Defying Brevity
It's the end of the year, and everything is taking forever.
Yes, I was one of the millions of homosexuals and/or women who went to see Wicked in a theater - a place I rarely go unless something is urgent to see and also unstreamable. It’s super fun. You’ll laugh and cry, but you will not sing along aloud because if you do, you should be sent to Guantanamo. Save it for the shower. My head has been holding space for the lyrics of Defying Gravity ever since.
And great news! We’ve reached the time of the year when we have to (read: get to) decide whether things are now problems or 2025 problems. It’s time to pull out your corporate vernacular handbooks and start to employ the greatest hits: “let’s circle back after the holidays,” “can we put a pin in that for now?” or “let’s touch base in the new year.” November was a disaster, and we owe it to ourselves to do as little as possible for December. We need to save up our energy for next year for a million reasons to bleak to list here. As I said to a friend earlier today, “Let’s make it a December to not remember.”
In the meantime, I’m trying to do a bunch of things to stay sane. I’m slowly making the move from x-twitter to BlueSky little by little, putting off my holiday shopping until the last minute, and participating in the exhausting ask of making list of things I should consider purchasing before the effect of raising tariffs - a concept many voters thought they understood but did not - affects every part of our lives. For example, I got a new phone, and it was a nightmare.
I did a quick tarot reading (“blessings, challenges, action”) for myself to make a little sense of December, and this is what I got.
What it’s telling me is: I’m blessed to be coming to the end of an overwhelming cycle, my challenges include focusing my powers to make magic happen, and the action I should take include giving myself lavish, generative, and profound grace and patience. This spoke to me - not disastrous. So, I’m going to try to do all this. You should feel free to steal my reading and do that too. I use the This Might Hurt Tarot Deck - it’s so beautiful and inclusive.
Also, read these books. I had a particularly strong streak of library deliveries recently.
THE LIBRARY IS OPEN
I Make Envy on Your Disco
by Eric Schnall (2024)
Coming of age novels are a dime a dozen, and that’s great. I love them. Can’t get enough of them, honestly. But you don’t hear a lot about coming-of-middle-age novels, as this one bills itself. And you definitely don’t hear much about queer coming-of-middle-age novels, I suspect because so many gay men have trouble admitting that aging is a real concept. This is just conjecture on my part, but it’s probably a contributing factor that’s compounded by a narrow view that the publishing industry takes of queer communities. Anyway, this book is totally a coming-of-middle-age novel, and it happens to be great, even if I would quibble about whether the ages therein can truly be considered middle aged. (37?!) However, I might just be sensitive from a recent birthday.
Anyway, our hero Sam is an art advisor from New York City who is a little fed up with his life and has been having some questions about the commitment of and connection to his handsome husband. A professional opportunity arises for Sam to abscond to Berlin, and while he’s there, he’s got a chance to think meaningfully about his place in the world, what his future holds, and what it is that would truly make him happy. On top of that, it gives him a moment to get lost in a new city, one that’s also in the middle of finding itself after a tumultuous past. (The book takes place a decade or so ago.)
Have you ever taken your wounded self to Europe or somewhere else totally foreign where you could become a new you? Or become yourself? Have you ever established a connection with folks in a foreign country immediately where it felt like you knew each other all your lives? Have you ever engaged in a semi-forbidden flirtation with someone far away from where you live? If not, have you ever wanted any of these things? Then this book may be for you. If not, it might be too.
This book is so thoughtful, inward, and meandering, but never boring. The characters are all so memorable and well drawn. It’s such a beautiful documentation of how an experience can start in isolation but bloom into something full of profound connection and possibility. I wish I could have stayed longer in Berlin with him in one of my favorite reads of the year.
Read it if you like: Berlin stories, overthinking, gay relationships, wry humor, leaving New York for another venue.
When the World Tips Over
by Jandy Nelson (2024)
I used to read YA more often when it seemed like it was the best place to find a wide breadth of queer romantic experiences. I feel like adult literature has caught up for the most part, but I still love to dip my toes back into the YA waters especially when the author has written one of the best YA novels of all time. I feel like so many folks I know who don’t love YA still fell under the charms of Nelson’s previous novel I’ll Give You the Sun. Ask around. People loved it! They (ahem, we) have been clamoring for the new one, and a decade later it’s arrived and landed on Amazon’s top 20 books of the year and their favorite YA.
I should also tell you a couple of things related to the book’s YA status: the book has something for readers of all kinds, and I don’t even know what YA means anymore. That said, this book is a delight. It’s a magical realism mystery, a family saga loosely based on East of Eden, and a clinic on how to describe delicious food. The Fall family of Steinbeck country in Northern California are in disarray. The father has run off for mysterious reasons without a word of contact, while the distracted culinary genius of a mother continues to leave out a meal for him every night. Dizzy (12, F) sees spirits and wishes her family would get along, Wynton (19, M) misses his dad so much that he sleeps every night with his old trumpet and is a wildly talented but out of control violinist who can’t seem to get along with his aloof and perfect brother Myles (M, 19) who is gaily hiding a very gay secret (that he is gay.)
Into their lives drops a mysterious, but maybe familiar, young woman with rainbow hair and turns their worlds upside down. Maybe with magic? Hard to say what magic even is. However, it isn’t long until tragedy strikes and everyone in the family has to deal with their own crises and how to keep the family together. There are family curses, a history of love stories, and more threads that you can count that somehow come together in the end for a very satisfying ended that will end up moving you if you’re anything like me. And if you ARE anything like me, you’d have known that this book was coming out already and were looking forward to it. And if you didn’t, lucky you. Now you’ve got a big old delightful tome to keep you company over your winter break. Thanks Dahlia for the recommendation and the book!
Read it if you like: Jandy Nelson’s last book which everyone kind of agrees rules, East of Eden which is a book I already told you is my fave classic, sibling stories, curses passed over generations, books you are told are YA but don’t really know what that means.
Blue Sisters
by Coco Mellors (2024)
But wait, more sibling drama!
I had been hearing about Coco Mellors in that way you vaguely hear about hot new authors if you read a lot about reading, so I was intrigued when this one popped on the scene. Plus, it had a bunch of Zach-nip elements that get me excited to pick up a book. Namely, sibling drama because they’re so different but connected, at least one queer character, and multiple points of view per chapter. Mix in some very complicated emotions around grief, and it’s exactly the kind of book I love to dig into. My prediction: correct!
Four sisters were raised in a two bedroom apartment in New York by an alcoholic father and a disinterested in a British way mother and become inseparable - best friends and rivals in the way that only close siblings can be. Avery, the eldest, feeling compelled to take care of her sisters in a violent household, waited for them all to leave the nest before embarking on her own addiction journey then becoming a wildly successful attorney. Bonnie became a boxing prodigy in her teens and ran away from her championship record (and her father figure coach) after a disaster in one of her fights. Nicole, or Nicky, was the girly girl who became a teacher who desperately wanted to start a family, spurned by a history of painful endometriosis. And Lucky, the baby of the family, was scouted as a model at the age of 15 and has been raking in dough and partying ever since. When one sister passes away, all the others must come together to find a way forward for themselves and the rest of their family.
If you’re wondering why this sounds a little like the plot of this season of Bad Sisters, well, I did too. There’s not perfect overlap, but there are parallels, so if you like the one you’ll probably enjoy the other. As the surviving sisters reel from the unexpected death, they must descend upon their home to make sure that the apartment where they initially bonded doesn’t get put up for sale. Despite the bleak set up, the book has a lot of humor in it, but the best parts are the places where the sisters are allowed to talk and talk, filling up pages with dialogue. Each a distinct voice, they convey the depth of pain, release, and profound love that goes into being family.
(This book is also a pick for Read with Jenna from the Today Show, a Bush sister rather than a Blue one, and her lists of book club choices is…pretty great?)
Read it if you like: Bad Sisters, bad sisters, addiction narratives, novels bound to be adaptations, getting on the ground floor of a hot new author.
One more thing! Anytime a friend writes a book, and I get to read it, I need to do a shout out here. I finally got around to reading Adam Sass’s Cursed Boys and Broken Hearts, the second m/m romance that’s part of his Micahverse. It’s a breezy, swoony romance homage to Beauty and the Beast about two guys (friends to enemies to lovers) who have to get over curses in their past to find their future. Check it out!
LIGHTNING ROUND
Hope your Thanksgiving was lovely, but speaking of complicated families, I loved this essay about breaking up with your in-laws over their stance on immigration.
The New York Times constantly annoys me, but their Top 10 Books of the Year list is something that will always get my attention. 3/5 of the fiction picks have been covered by this newsletter this year.
NPR’s Books We Love concierge grows every year, and I love their commitment to trying to reach every kind of reader with a massive list rather than distill their work to a top 10. (I love a top 10, don’t get me wrong, but NPR’s work here is a lovely antidote to that.)
Until next time…happy reading!