Book Bites: Martyr!

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Martyr! is what fiction strives to be. Iranian-American Cyrus Shams is an addict in recovery, writing a never-ending poetry collection about martyrs, desperate for a death to give his life meaning. On a whim, he decides to visit an artist who has turned her dying into performance, and in doing so begins to unfold the tucked-in corners of his life. A mother erroneously shot down by US airstrikes. A father who did the best he could. A roommate who might be more. The prose is playful and profound, bold and unafraid to bend reality to the narrative's will, teeming with absolute truth ("...after he got sober, when poetry became a place to put his body"). In Martyr!, Kaveh Akbar has written a masterpiece, a book that will reverberate with readers long after the last page.

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Book Bites: The (Most Unusual) Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy

The Most Unusual Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy by Roan Parrish
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Most Unusual Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy feels like two novels. On one hand, we have an adorably sweet romance between cat cafe worker Edgar and professional haunter Jamie. They meet at Jamie's burlesque show and have to navigate the sometimes-tricky ground of queer love (Jamie is trans, Edgar gay, both their families are a mess), yet their steamy romance never feels anything other than grounded and cozy and real. On the other hand, we have a ghost story; Edgar sees ghosts that scare him to the point he avoids leaving his house. While the spooky novel does interface a bit with the romance, it doesn't sparkle in the same way. The plotting drags and the denouement is oddly passive. Make no mistake, Edgar Lovejoy is still a wonderful spooky romance novel, more romance than spook.

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Book Bites: Levels of the Game

Levels of the Game by John McPhee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Levels of the Game is masterful sportswriting. Through McPhee’s telling, Arthur Ashe’s US Open Semifinal match against Clark Grabner wasn’t just a tennis match but a battle of archetypes; old versus new, black versus white, liberal versus conservative. The action is propulsive and McPhee wisely uses backstory as a highlighter.

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Book Bites: One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against this is required reading. At what cost do we purchase our normalcy, purchase our comfort within the status quo, when that normalcy also includes genocide? Omar El Akkad, through reporting, through lived experience, presents a powerful treatise on what it is to resist the systems that would eat our souls. Whatever sand is in your hand, throw it in the cogs of the machine. It's not a walking away from capitalism, from society, but a walking toward something better. Like the Transatlantic Slave Trade, like the theft of Native Lands, and now like the Genocide of Palestinian people and the uncaring capitalist systems that support it, one day, everyone will have always been against this.

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