Escape to Bizarro World
Three books that will take you on quite a journey.
Summer reads do not have to be dumber reads! These books are plenty challenging while still providing that escapism you crave when the beach is nigh… but the approaching wildfire smoke keeps you in bed, under the covers. I mean, just keeping it real, here.
The following are listed in increasing order of bonkersness, and it culminates with one of my favorite books of all time, so don’t jump ship early.
🍛 My Year Abroad
Chang-Rae Lee, 2021
This is not a fun romp through someone’s junior year in college. It is not Eat Pray Love. It is a disturbed, fictional story of a young, aimless guy—think Holden Caufield mixed with Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, only nicer and more of a doofus—who meets another probably totally fine and not shady at all guy with both ambition and money to burn! Tiller (the former) follows Pong (the latter) upon a wild ride through East Asia.
I keep thinking about various episodes in this book and laughing, not because they’re funny (though there are some that aren’t unfunny), but because how can anyone write something so absurd and bizarre. And then I remember that we have two more books to get to that are possibly even more bizarre than this one.
Recommended to: Those who have a high tolerance for magical realism and also aren’t afraid to just allow a thing to exist in its own weirdness without feeling like they need to connect the dots. I mean, feel free, but… it’s summer.
Will take you to: Macau, spas, giant mortars and pestles, disintegrating suburbs, casino tables, madness.
🪨 Kafka on the Shore
Haruki Murakami, 2002
I just realized I know virtually nothing about Murakami the actual guy, but in my mind he’s just like a totally normal man who quietly watches birds and sips coffee while wearing impeccably tailored clothing. It seems like a very, very put-together calm guy would be the kind of person who writes this incredibly beautiful insanity.
This book is (I think) about letting the past go. Like My Year Abroad, it is also about a teenage boy who goes on a journey, and there are a lot of 15-year-old boy thoughts that seem really jarring when expressed so mildly and juxtaposed next to elegant middle-aged ladies writing with fountain pens and truckers discovering Beethoven. But that’s ol’ impeccably-tailored-or-so-I-imagine Murakami for you.
Recommended to: Those who, again, are A-OK with magical realism, are not faint of heart (some pretty gruesome and some just gross scenes including some animal cruelty), and possibly have read a Murakami book before so know what they’re getting into. Highly recommend, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which is my favorite, thanks to you, Emily!
Recommended format: Audiobook, it has two narrators that do a great job weaving things together.
Will take you to: Tokyo, Shikoku, the library, a forest. Death? Life? A painting? A temple? An apartment owned by a concept who appears as a miniature Colonel Sanders. You can’t make this stuff up. Well, I can’t, anyway.
🦴 Gideon the Ninth
Tamsyn Muir, 2019
I’m almost afraid to recommend this to you, because I love it so much and understand it so little. I’ve read both of the sequels and they weirdly get better and better despite me understanding it maybe less than I did at the start.
You know what? I’m just going to stop there. It’s too precious to me to describe. I’ll just say that on the release date of #3 in the series, I got three separate, excited texts about it at 7am. Thanks for bringing this into my life, Katia, I owe you one.
Recommended to: Sci-fi fans, definitely. But also fans of humor and bones and spaceships and swords and friendship and women and more bones.
Recommended format: Audiobook is brilliant, but I also bought hardcovers to save forever and to read again in hopes that one day I’ll figure it all out.
Will take you to: No spoilers!
A book I excitedly started rereading and quickly abandoned
🍩 Flowers in the Attic — V.C. Andrews, 1979
I thought this was going to be a struggle to understand why I liked this so much as a young teen because its content is so messed up, but it ended up being a struggle to understand why I liked this so much as a young teen because its writing is just so bad.
No need to revisit this, curious former 13-year-old girls! Move along, and pick up Gideon instead.
And now, a bonus recommendation
☠️ Blood Meridian — The late great Cormac McCarthy, 1985
Recommended for: “Those who are good at desensitizing and dissociation, or those who find meaning in horror.”
Recommended by: My friend Melanie, who “has a boring federal government job” and is into “daily contemplation of how I ended up filling my house with overpriced mutts and the terrible consequences.” She also enjoys yelling at me about how Faulkner sucks (strong disagree but I do enjoy a spirited literature yelling). The last three books she loved were The Three-Body Problem, A Confederacy of Dunces, and Call Me Chef, Dammit!
That was the tenth EELS! If you need less insane recs for vacation reading, check out the archive! I’ll be on vacation myself the next two Fridays, and I may or may not be able to fire off an EELS (or possibly convince my very dear Sudie to write one for you). But as always, send any and all questions, feedback, and shouted book recommendations by hitting reply.
– Susan