Reading List for Social Distancing
Hi hello! We’re coming up on three weeks of staying more or less at home, other than a few trips to the grocery store or occasional walks by the lake to stretch our legs a bit. We’re not totally losing it, but we’re kinda losing it. Whenever we do go out in public it’s like I forget how to actually be a part of human society and not say weird things or make strange faces. It’s a learning curve.
BUT, for the most part we’re doing pretty fine and are incredibly grateful we are able to stay inside, stay safe, and do our part to flatten the curve. Work has slowed down and our days haven mostly been filled with working on personal projects, checking in on friends and family, and brainstorming recipes, DIYs, and other blog posts to share that would be contextually appropriate given the, uh, global pandemic.
For downtime, we haven’t yet run out of media to consume and I’ve also made it a point to read much more than usual. It’s something I wanted to do more of in 2020 anyway, before COVID-19 reached crisis level and put us all in time out, but now that we’re all left with a little more time to ourselves, I think I’ll partially consider this an opportunity to catch up on my long to-read list.
So welcome to the Probably This book club / spring reading list! We’re talking about a few old favorites, some recent reads, and some titles that we haven’t read that are high up on our list. If you’ve been looking for something good to sit down with and flip through, and you, like me, have trouble wading through all the options that are out there, hopefully this’ll help get you started by narrowing down your options. Let me know if you’ve read or want to read any of these, and please share your thoughts!
Black Leopard Red Wolf
by Marlon James
Here’s what I’m currently reading! This is one of those completely immersive fantasy novels that drops you in a world and makes you figure out the rules for yourself. People have called it “African Game of Thrones” but for the record I think they just mean that it’s fantasy geared towards adult readers—the plots and themes don’t strike me as all that similar. None of the characters are purely good or evil, and it’s a fascinating take on pan-African mythology and theology. The narrator, Tracker, has a superhuman sense of smell and is hired to find a missing child who seems to be especially important, but nobody seems sure why. Very fun, and very good, but just know it’s not like a passive read—I’m sure you’re way smarter than me and this won’t be an issue, but I find myself having to reread sections to understand what’s going on. I think it’s so good that it’s totally worth that effort!
Little Fires Everywhere
by Celeste Ng
It feels like everybody has already read this book, but if you haven’t what are you literally doing? It’s such a fun 90s suburban drama that neither Beau nor I could manage to put down the whole time we were reading it. It’s a pretty short, lovely read that asks great questions about parenthood, adolescence, poverty, and wealth, and now that there’s a Hulu miniseries based on the novel you better get to reading!
Red, White & Royal Blue
By Casey McQuiston
Lmao okay this is such a fun and honestly kind of ridiculous fluff read—the First Son of the United States falls in love with the Prince of England. This takes place in a slightly alternate universe where Ellen Claremont won the 2016 presidential election and nobody named Tr*mp ever got even close to the White House. It’s a fun, low-stakes, easy breezy, escapist gay romance read. I highly recommend if you’re just trying to check out for a second.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
by Ocean Vuong
Okay this debut novel by poet Ocean Vuong is nothing short of absolutely beautiful. It takes the form of a letter written to the narrator’s mother who cannot read English and so will never know this full picture of her son. Telling the stories of the narrator, his mother, and his grandmother in vignettes from Vietnam and Connecticut, this book wrenched my guts with a portrait of a queer immigrant experience that felt super specific and personal to the author but simultaneously universal. I highly recommend this one.
Beloved
by Toni Morrison
Listen, this is such a weak choice for me to include because this novel is already a damn classic, but I can’t not include it. Beloved is, I believe, the greatest American novel ever written. Toni Morrison writes about loss and family and history and heartbreak in a way I didn’t know was possible before. I haven’t read Beloved in years, and had already committed to rereading it in 2020 before quarantine guidelines went into place, so I’m sure I’ll be picking it up again soon. If you haven’t read it, you absolutely have to.
Circe
Madeline Miller
This novel had a hot moment when it was first published a couple years ago, and it’s another simple, beautiful page turner. A professor of the classics, Madeline Miller stays true to the ancient Greek mythology surrounding Circe and her family, lovers, and acquaintances, but allows herself liberty to fill in the blanks. What results is a beautifully written profile of an otherwise unremarkable immortal woman whose inner conflict about her Titan lineage and obsessive fascination with humanity lead her to create her own brand of power.
Dawn
by Octavia Butler
This is the first book in a sci-fi trilogy, but I’ve never read the second two books and I believe it works perfectly as a standalone novel. On a strange spacecraft an alien race awakens a selection of humans from a centuries-long sleep after saving them from the nuclear apocalypse. They’ve healed Earth cured all physical ailments, and now they want the main character, Lilith Iyapo, to be the leader of the new human civilization, but there’s a big tradeoff. I love this book because it uses science fiction to investigate race, gender, and humanity, and does so really well.
Maybe You Should Talk To Someone
by Lori Gottlieb
A therapist, her therapist, and our lives revealed. This memoir really serves up a home run for the voyeur inside of all of us. You get to hear about the not-so-simple, somewhat messy life of a therapist, as well as the not-so-simple somewhat messy lives of her clients. You gain perspective through the different life stories that are told in this book, and you also gain an even further appreciation for how much we’re all alike. Just humans trying to do the damn thing and sometimes failing. It might sound heavy, but it’s written in a pretty lighthearted voice that makes it easy to whizz straight through without putting it down.
Books On Our to-Read List
These are some books that we haven’t read, so we can’t technically vouch for. But omg I’m so excited to get to them. Click on the covers to check them out!
