Liz's Pickz 2020 + LOVE LOCKDOWN pre-order info!

 
I know you’ve been refreshing your inbox, just waiting for The Most Important Book List of the year to come out, so without further ado…..behold, Liz’s Pickz, Year of Lucifer, 2020!!!
 
[Now that I have your attention, allow me to shamelessly promote a conflict-of-interest selection for the year 2021, which is my own book! Here’s the pre-order link, and you can think of this as giving yourself a Christmas-in-July gift.]
 
It was a banner year for reading for me, if not much else. Funny how the dumpster fire that is our current moment in history has impacted reading capacities and tastes. I know many people haven’t been able to read a damn thing or have tackled Ulysses (We hate those people!) (Kidding) (Maybe?). I hewed toward rapid-paced fiction and personal essay collections/first-person reporting. And of course a whole lotta Oprah magazine in the bath (RIP print edition!). I averaged a book/week and I’m not boasting (fine, it’s subtle yet pitiful flex), I’m just telling you so you can contextualize this tightly edited list to see that there were many titles that didn’t make it. I.e. I am establishing my AUTHORITY, that’s a thing writers do. You’re welcome I just saved you from the time and $ of a MFA program/J-school. Ok, ok, I know you’re on the edge of your seats, sooooooo……
 
THE CATEGORY IS…..FICTION!
 
My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
A thriller of sexual power dynamics. Whew, boy, this one blew my hair back. If you are a woman who has been in a heterosexual relationship with a man you will have many a flicker of recognition, even if he wasn’t your teacher at boarding school (but weren’t they all our teacher at boarding school? I digress…)
 
Apartment by Teddy Wayne
I dare Mr. Wayne to write a book that I can put down for longer than the time it takes me to turn out the light and not fall asleep because I want to keep reading his books.
 
How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia by Moshin Hamid
I live for a second-person imperative narration and this has all the drama of a Slumdog Millionaire class ascension story with zero of the sentimentality.
 
Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam
As good as everyone says it is.
 
Grown-Ups by Emma Jane Unsworth
HOLY CRAP I am a fangirl. This one was like being at a boring party (that stands in for life in this metaphor) meeting a soulmate (that is the author) at the buffet table and spending the entire night talking shit about mutual enemies and cackling at each other’s witticims. I am now obsessed with this author and ready to devour her back catalog. If you are an elder millennial who has a complicated relationship with Instagram, this book is for you.
 
Want by Lynn Steger Strong
Perfect. Just perfect.
 
Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips
If an author can make me *want* to visit Russia then give her some kind of award.
 
 
CATEGORY IS……NONFICTION!
 
She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey
You probably think you know everything about Harvey Weinstein and the rest of the dirty lot and you probably do. But what you don’t know is the behind the scenes. This is the Hearts of Darkness to the Apocalypse Now and holy shit these women! Did you know that *both* writers have children and Twohey had a GODDAMN NEWBORN while she was reporting and breaking one of the most important stories of the godforsaken new millennium?! 
 
Wow, No Thank You By Samantha Irby.
Her funniest yet, IMO. There is a line in here about incontinence that had me crying laughing in bed.
 
Notes from an Apocalypse by Mark O’Connell.
This dude is one of my nonfiction heroes. His sentences, his verve, his topics. In this book he journeys to a conference for launching people to Mars, to Chernobyl, to a wilderness survival weekend and to the Covid Maroon lands of the Dakotas to check in on end times preppers. He is funny, compassionate, and brilliant. Irish people, am I rite?
 
A Life’s Work by Rachel Cusk
Essays on motherhood and the eternal push/pull. This was published in 2001 so dare I say she kicked off the “motherhood: is that all there is?” essay trend? I am equal parts enthralled and terrified of Cusk (much like my baby mama Janet Malcolm), a most winning combination in a female essayist, I think.
 
The Secret Life of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr
Come for the author’s maximalism, generosity, and hilarity, stay for the facts on shrimp procreation. An exemplar of first-person reporting.
 
AND WHO COULD FORGET….POETRY!
 
A Pillow Book by Suzanne Buffam
Another sublime poet I discovered through poets.org poem/day email. The book is an homage to Sei Shonagon, one of my literary heroes (I’ve known my answer to the New York Times Book Review’s “By The Book” ultimate question for a long time:
“Q: Which writers, living or deceased, would you invite to a dinner party?
A: Sei Shonagon, James Baldwin, and David Rakoff. I wouldn’t even try to keep up, I’d just take notes.” Thank you, thank you).
This is a prose poem (ew, haven’t said that since grad school, forgive me) on insomnia and the tension of trying to be a thinking person enmeshed in the mundane realities of motherhood. It’s one I’ll be revisiting for years to come.
 
The Book of Delights by Ross Gay
I love this book so much, as it captures both the pain AND joy of Black life, the latter being conspicuously absent on many of y’alls anti-racist reading lists. This book primes you to notice the many small delights of daily life, and it’s the book I gave most as a gift. It’s the kind of book you want to thrust into people’s hands. If I were to meet Gay in real life, I would surely embarrass myself with declarations of love, but I bet he gets that all the time and is used to it by now.
 
I also reviewed some dope nonfiction books for the SF Chronicle, including Big Dirty Money by Jennifer Taub and Mediocre by Ijeoma Oluo. Punchline: white men are dangers to society and should be treated as such.  
 
 
Miscellany:
 
Search Party S3
Give John Early all the awards now, just do it!
 
Healhaus monthly membership
I’ve been spending many winter evenings passing the time til a vaccine propped up with bed pillows in various states of repose in my living room, listening to the tinkling sounds of live yoga nidra. I call this Pretending To Be Awake Past 8pm.
 
The Gospel According to André
One of our brightest lights, in his own words
 
Trader Joe’s spicy pecans
 
My shiny new website, courtesy of my sister from a different mister, Christopher Backs.  Not all the Edible Arrangements in the world could pay back the time and care Christopher took with my Auntie ass, asking him all manner of embarrassing Luddite questions of someone born in the Reagan administration. (“What’s a TikTok?”) We met as residents at the Edward F. Albee Foundation one halcyon summer in Montauk. At the session’s conclusion, we had dinner with Albee and his then-“assistant,” a woodland nymph who shot daggers at Christopher all evening, so ensorcelled by him Albee was. Christopher ended the evening in Albee’s lap and my small dog Bonnie almost bit the elder playwright in the face. DM me for more details.
 
I hope your holiday is some semblance of whatever your spirit most craves. Til another year….
 
-liz