What I'm reading this week to shut my brain up (The Literary Apothecary #1)

bc prose is always the best drug for staying delusional enough to think that everything is going to be just fine

And for my first magic trick on Substack, I will demonstrate how to use other people’s words as a proxy for existence (when your own life is too hard to live). If you’re also using reading as a coping mechanism, you are in the right place :) To be completely honest I am usually a one book kind of person - the number of books I’m reading concurrently is inversely correlated with my mental health. For this week, I am on a 5 book joyride. You can do the math. I promise - this all makes total sense - see, because each book serves a very different and very specific purpose. Let me explain.

*note this is more of a why i am reading what i’m reading rather than a - look! here’s what i’m reading - kind of article*

1. The book for when you need to leave this dimension

Piranesi, Susanna Clarke

Hot girl books. By hot girl books I mean the prose is easy, digestible, the character voice is strong so you feel like you’re talking to the friends that you love but have been ghosting for 2 months on whatsapp. You can eat the words in this up for dinner - girl dinner. It’s a great time. The world you get transported to is visceral enough for you to forget whatever qualms you’re undergoing with your actual world, basically whatever helps you forget that you have a life, that breathing is conscious. This is my fun flirty read. It’s summer. It’s a first date where you get ice cream. Nothing bad will happen. You might cry, depending on the book - but it will be the kind of nice cathartic wail received by soft bamboo cotton tissues so your nose isn’t going to flake the next morning - not the A Little Life kind (this is a safe space). EVERYTHING IS OKAY. Effects also last up to 2-3 hours post-read depending on the potency of the book.

This week I’ve been escaping through Piranesi. I am 54% through and in love with the universe Clarke has created (ty queen), it’s filled with such a happy solitude. I think it’s quite rare for books to feel quiet - especially ones subdued in mystery and world-building but Piranesi is very special in this sense - it’s so peaceful and safe inside the book I want to camp out in an alcove and never leave. Also shoutout to our MC for their eternal optimism which reminds me of versions of myself where I didn’t hate the world. If you’ve read it and you’re laughing because the book doesn’t end with this vibe - shut up. I haven’t done my research and Jack Edwards told me to read this blind and when his highness orders, we oblige. The tone is shifting a little at the place where I am in the story so I am deeply afraid, but nonetheless this has just been a delight to read.

Alternative mentions:

• My Year of Rest and Relaxation

• Milk Fed

• Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

2. For the rare moments when your brain decides to make peace with your existence

Swann’s Way (In Search of Lost Time), Proust

Sometimes ya gal just wants to feel smart. This started off as an ego book. Who are you reading? Oh - Proust. Wow, so smart. This is how I picture the conversation going with my future husband when he falls in love with me at first sight in a cute coffee shop and I’m leafing through my turquoise penguin modern classic nonchalantly, and the light streaks and illuminates my skin (wow, she’s perfect), and there’s some piano elegy playing in the background. The camera zooms into his heart eyes.

Anyways - where were we? Ah yes, childhood. I was once a chronic overachiever and some of that has carried over to my adult life where I try to overcompensate my mediocrity through attempts in being in the 60th percentile for all my adult hobbies. It’s not Ulysses, but it will do. Swann’s Way hit me like a tonne of bricks though. The (unofficial) overture - hOLy. This book feels like falling in love for the first time, genuinely I feel like I have not read until I read:

and when I awoke at midnight, not knowing where I was, I could not be sure at first who I was; I had only the most rudimentary sense of existence, such as may lurk and flicker in the depths of an animal’s consciousness; I was more destitute of human qualities than the cave-dweller; but then the memory, not yet of the place in which I was, but of various other places where I had lived, and might now very possibly be, would come like a rescue from on high to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being, from which I could never have escaped by myself: in a flash I would traverse and surmount centuries of civilization, and out of a half-visualized succession of oil lamps, followed by shirts with turned-down collars, would put together by degrees the component parts of my self.

You just have no idea how good life gets until life gets good. This is what this writing is. This is a replacement for your afternoon depression naps. It makes time stretch on. It’s a long sunny lunch hour, in your bed, in the garden, frolicking in the fields, whatever whatever. There’s a softness to his prose. His way of writing is such a beautiful medium of noticing. Proust takes daily life and dissects it into pieces of stardust - you didn’t think waking up confused could be so beautiful, right?

When I feel like feeding myself pieces of prosaic beauty and brain food (and I have to be in a specific mood for this because whilst the text is accessible, it’s still not effortlessly accessibly - it’s so rich with new ways to string together reality through words that I often find myself (though gladly) re-reading pieces of passages a few times), I turn to this. The challenge of reading Proust (someone humble me in the comments) also makes my brain take little hits of dopamine as I watch my page counter increase. Sometimes when you feel stupid - do something a smart person would do, and you would feel smart for a bit. For optimal smartness, shout about all the smart things you’re doing on Substack. Make sure you actually like the book though, I tried reading the Waves in a similar vein of motivation to this and I just felt more stupid.

Alternative mentions:

• Giovanni’s Room

• Picture of Dorian Grey

• The Great Gatsby

Sorry these recommendations are quite basic but I am still just an aspirationally smart girl with a limited modern classics repertoire.

*also side note: for people who will take this seriously no - smart is so much more than the one dimension of reading classics. yes - we are simplifying a lot here. will i think that you’re smart if you tell me you read a lot of modern classics though? yes. but that’s just me, don’t cancel me before 100 subscribers please*

3. For when you need a reminder that you are a strong independent woman and you shouldn’t text your ex

The Completed Stories, Clarice Lispector

Stalk his Spotify all you like, but don’t do it. This is a very specific, contextual, case and if relationships combusting in your face and setting everything you ever knew to be true on fire makes you venture into feminist literature, so be it. This is kind of also why I looped Chappell Roan for 3 months straight during my last break up. In these trying and testing times, you either need to consume art that is entirely away from men (lesbian anthems) or art that champions Christina’s he’s-not-the-sun-you-are- energy. Give Lispector her flowers for telling fairytales and princes on white horses to eat shit. To be frank, I am only two stories in (and they were both delicious) but already sensing a common theme (he’s just ken, and you need to do some soul searching). I think as a girly who grew up reading, watching films, listening to music and romanticising - the 2000s were not very feminist and perpetuates the idea of male saviourism - which is frankly, false advertising. Clarice’s cold-water-splashing-on-your-face gives you perspective and helps to de-construct this damning narrative, it is very refreshing. I wish I read her in school, if she wrote Romeo and Juliet - Juliet might have just run off to live her own happy ever after. People lie in books, I took their romanticisms to be law because I didn’t know better - Lispector is a great rewrite of the legislature.

Beyond a disillusionment of romance and love, Clarice writes the ultimate coming of age moment. So far ‘The Triumph’ and ‘Obsession’ are both beautiful meditations on self-discovery and womanhood. They’re both very uplifting stories about protagonists learning to define reality in their own terms, outside of definitions by association with people closest to them. It’s a wonderful discovery and exploration of the joys of growing your own perspective. These are morning reads, with hot coffee, with your hair in a bun, fresh out of a shower. I would say, emotionally - these stories are quite hard to digest - there’s a lot of uncomfortable unveilings, as an idealist - something writhes deep inside my stomach whenever I’m forced to face the fact that people aren’t perfect and life rains on you sometimes. Disillusionment is never fun to read about, but it’s a nice reality check. This is my way of touching grass. I also like having a short story collection on my backburner because my tiktok brain can’t concentrate for more than 5 pages before I start craving dopamine hits.

Other Short Stories:

• Bliss Montage

• Someone Will Love Me in All My Damaged Glory

• Land of Big Numbers

Other feminist works:

• Boy Parts :)))

• Luster

• The Vegetarian

4. For when you need to stop your feeling spirals and chill tf out

At the Existentialist Café, Sarah Blackwell

Okay so when it gets bad, like REALLY bad - I venture into non-fiction territory. A mild case of this is a happy go lucky self-help read, memoirs or something social sciency. A severe case is venturing into existentialism and epistemology. Cue my hour long mental health walks to the bgm of a croaky white man trying to explain Nietzsche in my ears. For some reason my brain decided that when I feel like my existence is getting out of control, I can just reverse engineer it - understand the user guide and figure something out (this has yet to take effect but I am still hopeful). So - here we are. This is for when the light buzz in my head gets above a specific decibel and I don’t have the energy or the courage to write. Psychologists call this redirecting behaviour. I call this giving my 5 year old brain tantruming about more ipad time a bubble blower instead.

Besides podcasts and tiktoks (and I think I tried an app too at some point), I have tried a few times to understand Philosophy - capital P. It’s the deeper meaning of things, what is, what should be, why should it be etc… etc… so basically all the answers to life right? Gimme it. But a lot of books are written by academics which require 3x the number of brain cells to understand what they’re saying rather than the concepts they are saying things about. However, I was happily shocked when I started reading At the Existentialist Cafe. From what I read so far (13 - not a lot%), this is quite a comprehensive guide to all branches of phenomenology and existentialism - she writes in a commentary style, in fun anecdotes, and paints vivid portraits of modern philosophers that stick in your brain. I feel like she is holding my handing and walking me down a museum hallway of paintings of Beauvoir, Sartre, Husserl, pointing to them with her index finger and saying, you’ll never guess what. I like how she contextualises their philosophies with their personal backgrounds. In all honesty, I remember the stories of these people more than their actual theories but Sartre’s screams about getting my shit together and creating my purpose were heard. They will be ignored for now.

This is a frenetic 1am kind of read when I’m drowning in doomscrolling guilt and my emotions are too volatile to try and engage with, through fiction. Basically a xanax.

Other non-fiction:

• How to Not Die Alone

• Maybe You Should Talk To Someone

• How to Know a Person

• Atomic Habits

• Think Big

5. For display purposes only, to make the selection of other books on your shelf more appealing

Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke

In my defence, I am actually 50% of the way through this. It’s good but I find the prose tricky to digest smoothly. I find Rainer incredibly misogynistic so I need to navigate this with a filtered lens of focusing on his thoughts re creative work. He says to look inwards, he believes in sitting in your own disquieting solitude and describes writing as more of an innate need. He would have been friends with Hurrserl. This book reads like sticky taffy, it gives you food for thought but I can only get through one or two pages at a time of this for some reason. It is wholly grounded in concepts with little context (I mean I guess they are letters). Going back through my highlighted passages is more enjoyable than the read itself.

Nonetheless, having this on my shelf creates a funny illusion of choice. I feel more motivated to read my other books than I would have otherwise done if I didn’t have a deep-seated avoidance towards this. It did nothing wrong (except hate women). We just don’t get along. Anyways, it’s nice to pair carrots with sticks. This is usually a rare occurrence for me because I try to pick books that I know I will enjoy reading and usually I give up slumpy books in the first 2-3 pages. But if I get past this, sunk cost fallacy kicks in and then it sits on my shelf till forever. This usually applies to books that are quotable but not enjoyable for me - for example: Orbital. I did not like her. But the experience of reading these books make your eyes glance sideways and all of a sudden you’ve read 10 books by way of procrastinating finishing this one.

Other Slow Reads (for me):

• Orbital

• By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

• Norwegian Wood

Poof! magic :) and now you can optimise your survival through escapist literature too. That’s all for now. Stay strong.

How do you end these things anyways?