Alana Estelle

Analyzing literature is part of why I love reading so much - my brain loves recognizing patterns, connecting themes, enjoying beautiful language, etc. However, there are times when I crave reading for the simple joy of reading. 

I was definitely that kid who would try to read under the covers with the flashlight, because I just couldn’t put the book down. I was also that kid who would read copious amounts of books during summer breaks - when it was so hot that all one can do was lounge and read. 

I analyze and annotate every book that I read, because I enjoy it, but there are a few books that I’ve read recently that evoked a sense of nostalgia - reminding me of those days in my youth when I would just devour books quickly because the stories were just so addicting. These books also reminded me to never allow myself to be overly analytical and to read for the simple pleasure of escaping into a story. 

The Wolf Den - I read this last year when it was release and I consumed it in just a few days. Elodie Harper did so much research for this novel and I enjoyed analyzing the themes that I noticed, but I primarily enjoyed how addictive this was to read. I could not put this book down and I would keep looking at the clock saying, “I have a little more time for another chapter…” Harper reminded me how much I love fast paced, dramatic historical fiction. I love that she put so much care and research into this time period - Ancient Rome is one of my favorite historical fictional settings. The sequel to The Wolf Den, The House with the Golden Door, is set to be released in the UK later this year. This is the only release I care about this year and I will be ordering it from the UK as soon as it drops because I can’t wait!

The Silence of Scheherazade - The family saga, taking place right at the fall of the Ottoman Empire is *chef’s kiss* so stunning! Defne Suman has a gift for describing scents and smells. Her characters are so lifelike and believable. Again, this was a novel that yes, can be read and analyzed, but it’s also the perfect novel to cozy up with and tune out the rest of the world. I became so invested in these characters and what happened to them, that when I wasn’t reading this novel, I was eager to get back to the book to find out what happened next.

Outlander - I cannot WAIT to post the review for Outlander because... MAN IT’S EPIC! Diana Gabaldon is a master storyteller and even though this series if often pushed aside because it’s viewed as smutty romance (ok, this is a sexy novel…), but it’s so much more than that. This novel, despite it’s size its incredibly readable and just fun. It’s just as heavy on plot as it is on the characters and while it raises so many interesting questions about the interpretation of history, fate, and the weight of knowing information that other people don’t have access to yet, it’s just and excellent story to dive into and forget about the rest of the world. 

What books have recently reminded you about what it felt like to simply devour books as a child? Do you prioritize reading for fun over reading for analytical reason. Or, are you like me and prefer a balance of the two?

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Today I’m here to potentially ruffle some feathers. 

It’s the time of year in which book nerds all over the internet start updating us all on how many books they’ve read this year, while lamenting how many books they didn’t get to read this year. Huh? Pick a struggle. 

Ok, don’t get me wrong, I keep an annual list of how many books I read each year because I find it to be interesting data. I like to see how the number changes from year to year, as it can be indicative of what else I may have had going on, or not going on. Was life extra busy? Was I in a reading slump? Was life extra quiet for some reason? Also, what type of books did I tend to gravitate towards?

However, I do not put any weight on this number at all, in fact, I do not set an annual goal of how many books I’d like to have read by the end of the year because, in all honestly, it means absolutely nothing. 

If you read 10 books this year that were meaningful to you, then you had a productive reading year. If you read one book this year but you loved that one book, you had a meaningful reading year. If you read 100+ books and you accomplished that goal, great! Good or you, you also had a meaningful reading year. And if you were in a reading slump and read nothing, that’s ok! Slumps happen and I’m a fan of embracing the slump. 

This arbitrary total number at the end of the year is incredibly suggestive and can’t be compared from one reader to the next. For example, not all people read the same, plus we all have different schedules and demands on our time. The person who read 10 physical copies of 1000 page novels, and read them page by page, pouring over the language and annotating them, vs. the person who listened to 250 audiobooks nonstop throughout the day at 2X the listening speed, in which the hard copies average 250 pages each … is that even comparable? I’m not saying one is less than the other, I’m saying they are two completely different “end of the year” lists, so don’t get your undies in a bunch. 

One does require the reader to sit down and tune the rest of the world out and solely focus on one thing, while the other is able to multitask. I do occasionally use audiobooks, though very rarely and for me, it’s an entirely different experience, but I digress, because I’m not here to debate the use of audiobooks, because I could really care less how someone chooses to read, I just like the fact that people are interacting with books. But let me reiterate - you’d be hard pressed to compare these two mediums. 

But it does make me pose this question - when people throw out these massive numbers at the end of the year … how much did they actually process and absorb, whether or not they used audiobooks or read the hard copies? It’s like an assembly line of books and content. And, did the reader only seek to reach this “goal” for the sake of saying “hey look, I did this thing!”? And again, don’t get all tight and raise your blood pressure - I’m sure that there are many people who can read a copious number of books in a year and recall the intricacies of the books, but it’d be naive to not acknowledge that there are also people who shallowly run through texts for the sake of appearances.

By the end of the year, my book count will total around 33 books, which is about 20 books less than last year and I’m totally ok with that. Yes, I do seek to read as many books as I can, but there is no goal. I get to what I can get to, when I can get to it. Last year was an anomaly because life literally stopped in some cases. There was nothing else to do but read. However, the books that I did read this year were no less meaningful and felt like a 100 books to me based on the richness of the content, how much I enjoyed them and the fantastic conversations that resulted from having read these books. 

So, again, if you read one book or 100, own it. The purpose of reading is to enjoy what you read, not to impress others with some vague, subjective number. You read for yourself, not other people, so take these lists with a grain of salt and don’t let someone else’s list make you feel “less” than. Comparison is the thief of joy. You do you. I like seeing what other people have managed to read by the end of the year, but that’s what they’ve managed to read. What on God’s green earth does that have to do with me? Let other people be great - it has no bearing on what you were able to accomplish reading-wise this year.  

I’m done. Thanks for coming to yet another one of my TED Talks. 

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This post will contain some spoilers, so if you haven’t read this novel yet and don’t want to be spoiled, you may want to stop reading, but otherwise, please proceed!

One theme I haven’t seen many people (anyone?) talk about yet about this novel is the importance of having parents and this quote, to me, was one of the most impactful quotes in the entire novel. 

“Jude,” Harold says to him, quietly. “My poor Jude. My poor sweetheart.” And with that, he starts to cry, for no one has ever called him sweetheart, not since Brother Luke … the endearment was filthy to him, a word of debasement and depravity. “My sweetheart,” Harold says again, and he wants him to stop; he wants him to never stop. “My baby.” And he cries and cries, cries for everything he has been, for everything he might have been, for every old hurt, for every old happiness, cries for the shame and joy of finally getting to be a child, with all of a child’s whims and wants and insecurities, for the privilege of behaving badly and being forgiven … at last, of believing a parent’s reassurances, or believing that to someone he is special despite all his mistakes and hatefulness, because of all his mistakes and hatefulness.” 

A lot of commentary around the relationships in A Little Life center around Jude’s relationships with his friends, as well as those with his abusers. However, not many focus on Harold - Jude’s university professor who ended up adopting him as his son. There is just something about a parental figure that provides unconditional love, regardless of what the son or daughter does that can break through a lot of barriers. 

Harold never gives up on Jude, no matter what Jude does to try to push Harold to the brink. There’s just something that’s extremely poignant about this passage in the novel, because it really brings around full circle how much of an impact parental figures have on a young person and how it shapes the rest of their lives. Jude never finds out who his biological parents are - he was abandoned as an infant and then from there, it’s a timeline of male in positions of authority taking advantage of him. Harold is the antidote and I really appreciate how Yanagihara explores the theme of the father figure in this novel. Through friendships and attempted romantic relationships, Jude is ultimately seeking the type of unconditional love that a parent can provide, perhaps subconsciously, that was stripped away from him at birth. When he finally encounters this through Harold in his middle-age years, it becomes apparent what was missing - one is never too old to receive love from a parent. 

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I don’t care which community it is, there is always a bit of snobbery. Specifically, in the book community, I have occasionally seen statements critiquing the types of books that people choose to read. And let’s not be “holier than thou,” we’ve all done it to some extent, even if we just thought something.  

If you briefly scroll through my IG and look at the books I chose to read, one may assume that I mainly read “high-brow” literature. Well… I do. That is my preference. I gravitate towards chunky classics, books rich in so much symbolism they can be analyzed for a lifetime and literary fiction that I often seen deemed as “pretentious.” This is just my preference. I don’t tend to gravitate towards lighter reads. 

But this is what bothers me: every now and then I’ll see comments from other readers who think that they are lesser readers because they prefer “lighter” fiction. 

Read what you want to read. 

To me, it is a privilege to have access to books, to be able to read, and be able to read any book I want to read, when I want to read it. There are people who would do anything to have access to books or be taught how to read. 

If you want to read light, feel-good romances and cozy mysteries all the time - go for it! If you want to read 1000 page classic novels and then analyze every square in - do it! What’s most important is the experience the reader is having with the text.

Do you enjoy reading the books you select? Then proceed. It’s your time that you’re investing, so you might as well like who you’re reading. Other people’s perceptions on what you’re reading is irrelevant. If you’re excited and passionate about the books you decide to talk about, that’s all that matters and that will attract people to the conversations that you like to have around the books that you read. You are not a “lesser reader” because you don’t want to read a major work of fiction that is considered “the best.”

This also works the other way - if you’re a person, like me, who spends most of their time reading these really complex and heavy novels and a “lighter” read is appealing to you, READ. THE. BOOK.

I can’t say it enough: read what you want to read! Don’t read to make yourself look a certain way. Don’t read to “fit in” with what everyone else is reading. Don’t read to make yourself seem relevant if you really don’t want to read that book. 

I advocate for reading books out of your comfort zone, because you never know what you may end up liking and it may open up more books for your to explore. If a book is appealing to you for whatever reason, then just go for it. If you end up liking it, then you’ve hit the jackpot and you’ve diversified your literary palette. If you didn’t end up liking it, then you’ve just fine tuned your preferences. Seems like a win-win situation to me…

And if someone is judging you for the books you’re reading, tell them to exit stage left. If you’re judging yourself for the books that you are (or aren’t) reading, then you should really ask yourself why you’re putting unnecessary pressure on yourself for a HOBBY! It’s highly likely that you’re too concerned with what you think other people are thinking about you. 

News Flash: Most people aren’t thinking about you as much as you think they are (and I mean this in a good way)!

So go on - read the fairy-tale romance, the cozy thriller, the lush historical fiction, the philosophical classic, the dramatic fantasy. Life is too short to care about what other people think about your reading choices. 

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The main reason I initially set out to read A Little Life by, Hanya Yanagihara was to have this conversation about realistic trauma in fiction. Most conversations surrounding A Little Life are about how it’s just “trauma p*rn,” the content is actually “unrealistic” and it’s there for the sake of shock value. 

I want push back on this idea; just because content is graphic, hard to stomach, etc. (for some - people have differing tolerance levels: ) doesn’t mean that it’s unrealistic. So here are the questions I’m posing: What role does realistic trauma and realistic graphic content have in fiction? If A Little Life was a non-fiction memoir, would people still be calling it “trauma p*rn?” Do we expect fiction to “soften” reality, even though it’s framework is often mirrors life?

I also have two other books here, that I read this year that I think nicely fit into this category of realistic content in fiction that may make some readers…. squirm - Lolita by, Vladimir Nabokov and the recently published The Wolf Den by, Elodie Harper. The plot of Lolita is generally known, and though it’s definitely disturbing to say the least, and I totally understand why many people choose not to read Lolita, I found it to be quite realistic. We can’t deny that there is a subgroup of individuals that think this way about children and it’s actually more common than most people would like to acknowledge. The Wolf Den focuses on the life of prostitutes in Ancient Rome. Harper does not hold back with the realities of what they have to face. A Little Life, Lolita and The Wolf Den are extremely similar, sometimes so similar that it’s almost eerie, to the countless interviews I’m listened to of people sharing their trauma and abuse stories. In the majority of these interviews, the abuse began when the individual was a child and how they attribute that abuse to the continued abuse that they experienced in adulthood and the psychological and emotional impact it’s had on them. 

So, with Jude in A Little Life, nothing about the background that Yanagihara created for this character, was shocking to me. Jude’s childhood is far more common than people realize and in fact, I’ve heard of real stories even more insane than Jude’s - stories that in no way seem like they could be real; stories that took me months to process. There was one story in particular that was so “out there” that I had to stop listening to it, do research on what the person was talking about and then revisit the person’s story a year later to connect some dots.

So let’s circle back around to the questions that are floating around in my brain that I presented in the beginning of this post. Why is it that when we come across this type of content, especially when it’s in fiction, we write it off as voyeurism? “Oh, this is sensationalism.” Why does fiction, that is uncomfortably realistic, get categorized as “trauma p*rn” when it blatantly shoves real life in our faces? What does this mean about how we view fiction? Have we become gatekeepers of what we think should and should not be fictionalized?

These are open-ended questions, though I lean on the side of, yes, I think that to some extent, we begin to gate-keep what is fictionalized because most readers turn to fiction as a means of escapism. And lets make this distinction: Just because content in a book personally makes a reader uncomfortable or a reader decides that’s not the content they want to engage with, or a reader perceives something to be sensationalized or unrealistic, doesn’t mean that the content is sensationalized. There is also a distinction between what personally makes a reader uncomfortable and whether or not the content should be out there for people to choose to consume. I’m a big fan of, if you don’t want to read XYZ, the don’t read XYZ, but saying other people shouldn’t read something because of its content, makes no sense to me. Nothing in life is one size fits all… And not everyone reads fiction as a means of escapism. People will often turn to fiction to see how certain topics or historical events are portrayed and then fit it into broader themes and studies of specific time periods and topics. 

This post was perhaps a bit of a ramble, but it’s something that I think about a lot. I personally, have a very high tolerance for this type of content. I personally had no visceral reaction to A Little Life - yes, there are sections of it that are graphic, but there is also so much other content in that book. People have focused so much on how shocked they were, that I often see them neglect everything else in the book. 

Again, don’t get me wrong - not every book is for every person. I completely understand why many people don’t want to read this type of content. The more you read, the more you discover what you do and do not like to read. 

What do you think about this? How do you feel about realistic trauma in fiction? Why do you think, when this type of content is in fiction and readers become hyper focused on it?

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I have a pile of books there is are very unlike me. In fact, some of these books I’m already expecting not get on with, so why do I own them?

You’re looking at one of my next reading projects. This summer, while reading the first chapter of At the Existentialist Cafe, I came across some quotes that made me pause.

Thus, enter millennial fiction. When I see people review books from these millennial authors, I’ve noticed this rise in existentialism again - whether it’s being acknowledged or not.  I really want to dive into this because I think it’s interesting. There are some contemporary authors/books that are not millennial that can be brought into this conversation as well (ducks, Newburyport, Milkman, Esther Kinsky’s novels River and Grove, and Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy come to mind). I don’t think this is purely a phenomenon amongst millennial fiction, as there does seem to be a trend in contemporary literature focusing on the minutiae of life and one’s tension with the outside world. I then want to bring this around full circle to the king of details and the seemingly mundane - Marcel Proust.

Here are some topics I’ll be exploring within the framework of existentialism as I work through this reading project:

• Capitalism/Marxism/Socialism - Sally Rooney especially. I actually plan to read her three novels and Mr. Salary, a short story, and really dive into how she portrays Marxism. She is blatantly a Marxist. I blatantly dislike Marx. I do find it ironic how the marketing of her books profits off capitalism. One can argue that it’s the system she has to work within, but there are ways around structures. I don’t think Rooney and I will get along, but I think including her in this discussion of existentialist thought amongst millennial writers is crucial. I plan to argue counter arguments to some of her points about Marxism, which means I’ll have to spend some more time reading Marx (gag me…) Also, critiquing capitalism is very common amongst millennials. Severance by Ling Ma presents an interesting dialogue about this idea of post-capitalist society.

• Ennui - This term is used to describe a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction; one’s life seems unexciting, uninteresting, mundane. In these novels, there tends to be a focus on the characters getting stuck in the “hamster wheel of life” and they have difficulty reconciling this. How can life seem so mundane, yet the world is imploding around us at the same time? I think we’ve all felt this, especially in 2020 and 2021. This is were I want to eventually draw some parallels between my findings and Proust. 

• Milieu - This is a nice sounding word to describe one’s environment/surroundings. As I’m working through these millennial novels, I hope to pick up on any commonalities between the environments and settings in which these stories take place, why these settings may or may not be similar and why these are the settings that these authors are gravitating towards. 

• Why are millennial writers currently getting praised for this? This s a question I hope to answer, because it find it odd that millennial writers are currently getting praised for this, as if they are the first ones to have these conversations. I’m a millennial, and I think every generation falls victim to this. We think we are super special and unique, yet humans since the dawn of time have critiqued the structures around them. And millennials are not the first ones to feel this existential crisis; this tension between ourselves and the world. My hypothesis is that now, as those in my generation that were born in the 1980s and 1990s are getting closer towards middle-age (yea..weird…), we are now at this time in our lives in which we are trying to come to terms with and reconcile how we perceived adulthood would be and how it’s actually playing out. Our predecessors have already had this crisis, and Gen Z is not quite there yet as they’re still teenagers. This is why I’ll be bring Kinsky, Burns, Cusk and Ellmann (potentially Knausgaard) into this discussion; to see how our predecessors address these issues.

These are the ramblings and thoughts that are floating around in my head as I gear up to start this reading project. Like most of my reading projects, this will probably take me a long time to complete - years. I plan to start next year. I think I can read Mr. Salary this year, as it’s only 30 pages long and I really need to finish reading At the Existentialist Cafe. 

What do you think about millennial fiction? Have you read any of these books? Are there any books you think I should consider adding to this project?

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