Welcome to Litsy!

Banks' first book, The Girls Guide to Hunting & Fishing, reminded me of Sex & the City, & this one reminds me of Girls. They're all episodic stories about a lovelorn literary woman in NYC, trying to find herself & romantic & professional success. The writing is witty & sharp, & you identify with the main character (even if you're not 100% sure you like her; do you really like yourself?). You root for her, & you root for you; you love...& you hope.

"From there I go straight to, "This will never work"... I remind myself that this is what I always say and what I always do. As soon as I'm in a relationship, I promote fear from clerk to president, even though all it can do is sweep up, turn off the lights, and lock the door."

"He'd just finished reading a new collection of short stories that he loved and I loved, and I told him about other collections I thought he might love. We loved the same dead writers, too -- Hemingway and Fitzgerald but not Faulkner; neither of us had read "Ulysses", and I said, "Let's never read it," and we swore that no matter what happened between us, we never would."

He was lifting his crutch to hail a cab for me when I said, "You make me nervous."

He said, "You make me nervous."

"Good," I said. Then I gave him all of my numbers.

"She admired how thin and delicate Rebecca was. 'Like a long stemmed rose,' she said. I said, 'She's more like a long piece of hair with hair.'"

Everyone talks about The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing but in my opinion, this is the better book. It's a series of interconnected stories and is some of the best writing I've ever read. It's my pick for #underhypedbook for today's #augustphotochallenge.

At the top of my camping nightstand. Really enjoying this one.