Sunshine Reading
It's a holiday and you might be outside. Allow me to pitch you on a book that feels like a sunny party in a bottle.
Welcome to Amateur Bibliotherapy, my newsletter about book-y things. Use this Google Form at any time to tell me about what you’re reading—you might be featured here or on my Bookstagram! I’m an affiliate of Bookshop.org, which means that I may make a small commission if you make a purchase through my affiliate links. That commission will be donated to Welcome To Chinatown.
Good morning. It’s a Monday that feels like a Sunday, so I thought I’d get in touch.
While ignoring impending doom, I attended my first concert since 2020 (kpop kings Stray Kids sold out the Prudential Center and I feel like a proud mother); gasped at summer sunsets on the Promenade with Jess; bought BTS-themed coffees from H Mart; people-watched over ice cream and practiced Italian curse words with my mother; embraced my inner Kardashian by riding a Moke all over Amagansett; skinny-dipped and floated in a dreamy pool; watched the Mets get eviscerated at a home game; found a perfect $300 side table on the street; got sun rash; took a bookstore crawl and ate fiercely good Regina's Grocery sandwiches in the rain with Amanda; played with a baby; and devoured many a lobster roll. What a time to be alive.
The Books
Not much has changed since last we spoke, apart from the fact that I was VERY correct about ripping through a few romance novels. Other than those, I did quite enjoy A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske, a fantasy romance set in Edwardian England with a magical twist and a lot of gay pining. A smashing combination for success, if you ask me. I’ve outlined another recent favorite below, which I think makes particularly delectable summer reading.
Happy Hour by Marlowe Granados, a novel “for party girls, by party girls,” is my second five-star book of the year. Isa and Gala, two 21-year-old best friends, move to New York for a summer of doing nothing. They bounce between rooftop parties, bad bars, gallery openings, and luxury buildings in their pursuit of a good time, working any odd job to make rent while simultaneously charming their way into the upper eschelons of glamorous New York. I loved reading this book, structured as Isa’s diary during the summer months, on picnic blankets and poolside chaises with something cold in hand. My favorite element of Happy Hour is the extreme highs and lows experienced by its leading ladies, like being too broke to afford more than bodega hot dogs for dinner but being posh enough to attend a party with passed caviar hors d'oeuvres. While reading a book that is “deliberately interested in being frothy,” I reveled in the portraits of New York's wild power dynamics. Granados explains this well in The Atlantic:
I like to get away with things. I feel like I really put that in, with Isa and Gala, in the book. They get excited about getting away with something. When you’re a young woman, you get into these situations where your power is so imbalanced with what’s happening. These girls are playing with that. I think that that’s what they find so amusing. They’re also engaging with a cultural hierarchy I’ve only witnessed in New York. There is a certain breed of wealthy New Yorker who finds that having cultural capital is of the utmost importance. It exists to an extent in the other places I’ve lived—Toronto and London, for example—but the intense desire to be near social capital, whether it is downtown cool or the Philharmonic, feels specific. I think that is what the joke is with these girls. It is that they can enter scenes seamlessly because they see the inauthenticity of everyone in them—and feel power by taking advantage of these people.
I reveled in the creative ways Isa and Gala were ensnared by and escaped those kinds of situations. When Isa scores a coveted invite to the Hamptons home of a British aristocrat, for instance, she swiftly realizes she is expected to socially lubricate the experience for her host's well-heeled coterie. He's rich and she's not; he expects her to be grateful, and available at his beck and call to entertain guests, for the privilege of being in his vacation home. But the obvious financial discrepancy between Isa and her host doesn't win out: Isa makes such an impression on one of the guests that they offer to drive her back to the city, relegating the aristocrat to an arduous journey back via jitney. From Vulture: "If ‘charm is currency,’ as the author puts it, then Happy Hour is concerned with its use and depletion, and Isa, whose diary we’re reading, is still learning how to manage it." This is what made Happy Hour magnetic for me.
Quick Links
While I typically prattle on about the articles I've read of late, there's a good chance you've already read several of them. (I stockpile digital articles in Pocket for distraction-free reading and, like any self-respecting faux academic, have a tall stack of New Yorker magazines I read at an unhurried pace.) As such, I'm keeping my comments shorter than usual in the event I'm particularly behind the times in my selections. Here are some of my recent reads:
The fascinating Black history of Sag Harbor, one of Long Island’s most gorgeous beachfront towns (NYT, gift linked); a case for why time loop stories are inherently Jewish (Hey Alma); bookstore workers are unionizing (Teen Vogue); interviews between Ottessa Moshfegh/Carmen Maria Machado and Salley Rooney/Patricia Lockwood, which are vastly different but offer equally interesting literary contemplations (The Guardian); “get in babe we’re dissociating,” a lite analysis of the contemporary ~sad girl literary canon~ (no vibes just thoughts substack); Bridgerton as an on-ramp for new romance fans and the urge to gatekeep (Slate); books getting marketed as “beach reads” regardless of their contents (WSJ, gift linked); and the legacy of Gone Girl, though I disagree with a LOT of this article’s tone in particular (Esquire).
Alright, that’s all for now. If reading feels to much for you today, watching The American President or another film from 1995 might help. Bye!