Evidence of the Affair: A Short Story (Amazon Original Stories) by Taylor Jenkins Reid
What you see is what you get with Ken, or so I thought. He is methodical and logical and conscientious. I mean, we are talking about a dermatologist who eats a turkey sandwich for lunch every day and only listens to old Simon & Garfunkel and Mick Riva albums. I once put on a David Bowie record, and he said it sounded like “screeching cats crying for more drugs.”
Taylor Jenkins Reid, Evidence of the Affair: A Short Story (Amazon Original Stories)
I know it’s cheating to have multiple quotes from the same work spread over more than one day but I just couldn’t help myself. This one was just too good.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
I feel like publishers really stack the deck (or TBR pile, if you will) with November releases. They know the season for gift-giving is just around the bend and therefore the biggest titles of the year usually release in the weeks leading up to Hanukkah and Christmas. Below are some of the titles I’m most looking forward to picking up myself this season or considering getting as gifts. Links are included. Happy reading!
A Book of the Month Clubpick as well as Jenna Bush Hager’s Read With Jenna selection for November 2021, The Familycouldn’t have been released at a better time. For one thing, The Many Saints of Newark: A Sopranos Story, a prequel film to HBO’s The Sopranos, just came out on October 1st. While its theater performance was lackluster, it was a steaming hit on HBO Max and reignited interest in the original series as well as all things mafia in general.
Now, yours truly really appreciates the font on the cover, which serves as a none-too-subtle nod to Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. After all, it’s what made me pick up the book in the first place. There are some who would say that stories centering the families of organized crime had their heyday long ago, and who am I to tell someone they’re wrong? The Voracious Bibliophile, that’s who! For God’s sake, let us have our mobsters!!!
The Familytells the story of Sofia Colicchio and Antonia Russo, two Italian-American women raised in an insular Brooklyn community where their families’ business interests force them to hold the rest of the world at bay, forging them together into a bond not easily broken. The secrets of their world threaten that bond as they grow up, though, and only time will tell if the threads of their friendship will knit back together or fray past the point of repair.
Kirkus gave The Familya lukewarm-at-best review, calling it “a little too facile” and “readable but somewhat shallow”. Kruptisky’s novel is also negatively compared to the work of Elena Ferrante, but it’s not really fair to measure anyone in comparison to Ferrante, whose Neapolitan Novels quite literally changed my life. This was one of my Book of the Month Club picks for November and my box came the other day, so I will let you know my thoughts when I’m able to dig into it.
The Adriens are a manifestation of Willa’s wildest dreams, embodying the ideal family dynamic she always wanted but never had and living out a version of upper-middle-class life she has always craved but to which she never had access.
Win Me Somethingtells the story of Willa Chen, who while working as a waitress in Brooklyn gets the opportunity to work as a nanny for the Adrien family. The Adriens are a manifestation of Willa’s wildest dreams, embodying the ideal family dynamic she always wanted but never had and living out a version of upper-middle-class life she has always craved but to which she never had access.
As the mixed-race daughter of a Chinese immigrant father and white American mother, Willa longs for an uncomplicated history, one devoid of the racism she experiences due to her biracial identity and the bifurcations that always accompany being a child of divorce shuffled between two families, neither of which fully belong to her. Once she starts working for the Adriens, she begins to learn more about herself and the life she’s led up until now, finding that even when life is imperfect it can still be good.
Don’t expect any big reveals or melodramatics characteristic of “nanny fiction”. No husband-nanny adultery or child murder. No long-held secrets bubbling to the surface. If you’re looking for something more salacious like that, check out my Nefarious Nannies Reading List.
***Note: I was lucky enough to receive a free digital review copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher. You can read my review here.***
Publication Date: November 9th, 2021
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Page Count: 96
It’s a beacon of light as well as a sea of middle fingers raised high. Don’t miss it.
Kate Baer’s newest collection is nothing short of a reclamation. The “found poems” herein are crafted from missives sent to Baer online by detractors and fans alike. The detractors range from the annoying and intrusive to the outright abusive, and Baer takes no prisoners in transforming their vitriol into their vanquishment, their viciousness into her own sweet victory.
The detractors range from the annoying and intrusive to the outright abusive, and Baer takes no prisoners in transforming their vitriol into their vanquishment, their viciousness into her own sweet victory.
Baer’s experiences online are as old as the Internet itself. I’m sure the behaviors, if not the platforms themselves, date back much farther. The women living in the 21st century are dealing with the same crap that the women dealt with who were alive before Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue. The simple fact is men don’t like women who dare to be complex people in the public sphere. They prefer them to be silent and demure, to cow and coo, to be healthy but thin, outgoing yet deferential, smart yet never sassy, and above all, subservient. Well, pardon my French, but to hell with all of that!
Baer’s collection is perfect for anyone who has ever been subjected to unsolicited feedback about their words, their body, or their very existence. It’s a beacon of light as well as a sea of middle fingers raised high. Don’t miss it.
Bonus: Midtown Scholar Bookstore of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania is hosting a livestream discussion between Kate Baer and Maggie Smith about Baer’s new book. It’s free and open to the public but requires registration, so if you’re interested, I’m posting the link below:
Natashia Deón’s dazzling new novel was an early release pick for the Book of the Month Club and to be perfectly honest, the cover alone was enough for me to have it included in my box. The Perishingtells the story of Lou, an immortal Black woman who wakes up in an alley with no memory in 1930s Los Angeles. She has visions of a man’s face which she draws as she tries to make sense of who she is and where she came from. The premise immediately made me think of NBC’s Blindspot, as well any of a number of 40s films noir.
During the course of the novel, Lou also becomes the first female journalist for the LA Times, breaking stories of crime and vice during the era of Prohibition, which when you add in the fantasy elements make The Perishing a very intriguing read.
I am so giddily excited for this book and Natashia Deón in general. Is anyone else already casting the screen adaptation? Someone call Shonda Rhimes already and let’s get this going! *coughs* Janelle Monáe *coughs*
If you start singing this and the person you’re with doesn’t start singing it with you, that is a warning sign from God that you’d be remiss to ignore.
Will Smith first rose to prominence through his starring role on NBC’s The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The show ran for six seasons and after its conclusion, Smith was able to transition from television to blockbuster films rather seamlessly. Now, in addition to being a producer and one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars, the Grammy Award winner and Academy Award nominee can add author to his CV.
Co-written with Mark Manson, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Willis a celebrity memoir I’m very much looking forward to reading.
***Note: I was lucky enough to receive a free digital review copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher. You can read my review here.***
Anyone familiar with Kelsea Ballerini’s music knows she’s a gifted storyteller, and her abilities shine through just as strong in her poetry as they do in her songcraft. Following a recent spate of singer-celebrity poetry collections, Ballerini’s Feel Your Way Throughis fearsome and original, baring her soul on every page. Is this collection going to win (or even be nominated) for a Pulitzer Prize? Of course not. But you don’t have to be Walt Whitman to say something worthwhile and true about the human experience. Honestly, the elitism and pedantry surrounding what qualifies as poetry, especially “good” poetry, is a crock of 🐴 💩 anyway. Herein, Ballerini tells the truth as she sees it, and that’s more than good enough for me.
She is, in my opinion, one of the greatest living American nonfiction writers.
Publisher’s Weekly calls Ann Patchett’s newest book a “moving collection not easily forgotten,” but I don’t know if I have the emotional capacity to withstand a new essay collection by Ann Patchett, especially since Red (Taylor’s Version)drops on the 14th and 30by Adele drops just five days later on the 19th. Ann Patchett’s writing always makes me feel some kind of way and judging from the snippets I’ve gleaned from These Precious Days, it will not be the exception to the rule.
Consider the first two sentences of this excerpt furnished to CBS News:
Did I tell you I loved my father, that he loved me? Contrary to popular belief, love does not need understanding to thrive.
She has such an inimitable way of pulling the reader in, pushing them back, allowing them to flail for a little while, and then pulling them back in again. She is, in my opinion, one of the greatest living American nonfiction writers. In fact, the only writer I can currently think of who surpasses her in reticent emotional resonance is Joan Didion, long may she live.
Bonus: Read my review of Truth & Beauty, which I called “an exquisitely written and heartfelt evocation of a friendship”.
Don’t judge me if I don’t pick this one up until mid-December, although you can pretty much guarantee I’ll own it before then.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Some nannies are downright evil. They’ll slaughter you in your crib, seduce your dad, and surreptitiously drug your mom to the point where no one trusts her and she gets to become your new mommy (did anyone else see that Lifetime movie?).
Ah, nannies. Readers of bedtime stories and makers of snacks, kissers of boo-boos and sergeants of naps. Not every nanny, however, flits in like Julie Andrews insisting that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. Some nannies are downright evil. They’ll slaughter you in your crib, seduce your dad, and surreptitiously drug your mom to the point where no one trusts her and she gets to become your new mommy (did anyone else see that Lifetime movie?). The Nefarious Nannies in these books are rotten to the core, or at least misguided to a destructive degree. Links for purchase are included!
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Since the stern art of poetry calls for words, I, morose, deaf, and balding ambassador of a more or less insignificant nation that’s stuck in this super power, wishing to spare my old brain, hand myself my own topcoat and head for the main street: to purchase the evening paper.
Wind disperses the foliage. The dimness of old bulbs in these sorry quarters, whose motto’s “The mirror will please,” gives a sense of abundance supported by puddles. Even thieves here steal apples by scratching the amalgam first. Yet the feeling one gets, from one’s own sweet reflection—this feeling I’ve lost. That’s what really puzzles.
Everything in these parts is geared for winter: long dreams, prison walls, overcoats, bridal dresses of whiteness that seems snowlike. Drinks. Kinds of soap matching dirt in dark corners. Sparrow vests, second hand of the watch round your wrist, puritanical mores, underwear. And, tucked in the violinists’ palms, old redwood hand warmers.
This whole realm is just static. Imagining the output of lead and cast iron, and shaking your stupefied head, you recall bayonets, Cossack whips of old power. Yet the eagles land like good lodestones on the scraps. Even wicker chairs here are built mostly with bolts and with nuts, one is bound to discover.
Only fish in the sea seem to know freedom’s price. Still, their muteness compels us to sit and devise cashier booths of our own. And space rises like some bill of fare. Time’s invented by death. In its search for the objects, it deals with raw vegetables first That’s why cocks are so keen on the bells chiming deafly somewhere.
To exist in the Era of Deeds and to stay elevated, alert ain’t so easy, alas. Having raised a long skirt, you will find not new wonders but what you expected. And it’s not that they play Lobachevsky’s ideas by ear, but the widened horizons should narrow somewhere, and here— here’s the end of perspective.
Either old Europe’s map has been swiped by the gents in plain clothes, or the famous five-sixths of remaining landmass has just lost its poor infamous colleague, or a fairy casts spells over shabby me, who knows—but I cannot escape from this place; I pour wine for myself (service here’s a disgrace), sip, and rub my old tabby.
Thus the brain earned a slug, as a spot where an error occurred earns a good pointing finger. Or should I hit waterways, sort of like Christ? Anyway, in these laudable quarters, eyes dumbfounded by ice and by booze will reproach you alike for whatever you choose: traceless rails, traceless waters.
Now let’s see what they say in the papers about lawsuits. “The condemned has been dealt with.” Having read this, a denizen puts on his metal-rimmed glasses that help to relate it to a man lying flat, his face down, by the wall; though he isn’t asleep. Since dreams spurn a skull that has been perforated.
The keen-sightedness of our era takes root in the times which were short, in their blindness, of drawing clear lines twixt those fallen from cradles and fallen from saddles. Though there are plenty of saucers, there is no one to turn tables with to subject you, poor Rurik, to a sensible quiz; that’s what really saddens.
The keen-sightedness of our days is the sort that befits the dead end whose concrete begs for spittle and not for a witty comment. Wake up a dinosaur, not a prince, to recite you the moral! Birds have feathers for penning last words, though it’s better to ask. All the innocent head has in store for itself is an ax plus the evergreen laurel.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Evidence of the Affair: A Short Story (Amazon Original Stories) by Taylor Jenkins Reid
It is funny the crazy things our brains make up to save us from the truth.
Taylor Jenkins Reid, Evidence of the Affair: A Short Story (Amazon Original Stories)
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Love yourself. Be clear on how you want to be treated. Know your worth. Always.
Maryam Hasnaa
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
There are 52 reading days left in the year. My current count is 211 books, which means I have 52 days to read 89 books. For those of you who are interested in the mathematical breakdown, this means I’ll have to read 1.68 books per day for the rest of the year to meet my goal. Looks like I’m going to be settling in with a stack of picture books and graphic novels. By the way, those totally count, and you can bite me if you disagree.
I missed my goal by two last year and I’ll be darned if I let a late-evening nap on December 31st make me fail again.
I missed my goal by two last year and I’ll be darned if I let a late-evening nap on December 31st make me fail again. To be fair to myself, I do work nearly 50 hours a week at my day job so my free time is limited. Add that onto the fact that this blog (which I love dearly and wouldn’t give up for any amount of money) quickly went from a side project to a second full-time job, and I’m constantly going sixty per.
The other day I was taking lunch in my office at work and one of my employees came to ask me a question and caught me dead asleep.
But you know what? It’s true what they say: Dreams don’t work unless you do. I would like to be more intentional about carving out time for R&R though because I am never not tired. The other day I was taking lunch in my office at work and one of my employees came to ask me a question and caught me dead asleep. I’m talking mouth open, blacked out. But ironically, my hand was still in perfect position on top of my computer mouse. If that’s not #hustleculture in a nutshell then I don’t know what is. He immediately videoed it and SnapChatted it to another employee so I’m sure I’m enjoying a presence as a meme somewhere on the Internet right now.
Speaking of coworkers, another of mine just hit 100,000 pages for the year toward their reading goal and color me impressed. Between the two of us we probably read more than a hundred average humans combined each year.
At any rate, I can’t see myself stopping the tradition anytime soon, especially since I’ve got a TBR mountain that would make an Olympian (god, not athlete) feel inferior.
I have lots of other librarian and bookseller friends who set reading goals each year, but there’s a growing contingent of them who are dispensing with the tradition, citing it as stressful and sucking the fun out of reading. And they’re not wrong. If I were to put very much stock into whether I make my goal or not, it’d probably depress me on the years I didn’t make it. I don’t let it get to me as much as I used to, except for last year when I missed it by TWO FREAKING BOOKS. Huh…maybe they’re onto something. Oh well. At any rate, I can’t see myself stopping the tradition anytime soon, especially since I’ve got a TBR mountain that would make an Olympian (god, not athlete) feel inferior.
Did you set a reading goal this year? Do you ever? Why or why not? Let me know in the comments or shoot me an email. Only if you want to, of course.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
…the way Corral repeats and inverts the imagery of thorns and honey in the first and last lines of the poem lend it a freshness and vivacity not always seen in (unrequited) love poems.
Autobiography ofMy Hungers by Eduardo C. Corral
His beard: an avalanche of honey, an avalanche of thorns. In a bar too close to the Pacific, he said, “I don’t love you, but not because I couldn’t be attracted to you.” Liar— even my soul is potbellied. Thinness, in my mind, equals the gay men on the nightly news. Kissed by death & public scorn. The anchorman declaring, “Weight loss is one of the first symptoms.” The Portuguese have a word for imaginary, never- to-be-experienced love. Whoop-de-doo. “I don’t love you,” he said. The words flung him back— in his eyes, I saw it— to another bar where a woman sidestepped his desire. Another hunger. Our friendship. In tenth grade, weeks after my first kiss, my mother said, “You’re looking thinner.” That evening, I smuggled a cake into my room. I ate it with my hands, licked buttercream off my thumbs until I puked. Desire with no future, bitter longing— I starve myself by yearning for intimacy that doesn’t & won’t exist. Holding hands on a ferry. Tracing, with the tip of my tongue, a jawline. In a bar too close to the Pacific, he said, “I don’t love you, but not because I couldn’t be attracted to you.” His beard: an avalanche of thorns, an avalanche of honey.
I love the way Corral compares unrequited love to boundless hunger in this poem. Comparing the desire for food with the desire for love or sex is far from new—one need only watch Tom Jones (1963) to see a perfect example—but the way Corral repeats and inverts the imagery of thorns and honey in the first and last lines of the poem lend it a freshness and vivacity not always seen in (unrequited) love poems.
Do you have a favorite poem comparing unrequited love with physical hunger? Let me know in the comments or shoot me an email.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
The Voracious Bibliophile 