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“As it happened, I was no longer interested in literature as a form of snobbery or even self-definition. I had no desire to prove that one book was better than another; in fact, if I read something I admired, I found myself increasingly disinclined to mention it at all. What I knew personally to be true had come to seem unrelated to the process of persuading others. I did not, any longer, want to persuade anyone of anything.” . Ahh... the quote that launched a thousand bookstagram hiatuses ⛵️... Or was it just mine? 🤔 Haha. Finishing up Vacuum in the Dark today & then onto this beauty for the evening. 🐚🌊 At long last! There is little I love more than books about writers writing. Especially, it seems, if it is autofictional, relatively plotless, meta, and/or the ambiguous narrator is at an emotional or existential impasse. In other words, I think this one is going to be a personal hit. 😂 . Have you taken the Outline Trilogy plunge yet? Are you obsessed?

Does anyone else nerd out over The New Yorker’s Fiction Issue each year? It’s the one issue I always buy off the newsstand even when I’m not subscribing. Finally got a chance to crack it open for a few mins before work this morning with my ICED coffee ❄️☕️👏🏼 (bc I think it’s actually summer in LA now? 🌞🌴🌊🏄🏼‍♀️). Very much digging this year’s theme: Border Crossings. If you aren’t as giddy over of a magazine full of short stories as myself, surely you can appreciate the Mt. Everest-sized, nightstand book piles on the cover illustration. #tbr 😂 I mean... . Also cracking open this new planner for the first time. I so desperately want to be a bullet-journal person. I try, but my brain can barely organize daily tasks themselves without also having to construct the planning vessel. 😓 A goal for a future Monday perhaps. So what are your plans for next weekend? Haha

Blue skies for days in the desert... 🌤🏞🏜 Let’s all pretend this is where we’re going tomorrow & not back to work? 👼🏼Janis the VW Bus made it all the way out to JT last weekend, and she looked real pretty doing it. 🚌✨🛣🌵☺️ Now she’s getting her beauty rest for a pop-up bookshop we’re doing next month for July’s Fourth Friday on Retro Row in Long Beach in front of @saludjuice & we’re maybe a little super excited about that. 🍎🍐📚🍊🍋

Went camping in Joshua Tree a couple of weekends ago, and it was beautiful and awesome. 🌵🏕🌅 On our way out, we stopped in Pioneertown (You know all those old Westerns filmed in the 1930s/40s/50s? They were most likely shot there 🎥🏜🐎) for lunch at @pappyandharriets . While we were waiting for the restaurant to open, we looked around the little old town, and I genuinely stumbled into this bookshop inside a massive barn that was definitely not advertising itself as a place that contained books. No signage, just some cool music emanating from the doorway... 🎶 Pretty cool, huh? That light streaming in? ✨😍 There were some interesting finds in there, but I was good & didn’t buy anything, though I was tempted to take home this vintage People Are Crazy Here book on the awesome cover alone. 💓💊 Anyway, I tried to look up the name of this place to share, and it’s not even listed anywhere, so maybe it was a desert mirage?! ✨🏝📚✨ Ready for the weekend and wishing I could head back to the desert! How bout you?

Currently reading Vacuum in the Dark after guzzling down Pretend I’m Dead last week. I 💖 Jen Beagin. She does not give a f🧽🧹k. Many more thoughts to come about this weird, dark, smart, sardonic, sparklingly unclean pair of books about our girl Mona & her adventures in grime. 🦠✨

Oh, hi there! 👋🏼☺️ It’s been so long. Like, really long. I just realized yesterday I hadn’t posted here in over a month. I needed a break, some breathing room, some time to think about and process the connection between social media and my own mental health, and I don’t feel like I need to elaborate too much on that, because I’m pretty sure we’ve all been there in one way or another. The most important thing I realized during my IG hiatus? Literally no one in my real life cares about books the way I do...haha. But seriously, the way YOU guys do—and that sense of excitement and community around reading is the whole reason I started this account last June (almost a year ago 😳) in the first place. And despite the things I sometimes really do not love about IG, I miss THAT. So, I’m back to say hello—and how the hell are ya?—with my APRIL wrap-up haha. I’ve always been a better late than never gal, and I really loved all of these books, so I think they more than deserve a belated shoutout. Plus, I already had the photos, so... 🤷🏼‍♀️ Not pictured here, I also read The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer, Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala, and So Sad Today by Melissa Broder in April. How have you all been? Tell me a story. I love stories. {Postscript: I also wanted to say thank you so much to those who reached out to me while I was off the grid, just to check in. That really meant a lot to me while going through a tough time. Seriously, more than you could know. 🙏🏼🖤✨}

After everyone falling in love with Alexander Chee‘s mind and words during our April read-along of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, we have decided—with great enthusiasm—that our #bookpartyclub pick for May will be @cheemobile ’s own autobiographical novel, Edinburgh. If you’d like to be added to our discussion group, we would love to have you. Drop a line below or a shoot me a DM to join! 🌊🧡 • • • • • #alexanderchee #edinburgh #novel #bookclub #mayreads #toberead #badassbookbabes #bookphoto #prettybooks #coolgirlsread #bookrecommendation #bookstagram #howtowriteanautobiographicalnovel

Happy Independent Bookstore Day! 🌵🖤 Here’s a brand new spot in Long Beach with a mission of bringing social & political awareness to the community through books. Page Against the Machine is all about “fightin' words for mass defiance, empowerment, and self-reliance!" Pretty awesome addition to our neighborhood, right? 🌈🤘🏻📚🤘🏽📚🤘🏿🌈 (Also all my 80s & 90s kids will appreciate the name! 🎸😝) @patmbooks #independentbookstoreday

I read So Sad Today by accident last week, all in one sitting, in the middle of the night. I was only planning to read the first essay, to see what it was all about for a buddy read next month, but Broder’s story was like a balm that I desperately needed at that moment, and I was propelled forward. When I say balm, I do not mean to imply that her voice is soothing, it isn’t. There is beauty, though not in the traditional sense. The language is sometimes basic (like in the urban dictionary sense), ugly at times even, yet there is truly deep insight & poetry here, too. For someone so afraid, clinically afraid, she lays everything—every abject, humiliating thing—the darkest, weirdest parts of herself that we don’t speak aloud—out there. Spread eagle. She would probably hate to have it phrased this way, but it is fucking brave. The most important thing I think I can say, is that this book made me feel less alone than I had in a long time. A passage of her words that really resonated with me... “If I’m going to alienate you, I want to curate that alienation. I want to craft the persona that turns you off. I don’t want the real me, my vulnerabilities and humanity, to leak out and make you run. I don’t want to have needs. Like, what if you found out I am really not okay? What if you knew that I am suffering a lot right now and really scared? Would you flee? I don’t want to find out. So I deflect my vulnerability into humor or ‘wise platitudes.’ . I’m also terrified of other people’s narratives. I don’t want to be perceived as falling apart. Like, it’s fine that I’m frightened of me. But if you are frightened of me, then the problem is more real. I don’t really know how much I am allowed to fall apart. I don’t think I want to find out. . At the same time, I kind of do want to find out. After all these years of preserving my facade in daily life, I’m fucking tired. It would probably be a real relief to just crumble. I wish I could trust that the universe has me and that I could just let go. Or, like, even if I don’t trust that the universe has me (and I don’t), it would be a relief to just surrender anyway. I think my biggest fear and deepest wish is to surrender.”

Amelie’s Current Reads

@gitana.eleni

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Gitana’s Current Reads

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{Discussion Topics}: <i>The Snow Child</i>

{Discussion Topics}: The Snow Child

Continue reading {Discussion Topics}: The Snow Child

Posted on December 30, 2018January 6, 2019Author GitanadeneffCategories Book of the Month, discussion topicsTags discussion topics, the snow childLeave a comment on {Discussion Topics}: The Snow Child

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