Vincennes Review of Books 2024
Last year was my best year in reading since records began. I enjoyed almost everything, and plenty of what I read I enjoyed very much indeed. Let’s look at a graph and then not really talk about it:
I had a great reading year because I was extremely picky about the books I picked up. The extent of this became clear to me when, on a business trip in Boston, I spent ninety full minutes in Brookline Booksmith choosing what to buy. Ninety minutes is a long time to spend reading the backs of books and interrogating yourself about is this the sort of thing I enjoy, but it paid back tenfold because every day of that trip I could look forward to a couple of hours reading Rachel Cusk’s The Country Life in the evening, rather than sitting in an airport lounge grudgingly chewing through something I picked up because I’d heard of it.
My big project this year was Finnegans Wake. You read things about Finnegans Wake — in fact, in the introduction of the very guide I will recommend in two paragraphs’ time — that tell you this book is hilarious, literally a lol on every page. In fact, there is one lol; I found it; it is on page 34:
This is a thoroughly endearing book. Plenty of the words in it — the ones that aren’t portmanteaux of Triestine and Old Norse, and also somehow a three-in-one fart joke — are words I remember from growing up but don’t hear any more, either because I’m no longer in Scotland or because I’m no longer in primary school. Hoosh. Pinny. Daffydowndillies. I loved that.
If you want to read Finnegans Wake — and you probably know whether or not you do — I have some recommendations. Firstly, I read it with Edmund Epstein’s Guide Through Finnegans Wake, in which he shares his delight in the book as well as his understanding of it. It does have several misleading statements in it along the lines of “the next forty pages present relatively little challenge to the reader.” My dude, there wasn’t a sentence in the Wake that presented relatively little challenge to this reader. Nevertheless, it was a great guide and it helped me get much more out of it than I would have got on my own. Secondly, I read it with Matt, and highly, highly recommend reading with a friend. It’s a superb book for generating in-jokes, we each saw things that the other didn’t, and just knowing that someone else is in this makes the more obscure passages seem possible.
You might remember the most enormous fuss about Victoria MacKenzie’s For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain earlier this year, and that fuss still underplayed what an astonishing book this was. It stayed so close to both Revelations of Divine Love and the Book of Margery Kempe, and got to the gold in them both, without requiring knowledge of either of them.
It was, also, a far more sympathetic portrait of Margery Kempe than even her own autobiography offers. I appreciated the extent to which it cast her as brave. It’s easy, as a modern reader, to read The Book of Margery Kempe and think things like, this woman has very severe post-partum depression! and is maybe also autistic. For Thy Great Pain doesn’t ignore that, but it says; why would post-partum depression make telling the truth as you understand it a less profound act of courage? Why would autism make telling the truth as you understand it a less profound act of courage?
Here are book recommendations in twos to close out this year’s Review, but I’d love to talk with you about anything that’s asterisked in this year’s list:
Books about power
I can’t think of a book that has been more alive to me than Paradise Lost was last year. I’m still thinking about what it taught me about the lies we tell ourselves about power — to get it, to keep it, to be near it. Sometimes a book comes to you at a perfect moment, a time when you’re ready to listen to and work with it, and that was me and Paradise Lost last year.
Our Share of Night — Mariana Enriquez
Mariana Enriquez is not letting anyone off the hook. If you enjoyed, as I did, her unflinchingly horrific short stories in Things We Lost in the Fire, Our Share of Night explains and expands on several of the stories in that, while remaining completely its own unflinchingly horrific thing. It’s also about the lies we tell ourselves about what we will do with power, and about the compromises we make to protect the people we love. She’s so good.
Books about emo
Where Are Your Boys Tonight? — Chris Payne
Did you love emo music? Do you love oral histories? HOW ABOUT BOTH. I hadn’t realised, before I read this, just how fast emo took off, and I hadn’t thought about how disorienting that was for everyone involved. This book constantly called me back to the moment when I heard Take This to Your Grave for the first time, and felt like people probably felt when they watched Apollo 11 land on the moon.
None of this Rocks — Joe Trohman
This is the top book Amazon recommends when you look at the listing for Where Are Your Boys Tonight, and I also recommend that you add to cart directly. It’s about how we care for one another, what that means, and how care helps us to lose and find our place in the world. It was not at all the book I expected, and I liked it much, much more than the book I expected.
Aims for 2025:
Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self — Claire Tomalin
Also, obviously, finish Pepys’ Diary, before speedrunning a project that took nine and a half years by seeing what Claire Tomalin has to say about Pepys, including the wild psychosexual drama that consumed about four months of his 1668 and that seems likely to run and run in 1669.
Join me! You know I’d love that.
Previous reviews: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2007, 2006
Lists of books read: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004
