Reading, Writing, and Me

The Late Americans  by Brandon Taylor Overview: At the University of Iowa, a number of grad students across a variety of prestigious programs have their lives casually intersect and drift apart. From the tensions within an MFA poetry workshop to a painter that keeps surfacing between dancers and writers to the politics of which dancers were set up to chase their dreams, there are deep feelings and messy connections between these students reaching the end of their grad school journeys as well as those who inhabit the university town to build their permanent life. Aimlessly drifting, we follow glimpses of a broad cast's individual, quiet lives.  Overall: 3.5  Characters: 3 This book has an absolutely massive cast, which I'm not opposed to. It's a critique I see a lot for Kiley Reid's new book Come and Get It  as well. I thought it was interesting that this trait in Reid's book didn't bother me, but in The Late Americans , I felt unable to keep track of all the pla

Green Dot  by Madeleine Gray Overview: Hera is the other woman. Not on purpose. It was an accident, but it happened, and she didn't end it. Instead, she starts living a half-life – turning down her friends and her father's invitations for connection on the off chance he'll be able to meet up, on the off chance he'll leave his wife for her. She knows it's futile, but he becomes an obsession she must rationalize her way through, even in the lowest moments. Overall: 4 Characters: 4 I like Hera a lot. I relate to her on a number of fronts. She sticks with the guy even when she finds out he's married because she was never popular in elementary and middle school. No one has ever really seen her, but Arthur sees her. Even though she has a good group of friends now and knows how to work a room, that sad, lonely inner child thrives on the shreds of attention she earns from Arthur. I understand all too well how she fell in so hard. She's also in hear early twenties an

March has been a major reading month for me because, right in the middle, I had Spring Break, which offered a ton of time to read and access to my hometown library. I honestly thought I'd get more reading done over Spring  Break, but alas, the end of the week turned into a lot of fun social plans, so I guess I can't be mad at that. Still, in that week alone, I read 3 books which offered my usual total boost. I also read a ton of nonfiction through audiobooks that I got really invested in and, therefore, spent more listening hours reading. Looking over the list of what I read, I'm realizing that March truly has been the world's longest month.  I'm heading into a super stressful 5 weeks that include finishing my senior year of college, taking finals, wrapping up one job and starting another, and moving out of LA in a very compressed period of time. This will either  lead to a ton of reading to escape the chaos or almost no reading as my attention has to be everywhere