Rebecca > Recent Status Updates

I rarely comment mid-book anymore because I don’t trust myself to finish books when others are watching, because I now want my reading experience to be insular. But I just have to say this: Maggie Smith didn’t write this book for revenge, but even so, this entire memoir shows what a little immature, jealous, narcissistic shithead her ex-husband was. On nearly every page I am reading this and SCREAMING at him.

It’s kind of hard to put this down.

I’m reading this for the third time and still absolutely enthralled by the writing, the narrative. So much of this—especially family members covering for or making excuses for family members, not breaking the status of quo—resonates with me.

This has got me all up in my feels. I thought it was gonna be like Bridget Jones but it’s much more like Elinor Oliphant—or at least a cross between the two—mixed with some casual racism that Queenie experiences every damn day. Anyway, this is just to say this book has a hold of me and y’all should read it.

This is so damn good, so compelling that I really don’t want to put it down. But I would like to punch Tara’s brother. I knew her family was misogynistic even before her brother started calling her names and getting violent, but I am still horrified.

I’ve been in a reading rut, but not now. I really, really love this.

GR erased my other update so lemme just say that this novel feels both utterly unique and also like a return to a very old form, like the Spoon River Anthology or Winesburg, Ohio—or even a Greek chorus, from the grave. It’s good and weird and the Lincoln/Willie relationship is so very touching.

This is astonishingly good and astonishingly depressing. Everyone should read it, immediately.

This is so much faster a read than I imagined, and so touching.

I am at once depressed and awed by this book’s beauty.

I really really love this book.

I knew it was gonna take me awhile to read this, but it’s worth it every time I return. I especially love how much Leslie Jamison focuses on the nature of stories and storytelling.

I knew it was gonna take me awhile to read this, but it’s worth it every time I return. I especially love how much Leslie Jamison focuses on the nature of stories and storytelling.

This was not at all what I was expecting and so thoughtful and luminous and beautiful. I think every woman who’s too much, too wild, too filled with longing should probably read this.

Beautiful, luminous (no, literally), maybe I might even say tumescent. I love how this makes me think about desire in an intellectual way and desire in an emotional way.

I keep reading books about marriage, trying to understand it from the outside. I keep reading something that feels like autofiction. I don’t know if it is. This is lovely, but I’m not used to so many gaps, so much white space in my fiction—only my CNF.

I don't think I've loved a collection of poems this much in a long, long time.

To me, this really is the epitome of a post-postmodernist novel: the satire, the earnestness, the new sincerity, the metafictional aspects.

Soooo much desire, sooooo much fear.

I read a poem after every paper I graded tonight, not enough papers and not enough poems, but every single poem seems to knock me out, and whoa why didn’t this win every award?

There’s so much more here than just desire. It’s also a book about home and examining the cliches we use to talk about a full life.

Holy hell, this is good, so worth the hype and the (self-imposed) wait.

I forgot how bonkers (and bonkers good) this is. It’s interesting to read this four years after the first time and think about what Shteyngart got right and what he maybe didn’t.

I wasn’t expecting to see so much vulnerability in a book that makes heavy use of research on famous alcoholics.

I wasn’t expecting to see so much vulnerability in a book that makes heavy use of research on famous alcoholics.

I haven't been this drawn into a novel in ages. I wish I'd read it all in a day or two, but teaching takes precedence.