Volume 4, No. 4: Snowing, Slowing, Sowing, Singing

January Reading Reflections

Greetings, book and treat people! I started writing monthly reading reflections like this back in September, and since then it has become a tradition I cherish. I read a lot of incredible books this month and I took a lot of snowy walks. I’ve also written for at least ten minutes about every book I’ve finished, which is a huge accomplishment. I’m extremely proud of myself! It’s a writing practice that has been transformative for me and enriched my reading life in countless ways.

TLDR: Read Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar. Love loudly.

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Nessa and I started the year where we belong: on the ridge, in the cold and glittering late afternoon light.

I read Depart, Depart! by Sim Kern on January 1st. It’s a perfect little novella about how choosing yourself—truly choosing yourself, the real way—is often about choosing other people. We choose ourselves by choosing each other. There is no other way out.

The first audiobook I finished in 2024 was Most Ardently by Gabe Cole Novoa, a trans retelling of Pride and Prejudice. I enjoyed it. Some of the plot points didn’t work for me.

I spent most of the first week in January reading a delicious selection of small books: short stories, memoirs, and poetry collections. I feel head-over-heels in love with The Butterfly Jungle by Diriye Osman, so much so that I immediately bought another one of his books (Fairytales for Lost Children), something I never do. The Butterfly Jungle is a dizzy, vibrant mix of languages, lists, moments, fragments, and memories, disjointed and meandering. it’s a series of meditations on Black queer love.

I also adored Faltas by Cecilia Gentili, a collection of letters to various people in her life. It got me thinking about the magic of the letter, and if there is something specifically queer or trans about this form of address, this reaching back to older versions of self to tell a story. There is something about a letter that feels a little bit like a spell. It’s a space where relationships can be muddled over, remade, transformed.

I listened to Walking Practice by Dolki Min, translated by Victoria Caudle, and wow was it a weird time. I didn’t love it, but I'm glad I read it.

I turned 38 and spend a birthday weekend in North Adams. I stayed on a snowy mountaintop! I finally visited Mass MoCA! It was all a joy!

I visited The Bear & Bee, an utterly delightful and very queer bookshop, where I bought Blackouts, the Queer Your Year Book Club pick for March.

Mass MoCA was amazing. It’s been years since I went to look at art and it filled me up. I was walking around in awe. The world! What a glorious, devastating, impossible, infinite trip. My favorite exhibit was Joseph Grigely: In What Way Wham? It’s on view through March; if you’re local, do yourself a favor and take yourself to see it.

I finished the The Fifth Wound by Aurora Mattia, a book I checked out of the library four times in 2023! It was absolutely absurd and I’m not really sure what happened but it’s one of the most maximalist novels I’ve ever read and I loved it.

Cyclettes by Tree Abraham is a book about bikes! A compendium of bicycle-related musings. Drawings, diagrams lists, photos, doodles, quotes, maps, stories, memories. I enjoyed it.

The Rage Letters by Valérie Bah, translated by Kama La Mackerel, is one of two Metonymy Press releases from 2023, so of course I read it. It’s a story collection about Black queer characters in Montreal. It’s sharp, intimate, funny.

It snowed the day before my actual birthday: the perfect gift.

Nessa and I took the most perfect walk in the woods.

I don’t read that many non-queer books these days, but I did enjoy For Now It Is Night by Hari Krishna Kaul, translated by Gowhar Fazili, Gowhar Yaquoob, Kalpana Raina, and Tanveer Ajsi. Kaul is a famous Kashmiri writer; four translators collaborated to bring his work into English.

I listened to Aster of Ceremonies by JJJJJerome Ellis, and I also looked at the print book: both are astounding works of art. Ellis’s work expands what I know and feel about language, disability, history, and embodiment in a thousand flowering ways.

I’ve read a lot of Palestinian poetry in the last few months. You Can Be the Last Leaf by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat, translated by Fady Joudah, is a book of dailiness, devastating one moment, silly the next.

I enjoyed When My Ghost Sings by Tara Sidhoo Fraser, a memoir about illness, disability, memory, and how we construct (and deconstruct) identity.

There was a lot of snuggling.

I read Mary Oliver’s New and Selected Poems, Volume 2 and it was an opening and a solace and a fire. “Be ignited, or be gone,” she says, and I’m following her: along the coast, into the pine forest, through the blueberry thicket, into all the hearts.

My first big book love of 2024: A Small Apocalypse by Laura Chow Reeve. It’s perfect! It’s wild! It’s weird! It’s super queer and it’s sweating in the Florida heat. It’s haunting and haunted. It’s so funny, it’s so beautiful, it’s a dreamy, dazzling collection of ghost stories about family, inheritance, desire. It’s out March 13th. Get your preorders on!

I’ve been meaning to read And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliott ever since it came out because people I trust kept telling me it was very good and they were right. It’s extremely good! It’s about the implicit horrors of colonialism and what it takes to survive, and more importantly, how and why people choose each other.

I had a lot of complicated feelings about Golem Girl by Riva Lehrer, which I will write about at some point (maybe).

All the Hidden Paths by Foz Meadows was a good time and a good bedtime audiobook. I didn’t pay much attention to all the political nonsense but I love an established couple romance.

The Road to Dalton by Shannon Bowring was not a good time. I only finished it because I’d signed up to review the audio. It was very bad! Everything I hate about tropey, shallow, stereotypical rural fiction was in this book.

There was a lot more cuddling.

The Queer Your Year Book Club has been an absolute joy. I just can’t believe how lucky I am, that I get to hang out with these generous and thoughtful bookish people and nerd out about books and come up with queer emojis. I loved Haruko / Love Poems by June Jordan, which was fierce and loving, and I also loved Indigiqueerness by Joshua Whitehead, which got my brain and my heart whirring in all the best ways.

I read a picture book every day. How many more ways can I saw how much joy this brings me, how deeply picture books awaken my sense of wonder? This one book, The Little Band, oh, my beating heart.

There were more snowy walks. Each one, a miracle. Truly.

My bestie gave me a perfect hat.

I listened to Martyr! and then I bought a hard copy because I needed to press it against my chest. The audiobook is outrageously good. The book is perfect. I already told you that. I’m telling you again. I’m going to keep telling you. My love: it burns with the fire of a thousand suns.

I loved Martry! so much that I listened to a podcast episode about it! I do not listen to podcasts, so this is a big deal. Traci is fantastic (I’m in the Stacks Pack even though I’m not a podcast person) and her interview with Kaveh Akbar was, unsurprisingly, amazing. I cried a lot. I felt so wildly happy to be alive in a world with art. I wanted to scribble down most of what Akbar said, but these words about what the book meant to him, about what it felt like, to put it into the world—they are now on my fridge:

I read Blood Orange by Yaffa, which I didn’t like that much, because it’s a kind of poetry that never works for me: all ideas, no images. But I think it will resonate with a lot of people, and I’m glad I read it. And I’ll be thinking about these words for a long time: “if joy is / revolutionary / how much ecstasy / do i need / to free Palestine?”

The Year My Life Went Down the Toilet by Jake Maia Arlow is a perfect middle grade novel. PERFECT! If you are looking for a very real, very funny, very hurting, very beautiful book about being 12, queer, and chronically ill, this is your book. 11/10.

Every time it snowed, I walked.

I read Memory Piece by Lisa Ko, and it was fine? It was good? I think it’s probably a good book but I read it right after I listened to Martyr! and so it just felt cold. Some books just burn brighter. Martyr! burns brighter.

I absolutely adored Gesundheit! by Chen Chen and Sam Herschel Wein, however. It’s a chapbook about poetry and bodies and having feelings and feeling weird and friendship. A sweet bookish friend sent it to me, which made it even better, because reading it made me think of her.

I lit candles with my morning tea, a little in-between ritual, bridging the Season of Light (December) with the Brightest Month (January). I called my reps daily, another ritual, one of the ways I am striving (learning) to love loudly.

I finished my first book for my version of this year’s 10 Books 10 Decades Challenge. I’m reading one queer book from every decade of the 20th century, starting with the 1900s. The Garden God by Forrest Reid was published in 1905. It’s a weird little novella.

My last two nonfiction reads of the month were both fantastic: Bad Indians by Deborah A. Miranda is a brilliant memoir about California Mission Indians and land and home and language and whatever the opposite of “reclamation” is. It absolutely dazzled me. I wrote many many paragraphs about it, which I’ll wrangle into a review at some point. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

A Land with A People: Palestinians and Jews Confront Zionism edited by Esther Farmer, Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, and Sarah Sills is a collection of essays, poems, and art by Palestinian and Jewish writers. Most of the essays by Jews are about Zionist indoctrination, which is something I think we should all be thinking about. It’s a thoughtful and well-curated collection.

I started rereading Martyr! because my love, the suns, the fire. This time around I’m writing down all the art (books, films, songs, TV episodes, paintings, artists/authors/musicians, etc.) that’s mentioned in the book. I’ve already filled up an index card and I’m only on page 50. I’m also writing down all the times it makes me cry, because I am really into crying right now. I think we should all be crying more. Tears are cathartic and generative and connective.

I bought some stickers from Interlink Books. I also ordered this cookbook from them, and I’m hoping it’s going to inspire me in the kitchen.

I walked in the snow.

I am trying to love loudly.

Catch you next week, bookish friends!