hello fellow readers! what are you reading right now?

in this (hopefully) recurring newsletter, i hope to share what i’m liking or disliking about the books i read this year and onward. this may come with recommendations from me and asks for your recommended favorites, if you’ll indulge me. more than anything, i’m using this newsletter to propel me forward in my reading goal so that i can continue to share the new books i’m reading on a weekly/monthly basis. i haven’t got the format totally figured out yet, but let’s jump in and see what works!

recently read: How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee

this book was gifted to me by a friend this past Christmas; i didn’t realize until i’d started reading how important and relevant this collection of essays would be. Alexander Chee is a writer and professor whose twenties coincided with the AIDS epidemic and was teaching during the events of 9/11. he writes about his experience within the sphere of activism and what it’s like to be a writer amidst American calamity. Chee writes about an affinity for Tarot and cultivating a rose garden in the backyard of his Brooklyn apartment.

i identified so many parallels between Alexander Chee’s life and my own that at some points i felt that i had written some of his work and misremembered a few details. because of that, i was able to glean clarity, advice, and peace of mind from this book. these striking similarities also kept me hungry and wanting to read more. my reading of this book was not my fastest but certainly one of the most engaging experiences i’ve had.

below are a few of my favorite quotes from Chee’s novel. i’ve dog-eared many pages.

“As children, we thought Superman was brave to stand in front of a train. That’s not brave, though. Superman never stood before anything that could destroy him.”

“I hoped… to find a way to fuse my work with my belief in the possibility of a better, more radicalized world.”

“The more [roses] are cut back, the faster they grow and the stronger they are. My role models at last…”

“You are up against what people will always call the ways of the world— and the ways of this country, which does not kill artists so much as it kills the rationale for art, in part by insisting that the artist must be a successful member of the middle class, if not a celebrity, to be a successful artist.” — “On Becoming an American Writer”

i think that this final quote is part of my new motivation to continue writing. i am trying with great strains to resist subscribing to the rationale of America— especially in its current state and under its current leadership. this resistance is discernible in my writings on love, of community, of hope and resistance and dreaming of a better, more radicalized world. How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is one of the best gifts i’ve been given and one of the most moving pieces of literature i’ve read.

currently reading: Come & Get It by Kiley Reid (paperback version here)

i’ve unintentionally been consuming a lot of content about writers lately. after finishing How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, i picked up this book simply because it was on my want-to-read list (which i’ll share at the end of this); i recently watched Becoming Jane, in which Anne Hathaway portrays Jane Austen experiencing love and her society’s trials.

Come & Get It is told from the perspectives of several women. we meet Agatha (a forty-something author), Millie (an RA unsure of her sexual orientation), and several residents whose lives collide in surprisingly tumultuous ways. we see drama, gossip, and intrigue that are almost inseparable from the lives of college women, as well as some interesting twists that lie outside the boundaries of the usual.

some of the writing choices aren’t my favorite, like the overuse of the phrase, “Ohmygod,” and the way characters often start their conversations with a question mark. for example:

“‘Okay, so when I was at Hawthorne my freshman year?’”

“‘Okay, Robin? You just fucking got here.’”

it’s used mostly to punctuate arguments and, i think, a level of immaturity, but i find it a bit repetitive in a way that takes me out of the moment i’m reading.

but overall, i am enjoying the story and the outrageously bad decisions the seemingly more responsible characters make. i’m very interested to see where all the chips fall.

want to read/finish:

Beloved by Toni Morrison
Difficult Women by Roxane Gay
Opinions by Roxane Gay (started last year)
Witchcraft by Marion Gibson (started last year)
Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang
The Queer Arab Glossary by Marwan Kaabour
Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi
We Begin Here: Poems for Palestine and Lebanon Edited by Kamal Boullata and Kathy Engel

i’d love some recommendations, as i’d like to read at least 17 books this year! what are you reading now?