October 2020, *insert internet shrug here*

I don’t really know where I’m going with this one because there’s just too much to say. Do I want to get really angry about how everyone gets to choose which level of pandemic they’re in, even when we live in the same city? Do I want to go on and on about the impending election results? Do I want to talk about the exciting changes happening in my professional career? Do I want to talk about how I said, “I’m not even going to watch Home Alone this year” out loud to myself the other day and then almost teared up? Do I want to talk about how being on zoloft is going? (Good, but I can still cry, unlike on lexapro.) Do I want to talk about how I have overused my laptop this year and now the space bar sticks and inserts a stray period every few words because double tapping the space bar does that???

No, I think I just want to talk about books this time. But if you usually skip over book stuff, please note that I read The Warmth of Other Suns this month, so you can read that bit if you want to read about race, and I finished my seven month long Harry Potter re-read and have some thoughts on that, if you’d like to skip down to it.

Otherwise, thank you for reading and I hope you are all staying indoors and voting for Joe Biden and stuff. Donate to abortion funds — find organizations other than Planned Parenthood! And think about other people, not just yourself, and do your best.

[Books I Read With My Eyes]

Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman
I’ve recently spent a lot of time thinking about how I hope my legacy revolves around my friendships. I’m probably not getting married, I’m definitely not having biological kids, and, while I love my family dearly, I come from rough roots and not a lot of solid tradition. My friendships have always been my thing and I hope that’s clear to people. As I have had to endure years and years and years of public romantic declarations and proposals, in person and online, I’ve only ever had my friends. Even when I am in a relationship, my friends are my priority. That is not true for everyone in a relationship and that’s fine, but to me, I can’t imagine my life without my friends, and relationships come and go, even when you really don’t want them to. Because of all of that, I was excited to read this book. I didn’t love it. The research based aspects of the book were great and I jotted down a lot of names and other book titles to read. It’s not entirely the authors’ faults — I don’t listen to their podcast and am only vaguely familiar with each of them. I was just excited to have two friends write a book about friendship, though I found myself kind of questioning their friendship in itself. They’ve only been friends for 10 years and wrote a book about being friends? I don’t think time matters always — you can certainly form a strong, irreversible bond with someone in a very short period of time — but all of my friendships are at least a decade old and my Big Friendships (I would say that I have two, maybe three) way surpass both the length of time these two have been friends and the gritty details of their friendship strife. This is not a competition, but I was hoping for something a little more hard-hitting.
[memoir/social studies, nonfiction, cowritten by a Black cis woman and a white cis woman, medium read]

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
I have a very good friend named Luisa (hi Luisa!) who recommended this book to me…multiple times. Pachinko would always creep in with a batch of library holds and because of its length, I always sent it back for a later date. This time around, Luisa said “do it!!” and boy, was she right. I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a book this much the entire year. I thoroughly enjoy multigenerational sagas, even if it means it’s usually a long ass book. Getting to know one character and everyone they love throughout their lives is so special. Lee did an incredible job weaving characters that you really give a shit about with the history of Korean and Japanese relations including discrimination, blatant racism, stereotypes, and general power struggles. I cannot say enough about this novel. I will be purchasing it to read again and again.
[epic multigenerational novel, fiction, written by a Korean American cis woman, long read]

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
I exaggerate a lot so stick with me here — this is the best book I’ve ever read. The word epic is obviously used with reckless abandon, but this book is actually an epic masterpiece. As Wilkerson writes at the end, “the book is essentially three projects in one,” and it is. It’s a collection of oral histories, it is a deep and detailed narrative of three different lives, and it is a scholarly work, citing research on the Great Migration. Do you know what the Great Migration is? Did you learn about it in school? There is so much I know about history — Black history in particular — that comes from both my obsession with Black writers from a young age (I’ve never needed a movement to pick up a book written by a Black person) and my personal family history. But I didn’t learn this kind of thing in school, and I’m assuming many of you didn’t either. If you were compelled to pick up books on anti-racism after George Floyd was murdered, I’d implore you to put them all aside and read this instead. I don’t know if there is a better way to drive home and connect the very prevalent and deep-rooted history of racism expressed toward Black people in this country than by reading this book. It’s not just because it details true accounts from real people (who were alive as Wilkerson was writing this!!!) who survived sharecropping and the era of Jim Crow and lynching and and and, but because Wilkerson connects it to present day. Ida Mae Brandon Gladney — who has my entire heart — saw Barack Obama speak as a young senator in Chicago. The book is lonnnnng and journeys from the 30s and 40s to the 2000s, and even though I know a lot about a lot when it comes to Black history, I was still stunned to see how quickly we went from George Swanson Starling almost being murdered by his white boss for organizing a work stoppage on the citrus fields of Florida in the 30s to reading the name “Michelle Obama.” I loved this book. It is smart and beautiful and historically relevant and I wish I could read 100 books like this. I’d love to get to know the lives of more people who hopped a train for a new life, and I’d love to get to know more about the people who stayed in the old country.
[Black history, migrant history, written by a Black cis woman, very long read]

Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand
I read this for the Book Riot challenge as my “horror book published by an indie press” and it was enjoyable! I do not read books like this very often and I also wanted something ~spooky~ for October. This had great characters and good diversity and even though it was about a monster who eats little girls, it was well done. What a thing to say!
[horror/suspense, written by a white cis woman, relatively quick read]

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
I wish I actually knew how many times I’ve read this book. If I absolutely had to guess, I’d say I’ve read it with my eyes six times, and I recently listened to it for the first time last year. Regardless, I know it well and I know what I crave (the chapters Godric’s Hollow, The Prince’s Tale, The Forest Again) and what I don’t care for (Hedwig’s callous death, when Ron gets really mad and ditches them, the Xenophilius Lovegood stuff). This book holds so much weight for me, and not just because it’s long as hell and it is physically heavy. One of the most treasured memories that I have in my life is getting this book at midnight and rushing home to sit on my couch and read it through the night. I got three of the Harry Potter books at midnight but I barely remember anything except for this one. I remember rushing home, turning my phone off and putting it away to avoid spoilers, even though this was well before social media and the internet as we know it now. I was alone in my apartment for the summer and I had everything about reading this book planned out. I knew I’d be home by 12:30 am and I knew I would read until 5am, take a two hour nap, and read the rest of the book from there. I took the day off of work, of course. I cried profusely at two different parts in the book and had to set it down to take a breathing break. Some of these deaths felt — still feel — like losing family. And then I finished. And I napped. And I woke up, a person who knew how the Harry Potter series ended.

I found Harry Potter when my family moved in the middle of my freshman year of high school. I did not make friends that year, partially because I did not want to be there. I was always a good kid and student, but that year, I started going home at lunch and skipping my classes. When confronted about the skipping, I lied to my counselor and said my grandma had died, but I think she knew I was lying because I am bad at lying. The only thing I could do in the world that brought me any semblance of joy was read Harry Potter. At that point, only four of the books were out, and by the time Order of the Phoenix was being released, I was a full-fledged fan.

And it’s not coincidental to me that this re-read coincided — exactly — with the pandemic. As soon as we went into lockdown, I took a look at my bookshelf and knew I would do it. I felt isolated as a freshman, forced away from my friends, my family’s sixth move in my short life. I didn’t want to face reality, I wanted to get to know this boy wizard and his magical friends. I wanted to dwell on his trauma instead of my own. Is it any wonder why the series was appealing to me this year?

Unfortunately, J.K. Rowling chose this year to lean even harder into her hateful and ignorant views. It’s not new to me — when people ask me what I think, I tell them she’s shown her true colors for awhile. But it did come across worse this time, she went harder, deeper, into her perspective and she’s, simply put, wrong. It makes loving Harry Potter weird, but I also don’t think we have to stop. She created this world for us and I know plenty of trans people who feel that way too. But it sucks. I wouldn’t want someone reading and praising the words of someone who later would let them know that she doesn’t even believe in my existence.

I’ve donated a lot of money to trans organizations this year. I have in the past, but this. year, being home and still working, I’ve had a few extra bucks here and there. This month, I set up a recurring donation to The House of Rebirth. Nothing is enough, but as long as I find solace and comfort and joy in these stories, I will never let myself forget how they might make someone else feel.

[Audiobooks]

Having and Being Had by Eula Bliss
I honestly don’t know why I borrowed this from the library and I went into it knowing nothing about it and I barely paid attention. It’s about capitalism! I liked the narrator’s voice. That’s all I’ve got.
[economics, nonfiction, written by a white cis woman, medium listen, read by Alex McKenna]

Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive by Stephanie Land
Hoo, boy. This has been on my list for a long time because it was a Very Big Deal when it came out. When I posted this one in my instagram stories after finishing, I embarked on many deep conversations about it by other folks who have read it. One of my friends even dished — she knows Stephanie Land! Honestly, here’s how I felt:

I think memoirs are accessible, especially for nonfiction, and this book probably opened a lot of people’s eyes to how complex and impossible navigating the public systems of aid are in this hellscape country of ours. I’ll give it up for that. But otherwise, I was underwhelmed. Land comes across as a really judgmental person who honestly just made a lot of questionable choices. I am particularly sensitive about people who should not have children…having children. I know how horrible that sounds, but I have the greatest evidence of all time to back that up — my own damn life. I was raised in deep poverty and there was no other side for my family. We didn’t have anything, we were evicted from every home, we moved so much, my mom was a single parent working the kinds of jobs Land describes in her book. So, I don’t know. I empathize, but I also wish this had been better and more about the systems and less about Land’s personal feelings about the people who live in the houses she cleans. And all that being said, where are the book deals for Black and brown women who are living this exact life and have been since slavery? Stephanie Land has immense amounts of privilege that are never once acknowledged throughout this book. Rough.
[memoir, nonfiction, written by a white cis woman, medium listen, read by the author]

[What I Recommend]

Honestly, this may have been my favorite month of reading all year. It started out meh with the book about friendship that I didn’t care for, but the triple whammy of Pachinko, The Warmth of Other Suns, and the masterpiece that is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows made for a beautiful month of reading. All three of those books are very, very long, but I enjoyed every second of each of them. I strongly recommend Pachinko, (which is going to be a show on Apple TV+ so get it in before that!), and I honestly think it’s your responsibility, especially if you live in the United States, to read The Warmth of Other Suns.

Thank you for reading this and existing at the same time as me. Please take your vitamin D and talk to your doctors if you’ve been putting off the conversation about antidepressants. Things are bad. Take care of yourself. See you next month.

“There was consolation. The people you loved, they were always there with you, she had learned.” Pachinko

“Over the decades, perhaps the wrong questions have been asked about the Great Migration. Perhaps it is not a question of whether the migrants brought good or ill to the cities they fled to or were pushed or pulled to their destinations, but a question of how they summoned the courage to leave in the first place or how they found the will to press beyond the forces against them and the faith in a country that had rejected them for so long.” The Warmth of Other Suns

“Why had he never appreciated what a miracle he was, brain and nerve and bounding heart?” Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows