Books Upon Books

Reading While Traveling + the Dreaded Re-entry

Ed note: Not turning the paywall on yet bc I’m lazy. Soon!

It’s amazing how quickly a vacation high can nosedive. If someone has the secret to maintaining the glow, lemme know. I’d give anything! Thankfully I have photos to pore over and books to read – and boy, have I been reading. This trip I decided to take only one book in order that I could buy and read as much as possible while away. For the first time ever, I left books I’d finished in hotels, Airbnbs and even on a park bench in hopes that someone would pick them up and take them home. As usual, I visited my favorite post office in London (lol) and shipped a Big Box of Books™ home for myself (the best gift to come home to, imo!) filled with as-yet-unpublished-in-the-States books. This week I’ll go over what I read while traveling and what I’m reading to keep up the ruse that I’m not home yet. Because I’m robbing you of food content this go-round, next week I’ll publish some travel habits I swear by, and a recipe (or more), too.

Read(ing)

I brought Bone (written by Fae Myenne Ng, pub. 1993) from LA to tide me over in New York. Taking place in San Francisco’s Chinatown, it follows the Leongs (mother, somewhat estranged step-father, three daughters) as they navigate the aftermath of the youngest daughter’s suicide. Lei, the eldest daughter, narrates, pulling us into a family rife with bottled grief and unresolved pain – on top of the everyday battle of being working immigrants in the United States. As the book moves back and forth in time, Ona (the youngest) is barely mentioned by the Leongs or the author herself; but you deeply feel the effect of her loss. I kept waiting for the book to break open, for Lei to let us in, but I felt a narrative withholding that I don’t think fully worked. It sort of mirrors experiences I’ve had watching movies from the 80s/90s (dramas, mostly) where…very little happens (the film Ordinary People comes to mind)? I don’t often write about books I don’t love here but I do think it’s worth discussing the idea that sparseness can really work (see: anything by Natalia Ginzburg) but it requires a certain tenacity in the prose, from the narrator, or in the story itself. Would love your thoughts/reactions to this!

After Bone I needed something I knew I’d love, so I rushed to Daunt (I went to four locations when I was in London, every one spectacular) and headed straight to the ‘H’ section to look for my girl. And there she shone: Tessa Hadley. One of my favorite writers, Hadley is a beloved figure in England, known for both short stories and novels alike (you might’ve read her in the New Yorker Fiction section). It’s so nice having a list of authors on hand who you know won’t let you down. Lucky for me, she recently published a novella, The Party (pub. 2024), that I hadn’t seen in the US, and I scooped it up and read it in a day. SO DELIGHTFUL! It takes place over a weekend in Bristol in the 40s, after the war. Two sisters, Moira and Evelyn, simultaneously at odds with and envious of each other (god love sisters!), spend a weekend between two parties and at their home – with a father who’s cheating, a mother who’s ‘given up.’ Torn between two worlds, the girls yearn for independence but are shackled to the invisible pull of home and family life. Every sentence is a gem!

From there I read Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner (pub. 1926) – an early feminist classic that felt right, timing-wise, as a woman on one of many solo adventures. This one took me for a ride! When Laura Willowes’ father dies, she silently heeds the advice of her family, decamps from the country and moves in with her brother and his family in London. From here on out she’s Lolly – the forever single aunt, never ruffling feathers, feigning contentment with domesticity. 20 years into this arrangement, approaching 50, she snaps and abandons the family to live alone in the country, in a town she’s never visited (her family is obviously horrified). There, she’s free to let her eccentricities run wild – and that she does. I loved this book until the final third where it took a turn for the witchy. It felt as if a stranger had taken Townsend Warner’s pen and finished the novel! I loved the first two-thirds, though, so am recommending here.

After the final third of Lolly, I needed a boost, so dove into Happiness Forever by Adelaide Faith (pub. 2024) – a book seemingly everyone in London is talking about, and with good reason. What a gem! Our narrator is Sylvie, a veterinary nurse living in a seaside town in England with her brain-damaged dog, Curtains. Sylvie – fresh out of an abusive relationship and attempting to pick up the pieces – is obsessed with her therapist. At first I was expecting a Big Swiss situation (a book I really enjoyed), but it’s honestly so much better and deeper. Sylvie is learning how to be a person – a woman who’s experienced trauma but isn’t defined by it. She says almost everything she thinks, which is funny, refreshing and not even embarrassing? I found the whole thing piquant and deeply heart-warming. Couldn’t put it down. Five stars!

The book that bridged my re-entry from Paris to LA: The Line of Beauty by Allan Hollinghurst (pub. 2004). Oh my GOD. I haven’t read 500 pages so quickly in a long time. I want everyone to read this book – it’s queer canon classic for a reason. Sort of a mash-up between The Great Believers and A Little Life (with the friendships, without the trauma porn), it’s a gorgeous story of a middle class Oxford grad, Nick Guest, who goes to live with the family of a well-heeled friend in Kensington Gardens after graduation. Nick is gay, and this story takes place between 1983-87, so you can assume that AIDS comes into play. This is the type of book that immediately sweeps you in: The character- and world-building is first-class, you care deeply about Nick and his sexual exploration, and the stakes are high. I loved every minute of it.

Currently I’m trying not to tear through another book I shipped back from London – Novia Scotia House by Charlie Porter (pub. 2025). After finishing Line of Beauty I wanted to keep my Pride Month reading going and it’s over-delivering on every level. I’ll report back after I finish but in the interim, look it up.

Bonus: Turns out audiobooks are excellent travel companions! I, along with many others, loved Keith McNally’s I Regret Almost Everything (pub. 2025) — so honest and self-deprecating! Then I listened to one I’ve had on deck for years — Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain (pub. 2021), the truly deranged story of the Sackler family written by one of our country’s best reporters. Two thumbs up despite the tragic content.

Happy reading!