It’s the most wonderful time of the year, even though I only make this kind of post every couple of years. In 2016, I was annoyed by The Glass Castle and The Dead Ladies Project. In 2018, I was exasperated by Sick and American War. In 2022, I was bored by The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and Cold Enough for Snow. This year, I’ve been annoyed, exasperated, and bored by a new crop of books:

Nonfiction that tricked me with clever subtitles:

• Code Dependent by Madhumita Murgia: I love a bit of tech skepticism, and the subtitle “Living in the Shadow of AI” seemed to fit the bill, but it was written in a very stilted manner and failed to connect any of its stories about people affected by AI. I could almost see the “[insert humanizing background story here]” at the beginning of each chapter. I wanted to get to the nitty gritty! 
• Pause, Rest, Be by Octavia Raheem: The subtitle, “Stillness Practices for Courage in Time of Change,” must have caught my eye in March, while I was emerging from survival mode after a house fire. The “practices” part was pretty good; there are detailed instructions and pictures on how to achieve restorative yoga poses, which would work for newbies and yogis alike. The narrative, however, is a mishmash of new age and Christian woo woo, and relies on the same tricks many other self-help-ish books use to seem substantial and profound, like repetition and a lot of white space. 
• Wintering by Katherine May: Another subtitle that got my ass! “The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times” echoes Pause, Rest, Be, and I read these almost back to back, which was a big mistake. Wintering pissed me off so much. The big reasons (the maddening vagueness about what exactly was making the times so “difficult,” the blithe manner in which she flaunts her staggering privilege, the lack of understanding or curiosity about what actual winter is like in northern climates) are dwarfed by something that’s so silly, but she’s basically a bitch eating crackers at this point (I can’t find a good link to what this means, iykyk). She recommends going to the grocery store right before Christmas as a self care strategy. Or more precisely, something like going to the “green grocers” for “jams and jellies,” and I laughed out loud. I can’t think of anything I associate LESS with “rest and retreat” than venturing out in -20 temps, driving on icy roads, battling the crowds at Walmart, and spending hundreds of dollars on inflated groceries. Not to gatekeep, but I don’t think you should be allowed to write a book about winter if you live in a place where the average winter lows are above freezing.

Short translated works, reviewed shortly:

• Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi tr. Geoffrey Trousselot: One day I’m going to accept that I like weird Japanese fiction, not cute Japanese fiction. And this isn’t even cute, unless you find rigid gender roles and vaguely anti-choice sentiment to be cute!
• The Premonition by Banana Yoshimoto tr. Asa Yoneda: This started out more promising, no cuteness here, but revealed itself to be a lot of YA-style wish fulfilment and Holden Caulfield-style complaining about phonies. 
• Undiscovered by Gabriela Weiner tr. Julia Sanches: This is literally a personal essay, and not a very good one, but somehow got longlisted for my favourite fiction prize?

Lastly, and worstly, this one would fit under “nonfiction”, but, it doesn’t have a subtitle on the North American edition (the UK edition, inexplicably, does, “On Being Critical,” which, lol.) The author is a literary it girl known for her negative reviews, and more recently, for a novel that flopped: yes, it’s Lauren Oyler’s essay collection No Judgement. I wanted to write a full review, but sort of felt like it’s all been said. So let me take a moment to say just a little more.

The worst thing about this book is Oyler’s withering disdain for the reader, and it permeates every single essay. I mean “reader” in both senses: the particular reader holding the book, and the class of people who merely read, and aren’t writers themselves. This is pretty rich from someone who’s bibliography consists of a mediocre novel and a widely-panned essay collection. 

While most of the essays are simply self-important and wanna-be edgy, it’s the essay about Goodreads that broke me. It’s not just cringy, it’s wildly inaccurate, in ways that are immediately obvious to us lowly readers in the Goodreads trenches. Kathleen Hale and Lauren Hough are uncritically presented as victims of “review bombing,” and this is stupid enough, but it’s also like… this is all drama that happened five to ten years ago. Who cares at this point? Is she just mad that Fake Accounts has an abysmal 2.83 Goodreads star rating? I cannot fathom what else could have sparked this essay in particular, or the book as a whole.

It’s unfortunate that Oyler’s best writing, her scathing reviews for Bookslut, are lost to the sands of time and bit rot. We needed the push back against Roxane Gay in 2014. We don’t need any of this in 2024.

Whew! Now, I haven’t done one of these “what about you” kickers in a while, but truly, I want to know what your worst books of the year are. Hit me up in the comments.