Reading, Writing, and Me

Beautiful World Where Are You?  by Sally Rooney Buy Beautiful World Where Are You via Bookshop This is an affiliate link which means I may receive a small commission from your purchase at no cost to you. Thank you for supporting the blog! Overview: Alice wrote two popular novels, became a literary super star, and had a mental breakdown. Now she's gone to a coastal Irish town to get away from the pressures of Dublin and her life there. She's left behind her friends Eileen and Simon in Dublin. Eileen is working at a literary magazine, unhappy, and pining for her childhood best friend who is many years her senior. Simon, that childhood best friend, is working in politics and struggling to settle down and meet societal expectations. Once in the new town, Alice gets on Tinder and clicks with the first guy she goes on a date with. Felix works in a warehouse and is lost in what he wants for his life, but he's intrigued by Alice. While separated by distance, the two couple's st

So you've exhausted the BookTok table at Barnes and Noble, and you're bored of BookTube because you've seen literally every video. Where do you turn to now to figure out what you should be reading (besides Reading, Writing, and Me and our bookstagram obviously)? Here's some out of the box recommendations for people to follow from beyond the book world who often offer their opinions on books woven into Instagrams that aren't steeped in the Bookstagram world. This is where I've been gathering most of my bookish inspiration lately, so it only feels fair to share. Maisie Peters  First up, we have musician and longtime book lover Maisie Peters. This is the closest I'm getting to sending you to a bookish influencer since Maisie has maintained an alternate Instagram page for years called the Maisie Peters Book Club. Occasionally hosting Instagram lives or Zooms with authors (the latest with Cleopatra and Frankenstein  author Coco Mellors), she also issues a monthly

  Someone Who Will Love You In All Your Damaged Glory  by Raphael Bob-Waksberg  Buy the Book via Bookshop!* this post uses affiliate links which means I get a small commission from your purchase at no cost to you! learn more here . Overall: 3.5 I have a hard time synthesizing my thoughts on this collection because, like all short story collections, there are some I really enjoyed and some that I didn't. If you're a fan of Bojack Horseman, you'll likely want to pick this up because it was written by the show's creator. Though I've never seen the show, it seems to carry the same surrealist sensibility as many of these stories have strange quirks that warp reality as well. Some of these are entertaining and thought provoking and others are ones I could've skipped that took the bit to a tiring point.  The point of the collection, as hinted at by the title, is telling stories about love from a variety of different angles. The title is utterly brilliant, and there'

  No One Asked For This  by Cazzie David Buy the Book via Bookshop! this post uses affiliate links which means I get a small commission from your purchase at no cost to you! learn more here . Overall: 5 If you are unfamiliar, Cazzie David is the daughter of Larry David, best known for the TV show Curb Your Enthusiasm. It's a show I've never seen. The other notable thing about Cazzie David if you've never heard of her is that she was dating Pete Davidson just days before he got engaged to Ariana Grande during that whirlwind moment in 2018. She's also a hilarious and gifted writer.  While I'm rarely a fan of celebrity books, No One Asked For This joins the ranks of I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy as a celebrity book well worth reading, and one I'd love a follow up to. Cazzie's essays stand up on their own. I haven't read many essay collections before, and it's an interesting way to handle a memoir of sorts when you're still in your

  NSFW  by Isabel Kaplan TW: sexual assault This review contains spoilers  Overview: The protagonist of Isabel's Kaplan's novel doesn't have a name. We can ignore the fact that this unnamed girl has lived a suspiciously similar life to Kaplan, working in television and graduating from Harvard. Nonetheless, unnamed girl is back in LA from Boston and ready to break into the entertainment industry. While she often complains about having all the wrong kinds of privilege, her mother is able to get her a position temping at a television network because of her connection to the head of a company through her law career. She starts at the bottom, but a square one that was created for her. As time goes on, she realizes why TV is an infamously rough industry, and she faces multiple instances of both sexism and sexual harassment leading up to the big reveal that the head of her company–yeah, that guy–is a serial sexual harassment/assault perpetrator. Her mother's connections to the

Tell Me I'm An Artist  by Chelsea Martin Buy the Book via Bookshop! this post uses affiliate links which means I get a small commission from your purchase at no cost to you! learn more  here . Overview:  Joey made it out Lodi all the way to San Fransisco and art school. She's left behind a chaotic family that always makes her feel guilty for the good things that happen to her, and she's determined to make the most of her chance to be an artist. The book centers around Joey's struggle to create a semester long self portrait film, which she decides to theme around remaking the movie Rushmore  without having seen it. Despite being a drawing major, this film elective becomes the center of her life and makes her question what it means to be an artists and the actual value and meaning of art. At the same time, her family is imploding at home. Her older sister has disappeared, leaving her baby with Joey's mother who struggles to care for the baby while keeping a job. Joey