8 Things I Read This Week: Dispatch #8
hopefully this will be the last time I have to talk about the vampires.
Hi and Welcome to the Lost Friends Literary Club newsletter!
Happy Saturday (unless of course you’re reading on a weekday, in which case, happy whatever-day-it-is-today). I typically try to have a bit of a theme throughout each dispatch, but alas! This week we have no theme, just a lot of things that I’ve read lately and a couple of things to share. Next dispatch I promise will be theme-heavy so if cohesiveness if more your thing, just hang in there!
Currently Reading:
This weekend’s book is 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff, an epistolary (that’s our vocab word this week) memoir about an American woman and the London bookstore she forms a friendship with. I added this one last minute to my order from Daunt Books because they were sold out of another selection. I thought it would be cute. I thought I would just add it my reading goal for this year and move on. Easy reading!
Narrator: It would not be easy reading.
That’s not entirely true, it IS an easy read (just not so easy on my emotions). It is so sweet and so emblematic of how important books and bookstores are, how easily they facilitate friendships and connections, that I barely made it nine pages in before I started silently weeping. Thus far my favorite quote is one about buying books you’ve read and loved, and how old books frequently fall open to their previous owner’s favorite pages:
“The day [the book by] Hazlitt came he opened to 'I hate to read new books,’ and I hollered ‘Comrade!’ to whoever owned it before me.”
This week in book news:
Stephanie Meyer released the latest (and I think last?) book in the Twilight saga, Midnight Sun, this week on August 4th. Meyer shelved the project 12 years ago after parts of her draft were leaked online for Twilight fans everywhere to read illegally. Bummer. It sounds like this book was really difficult for her to write and she only waited 12 years to release it because it took her that long to finish.
If you’ve read Midnight Sun, please let me know what you thought.
Here are 8 things I read this week, for our 8th dispatch, coming out on 8/8 (wait, is that the theme?):
An ode to eavesdropping, opportunities for which have all but vanished with us all stuck at home. I appreciate the acknowledgement of how dull excursions feel without the chance to listen in as I also deeply miss the tiny dramas of other people’s lives. Feel free to stand in front of my house and talk loudly into your cell phone to someone who has wronged you.
Kristina Lugan’s poem: I want you to come now!
"What Vivian Maier Saw In Color," a profile by The New Yorker on the virtually unknown photographer and her work, which is stunning.
A small argument for why you should start a coronavirus diary.
The short story, The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides, originally released by the Paris Review in 1990 and rereleased now for their newsletter, The Art of Distancing, which is highlighting unlocked archive pieces. The story was followed up by a subsequent novel of the same name three years later and is one of my favorite books of all time.
An Elegant Woman by Martha McPhee. I loved this book a lot. It was incredibly beautiful and warm, but it was also very wordy.
The lyrics to Paperback Writer by The Beatles.
This short but interesting piece about fans turning against their favorite authors: The Curse of the Sequel-Hungry Fans. An interesting bit to think on:
“…the expectation of access to creators presented by the internet creates a ‘truly awful feedback loop of entitlement and agitation’.”
This week’s vocabulary word:
epistolary (adjective):
1: of, relating to, or suitable to a letter, 2: contained in or carried on by letters (like a relationship, where you’ve exchanged love letters), 3: written in the form of a series of letters (like a book)
Well, comrades, that’s all I have for you this week. If you enjoyed this dispatch, please share it with as many friends as you have, just go ahead and forward it to all of them, or follow us on social media at the buttons below. Every book I recommend can be found on this Goodreads shelf. If you want to chat, ask for book recommendations, or correct my punctuation, you can reply directly to this dispatch or leave a comment on substack, where you can also find an archive of every dispatch I release. Thank you for reading!