Nikki > Recent Status Updates

I’m so in love. How can I not be when there is a line like this:
“I like Eastern European men. Their depression can be very charming and they’re not obsessed with happiness which is linked, I believe, to a more relaxed idea of what breasts need to look like.”
Amazing.

I'm on page 8 and there's a reference (a rather witty one) to Slavoj Zizek. I'm pretty certain I'm going to love this book.

I'm putting this aside for a sec. It's too conceptually similar to "Found Audio" (just finished). I'll come back to it after I read a few dissimilar things...

I haven't been to the gym all week. I haven't done much of anything else really but to read this book and think about it in all the spaces in between. My time and mental energy has been absorbed in wrangling this unreliable narrator (catching her in the lies she tells herself), delving into the depths of the philsophy of self, and reading some of the most fucking incredible prose I have ever encountered.

I can’t put it down

I'm a couple chapters in now and not feeling the pull to go pick it up and read some more. It's over 400 pages and, at the moment, feeling a bit of dread about spending even 100 more pages with the narrator at this point. Hoping it picks up. Hoping I like our ghost a little bit more soon.

As the pages went on in Part One (The Peacock), I debated about setting this book aside. Starnone is a storyteller, of course he is (though this book so different than his others). Maybe it’s for a later time, when I have more than quick bursts of time. I’ll start Part 2 (The Boy Pouring Water) and decide…

Oh, what a find this collection has already proven to be. An eighth of the way in and we've already taken the bat to Freud using his very own swing technique, orgied with philosophers, and now delved into (the oft and well-argued argument of) Freud's countertransference with Dora, hysterical Dora, and the neurotic eroticism of her "sick" family. Published in the 1980s, I'm nerd-excited to see how the feminism carries

Not even a fifth (?) of the way through this hefty book and I'm starting to get distracted. The new books that just arrived in the mail (including Torres's Blackouts and Starnone's "the House on Via Gemito"!!!) are whispering to me. I've logged on to Goodreads to read some reviews -- see if it's worth sticking it out a bit longer...

I suspect this is to be the best book I have ever read. In gushing about it to a friend last night (eager to return to the pages), he advised, “enjoy and savor every page. Not too fast now.” And I’m struggling with this. The craving to devour this book, while simultaneously knowing I’m already nearing halfway with it. To know this is Elspeth Barker’s only novel makes it even more precious. This book. Oh, this book!

It’s good. I’m liking it a lot. However, my attention and heart strayed when my copy of “The Event” arrived today. Going to put the next short story of this collection on hold and sneak Sam Pink in between.

I'm losing interest. Staying optimistic though.

I'm getting distracted. It's becoming drudgery to read this book. If things don't pick up with it soon, I don't think I will stick with it to the finish. (I have "When Things Get Dark" whispering to me on my nightstand, trying to coax me away and I'm so tempted...)

I started this yesterday and I don't think it's coincidence that I had an awful, awful stomach ache all throughout as I was reading this. This book just ACHES. I'll wrap it up today because I HAVE to be done with it. I need to finish it, upsetting as it is.

I'm back to George Saunders. I will ALWAYS be back to George Saunders. I'm three stories in to this one and I'll say this: I take each one into my dreams at night. They are upsetting in the most surrealist sort of way that my brain needs to continue to process what I read even while I sleep.

Ordered from an indie bookstore, my copy arrived to me, in New Jersey from a seller in Dallas, TX. When I opened the book last night, there was a phone number on the inside cover with the name "Michael" next to it. The number is a 617. Boston. Who is Michael from Boston? Who wrote his number in a book that ended up in Texas? And so begins my experience with, ironically, Stranger Things Happen ... (I'm gonna call.)

I don't know why I originally set this aside (and began I Am Here in its place) but last night, I brought this book onto the beach with me and began again. Carmen Maria Machado is a writer. A WRITER. I've known this. This is no surprise to me. But this story is hers and as I've loved her so very hard leading up to this, this story takes on a very different hurt. I'm absorbed, but it's not easy.

There is an indescribable weight to this book that seeps into my dreams at night -- if I can sleep at all! I want to rush through it -- be done with it already! -- so that I might get a full night's rest but, at the same time, it's, of course, not to be rushed. This family... oh, how this family speaks to me.

Oh, do I love this book. But, oh, does it squeeze my heart. I've been reading this one slowly because it feels like a constriction of my whole being. There's no theatrics, no outrageously big, attention-grabbing events. It's family life. And marriage. And all the distances that evolve in time in relationships. It's just so real that it's lovely. But hard.

I have goosebumps up and down. Still reading the majority of pages now through teary eyes.

I'm unabashedly sobbing now.

I'm crying. Again.

That this book opened with a full Introduction explaining (offering excuses) why there was not the diverse representation of authors in a book on the very subject of cultural appropriation gave me some pause. Also interesting to read that the editors eventually opted for separate chapters on the same subject because the authors (meant to work jointly on it) couldn't merge their viewpoints.

Hmm... so far, though there have been some laugh-out-loud lines ("like edges are bad, but really where would we be without them? Ask Bono.") but I'm waiting for the PLOT to kick in -- or at least a little skeleton of a story.