Tag Archives: romantasy

The best is between the lines

Lit Chat Vol. 28 — June & July in Review

Book cover pyramid with Mystery Train by Can Xue, Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry, and Crown of Midnight b Sarah J. Maas on the bottom row; Stories from the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana and Possession by A.S. Byatt in the middle row, and Agua Viva by Clarice Lispector on top.

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:
Check out the Proust Read-along

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:

Young girl curled up in a hand-painted canvas butterfly chair, reading a book in a backyard under a large elm tree
this is still my preferred reading position

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:

Book cover images for Mystery Train by Can Xue, Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry, and Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas
sidenote: how gorgeous are these covers together??

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.

SOLID SUPPORTS:

Book cover images for Stories from the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana and Possession by A.S. Byatt

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.

THE TIPPY TOP:

book cover image for Água Viva by Clarice Lispector

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.

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

Housekeeping note: all book links go to my Bookshop storefront, where each purchase supports independent bookstores (and this newsletter, because I get a small percentage of each sale).

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Hope begins in the dark

Lit Chat Vol. 24 — February in Review

Pyramid of book cover images with Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott on top, The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead and The Carrying by Ada Limon in the middle, and Woman from Khao Lak by Randy F. Nelson, Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros, and Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas on the bottom.

Hi friends,

If January took forever, then February was a blip. I took a trip to New Orleans in the middle of the month for work, and had so much fun that it seems to have eclipsed everything else I did in February, because suddenly I can’t remember anything else.

Maybe the most notable update is our acquisition of this gorgeous Folio Society box set of In Search of Lost Time, which Phillip and I spotted in Crescent City Books far too early in the day, had a minor existential crisis about the practicality of purchasing and transporting it home, and ultimately decided it was fate and that we would simply figure it out.

Box set of In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust on a bookstore shelf
it was on sale!

Figure it out we did, and I am now all the more inspired to make the Proust book club I mentioned in last month’s newsletter happen. I’m still puzzling out the logistics, but if you’re interested in spending your summer (and beyond??) reading Proust, let me know??

Other local housekeeping: I’ll be hosting another Reading Club on Sunday, April 6th! If you’re in the NYC area and want to join, let me know and I’ll send you the invite!

Okay, moving on, but friendly reminder to subscribe to Lit Chat on Substack if you would rather read this post in your inbox:

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THE FOUNDATION:

Book cover images for "Woman from Khao Lak" by Randy F. Nelson from One Story magazine, Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros, and Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas

“Woman from Khao Lak” — Randy F. Nelson

I’ve written before about how much I enjoy my One Story subscription, which delivers the cutest little printed story booklets once a month or so. This month’s story, “Woman from Khao Lak” sucked me in from the first three paragraphs, in which the narrator recounts a teenage summer spent lifeguarding. The course of the summer—and arguably, the narrator’s entire life—shifts when a strange woman starts frequenting the local municipal pool, captivating the head lifeguard and irrevocably changing the pool’s whole social ecosystem. This story manages to be both nostalgic and deeply unsettling, an undercurrent of unease always rippling just beneath the surface. Support independent presses and read it for a whole $2.50 here!!

Onyx Storm — Rebecca Yarros

Hot take, but I was underwhelmed by this third book in the Empyrean series. Part of it was the fact that it’d been over a year since I read Iron Flame and it took me a while to remember who all of the characters were, the names of their dragons, and who had which powers. Violet spends most of the book stressing about how to handle the Major Unfortunate Development that happens at the end of Book 2 (no spoilers), while everyone else is more concerned about the fast-approaching war with evil magic-draining, wyvern-riding venin. We learn some more about the world beyond Navarre’s borders, some juicy family secrets get revealed, and more major battles take place, but despite the massive cliffhanger, I didn’t feel that the ending left me with a clear sense of purpose and direction for the rest of the series. Will I still read all 500+ pages of each new book whenever it comes out? Most likely!

Throne of Glass — Sarah J. Maas

Having finished all of the available ACOTAR books, the next logical move was obviously Throne of Glass, which I zipped through in the beginning of the month and enjoyed! This definitely felt more squarely YA than the ACOTAR books, though I’ve heard they get spicier as they progress. Throne of Glass features a notorious teenage assassin as the main character, who gets plucked out of a prison camp by the country’s prince to compete in a skills contest to become the King’s Hand—and ultimately buy her freedom. Maas’s books are excessively readable, and although between this and Onyx Storm I need a little bit of a romantasy break, I’ll definitely come back around to the rest of this series.

SOLID SUPPORTS:

Book cover images for The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead and The Carrying by Ada Limon

The Nickel Boys — Colson Whitehead

Phillip and I steadily made our way through all of the Best Picture Oscar nominees this month, with Nickel Boys being one of the last movies we watched, as we both wanted to read it first. I read almost the whole book on the plane to New Orleans, and regular Lit Chat readers will know that I love plane reading for being the perfect environment to let all of a book’s secrets stay with me in a contained space before returning to the real world.

The Nickel Boys was obviously no exception, and where I think both the book and movie excelled was in the translation of its characters’ physical and emotional journeys into a visceral, firsthand experience for its readers/viewers. Inspired by real accounts of horrifying abuse at a reform school in Jim Crow Florida, The Nickel Boys haunts not only through the horror of the crimes that take place within its pages, but also through the ghosts of its characters’ lost potential. That for so many boys, their immense capacity to give and receive love and justice was so senselessly denied is what makes the tragedy of their stories unforgettable. This was the first of Whitehead’s novels that I’ve read and will certainly not be the last.

The Carrying — Ada Limón

Crossing off my first poetry collection of the year! Ada Limón is absolutely one of my favorite living poets, and it’s such a gift that she narrates her own audiobooks. While I hadn’t read this 2018 collection in its entirety before, a few poems, like “The Raincoat,” “What I Didn’t Know Before,” and “Love Poem with Apologies for My Appearance” were familiar to me, and the pleasure in recognizing them was like that of running into a friend unexpectedly on the street. This volume features Limón’s signature blend of nature-inspired confessional poetry, with recurring motifs of plants and animals that continue to grow and bloom and reproduce while Limón herself struggles with infertility.

The collection takes its title from a poem titled “The Vulture & the Body,” in which Limón asks, “What if, instead of carrying / a child, I am supposed to carry grief?” In a way, this book is a response to that question, grief running through poems about roadkill, lost loved ones, and the burden of chronic pain. And yet, my favorite poem was probably “Wonder Woman,” which recounts a moment on the Steamboat Natchez in New Orleans in which Limón, after receiving bad news from a doctor, sees a girl dressed in a Wonder Woman costume:

She strutted by in all her strength and glory, invincible,
eternal, and when I stood to clap (because who wouldn’t have),
she bowed and posed like she knew I needed a myth—
a woman, by a river, indestructible.

I loved this not just because Phillip and I had just taken that same jazz cruise on the Steamboat Natchez not a week before, but also for the poignance of this final image. This suggestion that we can be myths for each other, that someone else might find strength through just our performance of it, is a beautiful example of the hopefulness that perpetually counterbalances the heaviness in Limón’s work.

THE TIPPY TOP

Book cover image for Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Bird by Bird — Anne Lamott

My second craft book of the year, and my only five star book for February! Much like The Writing Life last month, this is a book that I now feel the need to not only purchase for myself (it was a library book), but also maybe have an extra copy on hand for someone who needs it. Bird by Bird is best explained by its subtitle: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. It’s a collection of short, focused sections that cover everything from the basics of finishing a shitty first draft to the logistics of finding a writing group, and navigating the emotional journey that is tying a not insignificant amount of your self worth to your ability to consistently put a bunch of words down on paper.

Throughout the book, Lamott’s voice as both a writer and a mentor shines with wit and tenderness, using examples from her life and that of her friends to emphasize the importance of community, having grace for oneself, and of course, per Annie Dillard, simply doing the work. Though I’m sure I’ll return to some of the prescriptive exercises in the first section for advice on character, plot, and dialogue, it was the penultimate section that stayed with me the most, the one which asks you to consider the ultimate purpose for your writing. Lamott claims that everyone has one, whether it’s for some kind of outward gratification like publication, for the simple internal pleasure of being creative and finding your voice, or for a specific third party, as a gift that only you can give.

While I won’t presume so much as to call all of my writing a gift to the world, this book helped me realize that my primary motivation for writing is to connect with the people in my life. Whether that’s through the pleasure of sharing something with my writing group that I know will make them laugh, or knowing that these newsletters open a convenient little window for people from all parts of my life to pop in and say hi, I’m almost always writing with the hope that someone will read and react to what I’m saying. Reading and writing are often solitary pursuits, but there’s always the potential for them to form the basis of a connection somewhere off the page. I’ve realized that this, more than anything else, is forever my reason for doing both.

Thanks for letting me get a lil earnest on main! If you wanna chat about any of these books, or give me a recommendation for my TBR pile, or come over to my apartment in April to do both of those things in person, let me know! I’d love to hear from you.

And until next time, happy reading!
❤ Catherine

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Housekeeping note: all book links go to my Bookshop storefront, where each purchase supports independent bookstores (and this newsletter, because I get a small percentage of each sale).

View my Bookshop storefront