What Susan Choi thinks you should read next

Dear book clubbers,   Have you started reading Gideon the Ninth yet? It has one of my favorite opening passages, full of thick, dense prose that you have to feel your way through like it's a rose thicket, with creepy necromantic imagery stabbing out of the paragraph like thorns. It tells you what the world of this book is like immediately.   We'll start our Gideon discussion next week. This week, it's time to look back at last week's incredible Trust Exercise conversation with Susan Choi.   As Trust Exercise might suggest, Choi has a thousand interesting thoughts about the layers of our past selves and how they accrete and how we communicate with them. We discussed some of that over the course of our chat, and you can watch the whole thing, plus read a transcript of the highlights, here. NEWSLETTER EXCLUSIVE   As is now tradition, I asked Choi what she's reading these days, and her answer turned out to be one of my favorite books of 2019. Here's our quick conversation on Ted Chiang's Exhalation, and why you should read it:   What are you reading right now?   I was reading Ted Chiang's collection Exhalation. Oh, I love that one.   I started yesterday and finished this morning. And if it hadn't been the kind of book that you inhale — exhale, haha, get it? I just did that by accident, but nicely done — I could have told you I [am currently] reading it, but I finished it. It didn't last long enough.   What's next on my pile is a novel by Natalia Ginzburg called Family Lexicon, which I've wanted to read for a while. I discovered her earlier in the pandemic. I'd heard of her for many, many years, but I think maybe we're having, like, a little renaissance of new translations. She wrote in Italian, and there are just a bunch of new translations of her work that are popping up. I read a couple earlier this year: one called Happiness as Such, and one called The Dry Heart, which is such a great title. They're both so good.   So I have a new one. It's not a new book, but it's new to me. And that's what's next, now that Ted Chiang didn't last long enough.   I'm going to open up the audience Q&A, and let's see what we have here. One anonymous person wants to know what your favorite short story from Exhalation was.   I really, really loved the title story. But I also really love the story from the point of view of the scientist, the epistolary story, I think it's called "Unfollows."   I think "Exhalation" was, for me, the single most kind of shockingly beautiful story. And most, I think, transformative, just of my own thinking, where suddenly the whole world in this flash felt very different, because he's reconceived of the entire idea of existence in these different terms.   That's such a great way of putting it. This person did not ask me to share my own favorite story from Exhalation, but I like the one with the little robot friends. "The Lifecycle of Software Objects," yes. That one's gorgeous. The children, the AI being raised as toddlers. And then you have to figure out if they're more like robots or children or pets, and what your ethical responsibilities are to them.   Oh, my god, and then you have to decide if they get to have a sex life or not.  COMING UP THIS WINTER   Next week, we'll publish our discussion post for Gideon the Ninth. Here's what else to expect over the next couple of months.   Friday, December 18: Discussion post on Gideon the Ninth Friday, January 15: Discussion post on Harrow the Ninth TBA: Our live Zoom event for both books will come at the end of January, with details to be announced. THE WEEK IN BOOKS ON VOX   This week, Sean Illing interviewed the great Anne Helen Petersen about her new book on millennial burnout. Meanwhile, over at Vox's effective altruism vertical Future Perfect, Kelsey Piper revisited a classic by the utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer.    I'll see you next week with my list of my favorite books of the year. Until then, happy reading!   —Constance

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