Books I’ve Read on a Rampage
Despite how this blog might look to the average onlooker—Girl Writes Obsessively About Movies and Television—it is important to note that I can also read. Actually, in stark contrast to how I consume screen media, I like to take my time with a book. I like to keep it on my bedside table, stuff it in my purse, tuck it in my coat pocket (if the pocket allows for such a thing). It doesn’t bother me if a page gets wet or the cover gets bent. I like to live with a book and I like my books to be lived in. Because then, when I pick up that same book years down the line, I can remember exactly who I was and where I was when it first entered my life. The story between the pages becomes a little bit my own.
That all being said, sometimes, on rare occasions, I will read a novel that consumes my entire being for anywhere between 24-72 hours. I will read it like a madwoman, like I only have a day left to live. I can never predict which book will send me over the edge or when it might occur. I blow where the wind takes me.
Truthfully, this has only happened a few times in my life. It happened first when I was eleven and read Divergent in one night so I could talk about it at school the next day. It happened again in college when I read Conversations with Friends cover to cover in mere hours. Most alarmingly, it has happened several times this year already. Some may call it luck, others may call it a curse, but I have recently read a string of really truly awesome novels.
Part of my obsessive nature is to never shut up about the things I crazily consume, so I’ve listed my top four reads of the year for anyone who might be looking for a recommendation.
1. Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld
We’re beginning where my rampage began: Florida, May 2024. I picked up Romantic Comedy at a Books-A-Million in Jacksonville because of, naturally, the title. It is literary fiction, but also a simultaneous love letter and critique of the romantic comedy genre. The novel is about Sally Milz, a single woman in her 30s who writes for a fictionalized SNL called The Night Owls. She has this running bit about really beautiful, successful women ending up with less beautiful, less successful men, and why we rarely see the reverse (particularly in the entertainment industry). She’s cynical, a bit insecure, and is forced to eat her words when she starts to like one of The Night Owls’s musical guests, the very beautiful and successful Noah Brewster. The worst part is that he might like her back.
Sittenfeld makes you think you’re in for a standard rom-com (and it is for the most part), but then she hits you with the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of the negative reviews I’ve seen for Romantic Comedy have been about its handling of the pandemic and general 2020 retrospective. I certainly see where people are coming from—this novel has a strong millennial feel to it and will likely not be considered “timeless” literature—but I think it largely saves itself from being too cringe. I found it very honest and refreshingly realistic.
Needless to say, I read it in 24 hours. I laughed out loud. I cried. I read everything else Curtis Sittenfeld wrote. It’s my newfound dream to be in the same room as her. I reread Romantic Comedy again a few weeks ago because I missed it so much. Now, I keep it perpetually on my bedside table; I never want it out of reach because it’s timeless to me.
2. Persuasion by Jane Austen
For those that know me, I know what you’re thinking: “Here she goes again…” I wouldn’t fault you. Jane Austen has cemented herself on my Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, right alongside food and shelter. You might also be thinking: “Has she not read this one before?” Oh, I have. I’m on a current cycle of reading one Austen novel a year—so a six year rotation—for the rest of my life, which feels normal and healthy.
Anyway, I believe Persuasion is one of Austen’s easiest to “fly through.” It’s roughly 250 pages; there aren’t an insane amount of characters; and it doesn’t beat around the bush. The story follows Anne Elliot, the forgotten middle daughter, who is forced to move to Bath after her frivolous family loses their money and, by strange coincidence, is made to reconnect with her lost love, Captain Wentworth. In classic Austen fashion, Anne thinks Wentworth hates her and Wentworth thinks Anne has forgotten him. Persuasion is about trusting your judgment, making and keeping good friends, and giving love a second chance.
I reread this last month and devoured it like I’d never seen pen set to paper before. New lines stuck out to me, new details emerging that I’d previously missed. I remembered exactly where I was on my first read: hiding away in my sad dorm room on Norton Hall during the height of the pandemic. I ordered a used copy of Persuasion from ThriftBooks and, when it arrived, I realized it was once a library book from the King County Branch—my local library 2,000 miles away in Seattle. It felt like fate.
P.S. This is a fantastic novel for autumn. And DO NOT (under any circumstance) watch the 2022 Netflix adaptation (I beg of you).
3. The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
I read The Ministry of Time just last week and I’m still reeling. Published this year, the novel is part time-travel romance, part spy thriller. These are not typically genres I gravitate towards, but it was a gift from my friend Emma who said it was from her mother who thought I might like it and, boy, was she right (thank you, Mrs. Johnson!). The Ministry of Time is about a top secret British government agency that figured out how to time travel and snatches five test subjects from various parts of history to see how they will fare in the present day. Our main character is an unnamed employee of this agency, a woman in her 20s or 30s, who is no-nonsense and power hungry. Her official title is as a “bridge” for her assigned test subject, Navy Commander Graham Gore from 1848. She is tasked to live in the same house as him, report on his every move as he adjusts to the 21st century, and become his friend. He reluctantly becomes her friend, then maybe more, then there’s a twist! But I’ve said too much already.
It’s incredible. Bradley avoids most of the time travel logistics that would usually annoy me and skips right to the heart of the matter: what would it mean to lose your identity, your home, and the people associated with your time? She explores this idea beautifully by comparing it to our unnamed protagonist’s grapple with her Cambodian identity—her own loss of home and people.
I’ve never read anything like this novel. The surprise of it is partly why I couldn’t put it down. I picked it up at 10pm on a Tuesday and finished it at 5pm on a Wednesday. At risk of sounding dramatic, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t focus at work because my thoughts were entirely consumed by The Ministry of Time. It made me gasp aloud more than once and shed several tears. Afterwards, I fell into a deep, dark rabbit hole researching Arctic explorations and 19th century Naval officers.
4. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
We come to my last recommendation and a lot of you aren’t going to like this one. No matter. The Scarlet Letter is the hill I will die on.
Like a vast majority of American-educated people, I first read this in high school and was under the impression it would be like deciphering the Enigma code. It certainly wasn’t easy to read at seventeen, when I’d barely read any classics, but I ended up being strangely obsessed with the story. I found it startlingly provocative. I remember our junior year English teacher made us have a class discussion about whether we thought students should still be asked to read The Scarlet Letter. To me, it seemed like a no-brainer.
Something happened a few months ago where I felt very much haunted by the novel. I kept thinking about pilgrims (which happens sometimes), Easy A (2010), and the Bible. All signs pointed towards The Scarlet Letter. I scoured my favorite used bookstore for another copy and found a very old mass market paperback that fit nicely in my coat pocket. I set to work, but it wasn’t work at all. A whirlwind three days passed. When I shut the book and looked back out into the world, my head was full of Massachusetts and the clergy.
Everybody should read this, whether they’re forced to or not. They should also read it again I think. We should never stop reading this. Puritanical culture lingers in our country and it would do us some good to be able to spot it, better yet, understand it. The Scarlet Letter is the perfect novel if there ever was one.
P.S. This book would gain a lot more traction with kids these days if we started describing it as it rightfully is: sexy. Why are we overlooking how sexy it is? Let’s debate that.