What I Read: September 2019

I abandoned a lot of books in September.

I’m continuing to abandon them now. Just last night, I stopped reading a book 60 pages in to start reading another one. Last week, I was force to abandon the incredible Women Talking by Miriam Toews because of a due date at the library. I was 60 pages in on that one as well, a significant turn in the way I saw the book and how I processed the characters. But that’s this month. That’s another story altogether.

In September, I started the month with back to back reads of Alison Bechdel memoirs. My graphic novel book club was reading Are You My Mother? and suggested we give Fun Home a read as well. I’d read both before, years apart from each other in a search for meaning — for this new musical I’d fallen in love with, for my own relationship with my parents, with the way I see myself. By the time I read Are You My Mother? I was disillusioned and frustrated with the fact that it was so incomplete. But this time around, reading these memoirs back to back, I fell in love with the conversation they were having with each other. So much of Are You My Mother? is about the writing of Fun Home. I’d forgotten that.

I went on vacation and read a ton.

I don’t know what it is about going away for a weekend, but it’s the only thing that’s let me concentrate on reading. When I went to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, I packed my duffle and read until I landed in Medford. That’s how I finished reading The Honeymooners in quite literally twenty-four hours. Well, that and the fact that Christina Lauren’s writing is just so damn adorable.

Permanent Record by Mary H.K. Choi came out of my bag almost as soon as we landed and was my companion from park to Airbnb to the space just outside my Airbnb that wasn’t on the photos but also wasn’t on the off limits area. Actually, I do know what it is about going out of town. I don’t feel that pressure to work. It’s an odd concept. I haven’t been on a real not-visiting-family / just-because vacation in at least five years. Is this how people relax? I’d love more of that in my life. Jesus.

I also read Three Women.

Rather, it was read to me as I sewed and drove from Seattle to Issaquah, Seattle to Issaquah, three days a week for a month. I don’t want to spend much time talking about it here. In fact, I hesitated even considering it part of my reading life — the joyful part, at least — because I had so many problems with Lisa Taddeo’s methodology. You spent a decade researching women’s sex lives and the three women you chose were all (a) white, (b) heterosexual, and (c) unhappy? Seriously? I thought this was going to be so much more about desire — and I hoped that it would be more diverse too. It wasn’t and I know I’m not the only person to complain about this.

But seriously, it’s 2019.