ingenue.

‘Curtain’

Books that will make you think about what a book is:

Artful, Ali Smithtrigger warning: death, loss, depression

A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan

Ulysses, James Joyce (this book is hard going [i read it at a rate of about 10-15 pages an hour] so maybe don’t start with this, but it’s worth the pain — check out the online guide at infiniteulysses.com) 

“Days of Reading”, Marcel Proust (an essay)

Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallacetrigger warning: discusses depression, drug addiction, institutionalization

Middlemarch, George Eliot

Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon

Lowboy, John Wraytrigger warning: schizophrenia

NW, Zadie Smith

Books that will make you think about art and intelligence:

Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations by Adrienne Rich

Bluets, Maggie Nelson

The Night Sky: Writings on the Poetics of Experience, Ann Lauterbach

My Poets, Maureen McLane

Reality Hunger, David Shields

The Art of Recklessness, Dean Young

Books that will make you think about history:

The Rings of Saturn, W.G. Sebaldtrigger warning: somewhat graphic descriptions of world war II

Between the Acts, Virginia Woolf

Washington Square, Henry James

Art and Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light, Leonard Shlain

The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon

Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf

Maus, Art Spiegelmantrigger warning: graphic holocaust descriptions

White Teeth, Zadie Smith

A Scrap of Time and Other Stories, Ida Finktrigger warning: graphic holocaust descriptions; violence

The Emigrants, W.G. Sebald

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer

Books that will make you think about life, the human condition, etc.:

The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

The End of Vandalism, Tom Drury

The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James

Neon Vernacular, Yusef Komunyakka

Lit, Mary Karrtrigger warning: alcoholism, depression

Sinners Welcome, Mary Karrtrigger warning: depression

Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky trigger warning: graphic descriptions of murder, brief description of attempted sexual assault

The Empathy Exams: Essays, Leslie Jamison trigger warning: explicit descriptions of violence and assault

This is Water, David Foster Wallace

The Tenth of December, George Saunders

The Road, Cormac McCarthytrigger warning: apocalyptic narrative (this sets some people off idk!)

Disgrace, J.M. Coetzee trigger warning: graphic rape

An Unquiet Mind, Kay Redfield Jamisontrigger warning: discussions of bipolar depression

Books that will make you think about love:

Coeur de Lion, Ariana Reines

If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho (trans. Anne Carson)

Sonnets from the Portuguese, Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“The Beast in the Jungle”, Henry James (short story)

Just Kids, Patti Smithtrigger warning: drug use

Eat Quite Everything You See, Leslie Adrienne Miller

Morning in the Burned House, Margaret Atwood

Bough Down, Karen Greentrigger warning: depression, grief, suicide

Never Let Me Go, Kashuo Ishiguro 

This is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz

The Wings of the Dove, Henry James

Lolita, Vladimir Nabokovtrigger warning: pedophilia. this is under the love category because despite the absolutely appalling subject it’s one of the most beautifully written testaments to obsessive love and desire, ever.

The Rehearsal, Eleanor Catton

Nothing Was the Sametrigger warning: death, grief, mental illness

Books that will make you think about humour and laughter:

The First Bad Man, Miranda Julytrigger warning: disturbing content, mental illness

The Liar’s Club, Mary Karr trigger warning: all kinds of mental illness, sexual assault, violence

A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace

The Broom of the System, David Foster Wallace trigger warning: sexual assault if I’m not recalling incorrectly

The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P, Adelle Waldmann

Civilwarland in Bad Decline, George Saunders 

Orlando, Virginia Woolf

Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, Jenny Lawson

Books that will make you think about the books that almost never were:

A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf

Literary Women, Ellen Moers

My Emily Dickinson, Susan Howe

Heroines, Kate Zambreno

A Literature of Their Own, Elaine Showalter

The Madwoman in the Attic, Gilbert & Gubar

The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwoodtrigger warning: gendered violence

Beloved, Toni Morrisontrigger warning: explicit discussions of slavery, murder

Women and Writing, Virginia Woolf

if not then who am I?

4 / 30

There are two worlds, Wake and Dream. Wake is our own world. Dream is another world people go to when they sleep. It’s similar enough to our world - maybe it has the same land masses, maybe not. The laws of physics and economics and so on are definitely similar. It’s not some kind of constantly shifting mist-realm where you create things by believing in them, or anything like that. You’ve got all the same social and economic pressures and so on.

People pop into existence in Dream by their mother’s side the first time they go to sleep as an infant. After that they can travel through Dream the same way they would travel through Wake. Every time they appear in Dream, they’re in the same place they were when they left Dream the night before. This means that even if there are corresponding locations in Dream and Wake (eg the landmasses are the same), you might be in different places in each world. If you die in Wake, you disappear from Dream. If you die in Dream, you have deep dreamless sleeps for the rest of your life in Wake.

Nobody in Wake remembers the existence of Dream. They just wake up each morning with a collection of jumbled images they forget after a few minutes. But everyone in Dream has full memories of their waking life. Each night they appear in Dream and suddenly remember “Oh, right, instead of just having one life I actually have two, only one of which I can remember during the daytime”.

There’s no reason people’s dream lives have to be like their waking lives - but plausibly they would be. If you went to medical school in Wake, you might as well be a doctor in Dream too. This suggests that Dream doesn’t have much of an education system, since it’s more efficient to be educated in Wake and get education that persists through both lives.

But by the same token, Dream is more technologically advanced than Wake; Dream Einstein remembers all the discoveries he made during waking life and can spread them to Dream, but he also has decades worth of nights to think up more discoveries that never make it to the waking world. There should be on average about twice as many books/songs/poems by each of your favorite authors/musicians/poets in Dream, since Dreamers remember all the waking ones but can create more of their own.

Even if Dream has different land masses, there’s no reason to think the countries would be the same. As a reductio ad absurdum, if the countries were the same up until some dramatic battle, the Dream armies would know what tactics the Wake armies used in that battle the day before and would change their plans based on that knowledge. That means the battles can have different outcomes and the political histories can diverge. But they shouldn’t diverge too much. Dreamers still have their memories of being American or Russian or whatever, and they might feel patriotism toward their waking nations and try to expand them into the dreamworld, or subvert nations too far away from their ideals. Even if the Soviets win the Cold War in Dream, a lifetime of absorbing modern ideas about capitalism is going to make it hard for the Dreamers to really go all out with the communism thing. Or maybe if the propaganda is good enough they’ll just feel sorry for their poor deluded waking selves, who will never realize the glory of socialism. It could go either way.

Although the same people might tend to succeed in Dream and Wake just based on natural talent, it would be hard to directly transfer success from one to the other. A man who strikes oil in Dream would have no way of sending any of his money or status to the waking world; a man who strikes oil in Wake might become a bit famous in Dream and find a way to capitalize on that, but would have no other advantages.

‘view with a grain of sand: selected poems,’ wisława szymborska

‘the complete collected poems of maya angelou’

‘art objects,’ jeanette winterson

‘by grand central station i sat down and wept,’ elizabeth smart 

‘seam,’ tarfia faizullah 

‘play it as it lays,’ joan didion

‘war of the foxes,’ richard siken

‘midwinter day,’ bernadette mayer

‘in the pines,’ alice notley

‘death is not an option,’ suzanne rivecca 

‘the dead and the living,’ sharon olds

‘the melancholy of anatomy,’ shelley jackson

‘edinburgh,’ alexander chee

‘the woman destroyed,’ simone de beauvoir 

‘monster: poems,’ robin morgan

‘how we became human,’ joy harjo

‘ayiti,’ roxane gay 

‘our andromeda,’ brenda shaughnessy

‘second childhood,’ fanny howe

‘the lady in the looking glass,’ virginia woolf

‘the journals of joyce carol oates’

‘mathilda,’ mary shelley

‘flame & shadow,’ sara teasdale

‘go tell it on the mountain,’ james baldwin

‘stag’s leap,’ sharon olds

‘hyperdream,’ hélène cixous

‘devotions,’ mary oliver

‘the center cannot hold,’ elyn r. saks

‘sexing the cherry,’ jeanette winterson

‘the bloody chamber,’ angela carter

‘on earth we’re briefly gorgeous,’ ocean vuong

‘flesh wounds,’ virginia l. blum

‘the journals of joyce carol oates’

‘selected poems of frank o’hara’

‘the dream of a common language,’ adrienne rich

‘on beauty,’ zadie smith

‘the four chambered heart,’ anaïs nin

‘gravity and grace,’ simone weil

‘selected poems of anna akhmatova’

‘collected poems of t.s. eliot’

‘decreation,’ anne carson

‘collected works of susan sontag’

‘collected works of virginia woolf’

‘the woman destroyed,’ simone de beauvoir 

‘garments against women,’ anne boyer

‘the love of a good woman,’ alice munro

‘her body and other parties,’ carmen maria machado

‘the hour of the star,’ clarice lispector

‘good bones,’ margaret atwood

‘collected poems of sylvia plath’

‘selected works of joan didion’

‘devotion,’ patti smith

‘veil and burn,’ laurie clements lambeth

‘grief lessons,’ anne carson

‘the collected poems of audre lorde’

‘erosion,’ jorie graham

‘the empathy exams,’ leslie jamison

‘the beauty myth,’ naomi wolf

‘selected works of sarah kane’

‘waiting,’ marya hornbacher

‘sane,’ marya hornbacher

‘stigmata,’ hélène cixous

‘a field guide to getting lost,’ rebecca solnit

‘keith haring journals’

‘written on the body,’ jeanette winterson

‘night sky with exit wounds,’ ocean vuong

‘crush,’ richard siken

‘haruko / love poems,’ june jordan

‘bluets,’ maggie nelson

‘the collected poems of lucille clifton’ 

‘complete poems of mariannne moore’

‘poems and prose,’ christina rossetti

‘the gentrification of the mind,’ sarah schulman 

‘power politics,’ margaret atwood

‘a girl is a half-formed thing,’ eimear mcbride

‘one secret thing,’ sharon olds

‘the silent woman,’ janet malcom

‘the white book,’ han kang

‘braiding sweetgrass,’ robin wall kimmerer

‘not vanishing,’ chrystos

‘sinners welcome,’ mary karr

‘cat’s eye,’ margaret atwood

‘zami / sister outsider / undersong,’ audre lorde

‘sula,’ toni morrison 

‘we sinful women,’ rukhsana ahmed

‘the house on mango street,’ sandra cisneros 

‘blood and guts in highschool,’ kathy acker

‘unbearable weight,’ susan bordo

‘rhapsody in plain yellow,’ marilyn chin

‘the hunger moon,’ marge piercy 

‘trash,’ dorothy allison 

‘the cocktail party,’ t.s. eliot

‘love lessons,’ alda merini

‘selected poems of marina tsvetaeva’

‘disorder,’ vanesha pravin

‘a strangers mirror,’ marilyn hacker

‘human acts,’ han kang

‘dearest creature,’ amy gerstler

‘when my brother was an aztec,’ natalie diaz

‘second childhood,’ fanny howe