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She might try a new coffee bean. She will keep a lookout for the perfect pumpkin. By our friend Grace Farris.
P.S. Gentle things and romance novels.
Weekend Lady
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Anybody read Black Chalk by Christopher Yates?? That’s my fall campus book!
Campus novel=Come and Get it by Kiley Reid
I loved her other book too called Such A Fun Age !
Might look for summer tomatoes whilst everyone else is buying for pumpkins and spice. Might be tempted by fall apples. Might spend a morning writing and an afternoon wandering.
Okay, calling them campus novels is a stretch, but any other fans of The Scholomance Trilogy here? Happy, hopeful anticipatory fall reading to all!
Greatest read of the last five years for me, especially the first one. The “I will do the right thing, but I don’t have to be happy about it” grumpiness speaks to my soul.
I just reread them on holiday! Both laugh out loud funny and very dark, they are such a great series.
I inhaled them and now need to go and read them again! :D
We are headed to the island beach in our city this weekend, and will not be acknowledging pumpkins season until October 1, tyvm!
Love! This particular weekend lady might just eat croissants in bed on a Saturday morning and read some NYT, might bake an apple rhubarb crumble and as a nod to autumn, add a generous pinch of cardamom, might go blackberrying amongst coastal brambles before the rains roll in, might figure out which ankle boots to break out for office wear next week.
Spring just began here and we had a few teasers then wintery days again. Still my weekend lady vibes are she might buy some flowers, she might bake cinnamon scrolls, she might sit outside at a cafe with her dog…she will tell everyone, look the little green buds are popping up in the branches!
Our Trader Joe’s entrance is within a parking garage and the moment I opened my car door THE SMELL OF FALL. So if anybody needs a pick-me-up for fall, head to TJ’s and consider decorative pumpkins, apple cider soap, oh! and they have their maple leaf cookies turned into maple leaf ice cream sandwiches!
Seems like my nearest TJ’s in Grosse Pointe, MI has the same entry :)
They also have their cinnamon scented brooms and lots of fall candels!
Campus novel: Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld!
My favorite campus novel is The Secret History by Donna Tartt. It’s gritty and dark, but I loved it. It’s set on a fictional college campus in Vermont.
Two campus novel favorites:
I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe
The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach (my late uncle’s favorite novel)
I was at Stanford when Tom Wolfe was white-suitin’ around doing research for I AM CHARLOTTE SIMMONS and was heartily amused when it later won Literary Review’s 2004 award for the most embarrassing passage of sexual description in a novel: “Moan moan moan moan moan went Hoyt as he slithered slithered slithered slithered and caress caress caress caress went the fingers.” Airtight NDAs prevent me, alas, from confirming or denying that sex at Stanford was like this.
It’s been many years since I have read it, but I loved The Art of Fielding!
Love all the mights!
Might make soup. Might make bread. Might make a Dutch apple pie.
Re campus adjacent novels, I am enjoying (so far) Katabasis much more than I expected.
Omg I just bought Katabasis and I’m so excited to read it.
I’m checking out these campus novel recommendations! Mine:
– If We Were Villains
– The Gifted School (okay, not technically campus novel – but back to school vibes!)
I love how all of these start with “might.” That’s the ultimate weekend luxury to me these days – unplanned time!
I love this!
Campus novel suggestion: The Incandescent by Emily Tesh! Professor at a high school that teaches techniques for binding demons, really gorgeously written
Thank you!
Oh, it’s cardigan weather, all right.
I love this. Anyone has recs for a good campus novel? Mine would be The Secret History.
I LOVE THE SECRET HISTORY!!!!!! Currently reading Picnic at Hanging Rock, it is also an unsettling campus novel.
+1000
Yes to the campus novel! So far I’ve got Lucky Jim, the David Lodge trilogy, Possession, Secret History, and Babel lined up. Any recommendations?
Bump Babel way up the list!!
If you’re up for something REALLY different, the Dyachenkos’ VITA NOSTRA (Gothic-horrible magic school, translated from and extremely Russian) is mind-bending and eye-opening – and it’s a wild corrective to, say, the who’s-a-special-boy Potterverse. Definitely not for everyone, but if you’re looking for a singular coming-of-age story by a weird Ukrainian couple, it might be for you!
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/sergiy-dyachenko/vita-nostra/
Old School by Tobias Wolff!
It’s a bit older (2004) but Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason comes to mind. Thriller set at Princeton that has a Da Vinci Code feeling.
I Have Some Questions for You (Makkai), Prep (Sittenfeld), and The Ninth House (Bardugo) are all great! I also echo The Art of Fielding.
Fellow lover of Possession and David Lodge here! Another of my all time favourite campus novels is Moo, by Jane Smiley (from all the way back in 1995…). Many different characters and plot lines that get woven together so brilliantly and hilariously. I’ve read it at least a dozen times!
Ooh yes now I want to reread Possession. My favourite campus novel is Tam Lin by Pamela Dean (retelling of the fairy tale set on a small US campus). Mostly a story of an early 70s liberal arts college experience but also, turns out there are fairies. If you like a lot of English literature references this one is for you. It’s one of my comfort reads, I love it.
Tam Lin 100% if you can find a used copy; Gaudy Night is the campus novel par excellence. Possession of course. Stoner is wonderful but not the atmosphere most people mean when they say “campus novel,” same is probably true for Batuman’s The Idiot although it’s so good. The Likeness by Tana French if you can get to sleep after.
I wish I had time to read a campus novel — instead I’m living the back-to-grad-school life! I haven’t been this busy in years. Yet here I am checking CoJ. Ha!
Badass, Viv!
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