Booklyn #29
February Book Recs
Hi friends,
As you’re clawing yourself out from the snow and hopping across gross garbage puddles in the curb, I hope you’re also finding time to do fun things. Ben and I took a daytrip this month upstate to Beacon, and while I took zero pictures because it was gray and dreary and my hands were cold and gloved, it was delightful to leave behind the dirty city snow piles for a day and replace them with quaint, charming snow piles instead. We had hot chocolate, donuts, and delicious sandwiches, and Charlie had an amazing time smelling every tree possible. What more could you want!
Enjoy my book recs below. I hope reading them with a hot beverage of your choice helps you get through the tail end (hopefully) of winter. Also, tax the rich.
Just Watch Me by Lior Torenberg.
What it’s about: Fleabag meets Big Swiss in this bold debut about a charismatic misfit who livestreams her life for seven days and nights to raise money to save her comatose sister—a poignant and darkly funny exploration of grief, forgiveness, and redemption.
Why I loved it: This book was kind of deranged and unexpected in the best way. (Relatedly, my Brooklyn Public Library app has been recommending the category “Unhinged Narrators” to me at the top of my feed and I wonder if that’s tailored to my tastes…) Ultimately this was a very entertaining and heartwarming story, both because of and in spite of the narrator’s life choices.
If You Love It, Let It Kill You by Hannah Pittard.
What it’s about: A novelist learns that an unflattering version of herself will appear prominently—and soon—in her ex-husband’s debut novel. For a week, her life continues largely unaffected by the news—she cooks, runs, teaches, entertains—but the morning after baking mac ’n’ cheese from scratch for her nephew’s sixth birthday, she wakes up changed. The contentment she’s long enjoyed is gone. In its place: nothing. A remarkably ridiculous midlife crisis ensues. This is a deeply nuanced and disturbingly funny examination of memory, ownership, and artistic expression.
Why I loved it: This book started me on a kick of reading all of Hannah Pittard’s works, three of which I read in a row, starting with this one, in the last couple of weeks. I love her style of writing so much, her dialogue is so textured and interesting, her characters so distinct and mostly likable despite their flaws, and her POV is so funny and raw like it’s spilling straight from her brain onto the page. It somehow doesn’t even seem edited, in a good way? (I’m positive it is edited.) I listened to an interview with her where she talked about the autofictionalized/fictionalized memoir style she writes in, how she thinks it adds more to the story when you don’t know if what she’s writing is real life, is made up, or is somewhere in between. I definitely felt this to be true, and that the intrigue of wondering what was “real” kept me turning the page hoping to find out.
I Hope You Find What You’re Looking For by Bsrat Mezghebe.
What it’s about: The year is 1991. Eritrea is on the verge of liberation from Ethiopian rule and in Washington, D.C.’s tight–knit Eritrean community, change is in the air. Thirteen–year–old Lydia and her family are grappling with what peace—after decades of war—might mean for their future, just as they welcome a new relative into their Berekhet, a cousin newly arrived from Ethiopia to attend medical school. Berekhet encourages Lydia to confront a barrage of new ideas for the first time, about nationhood, family, and what it means to be truly free. Meanwhile, her mother, Elsa, a former rebel fighter, and the family matriarch, Mama Zewdi, contend with regrets and secrets long–buried—secrets that the emboldened Lydia is determined to uncover, including the truth about her martyred father.
Why I loved it: As someone who ate a lot of Ethiopian food in D.C. during college, but admittedly didn’t know anything at all about the actual history and culture behind the food, it was fascinating to learn about the Ethiopian and Eritrean people and their recent history and immigration to D.C. through the lens of these characters. But besides that, I really enjoyed this complex, intergenerational story about chosen family, and how Mezghebe lets the reader uncover the family secrets alongside the characters.
Talk to you in March!
Leave me a comment with your favorite recent reads so I can add them to my endless (non-derogatory) booklist.
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