#084 : CAT'S BOOK CLUB / WHAT I READ IN JANUARY, PART ONE
Original publication date: January 31, 2024
I am typing this with unmanicured hands, my old Brazil white pedicure, no makeup on, wearing a Nike ski hat. Yes, it is the end of January, and all I wanted to do at night this month was read. And that's what I did.
I read twenty-two books in January, but look at my stack. I got really hooked on the short novella, which is like a long short story. You can read it in one sitting, especially if a sitting is 8 PM to 11:30 PM. This format is much more popular abroad than in the USA. It’s a really great way to get to know the authors you want to read in longform later.
The list is in the actual order that I read them. I got my ideas for which to read them from *excellent* Instagram accounts like BazFiction and Natalie Portman’s Nat’s Book Club. At some point, my travel brain took over and I started using books to “country hop”, because I’m me.
Many of the books on my list are contemporary literary fiction, because I am currently trying to write contemporary literary fiction. I can’t plug all the book covers in or I'll melt down. I can only get through the first eleven reads in today’s column. I’ll publish the second half in a few days. Let’s go!
1) BIG SWISS by Jen Beagin
I read this, one of my Top 3, right at the beginning of the month, on the plane home from Brazil. Jen Beagin is such a funny, glamorous writer. Every sentence is funny. This book is about a lesbian affair between a hot Swiss chick and a repressed transcriber in Hudson, New York, and I just loved it. The crumbling house, the characters. I’m obsessed with the cover art by It girl Gagosian artist Anna Weyant, too.