books

link to my goodreads: here. also spoilers for all of the books i'm talking about probably.

catalog of unabashed gratitude by ross gay: 5/5. so good. only descriptor i can think of right now, stylistically anyway, it's like if richard siken started practicing radical acceptance and also started a garden. but i don't necessarily wanna compare the two, because they are at once both equals and entirely incomprable. anyway, the poems are amazing. the juxtaposing and mixing of the sacred and the profane. one of my new favorite authors for sure. i loved how each poem demanded your attention, the way his authorial voice meanders and by the end of the poem, you're in a completely different place from which you started. i love that shit. it was so good. so good.
martyr! by kevah akbar: 5/5 amazing. one of the best books i've read in a long long time. the conclusion between cyrus and zee made me bawl my eyes out. the ambiguity of the ending. is the world ending? is it imagined? if the world is ending, if they're dying, they're dying together. fuck. amazing amazing book. will have to reread cause i definietley didn't pick everything up.

parable of the sower by octavia e. butler: 5/5. really, really good. i loved lauren, she was so real and had, (i feel anyway), really rational and measured responses to the crazy fucking world she was living in. except for getting with the 57 year old. that was very strange. but everything else was very good. and way too relevant. just started the sequel and it's really good so far!

all fours by miranda july: rated this 2/5 on goodreads, but since i finished i've been feeling more warmly towards it. gonna go with 3/5. i really wanted to like this book more than i did, and i did like it at the beginning. when she tried to go on a cross country road trip but redecorates a motel room for 20k instead, like, that was real. i love it when women do shit like that. i think the obsessiveness she felt about so many people in her life was very real, but i feel like after she met davey, the whole book just turned into erotica. which is fine, but not what i planned to read. i don't know. i'm also 17 years old so this might hit harder when i'm actually in my 40s-50s. the book wasn't bad, it just wasn't for me. really silly goofy though. good for her.

jazz by toni morrison: amazing. she's a fucking genius. 5/5. no other writing hits me the way hers does. obviously the relationship between joe and dorcas is disgusting, but the storyline about joe's mom was really beautiful. among other things. her prose is the best.

haunting of hill house by shirley jackson
devotions by mary oliver, new and selected poems vol 1 by mary oliver, anything by mary oliver
the secret history by donna tartt, the goldfinch by donna tartt (being talked about too much doesn't automatically void their value.)
more i can't think of