Welcome to Worth It, a weeklymonthly(ish) round-up of the very best of what I’m reading, watching, listening to, and occasionally even cooking. Only the things absolutely worth your valuable minutes.
I know.
I KNOW I told you people I would offer a single, brief, uncomplicated book recommendation. But I read four (and ½) books since we last met, and what am I supposed to do, keep that to myself?!
Anyway, you should read all the ones in this batch. But if you reeeeeally need to skip ahead, the juiciest book is the last one.
Bewilderment, Richard Powers
Bewilderment is by the author of The Overstory, a novel that blew my mind—and also other people’s, apparently, because it won the Pulitzer a few years back. The Overstory could make even a lumberjack hug trees. Bewilderment is equally moving, but Powers seems a little more urgent to press his pro-environment point. I wholeheartedly endorse his conservation values and choked up more than once while reading. But if you aren’t already won over to the cause, you might find Bewilderment a tad preachy.
Great Circle, Maggie Shipstead
When the jacket copy calls a book “an epic novel” and describes how it “spans generations,” what that jacket copy means is really: This book has a lot of pages. This book does have a lot of pages, so maybe it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I loved it. Great Circle has two strands: a female pilot in the 1950s and a contemporary LA actress starring in a film about the pilot’s life. It reminded me of Horse by Geraldine Brooks; both are historical fiction and use modern-day timelines to make new discoveries about people in the past.
Trust, Hernan Diaz
Trust is another Pulitzer winner. It’s a unique premise: you read 4 stories (a novel, a memoir, a memoir of that memoir, a journal) back-to-back without knowing exactly how they fit together until the last few pages. Possibly, it relies a bit too much on the element of surprise; if you crack the schtick early on, you’re left with still a lot of book to read. But if you’re intrigued by the world of finance and Wall Street, you’ll love it. (It’s a little bit Great Gatsby-ish.)
All the Sinners Bleed, S. A. Cosby
But if you have time for only one book this September, go with Cosby. I was forced to read it page by page like a beggar, but I could’ve swallowed it whole. It’s the rare murder-mystery-thriller that is gorgeously written—plus it taps into southern, small-town race dynamics and will not let your thinking brain (or your soul) off the hook, even while you piece together clues like a deranged Harriet the Spy. I will 100% read this guy’s other two novels. (But fair warning: this one’s dark.)
In conclusion:
If you loved The Overstory, read Bewilderment.
If you loved Horse, read Great Circle.
If you loved The Great Gatsby, read Trust.
If you love to neglect all your duties to finish a book, read All the Sinners.
Classy with Jonathan Menjivar
These days in America, we are finally talking about race and religion and (regrettably) even politics, but have you tried talking about class? Like how you feel weird buying expensive hand lotion made with the hand-ground dust of unicorn eyelashes, even if you can afford it? Or how you can’t decipher menus at fancy restaurants but everyone around you seems to have come out of the womb wielding a forkful of amuse-bouche?
Listen to this podcast and find out if you are totally classism-free or, like the rest of us, “a classhole.”
Ack, why did I ever think I could recommend only ONE of anything? But if you know me and you came here thinking that was possible, I mean, frankly, that’s on you.
Four articles, below.
Years ago, I posed the following hypothesis to my husband: As Americans lost trust in the US government, the charismatic leaders of big tech companies would rise to power. (After all, the government only has power if we trust it. Money has power no matter what.) Now I’m convinced I’m a regular Carrie White, because this New Yorker article details how the government HAS INDEED come to both rely on and fear Elon Musk. (He who controls a. money, b. popular opinion, c. AI, d. social media, and e. freaking space inevitably controls policy.)
On a lighter note lol, here’s a think piece called Three Theories for Why You Have No Time. It’s from 2019, but I’m low-key1 obsessed with the way modern Americans insist they can’t live without “conveniences” that make their lives easier… and yet they are miserable and nothing is very convenient.
The household economy of cooking, cleaning, mending, washing, and grocery shopping has arguably changed more in the past 100 years than the American factory or the modern office. And its evolution tells an illuminating story about why, no matter what work we do, we never seem to have enough time. In the 20th century, labor-saving household technology improved dramatically, but no labor appears to have been saved.
Okay now back to terrifying reading: this article about The Claremont Institute, a coalition of influential leaders who are likely to hold high government positions (in our democracy) but happen to be, well, skeptical of democracy. I’m not saying this article gets it perfectly right and I know better than to engage politics outright on BTT, but suffice it to say, I think the following stance lacks a bit of nuance.2
It goes something like this: The sum of all our problems—and the greatest threat that the American republic has ever faced—is the rise of the “woke” elite. Cosmopolitan, overeducated, gender-fluid, parasitic, and anti-Christian—the leaders of this progressive cabal worship at the shrine of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion offices, which they use to elevate undeserving people of color and crush hardworking “real” Americans. They control “the regime”… Any and all means to annihilate the power of the woke, up to and including political violence and overturning elections, must be seriously considered if we (right-thinking Americans) are to “save our country.”
And I really tried to cap my recommendations at three, but did you see this article about how beloved American icon Jimmy Fallon is actually a huge turd? Why is the purveyor of Lip Sync Battles such a jerk? But more importantly, why am I not even surprised?! [sobs]
Omg, the latest issue of The Missouri Review landed in my inbox, and I read this poem and fist-pumped at my desk, and then I was like WAIT I KNOW THIS PERSON.3 And I fist-pumped again.
A Voice Lives in My Head and Says One Day You’ll Have to Settle for Someone
and I speak the same language, and she’s selling podcast merch. When I tell you I am sick that I didn’t think to name my Substack Nuanced AF, I am telling you I AM PHYSICALLY ILL with regret.but I hear they’re letting women own property nowadays. I hear bank accounts even. I hear cha-ching cha-ching and a quiet apartment. I hear no way from the man across the table when I offer to get the check, hear a man swear so I clutch my pearls, say my stars, melt right into the floor. I hear it’s a little sad for a woman to live alone. I hear my biological clock is ticking, like a grandfather clock, a cuckoo bird flapping out of the machinery every hour. My math teacher beamed when he said his wife chose to marry him rather than become a doctor. I heard she went into the woods as a kid and cut into dead animals. I hear that’s not something nice girls do, like rolling your skirt too high or neglecting the Lord. In school, I heard He had a plan and you couldn’t escape it, heard my life chugging along a set of tracks I never laid out and never asked for, so hear this: the solo sound of my spoon against the mug’s sides, wind down the breezeway like a deep, angry voice from another world. What is it to be a sound that isn’t echo, to be no one’s clockwork or schoolgirl. To be no one’s pearl-wearer. No one’s little bird. To be no one’s home, with its square tile floors and its teakettle singing. To be no one’s.
Till next time…
It’s high key.
If forced to choose between oversimplification and corn syrup, I’m betting American blood sugar levels would drop overnight.
The author is a poet I taught with a couple years ago, who also happens to be an amazing human being.