This is the barest Bookshelf I’ve posted since I started doing them a year and a half ago. Ten books certainly isn’t nothing, but it felt like I was in a bit of a reading slump - I fell off my typical daily reading routine. It was a busy quarter! I finished my first novel and started my second, I visited three new (to me) countries, I poured approximately sixty thousand pints at my bartending job, and I watched a shit ton of TV. So I’ll give myself a bit of grace for not reading as much. Usually early summer is a heavy hitting reading season for me because sitting in the park on a warm, sunny day with a book is the most blissful activity I could imagine, but Scotland is low on warmth and on sun, so I haven’t been doing that. I’ve been missing NYC’s beautiful parks desperately recently. I digress - here are the books I did read this quarter:
American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy (David Corn) - As an American, I have been wondering exactly how the fuck we ended up with a population that has so thoroughly gone insane. How do so many people live in a fucked up fantasy world based on lies and fearmongering? Corn does a great job of answering this question, tracing the Republican party’s reliance on conspiracy all the way back to the ‘60s. And of course, like everything else in this god forsaken country, a major answer to the question “why is this so bad” is “Ronald Reagan”. I really really recommend this one.
I Who Have Never Known Men (Jacqueline Harpman) - If you’re on the book side of the internet at all, you’ve probably seen this Belgian novel from the ‘90s randomly become crazy popular in the past six months. It’s a dystopian novel about women who are kept in an underground bunker for their entire lives and eventually get out. The narrator was a young child when she was put in the bunker, so it’s the only world she knows. This is such a fascinating book and I’ve never read anything like it. It does a fantastic job of defamiliarization - portraying something typical as something new and completely unknown through the eyes of a character who has never come into contact with it. A very uncomfortable, destabilizing read.
Counting the Cost (Jill Duggar) - When I watched the documentary on the Duggars, Shiny Happy People - my biggest takeaway was that Jim Bob Duggar and everyone working at TLC should go to jail for their exploitation of those children. After listening to the audiobook of Jill Duggar (the oldest daughter), I feel the same. The financial abuse, the conservatism that manifests in shaming and judgement of these kids, the manipulation of how they live their lives was so strong and traumatic, and it was very brave for Jill to write about it. She’s much more forgiving than I am, I’ll say that much.
The Neapolitan Quartet (Elena Ferrante) - I read and wrote about My Brilliant Friend last quarter, but this quarter I read the last three books of the quartet, and was absolutely blown away. I am typically not a series person, but I fell so deeply in love with Ferrante’s Naples that I couldn’t stop reading, and was so sad to finish the last book. The last three books follow the intertwining lives of Elena and Lila from their late teens all the way through their 60s. I’m working on a longer piece about this series so keep an eye out for that.
American Psycho (Bret Easton Ellis) - I wrote about this book a little bit already, specifically about Patrick Bateman’s idolization of Donald Trump - it was a very good book and also very unenjoyable. Unbelievably violent (I hadn’t seen the movie before reading the book), and while people often disparage it for the tediousness of the writing, I found that to be such an excellent stylistic choice. The obsessive attention paid to the sartorial and gastronomic choices of wealthy 80s finance bros does such a great job of characterizing Patrick. I can’t tell if I recommend this one, but it is a very good book.
The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom (Shari Franke) - I never watched 8Passengers on YouTube but followed Ruby Franke’s fall from YouTube stardom via the media coverage, and was interested in hearing from her oldest daughter’s perspective. Ruby and Jodi manipulated, exploited, and horribly abused the Franke children, and hearing about it from Shari’s perspective is heartbreaking. While she discusses the abuse, she doesn’t go into detail, choosing instead to focus on the exploitation and manipulation that came with being part of a popular vlogging family. It’s a harrowing story that has made me think differently about every parent that monetizes their children’s online presence.
Audition (Katie Kitamura) - This is a technically excellent book - a book for lit fic writers. I’m not totally sure how to describe it without giving the whole thing away, so I’ll just say that it explores the roles the characters play, both personally and as a professional actress, and the undeniable connection between the two. I loved the writing but I’m still not totally sure if I liked the book.
Bonjour Tristesse (Françoise Sagan) - I read most of this on a beach in Croatia while sipping limoncello spritzes, which is a perfectly delicious way to spend a day and the way this book deserves to be read. Follows a French teenager as she spends the summer in a beach house in the south of France with her philandering fuckboy father as he hops from one woman to another. Possibly the most French book that has ever existed, with its intoxicating cocktail of lust and languor and infidelity and tragedy. A stunning albeit flawed film adaptation was released in 2024 starring Chloë Sevigny as one of the father’s love interests, which I really recommend watching after you’ve read the book.
So that’s Q2 for you. In Q3 I will submit my dissertation, move back to New York, and (hopefully, I fucking pray to god) start a new job. So it may be another light reading quarter, or it might be a heavy one if I’m looking for refuge from the storm that is the transition from student to post-grad. Your guess is as good as mine, so we’ll reconvene here in three months and I’ll let you know.
I’d be curious to know what you think of the film adaptation of American Psycho if you watch it. Consensus seems to be that it’s superior to the book, but I feel like it stylizes the violence in a way that undercuts how horrible it’s supposed to feel. Movie Patrick is silly, almost pitiable, never genuinely menacing. In contrast, I found the book deeply upsetting, which I think is how it *should* feel to read about such wanton violence and cruelty. It pierced the desensitization I think we all carry from watching fictional, sanitized depictions of violence, which I think is a notable accomplishment.
I just finished The Story of a New Name and have been so itching to see what people say about these books. They are such an experience!! I will be keeping an eye out for your piece on this series!