But considering the way that many recent novels reference recent, niche cultural fragments most relevant to an incestuous class of urban media professionals, future generations would need a comically thick companion book. (How to succinctly explain the hilarious-to-me line, “I don’t use TikTok because it makes me feel like I’m having a seizure, but lately I can’t open Instagram without being bombarded by some ‘sapphic bookstagrammer’ or ‘queer radical sex therapist,’” from Anna Dorn’s Perfume and Pain?) The text is not timeless, and is not trying to be. It’s of an era, gone as fast as brat summer or hot girl summer or the summer of Barbie—a cycle of buzzwords to describe the same concept.
Both Darwin and the ship’s Captain, Robert FitzRoy, were deeply concerned with which books to take on board and how to fit as many as possible. FitzRoy writes that ‘considering the limited disposable space in so very small a ship, we contrived to carry more instruments and books than one would readily suppose could be stowed away in dry and secure places’. Darwin lived for five years in a cabin that also functioned as the ship’s library; perhaps some 400 volumes were crammed into a roughly 10 ft by 11 ft space. He slept and worked surrounded by teeming bookcases, bindings eroded by damp sea air and swaying slightly with the tide.
His favourites are clear from his papers, and his 1833 reference to Jane Austen’s Persuasion is one among many. Two years earlier, when he first began the journey as a fresh university graduate, he told his sister Caroline: ‘I will not take Persuasion, as the Captain says he will not read it, & there is no danger of my forgetting it.’ His correspondence is dotted with Austen references in a way that conveys a genuine fluency with her work. ‘Lydiaish’ means flirtatious, ‘like Mrs Bates’ code for overly doting, ‘like Lady Cath. de Burgh’ stands in for stern, and ‘a Captain Wentworth’ was his cousin’s term of endearment for Captain FitzRoy. His private notebooks likewise reference numerous Austen characters, and three of Austen’s novels figure on his 1838-40 reading list.
Instead of being a place to organize your thoughts, this was a place to organize your junk. Some people have no problem throwing away the random objects they collect from events or occasions—concert wristbands, dried flower petals, or ticket stubs. But if you’re like me, you’re holding on to these small tokens in every drawer, purse, or cabinet. We can’t bear to part with them, but what use do they have? Cue in junk journals. Think of it as a less polished and structured scrapbook with a lot less pressure on perfection.
Not all monsters are imaginary—real life holds plenty that is terrifying—and Lilliam Rivera’s Tiny Threads comes marked by both kinds of fear. The author of four highly regarded novels for young adults, Rivera is making her first foray into adult fiction with a narrative that blends horror, style, and a strong grasp of social inequity.
I love debut novels that feel stuffed with every idea an author has been waiting to express. Tom Pyun’s “Something Close to Nothing” feels like one of those books. It begins as the story of a gay couple’s tragicomic surrogacy journey but then expands into much more.
In just 67 pages (16 of which are glossy color photographs) Montgomery introduces us to her “Ladies,” the ever-changing flock of hens she raised on her New Hampshire farm for decades starting in the 1980’s. Blending her personal experiences as queen of the coop with everything you’ve ever wanted to know about chicken behavior, it’s a fun and informative way to spend an hour.
In Candid, Sammy interviews over thirty women across various genres and instrumental backgrounds, along with thirteen men, to share their experiences with women in music. This balance is one of the book’s strengths: while the women provide first hand accounts, the men offer outside perspectives, presenting a broader, unbiased look at industry dynamics.