Reading, Writing, and Me

Oh October, what a whirlwind. I went to three plays, had my parents in town for the week, did tons of assignments as the semester ratcheted up, and went on a number of other social events from the zoo to Halloween. Mixed into all this, I tried to dedicate a massive chunk of my life to both reading and writing since that's what I moved to Ireland to do. I've gotten back into audiobook listening along with podcasts as I've settled into living alone again. I've also gotten into the library hold system, so now I have tons of books coming in with time limits, incentivizing me to read quickly. On top of that, I've read lots of short stories, some for class but mostly for fun.  The Stats In total, I read 13 books with two books I've been reading throughout October that I will be finishing today or tomorrow, making a solid start to my November reading. I read 5 novels (I'm roping Simple Passion in here cause it's more akin to a novel than the other nonfiction bo...

Thirst Trap  by Gráinne O'Hare Overview: Harley, Róise, and Maggie all turn thirty this year. The novel opens as they try to get into a club with a succulent at one of these fabled birthday celebrations. The housemates and best friends are all in the same boat—jobs they don't really love, falling down house, unstable relationships, and a relationship to partying that is fueled by their dissatisfaction with life. They're also absorbing an immense amount of grief as the one year anniversary of their fourth friend, Lydia's, passing rolls around. This is the year when they need to make changes, and O'Hare proves with this novel that the coming of age arc is never really over. Overall: 4.5 Characters: 4 I really came to love all of the girls, and I'm impressed at what nuanced, complicated lives O'Hare manages to render on the page for every single character, even Lydia who is no longer physically a part of their narrative. There's messy relationship entanglem...

Atavist  by Lydia Millet  Overview: In this collection of short stories, Lydia Millet constructs a Los Angeles neighborhood where each story follows a different neighbor or someone vaguely attached to the neighborhood. The characters show up across each other's stories in surprising ways, filling in a background role where they were once the main character. This creates a rich tapestry and a good reminder of how truly interlinked we all are. Overall: 4.5  Characters: 4 Millet writes about a complex group of characters from many different backgrounds . Some of them are good people trying really hard through bad circumstances. Sometimes they're about awful people who triumph despite it all. There's teenagers and young adults trying to figure out how to be people and parents becoming empty nesters who are thrown back into a similar journey. We only get one point of view story from each character, but they become richer as the collection goes on and they make background appea...

On October 1, I had the wonderful opportunity to attend a reading and conversation for Caragh Maxwell's debut novel, Sugartown. I absolutely love attending events at Books Upstairs, and this was made even more interesting by the fact that Maxwell is a graduate of the M.Phil program at Trinity that I'm currently attending. Thusly, many of my professors were in attendance as well, including Eoin McNamee, who was the conversation partner for the evening.  The event began customarily with free wine before McNamee introduced Maxwell to the audience, sharing his story of first hearing Maxwell read a piece in class, knowing she was special. They discussed her extremely successful essay in the Irish Times where she wrote about having cancer in her late teens. This led to heaps of interest in her work, but Maxwell stuck with her degree. That was where Sugartown began to form as her culminating course project. The book received over forty rejections after completion, but just when Maxwel...

On the Clock  by Claire Baglin (Translated by Jordan Stump) Overview: I would classify Claire Baglin's book as a novella as it is quite short. It makes the perfect paperback to carry around with you because it's so slim. It's translated from French by Jordan Stump and chronicles two strands of story. The first is focused on a young adult's job working in fast food for the summer. This is interlaced with her father's story of working in a factory. The book examines how these jobs take advantage of their employees without offering a path to advancement or a way out of the intensely labor focused work. The point being mostly that these jobs will chew you up and spit you out, no matter how much pride and diligence you put into the work, how good you are. And in the disillusionment of that particular myth, it succeeds. Overall: 3.75 Thoughts: My thesis on this book is that it would've been an incredible short story made out of the first thirty or so pages but that st...

Welcome back to the world's most inconsistent monthly series—my wrap-ups! They should get more consistent now that I'm in school and reading is definitionally part of my job. Operative word is should ... Hopefully, they'll also be more interesting because I'll be exploring a wider range of books and texts as I keep expanding my knowledge, doing class readings, and picking up books for fun. I'm currently reading like twelve different things at the moment, and my brain is thriving being stretched in so many ways! I'm using it again! So needless to say, we're forcibly putting an end to the summer reading slump. This month started slow because I had my last week at work where I really prioritized hanging out with everyone and then I moved to an entirely new country and had to settle in, but the ending is promising. I'm also so excited about all the writing I've managed to do in the last week now that I'm no longer scrambling to buy enough household s...