8 Quarantine Book Recommendations Based on What You're Already Doing in Quarantine
If You’ve Become Your Own Bartender/Barista…
Read Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast
Find A Moveable Feast Here
This book details Hemingway’s years in Paris, from 1921 to 1926, written after he had already left Paris. The result is Hemingway describing his time in Paris the way only crystallized memories can, with the people he knew faceted in their essence and oil left on plates in brasseries. In the section “Hunger Was A Good Discipline”, he details a visit to a brasserie named Lipp’s. The way he describes a cold beer, potato salad, and a bratwurst, will shimmer on your tongue. There are many moments like this.
If You’ve Become Spectator to People Living Their Lives on Balconies & Rooftops…
Read Maggie Nelson’s Bluets
Find Bluets Here
Nelson meditates on instances of the color blue but is not concerned with their blueness. By entry eleven she states, “That is to say: I don’t care if it’s colorless.” So what is it about? Bluets is about connection and isolation, the pull towards a lover who doesn’t want you anymore and the decision to leave coveted miscellany as you found it, the exploration of obsession and the resignation to it.
If You’ve Found Yourself Masturbating More…
Read Eileen Myles’ I Must Be Living Twice
Find I Must Be Living Twice Here
The poet who states, “When I read books I think about my cunt,” isn’t shy about sex. Myles has a way of traipsing between the carnal and thoughtful with ease, and with a cleverness that isn’t seeking approval. This collection spans her career up to 2014, and you watch her sexuality and poetry develop. The collection isn’t all about sex, but it’s as much about sex as life is.
If You’ve Delved into Self-Care as Escapism…
Read Amy Key’s Isn’t Forever
Find Isn’t Forever Here
I was first introduced to Key when reading Poetry Magazine, and the way she describes the care of the body also acknowledges the notion of the plight of having a body. In her newest book she describes this feeling as ‘diligence of having a body.’ I think we all, at times, must escape our mind into our bodies, and remember the cheese in our bellies, and the relationships we hold.
If You’re Missing A Lover…
Read Anne Carson’s translation of Sappho If Not, Winter : Fragments of Sappho
Find If Not, Winter Here
Anne Carson proves a diligent translator by preserving Sappho’s original intent by indicating the missing pieces of Sappho’s texts. What we’re left with are fragments of Sappho that read tenderly as entireties, despite clear acknowledgement of their incompleteness. I almost don’t want to know the rest of 88A, “…I say I have been a strong lover… …painful.”
Find an Excerpt Here
If You’ve Tried to Document this Time, Anticipating History…
Read Mary Jo Bang’s A Doll For Throwing
Find A Doll for Throwing Here
In A Doll For Throwing, Bang creates a speaker who exists as part of the Bauhaus school in Germany during its shut down by the Nazis. In Two Nudes, the speaker states, “Every day was a twenty-four-hour standstill on a bridge from which we discretely looked into the distance, hoping to catch sight of the future. It’s near where you’re standing now.” I don’t think I need to elaborate on the relevance.
Find an Excerpt Here
If You’ve Jokingly or Seriously Referred to 2020 as the Apocalypse…
Read Clarence Brown’s Translation of Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We
Find We Here
We is the book that notably inspired George Orwell’s 1984, and creates the archetype of the modern dystopia through characters with varying distaste towards their reality which masquerades as utopia. Described by Penguin Publisher as a prose poem, the details read as imagery in a dream, less and somehow more specific than novels I’ve read. I’ll never forget the glass houses, or the dimples of O-90’s plump wrists.
If You’ve Watched a Livestream Rave/DJ Set/Concert…
Read Bianca Stone’s The Möbius Strip Club of Grief
Find The Möbius Strip Club of Grief Here
Live Music often serves as an individual experience within a collective, one that you only talk about after it has happened. Bianca Stone sets up a “burlesque purgatory” where the living pay to see the dead perform, as a way to cope with grief. Stone’s underworld functions in a collective unconscious, and holds you between viscera and aesthetics.