Summer reads

I didn’t read as much as I usually do during the summer. I spent most of my free time painting and doing Pilates. I’m actually surprised I managed to get through four books. I’m looking forward to the cozy fall and winter seasons, which are my favorite times of the year to read.

Summer Reads

A Girl’s Story by Annie Ernaux (2016). I bought this book at the French bookstore Albertine in New York City. It was recommended by the front desk staff. The book won the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize. It was a decent book but Nobel Peace Prize…not too sure about that. It’s a brief memoir centered around the author’s traumatic experience at a summer camp she worked at in her late teens. She was taken advantage of by an older peer. Throughout the book she zooms in and out of her younger self. At the time of her writing she’s been a writer for over 50 years so her reflection on this event gives glimpses of how it impacted her mental health, disordered eating, her writing and life choices. It’s written like most French books and movie scripts, lots of reading between the lines, layers of meaning, nuanced implications, double entendres and references to dead beloved French philosophers.

“Everywhere on earth with every day that dawns, a woman stands surrounded by men ready to throw stones at her.” - Annie Ernaux (p. 66)

All Fours by Miranda July (2024) is a quirky novel about a middle-aged woman who finds herself in a roommate-like dynamic with her husband. She is the mother of a nonbinary child and develops an unusual infatuation and connection with a young man in a small town. The book explores themes of aging insecurity, fluid sexual identity, rekindling love and passion in middle age, and friendship. I really liked Miranda July’s writing style; it was refreshing and unique. However, I didn’t connect with the story and the characters as much as I had hoped. While I enjoy reading about middle-aged women rediscovering themselves after years of motherhood and marriage, this particular story didn’t engage me. Another underwhelming book I was encouraged by the New York Times and NPR to read. I really need to stop trusting NYT’s nose for books.

“I was no closer to being sixty-five than twenty-five, but since time moved forward, not backward, sixty-five was tomorrow and twenty-five was moot.”
― Miranda July (2024)

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa (2010). The book is mainly set in a family-owned bookstore in Japan. The main character, Takako, is a twenty-five-year-old reeling from a breakup. She goes to her uncle’s bookstore and discovers the joy of reading, gains a bit of backbone, and helps her uncle navigate his marriage issues. It’s a short book that doesn’t delve deeply into character development, but I still connected with the characters. It’s a cute read—not too deep or long—a good choice to hold my fleeting attention while traveling this summer. Also it felt more like a Young Adult novel.

I don’t think it really matters whether you know a lot about books or not. That said, I don’t know that much myself. But I think what matters far more with a book is how it affects you.

-Satoshi Yagisawa (2010)

On Women by Susan Sontag (1973). This book is a collection of writings by essayist Susan Sontag. The book catalogues Sontag's reflections and essays on gender identity, societal expectations, and the challenges faced by women. I enjoyed her perspective and views on feminism and how women should gain power in the modern world. She presents some unconventional ideas which I found interesting. If you are interested in gender studies, this a good add to your library along with Angela Davis’s Women, Race and Culture. I really enjoyed Sontag’s essay titled, The Double Standard of Aging. A few quotes by Susan Sontag:

“Women should whistle at men in the streets, raid beauty parlors, picket toy manufacturers who produce sexist toys, convert in sizable numbers to militant lesbianism, operate their own free psychiatric and abortion clinics, provide feminist divorce counseling, establish makeup withdrawal centers, adopt their mothers’ family names as their last names, deface billboard advertising that insults women, disrupt public events by singing in honor of the docile wives of male celebrities and politicians, collect pledges to renounce alimony, conduct telephone harassment campaigns against male psychiatrists who have sexual relations with their women patients, put up all feminists candidates for political campaigns.” - Susan Sontag, 1973

The first responsibility of a ‘liberated’ woman is to lead the fullest, freest, and most imaginative life she can. The second responsibility is her solidarity with other women. She may live and work and make love with men. But she has no right to represent her situation as simpler or less suspect, or less full of compromises than it really is. Her good relations with men must not be bought at the price of betraying her sisters.” - Susan Sontag, 1973

Liberation means power - or it hardly means anything at all.