Volume 3, No. 39: Wonder, Water, Words: September Reading Reflections

Greetings, book and treat people! Today’s issue would usually be for paying subscribers, but I’m sending it to everyone because I’m in charge and I feel like it. I’m thinking about doing a monthly post like this—so please let me know in the comments if it’s something you enjoy!

These end-of-month reading reflections are inspired by my friend Rosamond, who is a delightful human (go say hi to her at Broadside Bookshop if you’re local!) who writes a delightful bookish newsletter (well, it’s equal parts books and dogs, as it should be).

I loved how she approached reflecting on her month of reading and living, so I’m doing the same thing.

A little reading & living in September

Here’s what I read in September, and what I thought about, and where I cried. Here is some of the beauty I saw and gobbled and made. I’ve reviewed some of these books, but I have yet to write about many of them, including some of my favorites, so get excited.

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On September 1st, I watched the sunrise over the mountains on my morning walk.

The first book I finished in September was Idlewild by James Frankie Thomas. It’s about two high school best friends, and it’s set during the exact years I was in high school. The details are shockingly right. It’s also one of the most painful books about trans adolescence I’ve ever read. It broke me. I sobbed on my kitchen floor.

I spent the next day rereading The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar. It’s one of my all-time favorite novels, a beautiful ode to queer and trans beauty and joy. It healed me.

I went swimming in the cold, clear, rushing river. I thought about how lucky I am to know a place, even a little bit, even this well.

Next, Miss Major Speaks by Miss Major & Toshio Meronek schooled me and made me laugh. It is full of brash and tender wisdom.

I listened to The Dos and Donuts of Love by Adiba Jaigirdar because I wanted something fluffy and fun. It was absolutely fluffy and fun, with a ridiculously unrealistic reality baking competition plot and a very satisfying romance.

I swam in the lake.

I went to my favorite orchard, which has the best view, and bought apples, my favorite fruit, to welcome fall.

I read Lucky Wreck, Ada Limón’s first poetry collection, and thought about how wild, how sweet, to get to read so many iterations of an artist’s work throughout a life.

I poured through the gorgeous and varied artwork of This Place, a collection of short stories by Indigenous writers that illuminate various people, events, places, and moments in the history of Indigenous North America.

Nessa occasionally made room for me in the bed.

I listened to Things I Have Withheld by Kei Miller which took my breath away over and over again. As in, I kept gasping.

I swam in the lake.

I read all of Ross Gay’s back catalog: Lace & Pyrite, a sweet collection of garden poems he wrote with Aimee Nezhukumatathil; Against Which, his debut, which felt like reading a different poet (not in a bad way), and Bringing the Shovel Down, which felt like coming home.

"not to mention the butterflies
of the loins, the hummingbirds
of the loins, the thousand
dromedaries of the loins, oh body
of sunburst, body
of larkspur and honeysuckle and honeysuccor
bloom, body of treetop holler,
oh lightspeed body"

I swam in the lake.

I celebrated Rosh Hashanah with my bestie. I made a perfect red wine and honey cake and ate it for days afterward. I spent a lot of time reveling in fall on my porch.

I wept reading MK Czerwiec’s graphic memoir Taking Turns. It’s about the time she spent working as a nurse in the 1990s, at HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371, an extraordinary and unconventional AIDS unit in a Chicago hospital. It is a gorgeous book about what it means to take care of each other: a weighty, complicated endeavor.

I cried a lot reading this month, because I also cried reading Carry by Toni Jensen, a rending and beautiful memoir about gun violence, cycles of abuse, land, belonging, Indigenous womanhood, birds, language, history. It’s full of sentences like this, that break and sing:

How much brush can a body take before it becomes a violence, before it makes violence, or before the body is remade—before it leaves all seasons, becomes something other than the body it was once, before it becomes a past-tense body?

Pup and I went for long golden walks along the ridge.

I gave myself the gift of rereading one of my favorite books of the year on audio: Nicola Dinan’s Bellies. I do not regret it. It was even better the second time. The narrators were both perfect.

I woke up early enough most mornings to walk along the dirt road at the top of the hill while the sun was rising. A remarkable gift.

I continued my love affair with 20th century queer lit with Imre: A Memorandum by Edward Prime-Stevenson. It’s an extraordinary little novel from 1906 about a young British man who falls in love with a soldier while visiting Budapest. It’s funny, romantic, poignant, and sometimes dramatic. It has a happy ending. I adored it.

I also read Pictures of the Floating World by Amy Lowell, a collection of poetry published in 1919. There’s a sequence of lesbian love poems that are both gorgeous and very erotic. Lowell and her lover knew how to enjoy each other, and their garden. I am still thinking about this book.

Honestly, Lowell’s poetry felt as sexy and romantic to me as Lush Lives by J. Vanessa Lyon, a contemporary sapphic romance with a very fun and intriguing subplot about Nella Larsen.

I swam in the lake.

Stars in Your Eyes by Kacen Callender is out next week. I listened to an ALC (advanced listening copy) and I can’t recommend the audiobook highly enough. It’s a romance, and it’s lovely, but is also about trauma. It is not light at all. It’s an intense and complicated story about healing that still, somehow, centers the romance.

Dear Prudence by Daniel Lavery is another delightful audiobook, a collection of letters and responses, with additional commentary, from the years Lavery spent writing the Dear Prudence advice column. Lavery sounds a little bit like David Sedaris to me. I find Sedaris entitled and annoying, but Lavery is charming and tender (and funny), so there’s something especially wonderful about listening to him read.

I loved Family Meal by Bryan Washington even more than I thought I would. It hurts a lot, but it heals a lot, too. It’s my favorite Washington to date. I’ll read whatever he writes. It’s out next week, and you should read it.

My parents came to visit and my mom and I went swimming at the lake on a cloudy, dreary day. It was perfect.

I crave books about rural queer life on a cellular level. Stacy Jane Grover’s Tar Hollow Trans is a wonderful, rigorous collection of essays about growing up trans in Appalachia. It’s also about what any kind of identity—queer, trans, Appalachian—means, and what it means to construct an identity. I loved it.

If you’re looking for smart, rageful, beautifully written nonfiction, Biting the Hand by Julia Lee is also wonderful. The audio is very good.

I bought myself fall flowers.

I’ve been wanting to finish Becky Chambers’s Wayfarers series for ages. I finally did! I listened to The Galaxy, and the Ground Within in the last days of September and it was perfect. Nothing happens. A few different aliens get stranded at a galactic truck stop and spend a week talking to each other about their lives. 100/10. No notes.

My last audiobook of the month, Nicole Chung’s memoir A Living Remedy, was yet another book that made me weep. It’s about the death of her parents and the ways this country kills people, especially poor people. It is full of rage, but mostly it’s a love letter and a witness. It also has my favorite cover of the year.

I swam in the lake in the rain.

I finished the month with Dry Land by B. Pladek, a book I will be shouting about forever. Set in 1917, it’s about a queer forester who discovers he has the power to magically grow plants with his hands. Except it’s really about how to love a place. It is so beautiful. It’s like Pladek reached down into the depths of my queer, nature-loving, firmly-planted-in-the-dirt, rural queer heart and said, “here, this one’s for you.” It’s a gift. You should read it.

On September 30th, I swam in the lake. It was my 51st consecutive day of putting my body into a body of water.

On October 1st, I started Moby-Dick. I was inspired to pick it up again (I’ve never finished it) after a great discussion I had on bookstagram about what queer lit is. I’m reading 20 pages a day. It’s extremely gay. The plan is to finish in about a month.

It was a hard, sweet month, full of water and words, some wonder, some tears. A little celebration, a little disappointment, my fluffy love, the hills. My gay chorus started again. I climbed a mountain with my nephew. I had dinner with my best friend, and her parents, and my parents. I read a lot of books, and fed myself, sometimes extravagantly, but usually with bagels.

I’m ready for October.