So the fun thing about deciding to start a mammoth project at 1:32PM on a Saturday and then launching it into the world at 9something AM the next day is that I had no time to fantasize/hypothesize/over-analyze how the whole thing would actually play out. I hadn’t thought about what order to take the recs in, whether or not to let people know in advance that I was about to start on their rec, whether or not to keep a running list of finished and unfinished recs and make it available - I *truly* had thought of nothing. The only possible snafu that I’d given a modicum of thought to was recommendations that I’d already read/seen/cooked/zumba’d/etc. (I have decided to Reconsume With Context and/or perform Conscious Reconsumption.)
As the recs started to roll in (I have 25 at last count!) I started to get excited not just about the variety of genres and mediums that I saw, but also, quite immediately, about the diversity of relationships that were recommending them. My first two were from people I know vaguely through the internet, and now my husband and I speak about them like old friends. I read him the soft pitches prefaced by ‘Megan says’ or ‘What Khaleel likes about it is’ and walked through the shelves of Strand bookstore (far away from other people and I only touched the books I bought) thinking about the curious guarantee that is the recommendation of a stranger. Their recs and those of other people who’ve never seen me cry or yell or dance or drunk are just recommendations. They’re not attempts to cure what ails me (they don’t know!) or methods of conversion to make our next movie night more in line with their taste (we don’t have movie night! They’re from the internet!) they’re not ways to show how deeply they know and understand me or thinly veiled interventions or introductions to a multilevel marketing scheme. They are the names of things another person likes that I, also a person, might also like.
I like that!
I also VERY MUCH liked my first recommendation: a romance book called Love and Other Words rec’d by Megan From The Internet™. I haven’t read romance since I was a middle schooler grabbing books from the romance section, running to sci fi and flipping through to get to the sex parts before my dad came looking.
Steamy coffee. Steamy book.
In college, I took an absolutely incredible class on ‘Chick Lit’ that covered everything from Austen to romance novels to Bridget Jones Diary. We discussed how by virtue of its designation as a ‘women’s genre’ romance has been unfairly pegged as low-brow and low-quality when what it really is is ‘Formulaic Wish Fulfillment: Lady Style.’ The same way that certain video games and comic books offer, among other things, big strong ways to be big strong gun man who stops big bad gun man, a brief flight through the eyes of a reluctant but powerful superhero, the chance to walk through the world as a historical or mythical figure and go on quests, or even the joyful opportunity to go to a new island and pay mortgage to a raccoon. Romance is a genre where those wishes fulfilled are hot people who communicate, best friends who are right all the time, perfect and easy prospective in-laws, and sex where you don’t have to stop foreplay to pee real quick. (Why those things are coded feminine and therefore less valuable, I do not know. They are great things! I wish this type of wish fulfillment on wishers of all gender identities. )
As a giddy newlywed who does not believe in soulmates and can say with 100% certainty that I would not have married my husband if we had met in our youth, it was glorious to escape into the (very well-written!) story of two soulmates who grew up and in love together over their shared affection for books and words. It was, as Megan From The Internet™ put it in her recommendation notes, ‘a balm’ during a grey and rainy New York day eight months into a global pandemic.
Also, do yourself a favor and check out the authors - two best friends (one with a PhD in neuroscience!) who love what they do, succeed at what they do, and try to help other people who what to do what they do!
Yesterday felt like the perfect beginning to this project: opening a book I would have never picked for myself recommended by a person I would never have directly asked, that turned out to be exactly what I needed. Can’t WAIT to see where we go from here.
Here’s a running list of all the recs I’ve received!
And here’s the google form if you still want to add yours to the mix.
Love you all!
TKP