Volume 3, No. 1: My 2023 Intentions in Three Books + Caramelized Onion & Cheddar Swirl Buns

Greetings, book eaters and treat people! It feels like it’s been ages since I last wrote in December. I spent the last week of the year happily playing with my 2022 reading spreadsheet, setting up my 2023 spreadsheet, eating cookies, and enjoying the cold. I am so excited to be back, and I have so much exciting stuff in store for you this year!

First: a big welcome to all the new folks! If you found your way here because of Queer Your Year, be sure to check out the new newsletter section dedicated to the challenge, which will include news and recommendations.

Some housekeeping:

• A reminder that, in 2023, free subscribers will get get two newsletters per month. In the alternating weeks, I’ll be writing essays for paid subscribers only. If you’re curious about what these will look like, check out the piece I wrote last year about winter and ritual and rereading Circe. Next week’s essay will most likely be an in-depth reflection on my reading in 2022. You can subscribe here, and, as always, your support means the world to me.

• The Boost is changing! Instead of links (which I’ll still include when I have them), I’ll be using this section to raise money for organizations and causes I care about, mutual aid funds, etc. I am so, so excited about this.

• Bookish Teatime: Last fall I started making weekly videos about my reading life for paid subscribers. I really enjoy making these, but very few people watch them, and as much as I enjoy it, I don’t have the time to make weekly videos just for myself and a few others. So I’ve decided to make the videos occasionally instead of weekly—I’ll share a video when I’m inspired to.

The new year is a fraught time for a lot of us. Sure, the opportunity for a fresh start can be useful but it’s also comes with a lot of unnecessary pressure. January 1 is just another day. I am a planner, and winter is my favorite season, so I’ve always liked the new year, but I’ve learned not to over-plan. I don’t set a lot of goals anymore. I do take some time to reflect on what I love, what nourishes me, and what brings me joy, and how I can make more space for those things in my life.

So here are some things I’m making space for in 2023, in my life and my reading life (they’re intertwined, after all), represented by three books that I will be carrying with me through the whole year.

The Books

Intention #1: Explore Rest / Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey (Nonfiction, 2022)

I’m writing this reflection—it’s definitely not a review, but a plea that you read this book, and living proof of how much it has already impacted me—from bed.

I felt a tickle in the back of my throat on Sunday night, so I drank some tea and went to bed early, hoping I could ward off sickness. After an hour of looking at my computer on Monday morning, my head started to pound, and I felt queasy. I emailed my bookkeeping boss to let him know I couldn’t work that day, and got back in bed.

When I realized I wasn’t feeling great, I panicked. Not doing my bookkeeping work meant not getting money I had been expecting. I had a whole list of things I was “supposed” to do this week—house chores, errands, work stuff, personal stuff. I have deadlines. “You can’t possibly be that sick,” I kept telling myself.

However “that sick” is, I was that sick—by which I mean, I couldn’t work. I tried to work, and couldn’t. I had full body aches and chills, bad stomach cramps, a headache, and a sore throat. So then I told myself I’d take a day off. If I rested, I’d get better faster, right? I’d be back on track by Tuesday. No problem.

I did not feel better on Tuesday. I didn’t get out of bed on Tuesday. Tuesday is when I usually write this newsletter, and I started to panic about that. I knew I couldn’t write it, and I wasn’t sure I’d feel well enough on Wednesday to write it, either. If I skipped a week, it would throw off my whole schedule! You, my lovely subscribers, were expecting the first newsletter of the year!

I read Rest Is Resistance at the end of 2023, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Hersey talks a lot about all the myths that capitalism has brainwashed us to believe—that our worth is tied to our productivity, that we do not deserve rest, that we should aspire to be“tough” and have “grit”. I nodded along as I read, but my reaction to getting sick drove home just how deeply these myths are embedded in my body, even though I don’t want them there. When I got sick, my first thought wasn’t: “What can I do to support my healing?” My first thought was: “Can I work through this?” And when I realized I could’t work through it, I immediately started questioning my worth.

Even when I was feeling awful enough that I simply couldn’t do all those tasks neatly laid out in my planner, I was still thinking about them. I was still bargaining with myself. I tried to read a bit on Monday night (I have a review due on Friday, and no, I’m not going to finish the book in time), but I only got through a few pages before looking at the text hurt too much. Later, scrolling through Instagram for five minutes, I thought: “Well, if you can look at your phone for five minutes, you can probably read that book, too.” It was like I was grading myself for well how I was doing at being sick.

Hersey’s book is about a lot more than rest—or, it’s about rest as a way of life, a complex, beautiful, creative, and liberating set of practices and philosophies and dreams and ideas that can guide the way we interact with ourselves, each other, and the world. Her work is steeped in and centers Black liberation, and she invokes the work and words of many Black ancestors. She insists that you deserve rest—you—not because it will allow you to be more productive later, but simply because you are alive, and rest is your right. This kind of deep rest, rest that makes space for dreaming and imagining, is not the same kind of rest as the rest I was doing while I was sick, desperately wishing for my body to stop hurting so I could go back to work. But Hersey’s ideas were buzzing around in my mind. Capitalism and grind culture had made themselves at home in my bed—in my bed!—where I was curled up in a blanket nest while chills raked my body, agonizing over whether or not I would be able to write this newsletter. It was a sobering realization.

I went to sleep last night intending to send out a note today with a shorter version of this story, explaining why there wouldn’t be a newsletter today. When I woke up this morning, I felt much better. I immediately sensed that the worst had passed, though I’m still fatigued and headachy. But instead of jumping back to work like nothing had happened, I slowed way down. I slept late. I took a long, hot shower. I noticed how my body felt: not bad. I put my pajamas back on, made myself a mug of hot water with honey and lemon, and got back in bed. I called in sick again to my bookkeeping job—I knew I wasn’t up to crunching numbers—and opened my computer. I typed a few paragraphs. It didn’t feel like a chore, and it didn’t make my head spin. It felt good to be doing something I loved after not being able to for a few days. I asked myself: “Are you doing this because you feel like you have to or because you want to?” I asked myself: “Is there a way to do this work while resting?”

I spent all day in bed, writing this newsletter. I wrote for 20 minutes and then took a break to nap or listen to my romance audiobook (Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail, it’s fantastic). I wasn’t worried about deadlines. I wasn’t worried about what would happen if I couldn’t finish the newsletter after all. I simply moved through the day, slowly, so much more slowly than I usually move through my days. I did what felt nourishing. Here we are.

There is a lot more I could say about Hersey’s book—I just barely got into it. Instead, I’ll just encourage you, whoever you are, to pick it up. You value is not tied to what you can do/produce/provide. You deserve rest.

Intention #2: Incite Joy / Inciting Joy by Ross Gay (Essays, 2022)

I could review this book by saying that I cried through most of it, and that, at the same time, my heart fell full to bursting with how much deliciousness and joy exists in the world and in my life. That’s it, I could end it there. Or I could go on to say that I have never cared about basketball, but Ross Gay turns basketball into poetry and music and companionship and creativity and so it doesn’t matter if I’ve ever played a game of pickup or ever will, because he’s singing with it, he’s gloriously high on it, it’s the thing that threads through his veins and keeps him here and home and alive and nourished and laughing, and I feel that, oh, I feel it, and it makes me think of sitting in a barn singing old songs with dear friends while the rain falls outside, and it makes me think of cooking in my best friend’s kitchen, and it makes me think of playing silly word games while weeding endless rows of carrots, and it makes me think of all the times I’ve ever felt held up and seen, so who cares if it’s basketball, or covers (look, I will never love music the way Ross Gay loves music, and it’s okay, though what makes it even better is that the way he writes about music makes makes me love what I do love—books, seeds, vegetables, dirt, fruit trees, yes, we have many loves in common—more), or skateboarding, it doesn’t matter, and this is the heart of it, maybe, this is the secret of it, maybe—it doesn’t matter what joy he’s writing about, I’ll say it again, it doesn’t matter, it’s the essence of the thing he captures, the beautiful, hurting, complicated, not-at-all-perfect, overflowing, impossible essence of each and every joy that thrums through every sentence of this perfect book, so that you can’t do anything but sit up and say “yes!” or clap or sing or start sobbing, because he feels it, you feel it, it’s a different feeling, it’s the same feeling.

Ross Gay writes sentences like no other poet or writer I know, and my cover—the paragraph above, did you notice it was a cover?—is only that, a cover (though perhaps he would take issue with my use of the word only there, so let’s call it a joyful cover, a gratitude cover, a humble cover), a cover by which I mean to convey just how delightful his meandering is, just how luscious his lists (they go on and on, his lists, endless catalogs of what hurts and what angers, of all the fruits and poets and trees and musicians and neighborhoods he’s loved, stacks of memories and imaginings and ideas, pages and paragraphs, because each thing we love is its own, isn’t it, each dinner cooked by a beloved, each walk, each game of basketball, each sunrise, each downy woodpecker at the feeder, each heartbreak, all worth naming, all worth listing), just how playful and beautiful his way of writing is—thank god for his over-the-top exuberance, for his footnotes, for his insistence on more words, always, we’re not here to hold back, we’re here to hold each other up, we’re here to eat pears, we’re here to make music, we’re here to grieve, we’re here to crack jokes and fall down, we’re here, we’re here, we’re here.

Every essay in this book is a reminder that joy is not something we need to keep in a special box on the top shelf, a box we only take out on special occasions—and even then, to look at, never to touch. These essays cut right down into the mess of our humanness, where joy is a small, everyday thing, where joy sometimes happens in rooms where people are dying, and sometimes in gardens, and sometimes in the middle of the hardest conversations, and sometimes when we’re crying so hard we can hardly breathe.

Despite every single lie to the contrary, despite every single action born of that lie—we are in the midst of rhizomatic care that extends in every direction, spatially, temporally, spiritually, you name it.

Thank you, Ross Gay, for sharing your brain and your heart with us, for your words, and all their bountiful, expansive, hilarious, tender, silly, wise, and generous threads of rhizomatic care.

Intention #3: Dig Deep / My Tender Matador by Pedro Lemebel, tr. Katherine Silver (Fiction, 2001)

This year, I want to slow down and dig deep. I want to follow tangents. I want to get lost. I want to spend whole hours watching the chickadees at my feeder and go on walks without set destinations. I want to sink into things, not skim over the surface of things. In my reading life, I’m participating in the 10 books 10 Decades Challenge created by Reggie Bailey The idea is simple: read 10 books published in 10 different decades. I’m using it as a way to explore 20th century queer lit (though today’s book was published in the 2000s). To me, this challenge feels like an invitation to slow down and settle in. My default mode is to move through books as fast as possible, and there’s something about reading older books that makes me want to linger instead.

What struck me most about this beautiful little novel, set in Santiago in 1986, is how funny and joyful it is, despite the dire times and constant danger it portrays. It’s about queer pleasure, and the power of queer imagination. The narrator, the Queen of the Corner, is a trans woman in love with a young revolutionary, Carlos. She knows Carlos is using her house for meetings that could get her killed, but she lets him go on doing it, because she loves him. She’s not innocent or naive, but she grabs delight with both hands. Her narration is agile and campy. She cracks a lot of jokes. She’s very witty and charming and fun. She puts her whole self out there, hiding nothing. But her attitude isn’t: “let’s pretend nothing bad has ever happened to me and nothing bad will ever again.” It’s more: “life really fucking hurts so I’m going to enjoy every fabulous moment.”

It felt to me like the opposite of the “queer falls for a straight boy” trope, because the Queen is just having so much fun. She knows what’s going on with Carlos, and still, she just grabs grabs grabs. Carlos might be in love with her or he might not; it’s mostly irrelevant. The Queen is having a ball, and is it going to hurt in the end? Probably. But she’s taking the risk. She’s grabbing her joy.

The Queen is also a character who embodies transness outside of legibility. I’m thinking of Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, and what trans performer and writer Travis Alabanza has to say about their legibility in their amazing book None of the Above:

I read about both in books, listen to things they have said, and I realize there are so many words Marsha and Sylvia used to describe themselves. Gay. A drag queen. A street queen. A transvestite. A woman. Of course, it is impossible to know how time would change their ways of describing themselves, but I can’t help but think that the same pressures I feel on myself to remove the less definable edges around my transness is the same desire we have to put more understandable labels around the figures who precede us. As if, in order for them to be an emblem, we must first make them man or woman.

I can’t stop thinking about how our current need/desire to label these trans ancestors and icons definitively, to box them in, to declare “they were this,” is really about making them legible to whiteness and the gender binary, which is, of course, a tool of whiteness. When queer people insist on claiming today’s words for our ancestors—as if allowing them to simply be, label-free and glorious and uncontainable and ever-changing, will somehow make them lesser—that’s us doing the work of whiteness and patriarchy.

This book refuses to do that work. Lemebel is not concerned with or interested in how the Queen “identifies.” She’s living her life. She’s a mess, she curses a lot, she’s wise, she’s having a delicious affair with a hot young revolutionary, and baby, she’s gonna ride that train as far as it will take her.

The Bake

My only baking intention for the year is to bake more of what I love. What I always seem to crave is savory treats: cheesy swirl buns, herby focaccia, bagels. These things take longer to make than cakes and cookies, and so I often neglect them. But whenever I do make time for these projects I remember a) how calming and grounding it is to knead and shape, and b) how much I love eating eating savory filled breads. I made these cheesy buns for my birthday breakfast, and I hope they are only the first of many indulgent, luxurious baking projects.

Caramelized Onion & Cheddar Swirl Buns

These are based on a recipe in The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook. I messed with the dough a bit, and changed up the filling.

Ingredients

For the dough:

• 375 grams (3 cups) all-purpose flour

• 1 tsp salt

• A few grinds of black pepper

• 2 tsp fresh rosemary, chopped

• 3 garlic cloves, pressed

• 1 Tbs honey

• 2 1/4 tsp (1 packet or 7 grams) yeast

• 1 cup (235 ml) milk

• 55 grams (5 Tbs) unsalted butter, melted

For the filling:

• 4 medium onions, sliced

• 4 Tbs butter

• 1 tsp. balsamic vinegar

• salt and pepper

• 1 cup grated cheddar cheese

To finish:

• 1 Tbs butter, melted

• A handful of sesame seeds

Make the dough: Combine the flour, salt, pepper, rosemary, and pressed garlic in the bowl of a stand mixer (or a larger mixing bowl). Add the honey to the milk, and then whisk in the yeast and let it dissolve. Pour the yeast-milk mixture into the flour mixture, and mix with the paddle attachment (or your hands, or a wooden spoon) until a shaggy dough forms.

Switch to the dough hook and mix at medium speed for 5-6 minutes, until the dough becomes smooth and elastic. If you’re doing it by hand, knead on lightly floured surface for about 8 minutes, until the dough is smooth. Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover, and let rise until doubled, about 2 hours.

Make the filling: Heat the butter in a skillet and add the sliced onions. Cook over medium heat until just starting to soften, then turn the heat down to low and continue cooking until deeply caramelized, about 40 minutes. Add balsamic and salt and pepper. Let cool.

Assemble and bake: On a lightly floured surface, roll the risen dough into a roughly 12x16 inch rectangle. Spread the caramelized onions evenly over the dough, followed by the cheddar. Starting from one short end, roll the dough into a tight cylinder. Trim the ends, and then cut the log into 12 1-inch pieces. Place them, evenly spaced in a 9x13-inch baking dish lined with parchment paper. Let rise until doubled, about 2 hours, or overnight in the fridge.

Preheat the oven to 350. Brush the top of the buns with melted butter and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the tops are golden brown.

The Bowl & The Beat

The Bowl: Butternut Squash, Kale, & Pork Pasta Bake

Cheesy pasta bakes are all I want to eat this time of year. This one is so easy and so filling, and you can make it with whatever you have around. Leave out the meat, swap sweet potatoes for winter squash, use spinach instead of kale, you get the idea.

Heat the oven to 450. Peel and seed a butternut squash. Cube it and put it on a baking tray with some olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast for about 15 minutes, until soft. Set aside. Meanwhile, thinly slice 3-4 onions. In a large, ovenproof Dutch oven, cook them in a lot of butter (I use 4-5 tablespoons, it’s the secret to delicious pasta bakes) until they’re soft and starting to caramelize, 15-20 minutes. Add a pound of ground pork (or not!), salt and pepper, and some chopped fresh thyme (parsley and rosemary are also nice). Cook until the meat is tender, and then add a bunch of shredded kale. Cook just until the kale wilts. Combine with a pound of cooked pasta, ~2 cups grated cheddar (or whatever cheese you like), and a few ounces of goat cheese. Mix well. Add a little olive oil if it seems dry. Top with more grated cheddar, some Parmesan, and bread crumbs, if you want. Bake, uncovered, for 30-40 minutes, until bubbling and golden.

The Beat: Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion written and read by Bushra Rehman

I started this before I got sick, and paused it to listen to some comforting romance, but I’m excited to get back to it. It’s a coming-of-age novel about Razia, a Pakistani-American girl growing up in Queens. So far I love how episodic it is. Rehman captures the immediacy of each event in Razia’s life, even—especially—the small ones. It gives the book a close, intimate feeling. There’s not a lot of drama, but the stakes are high, because that’s how everything feels when you’re a kid trying to navigate a mostly unfamiliar world.

The Bookshelf

A Portal

My 2023 reading spreadsheet is already bringing me so much joy. One of my favorite new tricks: color-coding! I track both individual publishers and type of publisher (Big 5, indie press, etc.), but sometimes I forget who owns what imprint, or if a press is an indie press or a non-Big 5 big press. Now I have publishers color-coded to match what type they are! It’s a dream.

Spreadsheet nerds, come talk to me about your tracking habits in the comments!

Around the Internet

On Book Riot, I rounded up (some of) the best queer books of 2022, as well as some great queer books from indie presses coming out this winter. I made a list of books featuring queer siblings. I reflected on my experience reading the NBA longlist for fiction. I also wrote about why horror is such a hard genre to figure out, especially if you don’t like to be scared. On Audiofile, I wrote about some great audiobooks in one of my favorite genres: the “Everybody’s Gay!” genre. My review of The Dream Builders is up on BookPage.

Now Out / Can’t Wait

As much as possible, I’m going to use this section to highlight upcoming books that will work for Queer Your Year!

Now Out

"You Just Need to Lose Weight": And 19 Other Myths about Fat People by Aubrey Gordon (Beacon Press): I am planning on finally reading Gordon’s first book this year, and then immediately reading this one, too. (Fat author)

Can’t Wait

Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H (February 7, Dial Press): I’ve read some great reviews of this essay collection about Muslim, queer, and nonbinary identity, and I can’t wait to read it! (South Asian Author, Essay collection)

Queer Your Year

News & Announcements

First of all, huge thanks and gratitude to everyone who has messaged me about the challenge, posted about it, shared it, and generally expressed their excitement. I am really excited, too! If you’re new, you can find all the details here. If you’re looking for recs, here are a few great places to start:

• Queer Your Year on Storygraph: Folks have added almost 800 books to the challenge!

• The monthly QYY rec threads: Check out the December and January rec threads, both full of fantastic books!

• The #QueerYourYear hashtag on Insta is starting to fill up. I’ll also be posting recs and reviews there often (@openbookopen).

I’ll announce the winning prompts for the first monthly raffle at the end of January. The January prize is one of my favorite calendars ever.

Recs!

I’ll be giving recs for two prompts in each newsletter. These will always be books I’ve read and loved. I’m starting with the first two prompts, because I have a lot of recs for them!

Prompt 1: A book in translation from outside Europe

A few books I’ve reviewed in the newsletter: La Bastarda by Trifonia Melibea Obono, tr. by Lawrence Schimel; Cobalt Blue by Sachin Kundalkar, tr. by Jerry Pinto; Bad Girls by Camila Villada, tr. by Kit Maude; Violets by Kyung-Sook Shin, tr. by Anton Hur; Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park, tr by Anton Hur.

And a few more:

• Limbo Beirut by Hilal Chouman, tr. Anna Ziajka Stanton: An interesting multi-perspective book about five characters all caught up in the violence that erupted in Beirut in May 2008.

• Las Biuty Queens by Iván Monalisa Ojeda, tr. Hannah Kauders: Lovely stories about ordinary queer life for a group of mostly Latinx, immigrant trans women in NYC.

• We All Loved Cowboys by Carol Bensimon, tr. Beth Fowler: A fun queer roadtrip novel set in Brazil.

Prompt 2: A nonfiction book by a trans author

A few books I’ve reviewed in the newsletter: Special Topics in Being a Human by S. Bear Bergman and Saul Freedman-Lawson; Voice of the Fish by Lars Horn; I Hope We Chose Love by Kai Cheng Thom; People Change by Vivek Shraya; Real Queer America by Samantha Allen.

And a few more:

• Tomboy Survival Guide by Ivan Coyote: I love everything they write. Their books are always so warm, generous, and wise.

• Dream Rooms by River Halen: A short but impactful collection of essays and poems about language, being a writer, making art, relationships, family, transness, and a lot more.

• My Life in Transition by Julia Kaye: Funny and moving autobiographical comics!

The Boost

Introducing: Book Giveaways for a Cause!

In every free newsletter, I’m going to share 5 books I’m giving away in exchange for donations. Last fall, when I catalogued and organized my entire book collection, I ended up with ~300 books I didn’t want. I gave some to my local used bookstore, and saved the rest to give away here (this project is absolutely inspired by Swati (@booksnailmail) who does book drops on Instagram).

The books are a mix of paperbacks, hardcovers, and ARCs. Some are gently used and some are like new.

How It Works

• Each week, I’ll post a picture of the available books and list the titles.

• Drop a comment indicating which book you want. The first commenter for each title will get that book.

• Once you’ve commented, I’ll email you with instructions on how to pay. Once I’ve received payment, I’ll mail your book to you!

• Hardcovers are $15, paperbacks are $10, and ARCs are $8. Remember: you are not buying books, and I am not making any money. I’ll take out the cost of shipping (usually $3.50 for US Media Mail), and the rest will get donated. If you can pay more than the base price, I encourage you to do so!

• Once all the books have been mailed out, I’ll make a bulk donation and announce how much money we raised together in the next week’s newsletter.

• Unfortunately, I can only mail to U.S. addresses.

This Week’s Money Goes To…

…The Harper Collins Union strike fund! The Harper Collins union has been on strike since November 10th (45 days). They are striking for fair pay (a $50,000 starting salary), union protections, and contractual language surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion. Harper Collins is the only major publisher in the U.S. that’s unionized. If none of these books appeal to you, you can support the union by:

• Donating to the strike fund.

• Signing the Strike Solidarity Open Letter.

• Buying books from the Harper Collins Union Bookshop. All affiliate proceeds will go to the union fund.

Ready? Check out This Week’s Books!

I mentioned how excited I am about the 10 Books 10 Decades Challenge, so, for this first batch of books, I’ve chosen five books published in five different decades! If you’re interested in doing the challenge, any of these will work.

• Find Me by Laura Van Den Berg (Hardcover, $15, 2016): I read this a while ago and enjoyed it. It’s weird and speculative.

• The Black Unicorn by Audre Lorde (Paperback, $10, 1978): A classic.

• Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich (Paperback, $10, 1984): I accidentally bought two copies in one year, so it’s someone’s lucky day!

• Cyclopedia Exotica by Aminder Dhaliwal (ARC, $8, 2021): This is a wonderful graphic novel about cyclopses just trying to get by in a human world.

• There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, tr. Keith Gessen (Paperback, $10, 2009): I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard good things.

Plus, A Few Links

• In this week’s Culture Study, Anne Helen Petersen interviewed one of the Harper Collins Union leaders, Rachel Kambury, about the strike. It’s worth a read.

• One of my favorite people on bookstagram, Kiki, has started a two-year Jamaica Kincaid readalong. The project includes newsletters full of tons of supplemental materials, a Discord, and a Zoom chat for each book. The January book is At the Bottom of the River. I have my copy, and even though I haven’t started it yet, I am so excited to dive in. Kiki is so thoughtful and generous, and it’s obvious how much work and heart she’s put into this project. I encourage you to join!

As always, a little bit of beauty to send you on your way: I have taken so many beautiful walks over the last three weeks. Here’s a moment from a ridge walk the other day that took my breath, a little.

Catch you next week, bookish friends!