I got a visit from the Easter bunny in the form of a task rabbit putting together my new bookshelf, which I am completely in love with.
What would have taken me several hours to do, he accomplished in, approximately, a half hour. With that time saved, I got to relish the fun part — shelving my books.
When I took all my books off the old shelf and added them to my massive floor stacks, I decided to count them all.
I have…
275 books.
Though I think the count is actually closer to 300 because I didn’t count the books that remain on other shelves…
I don’t really know how to feel about this number. A lot of these books are unread, but I love being surrounded by them and the promise they offer me — an escape, a good story, perhaps some heartbreak or just generally, a good time.
Anyway, for weeks my horoscope kept mentioning things about home improvements and I was like can you stfu and leave me alone about this?? And here I finally am, having made a massive improvement that is already adding positive value to my life.
While my bookshelf was being built, I wrote a note to myself:
Bookshelf organization:
By genre, alphabetical, read to unread
Dead to living
There are more living authors on my shelves than dead, but I do be reading a lot of dead people.
Without further ado…
A bookshelf tour from top to bottom
Top Shelf: Shakespeare
Obviously my guy always deserves top billing (also happy birthday to him). Plays I have read are standing upright, unread plays are on their side. Also on the shelf, a couple reference books, Paradise Lost, Canterbury Tales, you get it.
Second Shelf: Dead people, Classics
My dead heroes lined up in alphabetical order. Half the shelf I have read, half I have not. I really leaned into the books-on-their-side-denote-unread-section
Third Shelf: Literary Fiction
First, dead people I have read, in alphabetical order
Then, Dead people I have not read, in alphabetical order (separated by the ruby slippers)
Living people I have not read (stack on its side)
Books in translation
Living people I have read
Fourth Shelf: Historical Fiction + Upmarket Fiction
My proudest organizational moment – Historical fiction is shelved in chronological order (unsurprisingly, the 20s are big here)
The rest is unread upmarket fiction in alphabetical order — this is my most unread shelf!
Fifth Shelf: General Fiction
This one is kind of a hodge podge that begins with hardcover books I have read (except trick mirror… one day)
Then general fiction in alphabetical order, and a few genre books
Sixth (and final) Shelf: Romance + Beach reads
By beach reads I mean all my Elin Hilderbrands, of course
Then all the romance I have read in alphabetical order
And a much smaller stack of unread romance

Come over and borrow a book!
Some things—
i’m honestly fuming that emily henry is reese witherspoon’s may bookclub pic… like, come on. the last person who needs to be elevated by a national bookclub is emily henry. everyone was gonna read her book anyway! (including me, i’m excited about a new emhen as always, but….. be serious)
of all the offenses carrie bradshaw has perpetuated, trying to make “zsa zsa zou” happen may be the worst
i painted my toes a peachy neutral and i have to say… i’m loving it (i’m normally a big blue-for-toes person)
i guess i’ve never thought about it geographically, but i literally just learned that bermuda is in the atlantic ocean, like not that far off the east coast… that is WILD! it’s basically hawaii, right? why weren’t we all vacationing there? or has everyone been vacationing there and just no one told me…
american airlines is about to offer free wifi on flights, and someone being able to text me during my 6 hour flight is literally my worst nightmare. i’m serious.
i replaced my cracked glass screen protector and i feel like i have a brand new phone (for no reason other than my reluctance to do admin tasks, i’ve had the cracked protector on it for like…. a year maybe??)
season 2 of paradise has started filming, THANK GOD (shailene woodley is going to be in season 2 which is…. fascinating)!
ransom canyon is like virgin river and wildfire had a baby (complimentary). it has the spirit of a CW show in that it is deeply goofy, but everyone knows exactly what show they’re in and they are COMMITTED to it! unlike pulse, which refuses to acknowledge its CW DNA and works very hard to convince you that there’s a reason it’s not network tv (the reason is…. incoherent and icky and not good! you’re not the pitt! why didn’t you check your local listings before dropping??!)
What I’m Reading
My new bookshelf is so inviting, I cannot wait to finish all the books I’m reading right now so I can grab something new off my shelves. My goal is to finish everything I have borrowed in the next couple weeks and then read from my own shelf this summer… is it possible?? I am always tempted by newly released books, but we will see!
New summer reading list dropping in June.
Mayluna by Kelley McNeil - I finished this rock star romance and in some ways it was exactly what I expected, and in other ways, it surprised me! The story is framed by Will, the lead singer of rock bank Mayluna, giving an uncharacteristic interview about his early career, and Evie explaining her relationship with the band to her grown children after they find a photo of her and Will in an old issue of Rolling Stone after the death of their father.
The framing device is a good hook, and by the end, I appreciated it more, but there were moments when I wanted to just live in a scene and not have someone telling it to me, you know what I mean?
And Yet: Poems by Kate Baer - I’m leaning into national poetry month because, why not? I read Kate Baer’s first poetry collection a couple years ago and found it accessible, relatable and quietly moving. This collection is about womanhood, motherhood and grief, and is very much hitting.
This poem, Startled, startled me so much, i cried—
So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures by Maureen Corrigan - I said this in my Goodreads review but this was akin to talking about your favorite book with your favorite literature professor – lively, ardent, engaging. I love Gatsby! I love the Fitzgeralds! And at points I was mildly devastated while reading this because they flew so high and fell so hard.
I also did that thing I did with Edwin Booth after reading Booth where I dove into a rabbit whole of looking through photos and trying to find any other media (video, audio) featuring the Fitzgeralds. When this book alluded to a video of Scott writing at a desk outside in the sunlight, you better believe I found it.
I learned so much I didn’t know from this book, like Fitzgerald’s last Hollywood apartment was on Laurel Avenue, a street I cut down all the time. I’m so sensitive to prescenes that I’m like… have I been unconsciously traveling this street in order to be closer to him (i’m getting so woo-woo i can’t even, but INCIDENTALLY, i do often get ideas for scenes while driving down laurel ave specifically)??
Also, there was an organization made up of publishers, librarians, and booksellers who worked together to send over 100 million books to US troops overseas during WWII. 100 million books! Can you even? I feel emotional just thinking about it — there was a time we cared so much about morale and community. These books were printed in a very specific way so as to make them compact enough that soldiers could easily carry them around — they had almost no margins and double columns of text were printed on each page. The author talks about her dad mentioning these “funny little paperbacks” he read during the war, and I felt myself wondering if my dad’s dad read them. If he read The Great Gatsby while recovering underneath the Australian sun (dad, lmk).
Anyway, I could write an entirely separate newsletter about Fitzgerald, but this is me AF—
Fitzgerald was a romantic egoist, a lapsed Catholic, a dreamer; by temperament and upbringing, he saw meaning in the mundane.
What I’m Writing
Patience is not a virtue that I posses.
I know that I’m really just at the beginning of my querying journey with Novel 2 (i started at the end of february) but I’m also already feeling like… is this book dead, too?
Is it time to give up?
Is my work relevant?
Is what I’m writing about too small?
Do the stories I’m trying to tell matter?
Are my dreams of publication and a writing career too big?
I’m not really looking for answers. I’m just tired. And impatient. And maybe even a little disheartened.
I’ve seen this thing going around my corner of the internet where writers are taking their rejection letters and creating blackout poems out of them. I always subscribe to any form of catharsis so I gave it a try…
A Blackout Rejection Poem—
That’s all from me this week — Stay tuned.