words I liked: Book Lovers by Emily Henry
I really enjoyed reading this, the author posted on Instagram a really good explanation of how she feels and thinks about the romcom genre:
It’s not about a formula, any more than any other genre, though that’s how romances often get oversimplified in discussion. Some people scoff at the concept of a genre with a guaranteed “happy ending,” but the truth is, we all know the characters’ lives go on after the book ends. They’ll suffer other hurts. They’ll struggle. We’re with them for just a moment. But in that moment, there is so much hope.
That’s why this kind of story is so important to me. Sometimes our world is shitty. It’s unpredictable and terrifying and cruel and we constantly have to find ways to hold joy in our hearts even when we’re tired, grieving, or angry. We hang onto and believe in that hope: that no matter how bad things get, there is a force on earth that makes life brilliant, beautiful, and worth living.
Love is what holds us together when everything falls apart. It’s not about one singular happy ending we’re aiming for. It’s about weighing all those moments of sheer joy throughout our lives as heavily as they deserve.
On to the book itself, this about two sisters’ love was nice:
I didn’t know it was possible to miss a person this much while she was sitting right next to you, so badly everything in you aches.
As a slow reader I liked this turn of phrase:
Libby’s not a startlingly fast reader. She absorbs books like they’re bubble baths…
An expression of a more urban, densely populated life:
…the feeling of being one person among millions, as if you’re all nerve endings in one vast organism.
Love and passion in cooking terms!
I feel like I’m sugar under a blowtorch, like he’s caramelizing my blood.
This resonates:
…that’s what made me fall in love with reading: the instant floating sensation, the dissolution of real-world problems…
…and this!
“You’re in books. Of course you don’t have a life. None of us do. There’s always something too good to read.”
…and more:
Some books you don’t read so much as live, and finishing one of those always makes me think of ascending from a scuba dive. Like if I surface too fast I might get the bends.
Being brought tangibly in touch with your past:
That’s the thing about being an adult standing beside your childhood race car bed. Time collapses, and instead of the version of you you’ve built from scratch, you’re all the hackneyed drafts that came before, all at once.
Did I mention that I love words?
I read once that not everyone thinks in words. I was shocked, imagining these other people who don’t use language to make sense of everyone and everything, who don’t automatically organize the world into chapters, pages, sentences.
…and:
Maybe that’s why we as a species love stories so much. All those chances for do-overs, opportunities to live the lives we’ll never have.
Lastly:
Maybe love shouldn’t be built on a foundation of compromises, but maybe it can’t exist without them either.
Not the kind that forces two people into shapes they don’t fit in, but the kind that loosens their grips, always leaves room to grow. Compromises that say, there will be a you-shaped space in my heart, and if your shape changes, I will adapt.