The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2024, pt.1: Tara Campbell

 

The Pleasures of 2024

by Tara Campbell

 

 

 

My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson

Lyrical, engrossing, sobering, and mesmerizing. I started this in written format, but switched to audiobook (read by Aja Naomi King) when I had to give the book back. All of the stories are whip-smart, but the eponymous novella is a singular feat. Written from the perspective of a descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings, Johnson has put her own singular spin on the apocalypse novel. A masterpiece.

 The Angel of Rome by Jess Walter

Audiobook: stories full of Walter's signature wry, winningly sad humor and nostalgia, set in the Pacific Northwest. The title story is enchanting, featuring a larger-than-life actor and an ensemble cast of unlikely fans who wind up working on a Hollywood script.

 Blue Skies by TC Boyle

A sobering look ahead in terms of climate change, but with enough humor and human connection to get you through the hard parts. It’s set in (present? near future?) Florida succumbing to flooding, but the focus is on human relationships, denial, and folly. No spoilers, but there's a persistent sense of foreboding about a certain pet, and Boyle teases the tension out expertly.

 Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton

What a delightful journey! Seattle-based Buxton fully inhabits her main character, a feisty and delightfully foul-mouthed crow named S.T. (short for Shit Turd), making us cheer for him and his trusty hound-dog sidekick Dennis. She sends them on incredible adventures through a wonderfully detailed Seattle as only a Cheeto-addicted crow could see it. A love letter to both the grunge and the natural splendor of our fair city.
 

Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang

Another one I read in a matter of days. A slim novel that still feels full, like a meal that looks small on the plate but is satisfying because of the richness of its ingredients and the care of its preparation. There’s disturbing magic in the juxtaposition of decadence against the disintegration of the world, and tension in the relationships where the main character continually has to question who she can truly trust beyond herself. This is a perfect example of how closed settings can ramp up tension.


The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac by Sharma Shields

This book is mesmerizing and wonderfully weird. No wonder it won the Washington Book Award! Sasquatch lore expertly interwoven with a multi-generational family drama--truly unique.



And I'm currently re-reading (audio book) Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam Trilogy. Love, betrayal, gene-splicing, and pandemic. What can I say, the woman is a genius, prescient and incisive. She's what I want to be when I grow up.

 

 Tara Campbell is a writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, and fiction co-editor at Barrelhouse Magazine. She teaches flash fiction and speculative fiction, and is the author of a novel, two hybrid collections of poetry and prose, and two short story collections (Midnight at the Organporium and Cabinet of Wrath, from Aqueduct). Her sixth book, City of Dancing Gargoyles, was released by Santa Fe Writers Project (SFWP) in September 2024. Find out more at www.taracampbell.com

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening -- the 2024 Edition

 

 Our annual Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening series will begin tomorrow. As someone firmly embedded in old age, I've become increasingly focused on the importance of pleasure. Granted, on difficult days, pleasure can be fleeting. But for those of us old people who don't believe we will achieve immortality or super-longevity, there can be no contest between pleasure and its economic opposite, capital accumulation. 

(Hmm... Does that mean that old people are akin to Aesop's grasshopper? It's complicated, I guess. But it certainly does suggest that spending a lifetime playing music, writing books, making art doesn't count as productive work...)

Not that the writers and readers of these year-end pieces are all old people blessed (or cursed) with a heightened awareness of their mortality. I think pleasure--and an outright emphasis on it and a recognition that it is necessary for any human's flourishing (which includes the recognition that making other human beings miserable is an attack of their very existence)--is especially important now. 

 The Pleasures series includes more than the pleasures offered by books, although books are the general focus of this blog. In past years the series has shown that reading, viewing, and listening pleasures vary widely. And that is what has made me keep this series going. I love the variety of tastes and practices it repeatedly reveals. This year's iteration will include posts by Andrea Hairston, Christopher Brown, Nisi Shawl, Sarah Tolmie, Sofia Rhei, Cheryl Morgan, and others.

I hope you'll enjoy reading the pieces in this year's series as much as I do and that they'll swell the list of titles you want to read, view, and listen to yourself. We all know that the volume of books published is so tremendous that that really wonderful work often slips below one's personal radar. 

Part 1: Tara Campbell