Unstable Autumn: 5 Books for When You're Spiraling

to continue spiraling but also, perspective

I made three of these, you’ll see

Sometimes it feels as though I have so much digital access to feeling that I’d never have to leave my house again to get it. Stimulation is not the same as feeling. But feeling is not the same as connection. Connection > feeling > stimulation.

Here is a short list of things that give me the feeling (scroll down for book list) this is a different list:

This 4 minute TikTok of Stephen Sanchez covering Unchained Melody 

Historical romance

The film Memorias del Subdesarrollo

When the cat looks funny and my son says mami please look at manguinch

Lauren’s X-Factor audition 

Pisces by RIZ LA VIE

When it comes to reading someone’s book recommendation, taste is everything — adjust your expectations accordingly.

I’m watching Grey’s Anatomy for the nth time and shifting from McDreamy and McSteamy to Karev and Hunt. The Tommy Shelbys of the world. Edward > Jacob.

intense and unsettling > lighthearted and reliable

As spooky season merges into Scorpio season, I have two memoirs and three novels for you. None of these are scary, but they’re all scary to me. 

1. The Women by Kristin Hannah

   This is why I’m into Owen Hunt now. I know it’s called The Women, but the men in this novel…toxic and asserting and stoic and intense. It’s 1966, the whole world is changing. Frankie McGrath hails from an upper class California family and shocks her world and herself when she follows her brother’s footsteps to Vietnam, to serve as an army nurse. Hannah brilliantly describes and confronts the tragedy of war, especially the Vietnam War, and the horrific treatment towards our vets when it ended, especially for the women. Favorite book of the year. I said it.

2. Good Morning, Monster by Catherine Gildiner

   Why do bad things happen to children? Why do people do bad things to children? Why do parents do unthinkable to their children? This memoir delves into five profoundly tragic cases from Gildiner’s career as a therapist. The resilience of each patient in the face of such evil permanently shifted something in me. Out of all the books on this list, this one comes with a significant trigger warning.

   The author was a guest on The Skinny Confidential and apparently there’s a limited series podcast based on the book, but I haven’t brought myself to listen. Because it really happened.

3. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

   Let yourself be confused at first, this novel weaves through time and perspective. Soon enough you’ll be rooting for them, laughing at them, cursing fate for them. Humans deserve better. I love you Leo Gursky. I love this book, the voice, the pace. A beautiful reminder that the experience reading offers is rich. Rich rich. Life is unfair, but it’s rich.

4. The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante

   Grazie introduced me to Ferrante last year. Changed my life with Ferrante. I think as readers, particularly female readers, we have an identity before Ferrante and one after Ferrante. But who is Elena Ferrante? We don’t know, that’s the best part.

   Don’t sleep on the Netflix adaptation, but read it first.

5. Educated by Tara Westover

   This is, similar to Good Morning, Monster, devastating nonfiction. The youngest of seven children, Tara Westover, was raised in a strict, survivalist Mormon household where formal education was dismissed. Despite her shocking upbringing, I was most absorbed by the complexities of family loyalty and the chokehold our families can have on us — even when they’re wrong.

I’m currently reading Joan Didion’s Play it as It Lays, which would have absolutely made the list had I finished it before making these graphics. Consider it a bonus book — an unsettling portrayal of depression, addiction, and the cost of playing it cool. If you think times are dark now in America, and they are, there’s always the 60s. And the decade before, and the one before that, and so on and so forth.

Other than that we’ve been watching a lot of Halloweentown and Halloweentown High. I always skip Kalabar’s Revenge because it sucks.