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 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.