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I read most of Hustvedt’s work when I was in Berlin and Paris in 2019. She writes so beautifully about neurology and illness, neurotypical anomalies, but in a greatly poetic yet digestible way. I suggest one starts with Living, Thinking, Looking (2012).
Jun 9, 2022
Related Recs
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Stunning memoir. Absolutely immersive. Precise and heartbreaking writing by and about a woman who suffered her whole life and ultimately caused others to as well. Felt like a thrill and a privilege to live in the honest minutia of a real daily life in 1920s-50s Copenhagen, a world that was entirely unfamiliar to me previously. Bleak yet somehow sharply funny and delightful too!
Apr 10, 2024
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"It was the golden time of the year. Every day the leaves grew brighter, the air sharper, the grass more brilliant. The sunsets seemed to expand and melt and stretch for hours, and the brick facades glowed pink, and everything blue got bluer. How many perfect autumns did a person get? Why did I always seem to be in the wrong place, listening to the wrong music?"
I've been rereading Elif Batuman's Either/Or and found myself fixating on these lines.
It feels almost disarming to have someone articulate on paper a sensation so exact to the ways I have been feeling lately. I love the clarity that Batuman writes with. Her phrasing is so precise it hurts. Again and again I find myself returning to her novels, and to Selin as a character, as I find my own way through the absurd labyrinth of college life. I'm so grateful that books like this exist, and that I can read them.
Nov 20, 2024
Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, a claustrophobic, uncomfortable novel full of unsparing beautiful prose. Can’t wait to read more of her work.
Jan 30, 2025
Top Recs from @meetka
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If I’m ever at all anxious, I put YouTube on my TV and watch an amazingly comforting series called Intimate Portraits, which focuses on one woman in Hollywood per episode. The subjects are usually from the Golden Age of Hollywood up until about the 80’s or 90’s. The usually English female narrators talk so slowly and precisely about Bacall’s depression or Garland’s divorces, it weirdly makes me feel so relaxed and distracted. My favorite episode is on Lauren Bacall, and once you watch one, you can’t stop!
Jun 9, 2022
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Since teenagehood I always used my iPhone’s alarms, those horrible sounds to abruptly wake me from sleep and comfort. Now I use a radio alarm clock I got from Sharper Image that slowly gets louder over the course of 2 minutes to whatever station I desire! This makes waking up easier, and slower, less abrupt. You also can get lost in the radio, weekends are for the classical station and weekdays are for NPR. I wake up at 7 or 7:30am and lay in bed for a bit listening to the news and stories, not immediately looking at my phone, which now charges out of reach from my bed, which I also recommend! You can get them at Best Buy for like $20.
Jun 9, 2022
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Fuck The Rockaways, Fort Tilden, Jacob Riis…I personally have no issue with those beaches but if you want to actually be able to take a use of the lou and have a real meal all while enjoying the beach and all of its usual offers…Brighton is the one. On Fort Tilden, you have to walk the width of what seems to be the continent just to take a shit. For what? Some space in the sand? No. You can take a train to Brighton, have some pierogies, take a dip in the sea and be back in the city before noon and still have some energy to do other things.
Jun 9, 2022