december contains my favorite week of the year which is that vast no man’s land between christmas and new year’s. everyone is extra kooky. social norms? who are they? i spent the week eating mostly sugar via a tin of chocolate shortbread d’s mom brought us, reese’s pieces in a candy cane shaped plastic tube, 3 peppermint mochas, chocolate choux, an apple galette adjacent pastry with homemade whipped cream, and a plate of gummy sour candy from the chef’s stash at the restaurant where my sibling works. i’m so sorry to say that i didn’t read anything life-changing this month, but not every month needs to be life-changing, i suppose. that would be exhausting.
what I liked
Proof by Dick Francis
This was perfect, fa la la, winter reading: a large novel about a man in London who runs a wine shop and becomes embroiled in a crime that revolves around horse racing and Scotch. It was the novel version of a rich hot chocolate with too much whipped cream on top. Did I need it? No. Am I glad I had it? Yes. Will I remember it a year from now? Doubtful.
Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag
I really like Sigrid Nunez’s novels so I was excited to read this. It felt loose, more like a freewheeling essay than a book, about Nunez’s time dating Sontag’s son, in which she lived with the two of them before they broke up. I think the framing is a bit weird—why can’t it be Sigrid Nunez’s own memoir of that era, instead of what felt at times a misplaced focus on Susan Sontag?—but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Lots and lots of tidbits about the literary scene at that time, if you’re into that.
Alice Sadie Celine by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright
This juicy, lush novel follows Alice who begins an affair with her best friend Sadie’s mother, Celine. It’s complicated and nuanced and I didn’t want to put it down, not once. It’s a salacious premise but I thought Blakely-Cartwright did an elegant job building the scenes of her novel which added a necessary grounding to the book. I felt like I could almost smell Celine’s house, feel the cold air in Alice’s. And while the book’s thrust comes from the relationship between Alice and Celine, I thought the most precise and delicate parts were about friendship. It is a very verb-y book—the characters all seem to be puttering and ambling, flapping and spooning, which is my unfair and personal pet peeve, but I found that I did not care. It was almost endearing, actually. I really liked this one. I believe it was the author’s debut novel for adults and I really hope she writes more. I’m sure this novel will become a beautifully shot Normal People adjacent limited series show and I very much look forward to that.
and what I didn’t
I didn’t really dislike anything this month but…