Hi everyone —
This month’s Book of the Month is quite a departure, but that’s a feature of the JoeBlogs Book of the Month, not a bug. The idea is to give you a different kind of non-fiction read every month, and this month our editor, Talia, and Brilliant Readers chose a beautiful, haunting, surprisingly funny and unsurprisingly heartbreaking book by the amazing Sloane Crosley called Grief is for People.
The book, as our BotM Editor Talia will explain, is about two terrible things that happened to Sloane at roughly the same time — a robbery of her home that felt intensely personal and the loss of a close friend to suicide. If that feels heavy and dark, of course it is, but Sloane Crosley happens to be one of America’s funniest writers, so what Grief is for People actually does is take you on an achingly human journey of the heart. Like Talia, I read the book very fast — you just follow the writing — and like all great books, it changed me a little.
We’ll leave it now to Talia and our Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius panel.
The Panel: Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Great Writing)
Recommender Member: Patrick Smith
The Book : Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley
Content Warning: This beautiful book does revolve around extremely sensitive topics, including suicide and abuse. If this doesn’t sound up your alley, we have some fun supplemental books for you to choose from.
Supplemental Reading
For all the juicy details: Unacceptable: Privilege, Deceit & the Making of the College Admissions Scandal
For sports purists: There’s Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib
For (careful) risk-takers and predictors of the future: On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything
For biography buffs:
Fighting the Night: Iwo Jima, World War II, and a Flyer's Life by Paul Hendrickson
An Unfinished Love Story by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Hemingway’s Boat by Paul Hendrickson
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder
For a survival story: Into Thin Air by John Krakauer
For a little of this, a little of that: Impossible Owls by Brian Phillips
It’s August, and that means a couple of things:
1. It’s time for our next Book of the Month
2. Back-to-school season is upon us
For me, hearing the words “back to school” brings back memories of frantically annotating that assigned summer reading book at the last second, the smell of new school supplies, and the inevitable panic of realizing that summer has come to an end. But while I dreaded “back-to-school season,” I loved being a student. In solidarity with overly bright-eyed kindergarteners and exhausted college kids alike, I figured we would dedicate this month to great writing, which means leaning on our “Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” book panel to nominate brilliantly written books.
What makes for “great writing?” I have some thoughts on that — I don’t think all books with “writing that is great” make for “great writing.” Here’s what I mean:
First, there are books we are TOLD are great. Think about that one book from high school English class that developed a sort of school-wide infamy, and, GOSH, even though you painstakingly read every word (you did, right?), you just couldn’t understand what made it so special. Maybe you even told yourself you’d choose to read it again someday to try and understand, but of course, you never do, and instead decide that some books are called classics because they’re old and long, and this is getting too personal, isn’t it? Moving on!
My second definition of “great writing” is the kind of writing that just feels great to you, the reader. Why does it feel so great? Maybe the plot is spellbinding. Maybe the characters leap off the page, with the scenery unfolding before you like a pop-up greeting card. Maybe it is simply the way the author carefully chooses words and arranges them into sentences! The thing here is that this kind of writing is very personal and instinctual. You might recommend it to a friend who doesn’t get it at all. Your list of great books may not share a single title with mine.
The third, the kind that our Great Writing panel seeks out, is both! This is writing that feels both personal and universal. You hear from everybody that a book is wonderful. You’re skeptical. But then you read them … and they explode your mind. I’m personally going through one of these experiences. I am in the middle of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and my life is forever changed.
This month falls into this third category. It is a 2024 book that was praised by countless critics — it made nearly every top ten list out there, including Vogue, TIME, The Washington Post, NPR, Esquire, Publishers’ Weekly, and many others.
But when I read it, as you will see, it felt uniquely MINE.
That’s great writing.
There were so many great submissions this month. But it only took one sentence for me to know that our Book of the Month had to be Sloane Crosley’s Grief is for People:
All burglaries are alike, but every burglary is uninsured in its own way.
How are you not going to read on after that?
Grief is for People is a non-linear memoir and a letter to author Sloane Crosley’s dearest friend, Russell, whom she lost to suicide. Here’s what Brilliant Reader and Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius panel member Patrick wrote in his nomination:
“Grief tracks her journey dealing with the loss of property after a home invasion and with the greater loss of a close friend. She spins the two stories beautifully, seamlessly moving between the two, and you feel as if you know her, know her friend, and you also feel the pain of her loss. In the end, she brings it all together.“
I finished this book in two reading sessions, blazing through 73% (according to my Kindle) in one evening and the remaining 27% in another. I spent most of it with a lump in my throat, and the rest nearly laughing out loud or highlighting one profound insight after another. We’ve all heard of the seven stages of grief. What Crosley does is infuse those stages with all the little human idiosyncrasies — the timeliness, ironies, the messiness — of grief. And she does it with beautiful writing.
The best kind of writing makes you feel everything. Grief is for People did that for me. I think it will for you too.
