Started on 3.19.25, finished on 4.13.25

I felt so energized when I was starting this book! The concept (putting sentences from 10 years of diaries in alphabetical order, and then cutting them down dramatically to achieve a beautiful kind of poetic flow) is amazing, and lends itself to so many little discoveries and joys.

During the A chapter, when I had read a few people’s names once or twice, I thought forward, guessing (correctly) that most people whose names are mentioned will end up having a little section to themselves with a bunch of sentences in a row that start with their name. It was so interesting to get to those sections—it felt like I had gotten little clues about these people throughout the book, and then in the L or P chapter all of a sudden I got to read more concentrated thoughts about them.

I also really enjoyed seeing which words or phrases ended up with a lot of sentences represented, or sometimes not a lot of sentences, but really good ones. “I don’t” had a lot of interesting entries, “She said” had a few really good ones. The I chapter predictably had a lot of good personal stuff. I also really liked how the editing was done so well that I often would read three or four sentences in a row that felt so connected I would forget that they were likely from different entries and about different people/things.

That said, even though the idea is so interesting and I think the whole book is extremely well done, it is by definition pretty meandering and not plot-driven, so I found myself putting it down a lot and then coming back to it after reading something else, which is why it ended up taking me about a month to get through.

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My favorite quotes (in alphabetical order!):

“A person’s life should not be so filled up that a surprise friend can’t come in, but that doesn’t mean they have to become your new best friend.”

“Actually, he doesn’t love you. Actually, he doesn’t want you. Actually, he is looking around the world for another girl, and because of who he is, he will find her and be with her.”

“Even if the relationship makes me unhappy and lonely and alienated and upset—stay.”

“For the most part, I like the way I live and mostly want to continue living this way, even if it’s not so big, glamorous, exciting or interesting, and even if very little changes as the years go by.”

“Gazing down at him with his eyes closed, I thought, I do not love this man.”

“I protested that it’s not so easy to stop taking someone into consideration when you have been concerned about them for five whole years, but as I said this, I opened the door to the deli and saw the long salad bar halfway down the store, and all the ingredients in it, and its silver roof, and it felt possible to never think of him again.”

“In some cases, being good to one person means being less good to another, different person.”

“Marriage and divorce as a rite of passage. Marriage can make misery more bearable. Marriage is one step closer to divorce than being in a relationship. Marriage will not settle my restlessness.”

“My mind was racing with all these thoughts, and I asked myself if these thoughts were good, and my mind said no.”

“Sell a story to Hollywood. Sell my soul and hopefully start over with a new one. Sell things on eBay that you don’t need.”

“She was giving up fashion design because it was too stupid, you had to make sixty new things every six months.”

“Then her grandmother started talking—she was single, and she was talking about some drama in a recently past relationship, clearly obsessed with it above all else, and I thought about how distasteful it was to see an old woman obsessing about her romantic relationships—and I saw it was possible; that a woman really could do that her whole entire life, and I realized how important it was to stop.”