Brynne > Recent Status Updates

This line PULLED ME IN “I studied the girls with a shameless, blatant gape: it didn't seem possible that they might look over and notice me. (…)It was an age when I'd immediately scan and rank other girls, keeping up a constant tally of how I fell short, and I saw right away that the black-haired one was the prettiest.”

Re-reading an all time favorite that I am hoping, with its incredible prose and balmy descriptions of 1960s LA, will transport me to summertime during these gray Pittsburgh days which I also appreciate and embrace but like come on, it feels like January 72nd 🫶🫶🫶

Brilliantly written laugh-out-loud book

Wilkerson adeptly identifies the “isolationism, tribalism, the walling in and protecting of one's own, the worship of wealth and acquisition at the expense of others, even of the planet itself” that have been recorded in the United States, as some of our most central issues today

“He is the one man standing against the tide (…) unless people are willing to transcend their fears,endure discomfort and derision, suffer the scorn of loved ones and neighbors and coworkers and friends,fall into disfavor of perhaps everyone they know, face exclusion and even banishment, it would be numerically impossible,humanly impossible, for everyone to be that man.What would it take to be him now?”

This is such a hopeful, transportive work!

“The Chelsea was like a doll’s house in the Twilight Zone, with a hundred rooms- each, a small universe. I wandered the halls, seeking its spirits, dead or alive.”

Additionally- I’m stunned by the pure span of her experience- how she transitions with ease from the Louisa May Alcott days of her rural upbringing in the 1940s to the heat and thrill of New York City in the 1960s. The consistent references to Catholicism, and how, for those of us who were raised on it, its teachings remain omnipresent, have me HOOKED

Her prose is so rich and vivid!! - pink light washing over cities, worlds occurring beneath eyelids- Patti Smith is a master at observing, appreciating and remembering. Her reverence, gratitude and grounded, tranquil nature make her not just an excellent narrator, but a positively dear, beloved and inspiring one