Reading Is For Nerds

all the books I’ve read over the holiday break so far:

One Day Soon Time Will Have No Place Left To Hide by Christian Kiefer

While it took me a little while to get into this novella from Nouvella, once I was in I was hooked. I devoured the rest quickly like a package of jelly beans and while reading I got a sugar rush, felt high, crashed, then leveled out. On it’s surface an examination of a relationship, this novella was, for me, about conversations: the ways we talk to each other, what we say, what we don’t.

Talk by Linda Rosenkrantz

When I started reading this book a few weeks ago, I got ten pages in and put it down to text at least two friends that they had to pick up a copy. A book made up entirely of recorded conversations between Martha, Vincent, and Emily. I over-identified with Emily, a sassy, pithy, sweetheart who sometimes drinks too much. Gossipy and devastating, about the boundaries between healthy and co-dependent friendships. How to survive when all the men are shit to you and friendship is a lifesaver and a gauntlet. Also: lots of laying on the beach.

Animals by Emma Jane Unsworth

A book about female friendship which I knew would punch me right in the fucking stomach, and it did. Although a good percentage of this book was some of the best descriptions of hangovers I’ve ever read (not as good as the one in Cassandra at the Wedding but close), I needed to have a daytime tequila cocktail while I was ready to keep myself steady and my eyes dry. I took in a little too much wine that night, as if mimicking the characters. I identified with both Laura and Tyler, somehow, best friends who are as different as they are the same. The language in this novel is fantastic, it rolls along.

Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal

I’ve been dying to have a chance to really sink into this novel since I bought it earlier this year, and it slid into me gently, I didn’t have to chew to take it in. J. Ryan treats every single one of his characters with such tenderness, such empathy. Beautiful, delicious.

I Await the Devil’s Coming by Mary MacLane

Repetitive as hell, so I got through it really slowly. I think I started reading this 9 months ago, taking in a page or two whenever I felt like wallowing in misery. The book is Mary MacLane’s diary of three months of her life at nineteen: bored, lonely, conceited, and depressed. She’s miserable, and her misery is welcoming. She’s little funny in how seriously she takes herself and the way it’s always nice to laugh at your own darkest parts.

McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh

I’m sick of books with a first-person narrator who, through their circumstances or the things they consume, can’t provide for the reader a clear picture of the goings-on. I want clearer images, sharper lines. As a reader, right now, I want to be able to see. However, this book was pretty magnificent and really made me want to read Ottessa’s novel. She’s almost alarmingly good.