None of This is True, by Lisa Jewell – This novel took the collective’s love of True Crime podcasts and subverted it, providing the reader with a victim whose side you can never quite be on, and the resultant payoff. Well paced with a strong sense of setting, this book is a fast read. More than anything, it gave me so much insight into how people twist the narratives in their mind when their primary aim is to offload shame and responsibility.
SLAY the Bully: How to Negotiate with a Narcissist and Win, by Rebecca Zung – The star takeaway from this book was conceptualizing the idea of diamond-level supply (the narcissist’s image upheld) and coal-level supply (the fact that they will settle for making you squirm). This is clear and easy enough to access in a moment of dysregulation. The book would have been better for me if I was negotiating a high-asset divorce with children involved– my life is better because I’m not. Over and over, I kept being so grateful that I didn’t have to keep this person in my life. I used it to keep myself sharp and gracefully extricate myself from a toxic part-time civ job without doing or saying anything I’d feel bad about later.
Last Night at Chateau Marmont, by Lauren Weisberger – This author is a modern Jane Austen, to me. Her novels are well crafted, with all the likable characters, satisfying plots, and social satire you’d want in well, a modern Jane Austen. This one is about what fame and the music industry, and of course, LA can do to a marriage, or, since she’s all about the happy endings, try to.
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me, by Adrienne Brodeur – Memoirs by parentified children always fascinate me. This was heavy and worth it. Her mom enlists her help in her affair, making me once again grateful that I did not have a hot mom, but instead emerged from the ocean on a seshell and bided my time until I was free.
Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune, Anderson Cooper – I wish there was more to the fall of the Astor’s money than half the fortune absconded to Britain, taking the rents of thousands and thousands of NYC tenements with them in perpetuity. I love that Anderson, a Vanderbilt, took on this project. Old money is not so old here in this colony, after all. And, as Elizabeth Bishop wrote, the art of losing isn’t hard to master.
The Vacationers, by Emma Straub – I’m writing this on June 12, I just reread the description of this book, and I don’t remember anything about it. Do with that what you will.
Somehow: Thoughts on Love, by Anne Lamott – I love Anne’s essays, but after leaving 12 Step I found her insistence on God a bit annoying. Thankfully, as she gets older, she seems to understand that nobody knows anything. When I read her work, I feel as if I am in the presence of great wisdom tempered by great self-awareness and ownership. Because I am. Love is hard and also the most rewarding thing. Nobody can ever hear enough about it.
Older, by Pamela Redmond Satran – Okay, so this was fascinating despite the fact that I never read the first novel, which I believe a show was based on! I love to read about how older women navigate their lives. It takes them so long to learn to say no – not everyone is so lucky as to learn in the fire of sex work. She structures the memoir like a novel and everything works out in the end, which is why we read books instead of live life sometimes.
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I’ll be posting one of these every month, with all the books I read the previous month.
Your One Wild & Prec
