my favorite books of the year, so far
an alien, the multiverse, queer road trips, and more
Hello friends,
Did you know? The Shutouts is available for preorder! Early reviewers on Goodreads and Netgalley (I know, I know, I shouldn’t look!) are saying it “rivals the first book” and “honestly it was mind boggling at times very slay” and also “every character is queer.” You can preorder it here, or from your local indie bookstore.
Book-wise, there’s not much else for me to do right now other than pass early copies to friends and spiral about the future, so I’ve been using the space between Yours for the Taking and The Shutouts to read other people’s books. There are SO many amazing ones that have just come out. Here are my favorites I’ve read this year so far, in no particular order.
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Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino
An alien is born into the body of a human girl, with one mission: to study humans and report her findings via fax machine to the beings of her home planet. I have maybe never loved a book more. It’s sad and sweet, equally full of heartbreak and joy, and paints a portrait of a life that’s surprisingly resonant for anyone who has ever felt a little bit different. The main character struggles to understand how the humans around her can be so callous and cruel, while also feeling desperate for connection. I mean, who among us hasn’t felt like that? Maybe we are all aliens.
I’m Mostly Here To Enjoy Myself: One Woman’s Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris by Glynnis MacNicol
I loved the author’s first book, No One Tells You This (a memoir about how surprisingly great it is to be 40, unmarried, and without kids) and her followup was just as delightful. Now in her late 40s, the author goes to Paris post-pandemic and basically just has a really great time eating food, hanging out with her friends, and having sex with strangers. It’s very comforting to reframe middle-age as a time of pleasure, which is not something we really get to see women experience. Also, I really need to go to Paris now.
We Were The Universe by Kimberly King Parsons
A young mother mourns her sister while navigating manic crushes on everyone she meets. It’s so funny and at times very painful, and interesting to think about sex as a distraction from grief. In the case of this book, it’s sex that lives almost entirely in the narrator’s mind, which makes it a really intense and at times claustrophobic reading experience. I particularly loved the descriptions of motherhood, which were really sweet and chaotic.
Housemates by Emma Copley Eisenberg
A photographer and a writer living together in a queer group house decide to go on a road trip documenting rural Pennsylvania, and fall in love along the way. This one is brilliant, deeply romantic, and a beautiful commentary on power dynamics within art-making.
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
Another really thoughtful meditation on art and love, this one’s about a queer, sober Iranian American poet who becomes obsessed with martyrdom. Through his journey to grapple with his inheritance of violence and loss, the reader is pulled into the mysteries of the people surrounding him, including an uncle who once rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death, a dying artist who has set up shop at a museum in New York City, and a painting that holds the key to it all. It’s gorgeous, surprisingly funny, and super fucking sad.
In Universes by Emet North
This book really took my breath away! In the first chapter we meet Raffi, a scientist at an observational lab studying dark matter and the multiverse. Each chapter after that gives us Raffi in a different universe, some similar to our own, and some terrifyingly different. In each universe we see how Raffi’s queerness and gender expand and contract; how friends and lovers circle them, always showing up a little differently; and how their many different selves shift depending on where in the multiverse we are.
All Fours by Miranda July
A semi-famous artist on the precipice of perimenopause embarks on a solo cross-country trip only to decide to set up shop in a motel 30 minutes from her house and become obsessed with a much younger man. When she tries to return home to her husband and child, she finds she can no longer fit into her own life, eventually rearranging everything in order to truly be herself. This book is VERY weird, deeply horny, at times disgusting, overall beautiful, and full of the kind of revelations that have stuck with me long after I put the book down. I loved it!
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
This book is more like one long poem; a snapshot of one day in the life of a group of astronauts orbiting Earth. Nothing really happens, but that’s not the point; in other words, it’s no plot, all vibes. You have to be very in the mood for what it’s doing, which I was, but it also gave me weird space dreams. Each line of this book is gorgeous as we bounce from one astronaut to the other, watching them see the sunrises and sunsets while the precious planet spins below them, connecting with each other while going through the motions necessary for survival.
Loneliness & Company by Charlee Dyroff
In a near future NYC, a young woman is hired to work on a secret government project training AI to help combat loneliness. This is a gorgeous debut that explores what it means to connect with other people in a world set on pushing technology that drives us apart—it felt startlingly prescient.
Come and Get It by Kiley Reid
Ok, I wouldn’t say that this is the most pleasant novel to read, but it’s definitely laugh-out-loud funny and I think its abrasiveness is intentional. It’s 2017, and a senior RA at the University of Arkansas becomes enmeshed with a visiting professor and writer who wants to document the student culture. Chaos, of course, ensues. It’s a refreshing take on Gen Z—mainly that they torture each other the same way kids have always tortured each other, just with different lingo, despite the stereotypes about how social justice-minded they supposedly all are.
Whoever You Are, Honey by Olivia Gatwood
A young woman lives in seclusion with her much older roommate in a dilapidated Santa Cruz bungalow. When a tech billionaire and his too-beautiful girlfriend move into the mansion next door, everything begins to unravel. Nothing is what it seems in this moody, smart, often very poetic novel. Ultimately I think it’s about different kids of women finding solace in each other, though it’s also a commentary on technology and what we use it for (think Grey Gardens meets AI). This one comes out next week!
Knife River by Justine Champine
This book really has it all: a murder mystery, complicated sister dynamics, a messy lesbian main character, and an even messier love interest. It’s very dark and vibey, and explores the reverberations of the murder in a really smart, thoughtful way. I don’t generally love things that can be classified as true crime, but this is so much more than that.
First Love: Essays On Friendship by Lilly Dancyger
In this beautiful, slender essay collection, Lilly treats her friendships like great love stories, writing about how each of her close female friends shaped her life, especially through periods of grief. It’s really poignant and refreshing, and made me text all of my best friends that I love them.
Rabbit Hole by Kate Brody
In this thriller, our main character’s father kills himself ten years after her sister went missing. When she discovers her father had been in a Reddit rabbit hole trying to solve her sister’s disappearance, she picks up where he left off, falling deeper into a mystery that only gets more and more complicated. I couldn’t read it fast enough.
Love Is A Burning Thing: A Memoir by Nina St. Pierre
Ten years before the author was born, her mother self-immolated. She survived, but with wounds both physical and psychological. Growing up, Nina, her mom, and brother moved from place to place as her mother chased ascension. Later, Nina grapples with the truth of the situation; her mother’s mental illness, the lack of resources available to them, and the fires that marked all of their lives. This memoir is STUNNINGLY gorgeous and equally painful to read, written with a poetic brilliance that made me gasp. The lines between spirituality and mental illness blur as she writes about definitions of madness and the stigmas that go along with it.
Also, for friends in LA, on July 15 I’ll be reading at The Rubyfruit as part of the series “I Blame Television.” Hope to see you there!