Yesteryear
I’m just a girl,
Standing in front of the reserve shelf at my library,
Asking why I do this to myself over and over.
“This” = checking out as many “it” books as I can which then leads to an obsession with a certain morning news program’s “book club.” It’s hard work to keep up with the zeitgeist, y’all.
Thank you to those who outed themselves as Yesteryear critics after I shared some thoughts on Instagram stories yesterday. (Not yesteryear.) I feel seen. (And somewhat vindicated.) [edit: THE REPLIES KEPT COMING!]
Saying that Yesteryear is an “important look” at influencer culture, trad wives, and patriarchy is like saying Best Offer Wins (another GMA pick, sigh) is an astute look at the housing crisis and Americans’ quest for bigger and better. You know, just as Silver Spoons (awwww, Ricky Schroder) was the definitive examination of privilege and wealth. Which I think we all know is zero percent the case with those latter examples. But, man, the way this book has been foisted on the masses is sooooo bizarre. (Even more so when you read the acknowledgements and see that during the drafting process the author met with Anne Hathaway, who, yes, is starring in a film adaptation. What?! Acquiring the rights to a book after it’s published — and even starting a whole “book club” as a means for doing so [heyyyyyyyy, Reese] — is normal. But this feels weird.) And for those who claim Yesteryear is satire, I genuinely don’t get it. (I love satire! Read The Material by Claire Bordas!)
In my last newsletter, I wrote about what it might mean for a book to be “hospitable.” I used the tagline from Will Guidara’s book Unreasonable Hospitality as a way to think about it: “The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect.” The Latin word “hospes” actually means host and guest, and because of this symbiotic relationship, I wrote this toward the end: “Let’s expect a lot from the books we read, and let’s expect a lot from the authors to deliver. In turn, let’s expect a lot from ourselves, as readers, too!”
I think readers deserve an awesome novel about what Yesteryear purportedly is. Let’s expect more.
{PS: Two GMA books that I adored in the pic below.}
originally published on instagram