receiving light only from their own people and their own tradition.”
-Anwarul Azad and Ida Glaser
Genesis 1–11 Commentary in Windows on the Text
It doesn’t have to be this way, and The Poisonwood Bible reminds of just how wrong things go when we live with “shuttered windows.”
March: Book of any kind set in Poland
My pick: The Books of Jacob, by Olga Tokarczuk
You may remember this behemoth of a book from last year’s reading challenge, where I chose it as October’s pick. Olga is back for this March because the novel is almost 1,000 pages and I have a new approach to books this long: read it over months, even years. Come back and it’s an entirely new experience, because after a long time away, I’m new, too.
Also, a great YA pick for this theme is The Light in Hidden Places.
Until next time, a cup of warm and a real, raw, takes-you-new-places story.
-S
P.s. Title is adapted from a quote in Hamnet, page 96
P.p.s. I’ll be back next time with a travel essay. <3