Everything I Read & Where I Read It: July 7-13
This past week was a true NYC teacher-summer week: lots of time in my apartment, at the library, and at our local coffee shop. I spent a lot of time looking at and signing up for free events on The Skint, and then not actually attending them. I did attend one Zumba class on the Hunters Point waterfront. I got incredibly sweaty and then immediately ran into a former co-worker who I hadn’t seen in months. Awesome!
Same As It Ever Was by Clare Lombardo
I read this in peak teacher-summer mode: on our couch, air conditioning blasting, food and water forgotten, while I waited for it to cool off outside. New York City is, as we all know, a festering hellhole in the summer. HOWEVER. New York City in the summer when you don’t have to go to work? When you’ve put in your ten months of hard work with 25 13-year-olds and now you get to reap the rewards? Heaven!
Same As It Ever Was grew on me and then plateaued about three-quarters of the way through. I did not like the main character, Julia, at all: I found her to be weak and irritable and generally bitchy in a way that wasn’t particularly fun to read. I don’t have to love every main character, but she’s a character who is, I think, supposed to be sort of lovable at the least, and definitely relatable. I didn’t find her to be either thing.
The writing was compelling and detailed–I liked the way Lombardo described people. She’s good at including kid dialogue in a way that’s funny without being cloying, which put me a little in mind of Kiley Reid, one of my favorite authors. Overall, though, I hated most of the characters in this book, which meant that I can’t give it a full-throated rating of more than 3.5/5
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Beautiful by Christina Lauren
I read this book on Tuesday night, which, if you live in New York, you know was an insane summer storm. This was my version of watching a movie while it was raining outside. Scott was on a long run, and I’d just come back from a 6-mile walk along the West Side Highway because I’m an influencer. It was dark and loud outside, and cool and quiet inside. Excellent conditions for what turned out to be a pretty bad book.
And thus ends my short-lived Christina Lauren kick. This book was terrible. The romance was flat–it didn’t build appropriately. No angst, no longing. And, I swear, half of the plot was complicated logistics about this extended friend group, half of whom weren’t even part of the story! But were just connected through a group text! No, thank you. I know this is the series finale book, but still. Make it make sense. ⅕ romance stars. Bad, bad, bad.
Entitlement by Ruman Alan
Much like Same As It Ever Was, I read this book in two places: on our couch or in our bed. By far, the best thing about a paid summer vacation is feeling completely justified in reading for 2 hours mid-afternoon when it’s too hot to go outside and do anything.
I feel like people…hate this book? And I can see why: it’s almost impossibly uncomfortable to read. I think I really liked it, although it’s still percolating for me. It captured something so essentially relatable to me, as a teacher in a decrepit school who’s trying to figure out what to do with her life, that I can’t disentangle if I really liked or hated it. I felt called out, and I felt…forgiven?
Like Leave the World Behind, my experience of reading this book was one of deep discomfort. The psychological tension builds really slowly, until suddenly the narrator is experiencing a psychological break of some sort, making horrible choices, digging herself into a hole you can’t see any way out of, etc. You know exactly where it’s all stemming from, but you’re still surprised. The main character was hard to take in this one: compensating for her deep uncertainty with a self-righteous certainty. (And, with a little reflection, maybe that was so hard to read because it’s relatable and I hate that.)
I loved the commentary on money and class in this book. Really, it’s a commentary on every big social category available: money; race; power; gender. Especially money, though. Money is sanctified in this story. It purifies and ruins; it cleaves paths and shutters relationships. I want every one of my friends to read this book so we can discuss immediately. 5/5 because I’ll be thinking about it for a long time.