I wrote this month’s entry while eating mochi cake in a coffee shop. It was very nice to have the bustle around me. I am not usually a person who absolutely must write around people, but equally I do not need things to be perfectly quiet. Today, though, I enjoyed thinking about books with my cake and tea while listening to the Kirill Gerstein recording of the Busoni piano concerto. It was perfect. Call it silly if you want! I had a great time. As a person who works in higher education, I find early fall to be a very stressful time. Cake, tea, music, and time to write are balms in the face of this busy time of year. I hope that you, if you also find this time of year to be a stressful one, can also find your cake, your tea, your music, and your time to write, whatever those may be to you.

Happy October! Winter is coming but the weather is hot. What a time we live in. As ever, feel free to check out the links in the sidebar or follow me on The StoryGraph. I’m always happy to hear from you.

The Book of the Month:

Harlem Shuffle, by Colson Whitehead

I struggled mightily to decide which of Colson Whitehead’s Harlem novels would be my book of the month — Crook Manifesto is a stunner, too — but in the end I landed on Harlem Shuffle because it does such an incredible job of building a world. Take, for instance, the beginning of the novel. Decaying radio repair shops are described in vivid detail, in a way that perfectly sets up the New York of the late ‘50s and allows furniture store owner/fence of stolen goods Ray Carney to dwell on his family, his legal and criminal enterprises, and his own neighborhood (which he reenters after concluding his radio repair business). Does the row of radio repair shops matter to the rest of the novel? Not really. Carney returns to it only very briefly in the book’s closing pages. It is an incredible beginning, though, and it lays the foundation for an incredible book. I want to be more specific here, but I think the book is worth reading without spoilers. The plot isn’t vitally important, not really. Harlem Shuffle is just an experience worth having.

The Rest:

Crook Manifesto, by Colson Whitehead

A direct sequel to Harlem Shuffle, Crook Manifesto is, as I said above, a stunner, every bit the equal to the first book. It brings back the best of Harlem Shuffle while plunging the narrative directly into the pain and decay of 1970s New York. And somehow the Jackson 5 are crucial to the events that kick it off? It’s wonderful. Read it as soon as you’ve finished the first entry in the series.

Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel

I read Emily St. John Mandel’s The Glass Hotel a little while ago and really enjoyed it. Or “enjoyed” could be the wrong word. I found it compelling, a beautifully rendered book that placed a greater emphasis on world than plot. Station Eleven, St. John Mandel’s pre-pandemic plague novel, is slightly more plot-oriented in that many of the characters go on a journey with a defined goal and endpoint, but what matters most is the exploration of art and culture in the wake of a world-shattering event. I will admit that I found the plague portions of the book really, really, really hard to read, but a coworker of mine pointed out that few pieces of fiction really reckon with post-apocalyptic art. She’s right, and St. John Mandel takes time and care to do so, rendering her world in exquisite detail. This, too, could easily have been my book of the month. I look forward to coming back to it again in the future.

Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri

A bundle of heartbreaking short stories set in India and among Indian immigrants in New England. Somehow I’ve managed to avoid reading Lahiri in the past. That was a mistake! It’s hard to know what to say about a collection of short fiction (I’ve said this before about poetry and I’ll run into that again further down), but I thought the book was wonderful and I am excited to read more of Lahiri’s work.

Above Ground, by Clint Smith

Poetry! Clint Smith, the author of How the Word is Passed, writes beautifully of the experience of fatherhood and the experience of Black fatherhood and manhood in America. I was moved to tears again and again and again and although I really loved the books above, I think the most indelible image from my reading this month is Clint Smith dancing with his child in the grocery store. I read Above Ground as an ebook and I plan to pick up the hardcover as soon as I can.

Penric and Desdemona, by Lois McMaster Bujold

The formatting for this entry was hard to figure out, but bear with me here. I found it impossible to break the Penric and Desdemona books apart into separate entries in part because many of them are slight, in part because they’ve blended together a little, and in part because I don’t think the contents of any individual book in the series matters all that much. Each entry in the series gives sorcerer Penric and his demon Desdemona a chance to solve a mystery, conduct a daring escape, or reduce to ruins some enemy stronghold. There is never any real sense of peril, nor any sense that the stakes are particularly high. What matters is that sweet, quirky, and dangerous Penric and Desdemona scrape through some hijinks. If you enjoy one book in the series, you’ll enjoy them all. I’ve listed them below in roughly the order in which I most enjoyed the ones I read this month. For a reading order, try this list sourced from McMaster Bujold’s Goodreads blog.

  1. Penric’s Fox
  2. Penric and the Shaman
  3. The Orphans of Raspay
  4. The Prisoner of Limnos
  5. Masquerade in Lodi
  6. Penric’s Mission
  7. Mira’s Last Dance
  8. The Physicians of Vilnoc

The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X, by Les Payne and Tamara Payne

A biography with a real point of view, an awful read, a powerful read, and a read that left me once again furious at how little has changed in the last 70 years. Not every point is perfectly made, but my word does it not matter when there is so much anger behind the words.

Normal People, by Sally Rooney

Sometimes people aren’t all that great for each other. Sometimes they come back together anyway. Sometimes they grow together and the growing helps them to overcome the not all that great. Sometimes books can be romantic without being romances. I will admit to having avoided Normal People because I was worried that I would find it too sad. I did not. Instead I found it by turns horrifying and revitalizing, the kind of book that becomes a page turner even though it isn’t designed to be one. You’ve probably read it? But if you haven’t, you probably should.

The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On, by Franny Choi

Franny Choi is anxious, anxious, anxious. And so am I! So yes, it was a relief to read this book that reflects so many of my own 21st century worries. “Here’s something I can say about us: we’re not dead, not yet. (Not anymore.)” Isn’t that perfect?

The Crossing Places, by Elly Griffiths

A grim little mystery featuring an archeologist. The resolution is more predictable than I had hoped, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. A perfect rainy day read.

Pride and Premeditation, by Tirzah Price

It’s Pride and Prejudice with a legal mystery twist! Not a perfect book, but a very fun spin on a well worn story. Don’t worry, Mr. Collins is just as irritating here as he is in the original.

More Tales of the City, by Armistead Maupin

A low-stakes sequel to Tales of the City with a shocker of a twist. Episcopalians, huh?

Scribbled in the Dark: Poems, by Charles Simic

My least favorite of the poetry collections I read this month. The writing is nice, but I didn’t feel it nearly as much as I did either Smith or Choi’s work. I did make it through, though: “The infinite yawns and keeps yawning. / Is it sleepy? / Does it miss Pythagoras?” Little moments like that kept me going, because it does unnerve me that there is no structure to infinity.