I missed a mid-month post in August, but still got through a lot of reading. What book are you unwinding with over the long weekend?
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
I started this month with a reread; Adichie is one of my very favorite authors. The novel follows a young woman experiencing and blogging about what it means to be Black in the U.S. and her complicated feelings when she returns to Nigeria. Some pieces of her old life have changed, and some pieces she experiences anew as an “Americanah.” Lots to chew on in this book and beautiful writing.
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee
This is a gorgeous collection of essays on reading, writing, and identity. Chee discusses everything from his stint as a Tarot reader to protests at the height of the AIDS epidemic. I read passages of this again and again, savoring the poetic writing.
Modern Lovers by Emma Straub
I found this novel “meh.” It struck me as a first draft of a book I could have loved by draft three, with a dragging first half that started to pick up by the end. At its core, a book about shifting relationships among friends and spouses, and their children.
A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver
An approachable poetry collection largely about our relationship with the natural world. With lines like “And I am in that delicious and important place, roaring with laughter, full of earth-praise,” so many of these pieces made me grin.
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
I wrote down a few helpful ideas from this book, but most of it felt pretty generic to me. It’s meant to be an inspirational book to get you creating and especially writing, but there wasn’t much to it.
Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil by Ananda Lima
This has to be my favorite narrow genre of book - strange short stories, linked together, and playing with different forms. You can read one of the stories here, about a mother haunted by her still-living daughter’s ghost. The book is structured around a writer sleeping with the devil at a Halloween party and writing stories for him in the years after. It’s odd and I loved it.
This month Margot loved Stories I Wrote for the Devil and Sazerac’s sweet head is full of inspiration from Big Magic.
With summer officially ending, are you making a shift in your reading? Picking up anything new with back to school in mind? Let me know in the comments or reply to this email!