The Maris Review, vol 34

My favorite audiobooks of 2024, my least anticipated books of 2025, and more...

What I read this week

American Bulk: Essays on Excess by Emily Mester

Arranging a book of personal essays around the topic of consumption makes so much sense, you are what you eat and all of that. Emily Mester’s collection is intimate and incredibly particular, but there is so much in it that is universal: American Bulk contains stories about hoarding, on eating processed foods and eating at chain restaurants, on the kind of people who can shop at Costco, on constantly having a few shopping carts open on one’s phone so that one is in a perpetual state of shopping (she really got me there). For the most part Mester withholds judgment, implicating herself along with the people around her. Rather than a screed about why overconsumption is wasteful and damaging to the why we feel compelled to eat when we’re full, to always want more.

Real People by Alison Lurie

I think I read about Real People in Dan Sinkyin’s book about publishing and needed to see what it was all about. So glad I did. I’d read Lurie only once before: Foreign Affairs is her entirely enchanting 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the love lives of two academics who take a trip to London. Real People is just as funny but more slight, breezier (not necessarily in a negative way). Published in 1969, Real People is a slim, sly novel about a 42-year old “lady writer” who goes to a writers colony held at a picturesque castle (based on Yaddo). Names get dropped, drinks get drank, there’s fighting and fucking and fierce rivalries, and oh yeah, sometimes there’s writing. Lurie is great with the zingers: “Ann Landers says men won’t marry girls they don’t respect; but artists and writers do.”

Best audiobooks of 2024

Certain kinds of books lend themselves to listening: I love a memoir read by the author so you get a little more of the story just from hearing how the author talks, when they pause, when they laugh. Or reported nonfiction (there is never enough reported nonfiction) that feels like an extra long narrative podcast. I also love reading something literary, and then listening to the audio version and noticing new things about the work. It all comes down to feeling grateful to have different inputs for getting information in my brain.

All Fours by Miranda July

If you’re on the fence about picking this one up, the audio version is the way to do it. With the author herself narrating the novel, the choices made by her main character feel less bizarre; they almost make sense. She does all of these things because she’s played by Miranda July. ))<>((

The Friday Afternoon Club by Griffin Dunne

I have long been obsessed with his father, so I was delighted to find that Griffin Dunne’s memoir about growing up around Hollywood and New York royalty is as delightfully entertaining as I’d hoped.

You Get What You Pay For: Essays by Morgan Parker

Morgan is an enormously talented poet and novelist who wrote a poignant and witty essay collection this year that not enough people have read. Make space for Morgan to tell you a story or two.

This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life by

lyz

Lyz Lenz

I find Lyz’s anger aspirational, so there was a lot to love in her fiery, funny book about her own divorce and all of the ways that the institution of marriage is a sham.

Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones by

Priyanka Mattoo

Priyanka was a revelation as a narrator because the rhythms of her speech and the tone of her voice are unlike any of the others I’ve heard. She tells her story, charming,

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

The thriller of the year, perfect for long walks.

The Winner by Teddy Wayne

I think I said before that no one writes white male anger like Teddy, and so it’s fun to see him go full-on suspense novel where bad behavior — and murder — abounds.

A Reason To See You Again by Jami Attenberg

I first read my brilliant friend

Jami Attenberg

’s latest novel when I got a galley months and months before the book was published. So to refresh my memory, I listened to the audio version and noticed so many new things: how good Jami is at dialog, how much action she packs into a small amount of space. Compliments to the narrator, Stacey Glemboski, for being able to do that magical thing where she can make all of the different characters sound distinguishable, but not overly so.

Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics by Elle Reeve

I know it’s weird to say that a book about the worst people online who’ve come to take over the entire Republican party (and therefore America) is fun. But it is, and Elle Reeve is a fun reader of her own work because you can hear in her voice just what gets all of her various sources, from Proud Boys to tech trolls, to trust her.

Luigi Mangione, you’re a weird one:

New releases, 12/10

The Rest Is Memory by Lily Tuck

The Rest Is Silence by Augusto Monterroso, translated by Aaron Kerner, intro by Dustin Illingworth

Oathbreakers: The War of Brothers That Shattered an Empire and Made Medieval Europe by Matthew Gabriele and David M. Perry

Custodians of Wonder: Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive by Eliot Stein

My Least Anticipated Books of 2025