postcard 11: every book i've given five stars
on the shelf episode 4! good book recommendations as someone who has read over a thousand
It isn’t possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it off you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.
prelude
I long for a large room to myself, with books and nothing else, where I can shut myself up, and see no one, and read myself into peace.
—Virginia Woolf, from a letter to Violet Dickinson written in October 1904
One thing about me is that i am very very stingy with my 5 star ratings.
This doesn’t mean that I hate literature—I just like having a way to truly distinguish what books i loved throughout my life. I am very strict with my 5 star ratings in order to do the other books on the list justice. Sometimes, I will rate a book 5 stars and then bump it down; sometimes I will rate a book 4 stars and then bump it up. While dynamic, this list is still pretty much set in stone.
Here is how I decide if a book is a true five star for me:
Has plot and writing I consider perfect.
At least two quotes that I write down in my quote glossary.
Stays in my mind for more than a week (as in, it needs to haunt me for a little bit).
Feels magical when I’m reading it. these five star books remind me of why I read and why I love reading.
Elicits strong emotions & makes me feel something.
I consider rereading the book before I pick up a new one.
I text my friends about the book immediately after finishing.
Feels timeless, like they’ll stand the test of time and age.
This was originally going to be a paid post but it’s my birthday month and I just didn’t want to paywall this because it’s so important to me, so here is an extended version of my comprehensive five-star post! This post gets cut off on the email, so read it in the app or on your desktop <3
White Nights by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Despite ironically being set at night, this is Dostoyevsky at his most hopeful, idealistic, romantic, and starry. White Nights tells the story of a man who spends his life in solitude, yet dreams in technicolor. Despite reading most of Dostoyevsky’s bibliography, this is the one I return to the most. Melancholy yet beautiful and optimistic, this book is my favorite by him.
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
While it is not straightforward like a conventional memoir, Machado writes with devastating vulnerability and a propulsive cadence that makes this book impossible to put down despite the heaviness of the subject. This reads like folklore or fairytale anthology; like the actual process of building a house, each of Machado's kaleidoscopic chapters amounts to a complete account of an intimate history of her life and her relationship with her former partner. Written like a manifestation of real memories—fragmented, dreamlike, hazy vignettes that are not quite prose but not quite poetry.
Play It As It Lays by Joan Didion
Joan Didion at her best. The postmodern classic is devastatingly nihilistic and filled with hazy vignettes. It is a ruthless portrayal of one woman’s fatalistic mental spiral into self-destruction, drugs, and apathy. Maria’s mind is submerged in layers of numbness and detachment, and reading about her felt alienating and claustrophobic at the same time. The book not only depicts one woman’s spiral but also the counterculture and ennui of an entire generation in postwar America. Fraught with a hypnotic narrative that haunted me for months.
Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton
The most heartwarming portrayal of female friendship in your twenties. A must-read for those feeling lost in their twenties, as the entire memoir is an ode to friendship, love, and the mundane but precious moments in life. I especially adored the way she spoke about her best friend, about how they are two halves of a whole, and how they have left ‘no pebble unturned’. I currently no longer have this book on my shelf, as I annotated and sent my copy to my best friend for her birthday last year.
Thirst for Salt by Madelaine Lucas
In some of the most stunning prose I've ever read, Madelaine Lucas explores a nameless protagonist’s lack of belonging and her subsequent attempt to find a home in the marrow of someone else’s bones through a love affair with a much older man. Water metaphors and imagery are prominent in this novel—like water, relationships are fluid, filled with obfuscating lines and fluctuations that feel similar to the ebb and flow of the tides. And much like the vastness of the ocean, Lucas writes a deeply complex and empathetic depiction of love and the jarring juxtaposition of what it means in our memories versus in reality.
Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney
One of my top three books of all time. Conversations with Friends is a seemingly pedestrian and ordinary story, but past its superficial dermal layers, it is a painfully realistic portrayal of human nature and the flaws it entails. I saw so many of my traits and elements of my personality mirrored in Frances and couldn’t read another book for a good week after I read this. In this book, Sally Rooney does what she does best: break down human relationships and interactions in a way where, when you’re done reading, you see things in a slightly different paradigm than you did when you first started.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
There is not much to say about this book other than that it is a true testament to the beauty and genius of English literature. Tartt has the brilliant capability to immerse and entrap you into her narrative to the point where when you finish reading, you enter a sort of fugue state for a bit because readjusting to reality is hard. It explores themes of beauty, hedonism, moral corruption, and the very slow descent into madness. Atmospheric prose, strong characters, and a masterclass in plot pacing. What more could you possibly want?
Severance by Ling Ma
An uncomfortable pandemic novel written before COVID. The post-apocalyptic world that Candace lives in feels like an eerily well-paralleled hyperbole when compared to our current situation. Candace is disillusioned and stuck in the cogs of corporate America; she is ambivalent in everything she does yet does not yearn for something more or different. In this vein, Severance is a biting satire about late-stage capitalism as it is a chilling story about a pandemic a bit worse than ours. A brilliant yet claustrophobic commentary on identity, immigration, family, and modern corporate society.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brönte
Wuthering Heights is not a romance, but a love story nonetheless. Brontë's erudite demand of the English language shines through as she weaves poetry within her prose to create one of the most devastating, emotionally complex stories of all time. A story of deeply complicated and unlikeable characters and their relationships. Brontë uses them as vehicles to explore the boundaries and intersections between infatuation, love, and lust. Unlike most classics and books, she does not shy away from thoroughly depicting some of the most monstrous characters in literature—what they love, what they hate, how they love, how they hate.
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
A literary manifestation of a Hopper painting. Seemingly antithetical, this book is lovely melancholy—a late summer breeze on the precipice of autumn. The novel explores the relationships and dynamics between four people: Alice, Eileen, Simon, and Felix. The characters attempt to find the meaning of life through internal self-reflection and introspection, but also various external outlets: relationships, religion, jobs, family. They simultaneously crave and reject romantic intimacy and continuously question their own emotions and intentions. They chase fleeting moments of happiness that are maybe illusions, but isn’t that enough?
My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
Possibly the most devastating book I’ve ever read. Vanessa struggles to come to terms with the abuse she faced in her teenage years at the hands of her English teacher. She forces herself to believe that she is the one with the power in their relationship and that she holds all the cards. It is in the same vein that she believes, or forces herself to believe that Lolita is a forbidden romance instead of a novel detailing one man’s desire to groom a child. Vanessa rewrites the harrowing events that happened to her as a great love story. Because “if it isn’t that”, she tells her therapist more than a decade later, “what is it? It’s my life.” This is if Lolita was written from Dolores’ point of view, and one of the books that continuously haunts me.
Emma by Jane Austen
While Pride and Prejudice still reigns as the most well-known Austen novel, Emma perhaps is Austen at her most witty and intelligent. An underrated romantic comedy that is written in extravagance and lavish prose much like my favorite cossetted protagonist. Emma Woodhouse, the titular character, is rich, beautiful, and independent to a fault. She is so unlike all of the other characters in provincial classic novels and ahead of her time, which makes this book such a joy to read. “If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more” is one of my holy trinity Jane Austen quotes.
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
This is the memoir closest to my heart. Zauner perfectly describes the longing to belong to a culture when you feel adjacent to it all of your life. There is something about reading Korean words and food (especially things I say and eat on a daily basis with my parents) in a book. There was something so moving about seeing Korean culture intricately woven through the sentences. Things that feel so natural to me being explained made me feel proud, and it brought me to tears. This book filled me with love and ripped me apart all at the same time. I love my mom.
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Anna Karenina is as daunting as it is spellbinding. Spanning 800 pages, Tolstoy tells a cinematic tale that has remained beloved for centuries. At the core of the cinematic novel is the theme of love and its variants: all happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Despite its many political and existential themes and a vast amount of characters, at the heart of the book are two vastly different characters: Anna and Levin. Anna begins a torrid love affair with Vronsky, a charismatic and handsome officer, bound to crash and burn.
Happy Place by Emily Henry
This book is for the girls who worry and worry, worry if they’re good enough, worry if they’ve achieved enough, worry if they’re enough. Worry if they love people too much, worry if they love people too little. Worry about the possibility that they will never be happy. Worry if they’re a catalyst for something bad that happens. Worry if they’re too temporary or maybe too permanent. Who have nostalgic happy moments on a loop in their heads. Who feel the loneliness more with people around them than when they’re alone. Harriet and I mirror each other in so many ways, and reading it in words across a book made me feel so seen and comforted.
I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid
This is an absolute masterclass in how to write horror without a scare. The most genius thriller/horror book I have ever read. It is gorgeous and haunting and mind-bending. Reid exclusively utilizes anticipatory dread, creating a vague yet preternaturally unnerving atmosphere. The horror in this book stems from the anxiety of not knowing what is happening and the abstract knowledge that something is going to happen whether we understand it or not. And that is just so exciting to read as a reader.
These Precious Days by Ann Patchett
This memoir is an amalgamation of everything I love: beautiful writing, memoir essays, Ann Patchett, and that feeling when your heart hurts in a good way and you’re happy to just be alive. Her stylistic elegance combined with the unhurried, calm pace of the book gave me such peace of mind in a time of anxiety and worry. While reading, I felt like if I put my hand over my heart, I would be able to feel the warmth of this book. It is so, for a lack of better word, precious—it made me think of the people and things that I love, and how the only correct way to love is wholeheartedly and unapologetically.
The Idiot by Elif Bautman
This book is what I would call ‘brain food’. So darkly funny and smart, although incredibly frustrating at times. The book follows Selin, the main character, as she navigates her freshman year at Harvard university during the liminal period between analog and digital. Tt is deeply rooted in education and academia, with insights into philosophy languages, and literature. Selin’s intelligence is a dichotomy between being so academically brilliant yet socially inept, and this made for a funny narrative without dampening down the emotional resonance. One of the best, smartest coming of age novels.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
This is the enemies-to-lovers trope blueprint. Lizzy is headstrong intelligent, and independent. She refuses to marry anyone for anything other than love, no matter how much her mother emphasizes marriage. She knows the respect that she deserves. her prejudice (of Darcy) clashes with Darcy’s pride (hence, pride and prejudice), and the slow burn that ensues throughout the rest of the book is indescribably excellently written. This is not just a romance; this is a study into character and society during this time and about the plethora of emotions that we experience during human interaction.
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
A novel of dichotomies. It is atmospheric and haunting while being grounded in reality. It has as expansive parallels and world-building, but also intimate and vulnerable human relationships. It is a historical fiction set within the confines of a time period, yet feels timeless. Each word, each sentence, and each paragraph reverberates with emotion and heart. The novel runs on two parallel stories—a young orphan boy named Werner and a blind girl named Marie-Laure—until they intersect.
Beartown by Fredrik Backman
My most beloved series. Every single character came to life for a couple of hours, and they’ve never really left since then. Backman builds a world within this small town through the eyes of more than ten characters, all of different ages and genders and dreams. It doesn’t pick up until the middle, and then I couldn’t put it down. this book is so darkly realistic and incredibly uplifting all at the same time. The book explores toxic masculinity, sports culture, and the consequences of blind idolization. Seeing glimpses of people I love in these characters was truly magical.
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray is dark academic perfection. Wilde expounds on concepts of beauty, hedonism, vanity, and the complexities of the human soul. An extraordinary Faustian tale in which a man exchanges his soul for a guarantee that he will remain young and beautiful for the rest of his life. Wilde collocates aestheticism with morality, creating a one-of-a-kind story. Written in stunning poetic extravagance as well, The Picture of Dorian Gray is a tale of the extent a man will go to achieve an aesthetic ideal.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn captures the poignant and fragile magic of childhood. Like a tree, this is a tale rooted in strength and grounded in empathy. The story is told through the eyes of Francie, a young girl who lives in Brooklyn with her family. While this deals with many bleak and heavy subjects such as poverty and alcoholism, the writing and characters are vibrant nonetheless. It is a perfect slice-of-life book. The beauty of this book lies in its stillness and humdrum.
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Pachinko is living history for me. A brilliantly researched part of Korean history that is often forgotten. As all good historical fiction novels go, the characters in Pachinko represent real people who struggled and suffered in the same way. there are no words to do this book justice. I grew up listening to my grandparents on both sides tell me horrifying stories about their childhoods. The aftermath of a war is something that is glossed over in history books, and therefore, in people’s minds. Pachinko juxtaposes racism and war and identity struggles with hope and courage and resilience in a manner that is so unflinchingly honest and beautiful. A family saga story of compassion, resilience, and kindness even in the worst of times.
Book Lovers by Emily Henry
My favorite romance book. Book Lovers is a love letter to every eldest daughter with crushing responsibilities, every workaholic city girl who is seen as cold and withdrawn, every neurotic control freak who is terrified to even give up a tiny bit of independence and control, and every older sister who would do quite literally anything for the happiness of her younger sister. Basically, it’s a love letter to me. I saw so much of myself and my character traits in Nora, and I don’t think the way I 100% related to her can ever be replicated in any other book. Bonus points because Charlie Lastra is hot.
Persuasion by Jane Austen
Jane Austen’s most quiet yet strongest novel. While her other novels are long and filled with outright humor, Persuasion is more subdued and understated. This is written with emotional maturity and pensive melancholy. This is Jane Austen at her most empathetic, to a female protagonist who is much older than her others (twenty-eight but at this time, that was old). A second chance romance filled with grandiose love confessions amid anguished longing between two characters who fell in love at the wrong time and are trying to make it right.
I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
I read this on my 18th birthday, and this is what I wrote: Some things just remind me that it is such a wonderful and happy thing to be alive. Maybe it's because I read this on my 18th birthday, but this book just made me so ridiculously happy to be here, eighteen years later, despite everything. This book was just so genuine and heartwarming and grounded and just made my heart hurt and ache and expand in the best way. What a magical way to start my adult years. Hopefully, the rest of them will feel the same way I felt while I read this book. if not: take a deep breath. Feel the soles of my feet touching the ground, listen to the sound of my heartbeat. Find solace and appreciation in the quiet days that feel meaningless, and during long nights that feel especially lonely. It’s going to be okay.
Macbeth by William Shakespeare
This is Shakespeare’s best and most nuanced play. Macbeth is a complex portrayal of greed, morals, and fate versus free will. Shakespeare plays on the concept of the Aristotelian tragic hero, twisting it so that it becomes a character study of a fascinating former national hero who vacillates between corrupt ambition and honor, truly believing that he is fated to act that way. Additionally, Lady Macbeth is one of the most complicated and captivating female villains in literature, as she contributes to Macbeth’s eternal struggle between his conceived fate and supposed free will.
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
The embodiment of childhood summers. The Summer Book is calm, lovely, and short. Sophia and her grandmother have an unbreakable bond, and they spend idle days on the island together—Sophie’s childlike curiosity and her grandmother’s experienced wisdom. This is one of those instances in literature where the setting is so perfect, to the point where the surrounding nature and changing weather feel personified, becoming their own protagonists. The book filled me with warmth and nostalgia and a longing to revisit the feeling I would get stepping into my grandma’s house when I was younger.
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Steinbeck’s magnum opus and the best great American novel. East of Eden is a spin on the biblical tale of Cain and Abel that explores identity within a relationship or on its own amid a sprawling and beautiful landscape. Every character in this book feels real and flawed and each has a diverse take on the human condition. His writing is beautiful, and not even one single page is a filler. One of the most perfect classics.
Conversations on Love by Natasha Lunn
This is an ode to love and its many variants and manifestations in our daily lives: from falling in love to friendships to grief. Just like the definition of love, I think this book will mean different things to everyone who reads it. At one point, I found that the words of this book intertwined with my life and my personal experiences. I loved that Natasha Lunn pieced together the book in a way that allowed me to have the opportunity and space to reflect on our own lives and the people around us that we love so dearly.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
While I do have an unpopular opinion about this book that I will defend to the grave (that Gatsby is a terrible person who was never really in love with Daisy and Daisy does not deserve to be villainized), this is just such a fantastic book to read. Flawless scenes, flawed characters, exorbitant settings, and one man’s extremely messed up version of the American Dream spent chasing an elusive green light.
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
A tale of the obsession and immortalization of five teenage sisters by a Greek chorus-esque group of boys. Amid the lyrical beauty in the prose, there is an underlying sinisterness, an impending sense of doom. Everything feels sticky, humid, and suffocating—from the insular, mass-produced homes in the suburb where the sisters live, the claustrophobic and uniform male gaze, to the physically decaying neighborhood covered in dead flies and a rotting smell. Eugenides is excellent in conveying this claustrophobia and dread to the readers.
Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel
A perfect dystopian novel with an enchanting plot and prose that doesn’t feel like it belongs in a post-apocalyptic space. Station Eleven layers on layers of simple narrative that amounts to something overwhelmingly beautiful. The whole book reads like an elegy to life as we currently know it. It is wrought with existentialist dread and optimism all at once while balancing out the absurd situation of the book with realistic and grounded characters.
Know My Name by Chanel Miller
We live in a world where women are told to dress modestly more than men are told not to catcall. Where victims are asked what they were wearing or if they said no in courtrooms. Where alcohol is used as a vehicle to condemn victims and excuse perpetrators. Where sexual harassment is portrayed as comedic or romantic in media, allowing the public to further trivialize it. Where people suddenly develop overwhelming empathy for rapists that morphs into clinical disregard for victims. Know My Name is a memoir born of courage and resilience deeply personal while being an important commentary on rape culture, victim shaming, and the justice system.
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Middlemarch is a masterclass in empathetic and sympathetic portrayal of characters, and its beauty lies in its subleties and mundanities of ordinary life. The nine hundred page masterpiece is filled with questions of what it is to love and what it is to live with and for someone else. It’s packed with political criticism, ordinary financial struggles, romantic lines that made my heart hurt, sarcastic humor, and a strong authorial voice. A study of what it is to love and to be loved. In thirty years, I hope to see the same copy of Middlemarch on my shelf, flowing to the brim with annotations, with a record of my life the same way Eliot recorded the lives of these characters.
Richard III by William Shakespeare
If Macbeth is his best play, Richard III is Shakespeare’s best character. He is absolutely unhinged and bloodthirsty, but strangely eliciting sympathy from his audience while we question: truth or manipulation? Shakespeare is brilliant in recreating a true historical figure, giving him the nuance and sometimes a sympathetic eye to a complicated villain who we are unsure if he was one by choice or by fate. The opening monologue remains one of Shakespeare’s best.
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
My favorite Virginia Woolf. Fringed with joy and quiet memories. To the Lighthouse feels like sticking polaroids of quotidian memories on a wall. Woolf is able to spin words into gold and her prose is nothing short of mesmerizing. Woolf’s stream of consciousness style of writing is special, as it does not feel dense but rather feels like tracing multiple strands of thoughts in someone’s mind. A classic about family, emotion, and the human experience.
Anne of Green Gables by L.M Montgomery
I have a very long history with this book. I read it for the first time when I was seven (one of those tiny abridged kid classic versions) and loved it. It was the first 'big book' I attempted a year later. Every time I feel sad or feel like my life is falling to pieces, I pick up this book and for a few moments, everything feels good again. There's something so incredible and powerful about that. It's such a timeless book and I know that I will inevitably read it in a few years time. A million stars and more for my girl Anne.
Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadahota
She belonged to the sky, and the sky belonged to her. This was the first book I read that I cried over, and it is the book closest to my heart. I read this when I was seven, before I even knew about the existence of my younger sister, and again, after she was born. Kira-Kira is the book that taught me what it was to be a big sister before I even became a big sister. The physical copy on my shelf is all tattered and frazzled because I've read it so much, but this book was the first book to ever move me the way it did to my eight year old self.
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
Heart wrenching and grim. Colson Whitehead details the horrifying true story of the abuse that went on at the Dozier School for Boys. He does not sensationalize the characters’ suffering, but chronicles the tragedy and systemic injustice that occurs. Such a bleak yet important read about a crucial moment in American history.
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
An elegant, innovative reading experience. Trippy and weird and wonderfully strange. Calvino at his most ambitious, and with him, that’s saying a lot. This book is a postmodern gem.
Lord of Shadows by Cassandra Clare
Lord of Shadows is the only five star book from my young adult fantasy phase. It has excellent prose, world-building, plot, and the best star-crossed love story. I don’t think I can ever forget the almost dissociative shock that came after reading one of the most brutal cliffhangers I’ve ever read at the end of the book. Words cannot describe how I felt the first time I finished reading this book, and how long (1.5 years that felt more like 150 years) my best friend and I had to wait for the last book. Unfortunately, the last book was underwhelming, but I will never stop talking about how much I love this one.
interlude i: what i read this week
I only read two books in the last two weeks because I’ve been so busy with work. I read The Last Quarter of the Moon by Chi Zijian, which I enjoyed. I also read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, which has been sitting on my shelf for ages. I really liked it, but wish I read it a bit slower. I have to log a good ten books on Goodreads from the past month, but here it is if you want to follow!
Here are ten articles you should read this week:
interlude ii: what i watched this week
I watched Masculin Féminin, a old French movie from the sixties. I originally watched it because of this caption I found on Pinterst (below), but I actually really loved it. I also watched 20th Century Women, which was so good and captured so many experiences exclusive to women that I was actually very surprised to find out a man directed it. Here is my Letterboxd.
Here are some videos I watched this week: this video on the sad clown paradox, this video on our perception of how fast time moves changing as we age, this deep dive into Jane the Virgin, and this video on Munch’s ‘The Scream’.
postlude
things i love: jovoy’s fire at will perfume, anne carson’s writing, my spring playlist, anything with bows, the crisp spring air, morning runs.
love,
elle
On friday I went to a classical concert, and my friend told me this: "A good pianist makes you think "wow, he's so good", but a great pianist makes you think "wow, that piece is so good".
Your reviews make these books feel like beautiful must reads. (starting them soon... so if anyone wants to mini-book club discusssion lmk!)
Not sure about some of these books, but I am very sure about loving your beautiful vocabulary and expression 🥹🥰 thanks for sharing!!!