I read a lot of (women's) literary fiction and I love it but the subjects can become heavy or depressing if you read it all the time. I tried to switch it up and read some romance but the stories are so flimsy and it just seems almost too easy to read? Not sure what direction to look in next, not really interested in fantasy and these seem to be the top 3 genres at the book store.
Can anyone recommend a compelling book, with decent prose or interesting topics that isn't heavy?
by macszcsv
4 Comments
It’s nonfiction, but I just binge read “Poets Square,” which is by a woman who runs a cat rescue in Arizona and details her becoming a cat rescuer after moving into a house with a feral cat colony. Despite the title, it is not about poetry.
Have you tried r/weirdgirlliterature ?
Some of my favorites of this “genre”:
* Nevada by Imogen Binnie
* Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
* Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte
* Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson
* Acts of Service by Lillian Fishman
* Julie Chan is Dead by Liann Zhang
* The Wedding People by Alison Espach
* All Fours by Miranda July
* Big Swiss by Jen Beagin
* Perfume and Pain by Anna Dorn
* Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan
My Husband by Maud Ventura
You might like Beautyland, by Marie-Helene Bertino. It’s really very sweet and funny even though the protagonist feels so disconnected from her life that she is an extra terrestrial and so certain that her life is so unusual that “you are not alone” sounds like a curse rather than a blessing.
These two are memoirs and they are serious, but light. —
Raising Hare, by Chloe Dalton, and George: A Magpie Memoir, by Frieda Hughes. Both of these are written by women who inadvertently become the caretakers of wounded animal/bird and what it’s like to live in that kind of interstitial space, where you love the animal and want the best for it, which generally means hoping it will return to its nature. There’s no death in the books (I can’t stand animal death) except that George was found after the nest he was born in was raided, so there’s another sibling birdie who doesn’t make it.
And maybe give Girl, Woman, Other, by Bernardine Evaristo, a try. It’s been long enough since I’ve read it to not recall whether it’s a downer, but if it is, it would be offset by the warmth of the totality of the book.