{"id":6216,"date":"2023-09-22T05:23:15","date_gmt":"2023-09-22T05:23:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sometimesraw.com\/?p=6216"},"modified":"2023-09-22T05:23:20","modified_gmt":"2023-09-22T05:23:20","slug":"fall-pleasures-awesome-books-to-curl-up-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sometimesraw.com\/?p=6216","title":{"rendered":".Fall Pleasures: Awesome Books to Curl Up With."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Hey guys, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love a gem-like book and the satisfaction of devouring a story all in one gulp. Here are seven favourites, besides, of course, the ones I have written which are short, crispy essays. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"best<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A new-to-me author:<\/strong>\u00a0The English Understand Wool<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you spot this book in a store, you\u2019ll feel the magnetic pull of its silver spine, drool-inducing Thiebaud cover, and declarative title. The story begins with Marguerite, our teenage heroine, explaining the finer things in life. She\u2019s learned from the best, her exacting\u00a0maman<\/em>. At seven, Marguerite begins to play bridge \u2013 \u201cone cannot always assume that a child can be kept out of sight\u201d \u2013 and her mother\u2019s friends soon request Marguerite as a partner, \u201cespecially if there were to be interesting stakes.\u201d But then, at 17, Marguerite learns something her\u00a0maman<\/em>\u00a0had failed to mention, and it\u2019s way higher stakes than what hotel to visit in Paris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"best<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The crowd pleaser:\u00a0Mr. Salary<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0(more copies\u00a0here<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faber Stories is a British series, but you can find their short-story collection\u00a0online<\/a>. For five bucks, each edition costs less than an iced latte (in New York).\u00a0Mr. Salary<\/em>\u00a0was the first piece of fiction that Sally Rooney published \u2014 before\u00a0Normal People<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Conversations With Friends<\/em><\/a>\u00a0\u2014 so it\u2019s fun to look back at an earlier work of hers and see her signature style developing. There\u2019s an illicit will-they-won\u2019t-they aspect to the narrator\u2019s relationship with the titular Mr. Salary, an older family friend she moves in with at age 19 and later comes back to visit when her dad is dying. I started it in the pool and then had to finish it before getting dressed again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"best<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Nonfiction gems:\u00a0300 Arguments<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Tell Me How It Ends<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll read anything Sarah Manguso publishes, but\u00a0300 Arguments<\/em>\u00a0is a true delight. \u201cThink of this as a short book composed entirely of what I hoped would be a long book\u2019s quotable passages,\u201d she explains. Pack it for a park hang and then discuss your favorite aphorisms with friends. Here\u2019s one: \u201cAspiring to fame is aspiring to a life of small talk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next, in her extended essay\u00a0Tell Me How It Ends<\/em>, Valeria Luiselli (whose\u00a02019 novel<\/a>\u00a0you may have read) goes through the 40 questions she asked migrant children while volunteering as a court interpreter in New York. Of five- and seven-year-old sisters from Guatemala, Luiselli writes, \u201cThe day before they left, their grandmother sewed a ten-digit telephone number on the collars of the dress each girl would wear throughout the entire trip. It was a ten-digit number the girls had not been able to memorize, as hard as she tried to get them to, so she had decided to embroider it on their dresses, and repeat, over and over, a single instruction: they should never take this dress off, not even to sleep, and as soon as they reached America, as soon as they met the first American policeman, they were to show the inside of the dress\u2019s collar to him. He would then dial the number and let them speak to their mother. The rest would follow.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luiselli encounters these girls after they\u2019ve crossed the border, spent time in custody (\u201cthey didn\u2019t remember how many days, but they said they were colder there than they had ever been\u201d), lived for weeks in a shelter, and then flew to New York to reunite with their mom, stepdad, and baby brother. \u201cBut of course, it doesn\u2019t end there,\u201d she writes. \u201cThat\u2019s just where it begins, with a court summons: a first Notice to Appear.\u201d Though the volume is slim, she takes on the massive U.S. border crisis in a way that is clear and immediate. It\u2019s a heart-wrenching look into the lives of children before and after they cross into the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"best<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Best in class:\u00a0Kick the Latch<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Aug 9 \u2014 Fog<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kathryn Scanlan writes some of my favourite little books.\u00a0Kick the Latch<\/em>\u00a0tells the life story of professional \u201cracetracker\u201d Sonia, drawn from a series of interviews Scanlan did with a real horse trainer of the same name. It\u2019s an immersive look into a brutal and sometimes beautiful way of life, told in a series of vignettes. \u201cYou live at the track, your life is full,\u201d Sonia explains. Horse legs are \u201cwheels,\u201d jockeys sit in their cars blasting the heat while wrapped in cling wrap to try to \u201cmake weight\u201d for a race, and a galloping horse spends \u201ca lot of his time suspended in the air \u2014 flying, really \u2014 or on one foot.\u201d That foot lands with \u201ca thousand pounds of pressure held up by that one thin leg, that little hoof the size of a hand-held ashtray.\u201d You don\u2019t need to be a former horse girl to find it fascinating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aug 9 \u2013 Fog<\/em>, also by Scanlan, has a slower, sleepier feel, but it\u2019s no less compelling. The source material was the\u00a0five-year diary<\/a>\u00a0of an 86-year-old woman living in a small town in the 1960s. Decades later, Scanlan found the diary at an estate sale. She took it home and typed out some of her favorite sentences, arranging and rearranging them over the course of several years. As Scanlan writes in the intro, after spending so much time with a stranger\u2019s writing, the diarist\u2019s voice has become part of her own. \u201cOften I say to myself,\u00a0\u2018some hot nite\u2019<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0\u2018flowers coming fast\u2019<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0\u2018grass sure growing\u2019<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0\u2018everything loose is traveling.\u2019<\/em>\u201d This spare and beautiful portrait of a woman might inspire you to take another stab at diary life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"best<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A French favorite:\u00a0Happening\u00a0<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In New York, I was in an Annie Ernaux reading group that was formed after she won the Nobel Prize for Literature. We gathered every six weeks or so for wine, cheese, and Annie talk. We\u2019ve read six of her books so far, and this is the one I suggest whenever friends ask for an Ernaux rec. With her signature removed, she explores the shame of an unwanted pregnancy, her near-death experience, and her strongest memories of the period. If you like it, you\u2019re in luck, because several more of her books have been translated into English \u2014 Seven Stories\u00a0sells a whole set<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now it\u2019s your turn: what books or short stories do you love? I\u2019m always looking to add books to my overstuffed bookshelf.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hey guys, I love a gem-like book and the satisfaction of devouring a story all in one gulp. Here are seven favourites, besides, of course, the ones I have written which are short, crispy essays. A new-to-me author:\u00a0The English Understand Wool If you spot this book in a store, you\u2019ll feel the magnetic pull of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “.Fall Pleasures: Awesome Books to Curl Up With.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_ml_titleColor":"#000000","_ml_titleFont":"Roboto","_ml_titleFontSize":1.136,"_ml_titleFontWeight":"400","_ml_titleLineHeight":1.3,"_ml_metaColor":"#708090","_ml_metaFont":"Montserrat","_ml_metaFontSize":0.6785,"_ml_metaFontWeight":"400","_ml_metaLineHeight":0.92,"_ml_bodyColor":"#a9a9a9","_ml_bodyFont":"Open Sans","_ml_bodyFontSize":0.85,"_ml_bodyFontWeight":"400","_ml_bodyLineHeight":1.2,"_ml_wooPriceColor":"#666","_ml_wooPriceFont":"Open Sans","_ml_wooPriceFontSize":0.9,"_ml_wooPriceFontWeight":"400","_ml_wooPriceLineHeight":1.27,"_ml_headingColor":"#000","_ml_headingFont":"Merriweather","_ml_headingFontSize":2.02,"_ml_headingFontWeight":"700","_ml_headingLineHeight":1.47,"_mlglobal_userfontcolors":{"headingColorUser":[],"titleColorUser":[],"metaColorUser":[],"bodyColorUser":[],"wooPriceColorUser":[]},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-minimalism-lifestyle"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sometimesraw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sometimesraw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sometimesraw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sometimesraw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sometimesraw.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sometimesraw.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sometimesraw.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sometimesraw.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sometimesraw.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}