Best Books I Read in 2015

It is the last day of 2015, and I finally feel ready to actually post what I think are the best books I read in 2015. I read a lot of amazing books this year, many of which I loved and thought were extremely well-written, but these books listed below specifically are ones that always seem to pop into my mind, that frame my thinking of other books, and whose images, characters and words keep me thinking/guessing. I'm also going to include a quote from each to entice you to read them, of course! They are in the order in which I read them.

Aside from these amazing books, peep my new bedsheets as the backdrop,
where were a gift from one of my best friends. Who wouldn't want
lovely bedsheets for Christmas?!

The City in Which I Love You by Li-Young Lee

But the boy is packing his shirts,
he is looking for his keys. Are you a god,the man screams, that I sit mute before you?
Am I a god that I should never disappoint? ('A Story' 15-18)

Li-Young Lee is one of my absolute favorite poets of all time. I want to say that Lee's poetry deals with a lot of big issues, such as being a refugee (he and his family fled from Indonesia when he was a baby, and knocked around a few countries in East Asia before settling in the US), religion, love, etc. But to just say that, to say Lee is a political poet, is not enough. All of his poetry are grounded in specific moments, images, and relationships, that when I think of what 'humane' means, I think of Lee's poetry. The City in Which I Love You exhibits, I think, Lee at his best. With stunning poems such as 'My Father in Heaven is Reading Out Loud,' which conflates the image of his own father with a Heavenly Father, Lee teases out the complexity of his relationship with his father, religion, and the legacy of his family's history.

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

'That is a good beginning; I am glad it is yours. Tonight shall be mine.'
'Ought we to have different ones?'
'Different beginnings? I think we must.'
'Will there be more of them?'
'A great many more' (832)

I read this book at the very beginning of 2015, and have not forgotten about it - images, characters, themes, and sentences recur in my mind, and connect with other things I've read in the past year. This novel has truly stayed with me. I don't think more than two days go by without me thinking about it. The Luminaries is an intricately plotted novel, that follows a sprawling cast of characters - there is a character list in the front of the novel! - in the gold-mining town of Hokitika, New Zealand in 1866. Catton uses the zodiac and astrology as the bones of her novel - each character is associated with a zodiac sign, for example - in order to showcase how they interact, collide, and circle one another in the events of the novel. The basic plot is there is a missing rich, young man named Emery Staines, and the other main characters are invested in him being alive or dead for whatever reason. The use of the zodiac and astrology is brilliant, and makes you think about the connections between the characters in new ways (although, do not be mistaken, this is not about horoscopes), and I think propels the basic narrative of the missing persons case in interesting ways. This novel is an odyssey, and by the end, I believe all the traveling you will have done with these characters is well worth it. 

Mariana by Monica Dickens

'At first she had thought that her heart was dead. She told herself that she had been through a searing experience which had left her as a woman set apart from love - a tragic figure. This sustaining vision had tided her over the misery of the end of last summer' (189).

This is the first novel published by Persephone Books I have ever read. I found it randomly in The Strand when I was looking for a Charles Dickens book - Monica is his great, great granddaughter! If you don't already know, Persephone Books publishes forgotten novels by (mostly) women. I am all for supporting women, and not letting women's contributions to literature be forgotten. This book was simply lovely. There is nothing like reading a satisfying romantic book that is not condescending towards its heroine (the titular character, Mariana), nor its audience, and it does so because it acknowledges and beautifully portrays the flaws and desires of its characters. We follow Mariana through ups and downs as she desperately tries to gain independence, and find a man she can truly love and who truly loves her. It's a well-written story about wanting a man, but not needing a man, which is a distinction too rarely made in novels about women, or in women's lives in general.

The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson

'Some religions call life a dream, or a dreaming, but what if it is a memory? What is this new world isn't new at all but a memory of a new world?' (87).

This is a bit of an odd one. A post-apocalyptic novel that jumps back and forth in time, between worlds (or maybe the same world? Never quite sure). For the most part, the novel follows Billie Crusoe, who falls in with a 'Robo sapien,' Spike, as they embark on a mission to find a new inhabitable planet, since Earth is dying after being ravaged by war and greed. In this novel, we basically get a queer android love story that investigates the nature of war, time, and humanity, itself. Really everything is in this novel.

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

'The pleasure of ordinary devotion. The pleasure of recognizing that one may have to undergo the same realizations, write the same notes in the margin, return to the same themes in one's work, relearn the same emotional truths, write the same book over and over again - not because one is stupid or obstinate or incapable of change, but because such revisitations constitute a life' (112).

I knew this book would be one of my favorites. Last year, I read Nelson's Bluets - which if you haven't read YOU SHOULD - and absolutely fucking loved it. It's a brilliant book, which I will hopefully talk about on here soon, but haven't yet since I have so many thoughts on it that they are like an avalanche in my mind. Which is also my situation with The Argonauts. But anyway, this book is what Nelson calls a book of 'autotheory,' meaning it is an autobiography of sorts, in which she uses critical theory as a lens for her life, and as a way to shape her life. The autobiographical part deals in particular with Nelson's marriage to her partner, Harry, who is fluidly gendered, and their having a baby. Nelson is interested in what it means to make a family, and is interested in how the language shapes family relationships, and queer relationships. Nelson is brilliant at weaving her personal story with critical and literary texts, and the effect is a richer, and more comprehensive understanding of her life.

Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolaño

'The stories simply happen, period - produced by the sovereign power of chance unleashed, operating outside time and space, at the dawn of a new age, as it were, in which spatio-temporal perception is undergoing transformation and even becoming obsolete' (123-124).

At least one Bolaño was going to be on this list, and this year, it's Nazi Literature in the Americas, a fictional encyclopedia of right-wing authors. Bolaño makes up entire histories, and creates a tapestry of a literary world that never existed. In this endeavor, Bolaño pushes the boundaries of fiction. What does it mean to have a made-up encyclopedia? Something that is meant to the record the world as it is, but made-up? There seems to be a paradox of fiction and reality. And I don't even know where to begin to unpack why he decided on right-wing authors - the role of politics, fascism, and the specter of WWII and the Holocaust are dissertation-worthy + ten books of criticism.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

'"Catch you all next time.' Luisa is going. 'It's a small world. It keeps recrossing itself"' (418).

I've just finished this book last week, and it blew my mind. The construction of the story is brilliant: 6 stories-within-stories, spanning centuries, and the globe. Each story leads into the next, and we see how people are connected across time and space. It's a very lofty goal, and the execution is perfect: never clinical, and never a slave to its conceit, this novel is so rich in its characters, and so brilliant in the way it shows their connection. Many talk about this novel in terms of how it discusses the 'universality' of human beings, reincarnations, that there is some deep, mysterious connection between us all. I'm not sure about all of those things, but what I am sure of is that this novel discusses brilliantly how we all become stories, passed on, retold, and forgotten.

_____

I also want to say a thank you to those that have been reading along, as I post my thoughts and theories on this blog. I'm excited for the new year, and more books!

Also, some time in the next few days I'm going to post more of a statistical analysis of the books I read in 2015. And by 'statistical analysis' I mean tally marks. So get ready!

J.G. Ballard's HIGH-RISE: A Few Recombinations

This is second Ballard I've read. The first was Crash, which I thought was brilliant in all of its grotesque, fucked-up glory. In case you're curious, Crash follows people who get-off by getting into car accidents. It's a strange book, but also very important, because it explores how technology has affected our lives. The novel was published in 1973, so it's not necessarily about how social media or smartphones are affecting our lives (which I feel is often written about in a completely condescending way and totally unproductive in actually trying to understand how they do affect us, because how could they not?), but more about urban landscapes: highways, buildings, cars. 

High-Rise, in particular, zeroes in living in high-rise apartment buildings, and the growing culture of convenience and accessibility in cities. Published in 1975, High-Rise is about the residents of a new high-rise outside of London that is specifically meant to suit the needs of all of the residents. Within the 40-story structure is a supermarket, salon, restaurant, bank, school, swimming pools, recreation courts, etc. People do not necessarily need to leave the building, save for work. 

The high-rise was a huge machine designed to serve, not the collective body of the tenants, but the individual resident in isolation. Its staff of air-conditioning conduits, elevators, garbage disposal chutes and electrical switching systems provided a never-failing supply of care and attention that a century earlier would have needed an army of tireless servants (17).

The quote above not only shows how the high-rise functions as a replacement of human labor, it is also meant to serve the individual, not a collective body. There is not necessarily a community built in to the fabric of the high-rise - it is actually meant to lessen human contact as much as possible. Furthermore, Robert Laing, one of the main characters of the novel, notes that although he feels a bit ambivalent about living in the high-rise, that one of its appeals is that it is 'an environment built, not for main, but for man's absence' (34). And Anthony Royal, a tenant of one of the penthouse suites in the high-rise, and a contributing architect to the building, says that Laing is 'probably its most true tenant' (91). There are kind of two implications in Laing's observation that the high-rise, and the block of high-rises it is a part of, is meant to imply man's absence:

1. Laing desires less contact with other human beings. He want to be alone, and feel the absence of others
2. Laing desires an obliteration of mankind, including himself

These two possibilities are really interesting to me because the conditions of the high-rise make the residents regress. Over time, people break more clearly into socioeconomic classes: the residents of the top floors vs. the middle floors vs. the lower floors. There are outbreaks of violence, the residents stop leaving the high-rise altogether, and the residents form 'tribes.' There is a complete breakdown of 'civilized' conventions, as people stop bathing, throw their garbage in the hallways and vents, shit and piss anywhere and everywhere in the building, and the men commit an absurd amount of sexual violence toward women (which is a lot, considering the real world problem of sexual violence against women). Throughout the novel, there is a sense that there people are regressing to a more 'primitive' state, but it is only achieved through the contained nature of the high-rise, a distinctly modern invention. So there is this question of whether these modern conditions of the high-rise is actually a regression to a primitive state, or a sense of an obliteration of mankind, or whether the high-rise is an evolution of sorts for humanity to a more individualistic/android state.

This paradox of technology and primitivism makes the high-rise atrophy. The residents begin to kill each other off, or die of starvation, and the only ones that survive are those that have formed 'clans' of two or three people. The bodies pile up just like garbage, with all of the garbage, and the last of the survivors forage for scraps of food among the garbage and bodies, and live among the filth that has gathered in their own apartments. Laing, one of the characters that is alive at least until the last page of the novel, has a hard time remembering the original functions of the things in his apartment like the washing machine or refrigerator,

To some extent they had taken on a new significance, a role that he had yet to understand. Even the rundown nature of the high-rise was a model of the world into which the future was carrying them, a landscape beyond technology where everything was either derelict or, more ambiguously, recombined in unexpected but more meaningful ways ... he found it difficult not to believe that they were living in a future that had already taken place, and was now exhausted (176).

The original purposes and facets of the high-rise - everything available, convenient, and perfectly functioning so that there is no effort on the part of the residents - are lost, or rather, made it possible for their meanings to be lost. And in that above passage, I think Laing sees a bit of that, but there is more. Not only have these meanings been lost, and Laing is bewildered at their existence, they also make new meanings in losing their original meanings. All of these things made it possible for there to be a future made for 'man's absence,' the next evolutionary step, 'the future that had already taken place, and was now exhausted.' The language of the passage suggests that the future has reached back to the past to bring the residents of the high-rise into the future: 'the future was carrying them.' Something has gotten mixed up, something in evolution has gone wrong, the future is reaching back, and the past can't handle it, hence the exhaustion, and maybe why this situation is incomprehensible in many ways to Laing, and the other surviving residents. 

The atrophy of meaning, and then recombination of meaning, is the crux of the discussion of the influence of technology. But these are not necessarily only 'modern' problems. Laing's confusion of the future happening too soon, and being exhausted, points to the fact that they are not so separate, that there is not so clear a distinction. It's not necessarily about the regression, progress or evolution of mankind, but about recombinations of meanings in mankind.

Please let me know if you've read this novel, or any of Ballard's novels, especially Crash! I'd love to hear your thoughts.

'All the beds of the past cannot dress the ghosts / at my table'

Prayers or Oubliettes by Natalie Diaz

1
Despair has a loose daughter.
I lay with her and read the body's bones
like stories. I can tell you the year-long myth
of her hips, how I numbered stars,
the abacus of her mouth.

2
The sheets are berserks with wind's riddling.
All the beds of the past cannot dress the ghosts
at my table. Their breasts rest on plates
like broken goblets whose rims I once thirsted at.
Instead of grace, we rattle forks
in our empty bowls.

3
We are the muezzins of the desert
crying out like mockers from memory's
violet towers. We scour the earth
as Isis did. Fall is forever here -
women's dresses wrinkle
on the ground, men fall to their knees
in heaps, genitals rotting like spent fruit -
even our roots fall from the soil.

4
The world has tired of tears.
We weep owls now. They live longer.
They know their way in the dark.

5
Unfasten your cage of teeth and tongue.
The taste of a thousand moths is chalk.
The mottled wings are the words to pain.

6
We have no mazel tov.
We call out for our mothers
with empty wine jugs at our heels.

____________

Iterations // All the beds of the past cannot dress the ghosts / at my table

All the beds of the past cannot dress the ghosts / at my table: to overcome her ghosts, she attempts to parody them, by making them into cartoonish figures made out of bedsheets - it doesn't work

All the beds of the past: Not just evoking the image of white sheets, but of a bed, emphasizing the place of rest as what can be made a ghost - what we take comfort 'dresses' ghosts, covers them

at my table: she dines and communes with her ghosts

All: not just invoking the speaker's history, but everyone's

cannot dress: It doesn't work, and can only do so much

dress: something done every day

dress: treat, as in dress a wound; tender

____________

This line fascinates me because it is elliptical in its imagery: one thing leads to another, but then leads back to something else. Diaz evokes an image of beds stretching into the past, which transitions into the image of sheets being thrown over ghosts, which then leads back to the beds of the past also being ghosts, and all of these exist together at her table. It is image in which time stretches backwards and forwards, and stands still, as they all sit together at her table. This is an example of the confusion between prayers and oubliettes in the title, the mixture of pleasure and pain ('The year-long myth / of her hips' (lines 3-4), 'Their breasts rest on plates / like broken goblets whose rims I once thirsted at' (lines 8-9), 'Unfasten your cage of teeth and tongue' (line 23). 

____________

I wanted to try a more impressionistic approach to talking about poems. I find it hard to write mini-essays about poems (as I usually do with the various novels I've written about here), because poetry makes the most impact on me in images, in the lines that leave behind the most dynamic, distinct images, and I wanted to try and capture those images as I see them in my mind, in order to interrogate some of what is going in any given poem. With Iterations, I am hoping to merely present the possibilities and dynamism in any given line of a poem. 

Please let me know your thoughts, and impressions from this poem! It is from Natalie Diaz's collection, When My Brother Was an Aztec, published by the always amazing Copper Canyon Press.