in case you missed the first one, here's the description: i have decided to become a genius.
to accomplish this, i'm going to work my way through the collected stories of various authors, reading + reviewing 1 story every day until i get bored / lose every single follower / am struck down by a vengeful deity.
and yes, i chose this one due in no small part to miss phoebe bridgers.
DAY 1: THE HUSBAND STITCH this is truly one of the raddest pieces of writing i have ever read. i don't even know what to say. lovely writing, gorgeous allusions, wonderful style, brilliant structure, fantastic ending, genius title. a pitch-perfect retelling. i can't even deal. rating: 5
DAY 2: INVENTORY a story about sexual encounters during a pandemic quarantine is hitting a bit too close to home for me right now. rating: 3.75
DAY 3: MOTHERS you know that feeling when you start a short story and you're working at full attention to figure out where you are and who you're with and what's going on because you'll only have a few pages to both know and appreciate it? that feeling stuck around until the very last with this one. in a good way. rating: 4.5
DAY 4: ESPECIALLY HEINOUS hey so Carmen Maria Machado is f*cking amazing. this is brilliant. rating: 5
DAY 5: REAL WOMEN HAVE BODIES i keep waiting for a dud of a story and it just...won't come. genius end to end. rating: 4.5
DAY 6: EIGHT BITES okay ouch, carmen!!!!! this is starting to hurt!!!! rating: 4.5
DAY 7: THE RESIDENT so maybe this one actually scared me!!! what about it???? rating: 4.5
DAY 8: DIFFICULT AT PARTIES not my favorite. actually probably my least favorite. rating: 3.5
OVERALL this is a brilliant work by a brilliant author, and it's greater than the sum of its parts. i didn't miss a single day (despite having work and holidays and cross-country flights in that time), and not only that, but i looked forward to my time with this every day.
Give me a book I hate and I’ll write a full-on thesis on it. Prime example: Just yesterday I spent one huI do not know how to write five star reviews.
Give me a book I hate and I’ll write a full-on thesis on it. Prime example: Just yesterday I spent one human hour on a seven-page one star rant review. And honestly? Time well spent.
But when it comes to something I truly love? I’m illiterate. Can’t read. Can’t write. Call me Jared, 19. What am I doing on this book site? Couldn’t tell you.
I WANT to scream about this from the rooftops. I want each and every one of you to read it, because it is utterly one of a kind and it’s gripping from page one and the characters are fantastic and the writing is witty and beautiful and it is…
I tried to trick myself into stating all the ways in which it is amazing, but as always I got overwhelmed and ran out of words to describe it. (The one scenario in known human existence that can get me to shut up for even one second.)
Anytime I write a five star review, I struggle to render perfection onto the page, and I just make myself want to reread.
Damn...I really, really want to reread.
Bottom line: Don’t take my insufficient words for it!!! But read this book immediately.
The writing is lovely. The characters are charming and real. The stories give an immersive look at the as-yet-otherwise-unknown-to-me experience of a Scandinavian summer that feels totally new, and simultaneously gives a look at a childhood summer that is so familiar and comfortable and nostalgic.
It's a dream. That's all.
Bottom line: I don't intend to let another summer go by without me reading this book during it.
------------ pre-review
saw this one coming from a mile away.
review to come / 5 stars
------------ currently-reading updates
have you ever picked up a book and instantly known it was exactly what you needed it to be?
Okay, I do also want to say that this is such a beautiful and painful representation of how white America has stolen the stories of Black people. As the reader of this story is able to learn the story of these bloodlines over the course of 300 years, constructing a narrative from ancestry to the present, so must the reader be aware of how this history has been kept from the very people who are living it. No character in this story is able to have the breadth of knowledge that any reader does, and that is not only because of the slave trade but because of the school-to-prison pipeline, because of the war on drugs, because of the racism that is present in our society to this day.
If you are able to read this book without awareness of your accountability in that process, read it again.
Also, I can mention that even though we rarely follow one character for more than 20 or so pages, nearly all of them manage to be full and real and unforgettable. (@ authors who manage to write 300 pages about one character who I still can’t be bothered to care about - you are ON NOTICE.)
And lastly, I will write the four nonsense stream of thought sentences I jotted down upon finishing this: “This is just so gorgeous” “The first 5 star I’ve given in months” “You will never ever read a book like this ever” “What a gift”
Bottom line: Required reading.
--------------- pre-review “Originally, he'd wanted to focus his work on the convict leasing system that had stolen years off of his great-grandpa H's life, but the deeper into the research he got, the bigger the project got. How could he talk about Great-Grandpa H's story without also talking about his grandma Willie and the millions of other black people who had migrated north, fleeing Jim Crow? And if he mentioned the Great Migration, he'd have to talk about the cities that took that flock in. He'd have to talk about Harlem, And how could he talk about Harlem without mentioning his father's heroin addiction - the stints in prison, the criminal record? And if he was going to talk about heroin in Harlem in the '60s, wouldn't he also have to talk about crack everywhere in the '80s? And if he wrote about crack, he'd inevitably be writing, to, about the "war on drugs." And if he started talking about the war on drugs, he'd be talking about how nearly half of the black men he grew up with were on their way either into or out of what had become the harshest prison system in the world. And if he talked about why friends from his hood were doing five-year bids for possession of marijuana when nearly all the white people he'd gone to college with smoked it openly every day, he'd get so angry that he'd slam the research book on the table of the beautiful but deadly silent Lane Reading Room of Green Library of Stanford University. And if he slammed the book down, then everyone in the room would stare and all they would see would be his skin and his anger, and they'd think they knew something about him, and it would be the same something that had justified putting his great-grandpa H in prison, only it would be different too, less obvious than it once was.”
review to come / 5 stars
--------------- currently-reading updates
150,000 ratings with an average of 4.43..........
if i don't like this book i'm canceling myself.
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i am spending this month reading books by Black authors. please join me!
The best things in the world are as follows: - when you perfectly toast a bagel. I mean we all know how easy it is to underdo that bad boy so it’s stilThe best things in the world are as follows: - when you perfectly toast a bagel. I mean we all know how easy it is to underdo that bad boy so it’s still a weird squishy bread circle or even more likely, burn that baby till it’s glorified charcoal but when you really find that sweet spot...(chef’s kiss) - baking cookies and then eating them while they’re still warm, and then you eat a whole tray because if you made them they don’t count as caloric - genuine, believable enemies to lovers where you really feel them fall in love and also it’s funny and also everything is perfect.
Because I am extremely picky about books and am disappointed by most of what I read, I like to do this very adorable and charming thing where when I like one thing, I assume I will like everything that is similar to it.
I very much enjoyed The Hating Game (possibly to an extent in which I compared myself both to a jack o’lantern and a gif from Disney’s Tangled in my review, I don’t know, who’s to say), and so I assumed I would like every rom-com. Especially ones that were actually funny.
Especially-especially of the enemies to lovers.
And, like the new Star Wars movie and orange-flavored Skittles and every other disappointing thing, that was not to be.
But finally, FINALLY, my suffering has been rewarded.
Because...dare I say it…
This book is better than The Hating Game.
I KNOW.
Look at us. Hey! Look at us. Who would’ve thought?
Not me.
This is The Hating Game in terms of tropes and plot and the overall yay-falling-in-love feeling it gives off, but with better characters. And more humor.
GOD. This is so funny it doesn’t make sense. Since when are books funny? When was the last time I truly laughed at a book and I wasn’t laughing out of all the anger and hatred in my cold dark soul?
Not sure. Well before this, I’ll tell you that.
But it wasn’t just a barrel of laughs my friends. It also made my heart hurt, but in the good emotional way where you’re like, oh my god...fools...just love each other...kiss already...except also don’t because the drama and conflict and miscommunication and will-they-won’t-they (they will) is the fun part.
Basically what I’m saying is: I don’t know how to love anything without being obsessed with it, and I already want to read this eleven more times.
Bottom line: I didn’t play Animal Crossing for this! ANIMAL CROSSING!!!
-------------- project 5 star update
welcome back to PROJECT 5 STAR, a project in which i revisit all the books i've ever given five stars, mostly out of cynicism and masochism, but in this case just as an excuse to reread the most perfect romance novel of all time.
simply rereading this so i can write a kickass review and not because i've been searching for a reason
-------------- pre-review
please don't tell anyone i burst into tears at the gushy part of this book. it'll ruin my bad-boy image.
review to come / POSSIBLY FIVE STARS
-------------- tbr review
just saw this quote from this book: “I’m a miserable cynic (a newer development) and a dreamy romantic (always have been), and it’s such a terrible combination that I don’t know how to tolerate myself” and instantly started reading it because girl if that ain't me...more
And once I am there, I will stay there for a very long time.
When I found this book, it was in the literary fiction section of a bookstore basement, where the used books were kept in winding rows.
Another thing about me: I keep a wish-list of books I mean to buy. When I want to buy one that isn’t on that list, I achieve a Bare Minimum Requirement of reading a few pages and seeing if I feel ordained to keep going. (I almost always do.)
So in this bookstore basement, on a Thursday night around 9:30 or 10 pm (yes, I know this is late. The coolest bookstores are open late), I found a chair in a corner under an unseemly pipe, plunked myself down, and started reading.
Over the next hour, a series of quirky college students had loud and performative first dates in a cycle so coordinated it was as if they scheduled it. First two girls yelled about how one of them had seen Panic! at the Disco at a rural gas station. Then a boy and a girl did an intentionally adorable thing where they pointed out the title of a book and tried to guess the plot (this was the girl’s idea, and the boy’s interest was never more than half-hearted). Then two older women shouted across the shelves about where the children’s section was before learning the answer: right f*cking in front of them.
That last one may not have been a date, but I promise it was equally annoying.
Through it all, I sat and read this book.
It wasn’t even a comfy chair, or a particularly pleasant room. It was just that good of a book.
My favorite TED talk (which is a very low bar) has been Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story” since I watched it in a gender class a few years ago. In it, Adichie explains the pervasiveness of stereotypes and bigotry when only one story about a certain group is being told - she uses the story of Africa being a continent of poverty without technology, the only one told in America, as an example.
After I watched that talk in that class, and after I got home and watched it again, I should have gone right out and bought everything she’d ever written. But I didn’t. What a dummy.
This book is divine.
It is so, so beautifully written. I care about each and every character in a way that hurts my heart. It’s nearly 600 pages long, and character-driven to the point that there’s essentially no plot other than the daily progression of our protagonists’ lives, but if it were twice as long as I wouldn’t have minded.
It’s just that good.
I feel like it expanded my whole brain.
Everyone should get to have that feeling.
Bottom line: Everyone should read this book.
------------ pre-review
i missed reading this the second i finished it.
review to come / 5 stars
------------ currently-reading updates
could someone please inform the work i'm supposed to be doing that i won't be doing it due to suddenly being unable to put this down? k thanks
------------ tbr review
the best way to stay on track on your reading challenge is to read three books at once and also one of those books is 600 pages long...more
I have exactly one criticism of this book, and I will get it out of the way immediately:
This takes place in purgatory (awesome). Purgatory is set up aI have exactly one criticism of this book, and I will get it out of the way immediately:
This takes place in purgatory (awesome). Purgatory is set up as an airport terminal in which everyone has to figure their sh*t out in order to catch their flight to heaven (amazing). Everyone stays in an airport hotel with lumpy mattresses and an orange motif (also fitting).
Existing in a world where every food is wrapped in a jiggly nightmare of savory Jell-o is nothing short of hellish. That cuisine has absolutely no place in anywhere other than hell itself.
Now that we’ve got the complaining out of the way.
This is an almost perfect book. Ignore the bit I just complained about and it is totally perfect.
It is Emily Henry-esque, which is, as anyone who has the misfortune of knowing me knows, the highest possible praise I can give any object, individual, media, or element of matter.
It is so funny. The concept is brilliant. The writing is descriptive and visual and lovely. The main character is a gem. Okay, all the characters are gems.
And yes, fine, maybe I could have lived without the romance, but I didn’t hate it and I see its purpose and overall that may have much more to do with my cold unfeeling heart than the romance itself.
Bottom line: I can’t wait for Gabby Noone to write another fantastic creative funny ridiculous book so I can graduate from “appreciation” to “complete obsession.”
(Disclaimer: I have read her Twitter feed as if it were a book once or twice.)
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hey if this book isn't on your radar you are making a BIG MISTAKE.
HUGE, even.
review to come / 5 stars (i think)
------------ tbr review
couldn't think of a better place to read this, a book about a world in which purgatory is an airport, than while waiting for my plane...more
It’s a rendition of life in its mundanities and monotony, a display of the fallacies and frustrations that make up our daily story, but one that refuses to flinch away from the breath-stealing beauty of it. The miraculousness and gorgeousness and fated magic of life.
And that type of story rarely wins awards. It is dismissed and mocked as treacly and feel-good. In all honesty I feel that if this book were written about or by a woman, it’d be relegated to a corner of by-rights-less-serious “women’s fiction,” called even a romantic comedy and never ever ever spoken of in the same sentence as the word Pulitzer.
But it is not overdone and tired to depict everyday life as wonderful and gorgeous. In fact, it’s the bravest story you can write.
That’s all I have to say.
Bottom line: How lovely.
---------- pre-review
reading this book was like: sitting in a brightly lit room when the lights are suddenly extinguished, and there is a moment of discomfited surprise before the realization that you are actually quite tired, and the reprieve from the fluorescence is a loveliness and a mercy, and you settle into it and shut your weary eyes and the light has returned as abruptly as it was sent away.
i didn't want the beautiful vacation that was this story to end.
review to come / 5 stars
---------- currently-reading updates
don't mind me, just jumping on a bandwagon two years late...more
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