en-US Mon, 24 Mar 2025 21:49:32 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 30962053 A portrait of the artist as a young woman. A novel about not just discovering but inventing oneself.

The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. Selin may have barely spoken to Ivan, but with each email they exchange, the act of writing seems to take on new and increasingly mysterious meanings.

At the end of the school year, Ivan goes to Budapest for the summer, and Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside, to teach English in a program run by one of Ivan's friends. On the way, she spends two weeks visiting Paris with Svetlana. Selin's summer in Europe does not resonate with anything she has previously heard about the typical experiences of American college students, or indeed of any other kinds of people. For Selin, this is a journey further inside herself: a coming to grips with the ineffable and exhilarating confusion of first love, and with the growing consciousness that she is doomed to become a writer.]]> 423 Elif Batuman 1594205612 June 3 2022 3.67 2017
author: Elif Batuman
name: June
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2022/06/30
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: 2022
review:
I like that this book made me think.
]]> 44279110
Our narrator should be happy, shouldn¡¯t she? She¡¯s young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn¡¯t just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It¡¯s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.]]> 289 Ottessa Moshfegh 0525522131 June 5 2021, 2022, 2024, owned, lore 3.62 2018
author: Ottessa Moshfegh
name: June
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/01
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: 2021, 2022, 2024, owned, lore
review:
(i accidentally deleted this review so the dates and stuff doesn't make sense)
]]> 6798263 Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color...

A lyrical, philosophical, and often explicit exploration of personal suffering and the limitations of vision and love, as refracted through the color blue. With Bluets, Maggie Nelson has entered the pantheon of brilliant lyric essayists.]]> 112 Maggie Nelson 1933517409 June 5 4.09 2009
author: Maggie Nelson
name: June
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2023/04/22
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: 2021, 2022, 2023, loaned-out, lore
review:
An immediate reread. ¡°There was a time when I would rather have had you by my side than any of these words; I would rather have had you by my side than all the blue in the world.¡±
]]> 7741657 Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists' ascent, a prelude to fame.]]> 306 Patti Smith 0060936223 June 5 2022, owned, lore Favorite read in a long time¡­ 4.33 2010
author: Patti Smith
name: June
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2022/11/10
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: 2022, owned, lore
review:
Favorite read in a long time¡­
]]> 828038 This is an alternative cover edition for ISBN 9780571081783

We follow Esther Greenwood's personal life from her summer job in New York with Ladies' Day magazine, back through her days at New England's largest school for women, and forward through her attempted suicide, her bad treatment at one asylum and her good treatment at another, to her final re-entry into the world like a used tyre: "patched, retreaded, and approved for the road" ... Esther Greenwood's account of her year in the bell jar is as clear and readable as it is witty and disturbing.

'The Bell Jar' is Plath's only novel and was originally published under a pseudonym in 1963.]]> 234 Sylvia Plath June 0 2022, owned 4.09 1963
author: Sylvia Plath
name: June
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at: 2022/06/22
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: 2022, owned
review:
(accidentally deleted this review)
]]> 96259 Crush, selected as the 2004 winner of the Yale Younger Poets prize, is a powerful collection of poems driven by panic and obsession. Siken writes with ferocity, and his reader hurtles unstoppably with him. His poetry is confessional, gay, savage, and charged with violent eroticism. In the world of American poetry, Siken's voice is striking. In her introduction to the book, competition judge Louise Gl¨¹ck hails the ¡°cumulative, driving, apocalyptic power, [and] purgatorial recklessness¡± of Siken¡¯s poems. She notes, ¡°Books of this kind dream big. . . . They restore to poetry that sense of crucial moment and crucial utterance which may indeed be the great genius of the form.¡±]]> 80 Richard Siken 0300107897 June 5 2020, 2022, owned 4.35 2005
author: Richard Siken
name: June
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2005
rating: 5
read at: 2022/11/01
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: 2020, 2022, owned
review:
(accidentally deleted this review so this doesn't make sense)
]]> 30079724 An electrifying first collection from one of the most exciting short story writers of our time

Ottessa Moshfegh's debut novel Eileen was one of the literary events of 2015. Garlanded with critical acclaim, it was named a book of the year by The Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle, nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. But as many critics noted, Moshfegh is particularly held in awe for her short stories. Homesick for Another World is the rare case where an author's short story collection is if anything more anticipated than her novel.
And for good reason. There's something eerily unsettling about Ottessa Moshfegh's stories, something almost dangerous, while also being delightful, and even laugh-out-loud funny. Her characters are all unsteady on their feet in one way or another; they all yearn for connection and betterment, though each in very different ways, but they are often tripped up by their own baser impulses and existential insecurities. Homesick for Another World is a master class in the varieties of self-deception across the gamut of individuals representing the human condition.

But part of the unique quality of her voice, the echt Moshfeghian experience, is the way the grotesque and the outrageous are infused with tenderness and compassion. Moshfegh is our Flannery O'Connor, and Homesick for Another World is her Everything That Rises Must Converge or A Good Man is Hard to Find. The flesh is weak; the timber is crooked; people are cruel to each other, and stupid, and hurtful. But beauty comes from strange sources. And the dark energy surging through these stories is powerfully invigorating. We're in the hands of an author with a big mind, a big heart, blazing chops, and a political acuity that is needle-sharp. The needle hits the vein before we even feel the prick.

Bettering myself --
Mr. Wu --
Malibu --
The weirdos --
A dark and winding road --
No place for good people --
Slumming --
An honest woman --
The beach boy --
Nothing ever happens here --
Dancing in the moonlight --
The surrogate --
The locked room --
A better place]]> 294 Ottessa Moshfegh 0399562885 June 4 2022, owned -
3.5/5, rounding down to 3 stars bcuz Moshfegh needs to stop writing about fat people.

This collection has some highs and many lows. I love the theme and the idea of the theme, and the shared emotional tone of the characters was really my groove. But I wouldn't recommend this. I don't think Moshfegh's more crass writing works in short stories. For example, her writing around fat people/people with eating disorders/foreigners all seem like personal reflections on her thoughts, not like the thoughts of her characters (ex: the fatphobia and antisemitism read in My Year of Rest and Relaxation as the thoughts of the flawed narrator). But her obsession with fat people here was weird and wild and something I never want to engage with again?

Just go off and read "The Weirdos" and "A Better Place", maybe "A Dark and Winding Road" and "The Surrogate" too.

*Well actually maybe I do recommend reading this? Just because it is so unique and interesting prose. Especially if you are a literary fiction girl. Come join the dark side.]]> 3.63 2017
author: Ottessa Moshfegh
name: June
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2022/09/19
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: 2022, owned
review:
retroactive 4, i think about Homesick every day of my life. but the stories that miss really miss.
-
3.5/5, rounding down to 3 stars bcuz Moshfegh needs to stop writing about fat people.

This collection has some highs and many lows. I love the theme and the idea of the theme, and the shared emotional tone of the characters was really my groove. But I wouldn't recommend this. I don't think Moshfegh's more crass writing works in short stories. For example, her writing around fat people/people with eating disorders/foreigners all seem like personal reflections on her thoughts, not like the thoughts of her characters (ex: the fatphobia and antisemitism read in My Year of Rest and Relaxation as the thoughts of the flawed narrator). But her obsession with fat people here was weird and wild and something I never want to engage with again?

Just go off and read "The Weirdos" and "A Better Place", maybe "A Dark and Winding Road" and "The Surrogate" too.

*Well actually maybe I do recommend reading this? Just because it is so unique and interesting prose. Especially if you are a literary fiction girl. Come join the dark side.
]]> 123025904
Guided by her literature syllabus and by her more worldly and confident peers, Selin reaches certain conclusions about the universal importance of parties, alcohol, and sex, and resolves to execute them in practice¡ªno matter what the cost. Next on the international travel.

Unfolding with the propulsive logic and intensity of youth, Either/Or is a landmark novel by one of our most brilliant writers. Hilarious, revelatory, and unforgettable, its gripping narrative will confront you with searching questions that persist long after the last page.]]> 368 Elif Batuman 052555761X June 5 2022, owned 3.88 2022
author: Elif Batuman
name: June
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/04
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: 2022, owned
review:

]]> 59366193 All¡¯s Well That Ends Well, the play that promised and cost her everything, she faces a mutinous cast hellbent on staging Macbeth instead. Miranda sees her chance at redemption slip through her fingers.

That¡¯s when she meets three strange benefactors who have an eerie knowledge of Miranda¡¯s past and a tantalizing promise for her future: one where the show goes on, her rebellious students get what¡¯s coming to them, and the invisible doubted pain that¡¯s kept her from the spotlight is made known.]]> 384 Mona Awad 1982169672 June 0 2022, owned 3.78 2021
author: Mona Awad
name: June
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2022/05/07
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: 2022, owned
review:
I don¡¯t know that I can rate this. The reading experience is really engaging and I loved it at many points, but some sections drag on and on. I like what it tried to say about pain & itss performance, but I don¡¯t know that it worked,
]]> 56802114 Keep Moving and Good Bones, a stunning poetry collection that celebrates the beauty and messiness of life.

With her breakout bestseller Keep Moving, Maggie Smith captured the nation with her ¡°meditations on kindness and hope¡± (NPR). Now, with Goldenrod, the award-winning poet returns with a powerful collection of poems that look at parenthood, solitude, love, and memory. Pulling objects from everyday life¡ªa hallway mirror, a rock found in her son¡¯s pocket, a field of goldenrods at the side of the road¡ªshe reveals the magic of the present moment. Only Maggie Smith could turn an autocorrect mistake into a line of poetry, musing that her phone ¡°doesn¡¯t observe / the high holidays, autocorrecting / shana tova to shaman tobacco, / Rosh Hashanah to rose has hands.¡±?
]]> 128 Maggie Smith 1982185066 June 4 2022 3.94 2021
author: Maggie Smith
name: June
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2022/01/01
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:
These poems are subtle in the way nature¡¯s ways are, which makes it an immersive experience. Thematically, not always for me. But the writing¡ª wonderful.
]]> 43841537 Dunce she returns to the practice that has always been at her core: the making of poems. With her startlingly fresh sensibility, she enraptures us in poem after poem by the intensity of her attention, with the imaginative flourishes of her being-in-the-world, which is always deep with mysteries, unexpected appearances, and abiding yearning.]]> 96 Mary Ruefle 1940696852 June 4 2022 3.92 2019
author: Mary Ruefle
name: June
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2022/03/27
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:
A very beautiful collection of poetry. I particularly loved ¡°Crackerbell¡±, ¡°Lorraine¡±, ¡°Jewelweed¡±, ¡°A Morning Person¡±, & ¡°Boutonniere¡±.
]]> 36631251
Available at archive.org, from the collection of the University of California Libraries: ]]> 96 Gertrude Stein June 0 2022 3.00 1914
author: Gertrude Stein
name: June
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1914
rating: 0
read at: 2022/03/28
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:

]]> 43554866 The highly anticipated spoken word poetry collection from Lana Del Rey, Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass

¡°'Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass' is the title poem of the book and the first poem I wrote of many. Some of which came to me in their entirety, which I dictated and then typed out, and some that I worked laboriously picking apart each word to make the perfect poem. They are eclectic and honest and not trying to be anything other than what they are and for that reason I¡¯m proud of them, especially because the spirit in which they were written was very authentic.¡± (Lana Del Rey)

Lana Del Rey brings her breathtaking poetry to life in an unprecedented audiobook. In this stunning spoken word performance, Lana Del Rey reads 14 poems from her debut book Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass accompanied by music from Grammy Award-winning musician Jack Antonoff. Lana¡¯s debut book solidifies her further as ¡°the essential writer of her times¡± (The Atlantic). This audiobook features Lana reading select poems from the book, including "LA Who Am I to Love You?", "The Land of 1,000 Fires", "Past the Bushes Cypress Thriving", "Never to Heaven", "Tessa DiPietro", "Happy", and several others. The result is an extraordinary poetic landscape that reflects the unguarded spirit of its creator.]]> 1 Lana Del Rey June 5 2021, 2022 4.03 2020
author: Lana Del Rey
name: June
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2022/04/07
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2021, 2022
review:
i listened to this as an audiobook today, and i am fully obsessed with the presentation of it. i might need to reread it physically, but this is a 5. what a wonderful job.
]]> 60763709 55 Heather McNaugher June 0 2022 0.0
author: Heather McNaugher
name: June
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2022/04/18
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:

]]> 51582376 The Secret Lives of Church Ladies explores the raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good. The nine stories in this collection feature four generations of characters grappling with who they want to be in the world, caught as they are between the church¡¯s double standards and their own needs and passions.

There is fourteen-year-old Jael, who has a crush on the preacher¡¯s wife. At forty-two, Lyra realizes that her discomfort with her own body stands between her and a new love. As Y2K looms, Caroletta¡¯s ¡°same time next year¡± arrangement with her childhood best friend is tenuous. A serial mistress lays down the ground rules for her married lovers. In the dark shadows of a hospice parking lot, grieving strangers find comfort in each other.

With their secret longings, new love, and forbidden affairs, these church ladies are as seductive as they want to be, as vulnerable as they need to be, as unfaithful and unrepentant as they care to be, and as free as they deserve to be.]]> 217 Deesha Philyaw 1949199738 June 5 2022 -
Love this collection! Eula, DEAR SISTER, How to Make Love to a Physicist, & Peach Cobbler were my favorites. She does a wonderful job portraying love, family, & shame.]]> 4.16 2020
author: Deesha Philyaw
name: June
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2022/04/18
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:
retroactive 5 star, i think about this collection all the time
-
Love this collection! Eula, DEAR SISTER, How to Make Love to a Physicist, & Peach Cobbler were my favorites. She does a wonderful job portraying love, family, & shame.
]]> 43352082 112 Billy-Ray Belcourt 1487005776 June 0 2022 4.45 2019
author: Billy-Ray Belcourt
name: June
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2022/05/28
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:
Belcourt has a wonderful way of constructing and deconstructing self & body & soul. I really enjoyed ¡°A Lover¡¯s Discourse¡±, ¡°Romance of the Present¡±, ¡°NDN Homo Sonnet¡±, & ¡°Ars Poetica¡±. & ¡°Melancholy¡¯s Forms¡±.
]]> 13203
Celebrations is a collection of timely and timeless poems that are an integral part of the global fabric. Several works have become nearly as iconic as Angelou herself: the inspiring ¡°On the Pulse of Morning,¡± read at President William Jefferson Clinton¡¯s 1993 inauguration; the heartening ¡°Amazing Peace,¡± presented at the 2005 lighting of the National Christmas Tree at the White House; ¡°A Brave and Startling Truth,¡± which marked the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations; and ¡°Mother,¡± which beautifully honors the first woman in our lives. Angelou writes of celebrations public and private, a bar mitzvah wish to her nephew, a birthday greeting to Oprah Winfrey, and a memorial tribute to the late Luther Vandross and Barry White.

More than a writer, Angelou is a chronicler of history, an advocate for peace, and a champion for the planet, as well as a patriot, a mentor, and a friend. To be shared and cherished, the wisdom and poetry of Maya Angelou proves there is always cause for celebration.]]> 128 Maya Angelou 1400066107 June 0 2022 always wonderful to hear her 4.18 2006
author: Maya Angelou
name: June
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at: 2022/06/12
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:
always wonderful to hear her
]]> 41720140
Told in vignettes that flash between the U.S. and the Middle East--from New York to Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine--Zaina Arafat's debut novel traces her protagonist's progress from blushing teen to sought-after DJ and aspiring writer. In Brooklyn, she moves into an apartment with her first serious girlfriend and tries to content herself with their comfortable relationship. But soon her longings, so closely hidden during her teenage years, explode out into reckless romantic encounters and obsessions with other people.

Her desire to thwart her own destructive impulses will eventually lead her to The Ledge, an unconventional treatment center that identifies her affliction as "love addiction." In this strange, enclosed society she will start to consider the unnerving similarities between her own internal traumas and divisions and those of the places that have formed her.

Opening up the fantasies and desires of one young woman caught between cultural, religious, and sexual identities, You Exist Too Much is a captivating story charting two of our most intense longings: for love, and a place to call home.]]> 263 Zaina Arafat 1948226502 June 4 2022 3.62 2020
author: Zaina Arafat
name: June
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2022/06/14
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:
This was really good & immediately deserves a reread. Discusses addiction to love, trauma, & abuse from many perspectives. Would highly reccomend.
]]> 54304105 The Pisces and So Sad Today.

Rachel is twenty-four, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of existential control, by way of obsessive food rituals, while working as an underling at a Los Angeles talent management agency. At night, she pedals nowhere on the elliptical machine. Rachel is content to carry on subsisting¡ªuntil her therapist encourages her to take a ninety-day communication detox from her mother, who raised her in the tradition of calorie counting.

Early in the detox, Rachel meets Miriam, a zaftig young Orthodox Jewish woman who works at her favorite frozen yogurt shop and is intent upon feeding her. Rachel is suddenly and powerfully entranced by Miriam¡ªby her sundaes and her body, her faith and her family¡ªand as the two grow closer, Rachel embarks on a journey marked by mirrors, mysticism, mothers, milk, and honey.

Pairing superlative emotional insight with unabashed vivid fantasy, Broder tells a tale of appetites: physical hunger, sexual desire, spiritual longing, and the ways that we as humans can compartmentalize these so often interdependent instincts. Milk Fed is a tender and riotously funny meditation on love, certitude, and the question of what we are all being fed, from one of our major writers on the psyche¡ªboth sacred and profane.]]> 304 Melissa Broder 1982142499 June 3 2022 3.56 2021
author: Melissa Broder
name: June
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2022/06/16
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:
I liked this novel for its discussions about love & intimacy & hunger, and how eating disorders & the idea of indulging or being full are just as physical as they are mental. Some of the language and views of fat people especially the love interest I did not like. & Some of this is just unnecessarily vulgar. It was pretty okay, I enjoyed some of it.
]]> 40046059
In an American suburb in the early 1980s, students at a highly competitive performing arts high school struggle and thrive in a rarified bubble, ambitiously pursuing music, movement, Shakespeare, and, particularly, their acting classes. When within this striving ¡°Brotherhood of the Arts,¡± two freshmen, David and Sarah, fall headlong into love, their passion does not go unnoticed¡ªor untoyed with¡ªby anyone, especially not by their charismatic acting teacher, Mr. Kingsley.

The outside world of family life and economic status, of academic pressure and of their future adult lives, fails to penetrate this school¡¯s walls¡ªuntil it does, in a shocking spiral of events that catapults the action forward in time and flips the premise upside-down. What the reader believes to have happened to David and Sarah and their friends is not entirely true¡ªthough it¡¯s not false, either. It takes until the book¡¯s stunning coda for the final piece of the puzzle to fall into place¡ªrevealing truths that will resonate long after the final sentence.

As captivating and tender as it is surprising, Trust Exercise will incite heated conversations about fiction and truth, friendships and loyalties, and will leave readers with wiser understandings of the true capacities of adolescents and of the powers and responsibilities of adults.]]> 257 Susan Choi 1250309883 June 2 2022
don¡¯t read this book. I get why people can read this & find it very intellectually stimulating but I thought it was sloppy. There is a good 20% in the first half that is sooo cringey. The twist in the middle was really cool but not enough to save the ending.]]> 3.12 2019
author: Susan Choi
name: June
average rating: 3.12
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2022/06/16
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:
**okay okay maybe this book isn¡¯t too bad. i¡¯m gonna think about it for awhile. but after reading some articles on it, i get the angle. but i don¡¯t think that the author clued us into it enough. or maybe she did. i don¡¯t know.

don¡¯t read this book. I get why people can read this & find it very intellectually stimulating but I thought it was sloppy. There is a good 20% in the first half that is sooo cringey. The twist in the middle was really cool but not enough to save the ending.
]]> 39872917 The debut novella from one of contemporary fiction's most exciting young voices, now in a new edition.

Salem, Massachusetts, 1851: McGlue is in the hold, still too drunk to be sure of name or situation or orientation--he may have killed a man. That man may have been his best friend. Intolerable memory accompanies sobriety. A-sail on the high seas of literary tradition, Ottessa Moshfegh gives us a nasty heartless blackguard on a knife-sharp voyage through the fogs of recollection.

They said I've done something wrong? . . . And they've just left me down here to starve. They'll see this inanition and be so damned they'll fall to my feet and pass up hot cross buns slathered in fresh butter and beg I forgive them. All of them . . .: the entire world one by one. Like a good priest I'll pat their heads and nod. I'll dunk my skull into a barrel of gin.]]> 145 Ottessa Moshfegh 052552276X June 5 2022 This was so perfect. 3.25 2014
author: Ottessa Moshfegh
name: June
average rating: 3.25
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2022/06/18
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:
This was so perfect.
]]> 26893819 355 Emma Cline 081299860X June 3 2022 3.48 2016
author: Emma Cline
name: June
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2022/06/20
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:
I loved the prose¡­ it was very enchanting. There are just so many scenes/dialogue that don¡¯t really need to be there? I think this book could have been shorter & tell the same story even better. Overall I enjoyed it!
]]> 56597885 356 Sally Rooney 0374602603 June 5 2022
Also¡ª has Rooney ever written sexual tension so well? Some of those earlier scenes really shocked me.]]> 3.53 2021
author: Sally Rooney
name: June
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2022/06/21
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:
I hate to say it, but Sally Rooney really knew what she was doing here. It is just so smart. Her incorporation of her own thoughts on publishing and the literary world and success it just so interesting to see. The characters are really fresh for a Rooney story, and some bisexual man rep was pretty cool! Felix really shines here and brings the freshness that other Rooney protagonists lack. Alice seems like a self-insert but isn¡¯t devoid of blame. Eileen and Simon play into traditional Rooney characters in a way that feels more personal. It was really genius.

Also¡ª has Rooney ever written sexual tension so well? Some of those earlier scenes really shocked me.
]]> 5821978 276 Jenny Han 1416968237 June 0 2022 3.77 2009
author: Jenny Han
name: June
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2022/07/04
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:
I¡¯m not going to rate this book because I am not the target audience and I don¡¯t see the point in rating a well beloved book lowly. But. This was really disappointing.
]]> 36342706 A biting satire of the false promise of reinvention, by a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and Granta Best Young American Novelist

I'm still trying to make the dream possible: still might finish my cleaning project, still might sign up for that yoga class, still might, still might. I step into the shower and almost faint, an image of taking the day by the throat and bashing its head against the wall floating in my mind.

Thirty-year-old Millie just can't pull it together. Misanthropic and morose, she spends her days killing time at a thankless temp job until she can return home to her empty apartment, where she oscillates wildly between self-recrimination and mild delusion, fixating on all the little ways she might change her life. Then she watches TV until she drops off to sleep, and the cycle begins again.

When the possibility of a full-time job offer arises, it seems to bring the better life she's envisioning - one that involves nicer clothes, fresh produce, maybe even financial independence - within reach. But with it also comes the paralyzing realization, lurking just beneath the surface, of just how hollow that vision has become.

Darkly hilarious and devastating, The New Me is a dizzying descent into the mind of a young woman trapped in the funhouse of American consumer culture.]]> 193 Halle Butler 0143133608 June 4 2022
Also, the author narrates the audiobook, and the performance was just really entertaining.

I would probably reccomend this to people who were turned off by My Year of Rest and Relaxation but want to hear that type of story. Butler spares the filthy details and the absurdity of Moshfegh, but still makes a statement on depression in twenty somethings. If cross comparing, this book could have made more of an effort to address privilege? But I also get why that didn¡¯t happen directly.]]> 3.30 2019
author: Halle Butler
name: June
average rating: 3.30
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2022/07/07
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:
This book was surprisingly funny!! I was amazed by the sense of humor, and the dialogue was always just so absurdly normal in hilarious ways. There were also some relatable moments thrown in. The main character has a relationship with her parents and her friends that I found interesting to read about. The prose was consistently pretty good too. It read fairly easily, nothing pretentious.

Also, the author narrates the audiobook, and the performance was just really entertaining.

I would probably reccomend this to people who were turned off by My Year of Rest and Relaxation but want to hear that type of story. Butler spares the filthy details and the absurdity of Moshfegh, but still makes a statement on depression in twenty somethings. If cross comparing, this book could have made more of an effort to address privilege? But I also get why that didn¡¯t happen directly.
]]> 57286652 Little Fish won a Lambda Literary Award, the Firecracker Award for Fiction, and the Amazon First Novel Award (Canada). Her latest work, A Dream of a Woman, is her first book of short stories since her seminal 2014 collection A Safe Girl to Love. Centering transgender women seeking stable, adult lives, A Dream of a Woman finds quiet truths in prairie high-rises and New York warehouses, and in freezing Canadian winters and drizzly Oregon days.

In "Hazel and Christopher," two childhood friends reconnect as adults after one of them has transitioned. In "Perfect Places," a woman grapples with undesirability as she navigates fetish play with a man. In "Couldn't Hear You Talk Anymore," the narrator reflects on past trauma and what might have been as she recalls tender moments with another trans woman.

An ethereal meditation on partnership, sex, addiction, romance, groundedness, and love, the stories in A Dream of a Woman buzz with quiet intensity and the intimate complexities of being human.]]> 279 Casey Plett 1551528568 June 5 2022
Read this just for Obsolution and Enough Trouble. Plett made me feel both joy and pain for these women. She discusses trans women casually with focuses on sobriety and assault and queer friendships and just coming of age at many different ages? Excellent.]]> 4.28 2021
author: Casey Plett
name: June
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2022/08/14
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:
Objectively 4.5, but definitely a 5.

Read this just for Obsolution and Enough Trouble. Plett made me feel both joy and pain for these women. She discusses trans women casually with focuses on sobriety and assault and queer friendships and just coming of age at many different ages? Excellent.
]]> 58536037 A young, mixed-race vampire must find a way to balance her deep-seated desire to live amongst humans with her incessant hunger in this stunning debut novel from a writer-to-watch.

Lydia is hungry. She's always wanted to try Japanese food. Sashimi, ramen, onigiri with sour plum stuffed inside - the food her Japanese father liked to eat. And then there is bubble tea and iced-coffee, ice cream and cake, and foraged herbs and plants, and the vegetables grown by the other young artists at the London studio space she is secretly squatting in. But, Lydia can't eat any of these things. Her body doesn't work like those of other people. The only thing she can digest is blood, and it turns out that sourcing fresh pigs' blood in London--where she is living away from her vampire mother for the first time - is much more difficult than she'd anticipated.

Then there are the humans--the other artists at the studio space, the people at the gallery she interns at, the strange men that follow her after dark, and Ben, a boyish, goofy-grinned artist she is developing feelings for. Lydia knows that they are her natural prey, but she can't bring herself to feed on them. In her windowless studio, where she paints and studies the work of other artists, binge-watches Buffy the Vampire Slayer and videos of people eating food on YouTube and Instagram, Lydia considers her place in the world. She has many of the things humans wish for--perpetual youth, near-invulnerability, immortality--but, she is miserable; she is lonely; and she is hungry--always hungry.

As Lydia develops as a woman and an artist, she will learn that she must reconcile the conflicts within her--between her demon and human sides, her mixed ethnic heritage, and her relationship with food, and, in turn, humans if she is to find a way to exist in the world. Before any of this, however, she must eat.]]> 240 Claire Kohda 0063140888 June 3 2022
Kohda fuses a common "woman vs. the void" (or whatever we are calling this genre) story with a vampiric twist. Kohda muses on art, food, and life, to which I found the art content the best. The book lost me at the beginning and at the end, but the center of this novel really blew me away. The Vampire is used as allegory in some ways and as plot points in others, but nothing too major happens in this story. It is slow in its beauty. For that reason, it got a little lost on me.

Cool debut, would read from again!]]> 3.46 2022
author: Claire Kohda
name: June
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2022/08/21
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:
Overall: I enjoyed this book, and, if you read similar to me, you will most likely enjoy it as well! I think this book could be marketed to a large audience and be enjoyed universally right now in our book climate, so read it!

Kohda fuses a common "woman vs. the void" (or whatever we are calling this genre) story with a vampiric twist. Kohda muses on art, food, and life, to which I found the art content the best. The book lost me at the beginning and at the end, but the center of this novel really blew me away. The Vampire is used as allegory in some ways and as plot points in others, but nothing too major happens in this story. It is slow in its beauty. For that reason, it got a little lost on me.

Cool debut, would read from again!
]]> 43549917 100 Shira Erlichman 1948579030 June 4 2022
I really enjoyed ¡°Baby & I¡±, ¡°Potion¡±, and especially ¡°How the Jellyfish Prospered¡±.]]> 4.36 2019
author: Shira Erlichman
name: June
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2022/08/21
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:
It took a second for me to get immersed in this collection, but there are so many bangers. Erlichman had a great concept and stuck to it well, but I find the poems less about lithium to capture me more. Nevertheless, the technical skill of the work amazed me, especially the way she plays with construction and perspective.

I really enjoyed ¡°Baby & I¡±, ¡°Potion¡±, and especially ¡°How the Jellyfish Prospered¡±.
]]> 60009498 NPR ¡°BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR¡± SELECTION
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS¡¯ CHOICE A virtuosic debut from a gifted violinist searching for a new mode of artistic becoming How does time shape consciousness and consciousness, time? Do we live in time, or does time live in us? And how does music, with its patterns of rhythm and harmony, inform our experience of time? Uncommon Measure explores these questions from the perspective of a young Korean American who dedicated herself to perfecting her art until performance anxiety forced her to give up the dream of becoming a concert solo violinist. Anchoring her story in illuminating research in neuroscience and quantum physics, Hodges traces her own passage through difficult family dynamics, prejudice, and enormous personal expectations to come to terms with the meaning of a life reimagined¡ªone still shaped by classical music but moving toward the freedom of improvisation.]]> 224 Natalie Hodges 1942658974 June 5 2022
In full, Hodges addresses topics of music performance, science of time, quantum physics (yes! and it was awesome!), and family. As an ex-violinist-ish, I really felt for her on many topics related to orchestra culture. I also, however, was very enlightened by the way she talked about being Asian in relation to playing the violin and all the ways that that challenged her. The failure to reach greatness or make it big struck hard, as someone who felt that pressure at a much smaller scale as a musician. Her thoughts on the human condition and connections will stick with me for awhile. And I listened to some great work because of this! (Watch Gabriela Montero Improvisations please!!!, she is so charming & so talented!)]]> 3.75 2022
author: Natalie Hodges
name: June
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/08/22
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:
Wow. This essay collection blew me away. Short review: go try this book out. Regardless of the topic and its interest to you. Try it. The first essay isn¡¯t the strongest, but read up to Symmetry Breaking. Please.

In full, Hodges addresses topics of music performance, science of time, quantum physics (yes! and it was awesome!), and family. As an ex-violinist-ish, I really felt for her on many topics related to orchestra culture. I also, however, was very enlightened by the way she talked about being Asian in relation to playing the violin and all the ways that that challenged her. The failure to reach greatness or make it big struck hard, as someone who felt that pressure at a much smaller scale as a musician. Her thoughts on the human condition and connections will stick with me for awhile. And I listened to some great work because of this! (Watch Gabriela Montero Improvisations please!!!, she is so charming & so talented!)
]]> 44142745 Librarian's Note: this is an alternate cover edition - ISBN 10: 0374529949 (ISBN 13: 9780374529949)

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the emptiness and ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that both blisters and haunts the reader.
Set in a place beyond good and evil¡ªliterally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul¡ªPlay It As It Lays remains, more than three decades after its original publication, a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis and stunning in the still-startling intensity of its prose.]]> 214 Joan Didion June 5 2022 ¡°Why not?¡± Electric.<br /> 3.90 1970
author: Joan Didion
name: June
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1970
rating: 5
read at: 2022/08/27
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:
¡°Why not?¡± Electric.

]]> 57693639 Pure Colour is a galaxy of a novel: explosive, celestially bright, huge, and streaked with beauty. It is a contemporary bible, an atlas of feeling, and an absurdly funny guide to the great (and terrible) things about being alive. Sheila Heti is a philosopher of modern experience, and she has reimagined what a book can hold.

Here we are, just living in the first draft of Creation, which was made by some great artist, who is now getting ready to tear it apart.

In this first draft of the world, a woman named Mira leaves home to study. There, she meets Annie, whose tremendous power opens Mira¡¯s chest like a portal¡ªto what, she doesn¡¯t know. When Mira is older, her beloved father dies, and his spirit passes into her. Together, they become a leaf on a tree. But photosynthesis gets boring, and being alive is a problem that cannot be solved, even by a leaf. Eventually, Mira must remember the human world she¡¯s left behind, including Annie, and choose whether or not to return.]]> 224 Sheila Heti 0374603944 June 1 2022
I liked one thing. I liked the ways that Heti acknowledged how we experience the world in very individual ways. But also, she divides people into three categories and then makes assertions that love cannot be shared across those different attachment styles, so I might take back that statement.

What did I hate the most? The ending. Yeah, that was really silly. Is this book better intended for children? Also, the tree/leaf parts... um. If this was a possession story, that would have been weird and awesome. But it was just strange. So many sections drag because Heti does not say many original things in the philosophical musings department, and, when she does, the referenced science is not true or not the whole truth? Really upsetting. Do not reccomend.]]> 3.46 2022
author: Sheila Heti
name: June
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2022
rating: 1
read at: 2022/09/12
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:
This was not good. Going into it, I was under the impression it was artistic literature with musing on philosophy and poetic writing. And I guess that was what it was? To me, it read as poorly written self-help. Short thought: don't read this unless you can really enjoy some self-help.

I liked one thing. I liked the ways that Heti acknowledged how we experience the world in very individual ways. But also, she divides people into three categories and then makes assertions that love cannot be shared across those different attachment styles, so I might take back that statement.

What did I hate the most? The ending. Yeah, that was really silly. Is this book better intended for children? Also, the tree/leaf parts... um. If this was a possession story, that would have been weird and awesome. But it was just strange. So many sections drag because Heti does not say many original things in the philosophical musings department, and, when she does, the referenced science is not true or not the whole truth? Really upsetting. Do not reccomend.
]]> 54620517 * 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography, Finalist.

* A Best Book of 2020 ¡ª Kirkus Reviews, Book Riot, CBC, Globe and Mail, Largehearted Boy, Maudlin House

"In this stunning essay-collection-cum-prose-poem-cycle, Belcourt meditates on the difficulty and necessity of finding joy as a queer NDN in a country that denies that joy all too often. Out of the 'ruins of the museum of political depression' springs a 'tomorrow free of the rhetorical trickery of colonizers everywhere.' Happiness, this beautiful book says, is the ultimate act of resistance."
¡ªMichelle Hart, O, The Oprah Magazine

Synopsis
The youngest ever winner of the Griffin Prize mines his personal history in a brilliant new essay collection seeking to reconcile the world he was born into with the world that could be.

For readers of Ocean Vuong and Maggie Nelson and fans of Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot, A History of My Brief Body is a brave, raw, and fiercely intelligent collection of essays and vignettes on grief, colonial violence, joy, love, and queerness.

Billy-Ray Belcourt¡¯s debut memoir opens with a tender letter to his kokum and memories of his early life in the hamlet of Joussard, Alberta, and on the Driftpile First Nation. Piece by piece, Billy-Ray¡¯s writings invite us to unpack and explore the big and broken world he inhabits every day, in all its complexity and contradiction: a legacy of colonial violence and the joy that flourishes in spite of it; first loves and first loves lost; sexual exploration and intimacy; the act of writing as a survival instinct and a way to grieve. What emerges is not only a profound meditation on memory, gender, anger, shame, and ecstasy, but also the outline of a way forward. With startling honesty, and in a voice distinctly and assuredly his own, Belcourt situates his life experiences within a constellation of seminal queer texts, among which this book is sure to earn its place.

Eye-opening, intensely emotional, and excessively quotable, A History of My Brief Body demonstrates over and over again the power of words to both devastate and console us.]]> 142 Billy-Ray Belcourt 1937512932 June 5 2022 4.27 2020
author: Billy-Ray Belcourt
name: June
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2022/10/29
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:

]]> 292953
Expansive, lyrical, and groundbreaking poetry by Ruth Stone, winner of the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award]]> 128 Ruth Stone 0963818317 June 0 2022 Like, whatever? 4.15 1996
author: Ruth Stone
name: June
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at: 2022/11/12
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:
Like, whatever?
]]> 32902672 annual tidal waves to clear out errors, a ban on all forms of nostalgia. The new world was asking for wants
so I sent off my music with personal meaning, pilgrimages for self's sake, some feelings ranked for translation.
To spoil the end, I wasn't given a window or door, but a boat, blindfold. To spoil the beginning, I was given an oar.
Shown the way to skim water over the top like a breath. --from ODETTE]]> 44 Sara Gelston 1934832553 June 4 2022 this book is blue 4.14
author: Sara Gelston
name: June
average rating: 4.14
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2022/12/22
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:
this book is blue
]]> 341884
"She was once our savage Rimbaud, but suffering has turned her into our St. John of the Cross, a mystic full of compassion."--Edmund White]]> 72 Patti Smith 0393316262 June 3 2022 4.04 1996
author: Patti Smith
name: June
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1996
rating: 3
read at: 2022/12/22
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:

]]> 54348017
Nina Mingya Powles is a poet and zinemaker from Aotearoa New Zealand, currently living in London. She is the author of a food memoir, Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai (The Emma Press, 2020), and several poetry pamphlet collections including Luminescent (Seraph Press, 2017) and Girls of the Drift (Seraph Press, 2014). In 2018 she was one of three winners of the inaugural Women Poets' Prize, and in 2019 won the Nan Shepherd Prize for Nature Writing. She is the founding editor of Bitter Melon¿à¹Ï, a risograph press that publishes limited-edition poetry pamphlets by Asian writers.]]> 72 Nina Mingya Powles 1911027999 June 5 2022 4.10 2020
author: Nina Mingya Powles
name: June
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2022/12/30
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:
Best poetry collection I¡¯ve read in a long time. I like how Chen Chen says on the back of the book: ¡°I so love this poet¡¯s appetite.¡±
]]> 33898685
These poems are brilliant and dangerous. The opening poem, ¡°Invisible Woman, Dancing,¡± is the best protest poem of the decade. The speaker attends a party full of casual, good-intentioned racists and ableists. The ending of the poem is explosive. Constance Merritt shows incredible range ¨C erotic poems to a wayward lover; blues lyrics so rhythmic I can nearly hear the guitar; and devotional poems that offer ¡°this, you know, is love, is all, the end.¡± Blind Girl Grunt is a major work by a major poet.
¡ªJillian Weise

Merritt¡¯s latest collection is a back in bend¡ªbend in love, bend in prayer, and bend in anger. A Blues infiltrates these lines and stanzas, ready to sing and stay (as any devoted lover) through the long haul. And the haul here is a woman, her myriad contents, in medias res.
¡ªCM Burroughs

Beyond their shared¡ªand dazzling¡ªimmunity to taboos, the poems in Constance Merritt¡¯s fourth book are very different from each other. Different in form, from stern villanelles to get-drunk-on-them blues poems to wandering narratives. And they are different in their tones, with ruthless self-awareness next to sexy lullaby next to persuasive rage at being ¡°unmoored and vanishing¡± beyond ¡°the flag of whiteness.¡± Even within single poems, tone is protean. ¡°The Less Than Greater Than Blues¡± is goofily playful and also as blunt as blunt gets about the roots of the suffering we cause each other. The penultimate poem ¡°Advent¡± shifts between a longing that intends to wreck and a longing that intends to redeem. In fact the book as a whole shifts between these longings. As do we. Merritt implicates us gently but without hesitation, wrapping us into the ¡°brilliant skin, the ruinous eyes,/ the body poised in transit¡± that opens the collection and that judges and blesses, throughout it. Blind Girl Grunt is supple, and rigorous, and so surprising. It is vital.
¡ªTaije Silverman]]> 76 Constance Merritt 0997914912 June 3 2022 3.92 2017
author: Constance Merritt
name: June
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2022/12/30
date added: 2024/11/29
shelves: 2022
review:

]]>