Volume 2, No. 30: A Weekend Of Short Books + Limey Blueberry Cornmeal Cake

Greetings, bookish, bakeish friends!

Last weekend, after several busy weeks with family, I planted myself in a lounge chair in the shade and spent two days reading. Don’t get me wrong—it was a joy to spend so much time with my nephews, going to the beach, cooking and baking, playing games. But it was also amazing to sit down and just read for hours and hours on end. I’ve always loved the satisfaction of reading all day, but I especially love the feeling of working my way through a whole stack of short books in one weekend. There is something so delicious about it.

Here are three of the short books I read and loved last weekend. You can read these books in one sitting if you want to—I did. And while they’re not thematically related in any way, they do make for a great trio. They all have different tones and styles and subjects, which is part of what makes reading a whole bunch of short books right in a row so fun.

The Books

Backlist: In the Company of Men by Véronique Tadjo, tr. by the author in collaboration with John Cullen (Fiction, 2017, English translation 2021)

This short, powerful novel is a fictional account of the 2014 Ebola epidemic in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Tadjo employs a variety of POVs, all of which illuminate a different experience or perspective. There are doctors and nurses working in the temporary treatment centers set up by the government; a young man working as a volunteer to bury the bodies of the dead; a father who sends his daughter away from their small village when his wife and sons get sick; a child orphaned by the disease and the older woman who takes him in; a dying mother; a poet grieving the death of his fiancé; an Ebola survivor struggling to find connection in a world that shuns him. There’s also an ancient baobab tree, a bat blamed for the initial spread of the virus, and the virus itself.

It feels strange to call a book like this beautiful, because it’s graphic and horrifying. But it is beautiful. Tadjo describes what Ebola does to a body in detail, but she also describes caretaking in detail. It’s a book about wreckage and stigma and all the intersecting injustices that exacerbate epidemics and and pandemics. But it’s also about what it means to help, to offer comfort, to walk into the fire instead of away from it, to shoulder responsibility. Tadjo’s characters are all people whose lives were forever changed by Ebola—those who survived, those who died, those who lost loved ones. They are also the people who were called to do what they could, even if that was just burying bodies. It’s this mix of voices that I found so compelling. Reading this novel was painful, but it reminded me that humanity is always, has always been, a big roiling mix: there is always a little hope, a little beauty, a little solace mixed in among all the terror and destruction.

For me the most harrowing and moving sections were the descriptions of isolation: the young man first disinfecting and then burying the dead. Families unable to perform traditional burials and death rites. People dying alone, unable to be in the same room as their loved ones.

Ebola is a very different disease from covid, but there were so many passages that made me gasp out loud, that speak to the ways the world has changed over the past two years, the specific grief that comes with a pandemic, the violence of isolation and disconnection. This paragraph hit home:

We, survivors of the epidemic, suffer in silence. We carry invisible, painful scars. We want to lead normal lives, but the stigma of the virus keeps us apart from other people.

And this one:

I’m not just worried for him, but for all young children who’ve had to experience the epidemic. Maybe they’re not all orphans, but what they had to go through—the dreadful scenes, the palpable fear—has left them deeply scarred. …They’re just kids, but they’re already old. Can they hope ever to live a life free of the fear that the horror will return?

This is a book about human suffering and also human smallness. There is intimacy in each character’s story. And then there’s the baobab tree, observing it all, reminding us that our lives are mere blips, that soon we’ll all be gone. The nonhuman narrators add something intangible to the book that makes it sing—the baobab’s perspective doesn’t belittle human death and human suffering. It’s more of an and. This epidemic is unbearable and. This one human life matters and. And the world does not belong to us alone, and our understanding of the universe is so small, and.

Frontlist: Dot & Ralfie by Amy Hoffman (Fiction)

This book is such a delight! It’s about a lesbian couple in their late sixties, dealing with the challenges of aging. Dot is an elementary school librarian. Ralfie works for the Boston DPW. Ralfie has knee surgery, and a few months later, before she’s fully recovered, Dot has a heart attack. They suddenly have to figure out how to recalibrate their lives as they both recuperate.

It’s set in Boston, and it’s deeply steeped in the city’s geography and culture and messes. At one point Hoffman describes the stretch on I-95 where you’re driving both north and south at the same time as “Einsteinian.” I cackled. If you grew up in or around Boston and have spent any time driving on 95, you know. There’s a lot of hilarious Boston references like this. Dot and Ralfie themselves just feel like old Boston dykes. The specificity is delicious. But of course even if you’ve never been to Boston, there’s still a lot to love.

There’s not much plot. There’s just a bunch of short chapters in which Dot and Ralife deal with challenges, big and small. Dot has been having a low-key affair with another woman and when she, too, injures herself, Dot attempts to get her help. Ralfie has a lot of trouble getting used to being at home instead of out on the DPW truck. Dot’s sister takes them to visit a retirement development, hoping they can all buy in and move there together. Dot and Ralfie are decidedly uninterested. It’s all very funny and ordinary in the best way. It’s about errands and doctor’s appointments and who’s cooking dinner and failing health and being bored and money and not really liking your sister’s girlfriend.

One thing that stood out to me is how much this book is about how ableism hurts everyone. The main problem Dot and Ralfie face is that they live in a third floor walkup. They consider buying a condo in the retirement development Dot’s sister is enamored with, but they don’t want to live in the suburbs away from their jobs and community. They make too much money to move into the subsidized elder housing down the street from them, and not enough to be able to pay market rate for it. They can’t afford a condo in the South End, in a building with an elevator where a friend lives. If their building had an elevator they wouldn’t have to think about moving, but buildings of three stories or less aren’t required to (according to Ralfie, who has a detailed knowledge of Boston city ordinances—I didn’t look it up). Eventually it all gets sorted out, but it’s such a poignant and infuriating look at the ways the world is not set up for aging, for aging in place, for bodies that change, for bodies that need accommodations.

Dot and Ralfie both come alive even though it’s only 150 pages. I loved witnessing them bicker, tend to each other, be affectionate with each other, worry about each other. Their relationship feels true and layered. It’s about queer community and what it means to be an elder without children, but it’s quick and lighthearted.

Huge thanks to my aunts for lending this to me—I’d never heard of it! It’s rare these days that someone hands me a queer book (especially contemporary fiction, and especially a new release) I don’t know about. It was published by the University of Wisconsin Press and hasn’t gotten much (any) attention. It’s just a reminder of how many great books there are that fly under the radar.

Upcoming: No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies by Julian Aguon (Nonfiction, Astra House, September 13th)

I went back and forth about reviewing this book, because, while I read it in one sitting and enjoyed it, I didn’t love it. It’s written in a style that doesn’t always resonate with me, and that’s hard to describe, exactly. The best I can do is to say that it reminds me of poetry collections that are idea-heavy rather than image-heavy. Aguon’s writing is vulnerable and honest and fierce, but it isn’t always surprising, and sometimes feels vague.

I decided to include it anyway, because it moved me and I learned a lot from it and I don’t regret reading it. It’s not going to vault onto my list of favorite books, but, newsflash, not every book has to! And I suspect a lot of people won’t struggle to connect with Aguon’s prose the way I did.

Aguon is an Indigenous climate activist and human rights lawyer from Guam. This is a collection of his writings—essays, poetry, speeches, reflections, memoirs, reckonings. He writes about so many things, jumping from subject to subject in a blend of personal and political, outward and inward facing reflections. Much of the book is about the continued colonization of Guam and the violence it has inflicted and still inflicts on his people, environmental destruction, the loss of culture and habitat and connection with the earth, the destructive US military presence on the island, and the ways his people have been fighting back against all of these intersecting losses.

It’s also about small moments of love and pleasure and the power of storytelling. It’s full of quotes from the work of Aguon’s favorite authors, and he goes into detail about how these writers have influenced his work and life in the extensive footnotes. There is a lot of loss in these pages—in an interview with Desiree Taimanglo-Ventura included at the end of the book, Aguon speaks directly about the centrality of grief in the work: “So much of our story as Indigenous peoples has been about shouldering enormous loss and pressing on anyhow, with our hearts broken and our eyes peeled for beauty.”

I could feel that in every page of this slim book. Loss is everywhere, and so is wonder. Aguon shares stories from his childhood and memories of his grandparents. He writes about being dazzled by the landscape around him as a boy. He writes with reverence about the plants and animals of Guam—many of which are endangered or their habitats threatened. He talks about some of the injustices he’s fought in his work as a human rights lawyer, and about the weight of all the horror that is still to come. Through it all, his love for his people, his home, and the movements he’s a part of is overwhelmingly present.

Near the beginning of the book, Aguon poses this question, and I’m still thinking about it: “What do we do with our desolation?” He doesn’t offer any answers. He offers prayers, wisdom, anger, reflection, questions, witness. His words aren’t a fix or a solution. But they are antidotes to desperation.

Having come from a tradition of beauty, of women’s strength, of knowing what is worth wrapping one’s arms around, I realize now that the most cherished of all things I am taking with me in the new morning is, quite simply, other people.

It’s out September 13th, and you can preorder it here.

The Bake

I cannot remember the last time I made a cake that was not based on a Yossy Arefi recipe. You know the drill by now. This recipe is not, shockingly, adapted from Snacking Cakes, but from a recipe I found on NYT Cooking. But it might as well be from Snacking Cakes because it’s a Yossy Arefi recipe, and Snacking Cakes is the ultimate cookbook when it comes to cake. If I haven’t convinced you to buy it by now (or to check it out from the library over and over and over again), I really don’t know what you’re doing with your life. Not baking cake, I guess. Which, fair. But if you are baking cakes, and you aren’t using this cookbook, I don’t know what you’re doing with your life.

Limey Blueberry Cornmeal Cake

This is one of the best cakes I’ve made in a long time. I replaced lemon zest and raspberries with lime zest and blueberries. It is such a delicious combination. Plus, the crumb is perfect. It was hard to stop eating. Good thing I didn’t have to.

Ingredients:

• 2 sticks (1/2 cup, 113 grams) unsalted butter, melted

• zest of two limes and 1/2 a lemon

• 150 grams (3/4 cup) sugar, plus more for sprinkling

• 2 eggs

• 185 grams (3/4 cup) sour cream (I used a blend of Greek yogurt and sour cream)

• 3/4 tsp salt

• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder

• 1/2 tsp baking soda

• 160 grams (1 1/4 cups) all-purpose flour

• 70 grams (1/2 cup) cornmeal

• 290 grams (2 cups) blueberries, plus more for sprinkling on top

Butter a 9-inch round cake pan and line the bottom with parchment paper. Preheat the oven to 350.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the sugar and zests. Mix with your fingers until moist and fragrant. Add the eggs and whisk vigorously until the mixture is pale and thick, about a minute. Add the sour cream, salt, and melted butter, and whisk until smooth. Whisk in the baking powder, baking soda, flour, and cornmeal. Give it a few good turns with a wooden spoon. Gently fold in the blueberries.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Sprinkle extra blueberries on top, followed by 1-2 teaspoons sugar. Bake for 40-45 minutes, until the top is starting to brown and a tester inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let cool in the pan before turning out onto a plate.

The Bowl and The Beat

The Bowl: Summer Rice & Black Bean Salad

This is what I make when I’m in the mood for tacos but don’t feel like assembling all the taco stuff separately. It is very tasty!

Start by pickling a red onion (always a good way to start): slice it and put it in a bowl with salt, honey, a few splashes of rice vinegar, and the juice of half a lime.

Then put all the good stuff in a bowl. For this big bowl, I cut the kernels off six ears of corn, diced four medium yellow tomatoes, and chopped 3/4 a bunch of cilantro. I added two cans of black beans and about 3 cups cooked rice.

Finally, dry toast some cumin and coriander seeds in a skillet. Add some crumbled cotija cheese to the pan and fry it, stirring often, until the cheese crumbles start to get melty in the centers and browned around the edges. Add all of this to the bowl along with the onions and their dressing, a pinch of cayenne, a generous amount of salt and pepper, and the juice of a lime or two.

The Beat: The Sentence by Louise Erdrich, read by the author

I just started this and so far I’m loving it. I seem to only read Erdrich books on audio. So far I’ve listened to The Round House, The Birchbark House, and The Night Watchman. She also reads the The Night Watchman, and her narration is a real treat. I’m extremely wary of authors reading their own fiction—usually I hate it. Erdrich is one of the few exceptions. I could listen to her read forever. She has a real talent for character but there’s also something lovely and unique and so grounded about the way she reads. Somehow her voice is full of emotion and dramatic flair but also a bit distant and very calm at the same time. I don’t know how she does it, but I love it.

The Bookshelf

A Picture

I shared this picture five months ago, when I was packing up books to bring with me to the island in March. Of the 32 books here, I’ve now read 22, DNFed one, and am currently reading one (Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor). That’s 24/32—75%! So I’m feeling pretty great about my progress in my mission to read 100 books off my shelves this year.

openbookopen

A post shared by Laura Sackton (@openbookopen)

Around the Internet

I made a list of 20 queer books to get excited about in the second half of 2022! That’s now! I also had a lot of fun writing this piece about unusual backlists to dive into—not just your favorite author, but publishers, translators, and more. My review of All This Could Be Different is up on BookPage, and you’re about to find out how much I love it because…

Now Out

…FINALLY! One of my two favorite books of the year is out in the world! I love it so much, I don’t have the words. Please, please, please go forth and find yourself a copy of Sarah Thankam Mathews’s masterpiece, All This Could Be Different. I can’t stop thinking about it, I won’t stop shouting about it, it is just that good.

Bonus Recs: A few Other Short Books I Read Last Weekend

I devoured Becky Chambers’s A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, the second book in the Monk & Robot series, and it was everything I could have asked for from a few hours of reading. I also read and enjoyed Border Less by Namrata Poddar.

The Boost

I see author events posted all the time and never manage to actually make it to them. But I will make it to this virtual event on August 18th, part of Sarah Thankam Matthews’s book tour, I will. She’ll be talking with Mira Jacob. Anyone want to join me (virtually)?

As always, a little bit of beauty to send you on your way: I’m heading home today after a month of family time and so much swimming. I am excited to be back in my own house with my plants and my garden, but I will miss this wild, windswept place.

Catch you next week, book people!