Everything I Read & Where I Read It: September 7-14
I was so obsessed with two of the books I read last week that they ruined this week’s reading for me. Good problem to have!
Sky Daddy by Kate Folk
I read this on the ferry back from Nantucket, hungover, laughing loudly and continuously.
Sky Daddy was one of the funniest books I’ve ever read, fullstop. It put me in mind of Eleanor Olliphant and Strange Sally Diamond. There’s a darkness at the center of this book buffeted by huge amounts of observational humor that made me laugh helplessly.
This is definitely a book about sex–the central storyline is about a woman, Linda, who is sexually obsessed with planes. Linda’s main goal in life is to marry a plane which entails, for her, dying in a plane crash. I found it to be a touching investigation of kink, actually: at its root, it’s about a sexual desire so strange and otherworldly that it completely isolates Linda from everyone in her life.
As much as it is about sex, though, it’s just as compellingly about magical thinking and manifestation. I think Sky Daddy does best when it’s plumbing the boundaries between laws of attraction type thinking and full-blown delusion. Where you think that line of delusion falls–vision boards? Anthropomorphizing planes? Believing her plane husband will be so overwhelmed by his love for her that he’ll crash to keep her with him forever?–will probably determine if this book feels like an interesting experiment in magical thinking or an exploration of an episode of insanity. (And if you’re firmly in the camp of insanity, give it some time–you’ll see!)
I know I’ve said before: this ending was insane, oh my God, crazy. I need to reserve that kind of reaction for books like Sky Daddy where I actually could not stop thinking about the ending for days. It made me cry, not just because it was sad but because it scared me so badly. As someone who leans a little heavily on superstitions and jinxes, it read like my worst nightmare come to life. I need someone else to read this book to discuss the ending with–the Reddit thread is not doing it for me. An enthusiastic, full-throated 5/5.
Bonding by Mariel Franklin
The cover of this one got me: I loved the color gradient, the on/off toggle button. I totally choose books by their covers, which is usually a strategy that serves me well.
Bonding was very medium. Not horrible: there were portions of real substance with interesting commentary about the internet, online dating, love as a drug, drugs as a drug, the tech industry. Unfortunately, that commentary was interspersed with descriptions and dialogue that felt self-conscious to me. They read as overly stylized but somewhat confused. The actual storyline reminded me of Conversations with Friends but the narrator was, somehow, more numb and depressing than Sally Rooney’s characters. The love of her life died unexpectedly, and she seems, at worst, mildly upset about it. I know that’s commentary on the subject matter of the book itself, but still.
I think my main issue with books like Bonding is that they assume a shared experience of online ennui that I just don’t feel. The sentiment seems to be: look at all of us, living through the screen, scrolling 6+ hours a day, no real relationships. I don’t resonate with that framing and I resent its imposition on my life. 3/5.
King of Envy by Ana Huang
I met up with a professor last week and felt flustered by the experience after. I don’t necessarily think it went poorly. I do think that I got overwhelmed towards the end and acted weird, which I could not stop circling around immediately after. So I turned to my tried and true self-soothing method: sitting in Barnes and Noble and reading a romance book. This time I upped the ante by also getting Van Leeuwen’s on my way into the store. And I was right! I felt completely fine by the time I left.
The key to a successful Barnes and Noble stint is choosing a book that 1) you can rip through in a matter of hours, and 2) you don’t particularly care if you finish fully or not. For me, that’s always a romance. This one by Ana Huang was, um, insane. The male love interest speaks in sign language selectively because he was so traumatized by a particularly violent episode in his past? Whatever! None of my business. I’m here for the relationship build, which Ana Huang does well. I’ve mentioned before that I hate an organized crime subplot in romance, which is a fact that I know about myself from reading Ana Huang books. This one was no exception. Fear not: we have limited time sitting in the Barnes and Noble cafe. We can just skim those sections. 3/5 romance stars.
The Compound by Aisling Rawle
I had a friend staying with us last week. One night, she went out to dinner with college friends. I started The Compound while she was gone; she came back around 11, and I was still reading. I quickly said good night to her, then disappeared into my room to finish The Compound.
I could not stop reading this book. Scott was talking to me, and I would nod at him emptily, not taking in a word. In that way, it functioned really well as a commentary on the kind of bingable reality TV it’s satirizing. I’ve heard The Compound described about 100 times as Love Island x The Hunger Games. It’s true, and it’s a premise that works as well as you’d imagine.
So much of the book is about different forms of power–physical, intellectual, sexual–and how they’re performed. Like The Hunger Games, the contestants are performing for their invisible audience–and like in The Hunger Games, some of the eeriest moments come when the audience or producers make their presence known within the compound’s realm. You forget, like the characters, that the whole thing is being filmed and consumed. Simultaneously, you feel the characters leaning into a persona for the audience, including the narrator. I found it fascinating. I’d read it many more times. 5/5.
If You’re Seeing This, It’s Meant for You by Leigh Stein
This book could easily have suffered from a case of too many depressed internet books in one week, or just suffered in comparison with The Compound. I really tried with this one, too: I read 150 pages before I gave up. For all the ways The Compound felt organic and addicting, this one felt slow and overwrought. Also, really minor side note, but when a good amount of character/plot development is based around a pet rabbit, you lose me as a reader pretty fast. DNF.
The Co-Op by Tarah DeWitt
I was looking for a fun, flirty, escapist romance to binge read on Saturday morning. Instead, I ended up with an over-complicated romance where the female love interest’s defining trait is her constant bitchiness. The princess trope can work for me, certainly, when it’s accompanied by principled stubbornness or at least has a compelling backstory. This one had neither. Just a female character who’s supposed to be lovable because she’s so whiny. No, thanks. DNF.