Anatomy of a Boyfriend by Daria Snadowsky: This was a great book about a first love and exceptionally positive of female sexuality. I’ll talk more about this one soon, but I’m planning on picking up the sequel very soon. I loved the voice.

Blind by Rachel DeWoskin: I quit this one after 100 pages. While I appreciated what DeWoskin did with her main character’s need to describe the world around her as she approaches it (she’s blind), the writing itself left a lot to be desired. The story didn’t begin in the right place and moved at a glacial pace. At over 400 pages, I couldn’t do it when, at page 100, nothing had happened and I had no attachment to the characters at all.

The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison: I’ve been picking at this one for a few months and finally just sat down to finish it. I’m glad I did. I loved this series of essays — some which connected in terms of recurring characters — about what empathy looks like and what human emotions connect us and the hows and whys of those connections. My favorite essay in the entire book is available in full online and I encourage it to get a sense of what the book looks like. I’ll definitely be reading more essay collections following this. It’s an underappreciated medium (and one I found myself loving after reading Eula Biss’s Notes From No Man’s Land last year).

Sway by Kat Spears (September 16): There was some stuff I liked — Jesse’s voice is good and there are some good relationships — but as much as I love edgy, dark, boundary-pushing stuff, this one may have gone too far for me to really enjoy. There’s a joke about a time during a party that turns into date rape time and it was then I just….even if it was Jesse’s character to be so crass, I don’t think it’s an okay joke. And there’s some depictions of fat people in here that rubbed me really wrong. I have a feeling people are going to dislike a lot of other things in this book when more have read it. The cover is terribly misleading; this is no sweet romance.

A few things worth reading from around the internet this week, some book-related and some not:

• Kathleen Hale wrote a really thoughtful essay about the Slender Man stabbing that took place not far from where I live. It’s about how Slender Man makes for a great scapegoat for the real issues at hand in being a middle school girl. Not easy reading, but really worthwhile for anyone who cares about pre-teen and teenagers, especially girls. 

• This piece, “Cultivating Curiosity,” is about a love of stories and storytelling, over a pure love for words and language. I especially love the part about how a book is two things merging: what you bring to the book and what the book brings to you. 

• Over at Dear Author, necessary reading relevant to a lot of things I’ve been thinking and writing about in regards to being a blogger: The “C” in ARC Does Not Stand for “Contract.

• I didn’t think an essay about friendship would stick with me as much as one did this week titled “Grown Women Don’t Need A ‘Best Friend’.” It stems from Emily Gould’s recently released book about adult/millennial friendships but delves into why it’s okay not to have a “best friend” if you’re an adult woman. I related a lot, and I appreciated — and believe — in the idea of different levels of closeless when it comes to my friendships. 

• Zadie Smith wrote an essay for Oprah about the notion of summer reading and, at heart of the piece, is the notion that there’s such a thing as being addicted to books and reading. It’s a beautiful piece. 

Last week I mentioned the “get organized” series kicking off on tumblr, and a few people have chimed in to talk about the ways they organize their lives, as well as their to-read piles:

• I talked about my daily organizational methods, as well as how I organize my reading. 

• Maureen talked in-depth about how she organizes her to-be-read lists (it’s so impressive and methodical).