“Cause when people don’t know something happenin or that there’s a type a person that’s out there in the world, they think it don’t exist, an it suffers.” – James Hannaham, ‘Didn’t Nobody Give A Shit What Happened To Carlotta’
One thing about podcasting, I kinda don’t remember the things I say on podcasts. I’ve said “I’ve never heard of that poet” about poets Bob has read on The Line Break, I listen to the Lazy & Entitled Podcast episodes when Brendan puts them out because it’s like having an entirely new experience. Other podcasters say this is the case for them, too, which makes me feel like I have fewer problems than I probably do. All of this is a long windup to saying that I don’t super remember what previous months’ booklists have contained.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to look it up, no easily-accessible list that can be accessed with the click of a mouse, but I think this is one of the best book lists I have assembled thus far. And I haven’t even read one and a half of these books!
So this month (and every month), get reading. There’s so much good to read out there. Don’t let the algorithms tell you which culture to enjoy. Let some idiot with a blog tell you what to enjoy.
Didn’t Nobody Give A Shit What Happened To Carlotta by James Hannaham
Gotta start the list off with the most brain-re-arranging of books. If you think you know what is possible with POV in novels, read this book. Carlotta, a trans woman fresh out of a 22-year prison sentence for a crime she was barely present at, is constantly interrupting her own narrative while forming it in real time. Is the book in third person or first person? Yes. Everyone says “tour de force” about books, but this one actually is one.
Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield
So. You’ve settled into a pretty happy, middle-class, lesbian marriage. You and your wife love each other. She has to go on a deep-sea mission, which, fine. Okay, her submarine sinks to the bottom of the ocean, way less fine. Deeply uncool. Then she comes back! Exciting! Except she’s different. In ways you can’t really understand or explain. How does your marriage proceed?
No Gods For Drowning by Hailey Piper
Look, at lot of these recs are going to be about strange transformations. Here’s a cosmic horror novel that I think will interestingly mesh with the book I am reading now, in that both have a lot of water imagery and both involve navigating power structures larger than yourself. No Gods For Drowning, contrary to the title, does feature some gods, and if memory serves, plenty of people get drowned. How do the characters come out, on the other side? Differently than how they went in. Often bloodier.
Sister Maiden Monster by Lucy Snyder
My copy is currently on loan, so gotta rip a cover image. Have you ever wanted to read a cosmic horror where someone orgasms from murdering? Well. Try this three-narrator novel set in a dystopian near-free with alien monsters invading the planet we’ve made such a mess of. I do need to throw out some COVID trigger warnings—a lot of real-life pandemic parallels here, and it’s consciously unsubtle on the part of the author. As such, the prose sometimes risks “ripped from the internet” territory, but overall? This is a fun monster book. Given the constraint implied by the title of this book list, this is one of the more fitting recs here. All three narrators are unlike any other narrators I’ve read, and the strangeness of the horror will be new to a lot of people, too.
Backmask by OF Cieri
I made this list a few weeks ago, when I was farther ahead of the reading schedule than I am now. Meaning I haven’t even cracked my copy of BACKMASK open. It is on the docket for either next Friday or the Friday after that, but look. I’ve never read a Malarkey Books book that I thought was just okay. This one is super promising, too. It’s set in the 1960s pop music scene, and the lone back of the book blurb from Evan Dean Shelton reads “Compelling, sexy, neon-lit, intoxicating pop magick espionage. Like a snort of strange dope in a party at a fortune teller’s house where the weirdest coolest band you’ve ever heard is playing. READ THIS.” I will, Evan. I will.
Notes From A Regicide by Isaac Fellman
Sorry to spoil Friday, but I’m right in the middle of this one! It rules. Revolutionary, but primarily focused on art. A novel about being trans, but focused on the specific experience of being adopted out of an abusive home and into an eccentric home. It’s also futuristic, not quite dystopian, but the future isn’t rosy. The sci-fi/fantasy aspects of this book are subtle, with little in the way of explicit world-building, and I feel like that helps it. Keep in mind I am a little over halfway through. On a sentence level, this novel is unbelievably gorgeous. About 20 pages in, I posted on Bluesky something to the effect of “I didn’t know we were allowed to write this well.” Come back to lazy and entitled dot org on Friday to see if anything in the last 130 pages changes my mind, but goddamn, this novel is amazing.
Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced An Emergency by Chen Chen
Really funny, really heartfelt, really horny, really visceral, really inventive, really gay. I saw someone on Bluesky ask for poetry recommendations for high schoolers and someone else said Chen Chen. My initial reaction made me realize I’m more of a prude than I like to think I am. If I was a closeted (or uncloseted) high schooler, I could see this book being my everything.
Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin
Deeply important “this is how it felt then” novel. Not to say that abusive and hypocritical Christian homes don’t exist now. In fact, many of the broad ideas in this book felt incredibly familiar to me, a white straight guy who grew up in a non-abusive Christian house in Tennessee. I knew people who lived in houses like this. What’s that Baldwin quote about reading? Here, in this novel, is how it felt to grow up in a Black family in an abusive Christian house in 20th century Harlem. Obviously, it’s Baldwin, this novel is stunning on a sentence level. It’s also amazing how much he can say with such a relatively small cast and contained setting.
Headless John The Baptist Hitchhiking by C.T. Salazar
A book of poetry I’ve only read once, and need to return to. In fact, I knew as I was reading that I wanted to go back to it. Each poem made me want to turn the left page instead of the right, because I wanted the experience of the book to last a little longer. Good Southern poetry, real Mississippi stuff, but of course, the author is Latinx and non-binary. Then again, those identities are not as at odds with Southernness as imperialist culture would have us believe.
Lunch Poems by Frank O’Hara
The poetry collection that contains the poem that made me fall in love with poetry—”A Step Away From Them.” Many other incredible poems and lines here. Sometimes it feels like the lines are John Paul Brammer posts (complimentary). It’s such a good collection, and if you think you can’t understand poetry? Try this book. It’s not like the poems are easy or obvious, but it has appeal to non-poets, I think.
I Keep My Exoskeletons To Myself by Mac Crane
Simply one of my favorite books ever. I know it’s been on other lists. This is just such a stunning book. Poetic, dystopian, loving, sexy, a great read for new parents. If you read one book on this list, make it all of them. But. Especially this one.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris