Everything I read in November

Zoning out

This month, I think my reading goal was oblivion. I wanted to lose myself in stories, turn page after page until I wasn’t thinking about anything at all. Reading is the healthiest form of dissociation, in my opinion. This meant that I found myself drawn to books with lots of plot; mysteries and murders, affairs, and fictional renderings of Victorian London. I read on the train, lying by the fire, on the sofa with a glass of wine, in bed with the lights off and my kindle screen emitting a glow. Often, I was mildly stoned, sometimes I couldn’t sleep, occasionally, I carved out an afternoon or evening to do nothing but read. So, without further ado, here’s everything I read in November.

Book 1: The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley

I was busy this month, both professionally and personally, and during active periods, I’m often drawn to books that don’t challenge me. For me, thrillers - especially the domestic kind - are the literary equivalent of ordering a pizza. Comfort food! And like with pizza, I tend to gorge myself with these types of novels, reading two or three in a week and then feeling sick and swearing off the genre for a while. I’ve read a couple of Foley’s novels and I liked them well enough, although I can’t remember much about them now. This was a good read and I raced through it. The characters were a bit one dimensional, but characterisation isn’t really what I’m reading thrillers for, so I didn’t mind. I would love to write a pacey thriller someday, but I bet I would really struggle weaving the different narratives together, so props to Lucy Foley. She’s a pro!

Book 2: Another Marvellous Thing by Laurie Colwin

I’ve waxed lyrical about Laurie Colwin in my posts here before, so I’ll keep my comments short and sweet, much like Another Marvellous Thing, which clocks in at only 140-ish pages. It’s about an affair between two married people, Billy and Francis, and not much else. But also, everything else. One of those books that feels a bit like a play; the dialogue is witty and perfect and there are some little pieces of wisdom hidden in there with the laughs. Reading Colwin is like eating food that is both delicious and good for you. Like strawberries! (Sorry for all of the food similes, I’m writing this before dinner). I turned the last page and thought, more please!

Book 3: Wellness by Nathan Hill

I bought this one on a whim upon google searching ‘family saga for fans of Meg Wolitzer’, which I do about twice a week, occasionally swapping Wolitzer out for Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith or the like. I read the blurb for Wellness and I was hooked; anything sold as ‘An immersive, multilayered portrait of a marriage,” is right up my street. And it was wonderful! And well marketed! And I was mildly stoned/tipsy for a lot of the time I was reading it and so I can’t recall the specifics! But I enjoyed the experience of reading it, and that’s what matters, right? Hill is a confident writer and I felt safe in his hands as he explored topic after topic; prairie fires, the placebo effect, community planning, art, photography, Chicago in the 90s, the concept of soulmates, algorithims, radicalisation and misinformation; honestly the amount of ground covered here is dizzying. And it’s loooong. I suspect if I read it with my critical hat on I would have recommended cutting a couple of hundred pages and checking some spots for repetition BUT I didn’t read it with my critical hat on so that’s irrelevant. I got lost in this one for hours at a time, and during one particularly engaging chapter, I looked up to find myself in almost total darkness because the sun had set without me noticing. Higher praise is harder to find.

Book 4: The Fraud by Zadie Smith

I bought this paperback in the airport a few months ago and then didn’t end up picking it up on holiday. I knew I would get around to it at some point and some point ended up being on a trip to a friend’s wifi-less cottage in the Lake District. I’m sure you’ll agree that there is no better place to read than in front of a fire in a house in the middle of nowhere, especially if your phone is upstairs in a drawer. I’ve read White Teeth, Swing Time, Intimations and On Beauty¹ by Zadie Smith in the last year, so I knew I was in safe hands with The Fraud. I’m not sure if I would have picked this up if it had been written by an unknown author, as I’m not super into historial fiction, but I’m so glad I did. Loosely framed around a real-life court case about an inheritance claim and set between Victorian literary England and a Jamaican sugar plantation, The Fraud is about truth, morality, slavery, death, writing, and a lot more. Characteristically, it’s an ambitious story and characteristically, Smith makes the execution look easy. Her writing is so vibrant! There are actual jokes! Exploration of morals without being too concerned with morality! Zadie Smith is good isn’t really a hot take but, Zadie Smith is good.

my view while i was reading the fraud

Book 5: Everyman by Philip Roth

This was an unplanned choice for me. My partner downloaded Everyman to his kindle and, since we share an account, I got it too. I was on a long-ish train journey where I didn’t feel like doing any work, and so I read Everyman in a single sitting instead of editing my novel² , and the guilt of procrastination made the delights of Roth’s writing taste even sweeter. Here’s another lukewarm literary take, Philip Roth is good at writing! I raced through Everyman - which is written in one long stream of consciousness (no chapters!), and follows an unnamed protagonist as he nears the end of his life and reflects on his mistakes. The writing on pain and sickness (perhaps unsurprisingly) spoke to me very deeply, but the writing just sings. There’s some misogyny in there - which he is infamous for - and there are also sexual misconduct allegations against Roth, so this isn’t a novel I would blanket recommend to everyone, but if you can get past that it’s worth a read for the writing alone.

So there you have it. November wasn’t a particularly heavy reading month for me, probably due to the fact that I’m in editing hell, and so I’ve ‘read’ my novel about four times in the last few weeks (which raises the question of, can I put a book that I’ve written on my yearly reading roundup????).

There’s only one month left in the year and I have no great reading aspirations, although I am on the lookout for some good engaging stuff to read over the festive period. At the beginning of the year, my best friend and I made a half-joking resolution to ‘read more men’. I know what you’re thinking but stay with me here… The idea was to try and go back and revisit some of the traditional literary ‘canon’ that we might have skipped over or misunderstood, and honestly, I would recommend reaching outside of your comfort zone because I’ve found some surprising new favourites. I’ll be back with a yearly roundup before the end of the year. Hope this isn’t the post that gets me cancelled. See ya! XO

ps. Sorry about all of the exclamation marks and other errant punctuation but I didn’t feel like holding myself back today. Here’s some more !!!!!!

1. This was probably my favourite book I read in 2023

2. Does anybody else hate editing???? Not sure if this is an unpopular opinion or not but I do not want to read back my own work EVER.