I booked too much travel this month and I’m exhausted. This one will be brief.
I loved this piece about opioid overdoses, Narcan, and how and to whom we administed kindness. If you missed it last month, you should read it now.
I got to read Nino Cipri’s “Finna” when it was still in beta, and it did some things I had never seen before but really wanted. I really wanted a story to explain how surreal retail work can be; what layers and depths exist even as the day-to-day grows ever flatter. Cipri can really write a love story in decline, and can really take apart how we separate from one another. This is an original, masterful work on subjects that aren’t worn smooth by a century of the same privileged hands. If you ever worked in a concrete box that had some weird shit going on, you should read it.
Sarah Pinsker is the rare kind of writer who can describe the experience of hearing live music without becoming trite or resorting to cliche. “A Song for a New Day” is a dystopia that makes you think before it bludgeons you with awfulness. It’s a believable slippage from where we are right now. It’s a juxtaposition of what makes us feel alive and what makes us wish we were dead. This is the rare kind of book that tackles another art form and takes it down in a loving embrace rather than a tangle of limbs. Maybe it takes a musician to write this well. Pinsker is one of the best in the business right now.
