Nita > Recent Status Updates

Lol I too skilled a lot of classes at Yale 😂

This is so well crafted

I don’t read genre fic but this is kinda amazing

I worry this will be slow going and somewhat masturbatory. “Oh look at me and the genius way I wrote things!” ie I am feeling scooped yet again

Hard to get a grasp on the narrative POV which instantly puts a ceiling on the star rating

Sorry, Dave Eggers; THIS is the heartbreaking work of staggering genius.

I don’t want this book to end. It has the warmth and intimacy of a perzine and the momentum of a Bernhard with the playfulness of an imp. And yet at 212 on the resonant bass notes get clear and there are some moving passages that make this book such an achievement—so very well crafted.

I’ve read this before but am re-reading some of the short stories; Night Souper stands out

This might be the perfect book

Makes me want to try writing fiction

This is off to a great start but yeesh, I’m reading a seventh printing hardback and finding copyediting oversights 🤦🏻‍♀️ Book is so heavy my arms are getting toned

Oh I’m feeling so sad that my time with this novel is almost complete, I wish it could last for eons 🥺

I’ve only been waiting two years so obviously I’m mainlining this

Wondering about the alchemy of reader brain animating pages as a form of co-authorship vs how the movie version of this felt flatter than the book. Should the movie have been like Du Iz Tak? Only a silent film? Would our brains have been better primed to feel something?

Book got off to a great start buuuut here on page 26 wifey’s been dead all of two days and narrator claiming her laugh is already hard to remember?!? Either her laugh was really weak or the narrator has a shite memory because I can remember laughs of people I haven’t seen in decades, some of those people are very much cold and dead indeed. Tom you are in big trouble 😂

I’ve had this book a very long time and now it’s dated yet prescient

I don’t know much about David Bowie but have learned more courtesy the Mister who has misted and spritzed his knowledge in my general direction over the last decade-plus. Our first dance was to Heroes and it wasn’t until over a decade later that I actually listened to all the lyrics and had a good laugh. This is an enjoyable literary read so far.

I don’t usually read short stories and only read some of the poems tbh. From Afterlives by Sarah Khatry: “Machine learning did not really tell me or anyone else the future… I believed in the value of rigor, method, and discipline.” Originally published in AGNI (RIP).

Transgender chapter just as brutal as the rest, but I’m glad I’m reading this book even if it is hurting my wrists to hold up. I am going to need a lighthearted romp and/or a beach vacation after finishing this book… brilliant move to read as we make our way to the winter solstice 😬

“Our hardest conversations aren’t with other people; they’re with ourselves.”

“Intermarriage has compromised racial identity” … ??? Maybe changed its complexion but compromised? Ok one drop …

I’m feeling tender lately, perhaps spurred by the now near-constant thrum of pain I’m in in my torso and arms, so this last chapter about the parents of children in juvenile detention has me all sorts of upset and worried about my kid with scant impulse control etc. But mostly the humanity of this book is a slow tsunami of sadness I almost cannot bear to hold.

Oof

Autism chapter. Oof

Incredibly well researched

Although narrator is youthful and green, I don’t find it grating the way I loathed koren zailckas

Typo - tree “trucks” instead of trunks