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I went to Miami for Art Basel and by the end of the weekend I was filled with hangxiety so I spent an extra day sitting on the beach reading Stephanie LaCava’s newish novel I Fear My Pain Interests You. It’s about the daughter of two punk rock stars who suffers from “congenital analgesia,” which means she feels no physical pain, and though it’s definitely not a breezy beach read, it destroyed me, in a good way.
Jan 23, 2023
Related Recs
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For months since the start of the pandemic, I’ve had trouble getting back into reading for pleasure. I graduated from my Master’s program in May 2020, and was experiencing a lot of literary fatigue… I was studying medieval English literature, and had been up to my ears in readings for months, so I think at the end of it all I was just incredibly burnt out. This book changed that. Set in a post-Covid, semi-fictionalized version of Palm Beach, it’s incredibly fun, and just of-the-moment enough to feel like an inside joke for our times, without veering into the hyper-current or crinegworthy.
Apr 15, 2021
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I hadn't read a novel in about 45 years (I only care about stuff that is true) but I absolutely fell in love with this book and truly could not put it down. Nolan's novel is about obsession, sex, love and booze and boy addiction-- all the hits. I've never brought a book (or myself) onto the elliptical, but cut to me last month at Equinox absolutely devouring this book while taking little slidey steps to and fro. By the way, last week I saw a girl on the treadmill with her hair down?????? Someone send an ambulance!
Jul 29, 2021
As someone who was unmoved by Daddy but enamoured with The Iceman, I was unsure of what to expect when I cracked open Cline’s latest novel, The Guest. Revered as the Play It As It Lays of Gen Z sex work, Uncut Gems for chicks and the “book of the summer,” the novel tells the story of a twenty-two year old named Alex who is ousted by her sugar daddy in the Hamptons and determined to drift her way through the island until Labour Day. A stressful read in which an unreliable protagonist makes nothing but bad decisions, the sentences are clean and the plot grows tense with every page.
Most piercing, however, is the precision to which Cline illustrates how whiteness and its perceived docility can permeate the gates of wealth and class at ease. Chapter by chapter, constructed episodically so the rising action mirrors the high (and inevitable crash) of a drug, we read as Alex flattens herself to become fluid, to leech, to exploit. Cline's understanding of how these spaces function, and how the right (or white) wallflower can encroach on a territory that is not theirs, undetected, is acute. As a result, Alex's powers of manipulation come not from an aptitude for obscuring her identity. It's quite the opposite. Instead of a disguise, she offers herself - a blank canvas of a girl - and allows her surrounding environment to assume how she might fit in their world. Upon completion, I thought of a new comparison: Parasite amoungst the privileged.
Jan 22, 2024
Top Recs from @brock-colyar
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I moved to Greenpoint two years ago and tell everyone I live on the same block as Lena Dunham in Girls, though that’s a lie. Greenpoint has all the perks of gentrified neighborhoods (lush wine shops and lush wine bars, plus a bakery with addictive focaccia) without any of the drawbacks (Chipotle, Urban Outfitters, Equinox – for these things you just walk to Williamsburg). There’s so many good restaurants (I hate to say it but Five Leaves is perfect) and Transmitter Park. Also, there’s more aged childless hipsters than breeders in the neighborhood, and controversially, I love the G Train.
Jan 23, 2023
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People are constantly asking me where to go out in New York, but that’s kind of a hard question to answer. What I try to encourage people to do is get together with a group of people they love and go somewhere they would normally never go. People are far too fucking pretentious about their nightlife in this city and if you’ve spent every weekend for the last three months at Basement or Bossa or whatever, you’re probably chasing something you’ll never actually catch. I have the most fun when my friends go somewhere out of our ordinary, with people we’d never normally associate with. All of this to say: It’s ok to go dance at ACME sometimes.
Jan 23, 2023
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Bethenny Frankel is the true queen of the Real Housewives, and her TikTok is just as good as Bravo. Mostly it’s Bethenny looking hot and reviewing beauty products with profanity and gusto, but lately, for whatever reason, she’s also started reviewing things like… fast food coffee and cans of tuna? It’s brilliant and batshit. Sometimes she shares her thoughts on the culture, which are the best, such as her thoughts on Harry and Meghan. I don’t like them either. But I love Bethenny.
Jan 23, 2023