Category: fiction

I seem to be reading more genre fiction these days. Does this mean brainrot? I fear so.

In any case, this one’s a romcom. Interestingly, it’s from a startup with >$4m in investment, that’s basically a publishing imprint with associated income streams (e.g., buy the wine mentioned in the book). I can only be amazed that anyone would look at their investment dollars and think: I know, lets go make money in literature.

The founders of this imprint apparently cold call writers who have never written romatic fiction, or in some cases any fiction at all, and ask them to write for them. (This author, Erika Veurink, is I guess a brand consultant?) Seems an odd approach, and something of a slap in the face for aspiring writers, but there you go.

It compares itself on the cover to NORMAL PEOPLE and YOU, AGAIN. This is very hopeful. It’s not close to their league. However I read it in a single day, while half-dozing in the sun on the Common, eating ice cream, so no complaints here. If this is brainrot, rot away.

This book comes draped with reviews calling it a modern American classic.  I wasn’t feeling it.  It tells about a woman who goes to her twin sister’s wedding, and once there tries to commit suicide, because she is so unhappy about being left alone.

I don’t know what to tell you, I just found it kind of – meh.  I think I am just tired of books about people being so tortured all the time.  Stop drinking so much and go to therapy for god’s sake. 

Here is a book about a woman who pushes her husband to open their marriage.   It had some funny bits, like: “Her face was smooth and shiny in the right places, like she hadn’t put on any face makeup or like she knew the best makeup to buy.”   But mostly I wasn’t so much into it.  This is partly because I am not sure I can relate to all the negotiating about sex, but more because I couldn’t relate to the whole world.  The main character is in her early thirties, and there is a lot about how she misses her life with her friends in college.  Back then, she says, they were “around each other’s apartments all the time, and it never felt like a special occasion or anything.  We wouldn’t wash our hair before getting together.”  I mean who are these people in their thirties who only go to their friend’s houses on special occasions?  And feel they have to wash their hair first?!  Sounds exceedingly lonely. 

Also strange was how worried she is about getting older.  One thing driving her desire to open her marriage is how she is depressed by no longer being the focus of male interest, now she is so old, which is – wait for it – 32.  Honestly I can only conclude that some womens’ appearance really meant a lot to them in their early life.  I am much older than her and this has never worried me once.  Maybe I was just really ugly in my twenties?

In this book a woman is unhealthily obsessed with her mother.  Her mother meanwhile is unhealthily obsessed with her career in Hollywood.  There is also a surrogate son character who is just generally unhealthy.  I found this to be a quick-moving interesting read, but I can feel myself already forgetting it.  I think it’s because everyone in it is so unendingly miserable.  At some point towards the end there is like a rising arc, where you start to think we might get some kind of evolution or at least insight but then LOL no, how can you be so naïve, there is no escape! Everyone is just as unhealthy as they were before

I just found this dumb.  We eyeroll romances because everyone is so beautiful and happy, which is kind of silly.  This I found a bit silly too, just in the opposite direction, towards ugliness and despair.   

This is Cather’s alleged masterpiece. I am a huge fan of the much less famous MY ANTONIA, so thought I would give it a try. I can’t decide how I feel about it. Despite it being only about 250 pages, I kept almost giving up. Weeks later though, I am finding it has strangely stuck with me.

It tells about the struggles of two French priests, sent to Mexico (or New Mexico? I am not sure) in the late 1800s to manage an immense Catholic diocese. After the Spanish left, Catholicism managed to survive there on its own for multiple generations, without any additional reinforcement, developing its own rituals and apocrypha. I find it fascinating to see how the basic ideas of a religion are powerful enough across continents and centuries to keep people engaged, even if they only have a very short introduction to it. The priests were tasked with bringing this wild growing version of Catholicism back in line.

The book is a series of very short but very beautiful vignettes, moving back and forth in time from when the priests are young men, and decide to leave France for Mexico, through long mule rides across mountains, to building cathedrals, to rescuing women from abusive relationships, and finally on to death. It’s packed with incident and yet really I can’t tell you what I think it is about. I didn’t enjoy it, but perhaps I agree it is her masterpiece.

I can’t believe this is this author’s debut! First off, she came up with an amazing concept, being basically: tradwife goes back in time.  Then, even more gallingly, she really hit the execution of the concept out of the ballpark.  I won’t give away too much, because it has a fun twist, so let me just quote extensively as I like to do with books I like:

On her brother-in-law: “A pimple-faced corn dog of a young man with a bad temper”

On her husband, a rather sad figure who she forces into what she thinks his gender role should be: “he still wore his masculinity so roughly and unnaturally, as if it were an ill-fitting sweater I’d forced over his head”

And then best of all:

“Natalie’s like a border collie,” my mother used to say to the other women at church.  “She needs a project, otherwise she starts chewing the cabinet corners.”

“Are you saying my son is a project?” I imagined (my father-in-law) saying.

“No,” I imagined my mother replying.  “I’m saying he’s the cabinet corner.”