“All of this has something to do with a girl named Marla Singer.”
–Fight Club
Halloween when you’re a child is one night of the year and it’s the highpoint of your calendar. Halloween when you’re in college is a month of festivities every weekend once you hit October. By the end of the month, you’re pining for the next holiday.
For Halloween this year, I went as Marla Singer from Fight Club.
My brother and I watched Fight Club when we were in middle school after we found it on TV and caught hell from our mother for being up so late watching TV.
I read the book in high school but didn’t finish it.
The reference photo
One of my teachers told me that it would be hard to read a book about how capitalism was destroying our society when you still listen to One Direction.
Regardless, I went as Marla. I love a messy female character, which makes Helena Bonham-Carter’s body of work perfect every Halloween. Everyone thought that I was someone from The Devil Wears Prada or a witch of some kind.
I made slutty brownies for the party. Slutty brownies, for those who don’t know, are brownies that have oreos and cookies in the mix. They’re indulgent, hedonistic brownies and they’re a big hit.
The next night, I had another party to go to. The assignment was to come dressed as your favorite writer, so I went dressed as myself.
I wasn’t sure if it was iconic, cringey, or just pretentious, but I thought it was funny and easier than putting together an Edgar Allen Poe costume at the last minute.
So how did I dress to be myself?
A black turtleneck, black boots, cheetah print coat, red nails, and giant sunglasses on my head. In other words, I dressed as a parody of myself.
I also thought that there was a 90% chance that everyone else would dress like themselves as well, but no. David Foster Wallace, Nabakov, disgraced J.K. Rowling (a person wore a bag over their head), and Edgar Allen Poe, just to name a few.
Disgraced J.K. Rowling
Continuing the festivities, my friend Julia and I carved a pumpkin, whilst watching “It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown,” a proper Halloween tradition.
Olivia and I went to a party in midtown in which I knew no one there, but I nonetheless walked around, explaining my costume to everyone anyway.
On Halloween night, I went with my roommate, who was dressed as Chef’s Kiss, and her friend, who was dressed as Reverse Cowgirl, to Columbia’s gay-straight-alliance party at a nearby bar. We spent the night getting free drinks from a bartender that was dressed as Bob Ross, and meeting people who did not get our costume references.
Then, I brought the curtain down on my Halloween season, 2024.
It wasn’t a wild Halloween filled with an in-costume bar crawl, but I did damage to my liver as part of my favorite holiday.
I can’t wait for Halloween 2025.
The Tragic Queen,
Raquel
P.S.: Read about the Halloween that I spent in Italy and went to a nightclub dressed as a character from Rocky Horror Picture Show in Creature of the Night
There are many ways to observe that period where summer ends and your new semester begins.
One of the ways is to spend an evening at Le Bain, a nightclub that more than lives up to its name “the bath” by having a hot tub carved into the dancefloor, where fully-clothed patrons go for a dip and (possibly) contract HPV. Not really folks, calm down.
Another way is to enjoy a night of Bossa Nova and flamenco dancing, the kind that’ll maybe make you question your sexuality, at a tapas bar for your cousin’s 21st birthday.
A final way is to go to a rooftop party with your friends from Columbia to listen to a mutual friend DJ to a crowd of interesting people.
This is what I was getting up to when I met Zac Presley, one of the curators of Vibe Fine Arts. Vibe Fine Arts is a dreamy new SoHo art gallery that would be making its debut a month later.
I hadn’t been to an event like this since I went to see Mahmoud Hamadani’s work in undergrad, so I was thrilled when I made the list for the grand opening.
I was excited to see the artwork of Jule Waibel, a German artist who I also met at the aforementioned rooftop party, and whose work would be on display like a jewel in the crown of the art gallery (pun very much intended). When I met Jule at the party, she had her infant son strapped to her chest. When I saw her again at the opening, I found her, sans baby, standing in front of her artwork.
She explained her pieces to me, how she made one of the paintings after her mother died and processed the grief through her art. The painting, which is of two women crying in their underwear, shows their grief and vulnerability. Stomach rolls are visible as one woman lays on the other woman’s lap and she tenderly places a hand on her friend’s back, the tears gently filling up her eyes.
Another painting of Jule’s captures her life in Brooklyn, with a vibrant scene that brings vitality to the simple domestic task of a mother and daughter getting groceries.
Her work is beautiful and fortunately there are four pieces currently on display at the gallery that proves this.
The gallery more than lived up to its name. There was finger food, champagne that kept flowing, and men respectfully hitting on you. I wanted to take home several of the paintings, but knew that that would mean having paintings to hang in an apartment I could no longer afford.
The paintings weren’t the only type of art on display, as people milled around the gallery with coach bags, black sequined party dresses, and the SS22 Oscar De La Renta dress that Taylor Swift wore at the Grammys (or a really good knockoff of it). It was like walking through the style section of the Sunday New York Times.
By the end of the evening, I’d gotten a full dose of art and fashion and was ready to call it a night (by which I mean making a quick pit stop at the Marriott Marquis bar and then going to bed).
It had been a long night and an even longer summer of me being a woman about town, acting bougie at art galleries that I had no business going to. I’d finally experienced the SoHo art scene, a thing of legend in Manhattan that I had yet to explore. Now the only things left on my New York City bucket list are the Met Gala and an Eyes Wide Shut party. (I kid).
I’ll continue spending my time exploring the SoHo art scene and going to places with “vibe” in the name, two things that have yet to fail me when searching for a good time.
After much deliberation, I have decided that I am not meant to work for a living.
I respect the lifestyle, but it’s just not for me.
A glamorous headshot of me, taken at work
School’s back in session, so I can finally tell you all about the joys of my New York City job, how I was every inch the slick professional in chic pumps, ready to “shake up the game” or something like that.
A few weeks ago, I completed my summer gig of working as a receptionist at a zillenial fin-tech place, having found the job through a temp agency.
Photographic evidence of me working for a living
My parents told me to apply at a temp agency, something that I believed to be a thing from their New York City days that no longer existed, like subway tokens and paying a buck 85 for your coffee. As it turns out, temp agencies are still alive and well, unlike the other facets of their New York City days, when they could afford a walk-up on practically no budget with a job that they got by checking the want-ads one afternoon.
My mother requested pics of my work clothes everyday. Here they are
Through Taylor Hodson, I got a job as a receptionist at a company that, like most people, doesn’t even have a landline. My job was primarily to greet people and to shred meaningless documents, something that they trusted a 23 year old to do perfectly.
This was one of my first ever big girl jobs, not a part time internship that paid me minimum wage, gave me one day off a week, and let me roll in at 10 AM. Working a full forty hour work week for above minimum wage felt like graduating past that point in your school career where you get to have naptime.
A hardworking professional, as you can see
Unlike my previous part-time employment, I actually got off work feeling like I’d earned the right to a Friday afternoon happy hour drink as well as the right to yell at tourists walking three abreast on the sidewalk while I hurtled my body into my subway stop in the morning.
I filled out an I-9, a W-2, and an NDA, before completing a sexual harassment lecture and quiz that asked real head scratchers like, “is commenting on your coworkers breasts while she’s lactating sexual harassment?”
I practiced my route to work the day before in order to ensure that I could get there in a New York Minute. Then, I did some of new-job-pregaming-rituals the night before, like watching Anne Hathaway play a plucky career woman in one of her films (The Devil Wears Prada, The Intern, etc.). She is every woman… but she is a little bit more me than the rest of you. I’m sorry, it’s the big brown eyes and the long brown hair.
I’d wake up every morning and listen to Megan Thee Stallion rap about “holding a glock in her birkin,” two things that I don’t own, before manning a desk for eight hours.
I’d gotten a taste of rush hour traffic at my old job, but would now get to enjoy a long commute during rush hour in the middle of a heat wave. Every subway car was sardined with people, except for the one half-full car that has no air conditioning, making New Yorkers choose between personal space and heat stroke. We’re all hot and angry, trauma bonded from being jostled into each other’s half-naked bodies while sweat drips down our ass cracks. Nothing quite beats inhaling a wide range of body odors while trying to get to work on time.
This is being presided over by a conductor who was usually just as mad about it as we were and made that apparent by shouting at us to not only “STAND CLEAR OF THE CLOSING DOORS” but to “USE MORE THAN ONE OF THE DOORS” and “WAIT UNTIL THE NEXT TRAIN IF YOU DON’T FIT,” with the same energy as a TSA agent at LaGuardia who will yell at you to stand back if you approach them to ask a question that has already been answered.
I’m not sure whose fault this is, but I’m just going to blame Eric Adams. You can always blame the mayor of New York and then a decade after they’re out of office, they’ll get a couple of buildings named after them.
Commuting home at the end of the day, unreasonably exhausted from not doing much of anything, and then being responsible for making my own dinner seems cruel and unusual.
I now have a new respect for the people who work all day, come home to kids to raise, make dinner, and then sleep poorly, only to make a paltry sum of money the next day at work.
Like I said, I have decided that I am not meant to work for a living.
I’ve just started another year of school, so I won’t have to rejoin the workforce for another year. Corporate America will have to wait with bated breath for my return.
I think that if there is one thing that this blog has made clear, it’s that I am a very lucky girl: I have beautiful friends, I get to do the thing that I love by being a writer, and I have a lot of fun a lot of the time. I don’t want much else.
I never feel this more than on my birthday, when my friends and family come together to celebrate me.
Since my birthday fell on a Saturday this year, I planned a day of festivities.
First, my cousin Olivia and I started our day at The Mermaid Spa in Coney Island, a Russian banya spa with a reputation for being the best, most-authentically Russian place to spend an afternoon in New York City. Russian is the primary language spoken by the staff and patrons. Men spoke to me in Russian and then subsequently asked my blank face if I spoke the language.
If you ever wanted to eat borsch and inhale steam, this is your place. It costs $50 for 4 hours of spa time, making it girl-on-a-budget-friendly.
For these four hours, you can enjoy saunas, steam rooms, polar plunges, and a banya room where you can smack yourself on the back with banya leaves. All of it leaves your skin feeling supple and your mind feeling pleasantly empty. I’m shocked that some twenty-something Tik-Toker has not yet made this place outrageously famous to the point of not being able to get through the door.
We got massages from a masseuse who made questionable comments throughout. Pro tip: don’t make comments about your customers’ bodies when you work for tips and also just don’t do that in general.
I didn’t think that I held that much tension in my neck until my masseuse rubbed it and asked me if I’d had a previous neck injury. When I said that I didn’t and asked her why, she told me that she thought I had a bone popping out, but that turned out to just be a knot.
Following that, I set out with six of my main squeezes to go to Cafe Wha?, a live music bar downtown. Having previously gone out to Cafe Wha? with my workshop, I knew what to expect. The house band at Cafe Wha? always brings the house down.
I invited my friends from various walks of life, none of whom knew each other and therefore were in for a night of introductions and small talk, hopefully without resorting to ice breakers.
Once the music started, my table got lightly serenaded by the house band on account of it being my birthday.
I may have slightly undone the work of my neck massage by handbanging the entire night.
One of the best parts about being born during Pride month, is the festivities going on around me on the day of. Every Sunday during Pride month, Oscar Wilde, a 28th Street Bar, does drag brunch.
I wanted a drag queen for my birthday, so I set out for Oscar Wilde, feeling a little icky after being a tad overserved the night before, and then walked home, catching a piece of that morning’s Pride parade.
So far being 23 feels a lot like being 22. I’m still dealing with adult acne every morning when I wake up and look in the mirror, yet I’m at an age where it’s possible for me to get married, as many of my peers already have. I still have a million questions about what I should be doing with my life as people with whom I went to high school post about getting engaged on Facebook with increasing regularity.
Regardless, I’m in a good place.
Thank you again to the people who showed up for me. I will always remember and appreciate it.
A couple of weeks ago, as an early birthday present from my friend David, I went to see the Tony-nominated play Appropriate by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, starring Sarah Paulson, during the final weeks of its run.
I was seated so high up in the gods that parts of the stage were cut off, but any seat is worth it for such an incredible play.
The premise of Appropriate is as follows:
When the patriarch of a family dies, his adult children must come together to go through his belongings for an estate sale and, in doing so, come across items that hint at his racist past. The family must then decide what they believe about him and reconcile the father that they loved with the man that they never knew.
It is a very warm and fuzzy play.
The idea of race looms large in this story, despite it coming from an all-white cast. It reminded me of The Thanksgiving Play in that respect. It is very apropos to our current discourse, in which everyone is subject to reappraisal and scrutiny, even when they were a product of their time.
The father is the main character, despite never appearing in the play. It is an impressive sleight of hand from Jenkins who wrote a play that crackled with wit and verve.
There are plenty of funny moments to inject some levity into an otherwise deadly-serious play and there were more than a few audible gasps from the audience.
Appropriate is a many-layered play. Annoying, unlikeable characters are proven right when it comes to the character’s racism and characters who are proven wrong about it aren’t always annoying or unlikeable.
Sarah Paulson was incredible, making her voice hoarse to convey how run-ragged her character has become, while delivering monologues that most stage actors only dream of.
The ending was perfectly cinematic and unless you’ve seen it, you won’t know what I’m talking about.
Following the show, I did the same move that I always do and made a pit stop at Jollibee. Like all sane people, I avoid Times Square like the plague and only venture in that direction when going to see a Broadway show. I always think to myself, if I’m already in Times Square, I might as well go to the Jollibee for dinner, the only thing I like about Times Square.
Regardless of what your Broadway show-ritual is, you should go and see Appropriate the next time it’s on Broadway and judge for yourself.
“Don’t get your knickers in a twist. I’m not Mick Jagger”
–Billy Joel, Madison Square Garden, June 8, 2024
When Billy Joel announced that he was ending his decade-long stint as an artist in residence at Madison Square Garden, I spent the next couple of days on StubHub making sure that I got a pair of tickets. I’d wanted to see him in concert for the past five years at least and never got around to it.
With Bill being in his 70s and his residency about to wrap up, I really couldn’t afford to drag my feet on seeing him in concert.
He was scheduled to give 150 performances and my cousin Olivia and I went to see number 149. We were seated behind the stage, watching it on a partially-obscured jumbotron, but we could hear everything perfectly.
It was a pretty good crowd for a Saturday (wink, wink). Everyone else was about a quarter century older than us, but you’re never too young to appreciate good music. A juicy crowd showed up to see him perform and once the crowd had fattened up enough, he took to the stage to earsplitting applause.
He performed with such assuredness, making it look easy. For the record, he is also very funny, telling us that his eyes were leaky because he was 74 (the crowd cheered for this fact) and that his eyes started leaking when he announced his retirement from Madison Square Garden, causing numerous news outlets to report that he was crying.
I did a lot of off-pitch singing and shaky camera work throughout the night. My personal favorite of his has always been Vienna, which he did almost right out the gate. On more than one occasion, I thought I was going to cry, but kept it together through Vienna and New York State of Mind.
He’s gotten over his aversion to performing Uptown Girl, which he did about midway through. His 8 year old daughter, Bella joined him on stage for several of his songs, rolling around the piano and the floor, while her dad performed above her head.
Finally, as the night started to wind down, he sat at his piano with a harmonica and did “Piano Man.” On the line “it’s a pretty big crowd for a Saturday” the audience went wild.
At one point during the chorus, he stopped playing and listened to us sing his song to him. He listened to us shout “sing us a song, you’re the piano man, sing us a song tonight, because we’re all in the mood for a melody, and you’ve got us feeling alright.”
Afterwards, he exited the stage to chants of “BILLY! BILLY!” and then returned to give an encore of We Didn’t Start the Fire, It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me, and a whole smattering of others.
He played all of his hits, except for Just the Way You Are, but I will live with this.
Olivia and I left shortly thereafter, our ears ringing, as we weaved through the throngs of people selling fake, overpriced Billy Joel t-shirts outside. I bought a “149th” concert t-shirt that will serve as a pretty comfortable sleep-shirt for years to come.
So, what to say to sum it all up when you’ve witnessed a rock-and-roll legend giving one of their final performances at one of the most famous venues in the world? I can’t sum it all up; I can hardly even describe it. I just enjoy the memory of having seen it and remind myself of how lucky I am to have done so.
Olivia and I walked away from Madison Square Garden, in a New York state of mind.
–Moon River, from the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s
In the heart of Golden Gate Park, there’s a serene garden called the Japanese Tea Garden. It has gently combed gravel designed for meditation, statues of Buddha, koi fish in reflecting ponds, bridges you can climb over, and a tea house to eat in.
It’s free to the public on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays before 10 AM, so on my final day in San Francisco, I went there for breakfast.
I had green tea and what was basically well-seasoned chicken nuggets for breakfast, but with a lovely view of bonsai trees.
After that, I stayed in Golden Gate Park to go to the California Academy of Science, where I watched butterflies land on students’ backpacks in an indoor rainforest, and penguins dive into the water of an aquarium, before falling asleep in a warm, dark planetarium.
I took a ride on a cable car as a last hurrah and got some of my best views of the city by far. I couldn’t have envisioned a better final day in San Francisco.
My initial impression was that San Francisco was a charmingly-messy, mild-mannered city.
My new, better-informed impression is that San Francisco is a moody town that’s constantly reinventing itself. It’s in a troubled time, crippled by a homelessness epidemic that is distressing to think about, much less look at head-on, and a gentrified, monocultural tailspin with no end in sight.
But I believe that it will prevail.
So much of what I saw fit the reputation of classic San Francisco.
I saw two men having sex on a nude beach and had them look back at me with a “you lost, girl?” look. Likewise, I was offered magic mushrooms by a guy on the street, which I politely declined. A building had Jimmy Hendrix painted on the side of it, because he’d once lived there, but it had since been converted to a pet shop– the undercurrent of rock n’ roll being never far behind.
I managed to beat the heat for about five days at the start of summer by being in foggy San Francisco, famous for its mild weather year round.
Another beautiful San Fran attraction that you should visit in Golden Gate Park. Please ignore the little boy picking at his underwear.
This trip marks one of the first times I’ve voluntarily ventured out into the world. As a person who likes her solitude, I often have to force myself to leave my house, but I wanted to experience the world, since there’s such a lot of world to see.
While in San Francisco, I stumbled upon a nude beach, walked across The Golden Gate Bridge, tried to get the attention of some sea lions at Fisherman’s Wharf on Pier 39, visited a Japanese Tea Garden, did some thrifting, and rode in a few self-driving cars and cable cars. There are still many more things I’d like to do in San Francisco: taking a trip to Alcatraz and properly seeing Lombard Street both come to mind. But for now, I’ve gotten my fill of the city and will be thinking about it for a while to come.
Thank you again Raj for letting me stay with you and helping me learn enough for my novel. I will never forget it.
San Francisco, being my kind of town, has incredible thrift shops. The best thrifting in San Francisco is in Haight Ashbury and the best shopping in Haight Ashbury is on Haight Street, which is completely lined with thrift shops.
My motto, as you know
I journeyed down to Haight Street, known to the locals as The Haight, to judge for myself whether or not the thrifting was better in New York City or in San Francisco.
After taking me to Gus’s (the best sandwich shop in the city apparently), Raj gave me his own personal thrift tour, showing me the best spots.
At the many stores we hit, I found, and fell in love with, a red, wine-colored cocktail dress and a lavender jacket. Anyone who thrifts knows that one or two great pieces is quite the haul. I bought a San Francisco 49-ers shirt as a souvenir and am now prepared for men to ask me if I’m a fan as a way to make small talk, should I ever wear it out in public. My flirting skills, knowing no bounds, will probably have me saying, “no I just own the shirt.”
I came close a few times to buying a vinyl jacket that I absolutely did not need. “Absolutely did not need” would describe all of the shopping that I did while in Haight Ashbury.
I mainly wanted the statues of the naked golden ladies that were over the dressing rooms of one of the places I went to. I thought that they would make a nice addition to my Columbia apartment.
It would really give my apartment more of a Greek-sculpture-garden vibe rather than the soggy-cardboard-box vibe it has now and you just can’t get that from William Sonoma.
They were, alas, not for sale and so my apartment will have to make do with the aesthetically-pleasing pieces of furniture that I find on the street.
Following that, we had a night out on the town, me with my new jacket and Raj with his equally nice clothes. I was able to take a ride in one of those utterly terrifying self-driving cars that make you fear that you’ll be careening towards a sudden death in a matter of seconds. They also make you question how far automation will put us out of work in the future, but I forced myself to think happy thoughts, like about the amazing thrifting that can be done in San Francisco.
And if you ever find yourself in San Francisco, do yourself a favor and shop at The Haight.
Pssst! FTC Disclosure: Embedded in each book title is an affiliate link and if you click on it (and purchase a gently-used book) I will receive a commission.
Feel free to do that…
We interrupt your regularly scheduled program of me discussing my time in San Francisco to bring you part one of my 2024 book review.
Welcome back to This Book, That Book, the place where I tell you whether or not you should read this book or that book.
Last year, I read 43 books, topping my reading goal of 30 books.
This year, so far, I’ve read 36 books.
Hold your applause.
I’d be lying if I said that I enjoyed every single one of these books, but I loved so many of them and am excited to spend the latter half of the year reading more so that I can reach, if not surpass, my goal of 50.
Many of the books I read were about sad, desperate people, and only occasionally did the authors restore hope in the end. So many of them featured ugly people doing ugly things, depicting people as they are, and not always how they ought to be. Regardless of the type of novel, I frequently got inspiration for how I should write my own books and how I should live my life.
So, here is my review of all 36, keeping it light on the spoilers and constructive in the criticism.
Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter– Positions itself as a dystopian novel based in our modern times. It depicts the soul-crushing, cut-throat tech companies that exist around homeless encampments, the need for recreational cocaine to keep up with the grueling demands, and the ridiculousness of modern-dating. The message is clear: we live in dystopian times. Craftwise, the dialogue is a little weak, at times bordering on cartoonish for the evil tech bosses. The ending, as bizarre as it is, firmly cements the story in the magical-realism genre.
Short People by Joshua Furst– gets to the crux of how children are: the literalness, the earnestness, the honest-to-a-fault-ness, and the fundamental desire to do no harm. I’m a tad biased, having taken this professor’s class, but it remains a very good collection of short stories. Favorite story: This Little Light
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann– A famous German writer ventures to Venice, where he promptly falls in love with a young Polish boy (and by “young” and “boy,” I am being literal). The story is him obsessing over the child and, at times, making the effort to interact with him. It is a short, well-written novel, using the high-falutin language of the time, even in translation.
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine– I had read this book years ago for class and had to read it for another class this year, but it is worth reading twice. This “American Lyric” dives into Rankine’s personal experiences as a woman of color in America.
Exaltedby Anna Dorn– *spoiler alert* This was a super light and rompy book about astrology up until all of the incest. On a lighter note, this novel will teach you everything you need to know about zodiac signs, and is a love letter to Leos in all of their attention-seeking glory. Meanwhile, I was likened to a wounded puppy, as a cancer. This novel has it all: a self-loathing lesbian character, an obsession with Heathers-era Winona Ryder, incest, and a shit-ton of astrology.
The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore– This novel takes place in Ireland and examines the life of one Judith Hearne, a woman who has not done much with her life. This book is deliberately offensive, using racial slurs. It will depress you, by asking questions about your life decisions and whether or not you’ve truly lived a life.
The Pure and Impure by Colette– opens, like many great stories, in an opium den. In what is one of the earliest examples of autofiction, a writer gets inundated with all of the things that the people in her circle do and writes about them.
The Ha-Ha by Dave King– You will not ha-ha very many times during this book. A man who cannot speak or write due to an injury sustained in Vietnam is tasked with looking after the nine year old son of his ex-girlfriend when she goes into rehab. He is profoundly lonely, being completely articulate in his head, but not out loud, the one place where it counts.
Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast– Written in comic-format, this memoir outlines cartoonist Roz Chast’s experiences taking care of her aging parents. Chast takes you panel-by-panel, showing you how difficult taking care of elderly relatives can be, especially when they were always difficult people to begin with. After reading this book and seeing what was in store for me, should I make it to my 90s, I bought bok choy with apple cider vinegar and started doing laps in the pool. This book had a real eat-your-greens-and-do-some-push-ups effect on me. I also then proceeded to call my parents to tell them how much I loved them and to also recommend that they start putting aside some money for assisted living right now.
In A Free State by V.S. Naipaul– Anyone who says they have an interest in colonization, emigration, and dislocation should read this book. It’s a fictional story about people living in an unnamed African country, Haiti, and Washington D.C. and covers what it is like to be in those places.
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw– When I first started reading this, I was expecting something more dramatic and exciting, but as I read along, I appreciated the lack of pretense and melodrama. This collection of short stories was down to earth and realistic, telling the stories of desperate people trying to get through life. Each story was a fascinating character study. Favorite story: How to Make Love to a Physicist
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin– This cleverly-titled novel tells the story of a profoundly lonely book shop owner who is tasked with looking after a child. The novel is wholesome and hopeful. I read it in a day, which is a testament to how good it was. Reading a book in a day is what a sick day is for. This novel really tests your knowledge of books, making near-constant references to classic literature in a way that is not pretentious.
The Guest by Emma Cline– After she is ditched in Long Island by her rich boyfriend, a young woman can’t move back to the city, where her abusive ex-boyfriend, whom she robbed, is on the hunt for her. Instead, she plots to have her nice ex-boyfriend take her back, staying in Long Island by intuitively flitting from one group to the next and putting on airs as a blasé member of the same social circle. It was hard at times to read as the character inconceivably makes a mess of things. Syntactically, Cline uses copious amounts of fragments that weaken her work, while also, at times, writing lines that are too wordy and overwritten. This, oftentimes, lulls the reader instead of compelling them to read further. Cline always has beautiful, glittery descriptions, but they occasionally get lost in the less special details that clog her narration. I still recommend this book as it was very entertaining and hit the right pressure points when there’s tension in the story.
Writers and Lovers by Lily King– Generally speaking, I do not like novels in which the protagonist is also a writer (yes, the title should have tipped me off). Like everybody else, I read to escape, so I don’t want to read about another person’s crippling bout of writer’s block, which the author probably had while writing the novel in question, along with a contractual obligation to write the novel in the first place. It is the quintessence of “write what you know,” taken to the upteenth degree. The end result is usually a few ramblings about the creative process, and, in this case, a starving artist who ends up victorious with a book deal. Writers and Lovers is a far less egregious example, but an example nonetheless.
The Fox by D.H. Lawrence– Have you ever watched that scene in North By Northwest and thought to yourself: this is cool and all, but is running someone over with a crop duster really an effective way to kill them? I had a similar thought when reading The Fox, namely *spoiler alert* is chopping down a tree and letting it fall on someone an effective way to kill them? Still enjoyable to read.
The Senselessness by Horacio Castellanos Moya– A political-exile must edit thousands of pages of testimony from witnesses of the genocide of indigenious people for the Catholic Church, an institution that he hates. Naturally, this story grapples with some serious themes, so only read it if you too are angry with the world and in need of having those feelings validated.
Chronicle of A Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez– I read (skimmed) Chronicle of a Death Foretold in high school and had to give a group presentation in which we invented a literary interpretation as to what really happened in the book. Between me and my two group members, we’d read enough of the book to come up with the idea that Angela Vicario was actually a virgin who broke her own hymen. (If you haven’t read the book, I cannot imagine what that must sound like to you). The three of us stood in front of our class and, with complete confidence, told everyone that the female character in the story broke her own hymen to get out of a marriage, something that is not at all supported in the text, and could only be said by three fifteen year old virgins who thought that hymens were highly-breakable pieces of the female body that would shatter like cut glass stemware when, one day, a penis poked it. Actually reading the book as an adult leaves you with a *slightly* more nuanced impression. You focus more on the senselessness of the crime being committed, the sense of community, the culpability of bystanders, the way that the information is laid out so effectively despite the novel’s commitment to ambiguity, and the many, many layers of commentary that Marquez brings to the story. But the hymen thing is good too.
Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton– Poor Ethan Frome, man. In between a rock and a hard place with a marriage that he hates and a woman that he loves, Ethan navigates some treacherous waters and does so very poorly. It is not exactly a warm-and-fuzzy beach read, but it is still a worthwhile read.
The Pisces by Melissa Broder– I love dysfunctional women stories and this novel about a codependent woman who is court-ordered to go to group therapy after punching her boyfriend in the face hits that target pretty well, in my opinion. Some of you may remember that last year I read a book that had a naked woman spooning a dead bird on the cover, so it is only fitting that I should pick up this book in which a fully-clothed woman, in the throes of passion, embraces a silhouetted fish. Reading the description, I learned that it was actually a story about a woman who has a lot of sex with a merman and I thought to myself, “I’ve never read a book like that before.” That said, there was so much mermaid sex in this one. (The word pussy gets thrown around a lot). It was snarky and scathing at times in the narrator’s internal monologue, never going full-tilt, tawdry romance novel. And in case you ever wondered about the rudiments of sex with a mermaid, this book answers those questions for you in vivid detail.
The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat, trans. D.P. Costello– you read the book byliving inside the narrator’s opium-addled waking-consciousness. I would like to ask my professor what the deal is with many of the books he assigned dealing with opium. There was a lot of existential nihilism in this one, so get ready to feel depressed.
Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates– Blatantly based on the Chappaquiddick incident, a woman dies in a car after being left there by the drunken senator that left her there to die. RIP.
The Chill by Ross Macdonald– Is a noir-style mystery. It uses some dated terminology and describes the appearance of every woman he meets in ways that you couldn’t get away with today. The vibe is very much I-went-out-looking-for-dames. The novel has sparse details and is very dialogue heavy, but I appreciated the lack of meaningless stage directions. There is a complicated cast of characters, making it difficult to keep the names straight at times. The ending will take you by surprise.
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy– underedited in the best possible sense, being lyrical, fragmented, and non-linear in an almost un-authorial way that maintains the novel’s style. It is completely uninhibited in its descriptions, using unique details to describe a scene. I was most interested in Sophie Mol’s place in the story. It takes over a hundred pages for her to appear, we learn very little about her, and her death, which the entire story revolves around, happens so quickly it has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it-quality.
Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen– This novel had such a satisfying ending that’ll make you believe in second acts in old age and karma for those who abuse animals and women. After being tormented by the evil business practices of a dysfunctional circus, animal cruelty, and the cruelty of age, the story redeems itself in the end and will make you believe that you truly can run away and join the circus.
Hula by Lisa Shea– There was so much I appreciated about this novel, such as how the idyllic moments of childhood are juxtaposed against horrifying ones and the narrator’s incomprehension of them as a result of her age. The father is treated like a mythical figure throughout the story, in and out of the girls’ lives for better and for worse in equal measure. At times I thought that the prose were a little over-groomed, the result of meticulous editing, but I still enjoyed reading about these girls’ tumultuous childhood.
Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren– Like many novels in the contemporary romance genre, Love and Other Words is about as formulaic as a Hallmark movie, but still very fun to read. The girl’s mother who always lit up a room is dead, the heroine runs into the guy from her youth who was her first love and has suddenly turned dreamy, she keeps hinting at the big event that went down in their past that you must wait hundreds of pages to read about, and, guess what: they both love books. I was impressed by how she could always find new ways to wax poetic about the way the guy smiles and blushes. Apparently men with “lopsided smiles” are straight up perfect.
Every Summer After by Carley Fortune– I had deja vu while reading this one, as it was nearly a shot-for-shot remake of Love and Other Words. It was not like the author lifted whole passages from the text, but the premise was unmistakably derivative. Both stories go back and forth between “now” and “then,” telling the story in both past and present tense, and tease the reader about “what happened” between the protagonist and her love interest, for whom they were each others’ whole world. In both stories, the man grows into a flawless adonis who listens to every word she says and comes back even dreamier once they’re adults, at her beck and call. It is female wish fulfillment in its purest form. The parents were so much more fun in this novel than in Love and Other Words, as they were drinking red wine on their dock and eating hot fondue at the drop of a dime. That’s the dream right there.
Beach Read by Emily Henry– All hail Emily Henry, the patron saint of the contemporary romance genre. I don’t consider myself to be a romantic person, so making me read a contemporary romance novel is a little bit like making an atheist read the Bible; I might like parts of the story, but I’m just not a believer. This book did not convert me, but I still enjoyed it. The novel tells the story of two writers and I typically hate novels about writers (scroll up in case you’ve forgotten), but this one was so much more charming. Once again, the male character is attentive and perfect, being attractive, good in bed, and head over heels for the female protagonist.
Happy Place by Emily Henry– Here we have another rom com full of people in a situation that I would never find myself in. There is miscommunication, selfishness, and going with the flow just to appease others. The main character made terrible life decisions in this book, in my own personal opinion. I give it about a year before her character realizes the massive mistake that she made and gives up on life. I preferred Beach Read over this one.
The Sabotage Cafe by Joshua Furst– In an ode to punk rock culture, Sabotage Cafe tells the story of a delusional mother imagining what her teenage daughter is going through after she runs away from home. I appreciated the way in which the mother’s imaginings of what her daughter is going through reflects her own adolescence and how it is made clear throughout the story that the mother is deeply confused. Even though I knew it wasn’t real, I was still engrossed all the way through, wondering what was going to happen to the daughter even though nothing was actually happening to her. I also appreciated the suburban kids, fighting the system, despite not knowing anything about the system in question.
The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector– is a 70 page hailstorm of a novel that waxes poetic about the secrets of the universe over a very thin plot that turns a simple girl into something complicated through the narrator’s perception of her.
Book of Eve by Carmen Boullosa– reimagines the book of Genesis from Eve’s perspective. In doing so, Boullosa challenges the Bible’s ideas of womanhood. It depicts Adam and Eve out in the wilderness following their exile from the garden of Eden. Boullosa offers creative new interpretations about what really went down in the Bible, such as Cain being created in Eve’s image, as a lover of fruit. I felt that there were some missed opportunities to comment more on pregnancy, menstruation, and Eve’s role in that as the original giver of life.
Moving Kings by Joshua Cohen– After getting out of the IDF, Yuav and Uri work for Yoav’s cousin David King (an inverted King David) at his moving company, Moving Kings, where they evict predominantly people of color from their houses following the 2008 housing crisis. In doing so, the novel makes the comparison between the occupation of homes in New York City and the situation in Gaza, with occupation and displacement being the central themes of the novel. At times, I wasn’t sure what the author’s views were on Israel and Palestine, although trying to psychoanalyze a writer through their novel is usually a fruitless task. (It’s worth mentioning that the novel also came out in 2017). I know that it’s pretty low hanging fruit to compare Cohen to Philip Roth since they both write about the Jewish experience, but I think that with this novel it is an apt comparison for several reasons: grotesque writing about sex, total lack of political correctness, flippant tone, and not having very many plot points in what still manages to be an eventful novel.
On my second day in the city, I saw exactly what I’d dreamed of when I pictured going to San Francisco all of those years ago: the San Francisco Bay covered in glittery fog and the Golden Gate Bridge disappearing into the clouds.
I’d never been to the West Coast before– I’d only ever gone up and down the East Coast. Standing on the opposite edge of the continent, I wanted to go to the beach.
After walking the length of the bridge, I decided to hang a left at the beach.
At first, I walked down the path into a wooded hillside towards the water and then decided not to in case I encountered a bear along the way. (It is on their state flag after all).
The view from sunny California
Having told no one where I was going that day, I decided that maybe it was best not to walk down a mountainside alone and instead made it to Marshall’s Beach by taking the road.
I’d packed a swimsuit for my trip without any plans to get anywhere near the freezing cold water in the Pacific Ocean. Since I decided to go to the beach spontaneously, I didn’t have it on me. Instead, I climbed over the rocks and walked barefoot along the shoreline, discovering for myself that the water was in fact numbingly-cold.
Watching the waves crash, I started to get FOMO and wished I had my bathing suit, despite how cold it was. I turned a corner and realized that this was not the type of beach for which you needed a bathing suit.
When Google searching beaches with which to best glimpse the Golden Gate Bridge, none of the websites mentioned that Marshall’s Beach was a clothing-optional beach with a large gay scene.
And I’m not mad about it. I always love a good trip to the beach.
So did I partake in the nude beach experience? Did I adopt a when-in-Rome attitude and plunge naked into the Pacific Ocean? Did I emerge from the water naked with my long, wavy hair blowing in the breeze behind me like a Botticeli painting?
Maybe.
I can tell you that I came out of the excursion with a sunburnt nose and my bad knee even worse than before, having witnessed a few eye-opening things taking place on the sand, but I loved it. A day at the beach is still a day at the beach.
Following that, I ate bao at a chinese restaurant called Bao, which more than lived up to its name, and got a drink at The Buddha Lounge in Chinatown. I 10/10 recommend both.
Day two was down with another adventurous San Francisco day in the books. I was ready to limp around San Francisco for another adventure on my third day in the city.
The Tragic Queen,
Raquel
P.S.: Check out my previous blog post on what my first day in San Francisco was like.
The Tragic Queen 