Reading Sucked This Year
My list of books, an interview with Han Schneider, a poem, all of my distractions.
So, I didn’t update this all year. I’m sorry! I really love doing this newsletter and then couldn’t find the time. In the coming year, I would like to add an advice section where I answer your questions about reading, writing, whatever. I want to continue writing about how beautiful and hard reading is and how important it is now (more than ever, in fact) when people get radicalized by memes and the passive voice. So if you’re seeing this, please send in questions to mlozadaoliva@gmail.com.
SOME NEWS:
My book Candelaria is available everywhere to buy for your distressed niece and on December 19th you can listen to me narrate it over a whopping 10 hours.
I’m teaching a virtual class on “The You” on January 4th, 2024. You can sign up for it here.
THIS YEARS NON-PHONE RELATED DISTRACTIONS
WINTER
I moved from the place I had been living in during the pandemic into an apartment with my boyfriend. Wrote an essay about independence and living with someone else again and then deleted it. Who cares!
SPRING
-In LA, Olivia, Sarah and I walked out of a showing of Are you there God, it’s me Margaret because a man in an army hat and a Metallica shirt showed up by himself. He took out his large vest slowly and I left immediately, not even realizing that that’s what I was doing, and then felt bad for my intrusive thoughts, and was going to go back in when Olivia and Sarah were also like, “No, we have to leave.” On the drive back home the moon was giant and nearly red. The next day there was a shooting at a mall in Texas.
-In Eugene, Oregon I landed at 1 AM for a gig I had at the university the next morning at 10 AM. There were no ride shares available at all, which was told to me by a waving man next to a bunch of parked Taxis. “They don’t come around here at this time of night!” he said. A couple got into his car. Another man with a magician’s vest and one of those reddit hats waved over and said there was plenty of room in his car. I was like, no thanks (obviously) and got into a car driven by a white, middle-aged woman, which I thought would be safer. In the car she starts listening to a Youtube video about the mark of the beast by a passionate content creator who never tells you what it is. I could only see a few feet of the row ahead of us and remembered how it’s bad luck to look into the woods. The man was going on about sacrifices, and how those are always combatting the mark of the beast. She shut it off when we reached the hotel, where she said, “Sorry you had to listen to all of that. I just wanted to know what the mark of the beast was.” Then she started to cackle in a very frightening way that made me never want to go to Eugene, Oregon ever again.
-My boyfriend and I took taking salsa classes. The instructor told me to stop moving my hips so much because this class was about footwork. Sometimes people don’t want you to slay. We had to switch partners with twenty other people, and I kept wondering who they were and how they got there. I pointed to a muscular blonde man and his petite girlfriend and whispered to Miguel that this was a fun date night for them, and that later they would go to a brewery and at 10:30 PM do it doggie-style.Unfortunately this very nice man starting being referred to by both of us as “10:30 PM doggie-style.” Another partner I had was this older man who was bow-legged. He looked at my shirt and said, “Cool kids belong together? I used to be a teacher, I get that. But I couldn’t take it so I became a cop!” Then he mimed strangling a child. He led me but could feel my resistance (as a woman…) and said that I needed to trust him.
-My sister visited NYC and lost her shoe at the club.
-That orange day from the fires where I duct-taped the windows but not all the way because I couldn’t reach the top of the window because I’m short and I was afraid to pull up a chair because then what if I fell down and cracked open my head?
-There were many karaoke nights where I thought I would never die.
-Fear that my book would be bad.
SUMMER
-Will got married in Tahoe and when we jumped into a private lake I felt immense joy that bubbled up in my throat and I couldn’t stop laughing like that woman in Eugene, Oregon. The mark of the beast was the friends we made along the way.
-Miguel and I went to Italy in what was probably the most fun but financially irresponsible decision of our lives. We visited Pompeii and I kept trying to find the bodies, as if were in a video game and not an archeological dig. There were two that we found, their hands back or covering their faces. I learned that it’s not really their bodies but the shadow of their bodies, filled in with plaster. You should never tell a poet about Pompeii. I thought there would be more bodies and there weren’t, and I thought how gruesome of me, to want to see death so badly. I didn’t know what the fall would hold. And then in the gift shop, there were all the fucking bodies, behind glass, next to magnets of penises.
-My grandmother turned 90. There were mariachis.
FALL
-I broke my shoe on my birthday and hobbled into a car.
-My novel Candelaria came out and I was so so nervous but surrounded by love. Michael Shannon gave my mom his phone number afterwards at the bar. I’ve heard that he is now dating Jessica Chastain but the chemistry between my mom and Michael was real.
-On tour I relived the rush of touring as a viral 2010s poet. The little inns and the college towns. The strangers who know my work. I read with Ariel Martinez and Lupita Aquino. I got my boyfriend a hat at the Ulysess Inn. There was a taco in DC. I feel so lucky that people have read my book at all and that I get to meet the people who read it.
-On my way to the airport for an LA reading, I learned that my friend Ryan Carson, a beloved poet and activist and Massachusetts dirtbag, was murdered in a random act of violence the night before. I cancelled the reading halfway to the airport, initially thinking that I could shove the horror of what happened down while on a 6 hour plane ride. After the shameful and full-of-worms New York Post uploaded a video of Ryan’s terrifying last moments, a culture war commenced against Ryan’s loved ones, pointing to Ryan’s activism (which was for overdose prevention and recycling) as a reason crime runs rampant in NYC. While I felt disgusted and angered by the online vitriol, there has also been much community and love and beers and laughter in the last two months. I’ve never felt so in love with my friends and so dedicated to them.
-Will visited me in Seattle and we had a long walk that ended with food and karaoke. He was like “Um, so are you traumatized?” I was like, “Bitch …. yes.” I cried when he sang a Killers song.
-In Chicago Puloma made a gigantic feast and Alex read my tarot and we drank gasoline espresso martinis.
- Israel began its genocide against the Palestinian people. I’m now witness to endless videos of children’s lifeless bodies, mothers crying and holding onto bloody white sacks, horror, horror, horror. How is anyone supposed to read when that is happening?
DISTRACTIONS AS HAN SCHNEIDER
hello readers, I lived with Melissa for four years. And something she was always so good at was reading, and I always admired that about her. Whenever I browse popular books, I always recognize their covers because they flo
ated about our kitchen and coffee tables (upwards of two years ago). Melissa has her finger on the pulse of good reading, that's for sure.
A bit about me: I'm a writer for the internet who picks up a new hobby every few months, so I can't really figure out my niche. But that's OK. I was formerly amazingspiderhan on Instagram, but I got banned for seemingly no reason, so you can find me at my new, refreshed handle, "theamazingspiderhan."
What was reading like for you as a kid?
When I was a kid, I really did love to read. I would try to be romantic about it and read with a flashlight under my blankets, but I would quickly suck up all the oxygen under there and rip the blankets off, gasping for air, seeing stars. But yes, I read all those tree house adventure books; I also remember reading all of the quote-unquote age-appropriate historical fiction that was available in the library. I don't know about you; those books were kind of traumatizing. I remember reading Fever 1974, and my dad came in in the middle of the night to see I was still awake and sobbing because the grandfather in the book had died a very grizzly death from scarlet fever. I read a book about the Dust Bowl, where a girl's mom was depressed because she lost her baby when she accidentally spilled boiling water on herself. I also remember reading ... ugh, I can't remember the title. OK, I looked it up, "Code Orange" about a kid that is like poking around in old medical textbooks at an old family home in Connecticut. Then, a packet of smallpox scabs falls out from 1900, and his life is changed forever, and he like almost brings back smallpox, but is instead kidnapped. You might be thinking, "Why were you reading this? "It was our 7th-grade read for the spring. It was assigned by the school!
There was another one, too, "the red kayak"; I still have dreams about it. This kid is mad that his dad is sleeping with the neighbor woman, so he drills two holes in the kayak, and then when she goes out with her kid the next day, her kid drowns. I don't remember what happened, but my point is that my memory of reading as a kid makes me laugh; reading is about the human experience! It gets dark, even for kids! You just can't protect a kid from the horrors of the world because even if you do everything right, she'll be up at midnight devouring historical fiction about scarlet fever from the POV of a nine-year-old girl. And that's life.
What has made reading hard for you historically? In other words, when does reading suck?
OK, do me a favor and picture the control room of a submarine. There are knobs and gauges, buttons, and lights. For me, I feel like I have this weirdo gauge in my core that really dictates if I will read a book. Sometimes, it's a green light as in we are READING this book, and then I read a book all the way through and probably 4 or 5 after that. It's like so delightful to have a book that you're reading that you think about during the day like, oh! I forgot that I have that to look forward to later.
But other times, the gauge is just like a "buzzer sound." Nope. And I just can't get into something. I've started Lonely City by Olivia Liang so many times and just never picked up speed. Some books I own are super beat up because I pack them with me on trips, and I really want to want to read them, but then they just live in my bag, unread.
I could talk about ADHD, but I don't feel like it. I also think that I've read more this year than I ever have, and it's partly because I stopped fighting the gauge. If I feel that way, then I don't force it. I just wait until it feels right to read something. I also have started doing this thing called turbo reading, which I will explain later.
You've told me before about "reading bugs." When do these happen to you, and what makes them go away?
I envy people who like to always have a book. They have a space in their bag that is ready to hold a book because they read regularly. I am so not like that. This summer, after leaving a job that left me a burnt-out, crispy, fried piece of bacon, I read all of the ACOTAR series in my bed. When I think about it now, I am like, what the fuck was that. But I also understand it. I just needed to like to escape into horny fairy erotica, I guess, and it honestly left me feeling like my gears were nice and lubed up (sorry…. not being euphemistic!!).
I ended up reading five books after those books because the gears were greased, and I was enjoying it. And then, I read the last book in that voracious period, and I just stopped reading for a bit. I didn't pick up another book until recently when I got the Libby app to finally accept my library card. Then I read about ten books in the last month with that. And now I am in a weird lull again; no book sounds interesting to me right now. I am just sitting with that and waiting until I feel like reading again. Fighting it makes it worse, I think.
Tell me about your "turbo reading" or listening to books at 3x speed.
Let me tell you about the gospel that is reading at 2.8 speed. What I do is I check out an audiobook of a book I own, or I check out both an audiobook and an ebook. Then I fire both up (my phone gets super hot) and turn the audio up to about as fast as I can understand it while looking at the text version. The fastest I can go is about 2.8, which is unintelligible without the text right there in front of my eyes. This is kind of insane, I am aware. But it has actually helped me bypass that "gauge" in me that I described earlier. I also do this as long as it feels good. I typically get far enough into a story that I want to savor it and not listen at that rate, and then I turn it down to 1.8, which is my favorite "normal" speed.
If you were to name the genre of book you go for, what would it be?
This is the perfect chance for me to share about "Storygraph." It's like if Squarespace or hinge made a Goodreads— but better. The design is great, and my favorite part is that it tells you stats about your reading. So, if I didn't have this— I would say that I just read books that I like, and most of the time, they don't feel like they have a particular genre. I also think it's healthy to read things you don't like so that you can have a better idea of why you like the things that you like. However, I do love light science fiction. But my story graph will show that my favorite flavor of the book is "reflective," whatever that means.
HAVE I READ AT ALL?
note: some of these appeared in Ariel Martinez’ substack All the Things She Said (Were Good)
If you ever want to see how metaphor can make you squirm in your seat because you feel like you are pulling back your fingernail and you’re turned on by it, read this book. Two wealthy teenage girls in Ecuador at a private school are obsessed with each other in an Elena Ferrrante, classic female, are-they-in-love-or-in-friendship kind of way. One of them, Annelise, loves telling their group of friends “creepypasta” stories, online lore that is so specifically creepy because it’s tinged with loneliness and blue screens. Very We Are all Going to the World’s Fair and Skinamarink (never watching that, I like to sleep!) vibes. Annelise invents something called the White God, who is at the end of every one of her stories, and she has her friends participate in dares that serve as worshipping the White God. At the same time, her best friend, Fernanda, has been kidnapped by their teacher who can’t stop impersonating her dead mother. There’s so much to this book, but mostly it’s about this specific mortal fear of women growing older, having a child and it having it’s own mind, your body exploding because of that child, the grotesqueness and perverseness of puberty, and the tittering balance between fear and desire. Most unsettling experience reading I’ve ever had in my life.
Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
I read most of this book during Jury Duty. I’ve heard it called A Little Life with only 1/5 of the trauma. A lot of people hate the last third, because of something awful that happens and the way the two main characters spend time apart. I was also devastated by the awful thing, and was kind of unsure if it was earned, or if I just have a hard time dealing with bad things happening to fake people I’ve fallen in love with . This is about two video game designers in the 90’s, Sadie and Sam, who have a very intimimate, collaborative relationship that is never sexual. I’ve always been a luddite about video games because sitting in the dark seems sad to me, but reading this I was like wait are video games IT? Gabrielle Zevin makes it so ENGROSSING and JOYFUL to learn about how video games are made, and really draws a beautiful line between games and novels. The novel is so experimental — entire chapters told in game form, use of second person, sections divided the way the games they are designing are — but also very traditional, and because Zevin is a YA author, the language is accessible and feels like candy. There’s also an intriguing, realistic discussion of privilege: Sadie is a white and rich, but also Jewish and a woman. Sam is Korean, white, and disabled, but also a charismatic man. In designing games and the fame that ensues form that, their identities, and the obstacles and resentments attached to each of them, all come into play. Zevin also meditates on the artistic practice, and how sometimes we are fueled by pettiness set to the engine of youth. I think I loved it.
Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez
I haven’t had a reading experience like this in a long time, and don’t know if I ever will again. I used to think of myself as a short stories kind of bitch, but now I’m like, hold on, I love THE NOVEL. I love what it can do! I love how time moves. I love how the dedication to it. I love all of the lessons imbedded in the plot and in sweeping paragraphs. This book, at the end of the long day, is about a father and son, but also more than that, but also not. Juan is a medium with a heart condition that is indentured to a maniacal cult that provides him medical care in exchange for summoning something called The Darkness. Juan has a kid with a daughter of this cult named Rosario Bradford, but then she is brutally run over by a bus and dragged for two blocks. Now, Juan must protect his son from his own family. This novel is a lot of things. I almost wonder what it would be like to read it in four different novelas, but that would take away from the power of it. I guess one of the main things is parenthood: why do we have children, how do we protect them? Can we only protect them with pain?
Anthony Bourdain inside of a hotdog suit making love to a woman dressed up as a gendered pickle is kind of what this book is like. Jamie’s brain neurons are constantly firing off and I’m envious of her thought process and sentence structure, where she somehow rams in three jokes about diarhhea, period blood, and then says something profound about class structures and union labor. She travels throughout the US with her ex, her dog and her cat trying hot dogs and describing her scenery with the eye of a trained journalist who has also been a woman gazing out a big window looking for love. She is vulnerable with you but to the point. It isn’t confessional, it’s just the facts.
This book is exactly what I thought it would be. I thought it was cool that it ended the way a short story does.
I loved this time travel book so much !!! I couldn’t put it down!!
KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON by David Grann
The book is more of a whodunnit than the movie; you only learn of Ernie’s involvement much later, and then later you learn that the entire white community was out to murder the Osage. There is no nuance and there is no forgiveness. What happened to the Osage was calculated evil. Reading it as a genocide unfolds on my phone was enlightening because the same kind of denial that’s happening with Palestinian lives was happening with the Osage.
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Leguin
In this book a convoy named Genly Ai arrives on an alien planet where humanoid people do not possess any gender, except for once a month when they enter “kimmering” and fuck. Through Genly’s eyes we see how society functions without gender and the peace and new conflicts that come with it. What I like about this book is that Ursula K Leguin wasn’t an idealist. She simply was like, “Yeah, the world would be really different if people with uteruses weren’t second class citizens, but it wouldn’t be perfect.” It’s a thought experiment and also a love story. My only complaint is Genly and Estraven should’ve had sex. Why not!! Who cares!!!!
Poem Where I Am Old tits to the floor. wirey hair, puffy eyes, dusty skin. my feet hurt so much. my knees too. my eyes are shit. but I’m still alive. outside it’s too hot in December once more. my husband sleeps on the couch, a paper hovers above his face. our kids call us from Korea. they want us to come. it’s bad where you are, they say. we know. still, there’s a crossword puzzle & dinner to make & a cat to let out. there are things you wouldn’t be surprised about: evacuations & agriculture, guns & resources. there are things that you couldn’t even imagine: the space trash that cured cancer. there’s a photo of my parents. theres a photo of the apartment I used to live in from 1946. there’s photo of you in the poetry section of our library, where our books are still bloated from the flood. it’s been so long that sometimes I forget to look at you. it’s been so long that I am no longer in denial. it has become so much part of me & changed me in such a way that now it feels as though it was always going to happen. I see the thread & the needle piercing between pages by the bored alien in the sky. I’ve stopped imagining that you were just taken, lifted up by light to be with the multi-dimensional beings so they can make more men like you. in the future, I’ve stopped all of that. I’ve accepted. It is simple now: I am here. You were there. I have losses my 31 year old self would not understand & i’ve witnessed the unimaginable & I’ve lost my voice from screaming & sometimes I say things that are insensitive because my heart's grown hard as stone. I forget things. Like the name of the restaurant we went to where I owed you $45 or who it was that spilled the smashed drink you covered up with paper towels, or where I was going when I ran into you on the train. and on a horrible day I almost forget your name. and while I’m trying to recall where the flour is, somewhere in the city we all fell in love, there’s a bird resting on the very top of the tree where we once gathered around with candles and beer, remembering you. it’s a mere branch in a dirty ocean full of the straws we once shared. the bird sits here until the wind calls or another nest does. then it leaves.
See you next year! Ask me questions & I’ll answer them. XOXO.