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What Just Happened: Notes on a Long Year
A BOSTON GLOBE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • With unwavering humanity and light-footed humor, this intimate account of the interminable year of 2020 offers commentary on the COVID-19 pandemic, protests for racial justice, the U.S. presidential election, and more, all with a miraculous dose of groundedness in head-spinning times.
"This book is so funny and so true. Charles Finch unpacks a year of plague, fear, shameless venality, and dizzying stupidity with an irrepressible wit and surgically precise cultural observations. I didn't know how badly I needed exactly this. Maybe you do too?" —Joe Hill, author of Heart-Shaped Box
In March 2020, at the request of the Los Angeles Times, Charles Finch became a reluctant diarist: As California sheltered in place, he began to write daily notes about the odd ambient changes in his own life and in the lives around him. The result is What Just Happened.
In a warm, candid, welcoming voice, and in the tradition of Woolf and Orwell, Finch brings us into his own world: taking long evening walks near his home in L.A., listening to music, and keeping virtual connections with friends across the country as they each experience the crisis. And drawing on his remarkable acuity as a cultural critic, he chronicles one endless year with delightful commentary on current events, and the things that distract him from current events: Murakami’s novels, reality television, the Beatles.
What Just Happened is a work of empathy and insight, at once of-the-moment and timeless—a gift from one of our culture's most original thinkers.
"This book is so funny and so true. Charles Finch unpacks a year of plague, fear, shameless venality, and dizzying stupidity with an irrepressible wit and surgically precise cultural observations. I didn't know how badly I needed exactly this. Maybe you do too?" —Joe Hill, author of Heart-Shaped Box
In March 2020, at the request of the Los Angeles Times, Charles Finch became a reluctant diarist: As California sheltered in place, he began to write daily notes about the odd ambient changes in his own life and in the lives around him. The result is What Just Happened.
In a warm, candid, welcoming voice, and in the tradition of Woolf and Orwell, Finch brings us into his own world: taking long evening walks near his home in L.A., listening to music, and keeping virtual connections with friends across the country as they each experience the crisis. And drawing on his remarkable acuity as a cultural critic, he chronicles one endless year with delightful commentary on current events, and the things that distract him from current events: Murakami’s novels, reality television, the Beatles.
What Just Happened is a work of empathy and insight, at once of-the-moment and timeless—a gift from one of our culture's most original thinkers.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published November 2, 2021
79 people are currently reading
5037 people want to read
About the author
Charles Finch
37 books2,471 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads' database with this name. See this thread for more information.
My name is Charles Finch - welcome! I'm the author of the Charles Lenox series of historical mysteries, as well as a recent novel about expatriate life in Oxford, THE LAST ENCHANTMENTS. I also write book reviews for the New York Times, USA Today, and the Chicago Tribune and essays in many different places.
Like most people on this website, I'm a huge reader. My taste is all over the place, though I tend to really like literary and mystery fiction. Some of my favorite writers: George Orwell, Henry Green, Dick Francis, Anthony Trollope, David Lodge, PG Wodehouse, Bill Bryson, Roberto Bolano, Jonathan Franzen, Shirley Hazzard, Leo Tolstoy, AR Ammons, Philip Larkin, Edgar Bowers, Laurent Binet, Laurie Colwin, Jane Austen, Arthur Conan Doyle, Philip Roth, Henrik Ibsen, Geoff Dyer, the list could go forever...
A bit about myself: I was born in New York City, and since then I've lived all over the place, in America, England, France...at the moment I'm in Chicago, where I just recently moved. I spend most of my time here writing, reading, walking my dog, and trying not to let my ears freeze off.
You can find me on Facebook (facebook.com/charlesfinchauthor) where my reader are always giving fantastic book reviews, or Twitter (twitter.com/charlesfinch) which I don't like quite as much, though it's okay. I'll also try to blog here. Please let me know what I'm doing wrong, since I have remedial goodreads skills...
My name is Charles Finch - welcome! I'm the author of the Charles Lenox series of historical mysteries, as well as a recent novel about expatriate life in Oxford, THE LAST ENCHANTMENTS. I also write book reviews for the New York Times, USA Today, and the Chicago Tribune and essays in many different places.
Like most people on this website, I'm a huge reader. My taste is all over the place, though I tend to really like literary and mystery fiction. Some of my favorite writers: George Orwell, Henry Green, Dick Francis, Anthony Trollope, David Lodge, PG Wodehouse, Bill Bryson, Roberto Bolano, Jonathan Franzen, Shirley Hazzard, Leo Tolstoy, AR Ammons, Philip Larkin, Edgar Bowers, Laurent Binet, Laurie Colwin, Jane Austen, Arthur Conan Doyle, Philip Roth, Henrik Ibsen, Geoff Dyer, the list could go forever...
A bit about myself: I was born in New York City, and since then I've lived all over the place, in America, England, France...at the moment I'm in Chicago, where I just recently moved. I spend most of my time here writing, reading, walking my dog, and trying not to let my ears freeze off.
You can find me on Facebook (facebook.com/charlesfinchauthor) where my reader are always giving fantastic book reviews, or Twitter (twitter.com/charlesfinch) which I don't like quite as much, though it's okay. I'll also try to blog here. Please let me know what I'm doing wrong, since I have remedial goodreads skills...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 141 reviews
January 10, 2023
I wrote this one! I think it's the best thing I ever wrote. Not sure how much that opinion is worth but there it is 🧐.
October 6, 2021
I suspect we'll be reading many pandemic diaries in the years to come. While reading this one, I had to keep reminding me how fresh this all still is. Doesn't it seem like forever ago that RBG died? That aside, Finch is a great writer and he put a lot of himself into this diary; a lot of honesty and soul-bearing. That can be overwhelming for a reader, but he's struck just the right balance with the humorous writing he's so adept with.
The pandemic is far from over as I type this. In fact, we may not even be half way through it, or we may never be through it. So, is this book premature? I have no answer to that questions but I admit to wanting to read more.
The pandemic is far from over as I type this. In fact, we may not even be half way through it, or we may never be through it. So, is this book premature? I have no answer to that questions but I admit to wanting to read more.
December 4, 2021
The dust jacket photo on Charles Finch’s WHAT JUST HAPPENED leaves an indelible impression, a symbolic foretaste of the powerful recent memories that unfold between its covers.
You’re looking at a drone shot above a park, in which 110 precise white circles have been painted on the grass. All but five contain people --- individuals, couples, close friends, families --- in obedient protective separation. Only half a dozen or so humans and dogs are found outside these compulsory boundaries. This is outdoor living during COVID-19.
The abrupt cessation of “normal” during mid-March 2020 caught a lot of the world off-guard. We learned new terms like “pivot,” “distancing,” “social bubble” and “herd immunity,” and we reacquainted ourselves with “uptick,” “cocooning” and “pandemic,” among many others.
Award-winning American book critic, essayist and novelist Charles Finch (who is not related to me, to my knowledge, but I’d gladly claim him) accepted what must have seemed a tedious assignment at first: chronicling his experiences of living through COVID-19 when no one knew how long the global shutdown would last. To hear people at all levels (from then-President Trump, on up the intellectual ladder) talk back in March 2020, it seemed things would be under control in a matter of weeks or months. In that case, WHAT JUST HAPPENED would have been a very short book, perhaps only an extended magazine article.
History, of course, proved a lot of those early prognosticators egregiously wrong, resulting in a substantial, socially penetrating and often moving journal of our worst “plague year” in modern history --- an international health crisis that is far from over. As I write, the Omicron variant is today’s breaking news.
From his vantage point in Los Angeles, Finch documents not only his own disrupted life as a deadline-plagued writer, but that of the people closest to him (including a very knowledgeable New York doctor), their intersecting relationships, and the neighborhoods in which they all once moved with nonchalant freedom.
Rather than writing every day, as many pandemic-inspired journal writers (like me) have been doing, Finch adeptly juggled work on WHAT JUST HAPPENED with other real-world writing assignments, maintaining a sense of professional normality between outbursts and reflections that seem to well up in his psyche and burst out in rivers or explosions of prose. As I read each entry, all of them eccentrically varied in length and tone, I realized that what grabbed me most was the jagged honesty of the entire enterprise.
There isn’t a thing that crossed my mind during the initial few months of pandemic restrictions that Finch doesn’t include in WHAT JUST HAPPENED. He comments on sudden shortages of certain foods, hygiene products, access to entertainment, restricted medical services, disrupted transportation, global and national politics, the latest vaccine science news, and (inevitably) shopping online for things one used to get in local stores.
More tellingly, Finch writes about people --- those he knows and misses in physical presence, and those who have become statistics in a steadily mounting toll of COVID-19 fatalities. On April 23rd of the agonizingly long 10-month “year” covered in WHAT JUST HAPPENED, Finch notes the first in a series of terse one-liners: “50,000 deaths in the U.S.” The last of these is recorded on January 19, 2021: “400,000 deaths in the U.S.”
Against a relentless backdrop of rising case counts, the daily barrage of news headlines, pervasive anxiety about the future, and concerns over the mental health of his closest friends, Finch dug deep into his own life and identity. He worked through long-ignored personal issues, explored his inner mental and spiritual world as never before, and immersed himself in music that both clears and soothes the mind.
While he binged on the Beatles, other bands of the ’60s and some under-appreciated country singers, up here in Canada I binged on Bruce Cockburn, Loreena McKennitt and Gordon Lightfoot. He returned to smoking marijuana regularly, feeling guilty and anxious about it, only to be told by a doctor that he was doing exactly the right thing. I’m drinking a bit more red wine these days, but I’m not going to ask my doctor about it.
All in all, if we must accept COVID-19 and its hideous variant spawn as part of our “new normal,” I for one am glad that Finch accepted the assignment of documenting our collective experience of it. He lets us laugh, learn and lament all at the same time --- sometimes even on the same page.
He leaves us with a work that doesn’t finish, it simply stops. We still have to weather the real length of the COVID-19 crisis. Remember, WHAT JUST HAPPENED is not phrased as a question. Charles Finch doesn’t give us an answer, he gives us a cogent response. And he does it brilliantly.
Reviewed by Pauline Finch
You’re looking at a drone shot above a park, in which 110 precise white circles have been painted on the grass. All but five contain people --- individuals, couples, close friends, families --- in obedient protective separation. Only half a dozen or so humans and dogs are found outside these compulsory boundaries. This is outdoor living during COVID-19.
The abrupt cessation of “normal” during mid-March 2020 caught a lot of the world off-guard. We learned new terms like “pivot,” “distancing,” “social bubble” and “herd immunity,” and we reacquainted ourselves with “uptick,” “cocooning” and “pandemic,” among many others.
Award-winning American book critic, essayist and novelist Charles Finch (who is not related to me, to my knowledge, but I’d gladly claim him) accepted what must have seemed a tedious assignment at first: chronicling his experiences of living through COVID-19 when no one knew how long the global shutdown would last. To hear people at all levels (from then-President Trump, on up the intellectual ladder) talk back in March 2020, it seemed things would be under control in a matter of weeks or months. In that case, WHAT JUST HAPPENED would have been a very short book, perhaps only an extended magazine article.
History, of course, proved a lot of those early prognosticators egregiously wrong, resulting in a substantial, socially penetrating and often moving journal of our worst “plague year” in modern history --- an international health crisis that is far from over. As I write, the Omicron variant is today’s breaking news.
From his vantage point in Los Angeles, Finch documents not only his own disrupted life as a deadline-plagued writer, but that of the people closest to him (including a very knowledgeable New York doctor), their intersecting relationships, and the neighborhoods in which they all once moved with nonchalant freedom.
Rather than writing every day, as many pandemic-inspired journal writers (like me) have been doing, Finch adeptly juggled work on WHAT JUST HAPPENED with other real-world writing assignments, maintaining a sense of professional normality between outbursts and reflections that seem to well up in his psyche and burst out in rivers or explosions of prose. As I read each entry, all of them eccentrically varied in length and tone, I realized that what grabbed me most was the jagged honesty of the entire enterprise.
There isn’t a thing that crossed my mind during the initial few months of pandemic restrictions that Finch doesn’t include in WHAT JUST HAPPENED. He comments on sudden shortages of certain foods, hygiene products, access to entertainment, restricted medical services, disrupted transportation, global and national politics, the latest vaccine science news, and (inevitably) shopping online for things one used to get in local stores.
More tellingly, Finch writes about people --- those he knows and misses in physical presence, and those who have become statistics in a steadily mounting toll of COVID-19 fatalities. On April 23rd of the agonizingly long 10-month “year” covered in WHAT JUST HAPPENED, Finch notes the first in a series of terse one-liners: “50,000 deaths in the U.S.” The last of these is recorded on January 19, 2021: “400,000 deaths in the U.S.”
Against a relentless backdrop of rising case counts, the daily barrage of news headlines, pervasive anxiety about the future, and concerns over the mental health of his closest friends, Finch dug deep into his own life and identity. He worked through long-ignored personal issues, explored his inner mental and spiritual world as never before, and immersed himself in music that both clears and soothes the mind.
While he binged on the Beatles, other bands of the ’60s and some under-appreciated country singers, up here in Canada I binged on Bruce Cockburn, Loreena McKennitt and Gordon Lightfoot. He returned to smoking marijuana regularly, feeling guilty and anxious about it, only to be told by a doctor that he was doing exactly the right thing. I’m drinking a bit more red wine these days, but I’m not going to ask my doctor about it.
All in all, if we must accept COVID-19 and its hideous variant spawn as part of our “new normal,” I for one am glad that Finch accepted the assignment of documenting our collective experience of it. He lets us laugh, learn and lament all at the same time --- sometimes even on the same page.
He leaves us with a work that doesn’t finish, it simply stops. We still have to weather the real length of the COVID-19 crisis. Remember, WHAT JUST HAPPENED is not phrased as a question. Charles Finch doesn’t give us an answer, he gives us a cogent response. And he does it brilliantly.
Reviewed by Pauline Finch
December 20, 2022
Need to think about this one before I review, but overall, a book that certainly encapsulated the frustrations and uncertainties of the past few years.
December 27, 2021
I had the pleasure of meeting the mystery writer Charles Finch once, when the Poisoned Pen bookstore owner invited me (as another author who writes mysteries about Victorian London) to help interview him. That evening, Finch struck me as gracious, well-read, and comfortable in his own skin. He was on a book tour for The Last Passenger, one of the Charles Lenox mysteries, and I read some of my favorite passages from it aloud to the audience because they were wonderfully, wryly funny -- a tricky thing in murder mysteries. Pulling it off requires that a writer be keenly attuned to both emotions and language.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Finch has written a memoir that is discursive, literary, allusive, and above all humane. His dated entries beginning on March 11, 2020 follow the linear historical trajectory of events including Covid, the presidential election, and the Black Lives Matter movement, but the entries aren't homogenized into a tidy whole. To me, they feel reassuringly raw and emotionally uneven--reassuring because this is exactly the way that I experienced the past 18 months, with that messy mixture of denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance and some hope and a load of anxiety thrown in. If this sounds like Elisabeth Kubler Ross's 5 stages of grief, that's because ... well, it's been a long, painful year.
Some of the reviews on goodreads have criticized Finch for his liberal views, which are earnest and heartfelt and may strike some people as strident. I'll admit, I don't wholly agree with some of the solutions he sketches, as he's addressing some complex problems, but I also felt that what he was capturing (successfully) was the impatience, the desperate longing for things to change *soon* that many of us feel.
As for the writing itself, his feelings and thoughts, his memories and experiences are limned in prose that makes me a tad jealous at his turn of phrase. (The passages about his grandmother are especially tender.) It's the sort of book that makes me want to be a better writer, to be more precise with my own language, not to be lazy, but to find just the right metaphor to reflect human experience in a fresh, true way. He references cultural icons and books (so many books! I found myself thinking, How does he have time to do anything other than read?!) from Aslan to A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and I came away feeling as though I'd spent several hours with a lively intellect, someone honest, someone I'd like for a friend -- and having been reminded that shared stories and books are some of the nodes around which we can gather, to undo that feeling of isolation and get through this together.
Highly recommended.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Finch has written a memoir that is discursive, literary, allusive, and above all humane. His dated entries beginning on March 11, 2020 follow the linear historical trajectory of events including Covid, the presidential election, and the Black Lives Matter movement, but the entries aren't homogenized into a tidy whole. To me, they feel reassuringly raw and emotionally uneven--reassuring because this is exactly the way that I experienced the past 18 months, with that messy mixture of denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance and some hope and a load of anxiety thrown in. If this sounds like Elisabeth Kubler Ross's 5 stages of grief, that's because ... well, it's been a long, painful year.
Some of the reviews on goodreads have criticized Finch for his liberal views, which are earnest and heartfelt and may strike some people as strident. I'll admit, I don't wholly agree with some of the solutions he sketches, as he's addressing some complex problems, but I also felt that what he was capturing (successfully) was the impatience, the desperate longing for things to change *soon* that many of us feel.
As for the writing itself, his feelings and thoughts, his memories and experiences are limned in prose that makes me a tad jealous at his turn of phrase. (The passages about his grandmother are especially tender.) It's the sort of book that makes me want to be a better writer, to be more precise with my own language, not to be lazy, but to find just the right metaphor to reflect human experience in a fresh, true way. He references cultural icons and books (so many books! I found myself thinking, How does he have time to do anything other than read?!) from Aslan to A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and I came away feeling as though I'd spent several hours with a lively intellect, someone honest, someone I'd like for a friend -- and having been reminded that shared stories and books are some of the nodes around which we can gather, to undo that feeling of isolation and get through this together.
Highly recommended.
November 7, 2021
“North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, who dies about three or four times a year, may be dead again, according to Reuters”, reads an entry made in the month of August 2020 in Charles Finch’s part polemical and part philosophical ruminations, constituting his upcoming book. “What Just Happened” is a poignant yet scathing account of the first full year of the COVID-19 pandemic, as viewed from the perspective of an author and a critic living in the United States, one of the most severely affected countries, courtesy COVID.
Incessantly smoking pot and lampooning a “doofus” administration headed by Donald Trump, in an irreverent vein, American author and literary critic, Charles Finch’s “What Just Happened” is a miscegenation of Marta Gepe’s “Quarantine Diaries” and “A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole. Juxtaposing anxiety and anger, Finch illustrates the floundering state of affairs in America as an intransigent Government refused to acknowledge both the import and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Finch conveys to his readers a cathartic state of mind that racks and ravages him – a state of mind that also traumatized millions of his fellow citizens, physically and mentally – during the entire twelve months in the year 2020.
Converging at regular intervals on the video platform Zoom (social distancing and other Standard Operating Procedures putting paid to any hopes of face-to-face interactions), Finch deliberates, deplores and dwells on a whole range of topics with his closest friends. Nathan is an indefatigably overworked, yet optimistic doctor who keeps feeding the group the latest advances and setbacks in medicine’s fight against the virus. Wulf, of Austrian accent, and an eternally bright screenwriter posits that he is impermeable to the advances of the pandemic, while Rachel provides a ringside view of juggling with children attending classes online while their parents struggle to adopt and adapt to the new norms of working from home.
When not meditatively engaging his buddies, Finch finds tremendous solace in the power of music. The passages detailing the musical preferences of Finch and the circumstances that led to those choices form the apotheosis of the book, in my personal opinion. The words transcend meaning, assume proportions of dizzying beatitude and take on a remarkable relevance both contextually and aurally. For example, Finch’s incorrigible obsession with the Beatles has at its core, an inconvenient (medically) childhood with insufficient means and an incredibly musical minded Uncle expatiating about every exploit of the Beatles, both professional and personal. Finch’s absorption with music results in an eclectic mix of partialities. From an almost aleatory melody of The Doors to the paradigm altering rock of Led Zeppelin and much more in between, Finch’s collection of music is for the refined and the rustic alike. Even though it is Kacey Musgraves and Taylor Swift, at whose altar the maximum benedictions are offered by Finch – in fact Finch himself is pleasantly surprised to learn that Spotify bands him in the category of the top listeners who are inextricably possessed by a Taylor Swift fervour – he also allows himself to be transported into the soothing, lyrical and rhythmical world of American Blues, popularized initially by the likes of Bessie Smith. In fact, Finch devotes appreciable space to chronicling the contribution made by African Americans to the world of Blues and Jazz.
The year 2020 also saw the prolific permeation of many seminal public movements such as Black Lives Matter. The brutal and inhuman killing of George Floyd, when Derek Chauvin, a police officer pressed down his knee on the throat of a struggling, suffocating and squealing Floyd for an interminably long period of eight minutes forty six seconds sent shock waves amongst outraged populace not just in the United States but across a chagrined world. Displaying solidarity, people staged marches in various countries. In the United States a few protests turned violent with protestors clashing with the police. Finch reflects on the alarming state of affairs by sitting on the lawn of his friend Wulf (restrictions on shelter at home being removed) and watching a procession of fire trucks racing along with alarms blaring, while a few helicopters swirl above reconnoitering, with their rotor blades reverberating.
Finch reserves his most pungent diatribes however for a select few in the Trump administration. Rand Paul, in addition to being the ‘tiniest’ Senator of Kentucky is also a ‘cosseted princeling’ plying his wares solely in the shadows of his more famous father; the postmaster general Louis DeJoy is a man ‘whose head looks like reconstituted pig parts were molded into a crude ovoid respiration tank, then installed with the eyes from the dumbest dog-species and hi-tech, blindingly white porcelain teeth’. When Trump himself is afflicted with the COVID-19 virus, after flouting every possible Standard Operating Procedure, Finch engages in a quasi- soliloquy on the value (or a lack of it) of Trump surviving the virus.
The most arresting part of the book interestingly involves books. Finch during the course of his reveries and reflections, takes recourse to anecdotes and quotes forming part of various books. These provide the reader with not just an insight into the prolific reading habits of the author, but also the very heterogenous nature of the books themselves. Historian Leon Litwack’s ‘crushing magisterial book’, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow leads Finch, and his readers, back in time – even before the defiance of Rosa Parks – to a woman named Pauli Murray. When she was just a child, Murray witnessed the murdered body of a man named John Henry Corniggin, “lying out in the field, where he had been shot to death”. Corniggin’s folly: walking across a white man’s watermelon patch. Murray went on to become an activist extraordinaire and a highly successful academic and now has a school in Yale University named after her. Similarly the pathbreaking book by anthropologist and structuralist Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques is discussed in an elegantly poignant manner.
Finch ends his book (by which time Joe Biden has successfully wrested the US Presidency out the hands of the irascible Donald Trump), with a stirring homage to his late grandmother and one of the pioneers in the art of Minimalism, Anne Truitt.
Hoping that Finch continues to write with a fervour that is undiminished. But here’s also wishing that he kicks the undesirable habit of continually puffing pot and subjecting himself o racking and wheezy bouts of painful coughs!
(What Just Happened: Notes on a Long Year by Charles Finch is published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, and will be on sale beginning 9th of November 2021)
Thank You Net Galley for the Advance Reviewer Copy
Incessantly smoking pot and lampooning a “doofus” administration headed by Donald Trump, in an irreverent vein, American author and literary critic, Charles Finch’s “What Just Happened” is a miscegenation of Marta Gepe’s “Quarantine Diaries” and “A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole. Juxtaposing anxiety and anger, Finch illustrates the floundering state of affairs in America as an intransigent Government refused to acknowledge both the import and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Finch conveys to his readers a cathartic state of mind that racks and ravages him – a state of mind that also traumatized millions of his fellow citizens, physically and mentally – during the entire twelve months in the year 2020.
Converging at regular intervals on the video platform Zoom (social distancing and other Standard Operating Procedures putting paid to any hopes of face-to-face interactions), Finch deliberates, deplores and dwells on a whole range of topics with his closest friends. Nathan is an indefatigably overworked, yet optimistic doctor who keeps feeding the group the latest advances and setbacks in medicine’s fight against the virus. Wulf, of Austrian accent, and an eternally bright screenwriter posits that he is impermeable to the advances of the pandemic, while Rachel provides a ringside view of juggling with children attending classes online while their parents struggle to adopt and adapt to the new norms of working from home.
When not meditatively engaging his buddies, Finch finds tremendous solace in the power of music. The passages detailing the musical preferences of Finch and the circumstances that led to those choices form the apotheosis of the book, in my personal opinion. The words transcend meaning, assume proportions of dizzying beatitude and take on a remarkable relevance both contextually and aurally. For example, Finch’s incorrigible obsession with the Beatles has at its core, an inconvenient (medically) childhood with insufficient means and an incredibly musical minded Uncle expatiating about every exploit of the Beatles, both professional and personal. Finch’s absorption with music results in an eclectic mix of partialities. From an almost aleatory melody of The Doors to the paradigm altering rock of Led Zeppelin and much more in between, Finch’s collection of music is for the refined and the rustic alike. Even though it is Kacey Musgraves and Taylor Swift, at whose altar the maximum benedictions are offered by Finch – in fact Finch himself is pleasantly surprised to learn that Spotify bands him in the category of the top listeners who are inextricably possessed by a Taylor Swift fervour – he also allows himself to be transported into the soothing, lyrical and rhythmical world of American Blues, popularized initially by the likes of Bessie Smith. In fact, Finch devotes appreciable space to chronicling the contribution made by African Americans to the world of Blues and Jazz.
The year 2020 also saw the prolific permeation of many seminal public movements such as Black Lives Matter. The brutal and inhuman killing of George Floyd, when Derek Chauvin, a police officer pressed down his knee on the throat of a struggling, suffocating and squealing Floyd for an interminably long period of eight minutes forty six seconds sent shock waves amongst outraged populace not just in the United States but across a chagrined world. Displaying solidarity, people staged marches in various countries. In the United States a few protests turned violent with protestors clashing with the police. Finch reflects on the alarming state of affairs by sitting on the lawn of his friend Wulf (restrictions on shelter at home being removed) and watching a procession of fire trucks racing along with alarms blaring, while a few helicopters swirl above reconnoitering, with their rotor blades reverberating.
Finch reserves his most pungent diatribes however for a select few in the Trump administration. Rand Paul, in addition to being the ‘tiniest’ Senator of Kentucky is also a ‘cosseted princeling’ plying his wares solely in the shadows of his more famous father; the postmaster general Louis DeJoy is a man ‘whose head looks like reconstituted pig parts were molded into a crude ovoid respiration tank, then installed with the eyes from the dumbest dog-species and hi-tech, blindingly white porcelain teeth’. When Trump himself is afflicted with the COVID-19 virus, after flouting every possible Standard Operating Procedure, Finch engages in a quasi- soliloquy on the value (or a lack of it) of Trump surviving the virus.
The most arresting part of the book interestingly involves books. Finch during the course of his reveries and reflections, takes recourse to anecdotes and quotes forming part of various books. These provide the reader with not just an insight into the prolific reading habits of the author, but also the very heterogenous nature of the books themselves. Historian Leon Litwack’s ‘crushing magisterial book’, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow leads Finch, and his readers, back in time – even before the defiance of Rosa Parks – to a woman named Pauli Murray. When she was just a child, Murray witnessed the murdered body of a man named John Henry Corniggin, “lying out in the field, where he had been shot to death”. Corniggin’s folly: walking across a white man’s watermelon patch. Murray went on to become an activist extraordinaire and a highly successful academic and now has a school in Yale University named after her. Similarly the pathbreaking book by anthropologist and structuralist Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques is discussed in an elegantly poignant manner.
Finch ends his book (by which time Joe Biden has successfully wrested the US Presidency out the hands of the irascible Donald Trump), with a stirring homage to his late grandmother and one of the pioneers in the art of Minimalism, Anne Truitt.
Hoping that Finch continues to write with a fervour that is undiminished. But here’s also wishing that he kicks the undesirable habit of continually puffing pot and subjecting himself o racking and wheezy bouts of painful coughs!
(What Just Happened: Notes on a Long Year by Charles Finch is published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, and will be on sale beginning 9th of November 2021)
Thank You Net Galley for the Advance Reviewer Copy
October 5, 2021
2020. What a year. I am thankful that I survived, bodily and mentally. Why would I want to revisit it? After all, it JUST happened.
Crazy me, I did revisit it–with Charles Finch in his memoir What Just Happened: Notes on a Long Year. Finch’s notes hit all the headline news, Covid-related, political and social. Condensed, so you can’t help but notice that it was truly one damned thing after another. If we have PTSD, or anxiety, or burn-out, or are reduced to simmering or explosive rage, there is a reason for it.
Finch talks about how he coped with comforting music and weed, how day after day he was just stuck, how everything seemed so hard.
March 21. A sure sign that things are darker is that I’m listening to Norah Jones today for the first time in twenty years. from What Just Happened by Charles Finch
Reading this made me realize how universal our experiences were. March 11, 2020, I had an appointment. Then, Michigan went into lockdown. We drove the car around so the battery didn’t die. We drove to our son’s house and stood outside the picture window and waved and left goodies on the porch. I remember Sundays with no traffic anywhere–in Michigan, when usually thousands are coming home from Up North cabins on Sundays.
March 12. I drove just to take a drive today. No traffic anywhere. In Los Angeles.
from What Just Happened by Charles Finch
We ordered delivery groceries and cleaned everything then washed out hands and arms. On our walks, when we met people we made wide arcs around each other, nodding heads. We were scared of each other.
Finch writes about empty store shelves and the joy of getting a shipment of pasta. He writes about Zooming, online group reads, the television shows everyone watched, and most of all, “the boredom and terror” of lockdown.
Finch shares the story of his personal health crisis as a kid, and his dependence on medical treatment, the fear when DeJoy decided to slow down the Post Office to interfere with mail-in ballots, worried about getting his refill. He talks about the weaknesses of American health care, the brutal implications of government spending on war that could go to education and programs to benefit people. How conservatives thought it a good thing that mostly ‘old’ people died from Covid.
With a subtle humor, and great humanity, Finch recalls 2020 in all its boredom and fear, the grim, human toll, the frightening political circus, the uplifting Women’s March and the protests for Black Lives Matter.
I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
Crazy me, I did revisit it–with Charles Finch in his memoir What Just Happened: Notes on a Long Year. Finch’s notes hit all the headline news, Covid-related, political and social. Condensed, so you can’t help but notice that it was truly one damned thing after another. If we have PTSD, or anxiety, or burn-out, or are reduced to simmering or explosive rage, there is a reason for it.
Finch talks about how he coped with comforting music and weed, how day after day he was just stuck, how everything seemed so hard.
March 21. A sure sign that things are darker is that I’m listening to Norah Jones today for the first time in twenty years. from What Just Happened by Charles Finch
Reading this made me realize how universal our experiences were. March 11, 2020, I had an appointment. Then, Michigan went into lockdown. We drove the car around so the battery didn’t die. We drove to our son’s house and stood outside the picture window and waved and left goodies on the porch. I remember Sundays with no traffic anywhere–in Michigan, when usually thousands are coming home from Up North cabins on Sundays.
March 12. I drove just to take a drive today. No traffic anywhere. In Los Angeles.
from What Just Happened by Charles Finch
We ordered delivery groceries and cleaned everything then washed out hands and arms. On our walks, when we met people we made wide arcs around each other, nodding heads. We were scared of each other.
Finch writes about empty store shelves and the joy of getting a shipment of pasta. He writes about Zooming, online group reads, the television shows everyone watched, and most of all, “the boredom and terror” of lockdown.
Finch shares the story of his personal health crisis as a kid, and his dependence on medical treatment, the fear when DeJoy decided to slow down the Post Office to interfere with mail-in ballots, worried about getting his refill. He talks about the weaknesses of American health care, the brutal implications of government spending on war that could go to education and programs to benefit people. How conservatives thought it a good thing that mostly ‘old’ people died from Covid.
With a subtle humor, and great humanity, Finch recalls 2020 in all its boredom and fear, the grim, human toll, the frightening political circus, the uplifting Women’s March and the protests for Black Lives Matter.
I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
January 4, 2022
Thoughts of the silent majority
We as a nation went through this horrendous year, and Finch's diary seemed to echo the fear, the anxiety, and the anger felt by so many. Myself, being elderly, immune compromised the book relived those days listening to a President who lied, under played, and was ill prepared for what our nation would soon endure. The huge disparity between the average struggling person, and the mega wealthy became so clear.
If the pandemic wasn't enough we would watch the inhuman acts killing Black Americans, and children suffering in cages separated from their parents.
Finch made me reflect on our nation's moral compass, and our history. His writing is eloquent, but could likely do without the frequent use of the f... word. His personal struggle with the use of marijuana to deal with overwhelming anxiety becomes clear as he deals with a major illness. It is as he points out, you are either a person that has experienced illness, or one who has not. A close relative with MS, also has a marijuana prescription to deal with pain and anxiety.
Many may think Finch's thoughts are too liberal. But are they really? There is not a person in Congress who is not among the wealthy. I can't imagine their experience during this pandemic being the same as the average American household.
I look forward to Finch's further writing, and thank him for a brave position taken in 'What Just Happened....'
We as a nation went through this horrendous year, and Finch's diary seemed to echo the fear, the anxiety, and the anger felt by so many. Myself, being elderly, immune compromised the book relived those days listening to a President who lied, under played, and was ill prepared for what our nation would soon endure. The huge disparity between the average struggling person, and the mega wealthy became so clear.
If the pandemic wasn't enough we would watch the inhuman acts killing Black Americans, and children suffering in cages separated from their parents.
Finch made me reflect on our nation's moral compass, and our history. His writing is eloquent, but could likely do without the frequent use of the f... word. His personal struggle with the use of marijuana to deal with overwhelming anxiety becomes clear as he deals with a major illness. It is as he points out, you are either a person that has experienced illness, or one who has not. A close relative with MS, also has a marijuana prescription to deal with pain and anxiety.
Many may think Finch's thoughts are too liberal. But are they really? There is not a person in Congress who is not among the wealthy. I can't imagine their experience during this pandemic being the same as the average American household.
I look forward to Finch's further writing, and thank him for a brave position taken in 'What Just Happened....'
November 2, 2021
What Just Happened by Charles Finch is a memoir of sorts, a diary kept during the worst of the pandemic. Charlie is a wonderful writer, his prose is elegant and communicative. There are obvious threads running through the books: panic, boredom, depression. The thing I most disliked about the book is the blatant hatred of Trump, and more importantly, all things conservative. That Charlie is a liberal is no surprise. That he is not more even-handed, is. It was a disappointment to me. Will it stop me from reading his work? No. "Can we stagger into Joe Biden's arms and recover?" Well, that hasn't happened, has it? Too often Charlie followed the media, rather than thinking things through. He quotes the Washington Post, for crying out loud. "Hate is a bottomless cup; I will pour and pour (Medea by Euripedes).
I was invited to read a free e-ARC of What Just Happened by Alfred A Knopf, through Netgalley All thoughts and opinions are mine. #netgalley #alfredaknopf #whatjusthappened #charlesfinch
I was invited to read a free e-ARC of What Just Happened by Alfred A Knopf, through Netgalley All thoughts and opinions are mine. #netgalley #alfredaknopf #whatjusthappened #charlesfinch
February 7, 2023
On one hand, grateful to know Finch’s experience during this very lived-in time. On the other hand, it adds to my exasperation (due to the great writing) that there are still too many people shrugging off the pandemic as mere politics. Sadly, frustratingly, over 2 years after fortunately living through my initial bout of Covid, I still have lingering effects of physical and mental health. This book reminded me that my experience matters and to heck with those who want to pretend it is nothing, yet it continues wreaking havoc on people, communities, and countries. An honest and compassionate work.
October 11, 2021
This book encapsulates how I felt at the beginning of the pandemic but it went off the rails a few times. Even still, it feels like an oddly accurate historical gem. The type of thing that will be read like Samuel Pepys’ account of the fires a hundred years from now.
November 17, 2021
WOW!!
First, I had no idea that the author was NOT BRITISH [I have NO idea why I thought that, but I was sure he was!!]!!! LOL I went into the audiobook thinking I'd have a lovely listen with a lovely British accent and then he started speaking and I initially wondered if I had gotten the narrator wrong! LOL Thankfully, the author has a lovely speaking voice and narrates his book fantastically [as we all know, this is not always the case] and not once did I wish he was British after the book found its rhythm.
And what a book it is - whew. It was tough at times to listen to the past that isn't really the past [in the sense of it being a very long time ago] but feels like it was 100 years ago and not just last year and this year. As we continue to sit in this global pandemic and people choose to ignore the continued warnings that this mess is NOT OVER, the review at times was overwhelming. Things I had totally forgotten. People we lost [RBG!!!!]. January 6th. The continued belief by many that the election was stolen. All of this and more is what the author has written about, and how all of this has affected him and his own health challenges, and I have to admit, it was really good to listen to someone else talk about the struggles they had [and I am assuming they still are dealing with] and the open honesty about the farce that was the previous Presidential administration - SO many things he said were things I had thought to myself but never said out loud. It was glorious to hear someone I like and respect say them out loud [the bestie and I have been for months of course, but when your circle is teeny-tiny, it is really fantastic to hear someone else say them as well]. It was such a relief to really realize that we all who think the same are not alone in that belief.
This is a tough book at times - revisiting some of those scary early days of the pandemic really brought up some anxiety for me, but it was also cathartic; I feel like I can still go on. There are people who care and are fighting for good to prevail, there is hope. Heaven knows, we still need hope. So grateful for the openness and transparency of the author - he does not shrink away from any of his thoughts, no matter how crazy they might have sounded and that was also refreshing. Really, this is a great [though tough] read from beginning to end - though the moments of hilarity will get you through, much like we had to adapt to the "new normal" we all face, with hope and laughter and grace.
Thank you to NetGalley, Charles Finch and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
First, I had no idea that the author was NOT BRITISH [I have NO idea why I thought that, but I was sure he was!!]!!! LOL I went into the audiobook thinking I'd have a lovely listen with a lovely British accent and then he started speaking and I initially wondered if I had gotten the narrator wrong! LOL Thankfully, the author has a lovely speaking voice and narrates his book fantastically [as we all know, this is not always the case] and not once did I wish he was British after the book found its rhythm.
And what a book it is - whew. It was tough at times to listen to the past that isn't really the past [in the sense of it being a very long time ago] but feels like it was 100 years ago and not just last year and this year. As we continue to sit in this global pandemic and people choose to ignore the continued warnings that this mess is NOT OVER, the review at times was overwhelming. Things I had totally forgotten. People we lost [RBG!!!!]. January 6th. The continued belief by many that the election was stolen. All of this and more is what the author has written about, and how all of this has affected him and his own health challenges, and I have to admit, it was really good to listen to someone else talk about the struggles they had [and I am assuming they still are dealing with] and the open honesty about the farce that was the previous Presidential administration - SO many things he said were things I had thought to myself but never said out loud. It was glorious to hear someone I like and respect say them out loud [the bestie and I have been for months of course, but when your circle is teeny-tiny, it is really fantastic to hear someone else say them as well]. It was such a relief to really realize that we all who think the same are not alone in that belief.
This is a tough book at times - revisiting some of those scary early days of the pandemic really brought up some anxiety for me, but it was also cathartic; I feel like I can still go on. There are people who care and are fighting for good to prevail, there is hope. Heaven knows, we still need hope. So grateful for the openness and transparency of the author - he does not shrink away from any of his thoughts, no matter how crazy they might have sounded and that was also refreshing. Really, this is a great [though tough] read from beginning to end - though the moments of hilarity will get you through, much like we had to adapt to the "new normal" we all face, with hope and laughter and grace.
Thank you to NetGalley, Charles Finch and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
January 22, 2022
First thing to like about this book is its cover: a drone's eye view of a lawn party with individuals, couples, and pods of family/friends socially distanced from one another and outlined by thin, white circles.
Finch is best when he describes the ways in which he coped with the pandemic, especially the early months: listening to Fleetwood Mac and Norah Jones, hearing from a friend that he can only listen to Phil Collins and hypothesizing that "all of us are so tender that nobody can handle songs with real emotional content." His meditation on his grandmother, the artist Anne Truitt, is worth the price of the book alone.
Because this is a memoir about our first pandemic year and because, as Finch writes, "An idiot is in charge of everything," this book also includes a lot about Donald Trump and his acolytes. Some of it is funny but a lot of this reads like condensed Twitter takes, screeds, and memes. These portions of the book aren't as strong as the more personal stuff (such as a description of a chronic, life-threatening and presumably rare health condition that Finch lives with -- and never names -- and his irrational, crazy anger when friends ask him about it in connection with COVID health anxieties).
There is also a lot in here about the stories that sparked what is now known (cliche style) as our "long overdue national reckoning on race": the trial of the police who shot Breonna Taylor to death, the vigilante murder of Ahmaud Arbery and, of course, George Floyd. Finch uses these stories to go into history lessons about Jim Crow. (NOTE: This is a crass summary and I do not think that is what Finch was really doing, it's just how it came across to me.)
Very funny moment in this book is when Finch connects his early panic at the nationwide lack of pasta (his favorite food) with an aside Virginia Woolf made in her diaries, post World War 1.
I was surprised that I enjoyed this book so much because it is about a time and place that we are still in and probably won't understand for another 100 years or so. I'm surprised that I picked it up, but glad that I did.
Finch is best when he describes the ways in which he coped with the pandemic, especially the early months: listening to Fleetwood Mac and Norah Jones, hearing from a friend that he can only listen to Phil Collins and hypothesizing that "all of us are so tender that nobody can handle songs with real emotional content." His meditation on his grandmother, the artist Anne Truitt, is worth the price of the book alone.
Because this is a memoir about our first pandemic year and because, as Finch writes, "An idiot is in charge of everything," this book also includes a lot about Donald Trump and his acolytes. Some of it is funny but a lot of this reads like condensed Twitter takes, screeds, and memes. These portions of the book aren't as strong as the more personal stuff (such as a description of a chronic, life-threatening and presumably rare health condition that Finch lives with -- and never names -- and his irrational, crazy anger when friends ask him about it in connection with COVID health anxieties).
There is also a lot in here about the stories that sparked what is now known (cliche style) as our "long overdue national reckoning on race": the trial of the police who shot Breonna Taylor to death, the vigilante murder of Ahmaud Arbery and, of course, George Floyd. Finch uses these stories to go into history lessons about Jim Crow. (NOTE: This is a crass summary and I do not think that is what Finch was really doing, it's just how it came across to me.)
Very funny moment in this book is when Finch connects his early panic at the nationwide lack of pasta (his favorite food) with an aside Virginia Woolf made in her diaries, post World War 1.
I was surprised that I enjoyed this book so much because it is about a time and place that we are still in and probably won't understand for another 100 years or so. I'm surprised that I picked it up, but glad that I did.
November 15, 2021
When the Covid-19 pandemic began, Charles Finch was asked by the Los Angeles Times to start a diary to record the events unfolding across the globe as well as his emotional reactions to these events. Especially as an Angelino with so much shared experiences as Finch, I thought this would be a hard read for me to revisit all of the trauma that has occurred over the past year and a half, but I found myself totally engaged in this novel, in awe of everything we have lived through. Finch begins the book with our initial lockdown and then watches as the world shuts down. He recalls Italy, the first country to experience a devastating surge and recounts how it was predicted that 20,000 people might even die in America. (Ironically, that number is currently at 746,000 and climbing.) We were simultaneously naïve and terrified those first few months and I found it very therapeutic to read about all that we’ve gone through with a keen eye. While this is Finch’s experience, it’s also a collective history. If you’re ready to remember what many of us are trying hard to forget, then this book is definitely worth your time. Thank you to Knopf Doubleday and to NetGalley for the advanced review copy.
November 21, 2021
Hard one to rate. This was recommended by Audible because I love his British murder mysteries, so it was a shock to hear his own modern voice, profanity, political opinions, and all. I’m surprised the publisher thought this was a good idea, given how off-brand it is, likely to alienate many of his readers.
So why did I finish?
1. There was something so raw and unedited about the whole thing, that even as it felt reckless, part of me admired the unabashed willingness to put it out there. Like a friend sharing all their good, bad, and ugly. You don’t scorn them for it—you appreciate their vulnerability and honesty.
2. There were some gems of insight woven throughout that made me wish I had a hard copy to highlight and ponder later. He also had some hilarious Trump quotes that would’ve been fun to read to my hubs.
3. I was undoubtedly drawn in because it was an opportunity to see how someone else processed recent, “unprecedented” events that I am still trying to process (ie 2020). I wouldn’t do it through the same lenses he did, but it still helps to hear how another human is reacting to a shared experience. I would’ve liked to hear about his own family, but I understand not wanting to put *them* out there for scrutiny.
4. I think it could be an interesting read for those who cannot imagine the liberal perspective on the last 18mo. At the same time, he’s just confident enough in his own views and vulgar enough that they might not really hear him. I saw the only review on Audible said “Your opinions are dumb.” #nice Now that I’ve read this, I’d love to read a similar format from someone on the right. It is humanizing and under the best circumstances could breed better understanding and compassion across the aisle.
5. The author read it well.
So why did I finish?
1. There was something so raw and unedited about the whole thing, that even as it felt reckless, part of me admired the unabashed willingness to put it out there. Like a friend sharing all their good, bad, and ugly. You don’t scorn them for it—you appreciate their vulnerability and honesty.
2. There were some gems of insight woven throughout that made me wish I had a hard copy to highlight and ponder later. He also had some hilarious Trump quotes that would’ve been fun to read to my hubs.
3. I was undoubtedly drawn in because it was an opportunity to see how someone else processed recent, “unprecedented” events that I am still trying to process (ie 2020). I wouldn’t do it through the same lenses he did, but it still helps to hear how another human is reacting to a shared experience. I would’ve liked to hear about his own family, but I understand not wanting to put *them* out there for scrutiny.
4. I think it could be an interesting read for those who cannot imagine the liberal perspective on the last 18mo. At the same time, he’s just confident enough in his own views and vulgar enough that they might not really hear him. I saw the only review on Audible said “Your opinions are dumb.” #nice Now that I’ve read this, I’d love to read a similar format from someone on the right. It is humanizing and under the best circumstances could breed better understanding and compassion across the aisle.
5. The author read it well.
June 20, 2025
I thought that this book might be triggering but instead I found it comforting? Like, holding it in my hands meant that all of what we went through was real. It happened. The fear and the disbelief and little things that could bring hope but also the heavy, heavy grief of it all. So much happened in a year and the scale of it all. To read this too now, in Trump's second presidency, while the vaccine we yearned for desperately may not even exist for the next fall and the acceptance of all the likelihood of death has mostly been accepted in so many different ways, is it's own weird funhouse mirror that made me feel a little less insane that I might normally day to day. We thought 2020 was so bad, and it was, I am not discounting that at all, but the way it's faded. The way we've lived through so much since and have so much more still to come (if we're lucky, please let us be lucky) is wild. Life is wild. This decade is wild. I so appreciate Charles Finch sharing his experience with us so that I can think on mine.
November 17, 2021
I have every expectation that people will be reading Charles Finch’s WHAT JUST HAPPENED for a long, long time, as it’s a brilliant – and possibly the first – contemporaneous account of what it was like to live through the COVID-19 pandemic from the beginning.
But I’m here to tell you there’s no reason to wait, even if you’re someone (like everyone, perhaps) who otherwise thinks he or she is experiencing pandemic overload. Charlie is such a deep thinker, and such a brilliant writer, that he pulls off the trick of simultaneously making this shared experience seem both fully relatable and entirely new at the same time. Even more than that: this book is improbably funny (I'll never look at Louis DeJoy's face the same way), righteously angry, deeply honest, and unflinchingly (unFinchingly?) opinionated. I loved it.
But I’m here to tell you there’s no reason to wait, even if you’re someone (like everyone, perhaps) who otherwise thinks he or she is experiencing pandemic overload. Charlie is such a deep thinker, and such a brilliant writer, that he pulls off the trick of simultaneously making this shared experience seem both fully relatable and entirely new at the same time. Even more than that: this book is improbably funny (I'll never look at Louis DeJoy's face the same way), righteously angry, deeply honest, and unflinchingly (unFinchingly?) opinionated. I loved it.
January 19, 2022
Bright and interesting at the start, but became a slog (perhaps like the pandemic itself). Finch repeated commented on how often he was getting high, and much of the book seems to have been written in that state.
November 27, 2021
This book is the author’s journal of his observations of the year2020. It is a beautifully written account of the fear and uncertainty that descended upon the world during the year: COVID, isolation, frustration with the lack of leadership from our “leaders”, the crazy deniers in charge, anxiety over the election , outrage over the deaths of George Floyd and countless others. There are deep personal revelations about his own health, and the close friendships that kept him going during the lock down, as well as lighter moments ruminating on his favorite music (I would like to have a discussion with him about what makes a song “bad.”) Many people used substances to help them cope: food, wine, and other mood-altering devices, and the author discusses his own choices at length. The final entry is a tender memory of his beloved grandmother. This is an amazing book. Years from now, this real-time chronicle will explain what happened in 2020, with skillful writing and a keen eye for the absurd.
November 24, 2021
This book evokes all kinds of memories of my own journey through the beginning of the pandemic. I love that I was given the perspective of a medical professional as I didn't have that myself. I also liked that some of the information was very regional so sometimes parallel and sometimes crossing my own experience. It was so interesting to hear the author's view of the political aspects of the pandemic, insurrection, and BLM movement. Anyone of these experiences could be life changing and we encountered and are encountering all at once. This book is entertaining, scary, informative, and a great narrative of an unsettled year that was beyond prediction.
November 16, 2021
4.5 stars. Highly recommended. So good.
January 23, 2023
I've never heard of Charles Finch, but judging by this book, I tend to agree with him.
April 1, 2022
I’m fully aware this is a memoir and yet I wish I had written it.
October 23, 2021
I, like most people, want to put 2020 behind me to never discuss again. However, this book came along and I was compelled to read it. It is a well-written pandemic diary, broken down by each month detailing several of the tragic events of 2020. It also felt like a story of hope for most of us still meandering through life. I felt like I took away more from the book than effort (couch, pjs, feet propped up) I put in reading it.
October 18, 2021
Thanks to Netgalley and Knopf for the ebook. This modern day Diary of a Plague Year starts just as covid is starting to accumulate more and more cases and a nationwide shutdown is being proposed and goes all the way to Biden’s inauguration. Our author lives in Los Angeles and emails and Zooms with a group of close friends, including a doctor working in the covid frontlines of a NYC hospital, as covid runs rampant, Trump makes mistakes at every turn, racial protests break out worldwide with the killing of George Floyd, the Presidential race heats up and so much more. You wouldn’t imagine you’d be ready to relive such a recently grim past, but the author takes you along on a tour of his thoughts as all this is happening, with his outrage and generous humor as he leans on his family, friends, Kacey Musgraves, nightly walks and almost as frequent pot smoking.
January 22, 2022
I thought reading a book about the pandemic might be triggering but this was very, very funny, and somehow managed to be cathartic.
January 7, 2022
Lovely. The antidote to my January 6 blues. He diesn't make things better but his reactions in real time are very affirming of my own experience.
February 3, 2022
3.5 stars, maybe 4 even as it is not Finch’s fault I might not have been ready for this diary. He’s a great writer and so much of him is in this work. My favorite entries are those that are deeply personal and more about his background, friendships, musical taste and history vs political rants, which much of it becomes. At first I really enjoyed the rants but then it just felt like it was hitting too close to home, too recent in memory, and also, knowing things where they are now, was just too much for me. As far as the entries on enduring the pandemic, from the POV of those early days, I found them surprisingly cathartic.
June 7, 2025
It’s strange to read about a time that feels so long ago already and yet still so recent. My goodness, over five years ago already? Reading this brought back memories of all the anxieties and the simultaneous hope of the period.
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