 All (abridged) summaries taken from Good Reads. Notes are my own.
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 Me + Sasha at the beach |  Beach at sunset |
Blogging provides me with a space to be introspective and document my creative journey. My website is a collaborative space and I am dedicated to working with as many people from around the globe as I possibly can. Through interview series and conversations I’ve been able to showcase topics ranging from feminism and literature to sketchbooks and travel.
I’ve continued to learn so much this year and have preserved those lessons in writing over the past 12 months. This archive can be really comforting and inspiring, so, for anyone looking for a sense of productivity and purpose over the coming months—I hope that my platform may inspire you to launch your own.
 Katie's Graduation |  Surprising Katie with a visit to Pitzer |
 Katie's 18th Birthday |  Katie's 18th Birthday |  Visiting Pitzer |
One thing I’m always learning is that creativity takes courage. Genuine writing, personal writing, takes bravery. Blogging continues to be an endeavor in vulnerability and raw authenticity. Each week I present myself with the challenge to share a new aspect of myself through my writing, my art, and my photography. And for the past 156 Sundays I have taken on that challenge. With hundreds of blog posts behind me, I know there are hundreds more ahead.
I hope to continue to figure out who I am and what I want as I simultaneously synthesize my life experiences through art and writing. I am looking forward to graduating from The New School this spring (in whatever form that may be). I am looking forward to dedicating my life to ensuring that the arts are made accessible to people of all different backgrounds. I plan on continuing to submit my work to literary agents, journals, magazines, and other publications. I want to visit more museums, I want to travel more, and I want to continue to seek adventures with the people I love. I want to be filled with ideas. I want to be filled with inspiration. I want to be around creative people who talk about what ignites them. I want to have deep conversations and write about them. I want to dream up new concepts and make them happen. And I want to interact more with my audience and create content that YOU want to see—now more than ever!!
Gracee + Cookie
 Flower picking at Bataquitos Lagoon with Francesca |  Sea turtle in Kauai |
Kauai with Mom
If you have supported me over these past three years, thank you. If this is your first time visiting my blog, thank you, I hope you come back soon. If you check in every week, thank you. If you have contributed or collaborated with me in any way, thank you. And if you would like to work together, please contact me!! During this time, I’d love to use my blog as an outlet for positivity and gratitude. If you have any ideas or suggestions, I am happy to hear them and collaborate with you.
To everyone who has shared my writing, messaged me saying that something I wrote helped them, and contacted me with words of encouragement, I appreciate you each endlessly and I hope you know that none of this would be possible without you.
Here’s to celebrating my third year of blogging and many more to come!!
Cheers,
Annie Fay
 Kauai  |  Final sunset of the decade with Katie |
© Annie Fay Meitchik. All Rights Reserved. All content on anniefay.com is my own or credit is given when applicable, please do not use any of my images before contacting me above or @ anniefaymeitchik@gmail.com.
All (abridged) summaries taken from Good Reads. Notes are my own.
#1: Little Weirds by Jenny Slate
Notes:
- I have read "Little Weirds" twice now and absolutely love it. In terms of form, Slate redefines what it means to write short stories, and creative nonfiction short stories at that. "Little Weirds" is made up of dozens of vignettes about vulnerability, heartbreak, love, wildness, and beauty. Her nuanced way of viewing herself and the world around her is inspiring and I'd recommend this book to anyone.
Personal Rating: 10/10
- I have read "Little Weirds" twice now and absolutely love it. In terms of form, Slate redefines what it means to write short stories, and creative nonfiction short stories at that. "Little Weirds" is made up of dozens of vignettes about vulnerability, heartbreak, love, wildness, and beauty. Her nuanced way of viewing herself and the world around her is inspiring and I'd recommend this book to anyone.
Personal Rating: 10/10
#2: You'll Grow Out Of It by Jessi Klein
Summary:
In YOU'LL GROW OUT OF IT, Klein offers - through an incisive collection of real-life stories - a relentlessly funny yet poignant take on a variety of topics she has experienced along her strange journey to womanhood and beyond.
Notes:
- “When you encounter a man wearing loafers with no socks, run,” (68).
- “We were falling into the exciting tingle of fake intimacy through email, where a few personal overshares, blended with a sprinkling of coy, overly specific compliments, mimic the sensation of falling in love (when in fact usually you are only falling in love with yourself and your ability to write a really top-notch flirty email),” (70).
- “... I had been cuckolded. (I know this is not technically the definition of the word cuckolded but it’s a fun word and it somehow feels right in this context),” (75).
Personal Rating: 7/10
In YOU'LL GROW OUT OF IT, Klein offers - through an incisive collection of real-life stories - a relentlessly funny yet poignant take on a variety of topics she has experienced along her strange journey to womanhood and beyond.
Notes:
- “When you encounter a man wearing loafers with no socks, run,” (68).
- “We were falling into the exciting tingle of fake intimacy through email, where a few personal overshares, blended with a sprinkling of coy, overly specific compliments, mimic the sensation of falling in love (when in fact usually you are only falling in love with yourself and your ability to write a really top-notch flirty email),” (70).
- “... I had been cuckolded. (I know this is not technically the definition of the word cuckolded but it’s a fun word and it somehow feels right in this context),” (75).
Personal Rating: 7/10
#3: Normal People by Sally Rooney
Summary:
Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.
Notes:
- “If he silently decides not to say something when they’re talking, Marianne will ask “what?” within one or two seconds. This “what?” question seems to him to contain so much: not just the forensic attentiveness to his silences that allows her to ask in the first place, but a desire for total communication, a sense that anything unsaid is an unwelcome interruption between them,” (26).
- “...the same imagination he uses as a reader is necessary to understand real people also, and to be intimate with them,” (72).
- “Time consists of physics, money is just a social construct,” (112).
Personal Rating: 9/10
Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.
Notes:
- “If he silently decides not to say something when they’re talking, Marianne will ask “what?” within one or two seconds. This “what?” question seems to him to contain so much: not just the forensic attentiveness to his silences that allows her to ask in the first place, but a desire for total communication, a sense that anything unsaid is an unwelcome interruption between them,” (26).
- “...the same imagination he uses as a reader is necessary to understand real people also, and to be intimate with them,” (72).
- “Time consists of physics, money is just a social construct,” (112).
Personal Rating: 9/10
#4: Too Much and Not the Mood by Durga Chew-Bose
Summary:
Too Much and Not the Mood is a beautiful and surprising exploration of what it means to be a first-generation, creative young woman working today.
Notes:
- “Those guys who, of course, don’t exist...These tiny people turned me onto ingenuity...They were, for example, the characters in Mary Norton’s The Borrowers; a series of books I don’t remember reading but on whose illustrated covers I imparted my own stories...The Borrowers were, I made myself believe, living among us: snatching up my spare buttons and refashioning them as tabletops or winter sleds...They repurposed our excess was the point,” (14-15). Reading this, I was astonished at how an experience I thought was unique to me (as I've imagined this exact same thing) might be more universal/shared. I had this same realization later when I read the line, “...imagine furniture mounted on ceilings...” (176).
- Semaphore, anthropomorphic, acquisitive, alcove, moonbeams (I always record words I like)
- Thinking of things the way they were is another way of writing: “Thinking about someone I was in love with—how he’d peel an orange and hand me a slice...” (19).
- “...questions that can only occur in cars,” (25).
- “A vacant stare does not mean vacancy. It’s the inverse of invitation, and yet,” (26).
- “...make stuff instead of make sense...” (61).
- “She always feels like...she’s meant to be going to a museum, so sometimes she does. Like she’s meant to be ordering a pastry. So, often, she does,” (148).
Personal Rating: 8/10
Too Much and Not the Mood is a beautiful and surprising exploration of what it means to be a first-generation, creative young woman working today.
Notes:
- “Those guys who, of course, don’t exist...These tiny people turned me onto ingenuity...They were, for example, the characters in Mary Norton’s The Borrowers; a series of books I don’t remember reading but on whose illustrated covers I imparted my own stories...The Borrowers were, I made myself believe, living among us: snatching up my spare buttons and refashioning them as tabletops or winter sleds...They repurposed our excess was the point,” (14-15). Reading this, I was astonished at how an experience I thought was unique to me (as I've imagined this exact same thing) might be more universal/shared. I had this same realization later when I read the line, “...imagine furniture mounted on ceilings...” (176).
- Semaphore, anthropomorphic, acquisitive, alcove, moonbeams (I always record words I like)
- Thinking of things the way they were is another way of writing: “Thinking about someone I was in love with—how he’d peel an orange and hand me a slice...” (19).
- “...questions that can only occur in cars,” (25).
- “A vacant stare does not mean vacancy. It’s the inverse of invitation, and yet,” (26).
- “...make stuff instead of make sense...” (61).
- “She always feels like...she’s meant to be going to a museum, so sometimes she does. Like she’s meant to be ordering a pastry. So, often, she does,” (148).
Personal Rating: 8/10
#5: A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit
Summary:
A Field Guide to Getting Lost draws on emblematic moments and relationships in Solnit's own life to explore the issues of wandering, being lost, and the uses of the unknown. The result is a distinctive, stimulating, and poignant voyage of discovery.
Notes:
- verisimilitude
- “It is certain that species are vanishing without ever having been known to science. To think about this is to imagine the space inside our heads expanding but the places outside shrinking, as though we were literally devouring them,” (187).
Personal Rating: 7/10
A Field Guide to Getting Lost draws on emblematic moments and relationships in Solnit's own life to explore the issues of wandering, being lost, and the uses of the unknown. The result is a distinctive, stimulating, and poignant voyage of discovery.
Notes:
- verisimilitude
- “It is certain that species are vanishing without ever having been known to science. To think about this is to imagine the space inside our heads expanding but the places outside shrinking, as though we were literally devouring them,” (187).
Personal Rating: 7/10
#6: Create Dangerously: The Power and Responsibility of the Artist by Albert Camus
Summary:
In 1957, Nobel Prize-winning philosopher Albert Camus gave a speech entitled "Create Dangerously," effectively a call to arms for artists, in particular those who came from an immigrant background, like he did. Camus understood the necessity of those making art as a part of civil society. A bold cry for artistic freedom and responsibility, his words today remain as timely as ever. In this new translation, Camus's message, available as a stand-alone little book for the first time, will resonate with a new generation of writers and artists.
Notes:
- “This ideal of global communication is, in fact, the ideal of every great artist,” (20).
- “...the suppression of creative freedom is not, perhaps, the right way to overcome servitude, and until we can speak for all, it is stupid to take away the power to at least speak for some,” (27).
Personal Rating: 8/10
In 1957, Nobel Prize-winning philosopher Albert Camus gave a speech entitled "Create Dangerously," effectively a call to arms for artists, in particular those who came from an immigrant background, like he did. Camus understood the necessity of those making art as a part of civil society. A bold cry for artistic freedom and responsibility, his words today remain as timely as ever. In this new translation, Camus's message, available as a stand-alone little book for the first time, will resonate with a new generation of writers and artists.
Notes:
- “This ideal of global communication is, in fact, the ideal of every great artist,” (20).
- “...the suppression of creative freedom is not, perhaps, the right way to overcome servitude, and until we can speak for all, it is stupid to take away the power to at least speak for some,” (27).
Personal Rating: 8/10
#7: The Romance of the Forest by Ann Radcliffe
Summary:
Set in a Roman Catholic Europe of violent passions and extreme oppression, the novel follows the fate of its heroine Adeline, who is mysteriously placed under the protection of a family fleeing Paris for debt. They take refuge in a ruined abbey in south-eastern France, where sinister relics of the past - a skeleton, a manuscript, and a rusty dagger - are discovered in concealed rooms. Adeline finds herself at the mercy of the abbey's proprietor, a libidinous Marquis whose attentions finally force her to contemplate escape to distant regions. Rich in allusions to aesthetic theory and to travel literature, The Romance of the Forest is also concerned with current philosophical debate and examines systems of thought central to the intellectual life of late eighteenth-century Europe.
Personal Rating: 5.5/10
Set in a Roman Catholic Europe of violent passions and extreme oppression, the novel follows the fate of its heroine Adeline, who is mysteriously placed under the protection of a family fleeing Paris for debt. They take refuge in a ruined abbey in south-eastern France, where sinister relics of the past - a skeleton, a manuscript, and a rusty dagger - are discovered in concealed rooms. Adeline finds herself at the mercy of the abbey's proprietor, a libidinous Marquis whose attentions finally force her to contemplate escape to distant regions. Rich in allusions to aesthetic theory and to travel literature, The Romance of the Forest is also concerned with current philosophical debate and examines systems of thought central to the intellectual life of late eighteenth-century Europe.
Personal Rating: 5.5/10
#8: Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney
Summary:
A sharply intelligent novel about two college students and the strange, unexpected connection they forge with a married couple.
Notes:
- sanguine, verdant
Personal Rating: 8.5/10
A sharply intelligent novel about two college students and the strange, unexpected connection they forge with a married couple.
Notes:
- sanguine, verdant
Personal Rating: 8.5/10
#9: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
This is a book I've continued to revisit since I first read it in fourth grade. I doubt a summary is necessary but I'll leave my notes and personal rating below (:
Notes:
- “You won’t make yourself a bit realer by crying,” Tweedledee remarked: “there’s nothing to cry about,” (176).- “”Consider what a great girl you are. Consider what a long way you’ve come today. Consider what o’clock it is. Consider anything, only don’t cry!”” (185).
Personal Rating: 10/10 (obviously!!)
Notes:
- “You won’t make yourself a bit realer by crying,” Tweedledee remarked: “there’s nothing to cry about,” (176).- “”Consider what a great girl you are. Consider what a long way you’ve come today. Consider what o’clock it is. Consider anything, only don’t cry!”” (185).
Personal Rating: 10/10 (obviously!!)
© Annie Fay Meitchik. All Rights Reserved. All content on anniefay.com is my own or credit is given when applicable, please do not use any of my images before contacting me above or @ anniefaymeitchik@gmail.com.
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