April in Review — Lit Chat Vol. 18
Hi friends,
April’s big news has been that I’m taking a temporary social media reprieve, and the brain space that has opened up over the past few weeks has been unbelievably refreshing. I went from taking two weeks to read one novel to finishing five books in ten days. My attention span is lengthening by the minute!
It’s silly because I haven’t really enjoyed posting on social media in years. It feels like a hassle, and I mostly prefer to leave my personal life to the imagination. But I love lurking. It’s the lazy girl’s equivalent of eavesdropping in a busy coffee shop. I love listening to other people’s conversations and personal dramas and feeling like I’m in the world even if I’m just alone in my bed. But guess what scratches that same itch? READING! (Shocking! I know.)
Being more or less offline has been freeing. I feel like a kid again, when the first thing I reached for when bored on summer vacation was a book, or a craft, or my bike. I feel like I have a brain again and I’m so excited to use it.
That said, let me tell you about some books! If you prefer to get this post right to your inbox, you can do so by subscribing to my Substack below:
THE FOUNDATION:
Death Valley — Melissa Broder
Melissa Broder has nailed writing weird little books with female protagonists who are about one mild inconvenience away from a full mental breakdown. In Death Valley, a writer escaping the pressures of tending to her hospitalized father and her chronically ill husband has a bizarre experience in the desert, which leads to her getting lost and coming face-to-face with the realities (surrealities?) of grief and love. Broder strips her protagonist’s needs down to their most primal, placing her basest desires on the same stage as her instinct to survive and proving the two equally necessary and inextricably intertwined. A quick, trippy read! I liked it better than The Pisces, but it didn’t stand out too much otherwise.
The Blue Mimes: Poems — Sara Daniele Rivera
This National Poetry Month was less poetry-heavy than past years, but I had to squeeze at least one collection in! The Blue Mimes won the Academy of American Poets First Book Award for its meditations on grief and longing during the tumultuous years of the Trump presidency and the pandemic, and the personal losses that defined this time for the poet. The poems flow seamlessly between English and Spanish, this dialogue an avenue to explore Rivera’s family legacies in Cuba, Peru, and the U.S. in an effort to preserve the stories and memories that get lost when moving between countries and generations. I really recommend taking a few minutes to read three poems from the collection on Electric Lit here.
A Court of Thorns and Roses — Sarah J. Maas
All of the people who recommended this series to me failed to mention that it is essentially Beauty & the Beast, but with sexy faeries! That would have been a crucial selling point for the former Disney kid in me. A human woman spirited into faerie territory, forced to live in an exquisite mansion with a cursed (but still gorgeous) faerie lord who treats her kindly and comes to love her?? Tale as old as time! Unfortunately for Feyre and Tamlin, the presence of four more books in this series leads me to believe their happily ever after is still a long ways away, but I’m definitely in the mood to see where the rest of this story goes.
SOLID SUPPORTS:
Martyr! — Kaveh Akbar
In this first novel from poet Kaveh Akbar, struggling writer and recovering addict Cyrus Shams seeks the wisdom of a terminally ill artist who has chosen to spend her final days in residence at the Brooklyn Museum. Having immigrated to America from Iran as a young child after the tragic death of his mother, Cyrus has a fascination with death and martyrs. His latest project, a book of poems about famous martyrs, is an attempt to find meaning in his own life and work, and his conversations with the artist become increasingly personal as he strives to reconcile his desire to die well with the indifferent reality of death.
I had the pleasure of seeing Kaveh Akbar discuss Martyr! at P&T Knitwear back in January, which was an absolute delight. Akbar spoke candidly about how his own journey with sobriety influenced Cyrus’s, and about the myriad influences on his work and creative process in his transition from writing poetry to fiction. Akbar’s sense of genuine awe and gratitude for the world around him are contagious and permeate throughout his work. He signed my book, “May you walk in wonder,” and I just think that’s a beautiful blessing to give to anyone, much less a stranger.
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea — Barbara Demick
I want to give a shout out to my Aunt Sally for this recommendation! This book, which follows six former citizens of North Korea who defected to South Korea, was shocking in the ways I expected it to be, and devastating in ways I never thought to imagine. By interviewing defectors from various backgrounds and levels of privilege in South Korea, Demick reveals a country in chaos, rife with widespread poverty, bureaucratic disorganization, and deliberate misinformation during the reign of Kim Jong-Il to 2015, the time of her reporting.
The North Korean regime is often aptly described as Orwellian, in large part due to the nature of its surveillance state and enforced loyalty. However, what struck me the most was the extent of information deprivation throughout the country at all levels of wealth and privilege. Even as they were starving in a famine that killed millions in the 1990s, schoolteachers were still teaching their dying pupils that they should be grateful to be North Koreans, and that everywhere else in the world was inferior. A doctor who escapes across the Chinese border only realizes that this is untrue when she sees that dogs in China have more food to eat than she did back home. It’s easy for us in the West to dismiss North Korea as an anachronistic propaganda machine, but this book was eye-opening in its portrayal of the true horror and suffering its people have experienced for the sake of a few powerful men’s delusions.
THE TIPPY TOP:
1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round — Jami Attenberg
I’m giving this book the top spot for April, but I’ve been taking my time with it ever since attending not one but two (!) of its Brooklyn launch events back in January. 1000 Words is the book version of author Jami Attenberg’s annual #1000WordsofSummer challenge, in which participating writers are tasked with writing 1000 words a day for two weeks. For each day of the challenge, participants receive a motivational email from either Jami or another writer, offering much-needed encouragement and perspective. This book is a collection of these letters, as well as a number of short craft talks from Jami, organized seasonally to represent the shifting needs and opportunities of one’s ever-evolving creative practice throughout the year.
It’s hard to express in just a few paragraphs how much #1000Words means to me. I’ve participated in the challenge and its mini offshoots with varying levels of success since 2020, and have found such wonderful and frankly life-changing community, along with significant consistency and improvement in my personal writing practice. I’ve spent the past four months with this book on my desk, reading a few pages at a time before getting busy. Now that I’ve come to the end, I can say with confidence that it’s a volume I’ll continue turning to for a very long time.
This book is essential for all writers, but I’d also recommend it to those with any kind of creative practice. Swap out “writing” for painting, singing, dancing, crafting, etc., and its prescriptions for setting achievable goals, recognizing your strengths, and carving our time for your work—among many, many other things—become universal for creatives everywhere. I’m so grateful for the wisdom and encouragement both inside this book and beyond it in the greater #1000Words community, and I can’t recommend both highly enough. If you’re interested in joining us, the next #1000Words challenge starts on June 1st!
That’s all for April! I’ll probably come back to Instagram eventually, but until then, text/email/these comments are the best way to reach me. And I hope you will still reach me, because I am more jazzed than ever to be reading and talking about books.
Until next time, happy reading!
❤ Catherine
Housekeeping note: all links go to my Bookshop storefront, where each purchase supports independent bookstores (and this newsletter, because I get a small percentage of each sale).
Catherine Thoms 