Better by far you should forget and smile.

Than that you should remember and be sad.

Author

Grace Iderima
June 08, 2024

There is no regular programming this week, everything I kept writing were too all over the place and just my angry, annoyed, sad unfiltered thoughts, so you just get the books I consumed this week instead. I hope you have a nice time reading this either way.

Books.

10:24 AM. Saturday, June 1, 2024.

It's just a few hours after I released the last newsletter, although when you get this, it wouldn't feel like a few hours, it will feel like the next week—why is this funny?

Anyways, I'm reading the book (Better By Far by Hazel Hayes) and there's this part where she talked about people who were great artists but either didn't know about it when they were alive or they purposely never exhibited their work.

For example, Van Gogh didn't exactly sell lots of paintings when he was alive, he only sold one, and he didn't even know how good he was.

"Van Gogh is the most obvious example—“Van Gogh never sold a painting” being the phrase we wheel out every time an artist doubts their talent based on a lack of money or fame. The truth is that Van Gogh did sell at least one painting, The Red Vineyard, but that’s beside the point; he’s one of the world’s most revered and renowned artists and he had no idea while he was alive.”

Now, the one that actually stood out to me; Vivian Maier. She was a street photographer who was never known as a street photographer, she was a nanny. She never exhibited her work and it wasn't discovered until she was dead.

"Vivian Maier, a Chicago-based photographer, went one step further; she never exhibited her work and apparently never planned to either. Maier was a nanny for over forty years, during which time she led an entirely separate and secret life as a street photographer, surreptitiously snapping over 150,000 photographs, most of which remained undeveloped. She stashed away the negatives in storage lockers around the city, and in 2007, a real estate agent bought a box of them at an auction. He developed them and, realising the talent he’d stumbled upon, set out to uncover the rest of the collection, as well as the identity of the artist behind them. The woman he found was intensely private, a quiet, careful observer of tiny human moments, humdrum dramas, and sweetly surreal slices of Americana, a woman who saw the divine in the mundane, captured it, then hid it away for reasons beyond anyone’s comprehension.”

That's the thing about art and people who make art. For some people, they honestly just enjoy doing it and just want to do it. To just do it. I wonder why that is not always enough. Why do people think that when you're creating something there's some form of end goal or you're racing towards something. To get something. Maybe people just want to do stuff, it's really not that big of a concept.

"At what point does art become art? Inception? Execution? Publication? Is the work itself enough? Or does art require a witness?”

11:23 AM. Saturday, June 1, 2024.

I just finished the book and omg—fuck. I literally had to sit for a minute and just… pause. Remember what I said about the book unravelling slowly? Yes, that's exactly what happened. Reading the book at first, you think you've figured it out, the progression and all, but it's something elsewhere entirely.

The book is about art and grief, or at least, that's what it's to me. I didn't know how good this author was until I realised that one minute the MC was talking about her relationship with her previous partner and then, the next minute, it was her mother's death, and it didn't feel off. It was always side by side, but it's amazing how it just progressed from this to that.

Another thing that really warmed my heart so much was how she moved in with her friend and they decided to raise a baby together—like, please, stop, my fragile heart can't take this.

Everything was just beautiful and well put together. One of her friend's life and how he viewed his work, his transition, his relationship with his parents, the meeting with the other women during the full moon event, the whole thing about her sharing the house with her ex boyfriend, her friend trying for a baby, her mother's condition and her work.

I wish I could say more about the book right now, but my chest feels like stone and I want to cry, so I'll just share my highlights instead.

"The trouble with these boxes is that most people don’t even know they need ticking till it’s too late. You meet someone and suddenly your heart has bolted out the gate without a single thought for the Big Stuff. I’m beginning to think every couple should be forced to have a comprehensive conversation on their first date: how they feel about marriage, money, sex, religion, veganism, vaccines . . . where they’d like to live, whether they want kids, who they voted for in the last election, how they want to spend Christmas—whether they even celebrate Christmas! I’m telling you, it would save an awful lot of hassle. And legal fees.”

"Grief is full of these maddening discrepancies. Like knowing that the pain will pass and believing at the same time that it will never, ever go away. Like being certain we were wrong for each other and wondering, incessantly, if maybe we should try again. Like envying your next partner and pitying her in equal measure.”

"I still open my door sometimes to find grief waiting there for me. But now, instead of fighting or running away, I welcome her home. Like a loyal pet returning from her travels, I look, unflinching, at the gift in grief’s jaw, grotesque as it may be, grateful for whatever she has brought. I set a place at the table and invite her to sit with me. I share my meals and books and thoughts. I take her on long walks and into hot baths at the end of each day. Because I know now who she is—her mask can’t fool me anymore. Standing on my doorstep, disguised as a monster, is love, begging to be let in.”

There's this quote about grief being love or something like that. Grief is unexpressed love?

"Yet if you should forget me for a while

And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.”

5.0 stars out of 5.0 stars! Seriously, read the book.

Here's the synopsis.

Synopsis:

A genre-bending story about love and loss, hope and heartbreak, and the healing to be found in life’s little limbos, those in-between spaces where you’re no longer who you were and not yet the person you will be.

This genre-defying, meta-modern novel is unlike anything you have ever read, and yet at its core it is a story we all deeply understand. A story of love and liminality, and the ways in which grief grips us all. Prepare to laugh and cry; Hazel Hayes will break your heart, but then she’ll mend it for you.

Following a breakup, Kate and Finn decide to keep sharing their house until the lease runs out in twelve weeks’ time, alternating week by week so that they are occupying the same space but never at the same time.

Practically, the plan makes sense, but coming back each Sunday to a home where Finn has been and gone feels far too much like living with a ghost. Kate lost her mother at a young age and now this fresh grief dredges unhealed sorrows up to the surface, and soon, Kate finds herself adrift in her own subconscious, trapped in the liminal space between loving someone and letting go.

I wrote a review for her first book two years ago, you can check it out here.

7:40 PM. Sunday, June 2, 2024.

Surprisingly, I finished Friends and Strangers, I mentioned in the previous newsletter, I think. I just finished it and I feel like one of the FMC in the book—whenever she felt overwhelmed and bored, she would scroll through the Facebook page of people she didn't really like. I was just reading the book to avoid thinking.

I felt terrible for most of today, I just kept reading and reading, even though I wasn't particularly enjoying the book at first. It was a good distraction. Enough storyline to get you hooked, but nothing much exactly happens. Just a lot of unlikeable characters. 3.0 stars though, it was a bit entertaining. It wasn't bad, just manageable.

Here's the synopsis.

Synopsis:

Elisabeth, an accomplished journalist and new mother, is struggling to adjust to life in a small town after nearly twenty years in New York City. Alone in the house with her infant son all day (and awake with him much of the night), she feels uneasy, adrift. She neglects her work, losing untold hours to her Brooklyn moms' Facebook group, her influencer sister's Instagram feed, and text messages with the best friend she never sees anymore.

Enter Sam, a senior at the local women's college, whom Elisabeth hires to babysit. Sam is struggling to decide between the path she's always planned on and a romantic entanglement that threatens her ambition. She's worried about student loan debt and what the future holds.

In short order, they grow close. But when Sam finds an unlikely kindred spirit in Elisabeth's father-in-law, the true differences between the women's lives become starkly revealed and a betrayal has devastating consequences.

A masterful exploration of motherhood, power dynamics, and privilege in its many forms, Friends and Strangers reveals how a single year can shape the course of a life.

Also, I think after reading the book, the synopsis might be a bit misleading.

5:09 PM. Tuesday, June 4, 2024.

I started a new book. I started this book by 11:03 AM and stopped at some point to read my books, but that didn't work out so well, so I finished the book. The reason I picked up this book is because I was so anxious and I needed something to distract myself with, and this book did exactly that, it was entertaining.

The name of the book is Sugar, baby by Celine Saintclare. If I'm being honest, what happened in the book is not as deep as the synopsis is making it out to be. It's just a book about people making [bad] decisions and being well, sugar babies.

I wouldn't even call it bad, it's their choice anyway. I give it a 3.5 out of 5, it was entertaining and easy to read, I also thought the MC was funny.

Synopsis:

From the high-rises of Canary Wharf to the turquoise pools of Miami, Sugar, Baby is an intoxicating, darkly funny debut novel about beauty and greed, desire and delusion, from an extraordinary new voice in fiction.

Agnes Green is turning 21 and her life is heading nowhere. Still living at home with her devoutly religious mother in a lifeless suburb, she works as a cleaner by day and spends her nights secretly going to clubs and dating Toby - who loves arthouse film, getting stoned, and ignoring her texts.

That is until she meets Emily, the daughter of one of her cleaning clients, who lives in London and works as a model - and a sugar baby. Emily's lifestyle is the escape Agnes has been longing for: tasting menus, private flights to Paris and Miami, rich older men who shower her with compliments and designer gifts. But it comes at a cost.

Agnes' new life is beyond her wildest dreams, but it comes at a cost. As she begins to stray further from her mother's holy teachings, she must decide how far she is willing to go to be adored…

8:22 AM. Thursday, June 6, 2024.

I started a new book and I'm only reading it because the reviews on the book described it as gut-wrenching and now, I don't know if it's the book or just me, but I feel like an absolute mess, this week has been hard.

This is me:

This is also me:

The book is about this girl who is a make-up artist —wait for it—but for dead people and well, grief. Navigating her mother's death. She has this weird obsession with sex. I saw a review that called it animalistic, so I'm also looking forward to that bit.

I'm not even going to lie, I'm learning a lot, I didn't know that was a thing. I mean, of course, someone takes care of the dead bodies and prepare them for the funeral, but it never occurred to me like that. If this makes sense. I think it's the family that's in charge of that in Nigeria. Probably why it never occurred to me, but I don't exactly know. The book is set in Australia.

This is what made me start reading. If I don't feel this way, Emily Maguire should expect a call from me.

Anyhoo, my highlights so far,

"If I had the ability, I would turn into a huge, malevolent demigod. A demonic goddess who would stand ten tree-lengths high, so tall that my head would reach the underside of the clouds. I would kneel in the sea as I clawed my fingers along the coastline, combing out all of the mothers from every family and sliding them in handfuls into the sea behind me, because if I can’t have a mother, no one can. That’s the law of my land.”

"The ratio of care to being left alone is around forty to sixty. The bereaved need time to stare at a wall blankly, but then they need help remembering to brush the back of their hair, not just the front.”

“Ever since, I go to the ravine and stand on the edge; it helps me to know that humans are too sensitive for a world as hectic and harsh as this. There is an unbearable volume of chaos and beauty to endure and enjoy in one small, short life.”

"I get up to use the bathroom; it’s important to urinate after sex, otherwise bacteria climbs up your urethra like a staircase.”

"There is something very decisive about throwing your body from a cliff because you’ve written an ending in which you will either be very hurt or gone completely.”

I share a lot of highlights and screenshots of the books because, for me, excerpts are what makes me pick up books. Excerpts and synopses.

It seems I enjoy this schedule now because I came back from school and I literally went “it’s Friday, so I get to edit everything I've been writing and prepare to send it out tomorrow ”, writing this newsletter made this week a little bit easier.

Share this newsletter with someone or two or three, really, there's no limit, and who's counting anyway? You can share by clicking the button below and copying the link you find in your browser.

If someone shared this newsletter with you and you’re reading from your browser, do subscribe, so you don't miss subsequent newsletters.

Bye x.

P.S. I also want to hear from you, too.

Reply

or to participate.