Two Very Different Books You Can Read In One Day

At first I thought these two books didn't have anything in common with each other, apart from both being short. BUT they were both published on July 11, 2017! Imagine that. I might not recommend pairing these books together in a one day reading spree, even though you could definitely read both in that time, but they are both incredibly refreshing reads for different reasons.

Found Audio by N.J. Campbell
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio. July 2017.
Genre: ??????
Source: Publisher
Pages: 162



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Oh my goodness, this was such a fun read. I really can't help but love stories within stories. So basically, a mysterious man approaches an audio analyst with some tapes. He gives her a huge amount of money to transcribe them and learn what she can from them. She is explicitly told not to share this transcript with anybody. But, of course, she does and then she vanishes. All of this happens within the introduction, I swear I'm not spoiling anything. The vast majority of the book is the transcription, which follows an unnamed journalist telling his story of a bizarre and wildly implausible global hunt for a place called the City of Dreams - and it's great.

The set up was exactly what I wanted. Mysterious with people and locations that may or may not exist. People vanishing. And the manuscript itself contains all these wonderful little details about what's going on audibly apart from the monologue. I'm going to be honest, at first I didn't know if I was going to be able to get on board with the reading a monologue thing (even though every once in a while some other unnamed voices interrupt, which is so intriguing and unsettling). The writing made me a little nervous to begin with, but this dreamy, speculative story was exactly what I wanted. Found Audio is written like the fever dream of an incredibly adventurous travel writer. Once the book got to the second tape (of three) is when it really started to pick up for me. It takes a little while for the narrative to get to the point, which is to be expected considering it's a man telling a story and humans aren't always succinct (especially in this slightly psychedelic adventure context). By tape two, the City of Dreams is introduced and that's when it starts to get really crazy. I truly felt enraptured by the nameless main character's narrative. It's difficult not to get engrossed and just go along for the ride when the story is so confidently itself. By the end of it, I was deep in my own head about this search and what it could all mean. Little things I encounter in real life still make me think about this gem of a story, like the story has placed little mirages of itself into my reality, which is the most fun post-reading experience a person can have.

Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong
Publisher: Henry Holt. July 2017.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Source: Friend
Pages: 196



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Goodbye, Vitamin is such a sweet book, I truly don't even know where to begin. It is a thing that I love: a quirky, contemporary, stream-of-consciousness first person narrative, which generally are a little less than hopeful. So this is truly refreshing. Hopeful isn't really the word I mean, because this book is only realistic and completely grounded. I feel like the word hopeful implies an intentionally "feel good" book, which this isn't. My friend, Annie, put it well: it's kind. This is a book written in diary entries from the perspective of an untethered thirty-year-old woman, Ruth, who just went through a break up and had to move home to take care of her father with Alzheimer's. She is forced into navigating her relationship with her rapidly changing father, as well as navigating her father and her mother's relationship, which she is forced to come to terms with. It is a fun read, often funny, and very honest. Parts might make you cry, but it is never manipulative despite having ample opportunity to be considering the subject manner.


The little snippets of days that we see beautifully illustrate the daily struggles of caring for somebody in declining mental faculties, as well as the small things that make a day bright. In tandem with Ruth's diary entries, every once in a while we get to see a journal that her father used to keep filled with things Ruth would say and do as a child. These definitely got me the most, because even when taking care of her father was getting tough, the snippets of his journal so viscerally overflowed with love for his daughter. On a very personal note, I can't remember what specifically, but something in these journals made me think of how my grandpa would sing "You Are My Sunshine" to me and how loved I feel even now just reminiscing on those moments. Grandpa, you have all of your mental faculties, but I don't know if you remember that because you haven't sang to me in a while (rude). But thank you for emailing me your personal responses to all of my blog posts (I save them all), and I look forward to hearing your thoughts about this one. I love you! If you want to borrow this book, I don't have a copy - sorry!



Update: My grandpa did email me after reading this blog post. Some context: he was a musician in an orchestra. He said "The reason I sang that is in all my music I never had to learn lyrics. So you (and your mom) got to hear the only song I knew.." Then he told me to come over and give him a haircut. RUDE.

3 Books That Defied My Reading Slump

My blogging absence has sort of felt like the elephant in the room - for me at least. Blogging was a big part of my life, so I admit that it does feel strange not to be doing it on a regular basis. The reality is that reading has been very difficult for me for almost a year now. Maybe I'll get into that more another time. While my reading has slowed to a mere fraction of what it was before, that doesn't mean that I've stopped reading entirely. Every once in a while there is a book that brings back that excitement about reading that I've missed. Here are three of those books that I've read in the past couple months.

Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin
Publisher: Riverhead Books. January 2017.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Source: Library
Pages: 192



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Holy shit, this is my kind of book. If you like your literature short, tense, and deeply unsettling, Fever Dream is an absolute must read. The whole (tiny) book is a conversation between main character, Amanda, and a mysterious little boy named David. She is in a hospital. It's not clear why. David asks her to recall what happened that got her there from the very beginning, fixating on small details here and there. Once I picked this book up, there was no chance that I was going to put it down. They talk about children, worms, motherhood, dying horses, pollution, fate, weird spirit stuff, etc. It is all the scariest. Nothing explicitly horror-y happens, but the dread throughout is so so real. And some seriously weird shit goes down... or does it?? This book feels like a dream for sure, and it will not disappoint you. Highly recommended for fans of Helen Phillips, Clarice Lispector (sort of, in her very close focus & claustrophobic writing), or Jesse Ball. So beautiful! So amazing! Read it and be astounded by Schweblin's clarity of voice and vision in her murky and hypnotizing story.

Waking Gods by Sylvain Neuvel
Publisher: Del Rey. April 2017.
Genre: Science Fiction
Source: Publisher
Pages: 325



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Last year I read a book called Sleeping Giants, which was a glorious combination of Ancient Aliens and Pacific Rim in a a super fun and easy to read interview style. I had some problems with flat characters in the first book, but the sequel, which came out this year, really blew me away. It was action packed, the characters felt less forced and more confidently written, and it was an incredibly quick read. We also got to learn more about the nameless narrator who I thought was kind of cheesy as an idea in the first book. He's just like your general nameless spy dude who seems to have his fingers in every governmental activity (classified or otherwise). Part of me sort of didn't want any actual background, but I ended up really enjoying what we got. This book did not pull any punches AT ALL and it kept surprising me throughout. It is a great read, and it's worth checking out the first book to get here.

His Bloody Project by Graeme Macrea Burnet
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing. October 2016.
Genre: Historical fiction
Source: Library
Pages: 300



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I've definitely been on a true crime kick these past couple months, and it was a delight to experience this fiction book that reads like bonafide true crime. His Bloody Project was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize in 2016, which I find to be a super interesting, and well deserved, pick. In it, we have a series of documents that all pertain to the case of Roderick Macrea killing a family in his village. There are neighbors' accounts, his own personal written account, and a transcript of the trial - all of which are biased. Roderick Macrae is such a fascinating guy to be in the head of - and to see from the outside after you know what's going on in his head. It's not a book where you come away knowing exactly what happened at the end of it. It's one that you'll keep thinking about, trying to puzzle out the details and decide who exactly to believe. Burnet places some amazing little hints throughout the book that close readers and true crime fans will be delighted by.

What books have helped you during a reading slump?

Quick Reads, Quick Reviews

Even when I'm not reading as much as normal, it's hard to resist the pull of a short book. They're the perfect thing to jump start your reading. Here are three that I recently read.

Vertigo by Joanna Walsh
Publisher: Dorothy, a publishing project. 2015.
Genre: Short Stories
Source: Independent Bookstore
Pages: 120


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My daughter has made her first sacrifice to fashion. She has bought a short pink skirt with lace, which does not suit her and for which there is no suitable season or occasion. It will remain unworn, but beautiful. When she wears it, it stops being beautiful. When she takes it off, there it is, beautiful again. For this, she has given up her money.

This book engaged me like no other book could one day when I was up in the middle of nowhere with a stack of books to keep my company. I was slumping hard, but once I started this collection of vignettes, I couldn't stop. The packaging itself is stunning, the book almost square, and the words inside are also beautiful. It was one of those reads where I could tell that what I was reading was beautiful and fascinating, but I also felt not completely smart enough to get all of it. Each story takes you deep into the head of a woman (sometimes different, sometimes the same as an earlier story as far as I could tell). For the most part, we get to observe small moments but overall are given powerful insight into things like love, loss, being a person, etc. Walsh's minimalism was so elegant, I could hardly handle it. I was greatly moved by a number of these stories.

One Hundred Shadows by Hwang Jungeun, Jung Yewon (translator)
Publisher: Tilted Axis Press. Oct. 3, 2016.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Source: Friend



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Yeah, like me, I said, and then it hit me. I looked down at my feet, and sensed something odd about the way they were outlined, against the pine cones and white oak leaves splayed over soft soil. My shadow, spread out thin, very thin, stretched out from the little toe of my right foot all the way into the thickets.

Even though I give both this and Vertigo four stars, I liked this book better. If you like your novellas in translation with a hint of creepy magical realism, this is the one for you. Set in a slum electronics market in South Korea, a girl starts to notice that her shadow is rising. Other people gradually notice the same thing, their shadows becoming their own quiet, autonomous entities. But what does it mean?? All of the relationships between the characters are so interesting. Hwang Jungeun's writing is very subtle and the strange tale was completely riveting. Jung Yewon did a fantastic job translating this novella into stark, atmospheric English. Han Kang (author of The Vegetarian) is giving this book publicity, and I have to say that I liked it more than The Vegetarian. Not that it's a contest. This is a strange, gently unsettling novella that gave me all sorts of feelings.

The Subsidiary by Matías Celedón
Publisher: Melville House. August 2016.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Source: Friend
Pages: 208



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It is impossible to tell apart the animals.

I wanted to like this novella a lot more than I did. Despite being over 200 pages, The Subsidiary took around 20 minutes to read max. That's because each page is no more than a sentence. We've got an experimental format on our hands!! Our main character is an office worker trapped in his building when there's a mysterious power outage. The gimmick? He's writing the book using stamps. So, visually, this book is quite stunning. The story gets a little bit dark, a little bit absurdist. Some weird shit goes down in this Latin American subsidiary office. A lot is unexplained: all of the workers seem to be disabled, there's a child there (??), there's some weird sex stuff. So it seems as if none of us, the readers nor the characters, know fully what's going on. And that's totally fine with me. There just wasn't enough substance to carry the gimmick, in my opinion.

Would you check out any of these quick reads? Have one to suggest?

Horror AND? :: 2 Books That Push Genre Boundaries

I love a good horror story. I also love a book that can blend more than one genre together into something new. Recently I read two horror hybrids that take their readers interesting new places!

Disappearance at Devil's Rock by Paul Tremblay
Publisher: William Morrow. June 21, 2016.
Genre: Horror & Mystery
Source: Publisher
Pages: 327


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She can't tell her that people always do things that their friends and loved ones never imagined they would do. Not only is everyone more than capable of making the worst decisions possible, those kinds of decisions are frighteningly commonplace and easy to make.

Paul Tremblay, author of one of my favorite horror novels ever, is at it again with a new horror story with mystery/crime/thriller elements. Disappearance at Devil's Rock is about a very real horror: the disappearance of a child. After Tommy, a young teen, disappears in a park, and nobody seems to know why or how this happened. And then his mother is convinced she sees his ghost in the house. All sorts of weird shit goes down and I don't want to say much more than that plot-wise.

When I first finished this novel, I wasn't sure if I liked it or if I would categorize it as horror, though it definitely had horror elements. That was until I remembered that Paul Tremblay is totally a horror fan's writer. He had heavy allusions to several books/movies in Head Full of Ghosts, which led me to remember a favorite horror movie of mine, Lake Mungo. The plot of this book is heavily influenced by the Australian film: beloved teen goes missing, mom believes in ghost, sibling admits something, we eventually discover teen had secrets, doppelganger/future-seeing stuff. I'll stop my analysis before I spoil both film AND book.

What I'm trying to say is that having seen this movie made me completely understand what Tremblay was going for. I believe he was trying to recreate the slow burn pacing of the mockumentary film, because it has a very particular creepy tone. And, unfortunately, while I love the Lake Mungo plot similarities, I don't know if the pacing/tone was captured. Disappearance often just felt slow, regardless of whether some of the reveals and creepy bits were super intense and original, leaving them less scary for me. Another complaint some readers had were of too many Minecraft references. But as someone who teaches Minecraft, I can tell you that if anything Tremblay went light on them for the reader's sake. He captured awkward, annoying, approval-needing teen boys perfectly in this dark, eerie tale of the secrets people close to us keep.

My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix
Publisher: Quirk Books. May 17, 2016.
Genre: Horror & Comedy
Source: Publisher
Pages: 336



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"Corn dogs," the exorcist said, "are all the proof I need that there is a God."

If you're looking for a lighter horror novel, My Best Friend's Exorcism is the book for you. Grady Hendrix is responsible for Horrorstor, the horror novel that looks like an IKEA catalog. The gimmick this time? An 80s theme with binding that looks like an old yearbook. Normally gimmick turns me off, but this book had enough substance and good storytelling to cause me to "have fun." I started reading this book, looked up for air, and realized I was 100 pages into the book. Oops!

Super readable and fun (and that's coming from someone who hates fun), this is a story about teen girls in private school and a possession. Something happens to Abby's best friend, Gretchen, in the woods one night and she's a little different afterwards. And then she's a lot different. In a series of disturbing scenes, we start to see Gretchen's transformation and the havoc she wreaks on his friend group. Even though Gretchen turns on Abby in horrible ways, Abby is determined to save her friend. And she may get a body building god-enthusiast in on it. I laughed several times throughout the book.

There are a lot of things to love about this book. Every chapter title is the name of an 80s song, for example. There weren't quite enough scares for me, but it makes up for it with how fun it is. And the ending is surprisingly moving (I cried). Early on, I was very nervous the plot was going down a "girl gets raped and manifests itself in ways that look like possession" path. Which is a tricky path to navigate. But then that potential plot sort of gets dropped? Which is overall good, but then also feels like a loose thread. I don't know. I also paused for a number of days in the middle of reading, so it's possible that's what caused the feeling of a break in that plotline. Overall, a fun horror novel if you're not looking to get too scared.

What horror combo books do you love?

3 Startling Short Story Collections

One of my favorite parts of #weirdathon has been the chance to jump around and explore a bunch of short story collections. And I found some really good ones. These stories will startle, unsettle, and intrigue you. Don't worry, they're not all scary. They're just the right amount of strange.

A Guide to Being Born by Ramona Ausubel
Publisher: Riverhead Books. 2013.
Genre: Literary Fiction - Short Stories
Source: Independent Bookstore
Pages: 208


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I am going to try to be brave like you asked me to, but I don't have any idea yet what that means. Is it braver to allow the sadness of your leaving to spread into each of my bones until it is as big as you were to me? Or is it braver to let you drift out into what may very well be a brighter, finer place than this and be happy to think of your joy there? I hope, Petra, that I get it right.

This collection of short stories made me ugly cry twice, then tear up another time. Right out of the gate, Ausubel hits hard with her surreal, but emotionally direct, creations. Some stories are stranger than others. There's a ghost, there's a man who grows a cabinet of drawers in his chest, a ship with only confused grandmas on it, and a world where people grow arms only when they love someone (and there's no limit as to how many that could be). You're thrown immediately into these less than normal scenarios, or you watch them grow over time and share the fright of the characters as they change.

No matter what outlandish method is used to explore life in these stories, they're all about how our bodies and our selves are not entirely our own. How we belong to others, and how the loss of others affects us. Unafraid, Ausubel visits all different sorts of humanity and graciously takes us with her. Her writing is absolutely stunning, where her stories go will surprise you, and she will give you all sorts of feelings.

Warning: In the story Welcome to Your Life and Congratulations, one of the main topics is the loss of a pet cat in an accident. It gets minorly borderline gory. If this is a topic that you'd find upsetting, skip it. It's one of the weaker stories anyhow.

FAVORITE STORIES: Poppyseed, Chest of Drawers, Safe Passage, Magniloquence

Songs of a Dead Dreamer by Thomas Ligotti
Publisher: Subterranean Press. 1986.
Genre: Horror - Short Stories
Source: Library
Pages: 288



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It was those stars, I knew that now: certain of them had been promised specific parts of my body; in the darkest hours of the night, when one is unusually sensitive to such things, I could-- and still can, though just barely-- feel the force of these stars tugging away at various points, eager for the moment of my death when each of them might carry off that part of me which is theirs by right.

Songs of a Dead Dreamer is startling in a completely different way than A Guide to Being Born. This is by far one of the best collections of supernatural horror that I've ever read. At first I was a little off put by Ligotti's flowery often-gothic language, but I got used to him playing with styles and using it to his advantage in exploring old horror tropes with new breaths of imagination. I got a lot of The King in Yellow vibes in that a frequent topic was whether or not madness was actual insanity or knowledge of a different plane of existence. Ligotti's stories are so original, that it was hard to guess where their dark paths were leading. Very creepy, very otherworldly. Definitely the kind of horror that I'm into. I'd highly recommend it to any horror fan who's tired of reading contemporary haunted house kinds of stories.

I read these out of order over a long period of time (shortest first, because I read them aloud over a campfire while camping in the summer). When I started reading them again from the beginning, I learned that the first story (The Frolic) about a criminal psychologist and his patient packs a huge, creepy punch. You can read it here. It's not gory, but it's not for the faint-hearted. Prepare to be all SORTS of startled.

FAVORITE STORIES: Vastarien, The Music of the Moon, Drink to Me Only With Labyrinthine Eyes, The Frolic

Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail by Kelly Luce
Publisher: A Strange Object. 2013.
Genre: Literary Fiction - Short Stories
Source: Gift
Pages: 170



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A sharp, crunching sound pulled his eyes to one side, where they fell on the wet-haired boy. The child looked away quite obviously -- he had been watching him. To be observed so closely by a child felt a great honor.

I'm not sure why I expected this collection of short stories to be creepy, but I did and I was slightly misled by that. Though certainly strange, they're often delightful or beautifully haunting. Bizarre things happen, like people growing tails or a toaster predicting how people will die, but these are fully stories about reality and humans' relations to one another.

All of these stories are based in or focused on Japan, where Luce lived for three years. What was so lovely about these stories was how they were all told by or about outsiders, be they gaijin (foreigners) or Japanese people who feel like they are on the outskirts of their communities. I was startled by the appearance of demons and magical karaoke machines just as much as I was by how gently Luce could break my heart and tenderly stitch it back together again with her hope for our world.

FAVORITE STORIES: The Blue Demon of Ikumi, Ash, Rooey, Cram Island

What startling short story collection have you read recently?

3 Books About People Who Aren't What They Seem

I'm going to be real, I was beyond delighted to notice the common theme between my last three reads. A nonfiction book about undercover women. A novel exploring the roles of women and a woman who rejects them (in a more strange, allegorical way) in South Korea. And a novel where EVERYBODY has identity issues. The first one may not necessarily count for #weirdathon, but the other two SO DO.

Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy by Karen Abbott
Publisher: Harper. July 2014.
Genre: Nonfiction
Source: Library Audiobook
Pages: 513


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War, like politics, was men’s work, and women were supposed to be among its victims, not its perpetrators. Women’s loyalty was assumed, regarded as a prime attribute of femininity itself.

As someone who's super scared of nonfiction and who hates reading about wars, I was nervous about this book. But when I heard that Karen Abbott was coming to town, I decided it was time to give this book a chance. Everybody who has read it loved it and the subject matter certainly sounded interesting. Badass women undercover?? Sign me up. I've just always had trouble with history, for whatever reason. Abbott makes Civil War history so interesting and accessible, without dumbing it down. All of the women included were incredible in what they were willing to do either for their sides of the war.

Something I really liked was how Abbott doesn't present those who fought on the Confederate side of things like villains. She just presented the facts and the personalities; what the women did without judgement. No side was glorified, every woman flawed and incredible in their own way. Also, when I saw Abbott speak she described one of the women, Belle Boyd, as a mixture of Sarah Palin and Miley Cyrus, which is SO ACCURATE. If that doesn't make you want to know more about these women, I don't know what will.

The Vegetarian by Han Kang
Publisher: Hogarth. February 2016.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Source: Bought new
Pages: 192



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Everything starts to feel unfamiliar. As if I've come up to the back of something. Shut up behind a door without a handle. Perhaps I'm only now coming face-to-face with the thing that has always been here. It's dark. Everything is being snuffed out in the pitch-black darkness.

It's so hard for me not to give this four stars, because eeeeeverybody else loved it. But I don't at all feel comfortable giving it a solid four. I think I got caught in a hype trap a little bit. Everybody who read this heralded it as super disturbing and weird. So I was expecting the most disturbing book ever. Much to my dismay, it was only sort of disturbing. This story about a South Korean woman who gives up eating meat due to a violent dream she had is definitely interesting.

As she herself becomes more and more like a plant, and the book jumps to new narrators across relatively big spans of time separating the book into three parts, it definitely gets progressively stranger. I really appreciate what Kang has to say about conformity, women, and mental illness in South Korea. At the same time, though, I wasn't blown away by how the story was told. It felt like it lost steam a little bit when it had some excellent opportunities to get really unsettling and pack a punch. That being said, I did like a quieter ending -- but the second part of the novel was slow and the weird sex stuff was not nearly weird enough. That might be a personal problem, though.

Mislaid by Nell Zink
Publisher: Ecco. May 2015.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Source: Library Audiobook
Pages: 242



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Besides, adulthood is never something girls grow into. It is something they have thrust upon them, menstruation being only the first of many two-edged swords subsumed under the rubric “becoming a woman,” all of them occasions to stay home from school and weep.

Mislaid is a complicated novel, but I was so delighted to see that it had more of a structured narrative than The Wallcreeper did. I don't even know how to describe it. A gay professor and a lesbian student bone a lot, get married, have two kids, then the wife runs away, taking her little girl with her. To hide from her husband, Peggy/Meg and her daughter take up the identities of two deceased African Americans and live in poverty passing as black despite being very white. Shenanigans ensue, but like in the most intellectual sense.

The characters are all ridiculous, the plot is ridiculous, but it is soooo smart and funny. Zink does not hold back in her social commentary, and I'm glad she goes so boldly into the absurd while looking at identity. Having read The Wallcreeper, which was a bit of a narrative clusterfuck, I was pretty satisfied with the ending of her second novel. Granted, when you look back at it once you're done, you'll wonder why certain events and characters were included at all. Overall, though, it was pretty entertaining and it definitely makes you think.

3 Dark & Weird Books of 2015

A lot of my January reading has been catching up on books that I missed in 2015. And I've also been in a mood of wanting to keep my reading strange and exciting. SO here are three mini-reviews of very peculiar and often dark books that I read this month.

The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
Publisher: Crown. June 2015.
Genre: Fantasy?? Sort of??
Source: Library
Pages: 388


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For all intents and purposes, the power of the Library is infinite. Tonight we’re going to settle who inherits control of reality.

Ok, I listened to this as an audiobook and I HIGHLY recommend it. It was wildly exciting, nearly impossible to turn off. There were more "what the fuck" moments than I could even count. It is just the most bizarre craziness I've ever heard, and it was so much fun to get sucked into. I don't even know how to describe it, because there are so many facets in addition to it being so unpredictable.  Basically there's a group of twelve people who are raised by a cult-y leader named "Father." He takes them to a place called "the library" and they each learn a different discipline. So they're not really a part of the real world until all of a sudden Father goes missing and they're unable to return to the library. And then some crazy shit goes down.

I actually never had any idea what was going to happen. Sometimes it was high fantasy, then, wait a minute, it's a heist. No... a vet drama?? JK, it's just sci fi. BUT WAIT. And so on and so forth. It's funny, but it's also super dark. There's violence (be warned). Objectively, it is not the best book ever. But if you want to not know what to expect and have a really fun time in your confusion, The Library at Mount Char will totally make your week.

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
Publisher: Penguin Press. August 2015.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Source: Library
Pages: 272



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Nowadays I often have to leave a room or walk away when a person near to me smells bad. I don't mean the smell of sweat and dirt, but a kind of artificial, caustic smell, usually from people who disguise themselves in creams and perfumes. These highly scented people are not to be trusted.

Eileen is a strange girl and this book is the story of how she disappeared. In her early twenties, she is still living with her father, a manic alcoholic, in their disgusting run-down home. When she gets out of the house, it's to go to her secretarial job at a boys' prison. We get to spend time in the head of this quiet girl where we see all sorts of disturbed thoughts and fantasies. And I LOVE THAT. If you're a fan of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, it's a similar first-person quirky/dark feel. Eileen's narration is startling and funny. It was exactly what I wanted to read.

Things seem pretty grim as far as Eileen escaping her present goes. That is, until she meets the beautiful new educator at the prison, Rebecca. Oh man, do I love the dark places this book goes once that happens. It's a sloooow burn and I would not describe this book as a thriller. The novel is probably overly long at the beginning. The tension that builds isn't really in a creepy atmosphere but in that there's so little going on and that makes you anxious. Because you know that isn't going to be forever. I would recommend this book to anybody interested in being trapped in the mind of a strange and dark character for a while.

Not Dark Yet by Berit Ellingsen
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio. December 2015.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Source: Used Bookstore
Pages: 115
First Line: Blue foxes are so curiously like stones that it is a matter for wonder.


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With the news reporting soaring food prices and shrinking crops on all continents, the project made sense, even good sense. But he nevertheless felt unsettled about it, like a warning he had received and then forgotten, the shadow of a Kraken passing beneath the surface.

I'll be real, I grabbed this book because of the pretty cover and the Jeff VanderMeer blurb on the back. Not Dark Yet is a new novella in the cli-fi (climate fiction) genre. The world's going to shit due to global warming. People are running out of food. The weather's all out of whack. And the main character, Brandon, just needs to get away from it all. So he moves to a remote cabin in the mountains somewhere, leaving his boyfriend behind. This novella jumps around in time a little bit covering a bunch of interesting plot points. An affair with a professor that goes bad, an agricultural project he joins in the mountains, applying to be an astronaut who will live on Mars, some random military stuff, AND MORE.

All of these things are SO interesting and the book had a lot of potential to do all sorts of stuff. Unfortunately, however, Brandon is just not that interesting of a guy. His character is so flat that it's hard to care about any of his (often briefly touched upon) plights. As much as I love concise books, I feel like Ellingsen could've done a lot with more pages. Anyway, I can't mention the other thing I didn't like because it would spoil the whole book. So in short, I really loved most of the stuff that went down in this story, I really super loved what the book was saying (it's so good), but I wasn't blown away with how it was done. If any of this sounds interesting to you, it's worth checking out, if only just to instagram the cover.

2 Perfect, Magical Books For Times Of Transition

Transition comes in all sorts of different forms throughout life, and figuring out how to deal with them gracefully can be rough. Some are sudden, like the loss of a loved one or a break up. Some you have known about and planned for for years (graduation, a new job, etc.). Regardless, a change from this to that is awkward and painful when you don't quite know what "that" will bring or how exactly to get there. These are books that have healed me when transition has torn me in two. These books will make you think, appreciate what you have, and motivate you to move bravely toward change.

Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed
Publisher: Vintage. July 2012.
Genre: Non-fiction
Pages: 353



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Life can be hard: your lover cheats on you; you lose a family member; you can’t pay the bills—and it can be great: you’ve had the hottest sex of your life; you get that plum job; you muster the courage to write your novel. Sugar—the once-anonymous online columnist at The Rumpus, now revealed as Cheryl Strayed, author of the bestselling memoir Wild—is the person thousands turn to for advice.

Tiny Beautiful Things brings the best of Dear Sugar in one place and includes never-before-published columns and a new introduction by Steve Almond.  Rich with humor, insight, compassion—and absolute honesty—this book is a balm for everything life throws our way.

I don't necessarily want to say that this book saved me, because I wasn't close to any sort of demise, but Tiny Beautiful Things came to me at a time when I needed it most. It took me out of a book slump, and it's still leading me out of a weird post-graduation anxiety slump/perpetual panic. Reading a collection of advice columns initially just sounded like a fun time. Little did I know that Cheryl Strayed was about to blow my perceptions about life and myself apart, and help give me the tools I needed to piece it all back together into something better. It was medicine I didn't know I needed.

Beautiful advice is given to those with small, but meaningful, problems, and those with earth-shatteringly brutal issues. Your breath will be taken away by these anonymous writers' ability to share themselves and try to change, as well as by how Cheryl Strayed always knows the right thing to say. Unlike most advice columnists, she's not afraid to share parts of her own life in her responses, for which I am grateful. I don't think any book has ever made me cry and be completely astonished and hopeful more than Tiny Beautiful Things. I will be returning to this book for years to come.

Hammer Head by Nina MacLaughlin
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company. March 2015.
Genre: Memoir
Pages: 240



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Nina MacLaughlin spent her twenties working at a Boston newspaper, sitting behind a desk and staring at a screen. Yearning for more tangible work, she applied for a job she saw on Craigslist—Carpenter’s Assistant: Women strongly encouraged to apply—despite being a Classics major who couldn't tell a Phillips from a flathead screwdriver. She got the job, and in Hammer Head she tells the rich and entertaining story of becoming a carpenter.

Writing with infectious curiosity, MacLaughlin describes the joys and frustrations of making things by hand, reveals the challenges of working as a woman in an occupation that is 99 percent male, and explains how manual labor changed the way she sees the world.

Deciding that you want to do something completely different from what you've been doing is awkward. After the phase of questioning all of your choices ever (paired with a bit of self-hate), you move into a phase where you either have to take a leap of faith or accept where you already are. Nina MacLaughlin wasn't entirely sure what kind of change she needed, but she knew she needed one. This is the story of her incredible leap into a career path she knew nothing about and the wisdom it brought her.

MacLaughlin's writing is fantastic. You can easily finish this book in a sitting. Somehow chapters about tiling or about building stairs aren't boring at all. And Hammer Head is rife with literary references and philosophy that manage to feel 100x more interesting than they do pretentious.

It's the leap itself that's scariest. Sometimes a story of how well it can all go is all you need to go ahead and take yours. You're going to have to eventually.


What books have healed you?

3 Tiny, Strange & Delightful Books

There's nothing I love more than really short books. Even better? Short books that are smaller than the normal rectangular book. Better yet? Short, not-quite-full-sized books that are really strange. I've hit the jackpot with these three.

Light Boxes by Shane Jones
Publisher: Penguin Books. May 2010.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Source: Used Bookstore
Pages: 149
First Line: We sat on the hill.


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They said their bladders were being filled with lead and soon it would rise into their chests. My father smiled and ran in place, a tactic used against February last year, but I could see tears in his eyes, and then he stopped, shoulders slouched forward, head near his knees. Lead poured from his mouth.

This is a surreal little fable in an experimental format and the plot is my worst nightmare. In a small town, there are four seasons: Spring, Summer, Fall, and February. And at the time that we meet this town, they are experiencing an unusually long February. It has gone on for years and it doesn't seem like it's going to end. As it turns out, there's a god named February and he's mad at the villagers for using flight. So that's banned and he continues to torture them. And then children in the village start to go missing. A war against February begins.

At first it's a little difficult to figure out what's going on. Light Boxes almost looks like our world, but then it gets a little weirder and a little more magical. Sometimes, to mark the POV, the name of the character is in bold at the top of the page. Sometimes a page is just a list of things. You never know what to expect as you keep turning the pages, but you can be assured that you'll be confronted with whimsical, poetic language in every line. This is a tricky fairy tale that will keep surprising you. If you like linear storytelling, back away from this book now. Otherwise, by the end, you'll be especially surprised by how in love with the characters you were the whole time.

The Room by Jonas Karlsson
Publisher: Hogarth. February 2015.
Genre: Literary Fiction, Humor
Source: Gift (Thanks, Shannon)
Pages: 190
First Line: The first time I walked into the room I turned back almost at once.


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A lot of people, more than you'd imagine, think everything's fine. They're happy with things the way they are. They don't see the faults because they're too lazy to allow themselves to have their everyday routines disturbed. They think that as long as they do their best, everything will work out okay.
You have to remind them. You have to show people like that what their shortcomings are.

This book is absolutely hilarious, and a little more absurdist than whimsical. Our narrator, Björn, gets a new job at a strangely bureaucratic office. He seems well suited for it and very focused on his work. But that's because we're in his head and we can hear his explanation of things. The more we see him interact with his coworkers, the more we realize just how socially stunted he is. People will say things to him and he will sit silently, looking at them, then once they walk away he will assert how they don't seem to want to talk to him to himself. He has his own internal logic that he relies on for all of his decision making.

But things get complicated once he discovers the room. It's a room that nobody seems to use, so he takes advantage of it every once in a while to clear his head. It's nothing more than a small, closet sized office. Then he realizes that there is no room in the floor plan for this room to exist. When he enters the room, his coworkers see something completely different from what he sees, and they are frightened. But no way is Björn going to back down and lose access to this room.

This book is like The Office meets Office Space meets Being John Malkovich meets Brazil. But I only say that, because I can't think of words to describe how brilliant and funny it is. The humor and writing is spot on. Being inside Björn's strange and confident head is a delight.

The Blue Fox by Sjón
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. April 2013.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Source: Used Bookstore
Pages: 115
First Line: Blue foxes are so curiously like stones that it is a matter for wonder.


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The night was cold and of the longer variety.

The Blue Fox is so interesting that I almost don't know how to talk about it. It starts in Iceland in the 1883 where a hunter is trying to pursue the elusive and mystical blue fox. From there, it jumps back to a few days earlier where we meet a naturalist who is struggling with the death of a young girl with Down's Syndrome who he cared for. He rescued her from a shipwreck years ago where she appeared to have been abused. In the end it loops back to the tale of the hunter. It's all linked beautifully, and I really don't want to spoil it for you.

Sjón's writing is concise and beautiful. The landscape and story are bleak. There's a little bit of humor in his writing, and there's also magical realism. This book is even more a fable than Light Boxes, and the emotional impact I experienced was real. You'll feel like you're in a dream as you read, because Sjón seems to have some incredible control over time and his writing is so haunting. Once you're done, you'll want to flip through it and read bits again, and it will continue to linger long after you've put it down.

8 Books to Make You Cry

A note: Like many of you, I'm greatly disturbed by the terrorist act that was committed at a historical African American church in Charleston this Wednesday. If you haven't heard about this yet, please read about it here. If you would like to help the families of the victims, please please please consider donating here. Obviously nothing can undo this act of hate, but we can at least support each other in its wake. Thank you, and thanks to Shaina for bringing the donation page to my attention.

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Publisher: Doubleday. March 2015.
Genre: Literary Fiction


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I didn't talk about this book much when it came out, just because everyone in the bookternet kind of had it covered. But, 100%, this book made me cry more than any other book ever. Normally books more than 300 pages scare the shit out of me and are avoided, but these 700+ pages are more of an experience than a book. As you read, you'll grow to care very, very deeply for Jude, a man who is abused throughout his life. You won't ever forget these characters. I really don't know how Yanagihara did it.

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
Publisher: Knopf. August 2011.
Genre: Literary Fiction


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If you want a small book that pack an enormous punch, this is the book for you. It's a measly 144 pages and I still ugly cried like no other. The stories of "picture brides" brought from Japan to San Francisco are told nearly in verse and are referred to as "we." They have big hopes for their lives in America and are mostly disappointed when they arrive. They struggle with culture shock, horrible work conditions, horrible marriages, childbirth, and racism. And then the war begins. Stunning.

Sweetland by Michael Crummey
Publisher: Liveright. January 2015.
Genre: Literary fiction


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A remote Canadian island community is falling apart, because the government is trying to give them monetary compensation to move elsewhere. In order to receive the money, everyone has to agree to leave. Everyone is willing to take the money to leave, except for one man holding them back. Moses Sweetland, the curmudgeon in question, is so attached to the history of his home that he can't bear to leave. So he decides to stay on the island all by himself without telling anybody. As this old man struggles to stay alive on his own, the past of the island and his memories haunts him. I didn't expect this book to get to me, but it did. I loved it.

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Publisher: Plume. 1970.
Genre: Literary fiction


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Pecola, a young black girl in 1940s Ohio, leads a devastatingly sad existence due to pressures and mistreatment in society and within her own family. She desperately wants blue eyes, so she can be beautiful like white girls. She's lonely. She's a victim to a violent act. This book is painful, beautiful, and so important. Toni Morrison is amazing at words.

Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle
Publisher: FSG. September 2014.
Genre: Literary Fiction


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Sean, a lonely and disfigured man, creates a mail in roleplaying game as a teenager. It's sprawling and complicated; all thanks to Sean's incredible imagination. Two high school students get too invested in the game and take it into real life, and something horrible happens. This novel is told reverse chronologically, with little details of the event being learned as the reader gets closer and closer to seeing it. Incredibly written, this is a quiet and powerful book that won't leave you any time soon after reading it. I'm still thinking about it.

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Publisher: Penguin Press. January 2014.
Genre: Literary Fiction


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A high school girl named Lydia is found dead. Nobody expected it and nobody knows how it happened. As the story continues, what seems like a solid family with a perfect child begins to unravel. The mother, a white woman, and the father, a Chinese American, experience incredibly strain being the only interracial marriage in their 1970s Ohio town. Secrets come out, and I WON'T spoil them. It's intense and crushing and the conclusion made me break down in tears.

An Untamed State by Roxane Gay
Publisher: Grove Press, Black Cat. January 2014.
Genre: Literary Fiction


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This is a tough book to write about. And it's a tough book to read. Mirielle, a Haitian American, gets kidnapped and held for ransom when she visits her wealthy father in Haiti with her family. Her father, on principle, does not intend to pay the ransom. So Mirielle is left to do everything in her power to survive the horrible acts that are are committed to her by her kidnappers. This is a novel about corruption, suffering, survival, and hope. Roxane Gay is amazing.

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Publisher: Harcourt, Inc. 1940.
Genre: Picture Book


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Life may often be painful, but there's beauty worth fighting for.

5 Quirky Books to Make You Feel Normal

The First Bad Man by Miranda July
Publisher: Scribner. Jan 13, 2015
Genre: Literary Fiction, Humor
Source: Library
Pages: 276
First Line: I drove to the doctor's office as if I was starring in a movie Phillip was watching--windows down, hair blowing, just one hand on the wheel.


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I wouldn't use a British accent out loud, but I'd be using one in my head and it would carry over.

This is one of the funniest books I have ever read. Miranda July never fails to capture the weirdness of everyday life, and that comes into full focus in her debut novel, The First Bad Man. The main character is an awkward middle-aged woman named Cheryl whose thoughts are so quirky and hilarious, it feels like you're in the head of a more demented character from "The Office."

Cheryl's high strung, very particular, and very bizarre. She mostly stays in her own head throughout her life, imagining infinite lifetimes loving one man who actually doesn't give her the time of day and communicating telepathically with babies (who she imagines are all the same baby soul). That is until Cheryl's boss forces her to let her mean-spirited 21-year-old daughter stay with Cheryl, and her life completely unravels. It's funny, it's moving, it's poignant. It's very Miranda July. A warning: There's some (sort of) graphic sex stuff. But like it's funny and bizarre.

Every night my plan was to make it to dawn and then feel out the options. But that was just it--there were no options. There had been options, before the baby, but none of them had been pursued. I had not flown to Japan by myself to see what it was like there. I had not gone to nightclubs and said Tell me everything about yourself to strangers. I had not even gone to the movies by myself. I had been quiet when there was no reason to be quiet and consistent when consistency didn't matter. For the last twenty years I had lived as if I was taking care of a newborn baby.

Ghost World by Daniel Clowes
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books. March 1998
Genre: Graphic novel
Source: Library
Pages: 80
First Line: Why do you have this?


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If you like your quirky a little less whimsical, you have got to check out this brilliant graphic novel made just for pessimists hoping life is a little less shitty and weird than it seems to be. Illustrated beautifully in just blue and white, Ghost World follows recent high school graduates, Enid and Rebecca. Neither of them are planning to go to college and their future is kind of a mystery to them. They spend their days going to diners, watching/judging the strange characters in their towns, and stirring up mostly benign mischief.

It's really easy to relate to these characters as they do weird shit and hate people. I totally related to Enid. Her relationships with the people in the graphic novel PERFECTLY paralleled my relationships with certain people in real life. But even though it's funny and on point, it gets very real by the end when the girls start having to make actual decisions about their lives. The awkward struggle with this new found control over what your life is could not have been portrayed better.

The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac by Sharma Shields
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks. Jan 27, 2015
Genre: Literary fiction, Magical realism
Source: Library
Pages: 400
First Line: Eli Roebuck lived with his parents, Greg and Agnes, in a tiny cabin near Stateline.


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Eli Roebuck sees his mother leave his family for a sasquatch one day. I was ready for this to be a metaphor, but there is legitimately a sasquatch (Mr. Krantz) who lives his sasquatch life in the forest. And there are unicorns. And bird people. And lake monsters. I mean, granted, there's still some metaphor. But it's weird. Really weird.

We follow Eli as he grows up and continues his obsession with finding this sasquatch. It affects all aspects of his life, and we get to look into the lives of people this obsession touches: both of his wives, his daughter, his father, his mother. It's a very strange, very excellent look at the effect obsession has on families and what damage can be done--and hopefully reversed. And the magical realism is a fantastic blend of whimsical and dark.

The Wallcreeper by Nell Zink
Publisher: Dorothy. Oct 1, 2014
Genre: Literary fiction
Source: Purchased
Pages: 200
First Line: I was looking at the map when Stephen swerved, hit the rock, and occasioned the miscarriage.


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The characters in this book are some weird, confusing assholes. The Wallcreeper is a strange tale about some pretentious weirdos who are married. Well, Tiffany married Stephen really quickly and then they kind of also explore extra-marital affairs, which is sometimes not a big deal but is other times a very big deal. They're kind of both lazily interested in a future together and furthering potential careers, but not to the extent that they aren't just floating around talking about birds one minute then quantum physics in relation to babies the next.

The structure is dreamy and weird. Tiffany and Stephen eventually turn into eco-terrorists. Their relationships get more complicated. But throughout it stays smart, witty, and really well written. Everything Zink writes is so on point. Her descriptions of sex, life, and death are all strange but super accurate. She's definitely talented and this book is definitely crazy. Zink captures how messy and volatile life and relationships can be, but it makes you grateful that you're probably less involved in eco-terrorism than they are.

"Wait a second," I said. "I don't mean to sound like a crank, but are you saying that what makes our relationship valuable is my willingness to suffer for you? Are you aware that I've never suffered for you for even, like, one second? That's what makes our relationship so optimal, in my opinion."

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Publisher: Penguin. 1962
Genre: Horror
Source: Purchased
Pages: 146
First Line: My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood.


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Ok, maybe quirky isn't the BEST way to describe this book. Horrifying might be better. Or creepy. But the characters who live in the Blackwood house are actually the quirkiest ever. Merricat, the main character, is super into magic words, not allowing herself to go into certain rooms, and poisonous mushrooms. Just normal 18-year-old girl stuff. Her cat is her best friend, so it's easy to relate.

Anyway, this book is a big, weird puzzle surrounding the death of her family due to arsenic put in the sugar bowl. Her sister was arrested for it, but got acquitted. Now the two girls and their uncle rarely leave the big, old house. You'll be immediately sucked into how creepy and bizarre they all are, and you'll need to keep reading as fast as you can to figure out what's going on. If you haven't read Shirley Jackson before, read her short story "The Lottery" then this. Also, this book has the greatest opening paragraph of all time:

My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Robert Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.

Merricat, you have my heart.