Reading, Writing, and Me

Oh January, the fresh start of the year, a blank spreadsheet and a blank reading slate. The possibilities are endless. This is also when goals are freshest. I always feel a pressure in January to give myself the strongest possible foundation for the rest of the year, but this is likely because in the last few years I've had some of the most time to read all year in January due to school schedules, or, in the case of this year, taking some time out to be freelance. I feel this pressure even more strongly since my downtime for the year will be entirely weighted to the beginning. Mid-April, I'll start working full time or more again, and in August, I'll be moving to Dublin and starting a creative writing program. Hopefully that at least partially encourages reading, but adjusting to a whole new country, living on my own again, and classes will definitely somewhat reduce the amount of time I have to read. I know I shouldn't feel pressure about my reading goals. So many post...

Weather  by Jenny Offill  Overview: Lizzie's life is tethered to many different people. She has her family with Ben and her young son Eli. She supports her mom both financially and through phone therapy sessions. Her brother, Henry, feels like an even bigger responsibility as one person in her life characterizes them as "enmeshed" as Lizzie tries to help him through his sobriety and drug relapses. Lizzie never finished grad school or her dissertation. She's somewhat haunted by the idea that she never did make it big, her life didn't follow the expected arc. Now, she works in the university library and answers fan emails for the podcast her old advisor runs. This is a difficult book to write a plot summary for since there's very little plot. This is slice of life in its purest form. Overall: 4.5 Characters: 4 Lizzie sacrifices a lot of herself for others, and because she's pulled in so many directions, she can't fully satisfy any of her obligation witho...

I have a running Notes app list of books I've seen in bookstores and recommended online that I want to read eventually. I used to just put in Libby requests, but sometimes they don't have the book, and that was also a great way to create a holds avalanche. At the start of the year, I started using Storygraph for the first time, and I decided to transfer my list into the app to formalize it. Now, I'm sharing them all with you along with where I heard about the books and why I want to read them to both hold myself accountable to reading these throughout the year and share some reading inspo with you.   Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin This is a book that I saw talked about in Jack Edwards's video of books he wants to read this year. It's from 2024 and is about 2 different couples that live in the same apartments at different points in time. I am very sentimental about the places that I've lived, so I feel like this will be a super interesting read. Slow Days, Fast Comp...

Marlena  by Julie Buntin Overview: Cat is 15 when she moves to Silver Lake in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. There, she meets her next door neighbor, Marlena, who is 17 and undeniably cool. Cat struggles with the move and her parents' divorce, and Marlena offers an escape into a world that's unlike any she's known before as a straight A, strait-laced student. She skips school and is thrown into a world of drugs, drinking, and little supervision. Still, as much as Cat is exposed to, she recognizes that she has a safety net Marlena never had. The book is told in reflection, looking back from a time in her thirties when she'd moved to New York long after Marlena died. Overall: 4 Characters: 4 Cat is an interesting character to tell this story through, and there's an argument that our true main character is Marlena, who has the most dramatic arc of the story. Cat has an undeniable reverence for Marlena as the older cool kid, but her telling is also colored by her adul...