What We're Reading, Vol. 25: August 2020

Jenny Offill’s Weather. Photography by Olivia Gündüz-Willemin.

As summer comes to its peak, we’re continuing to take on our TBR piles while reaching for long glasses of iced drinks to keep us cool.

Here’s what we’re reading this month…

Olivia Gündüz-Willemin

Calm has been on my mind this month, or at least the pursuit of it. Oddly though, that means that the books that I’ve read have been anything but. There’s something upsetting to me about reading books disconnected from day to day reality when the world is in shambles – not because there’s anything wrong with it, but because chaos has become so fundamental to our lives that I tend to feel like something is suspiciously wrong when that isn’t reflected in our fiction. As such, Jenny Offill’s Weather was the standout of the month for me. A fragmentary novella that reads as a stream of thoughts of a university librarian who gets more and more drawn into the looming climate apocalypse, Weather is less dramatic, dystopian fiction and more like an oddly peaceful, and sometimes comedic reflection of our time. Very little happens in terms of plot, but worlds change as the novel passes, and it’s one of the best books on our time.

Other highlights include Jami Attenberg’s All This Could Be Yours – truly a dysfunctional family gem, Muriel Spark’s The Finishing School, and my current read, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. Next up now that I’ve finally gotten my hands on a copy is Ali Smith’s Summer.

Caitlin Carroll

I’m still trying to catch up on my anti-racist reading list. Stamped from the Beginning blew my mind last month, so I’m finishing up Ibram X. Kendi’s other book, How to Be an Antiracist. I’m both in awe of Kendi’s talent and disgusted that so much in his books are brand-new information to me. The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander is on deck after that. Otherwise, in times of woe I’m still reaching for middle-grade fantasy novels; I’m reading Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger, and I might read River Secrets by Shannon Hale afterwards.

Eliza Campbell

This month I finally found a hit in my search for some good adult fantasy novels! The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang is the first book in a fantasy trilogy inspired by Chinese mythology and history. It’s a dark, yet refreshing exploration of war, heritage, and personal trauma. Read the content warnings before you jump into it, but I’d definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a good adult fantasy novel that deals with difficult themes. As summer ends, I’m looking to clear out my summer ‘to be read’ pile. I’ll hopefully be finishing Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, and reading Mexican Gothic by Silivia Moreno-Garcia, two books I’ve been excited to read since their releases.

Tilly Nevin

This month I’ve been obsessed with reading everything and anything Valeria Luiselli, an author who has been on my TBR list for so long. Tell Me How It Ends, an essay in forty questions, documents Luiselli’s time working as an interpreter and translator for Mexican and Central American children in U.S. Courts, after a steep increase in the number of these children led to a priority docket created under the Obama administration – and significantly reduced the number of days children had to prepare for their hearings. The Lost Children Archive tells the story of a woman in a similar situation to Luiselli herself, but manages to be even more compelling and moving than her non-fiction. Most recently, the heatwave we’ve just had made me hunger for sun-soaked and stormy reads; Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk definitely delivered on this desire, with its heady prose and a sweltering Spanish summer that seemed to rise from the page. Stand-out reads for me this month were Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, a reread of an old favourite, and The Vanishing Half, an instant new favourite. Brit Bennett’s second novel is instantly attention-grabbing and its characters will stay with me. 

Amy Richardson

I’ve spent this month reading works by female authors and loving it. I started off the month finishing up Lindsay Davis’s The Iron Hand of Mars, which is the fourth book in her series about irreverent ancient Roman PI Marcus Didius Falco. These novels are good fun, hilarious, and regularly feature interesting and intelligent female characters who normally ending up besting the hero. It followed reading The Girl Who Played With Fire by Steig Larsson, so I needed a little light relief. I’ve also been enjoying The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold which is a fascinating and heartbreaking look into the victims of the famous killer. It places the focus firmly on them, recentring the story on how they came to be in Whitechapel the nights they died and refusing to talk about their deaths or who might have committed their murders. I’ve just finished Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein which was longlisted for last year’s Booker Prize and although I enjoyed it, it didn’t grab me in quite the same way her other novels have. I think for me it might have been exploring too many ideas, ranging through love, AI, religion, morality, and more. The novel I’ve picked up to replace it is Jessie Burton’s most recent – The Confession and so far, about 20 pages in, I am intrigued. Can’t wait to see if I love it as much as her previous two; The Muse is one I constantly recommend to others.

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