A goal of mine for 2022 is to finish a book a week. It's not going great, but still I persevere. Below are some thoughts on those books recently finished.
Week 9: Bad Blood, John Carreyrou: Dryly pounding the final nail in the coffin housing any belief that American capitalism is anything but a fraud perpetrated amongst various peer groups of dim and psychotic greedheads. (It's about a company called Theranos, which wanted to test people blood, but, like, sciencely, and which raised outrageous sums to do so, despite never actually having the capacity to do so.)
Week 11: We Were Never Here, Andrea Bartz: Average thriller with more than usual to say about gaslighting, manipulation, codependence, and the difficulty of trusting your own memories when shit gets real. Less than usual to say about female friendship, and an only somewhat successful head-fake at a suspenseful / shocking ending.
Week 11: LA Woman, Eve Babitz: Enjoyable, garrulous look at some of LA's women (and not a few of their men). I found myself struggling to maintain focus on this one, but by the end and especially in its withering afterword, I was glad I read it, and will read more by this author.
Week 11: Upright Women Wanted, Sarah Gailey: The great Sarah Gailey is not just a rad writer but is also an amazingly good sport: after we covered their "Western but with hippos not horses" novel River of Teeth on the podcast, they reached out most cordially for somebody who had been informed that their book had been covered on "a podcast about bad books". This is another Western-like book, set after the United States has splintered and run out of oil—so, 2024 or thereabouts, by my reckoning?—with lots of queer longing and a very compelling take on "So I found my people ... but that doesn't actually fix everything, it turns out". Great, thoughtful, heartfelt, fun read.
Week 13: The Library Book, Susan Orlean: Nonfiction account of the time the LA library burned down, with much (much) discursive info about how that library came to be, what might the future of libraries be, etc. Includes a very high number of instances of "I recently spoke with [someone]" which feels odder and odder as the book's publication date recedes from me, firmly anchored in the eternal central now.
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