read with me: may 2023
I’ve been so much better at putting down books that don’t capture my heart or mind right away, and it has made reading so much more fun and enjoyable and allowed me to read way more amazing stuff and far fewer meh books.
I’m basically a publicist for the public library at this point, but having a library membership lets me pick up and put down way more books than I would if I had the guilt of buying books and not reading them hanging over me. Plus no Amazon! Go grab your card before the summer starts if you don’t have one already.
Books:
Beloved
I don’t know how it has taken me so long to read Toni Morrison, especially because I have her philosophy about work pinned on my phone. I try to read at least one classic piece of literature every year, and this year I decided to tackle some of Morrison’s books since they’ve been the subject of the horrific book bans taking over the country. If you haven’t read it yet, Beloved is historical fiction and tells the story of a formerly enslaved family living in Ohio. It is heart-wrenching and filled with language that leaves you awe-struck that someone can write characters and place so well. It is the type of empathetic writing that I’ve been searching for this year.
Salt Slow
This slim book of immersive short stories blends realism, fantasy, and horror. One story is about a city where people stop being able to sleep, losing their sense of time passing. Another is about a woman who keeps a wolf as a pet. Another centers around a couple that lives on a ship after the ocean engulfs all land across the world. The stories are evocative and stuck with me, but be warned: they kind of freaked me out when I read them before bed.
Strangers to Ourselves
I have followed Rachel Aviv’s smart writing in the New Yorker for a while, so I was excited to read this with my book club. It’s another genre-bending book… is it memoir? Is it a collection of well-reported and researched essays? Journalism? It’s unputdownable and profoundly grapples with some of the most important questions we need to tackle as a society. What role should psychiatric medications play in our society? How do we even define what “mental health” looks like?
Piranesi
This is a weird jewel of a book that many of you have probably read already. It’s one of those books you give to people without telling them anything about it and just say, “Read this. Please.” My brother did that for me and I’m so grateful. It’s hard to categorize this wondrous book. It’s a mystery, a fantasy, and an allegory all wrapped in one, and leaves you with this strange sense of both peace and longing. I can’t recommend it more highly.
Reads:
Interview with jamieson webster
Want to fix your mind? Let your body talk
How usher became the new king of vegas
What if climate change meant not doom — but abundance?
My months were better because…
Eating steamed taro buns, smooth operator, treating myself by buying fresh ramen noodles at the grocery store, natasha lyonne interview, watching orna guralnik work her magic on the tv show couple’s therapy, discovering the blissful joys of trail running, cooking olive brine chicken, watching scenes from a marriage, feeling nostalgic watching are you there god? it’s me margaret, the 100 foot wave, finally watching crouching tiger hidden dragon which is a masterpiece, watching noir 40s mysteries when my mind is tired, eating the most incredible Turkish flatbread in london, obsessing over the celtics (RIP) and finding the strangest and most unexpected joy watching basketball with my family, visiting the farrallon islands and seeing SO MANY WHALES and puffins, hiking in the sierras, all of the fragrant wildflowers sprouting across Northern California, visiting the narrows for the first time, doing my second green fondo climate ride. For my Bay Area friends: chome, pineapple king bakery, the ansel adams exhibit at the de young, the best bagels i’ve EVER had in the bay, and Heidrun meadery in point reyes which is magical. And probably most importantly, trying not to be so precious about my successes and failures.
As always, tell me what you’re reading or listening to or enjoying. And if you know anyone who you think would like to receive this sporadic email, send them this link.
Love,
Julia