Grief Is A House Where The Chairs Have Forgotten How To Hold Us The Mirrors How To Reflect Us The Walls

I believed that books might save him because I knew they had so far, and because I knew the people books had saved. They were college professors and actors and scientists and poets. They got to college and sat on dorm floors drinking coffee, amazed they'd finally found their soul mates. They always dressed a little out of season. Their names were enshrined on the pink cards in the pockets of all the forgotten hardbacks in every library basement in America. If the librarians were lazy enough or nostalgic enough or smart enough, those names would stay there forever.

The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai

New York, 2022

oh my goddd i am fucking oBSESSED with this art for the ministry of time seriously i need y'all to please read this book. i need y'all to swoon over graham gore with me. it's not just a gorgeous romance novel, nor just a spy thriller, nor just a fantastic twist on time travel, nor just a way to obsess over the franklin expedition (for all you the terror girlies) but an incredible evisceration of the british empire that follows a British-Cambodian character by a British-Cambodian author. just. GOD. and graham gore is so dreamy. have i said that yet? he’s so dreamy and i adore the narrator (she’s a crunchy character with some incredible flaws and i adore her for them) and it's so good. 5/5 stars. if i could give it more i would. (also contrary to what i'd said before based on what i'd heard, it does end happily imo!)

You'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behaviour. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them — if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.

'The Catcher in the Rye' by J.D. Salinger

Amy & Hope are the new (and better) Claire & Bender

“Talking to yourself can be useful. And writing means being overheard.”

— Zadie Smith, ‘Intimations’

I fall in love with these kids over and over again and my heart aches for their tragedies and marvels at their friendship.

'On the Jellicoe Road' by Melina Marchetta