Working title
Books about people's jobs, only more interesting than that sounds
I don’t want everyone to write about their jobs (zzz), but I’m glad these folks did!
🐄 All Creatures Great and Small
James Herriot, 1975
Like all good books, this one starts out with a man feeling around inside a cow. Several times in my youth, I read this charming account by an English veterinarian about the beginnings of his career in the dales of Yorkshire. Because that’s just the kind of very hip kid I was, y’all!
Well, I just reread it, and the book is just what I needed. It’s peaceful and inspiring, and there are plenty of instances where taciturn grizzled farmers stare at a hapless vet covered in pig excrement before uttering something worth putting on a T-shirt.
Recommended to: Those who can handle a lot of descriptions of gross animal fluids comfortably nestled next to enthusiastic descriptions of Yorkshire puddings.
Another book in this same vein, also with a BBC adaptation: Call the Midwife, by Jennifer Worth
🫐 A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
George Saunders, 2021
There has never been a book that has, to quite this extent, caused me to beg so many people to just trust me and give it a try. I mean, “a master class where four Russians blah blah blah”? Sounds like a big “No thanks!” and I would never have picked it up if it weren’t sent to me as part of a First Editions Club thing I do.
All authors are doing their job when they write books for you to read, but here, George Saunders (best known for short stories but also Booker prize-winning Lincoln in the Bardo, which is not for everyone, but certainly is for me) is being George Saunders: College Professor. So he’s doing his other job, by writing a book that brings his Russian short story class to your eyeballs and brain.
Don’t be scared off by the word “class.” There are not tests. You don’t have to write a paper. He is simply helping you look at the format of a short story in a new way, and helps you figure out how to make that way entirely your own. And somehow, because he is a kind, charming genius, he makes you feel deep feelings about life and your own capabilities in the process. Seriously. Please. Just trust me and give it a try.
Recommended to: Those who think they don’t like Russian lit, those who have never thought about Russian lit, those who are ready to take the next step with how they read, and also my fellow editors. There’s tons of good stuff about editing in here.
Recommended format: Print or e-book. This won’t work on audio. You have to do close readings of texts in ways you will 100% enjoy, I promise.
🦁 West with the Night
Beryl Markham, 1942
One of the things I love about my friend Melanie is her tolerance for and possession of Strong Opinions. I respect Strong Opinions! So when she texted me with a command to read this memoir of a female aviator, I threw caution to the headwinds and complied. (It probably helped that I’d recently gone crazy over Great Circle, by Maggie Shipstead).
There’s a possibly apocryphal story about Ernest Hemingway calling Beryl a “very unpleasant…high-grade bitch,” but he definitely did write to his editor about West with the Night: “I knew her fairly well in Africa and never would have suspected that she could and would put pen to paper except to write in her pilot's log book. As it is, she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer."
Rumors have taken to the sky that she didn’t write it at all—but they seem to be based on clouds and air. Sexist clouds and insecure air! Beryl could look any of these scoffing men square in the eye, down six G&Ts, literally fight off a lion, and then come back to coolly destroy them in Mario Kart. What’s the 1940s equivalent of Mario Kart? “Draughts” or something? What is draughts? Is that just darts? Email me.
Recommended to: Those who want to feel the wind in their hair.
Edit this Dusty Stack™
What should this EELS reader keep in the stack? What should she promote to the bedside table? Let me know, and I will pass your gracious advice along.
And now, a bonus recommendation
💌 On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous — Ocean Vuong, 2019
Recommended for: People who “like heartbreaking memoirs, playful and expansive prose and first generation perspectives of American culture.”
Recommended by: My pal Pinson, a stupidly good drummer who recently: went on tour with Helado Negro and played percussion on Faye Webster’s Car Therapy Sessions, got into the Radio Garden app, and loved The Buried Giant, Gideon the Ninth, and Postcolonial Love Poem.
That was the eighth EELS! Send any and all questions, feedback, and shouted book recommendations to me by hitting reply!
– Susan