I read nine books last year and thought it would be a modest but attainable goal to hit a dozen in 2020. A pandemic and a California lockdown should have worked in my favor, but suffice to say I limped across the finish line. Working from home (or rather, sleeping at the office) has warped my sense of time and the natural cadences of life. Also I played a lot of video games.
This was a year where simply finishing anything, however barely, is good enough.
One of my most vivid memories of the year was going into a Barnes and Noble shortly after the local library closed, and feeling giddy like some starry-eyed child at Disneyland. I lurked for hours and bought four books that day.
What follows is more of a book diary and not a book review, which I share mostly to make myself remember.
Eating the Dinosaur
Chuck Klosterman
I don’t judge books by their covers, but sometimes I’ll borrow library books based on them. That’s how my first book of 2020 came to be 13 essays of pop culture critique on everything from cars, laugh tracks and time travel to ABBA, Rivers Cuomo, “Rear Window” and the Unabomber.
The first chapter, as it turns out, is about the art and facade of the journalistic interview, and why people even agree to do them in the first place. (One of the many wry but not untrue answers: “People answer questions because it feels stranger to do the opposite.”) He interviews two of the best at the craft: filmmaker Errol Morris and NPR’s Ira Glass.
His dissection of the authenticity, perception, and the role of media in shaping pop culture is the kind that most people will find either alienating or agreeable, with little middle ground. (I’m in the latter camp.) It’s his absurdist take on interviews, as a former journalist, that hit close to home. Now, in the heat of an interview, I sometimes find myself disassociating from the moment, imagining myself instead in the audience watching it unfold.
Here, of course, lies the biggest difference between a successful interviewer and an unsuccessful one: the successful one makes the interviewee feel as though he or she is interested in the answers. The unsuccessful interviewer — and I have sat in or listened to enough interviews to know, unfortunately, and disappointingly, how common they are — does not.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Dave Eggers
In February, I was offered an interview with Dave Eggers. I am a fan of his goofy literacy centers and once volunteered at the flagship “pirate store” at 826 Valencia to help middle-schoolers create a magazine. So I was pretty ecstatic at this opportunity. (Here is the interview.) I had only read one of his books before (“Zeitoun”) so I figured I’d better brush up with another.
Unfortunately, I did not like this one. I get that it’s his personal story borne of tragic circumstances, struggle and an unrelenting spirit to succeed in spite of whatever life throws at you. Losing your parents, raising a little brother on your own, eking it out in San Francisco — the story is truly heartbreaking.
Sadly, the writing style got in my way. It’s a manic, schizophrenic stream of consciousness that is probably supposed to reflect Dave’s mindset at the time. Oftentimes I found myself re-reading sentences, paragraphs, even pages twice just to follow what’s going on.
Such prose is a feat, I suppose. But I simply do not like books that are hard to read not because of their substance, but because of their delivery. The reason I (sometimes) enjoy writing is to make sense of the conflicted, convoluted thoughts swirling everyday through my head. I do not enjoy reading them in all their messy rawness in print, though.
White
Bret Easton Ellis
One of my favorite movies is “American Psycho.” It is based on the novel of the same name by Bret Easton Ellis, which is one of the most horrific, soul-draining and demoralizing books I have ever read. In 2019, it was made into a musical, which was one of the very few musicals I’ve ever enjoyed. (Do you see a pattern?)
How can one person be responsible for all this? So I looked to this autobiography of sorts for answers.
As it turns out, Ellis, an unabashedly proud Gen X-er, is very annoyed and angry at how politically correct the world has become. PC culture is ruining everything. Millennials are wusses. Who cares about your or anyone else’s goddamn feelings? A chapter is devoted to Twitter battles and crybabies (which he inadvertently sounds like).
I’ve also watched “Rules of Attraction,” based on another Ellis book, so I went in having sampled his brand of provocateur. I usually don’t mind being offended so long as it is rooted in some intellect and wit. I too have issues with PC culture, question “safe spaces” and find some people to be overly sensitive. Unfortunately, this book is too tepid, its arguments uninspired and hollow, like those often spewed by privileged white dudes.
“Shit happens, deal with it, stop whining, take your medicine, grow the fuck up,” Ellis writes. Oh, the irony.
It’s okay, Bret. My wife and I will still watch “American Psycho” at least once a year.
Breakfast of Champions
Kurt Vonnegut
A science fiction writer and a car salesman travel to an arts festival in middle America. Such is the departure point for detours into humanity, history, war, cruelty, conformity, racism, science, medicine and technology, replete with cartoonish drawings of guns, anuses, beavers, syringes, dinosaurs and the flag.
It’s got the dark, snappy satire that’s a trademark of Vonnegut, boiling down uncomfortable truths (like slavery) in simple, almost child-like fairytale anecdotes (like sea pirates). Every character seems outlandish at first, but when I think about them a little more, the more I picture someone I know (even myself).
At times absurd and always comical, this read proved to be a nice complement to a time when real life started spinning out of control.
There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.
The Nickel Boys
Colson Whitehead
Based on a reform school in Florida that broke down and, in some cases, buried a generation of children, this book revisits Jim Crow-era cruelty, corruption and corporal punishment in visceral detail. The crack of a whip, the silence of unmarked graves. Fleeting glimpses of humanity and hope, juxtaposed by humiliation for the protagonist, a college-bound kid whose life is derailed by being simply Black in a car.
Set in the 1960’s, the book is a reminder that slavery may be over but its legacy is far from so. It captures the scars from the past two centuries and connects them to themes that continue to erupt today.
The ending twist is something to behold. In the end, how much can people buck a system that’s perpetually stacked against them?
Tiger Woods
Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian
I watched Tiger growing up. My parents bought me a set of golf clubs after he won the Masters in ’97. Better yet, we share the same initials.
I’ve long known he was cold, seemingly inhuman. (Or, as many people in this book would say, an asshole.) Once, at a golf tournament, I said “Hi Tiger!” as he walked past me. He gave me his infamous, silent, how-dare-you-speak-to-me glare. You know what they say: Never meet your idols.
After reading this, and having grown up also a fan of Kobe Bryant, I’m convinced that you don’t get to achieve such levels of prowess without being delusional, masochistic, obsessive and opportunistic. This book goes into the details surrounding the drama that most people know about — his overbearing father, aloof personality, frugal tipping, military fantasies and sex addiction. And, yes, the feats that once made him the most dominant athlete of any sport.
Yet I still root for him, despite the fact that he has disappointed in all his tournaments I’ve watched this year.
Say Nothing
Patrick Radden Keefe
Most people don’t think of Northern Ireland as one of the most dangerous places in the world, but such was the case throughout the ’70s and ’80s, during the period known as “The Troubles” (a terribly understated name). I believe I first heard about it from my college Irish roommate, probably while we were downing Irish Car Bombs.
Centered around the mystery of a kidnapping and murder of a mother of 10 children, the book follows the journey of the people who wreaked violence and shaped the eventual peace: Gerry Adams, Doulors Price, Bobby Sands, Margaret Thatcher and many others. Of Burntollet Bridge and Bloody Sunday. It is a detailed, riveting history about intractable and inexplicable conflicts, the clash between idealism and the disillusionment of compromise and pragmatism, that stir the history buff in me. This is my favorite book of the year.
As soon as this pandemic is over, I want to visit Northern Ireland.
Colorless Tazaki Tsukuru and His Years of Pilgrimage
Haruki Murakami
Why do I keep reading Murakami novels? Is it because the protagonists are melancholic males who feel overeducated, underpaid, disenchanted and misunderstood, who are all fond of cats and whisky?
This book reads very similar to “1Q84,” “Norwegian Wood,” “A Wild Sheep Chase,” “Hard Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World” … and I forget how many others. Perhaps I like his minimalist prose. Perhaps I enjoy the fantasies of surreal daydreams colliding with reality, as is common with his novels and which sometimes occurs when I aimlessly pace around the house. Perhaps I just like things set in Japan.
The title of this book pretty much says it all: A troubled Tazaki Tsukuru goes on a quest to learn why his best friends abandoned him. I don’t remember why, because most of Murakami’s novels do not end conclusively and instead leave you wondering what happens next. (Perhaps that’s his trick to get us to read another one of his novels.)
The Story of Sushi
Trevor Colson
I know enough white guys obsessed with Japan to have hopes for a book written by a white guy about the story of sushi. But this blew me out of the water.
It follows a class of students training at the California Sushi Academy, founded in 1998 and a pioneer in preparing and placing American sushi chefs across the country. Kate, the protagonist, gets flak from nearly everyone at first for simply being a woman in a male-doiminated profession. (I’ve been to Japan seven times and have yet to see a female sushi chef.) Credit America for breaking with stupid traditions and inventing new ones (like the Philadelphia Roll — ugh…really, cream cheese?!)
In between the stories of students, Corson goes into the history of sushi and marine biology behind the fishes. I learned about the science of myoglobin and hemoglobin in redfin tuna. Fast-twitch fibers in white fish. How sea urchins evolved “ass first.”
Biology was, by far, my most loathed of all sciences. In fact, I somehow managed to graduate from college without taking a science class. But if all science were taught in the context of what I like to eat, things might have been different.
High School
Sara Quin and Tegan Quin
I picked up this book solely based on a song that’s not even really credited to Tegan and Sara: “Feel It In My Bones,” by Tiesto (“featuring Tegan and Sara”). But sometimes, all it takes is a song for me to pick up a book; it’s why I read Anthony Kiedis and Ben Folds last year.
The identical twins chronicle their coming-of-age years in alternating chapters, and their journey from misfits to musicians is also one of overcoming insecurities and embracing queer identities. The tales of teenage wanderlust also stirred some of my own memories: of my first taste of beer and vodka, of writing sappy songs consisting solely of power chords, of performing nervously in random plazas and coffee shops in front of strangers. Of feeling awkward, out of place, not fitting in. Of the intense fights and rivalries that close sibling relationships are often built on.
Just like high school, though, I was ready for this book to be finished three-quarters of the way through. There is a certain point after which I no longer wish to be reminded of those days.
Flights
Olga Tokarczuk
Dozing off on planes. Preserving body parts in formaldehyde. Reuniting with first loves. A man searching for his family on an island. Philosophy lectures at airports. And a whole lot of other short stories, all tied together around themes of discovery and what it means to travel — across places, people and time. On one of the evenings when I dozed off in bed reading this, I did have a dream about traveling to Japan, which was the best dream I’ve had all year.
The book flies back and forth across these tales, with sometimes maddening incoherency and inconsistency. It requires focused, consistent binges, and certainly not the scattered, intermittent pace that I took. It is difficult to pick it up after a week’s break and remember what happened.
I like to travel and see new places but I don’t like to think this deeply about the metaphysics of travel and how it reflects and connects with my own personal insecurities and search for meaning in my life.
A Promised Land
Barack Obama
I don’t usually read books about world leaders, but in a year largely devoid of hope, I wanted something a little hopeful to close the year on.
Many people think of Obama’s days with nostalgia in part because it felt more “normal” compared to Trump’s (really, anyone else’s would) but this memoir offers an honest, humble reminder that nothing about the presidency, politics or campaigning is normal.
Obama often projects composure, but he details the anxiety and uncertainty surrounding every step, every speech, every decision — and how intuition often clouds information and vice versa. In a chaotic year, I found reassurance in his reminders that in power, as in life, there are rarely perfect decisions, only imperfect data and probabilities.
This book is a blast to the past to the characters and events that shaped the job market just as I was finishing grad school. (Timothy Geithner! TARP!) It is also a sort of referendum, in the sense that the things Obama gets credit for belong just as much, if not more, to the people he surrounded himself with.
It reminded me of something someone told me once: If you feel like the smartest person in the room, you’re probably in the wrong room.
