Reading Material: A Review of Books I Read in 2015

I rarely review the books I read on this blog, so I figured I'd take this opportunity to look back at some of the books I read this past year. This is not a comprehensive list. You'd be surprised, but a lot of what I read is trash I don't want my mom to know about. These are the more intelligent, dignified books I read this year:

Wild
By Cheryl Strayed

At the very end of 2014, I broke up with a guy who wasn't right for me. Although it wasn't a long relationship, it threw me for a loop. Was I throwing away something awesome because I was being "too picky", or was I simply following my gut?

Part of what spurred me to end it was seeing the film Wild, based on the memoir by Cheryl Strayed. Wild is about a woman's relationship with herself. When her mom dies, Cheryl loses control of herself. She drinks too much, sleeps with strangers (despite being married), and eventually succumbs to drug addiction. After getting a divorce, she has a revelation that she needs to do something so physically demanding that it will reset her life. She decides to hike the arduous Pacific Crest Trail from Southern California to Oregon--alone. She tells her friend, "I'm going to walk myself back to the woman my mother thought I was." And she does.

I have to admit that while I thoroughly enjoyed Wild the memoir, I loved the movie more. Maybe there was something about the visuals or the soundtrack (the use of Simon and Garfunkel's "El Condor Pasa (If I Could)" in that film makes me want to fucking weep, it's so beautiful), that helped me connect with the story in a way the book did not. However, I still highly recommend the book--as well as Tiny Beautiful Things, Strayed's collection of essays from her "Dear Sugar" advice column.

Wild--the book and the film--helped me begin 2015 with a commitment to choose what and who I want, even when that means being unsure or ambivalent. The closing passage in both the film and the book states,

It was my life--like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me. How wild it was, to let it be. 

Grade: A-

***

Bad Feminist
By Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay is a writer who has a magical ability to make people feel welcome and comfortable with her writing. Bad Feminist is--duh--a collection of essays about feminism, which cover everything from pop culture to racism to why women should be friends with other women. While I'm a feminist who eats this kind of thing up, many folks feel alienated from feminism--as if they're going to be scolded by a cluster of scary, mean women.

While Gay never condescends to those new to feminism, her writing is like a welcome wagon of feminist thought: she's straightforward, easy to understand, and never judgy. While some of her essays will inevitably become outdated (even I, a longtime fan of Lena Dunham, tire of the debate about whether it's "ok" for a feminist to like Girls), others, such as the one about the problem with "likeable" female characters, are more likely to stay relevant.

Overall, Bad Feminist is great if you call yourself a feminist, or if you shy away from that label (as Gay points out, she is hardly the "perfect" feminist anyway). It's also a good book for the precocious niece or young girl in your life whom you want to nudge in the, ahem, right direction.

Grade: A
***

Dietland
By Sarai Walker

Now, here's a "scary" feminist book. The novel Dietland has two plot lines that run parallel. The first concerns Plum Kettle, a thirty-something woman who weighs 300 pounds. Sick of being stared at and taunted, she's a few months away from gastric bypass surgery, after which she is convinced her "real" life will begin. Because life as an obese woman is nothing less than a nightmare.

Plum meets and becomes involved with a group of feminist writers who challenge her about her beliefs about looks and weight. Eventually, Plum comes to embrace her fatness--but not for reasons you might think. This is *not* a feel-good book. Instead of accepting herself as she is for positive, "you go girl!" reasons, Plum realizes that her fat is a way to reveal the ugliness of other people. If she were skinny, a guy at a bar might treat her nicely--flirt, pay for drinks, be a decent human, But since she is fat, that same guy will laugh at her and mock her. Plum comes to see her fat body as a bullshit detector that separates the few decent people from the hordes of shitheads. And then she begins getting into physical altercations with said shitheads, who all assume fat girls won't throw a punch.

The other plot line is about a terrorist group that calls itself "Jennifer" (one of the most common female names--could be your daughter, coworker, or best friend) and does things like kidnap rapists and throw them out of airplanes at 20,000 feet. Or kidnap imams and force them at gunpoint to encourage the male followers of their religion to pour acid into their eyes instead of requiring women to cover their bodies and heads for "modesty's sake". As Plum becomes more radicalized in her everyday life, the news gleefully reports on the insane (or...completely justified?) acts of "Jennifer".

Dietland was a fucking wild ride. It upended my expectations. It scared me and depressed me. It also made me laugh at its insane audacity. This book kicks you right in the balls. It *wants* you to be uncomfortable, and it wants you to grin with glee at a world in which men who commit acts of violence against women get painful comeuppance.

Grade: A+

***

The Girl on the Train
By Paula Hawkins

The Girl on the Train wants so desperately to be Gone Girl...but it's no Gone Girl. While Gillian Flynn's novel of extreme marital discord hurt so good, with its acid wit and intelligence, The Girl on the Train feels more like acid reflux. Now, that's not to say the novel wasn't entertaining--it got me through a flight to from the east coast to Colorado--but, for all its success as a bestseller, it never felt like much more than a generic potboiler crime novel.

The main character, Rachel, is spiraling out of control. Unhappily divorced, she has become a blackout drunk who loses her job, comes home shitfaced every night, and is generally an object of pity and disdain among the few people in her life. The train she takes everyday passes by a home that Rachel becomes fixated on. In it live the "perfect couple": attractive, happy, and healthy. Rachel names this couple Jess and Jason and looks forward to spying on them for a few minutes everyday when the train stops near their house. But one day, Rachel observes that Jess is no longer there. The books becomes a mystery in the spirit of Hitchcock when she decides to do a little sleuthing on her own.

There are definitely many twists along the way. However, The Girl on the Train never felt surprising enough or intelligent enough to realy grab my attention. It's a good plane (or...train) read for sure, but probably not one that will haunt you afterward.

Grade: B-

***

Modern Romance
By Aziz Ansari

Oh Aziz, you're a national treasure. The first time I watched Aziz's stand-up (I think is was his "Intimate Moments for a Sensual Evening" special) I was like, eh, this guy's just ok. But after watching more of his stuff, I really started to like him. In particular, I loved his "Live at Madison Square Garden" special--which is basically a preview of Modern Romance, a book he co-wrote with sociologist Eric Klinenberg.

Modern Romance can be summed up by the book's cover photo: Aziz staring down at his phone with giant pink hearts plastered on his eyeballs. Aziz sets out to explore what it means to look for love in 2015. He interviews people at an old folks' home, where he finds that many people who got married in the 1950's and 60's met their partner in their neighborhood, church, or school--in other words, proximity was key. And these oldsters rarely described their spouse as "the love of my life" or "my perfect match", instead saying things like "She seemed like a nice girl" and "he had a good job". These interviews set the stage for the book's thesis which in essence is: we are overflowing with dating and mating options--and sometimes that's a good thing, but sometimes it's a terrible thing.

Aziz also looks into other cultures--the trend of "herbivore men" in Japan and the high tolerance for marital infidelity in France,

The book is infused with Aziz's voice, such as when he adds "damn!" to emphasize a statistic or writes "peep this graph above". After I read this book, I let a friend borrow it and she in turn lent it to another, who lent it to another, who I think lent it to another. So that just goes to show how great Modern Romance is.

Grade: A+

***

The Secret History of Wonder Woman
By Jill Lepore

I really wanted to like this book, which is a deep historical dive into the man who created Wonder Woman, his personal life, and the historical events and atmosphere that made Wonder Woman such a sensation when she premiered in the early 1940's. Although I wouldn't say the resulting book is "bad", it's actually pretty boring. Ok, and I'm saying this as a feminist who has a nosy interest in people's salacious love and sex lives--and The Secret History of Wonder Woman is chock full of feminist history and William Moulton Marston, who genuinely believed women should be the dominant gender and also lived a polyamorous lifestyle. What's not to like!?

Yet, somehow, against all odds...Jill Lepore manages to make a story filled with suffragists, sexual bondage, and bigamy dry as a desert. There's no humor in this book. No personal touch. And any trace of anything sexy or truly shocking has been sandpapered and lysol-ed into a clean, smooth surface. Bah! I don't want the PG-13 version of the secret history of goddamn Wonder Woman when it's not a PG-13 story!

So, although this book does have a lot of interesting facts and backstory (too much backstory, I'd say) about the creation and popularity of Wonder Woman, Lepore's inability to suck the reader in results in just an average grade.

Grade: C

***

Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief
By Lawrence Wright

Now, with this book I made the mistake of watching the documentary based on it first. Also titled Going Clear, the documentary provided all the information I needed about Scientology. It covers L. Ron Hubbard's life and his creation of what is basically the biggest (and wealthiest) cult of all time, as well as all the horrible things done to Sea Org (Scientology's version of clergy people), such as starvation, forced labor, and beatings. And, of course, all the juice on Tom Cruise.

The book covers all of the above and more. I ended up skipping giant chunks about L. Ron Hubbard's life and instead investing more time in the chapters about Tom Cruise and his relationship with current leader of the church David Miscavige (who is a textbook psychopath). These later chapters were absolutely fascinating and reveal how Cruise really is a true believer in Scientology. We also get to hear the detailed account of how director Paul Haggis left the church--spurred on by the church's intolerance for gay people (Haggis has two gay daughters).

A line of thought occurred to me while reading the book and watching the film: people love to mock Scientology because it's soooooo crazy. Yet, basically every established religion is nuts too. A virgin gives birth to a man who is also a God, and who is also the Son of God. Mormons believe that when you die, you get your own planet. If you die in battle on behalf of Allah, you are rewarded with 72 virgins in paradise. You get the picture. (And full disclaimer: I respect everyone's right to religious belief blah blah blah) I think Scientology is a special case since the church leaders demand an insane amount of money from their followers in addition to blind faith. At least most of the established religions, even if you count tithing, don't require their followers to give thousands to the church.

But the point is that the anthropologist in me goes back to what I was taught in college: make the strange familiar and the familiar strange. Scientology is bat-shit crazy and their practices are not only unethical, but criminal. And yet, people do horrible and bizarre shit in the name of religion every day, from murdering innocent people to disowning their children to attending formal balls where they pledge abstinence until marriage. I guess it has something to do with how we're wired. We seek meaning, and the craziest beliefs and actions can make perfect sense if you need that meaning deeply enough. So I guess my advice is: believe what you want, but never stop questioning.

Grade: A-

***

Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own
By Kate Bolick

And finally, the year comes full circle. Where I started out reading the story of a woman who goes on an extreme adventure to rediscover herself, I end it by reading about a woman with a less-harrowing but equally eye-opening self-discovery. Spinster is by Kate Bolick, a writer for The Atlantic who wrote the excellent article "All the Single Ladies" a couple years ago, which is basically about quote unquote "the end of traditional marriage". While I don't think we're quite there yet, it's undeniable that this is one of, if not the best times in history to be a single woman (at least in Western societies). You can support yourself. You can have sex. You can even have a baby on your own (if you got the dollas). Which means...you don't have to settle. You can wait until you find "true love" or whatever. You don't need to grab on to the man you're with at X age and never let go. You don't need to grab on to any man.

After years of serious relationships that never end in marriage (usually by her choice) followed by years of living alone and focusing on her writing, Bolick realizes that she maybe actually doesn't want to be married. To anyone. Ever. Not that she doesn't want sex and companionship occasionally--who doesn't? But she never wants the closeness that comes with marriage, which always feels suffocating to her. In Spinster, Bolick weaves the life stories of her "awakeners"--female writers, who mostly lived around the turn of the twentieth century, who may or may not have been married, but spent long portions of their life alone--with her own life story. She examines her relationship with her mother, her relationships with men (all positive, I should add. Bolick is no "man-hater"), and her relationship with her jobs. The result is part-memoir, part-cultural history. It's a very intellectual book, yet accessible. If you're a single woman, in particular, and you have a sense that you're "meant" to be single or you still feel single even while in a relationship, I think you'll relate to a lot of the sentiments expressed in Spinster. I know I did. What's great about the book is that it's not a polemic. Bolick isn't claiming being single is better, she's claiming that it's equally valid.

Grade: A

***

So there you have it, folks! Stay tuned in the coming weeks for more movie reviews of what are likely to be some of the best films of the year (it's Oscar season!) and, sometime in January, a rundown of my fave films of 2015.