Want to Stop Mindlessly Doomscrolling? Pick Up a Book.
Jezebel's contributing editor and Book Club host recommends three books that will engross you, in case there's anything over the next few weeks that you need a distraction from...
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I am sure if you are reading Jezebel in late-October-almost-November 2024, you are oppressively aware that there is yet another “most important election of your lifetime” happening on Tuesday—or rather, it all comes to a head on Tuesday. I am not a political pundit (thank god), but I think it’s pretty safe to say that Decision 2024 is not going to come to a neat and tidy result that everyone will accept on Wednesday morning. Bits of data will trickle in, as will stories of voter suppression that seem too evil to be real; disturbing videos and photos of the right-wing militias itching for a fight will proliferate on social media, regardless of who appears to be winning; politicians will say inane and absurd things. This could go on for weeks.
I’m here to preemptively tell you to put down your phone and pick up a book or four. (Kindles count.) Movies and TV are inadequate for this moment; we all know by now that you can half-watch anything while doomscrolling. No, the next few weeks were made for literature—good or bad doesn’t matter, so long as it’s engrossing. However, I’m not here to recommend bad books for you (that’s what TikTok is for). Instead, I’m diving into a few novels that kept me rapt recently. I hope you like them as much as I did.
The Ministry of Time, by Kaliane Bradley
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If I were to try to describe The Ministry of Time in the most boring way possible, I’d tell you that it’s about a civil servant who takes on a new assignment. That assignment is babysitting an expat and, this is where things get decidedly not boring, what this “expat” has been expatriated from is not another country but another time. He is also a stoic nineteenth-century naval captain, and our civil servant is a bit lonely—and also something is not quite right at the Civil Service.
The government has pulled a few people who died young into the future in order to (allegedly) study the effects of what such a move does to the body. The babysitters help them adjust to contemporary life, while also chauffeuring them to and from their check-ins with government doctors. As the love story heats up, so does the intrigue related to the inevitable consequences of time travel. (People from the future are not happy with what people in the book’s timeline are doing to the planet—a great reason to avoid time travel in our real world, in my opinion, but also a plot point that’s starting to feel a bit rote in speculative fiction.)
This is both a spy novel and a romance; promo materials also called it a “workplace comedy,” and there are enough conversations between the protagonist and her mysterious boss for that to count, but that’s not the sexy selling point. The sexy selling point is that the Navy captain, Graham Gore, was a real person who died trying to find the Northwest Passage, and he looked like this. Enjoy.
The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story, by Olga Tokarczuk
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Atmospherically, The Empusium, by Polish Nobel Prize winner Olga Tocarczuk, is perfect for this time of year: It takes place at a health resort in a Central European valley in the early 1900s—a setting where people go to be healed both by the fresh air and also by whatever questionable methods are in vogue with turn-of-the-century doctors—as autumn turns to winter. The weather is capricious and the vibe is decidedly spooky.
The protagonist, Mieczysław Wojnicz, is a sickly young man who allows himself to be overpowered in conversation by the louder, older, more assertive men staying at the same guesthouse. Among the topics they frequently discuss: the uselessness and weakness of women. The novel has no substantive women characters to speak of—though Mieczysław is shocked by the death of one shortly after his arrival at the guesthouse, and then often fondly recalls the housekeeper/nanny his father fired when he was young—and the mood in the guesthouse teeters between homosocial and homoerotic.
The threads of misogyny all come together in an unsubtle denouement that concludes: Misogyny, bad; gender-questioning, good. Though the heavy-handedness comes off as a bit clumsy for one of the foremost novelists of our time, it’s important to note that Tocarczuk is more specifically a Polish novelist, and this book was published in Poland in 2022, during the rule of the right-wing Law and Justice party (under which, among other things, a near-total abortion ban was implemented). So while this ending initially seemed uninspired to me, the more I thought about the reactionary politics that have taken hold of much of the globe, the more I realized that declaring “misogyny, bad; gender-questioning, good” might actually still be deeply brave.
Orbital, by Samantha Harvey
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A short novel (or a long novella) is one of my absolute favorite types of books. To be able to enter, consume (and be consumed by), and leave a complete story in a single sitting is a true joy; Orbital was the most recent example of this for me. It takes place on the International Space Station as it orbits around Earth over the course of a single 24-hour day. In that time, the six astronauts onboard rotate around the planet 16 times, seeing numerous sunrises and sunsets, viewing weather patterns and geographic marvels from above.
Nothing particularly happens in this novel beyond the thinking, dreaming, and feeling of humans existing in space. Harvey contrasts their longing to return to our miracle of a planet with the inevitable explorer’s itch; she writes both so beautifully, it almost made me—a lifelong space skeptic—slightly less terrified of the larger universe. Throughout, Harvey’s writing is so wonderful that having an emotional response is nearly inevitable.
To risk sounding like a cover blurb: Orbital is poignant, thoughtful, magnificent, beautiful.
This is the first installment of my new monthly books column here at Jezebel, which will be an addendum to our Book Club (which is relaunching on Nov. 1!). I’ll be writing on anything and everything books-related—mostly what I’ve been enjoying (and what I haven’t). I hope you’ll read along!