Tag Archives: agua viva

Lit Chat Vol. 28 — June & July in Review

Hi friends,

We’re back after a little summer break! I’ve been letting myself take things slow this summer, and that includes my reading. However! As we are now somehow over halfway through the year, I wanted to take a moment to check in on the reading goals I set for myself in January and see how much progress I’ve made:

My 2025 Reading Goals:

• read 6 poetry collections
  • 2/6! Time to pick up the pace—now accepting recommendations!
• read 6 short story collections
  • 4/6! On track and currently in the middle of #5.
• read 6 craft/writing books
  • 3/6! On track with my next one on hold at the library, but might need to do some thinking about what I want my last two to be.
• read 4 books in translation
  • 4/4! I joined a literature in translation book club in my office, which has been so much fun. Now it’s something that’s just built into my reading schedule without having to be as intentional about it, which is perfect.
• read Emily Wilson’s translation of The Iliad
  • Behind on this! I did read all the introductory materials and the first two or three parts at the beginning of the year, but lost steam when I had to clean my desk and put the book up on a shelf. Maybe taking it back off the shelf will help motivate me to come back to it by the end of the year? Or maybe I should just pick a month and say, “This is the month that I read The Iliad.” TBD!
• read Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time
  • In progress and thrilled about it!! If you didn’t know, I’ve been working my way through the first volume, Swann’s Way, with a few other brave souls behind the paywall on my Substack. We’ve just finished reading Part One, and I’m loving the structure of assigned reading and the weekly space to sit and use my brain for a little bit of analysis. Thank you to all who are currently on this journey with me, and if you’re interested in catching up (or just reading the paywalled posts), you can do so below:

Okay, all in all, pretty proud of how things are going! Even if my reading pace has been slower and I haven’t been reading as many books as in previous years, I do feel like I’ve been engaging with what I read more deeply.

Especially considering the number of opportunities I’ve had to be in literary community over the past six months, I’d say this has already been an especially rich reading year! I’m so grateful for everyone who reads this newsletter and/or has come over to my apartment to talk about books or gone to a book event with me out in the city.

I recently shared this photo of 9-year-old me reading behind the Proust Read-along paywall, but I can’t stop thinking how happy this lil bookworm would be that reading is still such a big part of her life, so I’m sharing it again here:

Okay! Now with that long preamble over, let’s get to the books of June and July. If you prefer to get this post delivered straight to your inbox, make sure you subscribe to my Substack here:

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THE FOUNDATION:

Mystery Train — Can Xue, translated by Natasha Bruce

This was July’s translation book club pick, and our discussion ended up taking almost as wild a journey as the titular mysterious train. It’s the story of a chicken farmer named Scratch who is sent on a journey to buy chicken feed by his boss, only to realize that this journey is unlike any of the trips he’s ever taken before, and there might not actually be a way off the train. This is a fever dream of a novella, and had us debating questions of life and death, desire and fate, metaphors of light and darkness, and the prerequisites for embracing the unknown. I’ll definitely be looking to pick up more of Xue’s work in the future.

Great Big Beautiful Life — Emily Henry

Okay, I am still very much an Emily Henry stan, but this one didn’t fully do it for me! I loved all of the things I always love about her books: e.g., the unique, cozy setting of small-town coastal Georgia, the witty banter, the sexy love interest with a gruff exterior just begging to be chipped away. I think what didn’t work for me was that it felt like she was trying to write two books at once: the love story of two journalists vying for the chance to write the biography of a famously reclusive former media darling, and the life story of said darling and her media empire family. It was giving The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, but shoehorned into an EH romance. My opinion is that whatever book-a-year publishing schedule she’s on is starting to take a toll, but this book still does everything it sets out to do and is an easy, fun summer read.

Crown of Midnight — Sarah J. Maas

I would have ranked this higher, but honestly, it’s been less than a month since I finished and I could barely remember what happened in this second Throne of Glass book when I sat down to write this. Since I’ve started listening to the third book, more details about Celaena’s attempts to subvert the king’s plans for her to eliminate resistance in Adarlan have come back to me, and I remembered that I did enjoy leaning into the new romance and the expanded lore found in this sequel. So far, I still prefer the ACOTAR series, but these books have consistently been a good palate cleanser for when I need to get back into a reading groove.

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SOLID SUPPORTS:

Stories from the Tenants Downstairs — Sidik Fofana

I picked this up as a “blind date with a book” from Transom bookstore in Tarrytown, which did a perfect job of reeling me in with its no-spoilers pitch. The blind date bio was: “a voicey, bombastic mosaic of a novel full of vibrant characters, real drama, and sharp social commentary on modern urban development,” and I think the Transom bookseller hit the nail on the head with that description.

This story collection is set at Banneker Terrace, a housing project in Harlem facing the looming threat of rent hikes and gentrification. Each chapter focuses on a different tenant, spotlighting single mothers, young entrepreneurs, an aspiring hairdresser, an elderly chess player, and more. A microcosm of New York community, everyone is fighting to support themselves and each other as best they can, and I found myself invested in all the ways the different storylines intersected and diverged. A quick but impactful read, these stories left me wanting to check back up on the characters like they were real people, and had me thinking for a long time about hope and grit and the complicated relationship between identity and home.

Possession — A.S. Byatt

I had to look at this silly-ass book cover every day, so I’m making you look at it too. Well over 500 pages, this book took me a loooong time to get through, but I ultimately appreciated the way it forced me to slow down and lengthen my attention span. The story is split between that of two modern-day British literature scholars investigating a potential affair between two Victorian poets, and the affair itself, pieced together from letters, diary entries, and their poems themselves. When the modern-day scholars’ quest catches the interest of other academics with a stake in the game, it becomes a race through time to uncover—and claim possession of—the truth.

As a novel about literature, this ticked a lot of boxes for the former English major in me. I love a scandalous literary mystery! That said, I definitely think the POV-hopping affects the pacing, and apparently some people (Goodreads reviewers) take issue with the amount of real estate that the poems introducing each chapter take up. However! If you’re paying close attention, the poems actually have little clues and Easter eggs relevant to the narrative, which I think is very cool!! Also, can we take a moment to appreciate how impressive it is that the author not only wrote a whole novel, but multiple poems in distinct styles and voices, attributed to different characters? This is the kind of showing off that wins you a Booker Prize.

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THE TIPPY TOP:

Água Viva — Clarice Lispector, translated by Stefan Tobler

I don’t even know where to begin with this tiny, crazy book. I can’t remember who recommended it to me, but after waiting months to get it from the library, I read it in one sitting, returned it to the library, bought a copy, and re-read it with a pen in hand so I could underline my favorite lines—something I rarely do! It reminded me a lot of Maggie Nelson’s Bluets for its snippet-like, philosophical-leaning experimentation with form, and because both are journeys of artistic self-exploration in the wake of an ended love.

Água Viva is Lispector’s quest to capture each instant moment as it passes to discover the fundamental truth of what is. She attempts to surpass that which can be expressed through words to reach an experience that exists “beyond thought,” often comparing these forays into the inexpressible to the effect art and music have on the brain. Phillip read it after me and said it was like reading from the perspective of an atom, which I thought was both brilliant and accurate.

Her playful experimentation with language becomes a vehicle for excavating the truest self, transfiguring the reality of our mundane world into symbols that represent shared experiences of emotion and sensation. What ensues is a kind of birth, a reborn Lispector speaking from the instant of the page to both her lost love and all her future readers, transcending the boundaries of time and space and form to preserve her inimitable, unmistakable voice. This is one of those books you could read again and again and get something new out of it every time, and I fully plan to do so.

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That’s a wrap on the first half of summer reading! I’d love to hear from you about how your reading goals are going, what’s left on your summer TBR, and if you have any thoughts on the books above. Feel free to drop a comment below or send me a message in all the usual places—I’m always down to chat!

Until next time, happy reading!
❤ Catherine

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