Helloooooo everybody and welcome back to the LFLC!
Oh man! It’s good to be back in the stacks. After a few unplanned months of hiatus, I’m happy to report that LFLC has returned and that my brain has just started working again. With that, returns the ability to read! [ed note: I could still actually read, I’ve just had basically no ability to focus and trying to get through one paragraph has felt like doing long division.]
But I’m feeling good now! It’s nice to be back with the books. It took me six weeks to slug through a book I had on hold for a year, but I’ve finally hit my stride. I’ve finished three books this week, and they were very small books but in this club we believe in small victories. Have you read anything good lately? Anything small? Anything at all? Please tell me!
I’ve also recently been overcome with the desire to read outside- not just on my porch, but out in the world. Give me a park bench! A café table! A parking spot with a good view for people watching! With vaccination has come freedom for the books. Let them out! They’re tired of dark reading corners! They need the sun as much as I do! It should be a crime to read indoors this time of year!! Actually, that seems extreme.
I’m just so glad we’re all reading together again! When thinking about the one year anniversary of this newsletter (which I let slip by without any notice because, oops), I realized how often I’ve talked about how I just don’t want to read. And at first I felt really really bad about that. You guys didn’t sign up for a newsletter about books so you could hear me kvetch about how books aren’t exciting me anymore! But then I also realized that this newsletter originated as a way to keep up the book conversations when I was separated from my book people. And while those conversations have still been very good… sometimes being a book person means facing the fact that books just aren’t always enough. I really appreciate you guys basking in those conversations with me, and sharing your recommendations anyways. It’s odd, but being a “book person” on display for the last year has made me really grateful for all of those people that also aren’t reading. Sometimes it’s a slug and that’s okay- I feel like I need that reminder from time to time.
I’ve been enjoying really small books lately- poetry or essays or cookbooks- things that I can truly read but that don’t require laser focus for long periods of time. This past weekend accidentally turned into a book buying extravaganza (because even if I’m not reading books, I’m still sure as hell buying them by the truckload) and I found myself really digging for the little guys. I’ve just finished reading Notwithstanding, a collection of poetry by Brit Washburn, which has a lot to do with food and being with people and that has really been nourishing my soul this week. I also bought Mr Salary by Sally Rooney (author of Normal People), which is really, truly, only 33 pages long. It’s so tiny. Size doesn’t matter, all books count. That led to me searching for everything that Sally Rooney has ever written, where I found “Color and Light,” another of her short stories. It was beautiful. Maybe I’m just a fan girl, but the way Sally Rooney writes relationships just absolutely boggles my mind. It’s all so beautiful and so real. She could write an entire series on the relationship between two strangers who have never met and I’d read every single book twice and probably beg for more.
But since I can’t buy every book I want to read all of the time, we’ve added a trip to the library to our Saturday morning routine. Let me tell you, it has been absolutely glorious. If you’ve been here long then you’ve heard me extol the delights of our public library many times, so you already know how I feel about this addition to the weekend. If you haven’t been here long, let me just tell you that I LOVE MY PUBLIC LIBRARY. I’ve got quite the list of books checked out right now and I’m very slowly making my way through them, but we’re moving through them all the same. I’d love to tell you what I’ve checked out but there are so many books on that list that it’ll have to be it’s own dispatch sometime.
I could keep going and going, filling ten more pages worth of book thoughts that I’ve had over the last few months, but I’ll save some for later. A few last things this week, two moments from the book world and what I’m reading now:
Eric Carle, author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar passed away this past week at 91 years old. In all accounts, he was loved by anyone who ever met him, and many who never had. His obituary in the NYT is beautiful and packed up with a few other profiles that the NYT has written about him over the years. I also have him to thank for my love of food, because the first food memory that I have is reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar and thinking that the salami looked so good, I’d like to eat it all, too.
In the comments section of this anniversary photo, the queen of impressive backyard meals, Barefoot Contessa Ina Garten, just ever so casually mentioned that she’s working on a memoir. Apparently this has already been announced but I missed that announcement so I’m celebrating now.
Right now, I’m reading a book on my Kindle app called Missing, Presumed by Alan Bailey, which I could only find on Amazon for a whole lot of money since the physical book is out of print (hence the Kindle app). It’s about six women who went missing from the same area in Ireland between 1993 and 1998 and so far it’s great. I also want to mention: this rec came to me through Morbid: A True Crime Podcast, and they’ve been really great for true crime book recommendations lately.
That’s all I have for you this week, friends! As always, thank you immensely for reading, both this newsletter and everything around you. Thanks for your patience, and thanks for continually asking me about books. I love that so much! And lastly, thank you so incredibly much to the lit clubbers that have been a part of LFLC for the last year. Here’s hoping there’s another good year to come. Cheers 🥂