i find myself able to read for pleasure again after a few years’ hiatus. and though no one asked, here is a full, ever-updating list of what i chose to read this year, most recent first. all of the buy links go to a non-amazon retailer. please, if you’re going to read these, go to your local library, lending circle, indie bookstore. fuck jeff.

23. Abolish Restaurants: A Worker’s Critique of the Food Service Industry, prole.info

(buy it!)
finished dec 26
takeaways—i read this roughly 1,000 years ago as a baby anarchist and re-read it at the end of this year after my housemate bought a copy (i think after we both listened to the excellent Citations Needed podcast episode “The Snitch Economy: How Rating Apps and Tipping Pit Working People Against Each Other”). overall, it really holds up and it made me feel better about being such a buzzkill about reliance on the service industry during covid. i’m all for texts that help digest unwieldy Left or post-Left theory into digestible, relatable forms and this is a gem in that category. if you have never worked in the service industry, then i would label this as required homework for you. if you have, or if you are during this especially dreadful time to be doing such labor, i think it could be very cathartic and inspiring. i really hope that the experience of this pandemic (for those who gave a shit about this anyway) which reconnected so many people to their own kitchens and their close friends’ tables can shift our relationship to restaurants. since working in the industry myself, it’s always been hard to engage in the ritual of having others serve me in this way. if i stop to think critically about the whole system behind that experience, it’s nearly impossible. i think that it does fall into a common trap in anarchist writing where the solution is “burn it down,” but also, i believe in burning most things down. if nothing else, it helped inspire me to continue not going out to eat just for something to do and to cultivate intentional, sensual, intimate experiences around food for myself and with those i love. would recommend to any Marx-curious folks, people burnt out by their insufferable jobs or bosses, and especially to those who have never done this work and can’t imagine what could be wrong with restaurants content note—mild descriptions of sexual harassment, physical and emotional burnout

22. My Degeneration: A Journey Through Parkinson’s, Peter Dunlap-Shohl

(buy it!)
finished dec 25
takeaways—i read this excellent graphic health memoir over a holiday visit with friends, one of whom has Parkinson’s. it was educational and engaging and honest. i especially liked seeing the author’s in-story adaptation to drawing digitally as his symptoms developed and knowing that context as i took in his work. as someone who has experienced severe, seemingly random degenerative symptoms as part of my own sickness, it was extremely cathartic to read Dunlap-Shohl’s mercilessly honest account of his experiences, reactions, fears, and judgments about his own disease. really cool art and really interesting technical information about this somewhat mysterious disease, about the weird world of the brain in general. it also provided a great opportunity to learn more about my friend’s own experience, since we met long after his own journey began. would recommend to anyone living with (or who has a loved one with) Parkinson’s, and to anyone dealing with any recent intense health diagnosis for themselves or a loved one (note: this is part of the Graphic Medicine series which also covers stories of Alzheimer’s, HIV/AIDS, and sickness/disability more generally!) content note—descriptions of medically invasive procedures, depression/suicidality

21. The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For, Alison Bechdel

(buy it!)
finished dec 14
takeaways—finally, finally got around to reading this queer and comics classic. this specific volume includes chronological strips from 1987 to 2008 and i spent many morning coffees working through it on the couch. it’s both hilariously entertaining and an important historical document borne of Bechdel’s desire to tell the stories she never saw about everyday lesbians, about her and her messy family of friends and lovers. watching the decades of revolving protests and the deaths and births of cultural touchstones through changing technology sort of calmed me down and grounded me in the permanence of the mundane stress of living through history and life’s changes. as someone who never really got into comics, i was really impacted by the passage of time for these characters and their real-time aging on the page. so fun, so sharp, it will continue to live in coffee table reach for a long time in my household. would recommend especially for queer folks looking for engaging tellings of our history, fans of comics, any lesbian who wants to feel seen/attacked by any number of characters content note—it’s a friendly read but contains storylines about cancer, transphobia, parental death and other challenging topics

20. Fledgling, Octavia Butler

(buy it!)
finished dec 11
takeaways—like so many people (i credit adrienne maree brown heavily for this) i read Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents for the first time in summer 2020. and what a time to read that specific dystopia it was. her writing (duh) completely captivated me and i knew i wanted to continue with her work. my sister had told me to read Fledgling, her only vampire book, and when i saw it on a friend’s shelf i borrowed it. aside from Buffy, i’m a total vampire novice so it was my first foray into the genre. Butler puts an unsurprisingly unique spin on the lore and manages to make a vampire book that isn’t just a richly built fantastical world, but also a statement on race-mixing, sexual politics, and white supremacy. the world is built meticulously and mercifully without the weighty exposition that usually keeps me out of fantasy as a genre. my one big hang up that kept me from absolutely loving this book (which is a semi-spoiler, but not really if you plan to read beyond the opening pages) is the placement of the protagonist in a child’s body. while this character is in her fifties in vampire years, it was distractingly upsetting for me to accept the many sexual and erotic scenes that placed her with human adults. i love Butler’s tradition of creating capable, tough, deeply-feeling young Black women characters who gain and weird real power, but i think i would have been much less distracted and yucked by an at least sexually mature protagonist here. all that said, the final section of the book is one of the best examples i can recall of an author using an engaging story (here, a trial) to illuminate many sides of a political and philosophical argument. would recommend to existing fans of Butler, vampire-heads who want something completely unique, people in interracial and/or polyamorous relationships content note—some extreme gore, violence, racial slurs, sexual scenes (sort of: see above) involving minors, racialized terror

19. Interior Chinatown, Charles Yu

(buy it!)
finished oct 29
takeaways—i picked up this book at the library on the recommendation (once again) of lovely librarian sarah. great to read while taking a screenwriting class, the book blends conventions of screenwriting with those of the contemporary novel. i was especially taken by the world created by the story, the shooting set of a police procedural-slash-working restaurant-slash-housing project inhabited by characters who are at once reduced to stereotypes and fully fleshed out. a meditation on (among other things) the western lens on Asian desirability and the specific quandary of Asian-American masculinity, it’s a story i hadn’t been exposed to in depth and i’m happy to have picked it up. for whatever reason, it took me a minute to get into, but once i had uninterrupted time i read through the bulk of it in one hypnotized sitting. would recommend to anyone, but specifically closet police-procedural fans and all writers content note—some graphic descriptions of violence and injury

18. The Shining, Stephen King

(buy it literally anywhere (but amazon))
finished oct 11
takeaways—after reading Her Body and Other Parties and listening to a podcast episode focused on a favorite documentary of mine, Room 237 (about the extreme culture of fan theories about Kubrick’s film adaptation of The Shining) at the onset of so-called spooky season, i decided it was time to finally read this classic of the horror genre. some in my life roasted me for reading Stephen King, but i think that millions of people can’t be completely wrong. there’s nothing wrong with a little halloween candy and i am so glad to have read the source material for one of my problematic faves (the film version). i’ve heard so much of the argument—book vs. film—over the years, but coming to the book having seen the movie dozens of times felt like a new and compatible layer on top of a well-worn terrain. without spoiling anything, i prefer the book’s portrayal of the relationships between the nuclear family at the center of the story. Jack Nicholson doesn’t leave much room for sympathy in his performance, but i found myself sympathizing with all the characters in the book version, perhaps jack especially. would recommend to any horror fans, maybe especially fellow film-heads who haven’t yet read the inspiration, and to anyone else who often gives themselves challenging reading and might deserve a fun foray into the pulpier side of life. content note—graphic descriptions of violence, psychological horror, racial slurs (for no reason…what gives, Stephen?), misogynistic language, and intense descriptions of alcohol detox.

17. Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado

(buy it!)
finished sep 30
takeaways—another off the list of ’things i really wanted to read and then didn’t because i didn’t read during the two years they came out’. so glad to have read it now, especially at the beginning of autumn. not for the faint of heart, but incredibly original, sticky, visceral body horror…for girls! obviously that’s said tongue in cheek, but hearing Machado’s descriptions of the carnage and unrecognized violence of feminized experience was equal parts chilling and validating. especially striking to me was the middle story, “Especially Heinous” which is required reading for any Law & Order: Special Victims Unit super-fan who ought to know better. taking the form of tv guide episode summaries, Machado weaves eight seasons of alternate history for detectives benson and stabler as the disturbing nature of their work and its tireless repetition cleave reality in two. i found something to connect to—often uncomfortably so—in each of the collection’s stories. would recommend to anyone craving a different, darker side of women’s experiences articulated through the horror genre, those seeking representation of lesbian relationships outside the stereotypical fray, and perhaps especially to aspiring feminist men. content note—graphic content throughout including gore, body horror, descriptions of psychosis, paranoia, and disease, domestic abuse, child sexual abuse.

16. Love Medicine, Louise Erdrich

(buy it!)
finished sep 7
takeaways—after finishing The Night Watchman, i didn’t feel done with the world that Erdrich built in her most recent novel, so i went all the way back to the beginning of her impressive career to read her debut. if you are new to her work, i suggest doing the same because it was very engaging to see some of the same threads she began to pull, both thematically and specific plot elements, in her first work reach a different level of detail, maturity, and texture later on. knowing the backstory of her own family—that the titular night watchman is based on her own grandfather—enriched reading the possible versions of that same character in Love Medicine. i felt that this book was incredibly cinematic, which is something i enjoy in fiction, and even coming back to write this short reflection over a month later, many of her vivid images are still near, influencing the ways i’ve been seeing since reading it. really beautiful, quietly political, relationship-focused multigenerational family saga: right in my personal ideal fiction climate. would recommend wholeheartedly, particularly paired with newer work as i proposed. content note—descriptions of violence, specifically violence against women including domestic abuse, ongoing genocidal practices

15. The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich

(buy it!)
finished aug 20
takeaways— a second–and surely not final–recommendation from dear friend and local librarian, Sarah. i felt cheated realizing that this was my first exposure to Louise Erdrich, and will be diving immediately into more of her fiction. as a non-Native reader, i felt welcomed into the world of these characters on their own terms and also learned a huge amount about the real world fight against “termination” led in part by the author’s grandfather. there isn’t much i can say about the quality of Erdrich’s writing that hasn’t been said by, say, the Pulitzer committee, or the hundreds of reviewers of this best seller, but it is clear she is at the peak of her powers. a reminder of how much i love fiction, and of its critical role in generating reflection, understanding, and empathy. i’m also a sucker for a multigenerational epic, particularly as i begin to critically consider work on my own, from the true mirror side of many of the issues of colonization that she deftly weaves together into a mystery, a love story, and a political quest. would recommend and insist that someone else close to me read it, stat, so we can discuss. content note— graphic descriptions of violence against Indigenous women, descriptions of sexual violence, ongoing genocidal practices

14. Calamities, Renee Gladman

(buy it!)
finished aug 1
takeaways— another late-retuned library book, and a recommendation from june. Gladman’s way with words pulls you along—my favorite example being her description of “the university level” as geological and architectural. she is able to pack almost too much into a short turn of phrase or a repetition. now that i’m done with my own writing tunnel (for now), i’ve been enjoying this genre zone of the poetic essay that isn’t too high on its own supply, its form, focusing on technique over ideas. she has both in balance. by the end (i don’t know if i was tired or if i just got a little lost in the “is drawing writing, is writing drawing?” of it all) i thought i stopped liking it as much. but then, only a day later, i found myself drawing as a way to avoid writing and the very same process she described happened to me. definitely looking forward to reading more of her earlier work. would recommend to poetry lovers who want more to chew on sometimes, to people with a challenged relationship to writing as a practice, to critics of academia.

13. Syzygy, Beauty: An Essay, T. Fleischmann

(buy it!)
finished july 20
takeaways— beautiful and lyrical as always, with compelling ekphrastic sections that work for me even though i know very little about art. made me feel unbearably lonely to the extent that i put it down for a number of months. as someone whose trauma and general affect puts them somewhere adjacent to the aromantic/asexual side of the spectra, the longing for the object of the text and the writer’s pleasure in a variety of relationships made me feel utterly outside of something, outside of entire aspects of queerness and life itself. i kind of got over it eventually and did really love this book. i, too, would love to build a house, to notice beauty, to savor all things. a long essay, persistently poetic, a testament to longing. would recommend wholeheartedly, despite my prior whining.

12. The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination, Sarah Schulman

(buy it!)
finished july 18
takeaways— halfway through and overdue, a copy was purchased. this is definitely a necessary on-hand reference because i know i will need/want to reread parts of it—or honestly cover to cover—again, if only to follow up on the references Schulman generously drops throughout. so many of my own frustrations that i am not able to articulate about the violence of gentrification and what it really means are captured here perfectly. i was frankly embarrassed to learn (again) how much of the real personal history of AIDS i remain unaware of, how many names we don’t remember and how quickly such a massive shock was brushed under the rug by the dominant culture, leaving only a whitewashed, cleansed, gentrified imprint intact. at the same time, i was heartened to learn some of the history of the struggle between assimilationist gays in the “post”-aids era and their radical, queer counterparts striving for something completely different, chaotic, organic and reminded of our collective power to continue that radical work today. would recommend to pretty much anyone and everyone. dense, but accessible essay with so many edges to chew on long after reading. content note—descriptions of violence against queer people, both by individuals and the state, descriptions of human toll of the AIDS crisis including medical detail and social fallout

11. Walk Two Moons, Sharon Creech

(buy it!)
finished july 2
takeaways— i found a copy of this beloved book of my childhood at a thrift store for fifty cents and had to bring it home. i have been wanting to reread it (passively) for some time and my sister and i have often discussed this author’s impact on our childhood reading. i also now live fairly near to lewiston, id where the climax of the book takes place and think of it more frequently now as i drive down the grade into the town. it didn’t disappoint and i devoured it in two afternoons after a long reading drought (books 10, 12 and 13 were all started back in april and sat largely stagnant through the late spring), oddly remembering much of it after twenty years but also feeling as though i were reading it for the first time. it’s really a lovely work of fiction that approaches issues of death, memory, heritage, and betrayal in a story that’s simultaneously appropriate for young audiences while refusing to sugar coat the content. unlike much of the media of my nineties youth, it has aged like a fine wine. would recommend for anyone interested in ya fiction as a genre, but especially for young readers, particularly those who might be dealing with grief. content note—death discussed frankly for young audiences, descriptions of (imagined) murder

10. Black Spokane, Dwayne A. Mack

(buy it!)
finished june 27
takeaways— dense but very interesting as someone who grew up in spokane and has been sometimes involved in contemporary anti racism work alongside contemporary Black activists and community members. an important, specific history chronicling the lesser known stories and struggles of a region generally overlooked by civil rights historians, that remains a crucial and informative part of the history of broader movements. i loved hearing about the struggles between factions of organizations and about the individuals and organizations who built the foundations of what still exists in the region. learning about the black weekly newspaper the Spokane Star and its specific value for engaging the Black community in organizing made me re-appreciate the work of Sandy Williams to publish The Black Lens today. would recommend to anyone interested in history and social movements, Black or non-Black, with connections to the greater Spokane region, particularly to anyone looking to become more involved in work for racial justice. being grounded in the history and informed as to what’s come before seems incredibly important content note—some descriptions of racial violence and harassment throughout

9. The Seas, Samantha Hunt

(buy it!)
finished april 22
takeaways— i asked a trusted avid reader (and recently minted librarian) for a beach read recommendation for a trip to the coast and she unsurprisingly picked just the thing. this novel is odd, sad, whimsical, and ultimately satisfying. it didn’t change my life, or move me on an especially deep level, but i did enjoy the world building (a depressing coastal small town that felt too real to be entirely fictional) and the subtext written within the grandfather character’s lifelong composition of a new dictionary (as i am a sucker for etymology and layers on layers in a narrative). at the end of the day, i also remember being an angst-ridden, lust-addled, depressed teenager convinced i must be something other than painfully, merely human. would recommend to fans of magical realism mixed with murder mystery, though not quite as highly as any of the other excellent fiction on this list so far this year. content note—graphic descriptions of war violence, self-harm

8. Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison

(buy it!)
finished april 17
takeaways—what can i say that would do justice to this book that hasn’t been said? i have read much of her collected work at this point, but somehow had back-burnered this classic until this spring. reading it helped me meet one of my book goals for the year of reading some of what’s already on my shelf. Toni Morrison does things with small turns of phrase and imagery that i don’t know whether anyone else does. nearly a month later, and a busy month at that, so many characters, images, lines of dialogue, and scenes are still roaming around in the forefront of my mind. again, as i said regarding Baldwin in an earlier post, it’s infuriating and illuminating to see how much of this story (especially regarding the logic of racial violence explained by Guitar) penetrates 44 years after publication, and how little has shifted. one of my favorite novels, instantly and forever. would recommend especially as a first Toni Morrison foray for a reader new to her work. more approachable than some of her other novels both thematically and in terms of density.
content note—descriptions of racialized violence, slurs

7. Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, Ijeoma Oluo

(buy it!)
finished march 24
takeaways—i ran a book discussion on Ijeoma Oluo’s first book, So You Want to Talk About Race, and fell in love with her conversational/brutally brilliant style of writing. her powers are further heightened here, and she takes on a stunning breadth of history and culture–from glorified cowboys committing genocide to Bernie bros to college football politics–in just a few hundred pages. as someone with a personal commitment to understanding and undoing the toxic legacy of white supremacy in my own life and world, the massive list of references alone could keep me reading for years to come. this topic has been the elephant in the room, well, forever, but i’d argue especially during this century so far. the deference to white male mediocrity (which we can of course parse out into further advantaged identity groups) in our broader culture keeps us from addressing our worst issues head on. Oluo uses the power of research, storytelling, and personal experience to make a strong case to the existence of these patterns while pointing out very obvious other ways of being that women, mostly women of color, have embodied all along. i learned so much from this book, including about topics i considered myself already very knowledgeable on, like the history of white “settlement” of the american west. i felt called out (in a good way, as a needed reminder) because i’m not exempt from this culture of white entitlement and its perpetuation of mediocrity, by any stretch. would recommend to anyone interested in the history of race and so-called identity politics in the united states, especially to white and white-passing people, especially to the men among them. leave your sensitivities and fragility at the door and you will learn so much. content note— descriptions of racial and gendered violence, racial slurs in context.

6. Detransition, Baby, Torrey Peters

(buy it!)
finished march 21
takeaways—everyone i talk to is reading/just read this book right now! i blame/thank Roxane Gay for featuring the book in her new book club, and–duh– the sheer talent of Torrey Peters herself. i was lucky to tag along on an official Audacious book club member’s streaming link to eavesdrop on the conversation between Gay and Peters and that alone made me claim first dibs on my household’s newly acquired copy. i almost never read fiction, but this book sealed the deal on wanting more for the summer. her rich, real, exasperating, captivating cast of characters refuse simple categorization and each of them pulled on distinct and often uncomfortable parts of myself. so many scenes stayed stuck in my head long after reading. i intentionally slowed down in reading this because i otherwise would have barreled through in one go to find out what happens to this maybe family. i am annoyed at the author for making me *~feel things~* about motherhood and relationships i was not really prepared to feel, but much more importantly, i am excited to see the broad and positive reception to her lovely debut book. would recommend to anyone into beachy novels containing real heft, and specifically to women–cis or trans–seeking the catharsis of fellow women’s frustrations and hopes for transforming notions of family. content note— descriptions of gendered violence and transphobic speech, miscarriage, some graphic sexual scenes and descriptions of disocciation during sex.

5. Notes of a Native Son, James Baldwin

(buy it!)
finished february 27
takeaways—i had to buy this 1963 paperback reprinting when i saw it at an estate sale recently. just look at the cover! i’ll admit i’d watched and listened to much more Baldwin than i’d actually read until now and in the earlier essays of this collection, i had some trouble navigating the pop culture and literary references, both likely over my head and out of my timeline. once i hit part two, though, i devoured the rest. Baldwin is so interesting as a visionary and a critic because we rarely hear voices from before what we think of as the civil rights movement in our whitewashed, speed-reading surveys of history. published in 1955 when he was 31, the observations in this collection still strike at our as of yet unhealed wounds. will leave you with this quote from the final essay, Stranger in the Village:

“I do not think…that it is too much to suggest that the American vision of the world–which allows so little reality, generally speaking, for any of the darker forces in human life, which tends until today to paint moral issues in glaring black and white–owes a great deal to the battle waged by Americans to maintain between themselves and black men a human separation which could not be bridged. It is only now beginning to be borne in on us–very faintly, it must be admitted, very slowly, and very much against our will–that this vision of the world is dangerously inaccurate, and perfectly useless. For it protects our moral high-mindedness at the terrible expense of weakening our grasp of reality. People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.”

would recommend to just about anyone, black history month never stops! sometimes dense writing, but beautiful, poetic, and cutting commentary that we could all still use to hear, sprinkled with surprisingly funny passages and personal moments. content note— descriptions of racial violence, racial slurs in context.

4. Joyful Militancy: Building Resistance in Toxic Times, Nick Montgomery & carla bergman

(buy it!)
finished february 3
takeaways—i ordered a copy of this book after reading only the intro and one of the two full interviews (this one with Silvia Federici) because I knew i wouldn’t be able to fully absorb its lessons in the amount of time allotted by the library and because i knew i would want, as an activist and an amateur anthropologist of social movements, to revisit it. builds out a language and framework to understand many of the unspeakable frustrating dynamics in radical / leftish spaces through in depth research and interviews with a wide and impressive array of folks. rigid radicalism, ’sad’ militancy, performative callouts, the reproduction of patterns of morality and domination, perfectionism—these are just a few of the topics that are laid bare in deeply discomfiting ways but with a humor and humility that allow us to see ourselves and our comrades in these patterns without retreating into guilt and denial. dense, but accessible. would recommend to anyone involved in social movements, transformative politics outside of movements, anarchism, anti-oppression work of any kind. another dense and rich bibliography! content note— descriptions of various oppressions faced under Empire, historical and contemporary

3. The Cassandra, Sharma Shields

(buy it!)
finished january 27
takeaways—yeeeeesh. first fiction of the year. would have been super engaging even if it weren’t set Omak and Hanford—two places well known to me and important to my own family history. well-researched, unique, unflinchingly violent and honest in regards to womanhood, everyday brutality, war, trauma, and bureaucracy. taps into a mythology i know but didn’t know i knew? spins out the cassandra myth into a captivating western / murder mystery / eulogy for the land and the people whose lives have been forever changed or ended by nuclear production and weapons. i picked this up used, finally, and in good condition. i had been told to read it when it came out by many local friends and it just slipped down the list. would recommend, especially to anyone from eastern washington, fans of weird historical fiction, magical realism. content note— graphic descriptions of sexual assault, violence, body horror

2. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, Rebecca Solnit

(buy it!)
finished january 21
takeaways—written in 2008/9, so interesting to see thoughts on spontaneous mutual aid just before Occupy. very long, but packed with solid research and storytelling. points out calmly and non-dogmatically that anarchists are measurably correct about ‘human nature’. i wish i had read it before covid and working on mutual aid in early quarantine. main thesis is that disasters interrupt the social order in a way that creates space for emergent organizing and that flattens pre-existing social divisions. panic is driven and feared most by the elite, who perhaps are most worried about losing their monopoly on power. some parts blurred the ideas of service work versus mutual aid, but that reflects the language and understanding of those Solnit interviewed. would recommend to anyone involved in mutual aid projects and fans of hidden/strange history. content note— some graphic descriptions of injuries, suicide, police and other racial violence

1. Trans Care, Hil Malatino

(buy it!)
finished january 13
takeaways—rethinking frameworks of care seems especially important right now in the context of covid, impending civil war, etc. it’s good for a broader knowledge of the history, structure, and possibilities of specifically trans networks of care. lots of overlap with my favorite essay in Rebellious Mourning (which I finished before the list started at the end of 2020, edited by Cindy Milstein, highly recommend) about building care networks in a queer chronic illness context. brings up questions for me around what accountability and care look like in personalized contexts—like, what do specific people need from me in particular? do i have that? and vice versa?—creating a more intentional exchange than a surface ‘allyship’ model which feels performative often and sometimes othering in an icky way i can’t quite articulate. in the home library now, so will likely revisit. would recommend to anyone cis or trans who wants to deepen their practices around co-creating a humane world for us all. deep, rich bibliography for further reading. content note— descriptions of gendered violence, both by the state and individuals