Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.
—Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
Review: On the Come Up by Angie Thomas
The genre: YA
The gist: A high schooler who loves to rap ultimately tries to make it as a rapper to help save her family.
The tea: I love Angie Thomas’s writing.
So far, I’ve only read The Hate U Give and this one, but Concrete Rose is up next, and I’m excited to read anything else she puts out.
Her characters and dialogue are so real that you feel like you’re popping in on actual conversations. Not only that, but her stories show an American experience that not everyone shares, and I feel like I’ve learned a lot from her books.
In On the Come Up, high schooler Bri loves to rap. She deals with racism at school, family drama, and eventually the threat of extreme poverty that causes her to try to make it as a rapper to help her family. On top of that, she’s got normal teenager stuff going on, like crushes on boys and the pressure of getting into college.
Something I really liked was getting to see the thought process behind Bri’s freestyles, seeing her quickly transform her scattered thoughts into the sick burns she throws at her opponent.
The wrap-up: Great author, great book. Read all her stuff.
The rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5 /5
I’m starting to think it doesn’t matter what I do. I’ll still be whatever people think I am.
—Angie Thomas, On the Come Up
Got ’em.
Sometimes people use thought to not participate in life.
—Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Green vibes
I Choose the Mountain
by Howard Simon
The low lands call
I am tempted to answer
They are offering me a free dwelling
Without having to conquer
The massive mountain makes its move
Beckoning me to ascend
A much more difficult path
To get up the slippery bend
I cannot choose both
I have a choice to make
I must be wise
This will determine my fate
I choose, I choose the mountain
With all its stress and strain
Because only by climbing
Can I rise above the plain
I choose the mountain
And I will never stop climbing
I choose the mountain
And I shall forever be ascending
I choose the mountain
He was sure that even to folks who lived a hundred years—as he hoped to do—it seemed like not much more than a summer afternoon.
—Stephen King, The Colorado Kid
Review: Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
The genre: Contemporary fiction, suspense
The gist: In 1964, Eileen works at a prison office at a male juvenile detention center, is daughter to an alcoholic ex-cop, and has lots of opinions on both.
The background: My brother used to work at the airport, and in the break room they had what they called their “library,” which was the was the stacks upon stacks of books that got left at the airport on a daily basis accumulated by the employees. Sometimes he’d send me photos and I’d ask him to grab specific titles for me; other times he’d just grab me a random book or two. This was one of the random ones. It’s been sitting on my shelf for years, and it was the perfect read last month during a snowstorm in Chicago!
The tea: I’m really glad this book fell into my lap.
It’s dark in a Gillian Flynn way, and I love Gillian Flynn. It reminded me a bit of Psycho by Robert Bloch, too. The writing in both is shrewd and to the point, and both Norman Bates and Eileen are calmly tortured introverts, who crave social interaction but react kind of…intensely when they really like someone.
Eileen is judgy, resentful, insecure, and slightly delusional. And that’s what makes her such a joy to read. Her humor is dark, witty, often harsh. She reads the people around her to filth in her head every second of every day, but only to avoid facing her own self-disgust.
Again, a joy.
She can be a frustrating contradiction, but so are most humans. We stan a flawed protagonist over a boring one.
I only wish this book were longer! Definitely going to be reading more of this author.
The wrap-up: If you like dark humor and writing that unapologetically explores the morbid side of human thoughts, this book is for you.
The rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
I hid my shameful perversions under a facade of prudishness. Of course I did. It’s easy to tell the dirtiest minds—look for the cleanest fingernails.
—Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen
That Book Broad 