postcards from friends
postcard 34: on my friends' favorite books and why you should read them, written by them
I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can’t help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year.
prelude
“In the midst of all these haunted people, she sat alone, without a ghost yet longing for one, her writing like a clasp of fingers around empty air.”
—Salt Slow, Julia Armfield
I decided to do a special edition for my weekly postcard this week, and asked my reader-friends to write about their favorite books for me. For reference, here are all the books I’ve given five stars in my life (now including Intermezzo + The Science of Last Things)!
ELLE | Mrs Dalloway
There are those books that transform you as a reader, and if you write, those that transform you as a writer. Mrs. Dalloway occupies such a profound place in my head because it is one of the very rare books that did both for me. It was the first Virginia Woolf I read, and I had the intense feeling of my life changing as I turned the pages, as dramatic as it sounds. I had never read a writer who so excellently described what it was like to be alive, to live inside your own head while experiencing the collective that makes us human. Every sentence is one worth considering, one worth putting in your pocket to turn back over later; I know some people find this style of writing tedious, and usually, I am not one who enjoys books that exist largely in thoughts, but perhaps it is because this book has thoroughly ruined me for all the rest. It is still intimate and innovative every time I read it, and it transformed my perspective of empathy for myself and others.
LEAH | Conversations with Friends ()
Two university students become tangled up with an older married couple.
This novel is one of the first I read as an adult where I felt like the author had plucked the thoughts straight out of my head and written them on the page. If I had to pick a fictional character that I relate the most to, I’d have to say Frances from this book (although this is potentially a big red flag). It’s also just such a well-written novel, with nuanced explorations of relationship dynamics.
NIÑA | Bluets
Bluets, my most recent addition to this list, is a book that I read in between long slumps. It’s a very different experience to be reading during this time in my life (I’m a first year medical student), because reading feels more intentional. To dedicate my time to it means I actively rather than passively pore through the pages, and I make more of an effort to immerse myself into the words of the author, so much so that they cling to me like a second skin.
The experience of reading Bluets felt like a silent killer, cracking me open in a way I never expected it to. Like the title suggests, this book is a celebration of the color blue. But it is also an exploration of the feeling blue, that muted melancholy accompanying the lonely even on ordinary, run-of-the-mill days. Bluets is blue as in cyanosis blue, a malformation of the heart blue, a heartbroken to the point of devastation blue.
What I’ve recently discovered is how much I enjoy books that read like poetry. It’s an incomparable feeling to stand in the world of a story and just bask in the sheer intelligence of good writing. That’s how it felt reading Bluets, in all its intensity, eloquence, and devastating prose.
EMMA | Alice in Wonderland
My go-to answer for the nightmare question of readers everywhere: what's your favorite book? No matter what I'm in the mood to read, Alice is always there. If you want a light read or a challenge, to learn or to laugh — as if by magic or by bite of mushroom, this transforms itself to always be exactly what I need it to be.
SARAH | In the Dream House ()
Where do I even begin? Carmen Maria Machado is one of the most incredibly moving and creative voices in contemporary literature, and her memoir absolutely changed my life. Machado’s voice is so clear throughout this stunning book, every creative choice is so poignant, and her story is told through various genres and highly experimental vignettes. I could sit here for hours and try to write about this book, but there aren’t enough words to capture the beauty of this memoir.
In the Dream House is unlike anything I’ve ever read, and probably anything I ever will read. It chronicles the lifespan of an abusive queer relationship and Machado dives into the discussion with complete vulnerability and honesty, opening the door for much-neglected conversation about abuse in queer relationships. Her research and literary references seamlessly blend with her life experiences to create a modern masterpiece. I think Lucy Dacus said it best, “There is no readying yourself for this one. Carmen is a modern legend, case closed.”
ELIZABETH | Pillars of the Earth
“Every fiber of her body told her to throw herself into his arms, but she knew what she had to do. She wanted to say I love you like a thunderstorm, like a lion, like a helpless rage; but instead she said: ‘I think I’m going to marry Alfred.’”
I cannot fully explain the effect this book had on me, but it’s one of my top favorite books of all time and this is some of Ken Follett’s best storytelling. The heroes remind us that everyone lives in their own universe and is just trying to do what they believe is right, putting our everyday mistakes into perspective, and the setting does little to alter the relatability of the characters.
The Kingsbridge Series also had some of the most devious, narcissistic, skin-crawling villains I’ve come across, made all the more unbearable for their realism. Waleran Bigod is Claude Frollo on steroids, and William Hamleigh is King Joffrey with no crown. As painful as it was to read these antagonists, it made it all the more sweet when they got their just desserts. If you’re looking for an epic historical fiction, look no further.
GRIFFIN | Collected Fictions ()
If you know me, you know I love baffling works of fiction, — and nobody wrote out a narrative puzzle quite like Jorge Luis Borges.
One of his stories seems on the surface to be a book review for a book by an author who has never existed; another is a handful of journal entries of a man who discovers a single volume in an encyclopedia for a country made up by a secret society in a bar one day; another is a short eulogy written for a recently deceased man by a eulogizer who you eventually realize was absolutely not allowed to give his eulogy. These stories feel like small bibliographies and newspaper clippings that line the bottom of a dresser, those which you don’t take note of until you sit down to actually read what was written and suddenly all sorts of strange contradictions begin to appear. Something doesn’t quite add up, you think. What’s going on here?
And you begin to wonder if this is not a translation of a copy of a copy of retelling. Who’s editorial hands have distorted the narrative? There are characters in Borges stories who are written down in the traditional sense, with faces and names, but in a turn unique to Borges’ fictions, there are also fictional editors, rearrangers of narrative, and translators with their own intentions and inclinations. They come up sometimes in the footnotes; sometimes they’re nameless and only existing in the abrupt changes in narrative feel, — the stories have been passed through a wide number of fictional hands, all playing a sort of musical telephone with the text. Literary communities become civilizations trapped inside an endless library of words containing every combination of words possible, all of which are contemplated and considered while the inhabitants go on crusades among themselves to uncover a perfect combination of words.
Borges’ real contribution to lit is that he put it very clearly into his fiction how our view of reality is deftly tied up with the things that we read, the music we listen to, the shows that we watch. Once you begin to bend the contradictions inherent to the written word, — no matter the language! — outwards until they break, all the starlight of the universe can be poured through the white spaces between lines.
ESJE | On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous ()
Ocean Vuong’s novel is one of the very few five-star books I have never been able to fully sit down and review. I have attempted many quick/short reviews in the past, but never one that I’ve ever been fully satisfied with. It feels like anything I write will be a disservice to the brilliance of his novel. There is something to the flow of the novel that centers its characters, elevated by the beauty of its words, that transcends me in every read.
I am never one to consider plot as an important pre-requisite to a great novel, as in this case. Vuong himself put it perfectly, “I could not employ the plot-heavy strategy because I needed these people to exist as they are, full of stories but not for a story.” and "When you surrender plot, you gain actual people."
A subtle heartbreak that won’t break you outright, but keep you on the verge of breaking for the entire duration of the book.
FAITH | The Idiot ()
The way I felt reading Little Women when I was nine was how I felt reading this book at twenty-two. It instantly became a favorite, despite not loving it as long as other books I’d held close to my heart. The Idiot was one of those books that just instantly shot to the top of my list. It might as well be an account of my own experiences, with some minor specificity alterations. Although technically plotless, this book simultaneously holds the ability to propel the reader to keep going, which I feel, in a way, mirrors the framework of life itself. It just felt so refreshingly real—most people read to escape real life, but this book forces you to confront it, right in its face: the good, bad, and the boring, and any emotions that come along with it. I related so deeply to the narrator, Selin, so much that it almost felt like reading a screenplay of specific events I’d experienced. I don’t think I can recommend this book enough, even to people who might not relate to her, because I'm sure everyone knows how it feels to be young, indecisive, and somehow both a cynic and a hopeless romantic at the same time. Elif Batuman is a genius.
VALERIE | Simple Passion ()
The kind of story you’ll finish in an hour and will think about for days, weeks, maybe months. Simple Passion is a short semi-autobiographical story reflecting on Annie’s affair with an emotionally unavailable man. Although I’m a huge fan of everything Ernaux and her descriptive wit, what strikes me about this particular story is that just in a few chapters, she manages to invite you into a kind of sultry, brutally candid world where chronological lines between actions and feelings are blurred. It’s almost noir: you’re forced to trace every line with your finger without fully understanding why, and the words linger in a way that’s painful because it’s relatable or relatable because it’s painful – I haven’t decided yet. It’s a beautiful story for anyone who’s ever been enamored with somebody just slightly out of reach. But I’m warning you: once you discover Ernaux, there’s no going back. She has forever changed the way I write and think about love.
NATALIA | Greta and Valdin
Greta and Valdin follows two nerdy, unexpectedly cool and incredibly queer twenty-something siblings as they navigate modern romance, career crises and the whims of their wonderfully eccentric family.
It’s warm, chaotic and laugh out loud funny, while also being surprisingly complex and emotional. Set in my hometown of Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa (Auckland, New Zealand), I was pleasantly surprised by how grounded this novel was in its setting. There are the tiniest jokes or passing descriptions that you’d only truly understand if you’d lived here for most of your life and these little vignettes added such richness to what is (to me) a deeply familiar world.
I first read this novel months after I’d reluctantly moved home to New Zealand from London. Prior to this, I’d never read a book set in my hometown before and it did wonders for easing that little part of me that was aching to be back on the other side of the world. It reminded me how much I love this wonderful, flawed, quirky place I call home and for that I’m forever grateful.
GABEE | Letters to Milena
It's strange to read something that was never meant to be read by you. It's even stranger to feel so seen by it. A collection of letters from Franz Kafka to Milena Jesenská, none of this was ever meant to be consumed by the public—yet why do I find my face reflected in these pages?
At times, it feels like a winding meditation on longing, anxiety and loneliness, especially with how reflective and self-conscious Kafka can be with his love. There's a gut-wrenching level of honesty laced within the writing, one that only a person baring their entire soul to another could have. It’s almost too much sometimes.
I always say I'm too flaky to ever get a tattoo. I'm anxious about permanence and change strangely comforts me, but here, Kafka wrote the one quote I'd actually tattoo on my body: “Perhaps it isn’t love when I say you are what I love the most—you are the knife I turn inside myself, this is love.”
interlude i: what i read this week
I am currently in the US right now (for the first time in four years, which is so exciting for me because it does feel like my entire life is here). I haven’t really been reading a lot, but I have been reading a chapter a day of Salt Slow by Julia Armfield. It is so, so good and I am in love with it. Perfect for late fall—these stories are eerie, atmospheric, and beautifully written. I also finished reading Saving Agnes by Rachel Cusk, which I didn’t like. I think Cusk’s books are a hit-or-miss for me, but her writing is always so gorgeous.
I have been going around to my favorite LA bookstores, and have amassed a (small but mighty) collection of books. I’m so excited to read Dark Tales by Shirley Jackson and The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li in particular—both of which I’ve heard amazing things about.
Here are ten articles you should read this week:
No, English isn’t uniquely vibrant or mighty or adaptable. But it really is weirder than pretty much every other language.
The Best Books We’ve Read in 2024 So Far
From The New Yorker.
Stevie Nicks: ‘I Believe in the Church of Stevie’
In a nearly four-hour interview, the legendary singer goes deep on longevity, Kamala Harris, why Fleetwood Mac are finished, and much more.
How Many Friends Do You Really Need?
Social circles were shrinking even before the pandemic. Here’s what the science says about the number of close friendships we should have.
In the city as online, infatuation is an organizing principle.
The World-Changing Trees of Vincent van Gogh
In “Van Gogh’s Cypresses,” a new show at the Met, the artist seems to bend nature itself toward his brush.
What George Eliot teaches us.
The Future of Film May Just Be Old Movies
As theaters throughout the country adjust to an ever-changing landscape, many are turning to cinema’s past. Could repertory and revival screenings be a way forward?
These Rare Artifacts Tell Medieval Women's Stories in Their Own Words
A new exhibition at the British Library explores the public, private and spiritual lives of such figures as Joan of Arc, Christine de Pizan and Hildegard of Bingen.
What Happens When We Stop Remembering?
Confronted with her parents' dementia and teenagers' climate anxiety, one woman considers how our baselines shift in the face of personal — and global — loss.
(No ‘what I watched this week’, because I haven’t had time to watch anything!)
postlude
things i love: my friends!!!! seeing my friends for the first time in four years!! also eating a cava bowl for the first time in four years
this post is so sweet omg. there’s something so touching about people coming together to love literature so earnestly – I love it 🤍
i love u and i love our friends!!