Although I was not in the right headspace, and although I think that definitely intensified the reading of this book, and although I may never be in the right headspace for this book, I recently finished reading Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. I must say that I did want to set it down several times and never pick it up again, but I persevered. This is a book (and an author) that has gotten a lot of attention in my circles, and so I wanted to read it, even if just so that I could join those conversations. Now I’m glad I did read it of course.

This book is beautifully written and feels a lot like contemporary poetry to me. Line after line attends to the sound and the vocabulary and the complexity of meaning, and so it is rich. It is also about difficult things: war, exile, abuse, survival (the necessity to), the fentanyl crisis, and much more.

Kind of like Schindler’s List, this is a book worth reading, an important book, and an artistic book, but it is an intense and emotionally difficult book. If you aren’t in a good head space, I’d say you can put it off. You don’t need to read it right this instant.