Books We Read: 11 Readers on Reading in 2016 —Niyi Ademoroti
www.read.i.ngNiyi Ademoroti
Maybe sometime during the second month of the year, I decided to read only short story collections. I was tired of the tepid encounters I had with novels, how on the axis that represented enjoyment the line always deepened somewhere in the middle. Also, I was going to have a desk job. I needed stories I could finish before leaving for work, during lunch, the short free time between dinner and sleep. Another thing I set out to do was read stories by masters. No genre writing and nothing not authored by a literary giant.
Of course, it would take an extremely disciplined fellow, something I am absolutely not, to follow through these two things. So I read a couple of novels, a few by Achebe and another which gripped me through work assignments by Tobias Wolff. I also read a couple of letters, diaries, a collection of interviews, none of which you will find in this review because it didn’t occur to me to consider them—wrote out the review before typing out this preface. A couple of debuts found their way into my library. I loathed some and I loved one.
So, yeah, there it is. The summary or idea behind my reading experience this year.
Notable Reads
It is always refreshing to see into the mind of a villain. More so when the villain is a degenerate. What's most refreshing is that Fuckhead narrates with a passive indifference. He's not telling you his story to get your pity. It is not for your affection either. He's telling it because you need to know—why else do we tell stories? A review of this book would be incomplete without mentioning the surrealism of its prose. The way it treads the path of both the physical and the supernatural. Leaning ferns on drifting roads in forests and blooming flowers in the middle of a desert. And the structure of the sentences. God. Such a perfect book.
Cathedral/What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
I've always known the things which look the easiest are the most difficult to achieve. Quick joke: I dare you to prove 1 + 1 equals two.
Seriously though, Carver's prose is so easy to digest. It is like water and sugar, maybe even ice-cream: It melts on the tongue and goes down easy. And his subjects. The normal average life. Women and men in lonely marriages dancing on lawns. Birthday boys with broken heads. It is always difficult to explain what makes the mundane beautiful. It is something Carver does so well.
Drown by Junot Díaz
What's not to love about this one? I remember reading Fiesta, 1980—which I still believe has ties to Murakami's Nausea, 1979—and going, this is the master in whom I am well pleased. The language is the most startling thing about Junot Díaz’s writing but I also love how emotive the stories are. How you can't help but feel for a childhood. Empathize so deeply with characters.
The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg by Deborah Eisenberg
Self-awareness means a lot to me. I love it when people are aware of what makes them them, their amazingness, their shortcomings. You'll read a Deborah Eisenberg story and you'll meet people who are aware, to the minutest detail, why they feel what they feel. It is incredible. Also, the solitary feeling of the characters is another thing I can relate with. How they make mistakes and forgive themselves.
Blind Willow Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami
I have a thing for prose which presents itself simple. That which glides silently in the mind, and you don't realize you're an hour deep. Yeah, that. Also, I have a thing for surrealism. Not exactly supernatural, magic, but not reality either. I have this belief that reality is calculated. It is a false thing, yellow. Aren't the things we put out airs?
Anyway. Murakami. I read someplace—can't remember where, or what exactly it was I read, even—that no writer has a more private body of work than Murakami. A lot of his stories are difficult to find root of. But, God, do they leave a dent. I remember reading A Poor Aunt Story and recognizing. What, I'm not sure of. The stories here are calm, beautiful. They remind me of music, in that it is a personal thing to the singer, but you're a part of it, you're being included. Yeah.
For the Relief of Unbearable Urges by Nathan Englander
Haha. I remember reading a review of this and someone saying he didn't like the book because he felt like the writer was showing off, like, "Oh I'm good, I'm an awesome writer, in your face!" I'd show off too if I could write that well.
When someone can do seriousness and humor with the same level of deftness, how will you not love the person? Read The Twenty-seventh Man, then Reb Kringle, and see just what it is I'm talking about. This book is so good.
I read maybe five novels this year. Here's why: Novels demand attention; I'm not crazy for saying that, right? They go on and on and on. Everyone knows a short story is perfect from beginning to end. Every word is precise. No excess. Novels? With their tepid middles? No, thank you.
Homegoing though, a punch from start to finish. Was so touching it was easy to forgive the archetypical characters. I cried and laughed and went, "What the fuck is that?" Homegoing was a delight to read.
The Collected Works of Flannery O'Connor by Flannery O'Connor
I remember finishing The Lame Shall Enter First and going: "What the actual faaaack?" Flannery O'Connor IS a masterrrrrrr. Damn! The way she explores how lost people are in their own heads, religion, parentage, it is magic. Her metaphors and lessons, the way she shows her hands in her stories, the confidence. How do you write a review on a book you loved when you loved everything?
Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro
Alice Munro somehow manages to pack the content of a novel into a short story. I'll be damned if I knew how.
The New Yorker Stories by Ann Beattie
This is not the first time I'm proclaiming my love for Ann Beattie, so I'll let it be brief: I love her characterization, how real they are and how much they know.
I especially loved this book because you can see her progression from the '70s to the 2000s. Good becoming great. It is a marvel.
Not Worth the Hype
• Blackass by A. Igoni Barrett
• Butterfly Fish by Irenosen Okojie
Niyi Ademoroti is an estate surveyor who spends all of his free time either reading or tweeting. He hates everything else (and even tweeting, too).
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This is the last of eleven pieces on Readers on Reading in 2016.