Better comes out in FOUR DAYS and I am nothing but a raw mess of nervous energy. It doesn't help that I've been without a therapist for about five months, but I literally started seeing a new psych two days ago and I love her. Great! Anyway, I'm doing a medium-bad job of promoting everything to the max, especially here. So, some news and updates for you all.
Giveaways
If you preorder(ed) Better, you can win either of two giveaways:
- A 5-book bundle of some of the best books I read while writing Better, including
- trans girl suicide museum by hannah baer
- One Friday in April by Donald Antrim
- Ghost Of by Diana Khoi Nguyen
- All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
- Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life by Yiyun Li
- A 3-audiobook credit bundle from Libro.fm, which can be redeemed for any books you'd like.
To enter, send proof of preorder to better@ariannarebolini.com with the subject line "giveaway." Unless you specify either of the gifts, I'll assume you'd like to be entered for both. I'd originally said the deadline was today but that's cancelled because I've gotten like two entries.
Humbling! But that's ok! You can email me for as long as preordering is still an option, i.e. any time before Tuesday 4/29. And speaking of preorders...
Preorder sale
I'm sure you've heard the spiels from other writers but it bears repeating: preordering is the best way to support an author and their book. Thank you to everyone who has done so!!! Let me give you something free!
Events
Come see me! Bookstore event attendees will get an exclusive Better zine, plus entry into MORE giveaway raffles. Details below, event links to come.
TONIGHT, IN ~3 HOURS LOL
Books Are Magic (Montague Street) w/ Emily Gould
Also will be streaming on YouTube Live
MAY 3: New York, NY
Open Secrets LIVE
Mental Health panel
Currently sold out, but you can sign up to find out if tickets open up here. If you're interested in covering the full-day storytelling event, let me know and I can probably get you on the guest list!
MAY 30: Los Angeles
7pm
Skylight Books w/ Aiden Arata
[will be in Seattle between these dates, TBA]
JUNE 5: Portland, OR
6pm
Broadway Books w/ Lydia Kiesling
JUNE 10: Philadelphia
7pm
The Head & the Hand Books w/ Emma Copley Eisenberg
JUNE 21: Providence, RI
7pm
Riffraff w/ Jaime Green
AUGUST 4: New York, NY
7:30pm
Miss Manhattan reading series
A break for other book recs
Because that is, first and foremost, what you're here for.
- Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata: I had never heard of Kawabata until I saw and picked up a staff rec for Master of Go last year at Turnsol Books in Kansas City. Then, weeks later, this one popped up in my little free library. Isn't that just how life goes! I hadn't devoured a book like I did with this one—a quiet story, published in 1948, about doomed love between a businessman, Shimamura, visiting Japan's "snow country" and a local geisha, Komako—in a really long time. Komako is a top-tier yearner, painfully aware that the married Shimamura will never commit to her or let her go, but unable to leave without the push and angry with herself the whole time. See her raging through his door late one night after working a party, so clearly disappointed in the decision she's made:
"I said I would come and I've come. Haven't I? I said I'd come and I've come, haven't I?" Her chest, even her abdomen, rose and fell violently.
"You're dead-drunk."
"Haven't I? I said I'd come and I've come, haven't I?"
"You have indeed."
[...]
"I said I'd come, and I've come." She spoke with the utmost concentration. "I've come, and now I'm going home. I'm going to wash my hair."
Reader, she stayed. That fury, nowhere to put it, the desperation, the powerlessness—I know it, feel it, so immediately. Timeless. I can't wait to read everything Kawabata ever wrote.
- Walking on the Moon by Barbara Wilson: I feel like it's a miracle I happened upon this novella + story collection at The Last Bookstore in LA because it's seemingly impossible to find elsewhere? These slice-of-life stories about lesbians in the early 80s are so resonant, and I immediately looked up the author to try to understand how I'd never heard of her. Turns out Wilson (who also publishes under the name Barbara Sjoholm) was a pioneer in lesbian fiction—known especially for crime novels starring a lesbian sleuth—and, once again, I'm excited to pick up more of her books. Someone re-release her work! I wish this was something I was in charge of!
- Waiting for Britney Spears by Jeff Weiss: A "fictional" story about a struggling writer (named "Jeff Weiss") who takes a job at an internet tabloid following Britney during her rise and fall. It's juicy but also insightful in its grappling with complicity in celebrity and exploitation. Plus: Beckett reference!
- I also put together a playlist of some all-time audiobook faves at Libro.fm.
Okay one more thing about Better
Some press! More to come!
- You can read an adapted excerpt at The Cut, about choosing to have a child as a person with depression.
- The wonderful Emma Copley Eisenberg asked me some questions in her brilliant newsletter, Frump Feelings.
- Kirkus called it "a brave narrative of radical empathy both for oneself and for others confronting the darkest darkness"!