July 2023
Top book of the month has got to go to R.F. Kuang’s Babel. I’d been aware of this one since it came out last August, it was buzzy! Flying off the shelves! Over 500 pages!! Obviously people are into this book, but of course whenever anything gets popular I become my middle school, anti-conformist, nOt LiKE tHe OtHeR girls self and reject it outright. Why would I listen to the masses? What could thousands of people know?! I am the sole arbiter of taste. Also (and equally importantly)…… big book scary!! What if I’m too stupid to manage this? What if I try at something and fail! Sure I read dozens of books a year but what if this one breaks me forever!!!!
Late 2022, I saw some footage of Kuang speaking at a Harper Collins Strike Rally. She said she wrote one of Harper’s bestselling books that year, a book that was all about the power of collective action and workers’ rights, and that if Harper wanted to continue publishing her books… then they better start providing their staff with the respect and fair pay they deserve. A best-selling author showing up in the rain to call out her publisher?!* A book about the power of strikes?! I didn’t know she was chill like that!
I rushed to my Brooklyn Public Library app to join the miles long hold list for Babel. It took MANY months (I think I was around 170th in line). But at long last, I had it in my clutches. I was impressed how easily and quickly Kuang developed her alternate history, “silver is magic”, version of Oxford. I tend to stray away from historical fiction and fantasy but there I was, eating out of the palm of her hand. I read the bulk of it in three days in between episodes of Lost (thanks MIke’s Mic for inspiring this mania).
Babel is a book about friendship, betrayal, colonialism, empire, the power of language. It’s reminiscent of one of my favorite books, The Secret History (DONNA TARTT PLEASE PUBLISH AGAIN SOON, WE’RE OVERDUE). It was one of those books where reading it isn’t enough. You have to tell all your friends about it. My unending plot ravings and quotations convinced my roommate to start it (1 down 7 billion to go🫡).
The other big hit for me was Jenny Slate’s Little Weirds. I inhaled the audiobook in one day on a long walk around Central Park (the north half of the big loop is transcendent, huge recommend from me). I knew of Slate generally but the only work of hers I really knew was the Marcel the Shell movie. I… adore this woman. To call this book a memoir would be selling it short. It’s not the typical “here’s my early childhood and career trajectory”. It’s not quite an essay collection either, somewhere in between the two yet unlike anything else I’ve read. She expands on her feelings, hopes, and fears; leans into her imagination and is unafraid of pure silliness. She goes beyond the factual truth of events and into the emotional core of moments. I was particularly moved by “Trench-times” and the recurring section “I died”.
I left feeling inspired by her capacity for wonder and play.
*yeah, I realize this isn’t that high a bar to clear. Because Kuang was one of their bestselling authors of the year and comes from money, she has a certain level of job security that many other authors do not. But still, it was something!
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Other standouts of July include:
Strong Female Character by Fern Brady
Superfan by Jen Sookfong Lee
Butts: A Backstory by Heather Radke
I encourage you to pop into your local library branch or nearest independent bookstore for any of these titles!
