“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again…”

My mum gave me Rebecca when I was eleven. We went to the library together, and she plucked it directly from the shelf. She told me it had been her favorite book at that age, and that was reason enough for me to love it too. But it didn’t take long for Rebecca to claim me for itself, inducting me into the shadowy world of gothic literature.

Manderley and its long drives, the cold, gray sea crashing beyond the trees, the housekeeper with her secrets, the second Mrs. de Winter with her silence. It all rooted itself deep inside me in ways I’m still unraveling.

At eleven, I read it as a kind of preparation for the life I hadn’t yet lived, and for the woman I hoped to become. Like the narrator, I longed to be a woman in black satin and pearls but was an awkward girl that didn’t like to be looked at. I didn’t fully understand the novel then and how could I? I knew there was a glamorous dead wife I wished to emulate, and a timid new wife I more closely resembled. I knew something terrible had happened in the time between them. But it was the mood I understood. The fog. The feeling of not being enough.

Reading it again now, I see Rebecca differently. I see it as a novel about power and the slow violence of erasing yourself inside your own story. The narrator folds herself smaller and smaller, hoping to disturb nothing, to replace no one. She doesn’t even want to change the dinner menu. Once, I understood that. I, too, would have left things untouched out of fear of upsetting anyone.

Now, many years later, I no longer see myself in the timid narrator. Her insecurities, once so familiar, now feel like someone that I used to know. That’s the strange magic of rereading: the story stays the same, but somehow, everything else changes.

#rebecca #daphnedumaurier #bookstadon #books #alwaysreading

My first Murakami (ok, ok, my second— I did read his nonfiction about writing and running)

#currentlyreading #japaneseliterature #books #bookstadon #alwaysreading

Everyone who has spoken to me lately has, in a way, already read this book—I can’t stop talking about it. I’ve been retelling these stories, giggling at the absurdity, finding the similarities in my life, and then diving into deep conversations about diaspora, migration, and identity. No light chats with me, hehehe.

To me, that’s the mark of a brilliant book.

In Dearborn, author Ghassan Zeineddine presents ten tragicomic stories that capture the layered experiences of Lebanese Americans in Dearborn, Michigan. For those of you who know Lebanese people, you know that we love very little more than our most beloved Lebanon.

Some of my favorite stories: a father teaches his son to hide cash inside frozen chickens to evade the IRS; a group of couples at the gym pool are inexplicably hypnotized by a newcomer wearing a tiiiiiiiiny Speedo covered in landmarks of Lebanon; and in "Yusra," a male butcher spends Fridays living as their true self, as female Yusra, and finds a friend who sees them fully. Yusra gave me all the feelings.

These stories are so funny, so tender, and so beautifully written—a collection I’ll be thinking about (and talking about) for a long time.

#books #bookstadon #shortstories #alwaysreading #dearborn #diaspora #lebanon #literature

I read this book last year but never wrote about it here. Not because I didn’t absolutely love it, but because I don’t always write about the books I read. Sometimes, I feel lazy, or I don’t like the photos I take, or I don’t think I have anything particularly interesting to add.

But enough time has passed. A second reading has happened. Now, I feel like I have more to say beyond “this book broke me, it is unfair, it drove me mad, but I loved it.”

This is a novel about poverty and the quiet tragedy of life. It was written in a way that makes you feel like you are unraveling as you spin your way through the lonely and unfair life of Macabéa. I couldn’t help but think about all the lives that are just like hers.

Reading The Hour of the Star in an abstract bubble is one thing. Reading it after walking through Rio de Janeiro is another. It is impossible to ignore the deep inequality that defines the city—the stark contrast between the gleaming glamour of Leblon (or the posh parts of any city) and the sprawling favelas that spiral into the sky. Macabéa, with her empty stomach and unfair life, is not just a character. She is real. She is one of the many invisible lives who are ignored, unheard, and deemed unimportant in a world that has only grown more selfish.

Maybe that’s what makes The Hour of the Star so devastating. Macabéa’s life didn’t matter—not to the people who around her, not to the society that left her behind. And yet, through the book, she exists. We bear witness to her life, hunger, loneliness, dreams, that moment of happiness as she listened to music and danced in her room. She mattered to us. And maybe that is the only kind of justice fiction can offer—to say, if only for a moment, she was here.

Macabéa mattered.

And this, my friends, is why writing and stories matter.

#bookstadon #alwaysreading #lispector #books #readeragonnaread #thoughts

Currently reading: We Do Not Part by Han Kang.

Has anyone on here read this already? I’m about a quarter way through and have so many thoughts!

#translatedlit #books #bookstadon #alwaysreading #currentlyreading #literature

Favorite writer book stack :)

#books #bookstadon #bookstack #readersgonnaread #alwaysreading #ernesthemingway

Happiness: a stack of books 📚

#books #bookstadon #alwaysreading #bookworms

This book arrived at just the right time—and yet, also, a little too late. As I weigh whether to remain in the humanitarian space, it served as a reminder of the people and the work that first called me to this field. I love my work, and I love serving. But for much of the voting population in the United States, with its relentless ICE raids, the revival of Guantanamo Bay, and savage calls for deportation, it feels like the spiritual lens came a little bit too late.

As the title suggests, The Asylum Seekers is about those seeking asylum in the United States. Through immersive, narrative-driven reporting, journalist and Episcopalian priest Cristina Rathbone documents the lives of Mexican asylum seekers in Juárez, living in tent camps along the Mexico-U.S. border in 2019-2020. She spent much of her time walking families to the border, hoping her clerical position might lend some weight to their request to enter the United States. She also spent a lot of time with the children, organizing daily English lessons and chances for their innocence to come back to the front. The time with the children were spent drawing and singing so that they could for however briefly forget both what had happened and what was coming.

Rathbone is not perfect. She is emotional, angry, confused, guilty, and, at times, she feels useless, burnt out, and lost. She serves as a listener and the stories recounted to her and the scars shown to her weigh heavily. Sometimes, the weight of it all builds inside her, and she has to go home to decompress. I loved this. Too often, journalistic accounts are cold, dry, and so data-driven that the humanity is lost. For those of us who work in this space, we know that it is emotionally heavy work. We always feel like it is not enough. Humanitarians are not perfect and it was so refreshing to read about someone who doesn’t hide it but embraces it and just tries to do her very best in this “tiny work.”

#bookstadon #theasylumseekers #books #alwaysreading

Currently reading 📚

#thebeesting #paulmurray #currentlyreading #books #bookstadon #alwaysreading