recently read: kitchen by banana yoshimoto
31: plus - sum and the great believers
Knowing what book someone is reading and what parts they resonate with most can be so intimate. It reveals their interests, where their head is at, and what excerpts are so significant that they will mark up a page because they think it’s worth revisiting at a later time. I’m fascinated by what books others gravitate towards and I find that it helps me get to know them better and gives me a small glimpse into who they are at their core. No one asked for these book reviews, but maybe it’s my way of showing who I am and what I’m interested in – beyond the clothes, the products, and my career. Or at the very least, encourage some to look up from their phones and instead towards the pages of a good book.
Book no. 13 of 2024
A short, quick read that delves into loss and grief in a way that is hopeful and focuses on the importance of relationships and friendships during those times. I appreciated the author's reflections on life and death and the constants of both the good and bad in our lives — and that once we recognize that we will always go through both, we are better equipped to handle the difficulties.
Underlined quotes:
“The conversation we just had was like a glimpse of stars through a chink in a cloud sky — perhaps, over time, talks like this would lead to love.”
“Never again. I don’t care for the loaded sentimentality of those words or for the feeling of limitation they impose. But just then they struck me with an unforgettable intensity and authority.”
“As I grow older, much older, I will experience many things, and I will hit rock bottom again and again. Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet.”
“To the extent that I had come to understand that despair does not necessarily result in annihilation, that one can go as usual in spite of it, I had become hardened. Was that what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly ambiguities?”
“I want to continue living with the awareness that I will die. Without that, I am not alive.”
“But for the time being, ‘just the two of us’ was a warm, safe place where the future was on hold.”
“It was over, leaving behind the bitter aftertaste of a confrontation in which nothing was gained.”
“I realized that the world did not exist for my benefit. It followed that the ratio of pleasant and unpleasant things around me would not change. It wasn’t up to me. It was clear that the best thing to do was to adopt a sort of muddled cheerfulness.”
“Because death is so heavy — we, too young to know about it, couldn’t handle it. After this you and I may end up seeing nothing but suffering, difficulty, and ugliness, but if only you’ll agree to it, I want for us to go on to more difficult places, happier places, whatever comes, together.”
“Even if nothing happened — even if it turned out to be just the two of us watching the sparkling glint off the cold, flowing river — it would feel good. It would be enough for me.”
Book no. 14 of 2024
The Great Believers - Rebecca Makkai
My goodness. My heart aches. This is a must read — not only for its beautiful but devastating depiction on friendship, found family and queer love but also for the way it highlights the AIDS epidemic in 1980s Chicago, something I know nothing about but should have learned about years ago. As always, I am disappointed but not surprised at how little the US teaches us what actually matters — stories about humans, especially those willfully ignored.
I appreciate how this book took me into the lives of its characters — characters full of flaws and hopes and dreams and love and heartbreak. And how AIDS physically and mentally affected not only those who had it, but how it impacted their loved ones and even those in the generations to come.
I only rate this a 4 instead of a 5 because I feel like some parts dragged a bit long, some aspects of the story doing too much. I would love to see this turned into a movie or tv show someday. It’s a story that needs to be shared far and wide.
If you’re a fan of A Little Life and On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, I think you will especially be interested in this novel.
Underlined quotes:`
“Yale would hear the camera’s click… Whatever happens — in three years, in twenty — that moment will remain.”
“If you learned new details about someone who was gone, then he wasn’t vanishing. He was getting bigger, realer.”
“Better than feeling like you lived in some alternate universe where no one could hear you calling for help. Now it was like people could hear and just didn’t care. But wasn’t that progress?”
“Well, here it was, then: longing, missing. The most useless kind of love.”
“But when someone’s gone and you’re the primary keeper of his memory — letting go would be a kind of murder.”
“If we could just be on earth at the same place and same time as everyone we loved, if we could be born together and die together, it would be so simple. And it’s not. But listen: You two are on the planet at the same time. You’re in the same place now. That’s a miracle.”
“Legislation of health care is still based on subconscious (or even conscious) prejudices about who deserves to live and who doesn’t. Just in December 2017, Trump disbanded the HIV/AIDS Advisory Council, despite the fact that over a million Americans are still living with HIV. That’s not random; that’s coming straight from homophobia and racism, and the idea that those million lives are disposable."
Book no. 15 of 2024
Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives - David Eagleman
My friend gave this to me for my birthday after noticing I had been moved by a quote from a book she shared about death and the afterlife, which was really thoughtful.
What a beautiful, funny little book. A book of 40 very short stories on different versions of the afterlife — ones that shine a light on how we live life here on earth more than they do about what will happen after it. Some I absolutely loved (the afterlife being you reliving your whole life — just in reverse, the afterlife being full of all the versions of you, the afterlife being the memories people have of us — which is something I’ve thought about often myself — to name a few) some I felt lukewarm about, some felt a bit repetitive.
Overall though, I really enjoyed it and found myself underlining many parts of the book. Makes you reflect on what it is you’d like to do with your one life while you have it and simply what it means to be human.
Underlined quotes:
“And the thought is blissful: a life where episodes are split into tiny swallowable pieces, where moments do not endure, where one experiences the joy of jumping from one event to the next like a child hopping from spot to spot on the burning sand.”
“Since we live in the heads of those who remember us, we lose control of our lives and become who they want us to be.”
“We don’t care about universal collapse — instead, we care only about a meeting of the eyes, a glimpse of bare flesh, the caressing tones of a loved voice, joy, love, light, the shade of a paint stroke…”
“You were much better at seeing the truth about others than you were ever at seeing yourself. So you navigated your life with the help of others who held up mirrors for you. People praised your good qualities and criticized your bad habits, and these perspectives — often surprising to you — helped you to guide your life.”
“You discover that your memory has spent a lifetime manufacturing small myths to keep your life story consistent with who you thought you were. You have committed to a coherent narrative, misremembering little details and decisions and sequences of events. On the way back, the cloth of that story line unravels. Reversing through the corridors of your life, you are battered and bruised in the collisions between reminiscence and reality.”
