No New Books
happy new year <3
For the new year, I roasted a chicken for my lover, with vegetables too and made a lazy man’s black eyed peas dish with pancetta and kale. The chicken really tasted like chicken, which makes you realize that most chicken doesn’t taste like anything at all. We ate and did dishes and went over to have a martini with friends who have a new puppy with very long legs. At eleven o’clock or a little after, we set out to meet my sister and friends at the greatest bar on earth. They passed out little plastic champagne flutes just before midnight. The countdown on TV was lagging, so there was some confusion around when to cheer and kiss. Anyway, we did—cheer and kiss.
I’m always quite energized by the new year, and this year is no different. The days are getting longer. I went to the Marlton yesterday to write and reflect and decide what resolutions I could make. They seated me in the bar room at a little round table like a second class citizen. Before long, a pair of right-wing gay men were seated to my left and a pair of therapized bros (for lack of a more elegant term) to my right. Apparently, when you import people from corrupt and low-trust societies they will engage in corrupt and low-trust behavior, and your ex-girlfriend’s desire for complete certainty before making decisions is actually a sign of narcissism.
As soon as I managed to stop eavesdropping, I scratched out the reflections and resolutions I’d come for. Do 10 pushups, stop watching short-form video entirely, etc. They’re still coming together, which is okay, since you can make new year’s resolutions at any time. You can count a year from any day. One of my resolutions, however, came to me in early December (and thank God, since I needed time to prepare1). Dear reader, you won’t believe it, but for my next feat, I will go an entire year without buying a single book.
I weighed the pros and cons (pros: hopefully ends with the ability to say I’ve read all the books on my bookshelf, cons: might cause depression?), and decided to forge ahead. This year could be the year that I finally read David Copperfield, The Power Broker, DUNE! The options are finite, but still bountiful, and I’ve started already with Hemingway—the pretty edition of The Sun Also Rises that I found with matching A Farewell to Arms & For Whom the Bell Tolls at thrift store maybe a year ago, maybe more. All three have been sitting on my shelf looking nice and collecting dust since then. I can’t help loving Hemingway.
What should I read next (it’s embarrassing, I know)?
love you, bye!
For curious minds, the last books I bought were Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard, The City Changes Its Face by Eimear McBrtide, The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner, Wild Ducks Flying Backward by Tom Robbins, Your Name Here by Helen DeWitt and Ilya Gridneff, and Something from Nothing by Alison Roman
I am also cutting back on the book buying in an attempt to read down my physical TBR! its daunting and I'm also worried about taking away the guaranteed dopamine hit of new book. But i'm with you in spirit! We can do it! good reading friend!
I need to do this! 🤪 I will say I'm putting together my top reads of last year, and Commonwealth definitely made the list, if that helps you narrow things down 😂 Good luck!!