Solve for X

 
On longer drives, my wife and I often play car games, such as looking for each letter of the alphabet on signs or listing things in alphabetical order. A few years ago, we listed books we had read by letter, and because of that conversation I read a book that started with K to fill in the gap. 

Our most recent game was authors of book we had read, using either first or last name. Between the two of us we actually could complete the challenge (though we had to go extra time and have my wife look up some things in her Goodreads account). 

My solo version is missing authors starting with the letters X and Q. To solve for X (ha!), I am reading the novel "Holding Pattern" by Jenny Xie. It was the only fiction book starting with an author starting with X, so I am lucky I had even that to choose. 

Obviously, I never would have read this book otherwise, but it's not too bad.  The prose is a little over-written in places, but it's fun to see someone at least trying to keep up literary traditions. The first two sentences:

Heartbreak was its own kind of incandescent that morning, scrubbing the world raw with its floodlight. I felt acutely out of place among Marin's pristine streets and quaint signage, its veneer of health and wealth an insult I couldn't answer...

I wouldn't have put it that way, but I can relate.

The book is set in the Bay area, so it has charming things such as a friend who trying to have his rat become a key influencer in the space (with real talks of branding deals at networking events), a cuddle-for-hire start-up that has had over $20 million in investor funding (what a quaint number, if only they had timed it to put in "block-chain" or "AI"), and a the mother wearing a bracelet that gives her a shock when her hand gets too close to her mouth during her intermittent fasting window. 

I realize that paragraph makes it seem like the book might be zany, but it is not. It is the story of the main character getting over a break up late in grad school and returning to the Bay Area, reconnecting with friends and watching her mother's life move on with an upcoming marriage. It is told in a grounded, somber style, with those occasional metaphorical flourishes, like in the opening. 

For the letter Q, I will read "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater" by Thomas De Quincey. It should be a little different of an experience. 

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And as an appendix, here authors I have read to fill the slots for the challenge:

Austen, Jane
Bradbury, Ray
Clark, Arthur C. 
Dickens, Charles
Ellison, Ralph
Frederich Nietzsche
Goodman, Ruth ("How to be a Tudor")
Hofstandler, Douglas
Isaac Asimov
Jack Kerouac
Kundera, Milan
Leo Tolstoy
Melville, Herman
Nicholas Sparks
Oscar Wilde
Pope, Alexander
Q --blank --
Robert Heinlein
Steinbeck, John
Tompkins, Calvin ("Duchamp")
Ursula Le Guin
Voltaire
Wodehouse, P.G.
Xie, Jenny
Yuval Noah ("Sapiens")
Ziya Tong. ("The Reality Bubble")