My summer reading program
The library made me, and now you're stuck hearing about it
Was there ever a more glorious tradition than the summer reading program at the local library? When I was a kid, every summertime visit to my library began by marching to the front desk and giving the librarian my name. She would pull out a box from under the counter and sift alphabetically through a series of cards before handing me the one with my name on it. Taking a pen from a cup, I diligently filled out the card with the title and author of whatever book(s) I had read since my last visit. When I completed the card with every 10th book, I was offered a prize: 30 minutes on the library computer, or a free book to keep. Guess which I picked. The apex of this experience was when I rifled through the big cardboard box of offerings and discovered a Buck Rogers in the 25th Century “Fotonovel.” The fact that I consider this one of the highlights of my childhood is one of the more salient things you can know about me.
As the summer winds to a close, let me pay tribute to the spirit of the summer reading programs of yore. Here’s a saunter through 10 of the books that have most recently moved, delighted, or otherwise excited me.
The Changeling, by Joy Williams
It’s rotten of me to stick this on a list with a bunch of other books, because there’s none other like it. Williams is a shaman-trickster, funny and terrifying at the same time, and this 1978 novel is her opus. A hapless young woman named Pearl runs away from her husband after giving birth to their child and - well, it’s not quite accurate to say that she enters an existential dimension warp that brings together life and death, animal and human, profane and divine. Or is it? Pearl is drunk most of the time, so not a reliable witness, and the inside of her head is an unsteady lodge from which to observe a savage world of feral children and ancient witches. This is a book that spits outrageous tales and phrases into your face while high-handedly refusing to let you sit down. Deliciously unsettling.
Blackouts, by Justin Torres
A young man spends his days in a colorless room nursing a mentor through death. This setup of nearly Beckettian starkness expands into mystery and memoir as the wistfully playful relationship between the two men - both gay, both Latino - slowly uncovers the older man’s history amongst the key players in an obscure yet fascinating corner of LGBTQ+ history. Adding factual flesh to a fictional skeleton, Torres’s 2023 novel is as unique narratively as it is visually, with its beige pages, dark-green ink, and carefully curated illustrations from a wide range of provocative sources. Every page contains something freshly unexpected.
Worm: A Cuban-American Odyssey, by Edel Rodriguez
You’ve probably seen Edel Rodriguez’s work - his iconic images of Trump before and after the 2016 election helped to set the tone for those perplexing years. Worm, his graphic memoir, traces his practice of visual resistance to a childhood spent in Castro’s Cuba, where his family lived under totalitarian rule before escaping to the U.S. as part of the 1980 boatlift. With a limited color palette illuminating searing memories, Rodriguez’s work gives you a child’s-eye view of political insanity, but its portraits of common people building lives against a backdrop of terror provides an unlikely blueprint for hope.
Otherworld Barbara (Vol. 1, Vol. 2), by Moto Hagio
A lot of manga has a reputation for being unhinged, but this one comes at its uncanniness from atypical directions. Moto Hagio is the biggest name in the shōjo manga, aimed at young female readers, but rest assured this is a mindbending spectacle for anyone foolhardy enough to pick it up. Set across two sprawling volumes, it melds sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, melodrama, romance, and comedy to tell the story of a comatose young woman who dreams an alternate reality that may or may not be a future version of our own. Don’t stress about following the convoluted plot threads - just sit back and let Hagio’s delicate artwork and bonkers sense of story wash over you in psychedelic waves.
The Interrogative Mood, by Padgett Powell
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to read a novel made entirely of questions? Would such a thing be amusing or miserable to you? What if it had no characters or plot, just an endless inquisition of you, the reader, by an unseen, unnamed interlocutor? What if some of these questions were grand and philosophical, while others were piddlingly mundane? Would you feel compelled to answer each of them, especially the ones that seem unanswerable? Would it feel like a literary intrusion of your privacy, to be made the main character of a book like this, or would it feel gratifying to be liberated from the constraints of narrative? Would you be surprised if, despite its arch conceit and dogged execution, it turned out to be hysterical and moving by turns? Would you care?
Blood of the Virgin, by Sammy Harkham
Written in installments over the course of 14 years, Harkham’s sweeping graphic novel hews close to the fits and starts of life as we experience it. Protagonist Seymour works on the schlocky margins of 1970s Hollywood - but he’s got vision, dammit. As he works to turn a blood-and-guts hack job into something to be proud of, his struggles and setbacks will be familiar to anyone who’s compelled to make art under the least promising of circumstances. Meanwhile, his wife, Ida, left mostly alone to raise their infant daughter, takes extreme measures to establish her own identity in his feeble shadow. Poignant, comic, deliberately maddening, the story is supported by a cascade of imaginative visuals that showcase an ambitious creator at the top of his game - exactly the sort of work his main character aspires to.
I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together, by Maurice Vellekoop
I’ve long admired the insouciant fabulousness of Vellekoop’s comics and illustrations - divine queerness sprinkled with just the right amount of self-mocking satire. This deep, dense graphic memoir adds new flavors to his work: boundless yearning, unblinking honesty, and rueful acceptance. It’s a story of growing up gay in late 20th-century Canada in a well-meaning but problematic family of Dutch immigrants. It’s also a story about Vellekoop finding his voice as an artist through the artists and culture he loves, complete with resplendent visual homages to dozens of seminal works. Warm and cozy alternating with biting and melancholic.
For Now, by Eileen Myles
At some point soon I plan to write about my resurgent interest in poetry. As such, this list intentionally neglects some of the exciting poem collections I’ve recently read, including my first exposure to Myles, a seminal downtown voice for decades. Part gadfly, part grifter, Myles’ work has a gritty grace and playful cadence that aggressively anatomizes a tireless mind in action, splattered right there on the page in short, choppy lines. The poet’s voice gets a literal hearing in this slim transcript of lectures delivered at Yale shortly before the pandemic. Myles’s wry, loopy observations of city life - a major motif follows their indecision over leaving a rent-controlled East Village apartment after 40 years, which gave me agita just to read - has added an indispensable new harmony to my inner chorus.
The Enchanted Wanderer: Selected Tales, by Nikolai Leskov (trans. David Magarshack)
This collection of five tales by a neglected 19th-century Russian master is essential reading for anyone who loves stories by way of storytelling. The voice is everything here. In impeccable translations by the late David Magarshack, tireless speakers spin yarns of operatic infidelity, bureaucratic incompetence, and ghostly malfeasance that would work just as well around a campfire or onstage as on the page. The highlight for me was the title novella, in which a hulking monk who believes - rightly or wrongly - that he’s been doomed by wronged spirits to walk the earth for eternity narrates his shaggy-dog story to a boatload of enraptured listeners. Part of me’s still on that boat, waiting for the next meandering turn.
Eve’s Hollyood, by Eve Babitz
Okay this is a cheat because I’m not done yet, but really, there could hardly be a better summer book. Packed with high-literary Los Angeles gossip of the late 20th Century - Stravinsky! Jim Morrison! - it’s an evolving self-portrait of a unique woman of letters - a child of elite aesthetes, an artist, a muse, a kiss-and-tell lover, a tireless critic of America’s inherent phoniness and an equally tireless discoverer of the beauty that glimmers through the dross. Most of these catty, poetic little pieces are hors-d'oeuvre-sized, ideally to be read on a beach underneath a giant floppy hat, smoking a cigarette and coolly dismissing all the yahoos blocking your view of the sunset.
I’m on vacation next week, so I’m prolly gonna take a break, but you never know. Meantimes, what’s on YOUR summer reading list this year?
Okay, this is totally off topic from this lovely post chock full of enticing recommendations but, before I run out and acquire more books from this impressive list, how do you go about *removing* books from your home?
I own books that I am certain I will never get around to reading, but as soon as I feel a book’s heft in my hands, read a page or two, or -good lord- SMELL the pages, I don’t have the heart to part with it. So I gently put it back, fantasizing about reading it on a drab Sunday in March even though I have stacks occupying much needed space on my office floor and overstuffed shelves. When do you know that it’s time to let go of a book? Do you know of bookstores (besides The Strand) that are likely to give out a few coins or store credit for them? I figure if anyone knows, you do.