What To Read Over the Holidays…

…if you need someone else’s life to feel messier than your own

My Education by Susan Choi

Sometimes it’s nice to focus on other people’s questionable decisions. Like Regina’s, to wear a sexy “catwoman” outfit to her medieval poetry class so that her hot professor might take notice. Her blithe narration of early-20s disaster-making feels somehow rarefied for its being inscribed in the world of academia, and yet what really makes this book sing is Choi’s gorgeous and haunting descriptions––including her visceral sex scenes. If this book were a pop song, it’d be Taylor Swift, King Princess, and Mitski all at once; I loved it.

…if you want to feel connected to the millennial generation in a positive way (for once)

README.txt: A Memoir, by Chelsea Manning

I’m not sure what’s more heroic: leaking classified documents to the world, or doing it while publicly going through your gender transition. Manning’s story is pretty incredible––except that it’s true, and has so much to teach us about contemporary struggles for freedom and justice, on and off the internet, abroad and at home. Plus, it was fun to learn about her early life: living in the UK, cutting her teeth on smaller hacking adventures, eventually figuring out how to reconcile her patriotism with a deeper set of values learned from queer/hacker communities. Chelsea for President!

…if you miss college

Stay True, by Hua Hsu

It’s UC Berkeley in the 90s, Kurt Cobain is dead, and Hua Hsu is in his off-campus apartment, spending hours on his handmade zines. The New Yorker writer recounts the days when his thrift-store fashion choices and immaculate record collection almost prevented him from meeting his best friend, a fellow Asian American in his entourage who would go on to be a significant force in Hsu’s coming-of-age. This portrait of the artist as a young man is also about the many different ways of being Asian American that Hsu witnessed when he got to college––identities that were less codified at the time, but which nevertheless opened up space for him to find his voice as the incisive, grounded critic we all love today.

…if your attention span does not match your desire to be immersed in a good story

Five Tuesdays in Winter, by Lily King

Don’t you hate it when you finish a short story and realize that the next chapter is a new story, not a continuation of the lives of the characters you just met? Luckily, all the stories in this collection are delights, so I promise the disappointment won’t last long. The title story follows a middle-aged bookstore owner, a single dad who’s struggling to connect with his teenage daughter; when she starts meeting with one of his employees for Spanish lessons on Tuesdays, he will have to face his demons and decide whether or not to grow.

…if you, like me, have become obsessed with birds

H is for Hawk, by Helen Macdonald

I swear to you, two days after starting this book, I saw a hawk up close; did he know? Helen Macdonald’s prose is as beautiful as the birds she describes, but this is a book about so much more than reverence for the goshawk. Falconry here becomes a window into questions about interspecies love, the ravages of grief, and the power of stories. I learned a lot about the author who popularized Arthurian legends in the modern era, too. Reading this book felt like sitting in a cozy forest cottage, a fire in the hearth and a bird of prey patiently awaiting our next hunt.

…if you need to feel hope about fighting the patriarchy

She Said, by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey

Thanks to these two women, you know what an “NDA” is. This gripping retelling of the early days of #MeToo has all the intrigue of an episode of Sherlock, only instead of some made-up villain, the guy they’re taking down is Harvey Weinstein––and as you might guess, it was NOT easy. This book has given me a newfound respect for the labor that goes into breaking a single, powerful, true story: a story that Kantor and Twohey knew they had to get right the first time. 

…if you don’t read anymore, you just play video games

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin

I know I’m the third (or thirtieth) person to tell you to read this, but it’s a rare novel that comes along and speaks so directly to our time. Zevin’s protagonists, a pair of best friends from childhood, design video games together, and each section of the book imitates the structure of the game they’re currently making. Set in the very early days of Silicon Valley, the book is a history of our modern tech era as much as it’s a story of friendship. It’s got surprises (some welcome, some devastating), and it almost made this bookworm want to dust off her old copy of The Sims. After all, what Zevin knows is the video game is just another format for telling a good story.