We’re getting closer to warmer weather and longer days, we can practically taste the groundbreaking-ness of florals for spring.
And not to brag but we’re having a really good reading streak. It’s been one of those months where reading hasn’t just helped up recharge, but has been reinvigorating. Like, sending screenshots of our favorite passages to our closest friends kind of reinvigorating. We more than likely have Dolly Alderton and Sloane Crosley to thank, given their new releases, but we swear, something’s in the air. Could it be Sally Rooney’s new book announcement? Tulip season? The buzz around new music from so many of our favorite artists that’s making us feel inspired? Whatever is contributing, we're into it.
Buy yourself some flowers,
Barbara, Kelsey, and Madeline
Share the newsletter with anyone you think would enjoy it! Follow us on TikTok and Instagram for more content between sends.
And by the way, if you upgrade to a paid subscription, we’ll plan your next book club 👀
Barbara
AirMail published an article earlier this month called “A Night Celebrating Sloane Crosley,” in anticipation of her new memoir Grief Is for People, which came out on Tuesday. Consider this review my celebration of Sloane Crosley, too. Grief is for People traces the impact of two significant, but unrelated, events in the author’s life in the summer of 2019. That June, Crosley’s apartment is robbed; multiple pieces of heirloom jewelry from her late grandmother are stolen, including an amber amulet. Exactly one month later, her dear friend and publishing mentor Russell Perreault dies by suicide.
The parallels of those two losses are used to explore Crosley’s reckoning with grief and her bargaining to recoup one, or both, of the things she feels have been stolen from her. “Every day is an opportunity to confirm where the necklace is not,” she writes. This memoir is as much a response to grief self-help literature as it is a beautiful, brilliant tribute to a friend whom she recognizes doesn’t fit into the neat categories that grief has been programmed around (father, brother, spouse, etc). Do not be totally deterred by the heaviness that the title of the book implies. While I suspect it is intentional, in typical Crosley fashion, she floats between the profound and witty (and the profoundly witty) with ease that only she can.
Read if you’re in the right headspace for the subject matter
Best if you liked: Look Alive Out There, I Was Told There’d Be Cake
Kelsey
‘Tis Oscar season and if that is something you pay attention to, you likely have seen American Fiction, or at the very least, the trailer for it. American Fiction is adapted from Percival Everett’s novel, Erasure, which I was shocked to learn was published in 2001 because over the past 20 years, the book has not lost a single bit of relevancy.
If you are entirely unfamiliar with what I am talking about, Erasure is about Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, a Black author who has achieved moderate success writing cerebral, esoteric literature. But when his agent passes on his latest manuscript while he is being confronted with his mother’s waning health, he begins to struggle with the responsibility of helping to make ends meet. Frustrated, he decides to compromise his art and writes a pandering, over-the-top, book under a pseudonym, which ultimately brings him significantly more success than anything he has penned before.
Erasure is a work of literary fiction and satire that holds a mirror up to racial stereotypes, the book world and commercial media, without, ironically, being all that commercial itself. It was definitely something I had to focus on while I was reading and took me nearly the whole month to complete. Ultimately it was very entertaining and is something I would recommend to people who particularly like creative formats.
Read before American Fiction hits streaming services
Best if you liked: Yellowface, and Brandon Taylor
Madeline
Figuring out how to enjoy fiction on audio wasn’t on my list of New Year’s resolutions, but I’m thinking about retroactively adding it because this month, finally, I cracked the code! After listening to three novels this month, I think, generally, first-person narratives are the easiest to follow, as well as novels that are more narrative-driven rather than ones with a ton of dialogue. I did miss highlighting and annotating while listening to books, so I’ll probably still continue to read on paper most often, but still, it’s always fun to try something new-ish.
Now, on to the book recommendation. My audiobook spree started with Jillian by Halle Butler. A couple of my writing group friends had mentioned it as a good workplace novel, and at 227 pages (just over four and a half hours on audio), I thought it’d be a good pick to get me out of a reading rut. The novel reads quickly and moves frequently, almost chaotically, between perspectives, primarily between Megan, a recent college grad who hates her job as a receptionist at a gastroenterologist's office, and Jillian, Megan’s 35-year-old co-worker who loves her job and has a blindingly bright outlook on life, which bugs the hell out of Megan. Oh, and Jillian is determined to get a dog, even though she absolutely cannot afford one and is not responsible enough to take care of one.
Obviously, these two characters see the world in completely different ways, and this makes for a stressful, darkly funny read about coping with the dread of daily life. Megan is, objectively, a bummer—she’s not kind to her friends or her boyfriend, she doesn’t seem to have any real ambitions, she drinks too much, she’s jealous of her peers and their successes; basically, she’s a wreck. But there’s something sympathetic about her (or maybe that’s just me and I’m the problem, oops), just as there is with Jillian, who really wants to see the best in people, even when it hurts her. It’s stressful, it’s bleak, it’s cringe—for the right mood, it’s perfect.
Read after complaining, about anything or everything, to your loved ones
Best if you liked: Ripe, Bunny, Convenience Store Woman
All books can be found at Books Are Magic, McNally Jackson, Greenlight Bookstore, and other independent bookstores, but if you don’t live near one, you can also click the links to support independent bookstores through Bookshop.org.
🤍🌸🌷💐🌳