December 24th, and time again for my favorite Icelandic tradition—the Yule Book Flood. So here I am, swaddling myself in knits and plaids and plonking down on the small grey sofa by the fireplace. (Though it is small and upright, it is peculiarly suited to extravagant lolling.) There, in the glow of the Christmas lights and the ambient red heat of the electric fire, with a sharp, salty snack and something to drink to hand, knowing that, finally, everything is wrapped and ready for tomorrow, I'll pick up something to read.
My imaginary to-read shelf is well-stocked. On it, I've finally secured a long longed-for copy of Edith Sitwell's A Book of the Winter, and I have the collector's edition of Michelle Oka Doner's Intuitive Alphabet. Then, there's Alex Arzt's fascination with feral cabbages and Suzie Alan Skunk's Maybe I Think You Stink, a "celebrated work of poetry and skunk culture written by and for the small animal community." Mathias Énard's new novel about "the one day in the year where Death and the living observe a temporary truce" beckons, too. I might while away a happy hour or so learning about the secret lives of stones or exemplary fools or odd jobs, or perusing exhibition catalogs "of the Disappeared, Destroyed, Lost or Otherwise Inaccessible" or Lois Dodd's windows and reflections. There's copy of The Girls, a "wry, macabre tale of simple country living, brutal murder, and a reasonably happy couple" by a "most startlingly offbeat suspense novelist," and Howard Fishman's life of Connie Converse, too:
"Converse was notable for preserving a greater level of obscurity more extreme than any of the others: recordings never commercially available; no connections to any scene or famous figure; being a guitar-playing singer-songwriter (and home-taper) in the early 1950s, before such a thing existed, who played only among friends before dropping out of music in the 1960s and ultimately disappearing shortly after."
(I think I found out about this book through Kelsey Keith's Substack.)
In other Substack recommendations: Jess Stanley's praise of Naomi Klein's Doppelganger landed it on the must-read shelf:
Klein has taken everything frightening in the world—Steve Bannon! Vaccine denial! Fascists! Colonialism and racist scapegoating! Inaction on climate change!—and made the state of the problem clear. Sometimes you just want someone older, wiser and cleverer than you to put your worries in order and point you in the right direction. Klein does this!
More directional reading: Sadiya Hartman, Christina Sharpe, Rinaldo Walcott, and Vicky Osterweil on looting, which Osterweil describes as "a nearly irrecuperable aesthetic gesture against the police, whiteness, and the regime of property that gives those forces power and purpose," and David Graeber's Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia, a book about, yes, 17th-century pirates, but also about what Francis Gooding calls "living, practical" experiments in "new ways of organizing social life," not to mention "blood pacts and poisonings, magicians and princesses, off-grid pirate towns on tropical islands, impostor kings lording it over phoney empires, and more."
Back in real life, I'll probably spend the evening in my pajamas with the Penguin Book of Christmas Stories. Italo Calvino and Angela Carter for Christmas—what could be better?
Wishing everyone, everywhere peace and somewhere safe and quiet and calm to read.
*
Aunti Oti fisherman sweater / Needles shaggy wool plaid pants / Lelet chain-bow bobby pins / Satomi Kawakita dangling diamond earrings / Georg Jensen "Acorn" Stilton scoop / Stilton cheese in a ceramic crock / Anthony Treherne & Co. miniature set of Shakespeare / Lobmeyr Persian flower tumbler / Comice pear / Effie's Oatcakes (delicious) / Jamie Haller bronzed penny loafers.
*
Previous jólabókaflóðs!
