Hello Darling Ones,

It’s been a long time since I took to the web to complain about a book, but I read one yesterday that infuriated me more than any book has in a long time.

For the most part I quit a book the moment it starts to annoy me. Doesn’t matter how far I get into it. I’ve DNFed (did not finish) at 75% though. Life is too short and all that.

Another thing I tend to avoid are books that are wildly popular. I’m of the rather snooty belief that for a book to be so universally adored it’s gotta be kind of bland. It probably takes no chances either in the writing or the storytelling. Often it seems the characters are flat or generic so readers can fill in the gaps the writer left with themselves.

However, Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke has garnered a bunch of buzz and I’m fascinated by influencer culture so when my hold came through from the library I was pumped. To say I was disappointed is an understatement.

The novel is being marketed as a satire about tradwives and influencers. If it is, the satire was lost on me. I couldn’t tell what point Burke was trying to make. Tradwives are angry about everything? For reasons?

The gist of the story: Natalie is a tradwife influencer with five kids, a hapless hubby from a rich family who suddenly wakes up in the 1800s living the life she cosplayed for her millions of followers.

Want to know why this book was such an utter disaster for me? Because the author failed at the Number One tenet of writing: your character has to want something and your reader should probably know what that is, even if your character doesn’t.

All through the book I kept muttering, “what does she want?” I can’t tell you. She seemed to hate everything: her kids, her husband, her in-laws, all the people who worked for her, women who adored her, women who hated her, and even, sometimes, God.

Natalie wanted nothing. And not just in the material way of someone who repeatedly says “money is no object.” She is one of those characters with so little vitally and humanity that nothing would have made her happy. She was Burke’s distaste about religious tradwife influencers in the shape of a human.

Again, what was the satire? Is it that Natalie was supposed to be a pious, traditional, man is the ruler of the home kind of woman, but she was calling the shots and running a successful business? Isn’t that the real, actual hypocrisy of tradwife influencers? They run successful businesses while pretending to be women who give up their agency to their husbands so they can focus on parenting and housekeeping. We all know this.

The book made no sense and said nothing about women, “traditional” values, religion, or 1800s. It was so vapid. And the 1800s twist was quite disappointing and doesn’t hold up to any kind of deep thought. I won’t spoil it for you, but it’s a cop out.

Yesteryear is a muddy slush pit of all kinds of buzz topics: religion, misogyny, erectile dysfunction, social media, conservative politics, influencer culture, the manosphere, perhaps latent homosexuality, and anything else you can think of.

It also reinforces my snooty belief about books that are wildly popular taking zero riisks and end up not saying anything. Boo to this book.

Love,
Jodi

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Hi Darling Ones,

I started this list with intentions of posting it the day after The Top 10 Nonfiction Music Books, but I am fickle and easily distracted.

This morning TimeHop reminded me that twelve years ago I talked to Arthur Phillips about The ‘Mats after his phenomenal reading at the library. You’ll see why this jogged my memory if you read the list below.

1. Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

I love this book. I think I’ve read and/or listened to it three or four times? The audiobook is read by an all-star cast including Judy Greer and is fantastic. It’s a story of a band that falls apart at the pinnacle of their fame with so many shades of Fleetwood Mac the book could have been called Rumors. It’s so good. The writing is phenomenal and Daisy Jones has so much to say about sexism and music. I can quote her from memory, “I have absolutely no interest in being somebody else’s muse. I am not a muse. I am the somebody. End of fucking story.”

2. The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton

I also love this book a whole bunch. The only reason this gets the #2 spot is that ‘Daisy Jones’ has more music, which is the true joy of my heart. This one is more political, with the main character, Opal, facing a lot of sexism and racism. The story is fantastic and told wonderfully through interviews, newspaper stories, journals, and social media. It’s a story told in the way we learn things today and is utterly unforgettable.

3. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

This a collection of loosely connected stories and not all of them deal with music or the music industry, but Egan is a genius and her books are (for the most part) amazing. You should read this one even if you don’t like music.

4. On the Come Up by Angie Thomas

I’ve read all of Angie Thomas’ novels and they are very, very good, but this one about a young female rapper is my favorite. Rap and Hip-Hop aren’t really my jam (I appreciate it, but it’s not music that clicks into my soul like a LEGO), but the way Bri, the main character, talks about the music that stirs her and how she writes it is captivating, and how she manages to be creative in the dire circumstances she’s living through makes for good reading.

5. Scott Pilgrim Series by Bryan Lee O’Malley

Is this cheating, putting a six-book graphic novel series on the list? Yes, I do not care. There’s so much music in the series, the books are drenched in it. Plus, Ramona Flowers’ favorite band is The Replacements. COME ON!

6. The Song is You by Arthur Phillips

This is charming book about a dude stuck in life who has a chance sort of meet-up with a rock singer and they have an increasingly interesting will they/won’t they courtship that takes place through songs and phone calls and emails. Like so many of us Julian uses music to make sense of his life, and when he reaches a low-point, when he feels sexually, emotionally, and creatively dead, it is music that resuscitates him.

7. The House of Tomorrow by Peter Bognanni

Sebastian is a weirdo home-schooled kid who lives with his grandma in a geodesic dome in a small Iowa town. Her health is precarious and they have a falling out that leads him to stay with a kid he met at the hospital. Jared, is a chain-smoking heart transplant kid whose family is on the verge of falling apart. Together they start a band, of course, and Jared schools him on all the ways of the word from Pop Tarts to The Ramones. This one is drive by Sebastian’s unique and wonderful voice.

8. Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan

Music infiltrates this book, providing a backbeat for all of Nick and Norah’s adventure and the one thing that initially draws them together. Wilco, The Cure, Michael Jackson, the Beatles, Patti Smith, Belle & Sebastian, Green Day, the Clash, Parliament . . . those are just a few of the bands mentioned in the book (the few I can rattle off the top of my head). Anyone who has ever had that spark of attraction and excitement that comes with being musically connected with someone will love this book.

9. Hopeless Savages: Greatest Hits 2000-2010 by Jen Van Meter, et al

This is another graphic novel series about what happens when punk rock stars fall in love, grow up, and raise a family. It’s hilarious and you should read it (I’m getting kinda hangry here so I’m being short).

10. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

I almost didn’t include this on the list. I almost went with Juliet, Naked just to be subversive. I recently tried to re-read High Fidelity after re-watching the amazing and criminally-underrated Hulu series based on the book. The re-read didn’t go well. I stopped after I made the cringey, grimace, “oh no, this has not aged well” face twice within a few pages (gross racist steroetypes, use of the r-word). I just didn’t have the energy for the constant mental gymnastics it takes to deal with how insensitive we were to non-white, non-cis, non-hetero people in the 90s.

I think the affection for this book stems more from the phenomenal John Cusack movie than from the actual book. I love the movie. I’ve only ever been so-so on the book. However, I cannot deny its place as the touchstone for rock & roll novels (even though I kind of want to and maybe would if I wasn’t really, really hungry right now).

Time for dinner,
Jodi

P.S. I’ve been listening to The Marfa Tapes record by Jack Ingram, Miranda Lambert, and Jon Randall, all damn day. It’s so good.

The post The COVID Diaries: Top 10 Fiction Music Books appeared first on I Will Dare.

My wonderful former writing teacher Dale Gregory Anderson used to tell us that when it came to endings our job, as writers, was to land the plane safely. I think of this a lot whenever I’m reading fiction. As a reader I’ve had a tendency to be a dick to writers who gave me endings that displeased me. I like to believe I’ve become more forgiving, especially if I felt the plane was landed safely.

Unfortunately, Karen Thompson Walker did not land the plane safely in her new novel The Dreamers, which is a bummer. Up until the end, the book about a weird sleeping virus that strikes a small California town is an intriguing, compulsive read. We follow a bunch of loosely connected randos as they watch the town around them fall into these dream-filled, unending slumbers. It’s a little weird how complacent the town is about the virus, but I shrugged off this skepticism because I trust KTW and I was going to follow wherever she lead.

Unfortunately, she led me nowhere. The story just wanders around quietly with any tension quickly dissipated, until things peter out in an ending that made me think What? That’s a ripoff!

The post Day 180 of 200: The Dreamers Doesn’t Land the Plane Safely appeared first on I Will Dare.

Sometimes, but not often, I will struggle through a book that is challenging. The older I get the more I want to read things that are outside my taste. This rubs up against my “life is too short to read books you don’t enjoy,” because I frequently do not enjoy books outside my taste.

To wit, I tried to read two modern romance novels recently. One involved a woman who fell in love at first sight with a dude she saw at a bus stop and then who started dating her BFF. I just could not. I tried. But I didn’t care, and I didn’t buy any of it. I quit after a few chapters.

One, I did finish, was Milkman by Anna Burns. Oof. This is one that was long on concept and short on plot or character development. Oftentimes I’ll read a short story and think, that would make a great novel. The opposite is true in this case. The stream-of-conscious narration, the 18 ways to say the same thing in the same paragraph, and nicknamed characters would have been well-suited for something much shorter. Instead we get a book-length writing experiment that was completely exhausting & unenjoyable to read.

The post Day 175 of 200: Milkman was Exhausting appeared first on I Will Dare.

The first time I read Lorna Landvik’s Patty Jane’s House of Curl, I was a 23-year-old gas station attendant. I remember reading the book late at night laying on my futon in the bedroom I claimed as mine (stolen from Sister #4) in my parents house.

The only thing I remembered about the book was sobbing my face off at the end and loving it.

For comfort in this garbage year as this country continues to ramp up its racist, fascist bullshit, I’ve turned to re-reading favorite books. I’ve been meaning to get back to Patty Jane’s, and today I made the time.

Shocker, it’s not as great as I once thought. It’s like a rough draft of a really good book. The draft where you tell everything and show nothing. It’s cute and pat and relies so heavily on coincidence you kind of wince when you revise it.

HOWEVER, I must report, I still snotted my face off when << SPOILER ALERT >> Harriet dies. I don’t know why. It’s not like anyone in the book feels like a real person and you see her death coming on page 12. Yet, I bawled. I blame it on dead sisters getting me every time.

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