Reading, Writing, and Me

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake  by Aimee Bender  Overview:  Rose can taste feelings. She can understand what someone is going through, their deepest emotions just by tasting someone's food–whether it be a cake or something as simple as toast. The novel follows Rose from the onset of this ability (magic trick, curse, gift...) through her becoming a grown-up around 22. While Rose is navigating her own struggles with her food-related medium skills, her older brother Joseph struggles with his own inherited sensitivity. Overall: 3.5  Characters: 4  Rose is what holds this book together. More precisely, the idea of Rose is brilliant. I love Bender's way of discussing parentification through the lens of a surrealist twist. Rose's ability to taste emotion through food feels very akin to the hyper-sensitive way that some children learn to read emotional cues to smooth things over within their family before issues arise because the parents struggle to regulate thems...

Long Island Compromise  by Taffy Brodesser-Akner Overview: The Fletchers were doomed from the start. Or, well, not the start, but from the time that Carl Fletcher was kidnapped and his kids ranged from eight-years-old to in utero. He was returned, relatively unharmed, after a heavy ransom was paid, and he stoically returned to his factory—the very place he was held captive. Though the effects of the kidnapping are written all over the family, it's the one thing they'll never talk about. Overall: 3 Characters: 2  I am truly baffled by this book. For one, there are so many characters that are introduced and named so quickly while being given almost no defining characteristics that the novel is extremely hard to follow. On repeat mentions of the plethora of side characters, I would stare into space confused at who this person could possibly be and why they mattered. Though, honestly, I found myself questioning why I was reading about any of these characters. The book is arranged ...

Blue Sisters  by Coco Mellors Overview: The Blue sisters are wandering through a landmine of grief one year after their beloved middle sister died. It's now been long enough that the side effects of their more unfortunate coping mechanisms are manifesting into full-on life disasters. Sorting through their individual grief responses and life challenges forces the Blue sisters back together as they return to New York City to pack up Nicky's belongings before their parents sell their childhood apartment in the city. Lucky, the youngest, comes from Paris where her hard partying is interfering with her career. Bonnie, the second oldest, returns from a stint in Los Angeles where she abandoned her boxing career to become a bouncer at a club. And Avery, perfect, oldest Avery, returns to New York from London with her carefully constructed life fully unwound. The Blue sisters have to find a way to come back together to begin healing. Overall: 4.5 Characters: 5  This is a big cast of cha...

The Anthropologists by Ayșegül Savaș Overview: Asya and Manu are looking to buy an apartment in the city where they now live but aren't from. It feels like home, but it doesn't. Between house hunting and contemplating what makes an adult life, Asya is working on her documentary about everyday life, focused on her favorite park. They're also grappling with their friend groups and the people in their lives, relationship that are always changing and evolving. This is a slice of life novel to the highest degree, set adrift in an unnamed city. Overall: 5 Characters: 5 I loved sitting with Asya and Manu through this short novel. This book isn't about loud characters that explode off the page but rather characters that could be you, your neighbor, your best friend. The city and county is never explicitly specified, and this vagueness continues into the people in this world. There are defining characteristics, but they could also be anyone in the best way possible. Usually, th...

One of my major goals for the blog this year was to chat with more authors again , so it's been beyond my wildest dreams to have the chance to interview Alison Espach , author of one of my favorite books of this year, The Wedding People . You might be familiar with the novel from it being a Read with Jenna  pick or its popularity on bookstagram, or you might have just stumbled upon it in the bookstore and been drawn to its stunning cover. I've had so many wonderful conversations with other readers who loved the book, so it was awesome to then get to talk about it with Alison herself and get some insight into how the book was written, her tip for querying writers, how writing looks both the same and different 3 books into her career, and what books she's been loving lately!  If you're not familiar with The Wedding People  yet, you're in for a treat. Check out my review to hear about why I loved it, but I'll also add the back cover copy to give you some context ...

All Fours  by Miranda July Overview: This novel is about a sorta-famous woman who is also a mother, a woman facing the realities of aging, and someone intensely battling a feeling of stasis. The novel begins with the premise that this woman will drive from LA to New York, in some kind of a bid to either find or change herself. Instead, she only makes it 30 minutes from home before settling into a roadside motel where she strikes up an affair with a fan who works at a rental car office down the road. In the second half of the book, the protagonist reckons with the findings of her botched roadtrip while reemerged in the confines of her normal life.  All Fours  questions the realities of modern life that are taken as given.  Overall: 3 Characters: 3  There are so many interesting ideas here, but July plays a strange game of withholding with the reader that never allows a proximity that makes the novel feel worth reading or the main character one you can fully inves...

In August, I got back on the reading train. If you noticed that I didn't have a post for July's Wrap-Up, you can probably guess that my reading (and blogging) month didn't go exactly to plan. Luckily, August has felt much more fulfilling on a creative front, and part of that means doing more reading. Beyond books, I ended up joining a critique group, registered for a writer's conference in my hometown, and made steps towards both submitting more short stories and progressing on my novel draft. Part of my career choices post-grad were heavily made to prioritize writing, and I'm trying to honor that in both my reading and writing. I read a new favorite book this month as well as some others I'm greatly enjoying. I read a recommendation from a friend and a book that sparked Twitter drama months ago. It was a varied reading month and hopefully one that will be repeated.  stats. August felt like a strong reading month coming out of July where I worked a ton, got sick...