It’s no secret that I love words. And I am endlessly in awe of people who can puzzle-piece them together in a way that makes me feel so deeply — so seen, so heard, so full of thoughts and questions, so in awe of the world, so imaginative, so creative, so in love with all the weirdness and messiness and embarrassment and simpleness that comes with being a human person.
And FICTION! You mean to tell me that these people just create these whole worlds in their own brain, and then are able to articulate them so clearly and so detailed in a way that makes me feel like I am there, that I am them, that this is my world too?!
I don’t know. I just think it’s really cool how we can read words that build worlds in our mind. Also, reading means you can’t look at your phone.
Here is a list of some of my favorite books I’ve read this year, accompanied with a quote from each. Sometimes it’s hard to articulate why something resonates with you, so I’m cheating and letting the author continue to do the talking for me.
Jamesland by Michelle Huneven
I read this one in February and I have not stopped thinking about it since. Actually. I probably think about it at least once a week. Really great for anyone who has just moved to Los Angeles, particularly East LA, and wants to learn to love this city for it’s bedrock, what’s underneath the glitzy facade of the LA stories we are more commonly served up (which are also more generally set on the West side). Also great for Griffith Park lore. RIP P-22.
“My darling, this melancholy is not a medical condition, but a philosophical one: ‘tis nothing but the bitter manufacture of my own ruminations. I need to read and reflect without interruption. Europe affords me this.”
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
This is not the first time you’ve heard about this one, I know. But if you haven’t read it yet…read it. Also great for Angelenos (I regularly drive past the former location of the Happy Foot Sad Foot sign, and I think about this book every time).
“Sam's doctor said to him, "The good news is that the pain is in your head."
But I am in my head, Sam thought.”If We Were Villains by M L Rio
Theater kids x dark academia. Maybe not for everyone, but definitely for me. A thriller that held my attention until the very end.
“How tremendous the agony of unmade decisions.”
Smile: The Story of a Face by Sarah Ruhl
Sarah Ruhl is one of my favorite playwrights (her Eurydice is truly *poetry* in a play). I discovered this book in a neighborhood Little Library while on a long Madeline walk, and it ended up being an author signed copy?! Magical.
“And in this day and age, we sometimes seem to care more about the record of joy than the experience of joy itself.”
The Topeka School by Ben Lerner
A friend recommended this to me after she learned I was also a child of a psychologist (don’t worry Mom, it’s a good thing).
Come for the topical subject matter, stay for some of the most brilliant sentence structure I’ve ever seen. I finished this one last week, after taking half an edible, and it somehow felt like reading slam poetry, or like slam-poetry 3D except no visual only words & feelings. I don’t know. Truly “a triumph of ventriloquism,” as reviewed by The Times Literary Supplement (UK).
“But there are no grown-ups, that’s what you must grow up to know fully; your parents were just two more bodies experiencing landscape and weather, trying to make sense by vibrating columns of air, redescribing contingency as necessity with religion or World Ice Theory or the Jewish science, cutting profound truths with their opposites as the regimes of meaning collapse into the spread.”
Bad Thoughts by Nada Alic
A story collection that at once makes you laugh out loud and bites just where it hurts. Full of my absolute favorite kind of characters: deeply unlikable and deeply relatable at the same time.
“A group of middle-aged joggers shuffled past me taking shallow, labored breaths, their faces bright with blood. I gave them a knowing smile and a nod, as if to say, I too have known great suffering. Pain touched everything I saw. It was in the hulking man, violently rubbing his eye, tormented by an eyelash. It was in the ceaseless honking from a busy intersection in the distance, begging to be heard. And in the rival honk, wanting the same. A chorus of dogs barked. A pebble rattled in my shoe. A bug went in my mouth. Every living thing in pain, together.”
Honorable Mention: Meek, by Penelope Skinner (a play)
I devoured this in one sitting, in under an hour. A play set in a modern dystopia that is unfortunately all-too-easy to imagine. 'This play is translated from an imaginary unknown Scandinavian language.’ If that doesn’t hook you…
For all my fellow bibliophiles, here are some of the most anticipated books of 2023. Wait, you mean you don’t spend your Sunday afternoon adding new titles to your Goodreads..?
Happy holidays and see you in the future xx
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