#Emma Straub

[novelconcepts]

Another year, another absurd amount of books read (296, because if I wasn't reading or writing this year, my brain was on fire). I was asked again for my top books of the year, so here we go: 2023's top 10, in no particular order.

This was the first book I read of the year--literally, vacated the hangout with my wife and sibling-in-laws to sit on their couch upstairs and eat through it. Do you love The Fall of the House of Usher, but wish for a nonbinary protagonist and a lot more mushrooms? This is the book for you! (T. Kingfisher is fucking rad, I made a concerted effort to only list ONE of her books on here, but honorable mention goes to The Twisted Ones for fucking me upppp.)

A gay, post-apocolyptic Pinocchio retelling involving copious robots, found family elements, and a cool-ass treehouse. Klune always hits for me with his unrepentant queer family dynamics and sense of humor. Honorable mention to the first two in the Green Creek series (although that's got a lot more...adult elements in among the werewolves, you've been warned).

I thiiiink I found this through The Homo Schedule podcast (PSA: if you missed out on Jasmin Savoy Brown and Liv Hewson doing a podcast together, now you know better), and it wrecked my shit. Tons of trigger warnings, as this is a memoir about abuse within a queer relationship, but it's so beautifully written. I personally suggest listening to the audiobook first, then standing anxiously behind someone at a book warehouse sale, hoping they'll set down the only paperback copy so you can swipe it.

A fantastical-historical reimagining in which the KKK is filled with literal monsters, and Black women are resistance fighters armed to take them out. Visceral and intense, and truly an excellent horror story.

Just. Such a soft time travel story about a daughter and her father and cherishing the time you get with loved ones. I was thoroughly unprepared for how lovely I found this one. It's very kind.

Spooky house, take-no-shit redhead, protective sibling elements, bisexual recluse with a sword who really just needs a nap. I haven't found a Harrow book yet I haven't slapped five stars on. She's so good at character and atmosphere, and I'm always surprised at how fast her stories race by.

The whole Daevabad trilogy (of which this is the first book) is just magical. A girl from the mortal world finds herself embroiled with the centuries-long prejudices and wars of djinn in a fantastical city. It's one of the rare stories of its kind that does have a love triangle, but doesn't feel like a love triangle; it's far less interested in the insufferable "who gets picked" than it is in the actual horrors these people are both perpetrating and coping with. It's an intoxicating ride.

Fuck You, TERFS: the book. Given that fact, there's obviously quite a lot of transphobia to deal with, but it's very clear that those people are wrong, and it's a super-engaging (and super-oh-god-what-comes-next) witchy time populated with queer, protective, interesting characters I'm excited to see again in the follow-up.

Have you ever wanted a haunted house story with visceral imagery and a rather lovely twist? Gailey has you covered. As much as I enjoyed The Echo Wife, I think I actually loved this one more, and it makes me so excited to see what else they've got up their sleeve.

One of my final reads for the year, when I was just churning through hardcovers at the speed of sound. I love this book. I recognize it won't be for everyone, but it takes so much of what I love about IT (one of my all-time favorite books, despite its flaws) and twists it through the lens of an author who escaped the Mormon church. It's horrific, it's fantastically abstract in places, it explores childhood and memory, imagination and abuse, and almost every character is queer. It's a great "I simply cannot sleep until I've finished" read.

[jennamacaroni]

There were too few opportunities, as an adult, to be surrounded by friends after midnight.

Emma Straub, "This Time Tomorrow"

[kayteeaay]

“I’m just really going to miss you, you know?”Alice’s voice caught in her throat. “I don’t know how many people I really, really love, who really, really love me, you know what I mean? I know that sounds pathetic, but it’s true.”

“It is true,” Leonard said. “But that love doesn’t vanish. It’s still there, inside everything you do. Only this part of me is going somewhere, Al. The rest? You couldn’t get rid of it if you tried. And you never know what’s going to happen next. I was older than you are now when I met Debbie. Time to go forward into the breach. Until the future, at last.“

– Emma Straub – This Time Tomorrow

[scribblingcynic]

Alice wasn't a writer, but she'd spent enough time sitting at dinner tables with novelists to understand that fiction was a myth. Fictional stories, that is. Maybe there were bad ones out there, but the good ones, the GOOD ones--those were always true. Not the facts, not the rights and the lefts, not the plots, which could take place in outer space or in hell or anywhere in between, but the feelings. The feelings were the truth.

This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub

[desdasiwrites]

– Emma Straub, This Time Tomorrow

[amor-barato]

Estou te dizendo, El, essa oferta não muito boa é sinal de que provavelmente vão fazer uma oferta boa, boa mesmo. Tenho certeza — disse ela, abrindo o notebook e começando a digitar. — Estou só tirando tudo e começando de novo. Adoro isso, me sinto uma assassina.

Elliot ergueu a sobrancelha.

— Ah, é?

Wendy não olhou para ele.

— Isso é meio excitante, Wen

Agora ela olhou para ele. Elliot caminhou devagar de volta à mesa. O gerente do escritório ficava lá fora, no final do corredor. Fora do alcance dos olhos e fora do alcance dos ouvidos, sobretudo quando a porta estava fechada.

— Vou te dizer quando algo é excitante — disse Wendy, desmascarada por um tremor no lábio inferior. — Senta aí.

Elliot girou a cadeira para que ficasse ao lado da dela, ambos de costas para a porta. Wendy desabotoou a própria calça, depois a dele.

— Me pergunta se você pode me tocar — pediu ela.

— Posso te tocar? — perguntou Elliot.

— Sim.

Wendy pegou a mão de Elliot e deslizou pela cintura dela.

— Não vou perguntar nada — disse ela. Só vou fazer o que quiser com você, e você vai gostar.

— Sim — concordou Elliot.

Ele fechou os olhos, vibrando de concentração. Era como na época em que estavam na biblioteca da faculdade, tão famintos pelo corpo um do outro que transavam nos banheiros unissex.

Emma Straub (Somos todos adultos aqui)

[signal-failure]

This Time Tomorrow

I just loved This Time Tomorrow, by Emma Straub. Y’all know I love a good wibbley-wobbley timey-wimey story, when linear time is folded and twisted for character and plot purposes. The opening of This Time Tomorrow almost riffs on a romcom, but with a middle-aged protag. Alice gets passed over for a promotion, which means she’ll just keep doing private-school admissions for the children of her…

[ohjoyce]

The problem with adulthood was feeling like everything came with a timer-- a dinner date with Sam was at most two hours, with other friends, probably not even as long. There was maybe waiting for a table, there was a night at a bar, there was a party that went late, but even that was just a few hours of actual time spent. Most of Alice's friendships now felt like they were virtual, like the pen pals of her youth. It was so easy to go years without seeing someone in person, to keep up to date just through the pictures they posted of their dog or their baby or their lunch. There was never this-- a day spent floating from thing to another. This was how Alice imagined marriage, and family-- always having someone to float through the day with, someone with whom it didn't take three emails and six texts and a last minute reservation change to see one another. Everyone had it when they were kids, but only the truly gifted held on to it in adulthood.

This Time Tomorrow, Emma Straub

[fizzreads]

I reread another book! Who is she?

I looked up my first post about this book, and at the time I said I loved it. But in my next post about an Emma Straub book, I said that while I loved The Vacationers, I couldn’t remember the plot.

I still loved it. Here’s the plot- a family from New York and a couple they’re friends with go on vacation to Mallorca, Spain. The couple is anxiously awaiting news of an adoption, one of the kids is about to go to college, the older kid (who lives in Miami and is dating an Older Woman) is having relationship trouble, and the parents are also having trouble because the husband cheated. Still a great read.

[yoongivenn]

This Time Tomorrow - Emma Straub

I was thrown into This Time Tomorrow without knowing anything about it. I heard about this book last year when it was released, saw the cover and that it was nominated for best fiction at the GR awards, but I just didn’t know anything about it. Last week, I saw a post recommending books in the vein of “liked this? try this!” and Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (a book I was so…

[benevolentlibraryghost]

An entire family going through a (mid)life crisis

An elderly woman wondering if she was a good enough mother for her three children. An eldest son trying to prove himself to his family and the town he lives in. A daughter - pregnant, single mother by choice - struggling to give up her adolescence. A youngest son, making parenting mistakes of his own with his daughter, who is sent away to live with her grandmother. And more people, adults or not, who are trying to find themselves and all have their own take on life’s opportunities. 

The book starts with the elderly woman, Astrid Strick, witnessing a bus crash and kill a woman she knew. This event makes her aware about the expiration date of her own life and she starts reflecting on her life and her actions. 

Each chapter focusses on one of the characters and what they are dealing with. The book offers different perspectives on important life events. For example, you read what mother and son remember and think about one particular moment that changed their relationship.

Many different subjects are dealt with in a few hundred pages. Even though it might be realistic, it often feels as if the author forced as many events and themes in the book as possible. 

Besides that, the book is an enjoyable and light read, perfect when you want to relax. There isn’t much tension in the book, which one could argue makes the story quite boring. I personally didn’t mind this and thought it made the book extra cozy and calm.

Rating: 4/5 complicated family dynamics 

[jennamacaroni]

Alice wasn't a writer, but she'd spent enough time sitting at dinner tables with novelists to understand that fiction was a myth. Fictional stories, that is. Maybe there were bad ones out there, but the good ones, the good ones–those were always true. Not the facts, not the rights and the lefts, not the plots, which could take place in outer space or in hell or anywhere in between, but the feelings. The feelings were the truth.

Emma Straub, "This Time Tomorrow"

[secretarydamselfly]

This Time Tomorrow

Abe Books The first book club meet went well, so we picked this one. The first 25% of the book is a long setup. Reads more like a screen play for a 20 episode TVB series. Well this how I measure things in my brain. Just started to get juicy though. Will finish no matter what since I need it for book club. Recommend.

[kayteeaay]

Alice had already spent so much time grieving in the present that she didn’t quite know what to make of having her father in front of her, awake. The idea of Leonard dying, and what it would mean for the rest of her life, was heavy, but it was a familiar weight. Not that Alice thought she had worked her way through it – if anything, she understood that it wasn’t actually something one could ever work all the way through, like a jigsaw puzzle, or Rubik’s cube; grief, with something that moved in and stayed. Maybe it moved from one side of the room to the other, farther away from the window, but it was always there. A part of you that you couldn’t wish or pray or drink or exercise away.

– Emma Straub - This Time Tomorrow

[xinesegalas]

December Reads & Listens

Better late than never. Here is my December Reads & Listens reviews.

It’s a few days before the end of January and I am posting December’s Reads & Listens as a way of trying to move closer to a routine. December was a difficult month with my father being in the hospital for many weeks. The family on edge, not sure which way things would turn out. My father died on January 2, 2023. So has January been a struggle. In December I was looking for books to read that…