Trees of Reverie July 2015 Readathon Day 4: Recommended Read

Day Four, Tuesday, July 14:

(All times are Brisbane local time)

I am participating in the July 2015 Trees of Reverie Read-a-thon. This is the Day 4 Challenge post.

Challenge:

If I could share and recommend only ONE book/series that I’ve read so far in 2015…

Oh, my! Just one? How do I even choose?! This is such a hard question…

Ugh. Okay, If I have to pick just one of the books I’ve read this year, I’m going to have to go with— Wow, this is hard…

Alright, I pick:

Mouthful of Forevers by Clementine Von Radics. I was invited to read my poetry at a reading she was also a part of, and though I got a bit lost and was late, I loved what I heard of hers, and after the event we swapped a copy of our own book for the other’s. I didn’t get to read it until a week later, though, when I devoured this book over the course of a flight from Oregon to Alaska for a debate tournament, and I made my teammates read my favorites, and gesticulated a bunch and was very, very excited.

(Warning for profanity.)

Here’s a sample:

FOR NIKKI

I know
you and I
are not about poems or
other sentimental bullshit
but I have to tell you
even the way
you drink your coffee
knocks me the fuck out.

That’s it! Go back and read that again. ISN’T IT SO GOOD?! How about this one:

WHEN HE ASKS ME TO DESCRIBE FEAR

I say my mother smelling vodka
on my breath at seventeen. I say grief
is a firework of blue left on the collarbone.
Superheroes always have broken hearts
and tragic backstories, so maybe I’m doing okay.
In my dreams we are brave enough
to leap tall buildings in a single bound,
and see through walls and also
never lie to each other.

Promise me this:
when you finally leave me, you’ll get creative.
Tell me I was more disappointing
than your childhood. Send me your bloody ear
with a letter saying, I’ve got to Gogh,
you’re making me crazy. I am hard to love
but know this much:
you are the only thing I like doing
more than writing poems.

RIGHT?! Oof… They’re all brilliant. Check the corners:

I would honestly probably have folded all of them down if a) that didn’t defeat the purpose of folding down corners, and b) it didn’t make me feel weirdly guilty or something. (Internalised thing, no idea where from. Not gonna think about it too hard.)

So, what I’m saying is, read this book. Do it.

Readathon update:

Put on a burst, and finally getting somewhere.

1. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (FINISHED; current page: 227 of 227; net change: 115 pages)
2. Supernatural: John Winchester’s Journal by Alex Irvine (FINISHED; current page: 217 of 217; net change: 59 pages)
3. The Jewish Study Bible by Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler (Eds.) (Current page: 343 of 2181; net change: 9 pages) Note: not originally listed, not technically being read for the challenge, but the challenge dates encompass two weeks of parshot (readings), and so those will be included in my page count.
4. The Enchanted by Rene Denfeld (Current page: 122 of 233; net change: 10 pages)
5. Lady of the Moon by Amy Lowell, Mary Meriam, and Lillian Faderman (FINISHED; current page: 98 of 98; net change: 98 pages)
6. A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis (Current page: 10 of 76; net change: 10 pages)

Net change for all books read so far: 301 pages

To see all Read-a-thon posts, go here.