Expiration Dates
Friends,
I'm sure he'll love that I'm writing this, but a few weeks ago my husband cooked us dinner using half a can of beans that went bad. They looked and smelled fine, but were not. It's December, and there's a sense of everything having an expiration date, that once the clock strikes 12:01 on January 1st, we've run out of time for whatever we wanted or planned for in the year. Of course I get why so many year-end lists exist (and will link to the ones I'm on shortly), but I am deeply uncomfortable with how we as as a culture need to define best or "not-to-be-missed" books. Because unlike refried beans, books don't go bad*. They don't wake up at 9:30 pm and 2:30 am and puke all over things, like our children did that night. Reading is personal and subjective and loving a book is entirely about where you as a pulsing, thinking, feeling human meet a few hundred printed pages. The limitlessness, the reach across time, is what makes reading books so damn great, and the confinement of a book to its pub year seems silly at best. At worst, it makes the shelf life of a book seems short. Of course it's not. It's always fun to be part of a conversation, but a good cultural diet, like any diet, is varied and driven by one's own appetites and I hope pleasures. You are not obligated to like all the books on those year-end lists (and many of those books are truly excellent), or buy them, or even have a reason for not buying them. And if you "missed" any books this year, they still exist! Writers love it when you read our books whenever. We want them to live long lives.
When someone asks what I read and loved this year, these books float to the top: Invitation to a Bonfire by Adrienne Celt. Red Clocks by Leni Zumas. Tell Me How it Ends by Valeria Lusielli, Rachel Lyon's Self Portrait with Boy, The Wolves by Sarah Delappe, Brass by Xhenet Aliu, Hot Milk by Deborah Levy, All My Puny Sorroes by Miriam Toews. A number of these pre-date 2018.
*Generally. There are absolutely books that don't hold up to the modern age or our recollections of them. But none require a load of laundry and a bucket by the bed.
Nice Things About Back Talk
NPR Best Books of 2018. This book concierge thing is generally really really cool.
Other end of year lists: Esquire, Thrillist, Electric Literature, My Domaine. Subtext Books in St. Paul, Minnesota, a state I have always adored, truly, and now love even more. Double for booksellers. I got a nice little shout out in Adrienne Celt's Year in Reading at The Millions. This series is pretty great, and is my favorite way to reflect on just what the title says.
Using My Words
I reviewed three excellent short story collections for the New York Times.
I have a brand new story in this year's Short Story Advent Calendar. I talk about my process writing it here. Other writers with stories in this year's include Etgar Keret, George Saunders, R.O. Kwon and whoever is ahead in these next 10 days. I think this makes a great gift, to be opened on whatever 25 days. It's currently on sale from Canadian publisher Hingston & Olsen.
"Hide and Seek," a story from the collection, is currently making the rounds in Colorado in Telluride Magazine.
Reading, Thinking, Feeling
Writers, Protect Your Inner Life, which was sent to me by multiple people, though it's a few years old. This is on a literary site but it's not really about being a writer, though it does speak a lot to being tangled in your own marketing. (Hi, she types from her TinyLetter). I really enjoyed spending less time on social media this fall. I find myself creeping back on and am torn about what I'm doing here. Relatedly, Ta-Nehisi Coates in conversation with Chris Hayes on the Why is This Happening podcast is gold for all the reasons you'd think it would be, but so much for his opening about the space we lose as thinkers when we get sucked into social media. I've been trying to post and respond more thoughtfully.
The Witch Elm. Tana French is the only author who murders her characters that I can read. Pretty much every smart woman I know loves these books. I'm still making my way through the Dublin Murder Squad books (aka hoarding them), but I think about The Likeness on the regular.
We've been watching My Brilliant Friend. I got stuck at book 3, so this is very satisfying, to think that I will get to see it through to the end (we have a season 2 renewal here: I can't imagine we won't get all 4). But I was really taken by the way the mini-series uses both silence (the recaps!) and camera motion. I enjoyed what I got through of the books but shhh, prefer the visual versions. Also watching all the Italian names in the credits. A delight. (Though I still hold that Days of Abandonment is the best of the Ferrantes. It's intense, a certain kind of nightmare that I don't recommend if you're touchy about the stay-at-home years with kids.) And I very much loved The Cut's discussion on the podcast on why Ferrante fever is a thing, particularly Aminatou Sow, as ever, lending the real real "you did not discover this" perspective. Books about female friendship are my wheelhouse, so I've read a whole damn lot of them, and two that spring to mind about the intersection of friendship and neighborhood are Jacqueline Woodson's Another Brooklyn and Julie Buntin's Marlena.
I refuse to count how many ways there are to make coffee in our (not very big) kitchen, but my husband's birthday was this week and I couldn't resist this Bialetti stovetop espresso maker. (We got ours at Zabar's for New Yorkers.) I like to think the possibility of red eyes at home will make my work fly.
Where to Find Me
Added an AWP event, celebrating the long history and bidding farewell to the journal Glimmer Train. If you're in Portland in March, come say hey.
No, really, I'm working on my novel.
Remember, you're all the best.
Talk soon,
Danielle