Summer-Winter Reads: June, July, and August

I have read and written less than I would have liked during the past three months. Not too unexpected, however, as it has been the part of the year in which I have traveled the most. After a month in Cape Town, I feel like I have some room for pause and reflection on the books that have accompanied me from Bath and London to the United States and now South Africa.

Indoor scene of a bookshop with books in shelves in the background and more books on the table in the foreground and a vase with flowers.
Fig 1. Persephone Books in Bath, where I spent a few happy mornings in June

I realize now that my reading has been just as scattered as my physical presence: from a radio journalist's compilation of tales about the lives of Chinese women in the 80s and 90s to contemporary queer Latin American poetry and an academic analysis of the cultural impact of Ayn Rand. It has been interesting. So much so, that I do not know where to begin.

Perhaps, I should begin at the beginning. And an important beginning for me is Jane Austen. Bidding adieu to Bath, I re-read Pride and Prejudice during my last few days in the UK. It happened spontaneously, or as spontaneous as it can be when at every corner I was reminded that it was the 250th anniversary of Austen's birth. Bath practically burst with Austen, and I eyed it all a bit skeptically. Maybe with a similar skepticism to that with which I approached Pride and Prejudice for the first time when I was in high school. However, Austen's eternally fresh and funny storytelling always manages to sweep away my reserve. With each re-reading, my appreciation only grows and I was pleased to have the novel's company during the long hot nights of a London heatwave.

Some of my other reads of this summer were less comforting, matching the anxious tone of the times, of degradation in all sense of the word. Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed by Lisa Duggan and The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices by Xinran are two non-fiction books that prompt reflection on how societies function and malfunction, and how this malfunctioning can profoundly hurt individuals, families, and communities. What ideas get to be influential and why? How do we displace harmful ideas and conventions?

The pessimism and anxiety that comes from ruminating on the world's biggest issues, some that perhaps seem unsurmountable, is one of the main themes of the other book that accompanied me on flights and train rides: A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding by Amanda Svensson. This big novel is full of quirky moving pieces, like a Murakami novel, but very Swedish and with less music. Faraway places, improbable images, coincidences that promise to be part of some big conspiracy. The three sibling protagonists try to make sense of a world that feels like it is going to pieces. In other words, entropy. In the end, I felt like this novel was an exercise in building suspense and anticipation only to purposefully disappoint in order to make a point. I appreciated the concept more than the novel itself, unfortunately. Not sure I would pick it up again.

In the midst of all of that, I stumbled into some poetry as well. Feeling a bit nostalgic for home, I picked up an anthology of queer Latin American poetry edited by the Argentine poet Leo Boix, as well as a newly published work by Boix. Within Hemisferio Cuir: An Anthology of Young Queer Latin American Poetry, I was please to discover poetry from across the region, including some countries that are less well represented on the global literary stage. These are the poems from the collection that stuck with me:

- Andrea