Tag: quarantine

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book reviews

Book Review: ‘My Year of Rest and Relaxation’ by Ottessa Moshfegh

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh tells the story of a young woman who decides to spend the year 2000 holed up in her apartment and isolated from the world. She tries to hide from her life, but her best friend keeps bothering her and so does her feelings for her pseudo-boyfriend and for her recently deceased parents.

The nameless narrator is living in that glam NYC Sex and the City setup at the turn of the millennium unfazed by the excitement. She has her friend Reva who she seems to loathe for being upbeat about the future. Reva tries to keep her friend engaged with the world, but her friend is not having it. When Reva experiences a loss, the narrator still can’t find enough empathy to be selfless in the situation. She remains a curmudgeon with the thoughts of her father and her mother dying within months of each other still haunting her. Other than Reva, she only really contacts Trevor who’s usually sleeping with another woman when she calls and acts like he doesn’t have time for her like she doesn’t have time for Reva. To vent her problems, she goes to her aloof therapist who dishes out questionable treatment methods. Finally, the narrator takes extreme measures to really get the rest and relaxation she wants without the distractions after seeing Reva and Trevor move on without her. When she’s satisfied, she finds herself emerging from her submersion as the city is hit with the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The narrator is that great unlikable character who acts in ways that are upsetting and annoying yet it’s understandable. Though the book came out a few years ago, the book is enjoying a resurgence as the world grips with the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic and being forced into weeks of “rest and relaxation.” It also shows that excitement for the future at the turn of a new decade, like now in 2020, and how all that hope can go down like it had in 2001 because of a national traumatic event. The narrator is working hard to ignore the news and enjoy TV reruns while laying on the couch like many are now with the worry around the novel coronavirus. She has everything going for her: her Columbia University degree, her art gallery job, and her rent-control Upper East Side apartment, but she can’t handle it and wants to escape the life she’s unsure she wants.

Overall, the story is well-written and highlights the unlikable character and her selfish desperation. It’s an interesting read for today’s times as 2020 is becoming a year of rest and relaxation for some who choose to see the widespread quarantine that way.

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what's lit

Quarantine Life Lessons From Nicola Yoon’s ‘Everything, Everything’

With most of the U.S. population under some type of stay-at-home measure, it may feel like we’re Madeline Whittier from Nicola Yoon’s 2015 blockbuster young adult novel Everything, Everything. The 17-year-old character stays home her entire life after her doctor mother diagnosed her with severe combined immunodeficiency, meaning she’s allergic to pretty much everything.

Maddy’s illness keeps her indoors all day every day. Her mother takes every precaution to make sure Maddy’s bubble stays clean, with the assistance of Maddy’s home nurse Carla. But once Maddy lays eyes on her new neighbor Olly outside her bedroom window, she questions the lifestyle her mother put her in after her father and younger brother died years before.

Since Maddy stayed inside for 17 years, she has moments in the book that reflect on what many may be experiencing now amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

KEEP THE CONSTANT ONLINE INTERACTION

At the start of the chapter “Secrets,” Maddy expresses how her online communication is reducing her sleep: “My constant IMing with Olly is catching up with me. I fall asleep during not one but two movie nights with my mom. She begins worrying that something’s wrong, that my immune system is compromised somehow.”

As Maddy and Olly mostly depend on online interaction, they exhibit the qualities many people are feeling now with using social media like Instagram Live and videoconferencing tools like Zoom to stay in touch because they can’t see each other in person. Authors are using IG Live to read their works, give writing lessons, and interview each other. Book clubs have found refuge with Zoom to keep their book selections on schedule and continue or start face-to-face meetings.

MAKE FANCY HOME-COOKED DINNERS

The “Menteuse” chapter describes the dinner traditions between Maddy and Pauline, which sometimes include Carla. “Everything at Friday Night Dinner is French. The napkins are white cloth embroidered with fleur-de-lis at the edges. The cutlery is antique French and ornate. We even have miniature silver la tour Eiffel salt and pepper shakers.”

She goes on about how Pauline likes to make cassoulet, “a French stew with chicken, sausage, duck, and white beans.” Except their cassoulet only contains the white beans because of Maddy’s allergies.

One of the conversations that keeps coming up online during the coronavirus isolation is people are either learning to cook or taking pleasure in cooking their own meals. To dress up dinner night, incorporate a theme to keep spirits high at least once a week for yourself or your family.

EXAMINE STRANGE DREAMS

In “My White Balloon,” Maddy describes a dream she had about the house breathing in line with her. On an inhale, walls collapse, but on an exhale, they expand.

According to the World Economic Forum, a sleep expert says the reportedly high rate of vivid dreams people are having during the coronavirus lockdown may be due to information and emotional overload. Maddy is having similar dreams early on in the book when she first sees Olly, which revs her up to find out more about him and how to communicate with him.

MOVE THROUGH THE BOOKSHELF

In “Madam, I’m Adam,” Maddy tells us she returns to a lot of her favorite books: “Sometimes I reread my favorite books from back to front. I start with the last chapter and read backward until I get to the beginning. When you read this way, characters go from hope to despair, from self-knowledge to doubt.”

If you have an obsession to outpace your book consumption with buying more books before finishing most of the ones already on your shelf, then this may be the perfect time to make a dent in your home readership. With physical libraries closed, it makes us value the books we own and revisit the ones we love. More people, not really bibliophiles, have done Marie Kondo makeovers on their bookshelves, so bulking up a skimpy bookshelf can still be done with supporting independent bookstores and checking out library e-books through a mobile device.

Everything, Everything was also made into a motion picture in 2017, starring Amandla Stenberg, Anika Noni Rose, and Nick Robinson.

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what's lit

Author Jia Tolentino and Model Kaia Gerber Discuss What to Take From ‘Trick Mirror’ During Quarantine

The novel coronavirus quarantine has produced another celebrity book club. Supermodel Kaia Gerber, daughter of the legendary Cindy Crawford, started a book club that’s already receiving praise from fans and young Hollywood.

Now a month into her book club, she had an Instagram Live conversation with Jia Tolentino, the author of Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, on Friday night with an average high of 2,200 viewers. Kaia started the chat saying she found the book to be a refreshing take on modern-day philosophy.

This is how publisher Penguin Random House describes the essay collection: “Tolentino writes about a cultural prism: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the advent of scamming as the definitive millennial ethos; the literary heroine’s journey from brave to blank to bitter; the punitive dream of optimization, which insists that everything, including our bodies, should become more efficient and beautiful until we die.”

A staff writer at The New Yorker, Jia talked about the ills of the internet and social media, a focus in her book, but also mentioned its current necessity as we grapple with self-isolation and quarantine due to the coronavirus crisis. Jia brought up how the internet and social media has made people perform for attention. She asked Kaia about her personal experiences since the Gen Z model has 5.5 million followers due to her career and stature.

Now 18, Kaia said she started her Instagram at 14 and noticed how social media can change a person and their professional goals and give more attention to influencers rather than, for example, doctors and nurses who are saving lives during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The internet, for better for worse, is the biggest change of this era,” Jia said during the conversation. “It’s become this nervous system of our society… There’s an unavoidable centrality to it that seems like every story in a way is an internet story, no matter what.” She added we have a natural impulse to be seen, to be recognized, to be liked, and the business of social media takes these behaviors and monetizes “every inch of human life.”

They discussed how social media and the internet has to be impacting teens’ lives now and adding unique pressures never before experienced. Jia, a millennial who said she graduated during the Great Recession, said it would’ve been “dark” if she owned a smartphone in high school. With dreams to attend Columbia University, Kaia said as social media became a regular existence around her and she became hyper cautious in order to stay clean for college application times.

Jia pointed out to the feminism parts of the book where women were not able to apply for credit cards alone until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act in 1974 and how marriage is supposed to be the main life-changing event for a woman. Kaia brought up how her mother’s wedding dress was revolutionary in a way because it was a slip dress when sexy was looked down upon for a bride.

The chat came to a close with Jia saying how clear it is during the coronavirus quarantine that we can’t wholly replace in-person interaction with the internet and social media. Kaia said she would read anything else Jia writes and added the excitement of being able to have the conversation:

“This is the coolest thing ever. Truly the only people I fangirl over are writers and authors because I admire it so much because the idea of sitting down and writing an entire book is so intimidating to me, but I would read all of them.”

Earlier in the month, Kaia had an Instagram Live chat with the stars of Normal People on Hulu, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal. The TV series is based on Sally Rooney’s literary fiction book about two unlikely friends who develop a complex relationship in high school then college.

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what's lit

Publisher Flubs Quarantine House Tweet by Forgetting Authors of Color

Photo by Prateek Katyal from Pexels

Little, Brown and Company shared a quarantine house tweet Monday morning to its almost half a million followers, but it was quickly met with criticism after sharing six houses with all white authors. After most of the responders asked the publisher to delete the offensive tweet, the publisher later did just that and apologized for its oversight. But this incident added fire to the continuous discussion on diversity and inclusion in the publishing industry.

The quarantine house tweet trend has taken over the social media network with users grouping well-known people in a particular industry in so-called houses and asking their followers to pick a number, a house they would want to be quarantined in. The trend is supposed to be a viral uplifter amid the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic where most people are staying home in quarantine. But the fun feel of this tweet backfired.

A few authors and other tweeters quickly noticed that none of the houses featured authors of color. The publisher responded that it purposely highlighted its roster of authors, which isn’t diverse.

Some responders mentioned that the Hachette Book Group imprint is associated with authors of color such as: Attica Locke, who is currently a writer on the Hulu series Little Fires Everywhere promoting her recent book Heaven, My Home; Walter Mosley, who won the Los Angeles Times Robert Kirsch Award Monday; Malcolm Gladwell, the well-known intellectual with a recent book called Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know; and Marie Kondo, whose new book Joy at Work: Organizing Your Professional Life came out last week. Walter and Marie later were promoted on the publisher’s timeline along with press articles about their work.

Dawnn Karen, the author of Dress Your Best Life: How to Use Fashion Psychology to Take Your Look—and Your Life—to the Next Level, and Leslie Gray Streeter, the author of Black Widow: A Sad-Funny Journey Through Grief for People Who Normally Avoid Books with Words Like “Journey” in the Title, are two black women authors with upcoming books within the imprint. A promotional tweet for Leslie’s book was shared by Little, Brown and Co. and another one was retweeted, so the social media promotion for authors of color ramped up after the quarantine house tweet was taken down.

Little, Brown and Co.’s admission that its author roster was not diverse should force the publisher to take diversity more seriously like Flatiron Books promised to do after the backlash around Jeanine Cummins’ best-selling novel American Dirt. The diversity issue in publishing also coincides with #DVpit Twitter pitch party for marginalized authors looking for literary agent representation next week on April 22 and April 23.

Categories
what's lit

April 2020 Celebrity Book Club Picks

AMERIE’S BOOK CLUB

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson

Singer-turned-writer Amerie chose Kevin Wilson’s New York Times best-seller and former Read With Jenna book club pick for her April book.

“An outrageous yet grounded read that had me laughing out loud and tearing up in the same paragraph, Kevin Wilson’s Nothing to See Here explores parenthood and found family, while also addressing the very frightening phenomena of spontaneous combustion, of which, like the author, I grew up scared to death,” Amerie wrote in her Instagram post announcing the book selection.

BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB

Writers & Lovers by Lily King

 

Actress Emma Roberts’ book club chose Lily King’s new novel. The book was also a March selection for the Today Show’s Read With Jenna book club.

 

In an Instagram post on her personal account, Emma said, “So excited to read along with you guys and discuss!”

 

GMA BOOK CLUB

Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore

Good Morning America‘s book club named Margarita Montimore’s debut novel. In the U.K., the same book is titled The Rearranged Life of Oona Lockhart. Both have abstract covers of Oona’s face with the GMA book club reposting some of their favorites from readers.

“I’m so grateful ‘GMA’ has chosen my novel ‘Oona Out of Order’ as its latest book club pick,” Margarita told GMA in its story on the book club pick. “I know the whole world feels like it’s out of order right now, and social distancing is tough, but join ‘GMA’s’ Book Club and we’ll all feel less isolated as we get lost in this uplifting story.”

NONAME’S BOOK CLUB

Mean by Myriam Gurba

War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America’s Colony by Nelson A. Denis

Indie rapper Noname’s book club usually selects two books each month, with Noname picking one and someone else naming the “homie pick.” Noname chose Mean by Myriam Gurba and Yahdon Israel, founder of Brooklyn-based @literaryswagbookclub, chose War Against All Puerto Ricans.

The book club says it stands in solidarity with the prisoners who participate in the book club over demanding more protection such as masks during the coronavirus COVID-19 forced quarantine. After announcing it had to cancel all in-person meetings due the pandemic, the book club recently started its own newspaper, Out of Print, for Patreon members.

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker

After the controversy around her last book club pick American Dirt, Oprah Winfrey chose the biography of a family where six out of 12 of the children were born with schizophrenia and became a major source of research for scientists working to understand the genetics behind the devastating mental illness.

“This is a riveting true story of an American family that reads like a medical detective journey,” Oprah announced in a video. “It reveals the shame, denial, shock, confusion and misunderstanding of mental illness at a time when no one was really sure what schizophrenia was or how to treat it.”

READ WITH JENNA – TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB

Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore

Former first daughter and Today Show co-host Jenna Bush Hager picked Elizabeth Wetmore’s debut novel that publisher Harper Collins describes as “explores the lingering effects of a brutal crime on the women of one small Texas oil town in the 1970s.”

“Elizabeth really developed these characters that I felt like I knew,” Jenna said about the debut novel on Today’s website. “I found myself missing them when the story was over. The women are complicated. They are a lot of things at once.”

As a native Texan, Jenna added that Elizabeth portrays Texas life just right in Valentine.

“I spent a good portion of my childhood eavesdropping on my mother and her girlfriends as they sat out on the back porch after dinner, and I listened to them telling stories,” Elizabeth told Today. “They would sit out there with their cigarettes and mix drinks because it was the ’70s, and I listened to them rehashing their days.”

REESE’S BOOK CLUB

Untamed by Glennon Doyle

Rising book club queen Reese Witherspoon, who’s currently starring in Little Fires Everywhere based on Celeste Ng’s novel, has chosen well-known memoirist Glennon Doyle’s latest book, Untamed.

 

“It’s an absolute joy to announce Glennon Doyle’s UNTAMED as my April book pick,” Reese wrote at the top of her Hello Sunshine announcement email. “This memoir is so packed with incredible insight about what it means to be a woman today, what it means to be “good,” and what woman will do in order to be loved. I swear I highlighted something in EVERY chapter. This book really spoke to me in so many ways!”

 

Glennon also wrote an essay about her writing process on Hello Sunshine’s website.
Categories
what's lit

Literary Love in the Time of Coronavirus

Photo by Ena Marinkovic from Pexels

I couldn’t breathe. It was the first day of December in 2016 when I was grasping my chest on the curb waiting for the ambulance. I didn’t have enough strength to battle my Los Angeles parking woes with my car locked in a garage three blocks away from my shabby studio apartment building in Koreatown. I had been having similar episodes over the last few weeks, but I was able to control them with pulling out the inhaler I barely used.

This time, it failed. Though I was one of the few adults who never outgrew my food allergies to wheat and milk, I had outgrown asthma. At the hospital, I had a breathing treatment on a noisy nebulizer sealed behind a curtain, reminiscent to scenes throughout my childhood of receiving daily treatments during school in the nurses’ office. The doctors said I was having a bronchospasm, a sudden constriction of the muscles in the walls of the bronchioles that lead to the lungs.

Returning home with a sore chest that felt like I was recovering from a heart attack, I soon realized the bronchospasms may be caused by stress. Self-quarantining while immunocompromised amid the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to be the best option for my lungs, but other readers and writers seem to be taking advantage of the potential self-care that could be done over the weekend and possibly the next two months.

As a writer, I want to:

  • Finish the short story collection I started during NaNoWriMo: In November, thousands of writers around the globe embark on a monthlong adventure called National Novel Writing Month aka NaNoWriMo to come close to completing a novel with 50,000 words. And like most of those writers, my projects suffer after November. I’ve surprisingly been adding to the one I started in 2019, and I would like to complete the roughest first draft this spring.
  • Send out more query letters for my young adult novel: Every new year means me pitching my novel to literary agents. In past years, I quickly grew annoyed and stopped sending letters. Now realizing I quit before the odds weighed in my favor, I’ve been sending out a good number of letters every few weeks. I need to keep the momentum of my 2020 resolutions.
  • Resurrect three old manuscripts and make stronger story plans: In part to the previous goal, I queried other novels. But I think they could be better, so for the past few months I’ve been trying to find quiet times to meditate on how the story should morph, what should happen next for my characters, and what will the story look like at the end. Many authors discuss how they weren’t able to sell manuscripts at first, but I want to take the challenge that these stories have promise and could succeed with extreme improvement.

As a reader, I want to:

  • Write several book reviews: 2020 is already a heavy reading year, so much so I fell behind on producing book reviews for books I had read weeks ago.
  • Create an ancestry search book syllabus: Over the past year, I’ve been researching my family trees in the Americas. It had become stressful looking through death certificates, Census Bureau lists, and other government documents, so I decided to stay on track with books that could open my mind on the subject. I’ve just started reading Roots by Alex Haley. I hope to finish the almost 700-page book within this quarantine period.
  • Read more appealing books: Like other book bloggers, I tend to focus on the hottest books of the moment. But some of these books didn’t keep me engaged. From my personal statistical analysis, many books that rise to the top are usually three stars, so I want to read books that appeal to me regardless of its release date.

What are your reading and writing goals during the coronavirus crisis?

Write your goals into existence in the comments below. And stay healthy!