At the end of last year, I plugged hold list from the library, all my scheduled book club readings, and my remaining TBR pile into Claude. I asked it to build a month-by-month reading list, plugging in deadlines, and grouping the remaining books by theme. I’m a little bit obsessed with the result. Instead of keeping it all together in my mind, I have a comprehensive plan, and I don’t think it’s an accident that I’ve read more this month than in the past several.
The Correspondent: A Novel by Virginia Evans
The grief that must fill the world is incomprehensible. Our small dose felt as large as the sun, didn’t it?
There is a reason everyone and their mama is talking about this novel. It is a complete and total DELIGHT…and also devastating. I really don’t want to say much more because I think the less you know, the better. As you know, I’m exacting on trending novels. I am not easily impressed by cute plots or melodrama. This novel is beautifully written, and the story is expertly told. It completely lives up to the hype.
Common Sense by Thomas Paine
The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.
America250 includes many celebrations, including the 250th anniversary of the publication of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. I’m sure I read this pamphlet multiple times during high school and college, but I was due for a reread. It did not disappoint. Beth and I discussed our reactions on Pantsuit Politics.
I’m still making my way slowly through The Stand and hit some of my favorite chapters this month. Who’s been reading along with Laura Tremaine and I over at Slow Read: The Stand?!
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo
You would have imagined her at one moment a maniac, at another a queen.
The January selection for Well-Read Mom, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, was the first work by Victor Hugo I had ever read. The plot is very dramatic and is dripping with Romantic Era sensibilities. And yet, I found moments where the tone was modern and almost sly. I usually skim the background segments of classic literature - when a Russian novelist decides you need a whole chapter on Orthodox theology (looking at you, Dostoevsky!) - but I actually enjoyed Hugo’s side rants on architecture and the city of Paris, some of the most affecting parts of the novel.
Plus, my friend Kate and I decided to have our book club meeting for this novel IN PARIS next month! So, hard to complain about much when it comes to this book.
Children of the Savage City by Elizabeth Heider
In these families, crime isn’t seen as deviance; it’s following the path of their father.
Members of The First Books Book Club will recognize this author! Elizabeth wrote May The Wolf Die one of our modern genre picks, and it was basically everyone’s favorite new book of the whole year.
Guys, I don’t even like crime novels, and I basically never read series. And yet, here I am speed-reading Elizabeth’s newest and then abusing her personal email to yell at her for killing one of my favorite characters. (#sorrynotsorry) She is such a gifted writer, and the plot feels realistic and propulsive. Plus, despite the fact that Nikki Serafino and I would basically never be friends IRL, I find her so fascinating and am rooting for her so hard.
Children of the Savage City comes out on February 17th. Run, don’t walk to get your preorder in!
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.
Vonnegut’s satirical apocalyptic novel representing the hopelessness of sixties youth felt shockingly relevant as I read one piece after another about the loneliness epidemic and the disaffection of Gen Z. Honestly, by the time I had finished the novel, it was downright freaky how closely aligned Vonnegut’s words were with our current malaise.
Chapter 125:
“I asked him if he had any sex urge left. I mourned that I had none…I recalled a think I had read about aboriginal Tasmanians…the aborigines foudn life so unattractive that they gave up reproducing.”
A paragraph from an email newsletter I receive I texted to basically everyone I know on the day I read Chapter 125:
Will sex soon be no more than a “niche hobby”?
In one out of every three postcodes in Britain, says Simon Kelner in The i Paper, there are “more dogs than children”. There are two causes: Britain’s canine population soared from nine million in 2019 to more than 13 million last year; and young couples are having fewer children. With almost a quarter of new puppy owners aged between 25 and 34, no one should be surprised at the rise of the #dinkwad – “dual income, no kids, with a dog”. Instagram is awash with disturbing posts from couples proudly extolling the virtues of a child-free life in the company of their canine “child”.
It’s not just that today’s youth aren’t having children, says Mary Wakefield in The Spectator. They’re not even having sex. The proportion of 18-to-24-year-olds who do the deed has fallen from 67% in 2019 to just 43% last year. At this rate, by 2030 only a tiny fraction of the “young, fertile humans sex was designed for” will be doing it at all. By 2050, perhaps it’ll be a niche hobby, “like playing the euphonium”. But can you blame them? We Gen Xers had Jilly Cooper to fire our imaginations. These poor sods have been exposed to the most appalling pornography since before puberty while also being conditioned – in the interests of “removing stigma” – never to “kink shame”, hence the gruesome rise of strangling during sex. Meanwhile, normal flirting has become taboo: a shocking 17% of Americans between 18 and 29 think asking a girl out for a drink is “always” or “usually” sexual harassment. In this “worst of all romantic worlds”, perhaps a sex strike is a “perfectly reasonable response”.
So, I’m torn between feeling nihilistic that we’re on a march to oblivion anddddd feeling hopeful that this is a common generational reaction to modernity, changing technologies, and being human. Either way, the novel itself is a wild trip through Vonnegut’s imagination that manages to be both entertaining in a distracting way and also piercing in its broader questions and observations.
Get Me Carlucci: A Daughter Recounts Her Father’s Legacy of Service by Frank Carlucci and Kristin Carlucci Weed
Instead, as so often happens when the worst does not occur, it’s been swept aside and largely forgotten.
Kristin Carlucci Weed, a longtime listener of Pantsuit Politics, had sent me this biography of her father many months ago (It was on the infamous TBR pile!). In some ways, I’m sad it took me so long to read it because her father’s life is such an interesting case study. However, in other ways, I’m glad I finally picked it up when I did because it holds so much relevance to current controversies - especially reducing federal bureaucracy.
I got to sit down and talk to Kristin about the book and her dad, and I will be sharing that interview this week!
Soft Launch by Sarah Vacchiano
I love the idea of a coming-of-adulthood novel, and I think Sarah really captures the grey in-between of figuring out what relationships and what career really work for you as you leave the promise of your twenties behind.
What did you read in January?
I managed to read 22 books in January, but 12 of them were from the Chalet School series. I was determined to complete the set of 58 and very pleased I got that done in January.
My favourite book this month was The Burning Grounds by Abir Mukherjee. This is book 6 in the Wyndham & Bannerjee series, which starts off in 1920 Calcutta. Highly recommended.
Great list! Kristin Weed is a good friend of mine and I loved her book also. Felt very nostalgic of a time when we could expect civil servants to be civil and have the country’s best interests at heart. And her dad was definitely a very special man.