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"It was the golden time of the year. Every day the leaves grew brighter, the air sharper, the grass more brilliant. The sunsets seemed to expand and melt and stretch for hours, and the brick facades glowed pink, and everything blue got bluer. How many perfect autumns did a person get? Why did I always seem to be in the wrong place, listening to the wrong music?"
I've been rereading Elif Batuman's Either/Or and found myself fixating on these lines.
It feels almost disarming to have someone articulate on paper a sensation so exact to the ways I have been feeling lately. I love the clarity that Batuman writes with. Her phrasing is so precise it hurts. Again and again I find myself returning to her novels, and to Selin as a character, as I find my own way through the absurd labyrinth of college life. I'm so grateful that books like this exist, and that I can read them.
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love a book about a girl and also about school. main character was so compelling to me. not doing it justice, but just writing this is making me wish I owned a copy so i could reread at will.
Feb 11, 2025
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If you like Elena Ferrante or if you too, have felt the pains and pleasures of writing. If you want to hear someone describe the age old ‘ahhh language can’t possibly communicate the true depth and complexity of our thoughts!‘ but in an actually thoughtful manner. Made me cry.
Jan 28, 2024
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My favorite read of 2024. Ive always been a fan of Miranda July and this novel is quintessentially her: tender, funny, weird, perverted and so in her own head.
one of my favorite excerpts:
"But to be clear, I had not, at any age, desired a specific male body in the way I did now. While all my boyfriends and crushes had been reasonably good-looking, my attraction hovered up near their face, where they kept their talent and power. Lusting for the whole length of a person, head to toe, was what body-rooted fuckers did, Jordi, and men. Now, for the first time, I understood what all the fuss was about. How something beautiful could strike your heart, move you, bring you down on your knees and then, somewhat perversely, you wanted to fuck that pure, beautiful thing. Sex was a way to have it, to not just look at it but to be with it. I suddenly understood all of classical art. The endless carved nudes, Venus in her shell, David. And sexy clothes. I had worn them without really understanding why, thinking of sexy as one of many styles, not realizing it was the only style. You should always be emerging from a shell if possible. Without knowing it, without really understanding it, I had been a body for other people but I had not gotten to have one myself. I had not participated in the infuriating pleasure of wanting a real and specific body on Earth. I lay in the center of the bed, unblinking. Wanting a body had a seriousness to it. When you said you might never recover, you really meant it. This kind of desire made a wound you just had to carry with you for the rest of your life. But this was still better than never knowing. Or I hoped it was. Because in truth it was like a bad dream, a nightmare. Life didn’t just get better and better. You could actually miss out on something and that was that. That was your chance and now it was over. I wondered if I would continue with my work and then I realized that my work was all I had now. I had gotten it completely wrong—I thought I was laboring toward a prize, but the prize was right there, I already had it, and work was something I could do afterward, after I was no longer young enough to be beautiful and could no longer be wanted by someone beautiful."
Jan 29, 2025
Top Recs from @foreva
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feels like the anticipation of a storm.. perfect weather for looking at crows, feeling disheveled in a cool and mysterious way, climbing a hill to watch the rain roll in and saying "thar she blows".
Apr 17, 2024
Nov 27, 2024
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In the back of every class notebook that I keep there is a hidden collection of all of the thoughts would otherwise disrupt the chronology of my notes. Here is where I keep my to-do lists, distracted classroom daydreams, & sudden revelations. Something about the unorganized and anachronistic nature of these pages allows me to be my most honest, unfiltered self.
Nov 20, 2024