#babenationbooks

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#BabeNationBooks A contemporary retelling of Balzac’s Cousin Bette, The Cosmopolitans, by Sarah Schulman, is set in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1958 and follows the relationship between Earl, a gay, black struggling actor, and Bette, a straight, white secretary at an ad agency. Earl and Bette have been best friends for years out of a shared loneliness that has been working for Bette but not so much for Earl, who is desperate to find a romantic relationship. When Bette’s cousin Hortense arrives to “make it in the big city” as an actress (insert large eye roll from Bette), she causes a huge rift between the longtime friends, an act in response to which Bette unleashes some serious, previously-unbeknownst-to-her revenge skills worthy of Blair Waldorf to get her friend back. Thanks to @srutii for the🔥rec.

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Tonight we're discussing Jenny Zhang's powerful short-story collection, "Sour Heart," which follows the coming of age of seven different first-generation Chinese-American girls. Equal parts beautiful and painful, the stories stay with you long after they've ended, leaving you quiet, thoughtful and completely moved. #BabeNationBooks

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Tonight at book club we’re talking about Sex and Rage, the recently reissued novel by 1970s writer and “It Girl” Eve Babitz. Loosely based on Eve’s life as a late teen/young twenty-something, the book is about a girl named Jacaranda who grows up in Los Angeles bumming around, partying, and generally being wild and glamorous until she realizes that she has no sense of purpose and moves to New York to become a very serious person. It’s been described as “starry, sensuous and dreamlike,” and we’d add to that “delicious.” #BabeNationBooks

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#BabeNationBooks Right now we're reading Too Much and Not The Mood, Durga Chew-Bose's debut collection of personal essays. All incisive, intimate, beautifully meandering meditations on the self, identity, family and writing/creating, these essays are basically the feelings equivalent of a taking late-evening melancholy solo summer walk ✨✨✨

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#BabeNationBooks This week we talked about The Break, by Canadian Métis writer Katherena Vermette. Told from the perspectives of nine women and one man, the story explores the aftermath of a crime in Winnipeg's North End and the constant adversity and suffering First Nations women face. The Break, Vermette's first novel, was shortlisted for a Governor General Literary Award and the Rogers Trust Fiction prize (among many others), and is a Canada Reads 2017 Finalist.

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#BabeNationBooks We're discussing Cassandra at the Wedding at next week's book club: A quirky little gem about identical twin sisters, Cassandra, who is super smart, neurotic and a touch suicidal, and Judith, who is more conventional, practical and family-minded, who have grown apart after an extremely close childhood. They're now in their mid-twenties and Judith is engaged to some yawn of a dude and Cassandra has come home to fuck up her shit. It's divided into sections that alternate between the twins' voices and the story has been described as something Wes Anderson might create, so like weird and fun? It was published in 1962 but has been kind of obscure ever since. The author, Dorothy Baker, only wrote a few novels in her lifetime.

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At Monday night's book club, we'll be talking about The Girls, Emma Cline's absorbing debut novel about a lonely, discontented teen girl who's drawn to a dangerous cult (loosely based on the Manson family) because she longs to be like the magnetic, self-possessed older alpha girl in the group's following. A must-read if female sadness, teen anxieties and coming-of-age stories warm your girl-center. #BabeNationBooks