Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life | 
pickWhy live? Why write? These questions frequently exercise me, too. I'm not much closer to answering them but am beginning to suspect that the asking itself is the answer.
Yiyun Li comes across as a difficult person and doesn't prettify herself to be more ingratiating to her reader. I respect that.
I didn't enjoy it, exactly, but it seems the at-arm's-length company of another reclusive, depressive bibliophile is sometimes just what's needed.
...the effort, under the gaze of the former, seems ludicrous. One always knows how best to sabotage one's own life."
Way too relatable! ?
so-soMemoir written while depressed. Li is highly sensitive and fragile & struggles to be in the world; she shies away from connecting with people so as not to hurt them. (‘I am not the only casualty in this war against myself‘). She meditates on life, death and melodrama, enriched by the authors she‘s reading (Zweig, Woolf among others). The tone is melancholy; I appreciated her honesty & insights more than enjoying it.
Morning reading by the canal. This is melancholy & thought-provoking but oddly comforting. Have you read it? We‘ll be discussing it on Books On The Go. Fans of Maggie Nelson & Olivia Laing might like this.
Reading the Sunday paper (yes, a couple days behind), and am now intrigued by this author! Any of you read her?
pickI absolutely loved this book, probably even more so because it was a serendipitous find at the library. Yiyun Li's writing is so lush and intimate and powerful, and I just had to buy it for that cover 😍 A top contender for favorite of 2017 for sure! #TGIFGIVEAWAY
1Q84 and Born a Crime are very close runners-up, too. (How could I only mention 1 book? 😂)
I know we all have multiple motives and reasons for reading. This one struck me as unfamiliar...
I may have gone a bit overboard at the library yesterday...😯
pickRead two excellent memoirs back to back recently :) they both center narratives of mental illness, but are SO different. Head over to my bookstagram (@annahundert) for both reviews. Xo
In the middle of this beautiful, dark, weight book. So many deep thoughts here!
#booklust this book by yiyun li! The vagrants was such a powerful book.. can't wait to read another by such a talented writer.. and what an interesting title! Picture from Random House Instagram feed..
pickThis beautifully written memoir in essay form evolves around the author's hospitalization for severe depression. While vague in details, it mostly describes the books and writers she found solace in during that time. The book is not written linearly and often jumps around all over the place but this book is so lovely and lyrical. I can see how this might not be everyone's cup of tea but I couldn't put it down and really enjoyed every bit of it.
so-soStarted loving it - but by the end had lost patience. There are definitely better books to read about being a writer and having a breakdown.
Isolation, I was reminded again and again, is a danger. But what if one‘s real context is in books ?
Who among us dares to assert that our memories are not tainted by time, sweetest poison and bitterest antidote, untrustworthy ally and reliable annihilator?
A young man confronted me at a reading, questioning my disinterest in being a political writer... Why can‘t you live up to that expectation? ... I have spent much of my life turning away from the scripts given to me, in China and in America; my refusal to be defined by the will of others is my one and only political statement.
I did not see myself in Scarlett O‘Hara; or Anna Karenina or Tess Durbeyfield or Jane Eyre; nor did I look for myself in Jean-Christophe or Nick Adams or Paul Morel or the old man fighting the sea. To read oneself into another person‘s tale is the opposite of how and why I read. To read is to be with people who, unlike those around one, do not notice one‘s existence.
All the things in the world are not enough to drown out the voice of this emptiness that says: you are nothing. This emptiness does not claim the past because it is always here. It does not have to claim the future as it blocks out the future. It is either a dictator or the closest friend I have ever had.
the TBR pile...
