on the shelf, episode eleven
postcard 43: sarah (peoplesprincess)'s favorite books
“Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything.”
prelude
It’s not enough to grow, to accumulate experience and intelligence; we need to be able to correct ourselves, to change track.
—My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante
Every month, I’ll be featuring someone’s favorite books so you get to hear from someone who isn’t me. For December, I asked Sarah, who is one of my best friends and runs the newsletter people’s princess. She is such a special person, and her taste in books is as equally as wonderful as her. I am so happy I finally get to feature her on my newsletter (after our ten thousand joint post idea list), and the fact that I get to do it as a Christmas special makes it so much better. She is truly one of the only reasons why I stay sane and present on this platform. Please give her newsletter a read and subscribe, because it is one of Substack’s best!
As always, as I do for my Substack friends, I’ve linked a few of my favorite essays of Sarah’s in the article links!
1.My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
“When there is no love, not only the life of the people becomes sterile but the life of cities.”
This is one of those books that came into my life when I needed it most and it had the most profound impact on me. I didn’t know it at the time, but my mother and I were reading it simultaneously, our lives were drastically changing and we were separately falling apart, yet somehow both of us were drawn to this book. I avoid ranking my favorite books because it stresses me out and I love so many, but this book is in a league of its own. Ferrante’s prose is stunning, she tells an intricately woven story about the friendship between two girls from a small neighborhood in Naples. It’s the first book in a quartet, and unsurprisingly, it’s my favorite series. As you’ll see throughout my favorite books, I tend to gravitate toward literature focusing on women– our relationships with each other, the struggles we experience and grow from, and how our environment and people we grow with affect us as adults– and My Brilliant Friend is the epitome of this. I wish I could build a time machine just to read this again for the first time, but I’m content knowing that I’ll be able to revisit this book and series throughout different points in my life and resonate with different sections. It’s the closest thing to a masterpiece that I’ve had the fortune of reading.
2. Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
“Many people live and die without confronting themselves in the darkness. Pray that one day, you will spin around at the water’s edge, lean over, and be able to count yourself among the lucky.”
I read this when I was 20, I was struggling with a lot of aspects of myself and the tumultuous nature of my mental health, and reading this was a deeply emotional experience, but one of healing. Her Body and Other Parties is a short story collection by my fellow American University alum that touches on themes of womanhood, sexuality, trauma, and bodily autonomy. This is often classified as horror, due to the repeated motifs of women experiencing genuinely terrifying situations in their physical bodies, but it’s told in a way that combines the real terrors of our world, with fairy tale and fantasy elements. It’s so innovative and unique, much like Machado’s memoir, In the Dream House, and refuses to confine itself to one genre, or even one narrative. All of the short stories in this collection can stand alone in their brilliance, but my favorite is “The Resident,” which is the culmination of the gothic horror tropes prevalent throughout the collection. This book is a masterclass in writing and a perfect combination of theory and literature, and it’s been one of my biggest inspirations for the novel I’m trying to write.
3. Normal People by Sally Rooney
“What they have now they can never have back again. But for her the pain of loneliness will be nothing to the pain that she used to feel, of being unworthy. He brought her goodness like a gift and now it belongs to her. Meanwhile his life opens out before him in all directions at once. They’ve done a lot of good for each other. Really, she thinks, really. People can really change one another.”
Very few books have infiltrated my subconsciousness the way that Normal People has. Sally Rooney changed my life. Her writing incorporates some of the most real depictions of emotions–positive and negative– and her classic social and political commentary. Marianne and Connell are young students growing up in very different economic backgrounds in Ireland, Normal People follows them from high school to college, as they come to understand the depth of their relationship. I debated between adding this book or Beautiful World, Where Are You? but Normal People has such a special place in my heart. Rooney writes emotions so well, she illustrates the complexities of a relationship and how issues arise not from lack of love, but from miscommunication, economic backgrounds, and self-resentment. One of the most important parts of the story is Connell’s journey, his isolation and realization of his unhappiness at leaving home, and the rapid pace at which life changes. It’s something that was so moving to me.
4. Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion
“There was silence. Something real was happening: this was, as it were, her life. If she could keep that in mind she would be able to play it through, do the right thing, whatever that meant.”
I was first introduced to Joan Didion’s writing in high school, my AP Lang and Comp teacher printed out a copy of “On Keeping a Notebook” for me to read (she told me it was something I would resonate with) and I remember reading it over and over, pouring over her words, and I knew I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to contribute something to the world even an iota as wonderful as Joan Didion. Her unflinching, sparse writing (her trademark) perfectly sets the tone for the arid, desert landscape where we see Play It as It Lays play out. Set in the 1960s, the story follows a failed actress in her failed marriage as she unravels psychologically. The novel touches on mental health, abortion, and suicide, and is told with nonchalance, reminiscent of the laze of Hollywood in the 60s. I finished it in a coffee shop near my apartment, and the end of the novel made me cry for a few minutes and then sit in prolonged silence, just absorbing the words.
5. All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks
“The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control.”
I don’t think it’s possible for me to present some of my favorite books without including All About Love. I tend to form emotional attachments to books that remind me of a certain period of my life or helped me through something, and this is one of those cases. I read this for the first time in 2020, I had just begun dating my boyfriend, I was severely depressed and lonely, and like I do in the most difficult times, I turned to literature. I read a copy of this online through the library and bell hooks’ words allowed me to embrace the vulnerability I was feeling during those dark days and put words and concepts to feelings that had floated around in my body for a long time.
6. The Woman Destroyed by Simone de Beauvoir
“My life was hurrying, racing tragically toward its end. And yet at the same time it was dripping so slowly, so very slowly now, hour by hour, minute by minute. One always has to wait until the sugar melts, the memory dies, the wound scars over, the sun sets, the unhappiness lifts and fades away.”
I’ve read this exactly once, and I don’t know if I can ever pick it up again. It’s one of the most gorgeously written works I’ve read, but the book– made up of 3 stories of different women who are past their youth and facing some kind of crisis—is wholly visceral. I read this in the middle of my parents’ divorce, so I spent a lot of time thinking about relationships having a time limit on them, and this book felt like it dug straight from everything I was afraid of. It was written in 1967 and still feels incredibly contemporary, the issues of autonomy, sense of self, love, and motherhood will never cease to be relevant.
7. Emma by Jane Austen
“If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.”
Maybe this is a controversial opinion, but my favorite Jane Austen novel is and always will be Emma. The titular character, Emma Woodhouse, kind of sucks sometimes. She’s flawed, meddlesome, definitely a Gemini (me too), and selfish, but throughout the novel and through love and friendship, she reckons with her faults and exhibits beautiful growth. I love her. Jane Austen is such a lively writer, she incorporates humor effortlessly, and the dynamics between the characters feel so fleshed out and important to the plot. I felt so at home with this novel, the characters and setting feel very familiar to me, it’s such a natural, charismatic read. I also think that the quote above is one of the most romantic lines in any book I’ve read, so I’m proud to say it’s from one of my favorites.
8. The Haunting of Hill House Shirley Jackson
“To learn what we fear is to learn who we are. Horror defies our boundaries and illuminates our souls.”
There’s a shelf full of my favorite books that lives inside of my heart, and this is one of the most recent additions. I think The Haunting of Hill House is one of the most pivotal pieces of horror media. Jackson tells this story quite simply and leaves so much room for the reader to imagine the eerie corridors of the house or the paranoia that Eleanor, the protagonist, experiences. She leaves the necessary space required to let the horror linger, and yes, the book itself is scary, sad, and poignant, but I appreciate a writer who can effectively plant the pieces you need to assemble some of the puzzle for yourself. Aside from the ghosts and gothic horror, this story has a deep focus on the relationships between the characters, namely between Eleanor and Theodora, which is inherently queer and is essentially the beating heart of the novel. There’s a reason this is one of the pillars of the horror genre!
9. Writers and Lovers by Lily King
“I don’t write because I think I have something to say. I write because if I don’t, everything feels even worse.”
I’ve often said that my life is a cycle of really good things happening–milestones, successes, little wins– immediately followed by some of the lowest lows imaginable. It’s a cycle I try so hard to break out of, but at the end of the day, it’s life. Writers and Lovers is so special to me because it’s one of the best depictions of that cycle I struggle with every day. It was incredibly relatable to me, I felt so seen in Casey, the protagonist, who struggles with anxiety and finding her place in the world (much like yours truly) but only finding solace in her writing. King’s writing is acutely beautiful, she effortlessly captures small details of everyday life and nature, it’s witty and sensitive, and she tells this story with such intimacy. This is a novel about the challenges of ordinary life, it’s one of my biggest inspirations, and it is a reminder that I can do the writing thing I dream of.
10. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
“Here's some advice. Stay alive.”
To round out this list, I had to include one of the books that’s been in my life for the longest and that I probably think about the most often. I read The Hunger Games when I was around 11 and it very quickly became the sun that I orbited around. I’ve jokingly referred to this book as my Bible, it shaped so much of my interest in literature, and represents such a specific time in my life. Suzanne Collins is a genius, her writing shaped a generation. I’m not even going to describe the plot because you must know it by now, but Collins, who was inspired to write the book by flipping channels and seeing coverage of the war in Iraq on one channel and reality TV programs on another, integrated some of the most in-depth cultural commentaries into what was passed off as a YA romance book. Collins’ depictions of propaganda, violence against children, authoritarian governments, and the cracks we see in all governments, truly rival some of the greatest political commentary I’ve read. Katniss Everdeen, you’ll always be famous.
interlude i: what i read this week
Still on War and Peace! I am actually very impressed at myself for being so committed to a book I tried to read on four different occasions and failed less than 100 pages in. I’m now on Volume II (400 ish pages in), and things are getting exciting. I’m really enjoying both the war parts (which I thought would be a bore) and the Russian high society parts (which I knew I’d love because Anna Karenina is one of my favorite books).
I am making a post of every book I read this year, ratings and reviews included. It’s pretty long and maybe a can of worms, but I’ll be done by Thursday hopefully!
Here are ten articles to read:
The Best Books of 2024, According to Friends of the Review: Part Two
The Paris Review’s best books of 2024, part 2
Roaming Rocks by Marcia Bjornerud
Metamorphic rocks are our emissaries from the deep, travelling to alien realms and revealing the restless nature of Earth.
Why Your Big Sister Resents You by Catherine Pearson
“Eldest daughter syndrome” assumes that birth order shapes who we are and how we interact. Does it?
I’m Ready to Take a Sledgehammer to Tiktok HQ by
“On trad wives and social media trends rooted in conservatism, the irony epidemic and a plea to stop trying to tell me that "I'm just a girl" isn't harmful!”
The Great Forgetting by Kristin Ohlson
Our first three years are usually a blur and we don’t remember much before age seven. What are we hiding from ourselves?
The Ghost in the Machine by Liz Pelly
Spotify’s plot against musicians.
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It's a knife when you don't know if you'll ever amount to anything spectacular.
Six Handbags by Simon Wu
“I worry people will think I am shallow, or that I have more money than I do. I just love design, I say, and even I am not convinced.”
What Professional Organizers Know About Our Lives by Jennifer Wilson
Overwhelmed by too much stuff, we hire experts to help us sort things out. But what’s really behind all the clutter?
We Don't Have to Work It Out on the Remix by
The beauty of female friendships.
interlude ii: what i watched this week
I haven’t really watched much because I’ve been so busy this week, but I’ve been gearing up for the last week of the year, which is when I watch a movie a day. I did rewatch The Double, which is an excellent movie as well as such a good short story by Dostoyevsky. I think the movie really did the book justice, which I really seldom say.
I am also dying to rewatch Interstellar in IMAX (although I tragically may be too late). If I can’t, I’ll do a double feature of Nosferatu and Babygirl on Christmas day.
Here is my Letterboxd for reference.
Here are the two video essays I watched this week: this documentary about Bram Stoker and this video on why movies fake locations.
postlude
things i love: everything christmas!! merry early christmas, everyone. i’m so so glad you are still here reading my postcard <3
thank you for letting me talk about my favorite books 🩷
i love you so much