This week features recommendations from Tyler Watts ’25, our wonderful Creative Director.
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
This book is gonna hurt. Short enough to read it in a day, but trust that in the weeks that follow you won’t be able to get it out of your head. So much is revealed about relationships, masculinity and the power dynamics it creates, and how glaringly sour internalized homophobia can turn your heart. Such a harrowing protagonist to follow, but buckle up because it’s worth it. This is the first novel by James Baldwin that I’ve ever read, and I’m more than ecstatic to continue my journey through his bibliography because of this book.
You will like this book if: You’re an American desperate to be in Paris, or conversely if you’re a non-American grateful to not be American.
Crush by Richard Siken
Pages laden with the lingering resonance of your lover’s touch. If you can still feel their arms around after they’ve gone, you will feel these poems. Each poem feels cinematic, in fact I would love to make one of my favorites, “I had a dream about you” into a little film. I like how love is playful, damning, immaturing, resurrecting, and dreamlike in Siken’s world.
You will like this book if: You’re falling in love for the first time, if you keep track of your dreams in a journal.
The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
You could call it the book of Job for married women. In a society that shoves hyper independence down our throats, this book is refreshing. I say that because love is real, our insecurities are real, and the more we try to suppress the vulnerability of heartbreak, the longer we hinder our healing. This book works because of protagonist Olga. She is not reduced to motherhood or her marriage–these are roles that she sometimes fulfills as part of her life, roles that she sometimes resents and performs poorly. It’s a narrative written by a woman about a woman simply falling apart. It’s the lovechild of Honeymoon and Blue Banisters. Sometimes it gets mundane but the details and the dreadedness are part of the tainted world.
You will like this book if: You host wine nights for your friends and love the adjective “unhinged.”
