2025 Reads

I finally read it! I missed my oppertunity when I was 16, but I read Catcher in the Rye. Honestly, I was a little bored reading this - Franny and Zooey honed a lot of Saligner's social commentary in a way that made Holden's rants too familiar. But It was an impressive sort of boredom, because I felt like I knew this guy, and I could guess what he was going to say - I knew all his verbal ticks by the end of the book (do I want to start using kills in the positive sense?). Holden feels like a person! It made me a little sad when I finished the book to think about how many people just call him a cynical asshole when so much of his character is centered around his dead brother. His favorite person!! Great description of grief. My mass market paperback had the same cover on the front and the back, and that killed me.

I don't even know how to describe it but Lispector writes in a totally singular way. I love what she can do with 100 pages. This a story of a narrator get entalged with his protagonist.

If you have been following my reviews you would know that I am always disappointed by 21st century family epics, and I expected to be let down my this book, but NO! This book was an amazing family story, a tragiccomic work of art that kept surprising me (the best thing a book can do) and delievered and epic tragiccomedy about how fucked up denial can make people, seeping from one generation to the next. I read this 600 page book in three days, which is the kind of high I though I lost the ability to reach when I was 12. All of the characters are distinct, using different forms of narration, and I espically love how Murray writes teenagers. Great pager turner to get out of slump READ IT!!!!

"Heisnberg's uncertainity principal shreaded the hopes of all thoses who had put their faith in the clockwork universe Newtonian physics had promised. According to the determinists, if one could reveal the law that governed matter, one could reach back to the most archaic past and predict the most distant future. If everything that occured was the direct consqeunce of a prior state, that merely by looking at the present and running the equations it would be possible to achive a godlike knowledge of the universe. Those hopes were shattered by Heisenberg's Disovery: what was beyond our grasp was neither the future nor the past, but the present itself."

Loved this book, one of my favorite pieces of creative nonfiction. What if math is the rot at the center of the universe? What if physics is an eldrich horror we should steer clear from? Labatut chronicles the history of quantum mechanics, during the interwar period when some of the most talented scientists gathered together in rooms. Quantum mechanics as the reaction to WW1, a death of god similiar to Dadaism. Turns out Schrödinger's cat meant to make fun of quantum theory before it became its leading metaphor.

Unlike other romance books I read, I went into this one wanting to give it the benefit of the doubt, but the premise of this book is better than the result. I love the idea - f/f hockey romance between an arrogant star player and a student coach who had to retire after getting Rheumatoid arthritis. and there was a lot of good here, but it was way too long, and so much of it felt forced!! The enenmy thing just came on so strong out of nowhere, and during the sex scenes it was like the characters stepped out of themselves. The dragging out of the story did make Darcy and Peyton feel more like people. The potential was there!!!! And of course they get married at 26. what else would happen.

Nice collection of research, but nothing new if you've been on queer internet for the past 10 years.

Reading this book was like staring into the sun. I couldn't do it too long. Lispector is interested in the it - the present. "You will no doubt ask me why I look after the world. It's because I was born charged with the task." A mediation on the present. I would love to have 5% of the firece attention the author has for the world. Read this mysterious prose right now!!

Missed my shot as an angsty teenager to read Catcher in the Rye, but I was able to read this book as a disillusioned college student. I think I read somewhere that Saligner was the first novelist to come out of the New Yorker, and it totally shows - the irreveant intellectualism, characters showing distrust towards the ruling class while being a part of it, a book aligned mostly around conversations. I had a lot of fun.

This book is such an interesting look into the gay marriage debates that were happening not just nationally in the early 2000s, but in between gay couples. Savage's family is more heterosexual than his brother, who is in an open relationship with his girlfriend. He has a committed boyfriend and is raising a son. He agrees with conservatives on the value of tradional families, but he is also a gay man running a sex-column, engaging in non-monogomy with his boyfriend. Savage does not fit in any box, and he's also hilarious.

One of those books where you can tell how key the author's lived expierence is to the story, both for better and for worse. A book about an 18-year-old jewish girl who moves from Orthadox Brooklyn (upstate NY?) to San Fransico in the 1990s.

I understand why people list this as the greatest novel of all time. This book really digs into the fundamental questions of human life like what it means to be a person and what it means to be good, all through the banalities of boring victorian life. Elliot is deeply interested in women and marriage. I hear "show don't tell a lot" but one of my favorite things about this book is just how amazing Elliot is at telling. She can sum up a character's whole deal in a paragraph or less. This book is so generous - once you get adjusted to the style Elliot lays out so much about how her characters' minds work. I book clubbed it and that was absolutley the right choice. Read classics with your friends!!!

A list of texts I sent my friend while reading this book for them. TLDR did not like it :

• "devs brain is CRAZY he’s equating “thinking reality show is fake way to find love = do not believe in romance”
• "ik there’s always the believe in love guy with the doesn’t believe but it’s insane that dev is like nooooooo reality tv is love. in another world this book would make fantastic satire about the love industry"
• "sad and insecureeeee 27 yr old millionaire"
• "this book’s emphasis on “deserving” love is kind of weird"
• "ughhhh this book is driving me a little crazy bc it’s not all bad but the second i get into it we get a line of dialogue like “it’s so humorous when you mock him for not conforming to your hypersexualized notions of masculinity”
• "i liked the idea of dev but it never fully clicked for me, charlie i never fully got (never really felt like a millionaire tech bro). 80% of the dialogue did not feel real. too woke to be fun. did not buy that these guys were adults buttttttt that’s more genre crit than anything else. romance is not for me. but i appreciate a book rec and love to finish a book super fast"
• "LMAO this book refuses any ideas about toxicity but we’re calling it the meeting of heated rivalry and the devil wears prada (the corner of sexy power imbalance ???)" <- deadline annoucement of the movie

not sure what exactly happened with the sequel, I loved Welcome to the Goon Squad and this one was set up similiarly, but all of the stories felt like false immiations of the original.

yes i got curious after finishing the show. this book is actually one of the better romance novels out there but still is a perfect example of why I dislike the genre. Reid presents a lot of interesting stuff that then all fizzles out for the typical romance novel plots. Plane crash leads to a proposal! the hockey team in Ottawa is so progressive so let's just forget about the systemic homophobia! Okay whatever Shane got outed and kicked off his hockey team and left in disgrace after he was outed and then tripped in a game (they are killing my guy!!) vindicating every bad thing he thought would happen, but it does not matter. The homophobia is the hockey comissioner who can be yelled at. Of course they get married and stay in the suburbs. and there is a dog. still a pretty fun 1 night read. excited to see how this translates to the screen, but I do wish that someone could free these characters from a romance novel. My first hockey book was Backman's Beartown, a very different novel about the culture of the sport, and while I wish there was more critical anaylsis in this book, it's a bit of a bad faith arguement. But Reid did not have to make the choice to introduce complex issues, so maybe a some critism is fair game.

about two gay guys adopting a baby in the 1990s. so fun, bitchy, earnest. good start to my year, if not somewhat repetitive