baby book update for u
just wanted to say hi and send a tiny note out, lest you start getting your book rants from elsewhere
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.
Hello! I wanted to send a short little love letter your way, as I’ve been caught up enjoying the cooling weather and its trappings. My summertime sadness is finally receding in favor of light jackets and dark academia. Yesterday I wore jeans and munched on a caramel apple cinnamon roll. It is, at last, my time to shine.
Plus, my last newsletter was so massive that I’m sure you lost interest halfway through and maybe need to be reminded to get back to it. Go yonder, if you wish!
The books, etc
After being emotionally obliterated by Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, I picked up a video game instead of another book. I played Strange Horticulture, a creepy and cozy little game in which you run a mysterious plant shop. You gather and identify botanicals of all kinds, aid the plights of your neighborhood coven or cult, and brew elixirs to treat ailments of all kinds for the local townsfolk. Plant magic, combined with an occult story that unfurls as you play, made this feel like an incredible autumnal welcome. Inspired by the subject matter, I picked up Evil Roots: Tales of the Botanical Gothic edited by Daisy Butcher, an "unruly garden of short stories" all about devilish plants of all kinds. I'm working through those, but must highlight the inimitable Rappaccini's Daughter by Nathaniel Hawthorne; I hadn't read it since college and forgot how bonkers it is.
I did eventually manage to finish I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Teokbokki by Baek Sehee, a memoir that records and reflects on the author’s therapy sessions. Though I enjoyed the author's candor, I wish it had more of a narrative structure to guide the reflections.
In an attempt to really break free from the Tomorrow x3 spell, I managed to devour another contender for a favorite novel of the year. Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R.F. Kuang is a masterclass in complicating and elevating the conventions of the dark academia genre. After a Chinese orphan is plucked from his home in Canton and brought to an alternative Victorian England, he gets trained for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese in preparation for Oxford University's world-famous Royal Institute of Translation. He doesn't realize that he's part of a network of children who are "taken from all corners of the empire, fluent in Chinese or Arabic, raised in England, and put to work at Babel to translate, thus… making new magic – only ever used for the benefit of the rich in London, and to the detriment of those the translators must leave behind in their colonised homelands." I promised a short missive today, so I will save my proselytizing efforts for another time except to say that I am obsessed with this book.
In order to avoid yet another reading slump after such brilliance, Amanda and I decided to take a little Brooklyn book crawl today. We started at Terrace Books, which easily had the best curation of the day (lots of independent publishers, sweet shelftalkers, and helpful staff); meandered north to Powerhouse on 8th, where I bought An Atlas of Extinct Countries by Gideon Defoe for fun, and Community Bookstore (which apparently owns the previously linked Terrace Books), where I bought Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting by Penelope Mortimer on a whim; nearly walked past Unnameable Books by accident, since they’re currently changing their signage; stopped for japchae, chicken wings, and kimchi fried rice at the delectable White Tiger; moseyed over to Troubled Sleep, where I snagged Diary of a Void by Emily Yagi; and finished up at my beloved Books Are Magic, where they are regretably sold out of Babel signed editions. Amanda ended the day with a whopping eleven(!) new books, so my paltry stack of three cowers in awe.
That’s it for today, as I’m heading to a ~Broadway production~ this evening. Bye!