#aja gabel

[olympain]

It's a nice camera. I hope it turns out.

[smokefalls]

Everyone needs someone who allows them a way to love themselves.

Aja Gabel, The Ensemble

[moviesframes]

Little Fish (2021)

Directed by Chad Hartigan

Cinematography by Sean McElwee

[universitybookstore]

Another well reviewed debut, The Ensemble, by Aja Gabel, new from Riverhead Books. (Listen to her NPR interview here.)

[riverheadbooks]

Selected Shorts: Riverhead Books' 25th Anniversary

Symphony Space is a performing arts center on the Upper West Side of Manhattan offering theater, film, literature, music, dance and family entertainment. Our mission is to connect art, ideas, and community through our programs and our commitment to literacy and education through the arts.

🎶 Tonight we're gonna party like it's #Riverhead25! 🎶

We're celebrating 25 years of publishing extraordinary, groundbreaking diverse voices from around the world tonight at Symphony Space's Selected Shorts!

[poetsandwriters]

For years and years, there’s been only one book I turn to when I feel the well dry up: The Lover by Marguerite Duras, and specifically the opening paragraph....I hope by memorizing it I will have absorbed it, and by absorbing it I will have in my lungs and blood the residue of that audacity to use when I sit down to write. Write fearless sentences, that first paragraph teaches me. Tell the savage truth, it insists.

Aja Gabel, in this week’s Writers Recommend; read the rest at pw.org!

[daniellemohlman]

August 2018

I fell behind on posting these mini reviews because of life and writing and all good things, so this is going to feel short, forced, fleeting, and another emotion I can’t quite name. I started the month with Jessica Knoll’s The Favorite Sister, which made me gasp near the end and then I forgot to take a photo of it before returning it to the library. I feel very conflicted about the queer baiting throughout this novel, though, and I don’t think I actually liked it. 

Next was Less by Andrew Sean Greer, which wasn’t even on my radar until he (unexpectedly) won the Pulitzer Prize and man am I glad I did. It took me on an emotional roller coaster -- all the while being funny in a laugh out loud way that I rarely participate in. I recommended it to my friend Kate and she sobbed through the final chapters, which feels like the exact right response to this book. 

I fell in love with The Ensemble by Aja Gabel. I was talking about this book so much that Jeremy started rolling his eyes at me, which made me start air kissing the cover good night which just made him question me even more. But folks -- it’s that wonderful. It’s a meaty character exploration of a string quartet over 20+ years of their lives and when I finished it all I wanted to do was start it over again. The writing is gorgeous and the way music is written about is just so perfect and audible. If you only read one more book this year, it should be this one. 

[eldritchteacozy]

@bibliophilicwitch A new Sunday. A new book (and a cup of cardamom coffee at one of my favorite coffee places)