finished reading xxxl
i forgot to tell you about what i’d read five times in a row. i blame my audiobooks phase. anyway, here’s a supersized multipack of book reviews:
🎧 Famesick by Lena Dunham
i really enjoyed listening to her narrating this. it was like an 8 hour gossip session. no regrets. i do have to say, in most of her anecdotes, she tends to put herself in a role of an unassuming youth who’s never a perpetrator, always a victim. as if she’s never had a dark impulse or an unkind thought.
when talking about her shortcomings, she pads it with self-compassion so much you end up in awe of her emotional maturity. it’s especially cute to me when she mentions that it wasn’t until her 30s that she realised she was privileged, and not everyone has a big loving family, money to go to a good school, a mum whose best friend is a hollywood talent agent who can get you an hbo pilot – you know, small things like that. anyway, i can’t decide if i’m buying this innocent persona of hers, but great goss 10/10
🎧 London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe
regarded a top non-fiction bestseller of 2026, this book is like bad sex: it peaks early and goes on for way too long, to no satisfactory conclusion. the best thing about it was its marketing campaign. the basic premise is: a boy falls to his death from a balcony, whoddunit? but there isn’t a plot as such. instead, there’s what feels like 30,000 pages of backstories: of both his parents, of his gangster friend, and of his another gangster friend, and their gangster friend-of-friends, and their partners and their lovers. maybe good for people who are really into gangster stuff, otherwise a pass
📖The Make–Believe by Hannah Murray
absolutely loved this one. also a memoir, but nothing like Dunham’s. i always liked Hannah Murray and related to her character Cassie in Skins a lil too much for my own good. i kept occasionally checking her imdb wondering what she’s up to, which wasn’t much. turns out, while working in the US, Hannah Murray got into a cult. which took over her life and eventually led to a mental breakdown. after a period in a mental institution, she quit acting, got a writing degree, and wrote a memoir about how the whole thing unraveled. unlike Lena Dunham, she doesn’t shy away from her own dark side, and has a great sense of humour to complement it. a fantastic read and i hope we’ll see more from her.
📖The Land and Its People by David Sedaris
it’s another book by David Sedaris. it was good, wasn’t it? it was definitely a David Sedaris book that he wrote. on tour. about a tour. and his siblings. and shopping. it’s his thing. i would recommend Me Talk Pretty One Day or Calypso over this one. this one, optional
📖 Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
but also thanks to David Sedaris i found out about this one. he mentioned it as one of his big influences. Yates worked in mid-20th century which was a prime era for countercultural American writing, and maybe for that reason his name ended up below the fold – i never heard of him before. Revolutionary Road is about a couple in a New York suburb who always fancied themselves as superior to the normies, but ended up walking the exact path of the normies – and the only rebellious thing about them is that they live on Revolutionary Road, a lofty name for a meek place. for a moment, it feels like they might indeed be destined for something greater, and then it all falls apart. a great novel and a great film, highly recommend, in that order
