So you think you can read XIII
Book recommendations "n" stuff for March
I wish I’d never absorbed the notion of an “attention span” because now all I can think about is how stubby mine is. Especially for the pile of required reading (required because it is related to an assignment) currently squatting on my desk.
This happens every time. The instant a topic becomes mandatory, it is enveloped in a fog of dullness. The fog is accompanied by a random and powerful interest in any other topic that comes up. During the first 20 pages of [redacted assigned reading] I was assailed with intrusive questions about gas chromatography, the movie Platoon, the maximum size a chrysanthemum flower can grow, and where the writer Denis Johnson was born.
Plus the two books below, which, due to being consumed in a fit of defiance, acquired an extra naughty glow.
The Documents of the Case by Dorothy L. Sayers and Robert Eustace
Suspense, 1930
Certain forms are so difficult to execute well that I approach them with pre-lowered expectations. For example: soufflés, one-act plays, epistolary novels. This above is an epistolary novel that doubles as a mystery that triples as the only novel Dorothy L. Sayers wrote with a collaborator. Seemed like a recipe for thin gruel.
I only read it because whoever designed the cover deserves a posthumous Genius Grant. I had to experience the text that led to the interior monologue of some uncredited person thinking, “I see ripe persimmon behind a cropped Don Crowley illustration of bedsheets rendered Vermeerly and a corpse with anatomically impossible trapezius muscles. The lettering will be my own invention—something vaguely ecclesiastical, with chaotic Basque inflections.”
One reason the type is perturbing—and then I promise we’ll evacuate Font Corner—is that the letters individually differ. Why are there two kinds of R? And two kinds of A? (below). Not to mention the variations in S and the E. (Shudder.) You need not be afflicted with expertise to be subtly—perhaps imperceptibly—discomfited:
Of course, a lot of great covers festoon bad books, and I had to find out whether the designer had been moved to greatness by the text or by some unrelated agent of inspiration. Having read it, now, I vote the former.
We begin in a suburb of London in the late 1920s, in a house full of unhappy people: a prosperous married couple, their lady’s maid, and two young men—a painter and a writer—renting the maisonette. The first chunk of novel unfolds in letters among these people and secondary characters. Because we have access to nearly everyone’s interiority, we find each character sympathetic, even as they find each other irritating or pathetic or evil. It’s a clever way to thwart a reader’s attempt to identify a villain—we can’t quite shed their self-conceptions, and nobody is a villain to himself!
The psychological insights are sharp and the plot is satisfying. Innards and outtards of novel have achieved superb compatibility.
RIYL: Novels about intelligent British people misbehaving (so, Iris Murdoch novels), Sleuth (1972), Nicholas Blake’s The Beast Must Die (1938), foraging for mushrooms
American Spirits by Anna Dorn
Fiction, 2026
Serious question. Why are there so few synonyms for “lesbian” (adjective form) in English? “Sapphic” is corny. “Queer” is obviously too broad. Surely there are better options in other languages. Polyglots, sound off.
Given this constraint I’m always impressed at Anna Dorn’s ability to write lesbianically without succumbing to bland repetition of that word. She is also unafraid to be a little bit psycho, as an author—American Spirits is about a pop star who granularly resembles Lana Del Rey and the book’s dedication reads For Lizzy Grant and Del Rey appears yet again in the Acknowledgments section. Dorn, you lunatic! Is any novelist having as much fun as this woman?
It is that quality—the palpable fun being had—that guarantees I will read whatever she writes, even if I never care about the putative subject matter (Del Rey in this case; in previous cases: astrology, law school, viral fame, white rappers who are not Eminem).
Most of American Spirits switches between the perspective of the Lana figure, who is named Blue Velour, and that of her #1 fangirl-turned-assistant, Rose, with interludes from a subreddit dedicated to speculation about a romance between Blue and her (female) music producer. When Covid hits, the three women—pop star, assistant, producer—retreat to a redwood-encircled luxury cabin in Northern California. Two albums get made and three people go berserk. The pages turn themselves.
NB the book comes out in April but is pre-orderable.
RIYL: Poetic descriptions of vaping, googling Cory Kennedy once every 5 years, being a female born between 1984-1990, Emmanuel Carrère’s “fictional biography” of Philip K. Dick, which by the way bears one of the greatest titles of all time
If I were allowed to teach—ha HA ha—in any institution I would teach a course called WWJD (What Would Janetmalcolm Do), featuring an All-Janet curriculum. The class would cover archival research, ethics in journalism, intellectual property, concision, and locating the right moment to insert a tiny joke in a serious text. Willing to tailor my lectures to any age group from 12-100. Students caught using AI in their papers will be whipped. No crying in office hours.
I’d like to congratulate three readers on their follow-through in obtaining vanity license plates prompted by these two posts. No drug can replicate the euphoria of knowing that you are driving around in a four-wheeled shrine to the spirit of “why the hell not.”
If you’re inspired to customize but need that extra push, I just checked the NY state database for a few more options, all available:
Thank you for reading!
Feel free to send reader mail or book recommendations to mollybethyoung@gmail.com. Your remarks may be included in a future edition so don’t write anything that could get you fired. Or better yet, DO but include a preferred pseudonym. What your employer doesn’t know won’t hurt them.
Farewell,
Molly