With the new year comes new 
goals, new hopes, new dreams. 
For many, “read more books” is 
near the top of resolution lists, 
which is both commendable and 
conventional in this day and age. 
Nevertheless, it can be difficult 
to set your tasks and technology 
aside to dive into a book. 
Whether you spent New Year’s 
Eve finishing your Goodreads 
Reading Goal (I finished my 
“Daisy Jones & The Six” reread 
just before midnight) or you’re 
only now getting back into the 
habit, I’m sure there’s a book 
out there that will engross you if 
given the chance. I’ve compiled 
a list of books that I believe will 
do the trick for kick-starting your 
2023 reading goal. 

Who’s afraid of the big bad 
book? 
I am, and I’m not ashamed to 
admit it. I am not only intimidated 
by 800-whoppers — I’m terrified 
of them. I was incredibly close to 
rigging my book club’s January 
selection when people voted for 
“Anna Karenina,” and, for a brief 
time, loathed my friends who 
recommended “The Priory of the 
Orange Tree” to me. Though both 
the aforementioned works ended 
up pleasantly surprising me, no, 
dear reader, I’m not recommending 
you start out the year carrying a 
boulder around in your bag. 
Starting off 2023 with a short, 
fast-paced book will not only 
launch you ahead in your race 
of reading, but will give you 
the 
motivational 
satisfaction 
of quickly finishing a book and 
encourage you to pick up another. 
Madeline Miller’s “Galatea” is 
only 20 pages long — yes, you 
read that right — and will have 
you eager to follow it up with her 
full-length novels “Circe” and 
“Song of Achilles.” As is shared 
in her afterword, “Galatea” is 
Miller’s 
“response 
to 
Ovid’s 
version of the Pygmalion myth in 
the Metamorphoses.” Galatea is a 
marble sculpture of Pygmalion’s 
that comes to life after his 

pleading to the Greek God Venus, 
and Miller’s short (and I mean 
short) 
story 
centers 
Galatea 
and her position as a fetishized, 
oppressed being. Miller’s Galatea 
is intelligent, witty and fierce. 
Before the first few pages are 
up, you’re rooting for her and for 
Pygmalion’s downfall. “Galatea” 
is a small testament to Miller’s 
writing prowess, which teems 
with electricity and emotion. 
A 
more 
substantial 
(but 
still 
short) 
recommendation 
is Michelle Hart’s “We Do 
What We Do in the Dark,” a 
222-page read that will have 
you 
simultaneously 
intrigued, 
disgusted and devastated. The 
story follows Mallory, a freshman 
in college who has recently come 
out and accepted her sexuality as 
a lesbian. She meets a (married) 
professor at her college — who is 
only referred to as “the woman” 
throughout the novel — and the 
two have an on-and-off affair. 
Though their relationship is 
the driving force of the story, a 
secondary plotline concerning the 
death of Mallory’s mother is also 
critical to the novel. Mallory’s life 
is constantly evolving, wavering 
in its complexity as we move 
throughout time, flashing back to 
the past and forward to the future 
as Mallory wrestles with her grief 
and her identity. 

For those who want to laugh 
but don’t want to cringe
It’s a tricky line to toe, but 
Jill Gutowitz has figured it out. 
Her debut work “Girls Can Kiss 
Now” is a collection of essays that 
chronicle her life as she discovers 
and explores her Queerness, 
dissects pop culture, unpacks her 
past relationships and makes you 
laugh out loud along the way. I 
listened to her essays, and I’m glad 
— I’ll always rally for listening to 
personal works and memoirs over 
reading because of how much 
more intimate they feel. Hearing 
Gutowitz share her stories and 
memories out loud made her 
feel like an older sister: someone 
who 
simultaneously 
provides 
solid advice while also making 
you gasp and giggle. Besides 
the fact that Gutowitz’s pen is 

praiseworthy, the structure of the 
book makes it a great work to start 
the year off with. The division of 
the work into easily digestible 
essays quickens its pace and will 
have you feeling accomplished 
sooner rather than later. 
Ali Wong’s memoir “Dear 
Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold 
Secrets, & Advice for Living Your 
Best Life” is another book that 
lands on the funny side of the 
line. Similar to Gutowitz, Wong 
divides her memoir into sections, 
or letters to her daughters. Wong 
shares details — both hilarious 
and outrageous — about her life as 
a comedian, but also speaks to her 
experiences growing up in San 
Francisco and as a college student 
abroad. Though I remember 
the 
laughs 
from 
my 
time 
reading, I also remember feeling 
sentimental listening to Wong 
craft a book for her daughters 
first and foremost. 

To my lighthearted readers 
who crave emotional turmoil 
Also known as my favorite 
genre — and no one does it better 
than Carmen Maria Machado 
and Celeste Ng. Their respective 
works “In the Dream House” and 
“Everything I Never Told You” 
are modern classics in the making 
(and my favorite reads of 2022). 
“In the Dream House” is an 
unconventional 
memoir 
that 
focuses specifically on an abusive 
relationship of Machado’s. Each 
section of the book, which vary 
in length though never in gravity, 
glimmers 
like 
vignettes; 
the 
memoir is painfully beautiful, 
staunchly severe. It is devastating 
and it is completely absorbing. I 
read it all in one sitting, though it 
can be read in chunks and pieces. 
Depending on your approach, “In 
the Dream House” can be read 
quickly or slowly, allowing you to 
dedicate as much time as you can 
without fear of forgetting what 
happened or interrupting its flow. I 
would recommend researching the 
trigger warnings, but would still 
encourage any interested reader 
to pick it up and stay updated on 
Machado’s next releases.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Nine books to jumpstart your New 
Year’s reading resolution

LILLIAN PEARCE
Daily Arts Writer

On Oct. 21, I received a text from 
my best friend telling me that she 
“wanted to hear my Midnights 
thoughts.” About an hour later, I 
FaceTimed her and we immediately 
began 
discussing 
our 
various 
impressions and hottest takes on 
Taylor Swift’s newest album, which 
was only 12 hours old at the time. 
We came to the conclusions that 
“Midnight Rain” was written for 
Jo and Laurie and that Lana Del 
Ray did the best she could with her 
0.2-second feature on “Snow On The 
Beach,” and eventually moved on. 
After another hour of complaining 
about seeing people we knew 
around our respective campuses, 
brainstorming Halloween costume 
ideas and her telling me about a 
guy she knew who looked “JUST 
like JJ Maybank” (Rudy Pankow, 
“Uncharted”), we finally hung up. 
I 
have 
been 
best 
friends 
with the same girl since I was 9 
years old. We mess around, take 
0.5-zoomed pictures, talk about our 

ex-classmates or celebrity crushes 
of the week, and somehow always 
end up at Target. We may not be 
perfect, but I always have her back 
and I know she always has mine. 
This is what I’ve grown up knowing 
female friendship to be. So when 
I open any streaming service to 
watch my new favorite show or 
rewatch an old obsession, why am 
I rarely, if ever, told the same story?

When it comes to writing strong 
female 
friendships, 
the 
media 
doesn’t exactly have the best track 
record. Over the last 18 years of my 
life, I’ve watched Paris constantly 
switch from Rory’s friend to bully to 
friend again in “Gilmore Girls.” I’ve 
watched Cassie hook up with her 
best friend’s abusive ex-boyfriend 
in “Euphoria” and Serena and 
Blair do everything under the sun 
to sabotage one another all while 
referring to each other as a “best 
friend” in “Gossip Girl.” Even pairs 
like El and Max from “Stranger 
Things” or Sarah and Kiara from 
“Outer Banks,” whose friendships 
I eventually grew to love, began in 
places of jealousy or mistrust. 

Sure, I’ve seen female friendships 
like this in real life — sometimes 
people just aren’t as compatible 
as they’d like to be. But do the 
majority of women have some 
sort of vendetta against their best 
friends or secretly want to see them 
fail in order to gain attention or a 
mediocre love interest? No.
While a few shows, like “The 
Summer I Turned Pretty,” were 
able to feature non-toxic female 
friendships that took place on the 
sidelines of the show’s main plot 
(Laurel and Susannah are the 
blueprint, let’s be honest), one show 
truly stands out to me as being the 
series with the best TV friendship 
of all time (while simultaneously 
featuring this friendship on a 
regular basis as an important part 
of the plotline). In the words of Ben 
Wyatt (Adam Scott, “The Good 
Place”), “let’s talk about ‘Parks and 
Rec.’”
Leslie (Amy Poelher, “Saturday 
Night Live”) meets Ann (Rashida 
Jones, “The Office”) in the pilot 
episode of “Parks and Recreation,” 
when her future best friend comes 
to her as a citizen in need of help 

from the Pawnee government. 
Over the course of the show’s 
seven seasons, the two women 
form an incredibly close bond, 
becoming acquaintances, friends 
and eventually the iconic pair we all 
know and love.
So where did Ann and Leslie go 
right? It all starts in the show’s first 
season. Even during the weirdest 
point in their relationship — 
featuring a brief interest in the same 
man — Ann sits down with Leslie 
and genuinely makes sure she’s all 
right with her going on a date with 
him. She even addresses the fact 
that Leslie may feel pressured to 
lie to protect her feelings and tells 
her she’ll skip the date if Leslie is 
uncomfortable. Even throughout 
the most stereotypical plotline of 
their relationship, Ann and Leslie 
are respectful of each other’s 
feelings and willing to sacrifice 
their own romantic interests in the 
name of their friendship, proving 
once and for all that uteruses do 
come before “duderuses.” 
Another important aspect of 
these characters’ friendship is their 
willingness to stand by one another 

even through hard or awkward 
times. From scavenging in a ditch in 
the middle of the night for Leslie’s 
“gummy penises” (it’s a long story) 
to becoming Leslie’s campaign 
manager despite having no political 
experience, it’s no secret that Ann 
was willing to put her life on hold 
to be there for Leslie when she 
needed support. But Leslie always 
held up her end of the bargain as 
well by not only snooping around 
her boss’s home for clues that he 
may be cheating on her best friend, 
but skipping a huge milestone in 
her career to drive Ann home after 
a humiliating miscommunication 
with her ex. 
These best friends also went 
out of their way to never make the 
other feel stupid for their flaws 
or shortcomings. From “poetic, 
noble land mermaid” to “talented, 
brilliant, powerful musk ox,” Leslie 
blesses Ann with just about every 
strange compliment under the sun. 
Even after a misunderstanding with 
her ex leads Ann to believe they’re 
still dating, Leslie doesn’t point out 
her embarrassing inability to read 
the situation, but claims that Ann 

couldn’t have possibly understood 
her rejection — she was too 
beautiful to know what it felt like to 
be dumped. Although well aware of 
one another’s flaws (proven when 
Ann points out Leslie’s tendency to 
be a “steamroller”), the two friends 
are loyal to a fault and only ever use 
their knowledge of one another’s 
traits (both good and bad) to uplift 
their friendship, never to tear it 
down.
In a world filled with distorted 
media (often produced by men), it’s 
seemingly become a radical idea 
that two female characters may 
actually like each other without 
the demeaning stereotype that all 
women want to stab each other in 
the back. As these Blair and Serena-
esque friendships have become an 
unfortunate commonality in the TV 
world, we can only hope that more 
creators and writers begin to wrap 
their heads around the idea that 
true female friendship is something 
fun, 
something 
genuine 
and 
something entirely real, whether it’s 
reflected well in the media or not. 

How “Parks and Recreation” got female friendships right

Wednesday, January 11, 2023 — 3

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

OLIVIA TARLING
Daily Arts Writer 

Arts

Courtesy of Lillian Pearce

‘Begin Again’ the new year with 
Emma Lord’s upcoming YA novel

It’s only the first day of school, 
and Andie Rose’s perfectly curated 
plan has already gone awry.
In Emma Lord’s “Begin Again,” 
Andie transfers from her local 
community college to the uber-
competitive Blue Ridge State — 
her dream school that happens to 
be the same school her boyfriend, 
Connor, attends — only to find 
out Connor has transferred to her 
community college. Her bookish 
roommate, Shay, needs a to declare 
a major and Andie needs help 
passing statistics. To top it all off, 
Andie finds herself in a unique 
position giving people advice on 
her school’s pirate radio show — 
the same one her mother founded 
when she went to Blue Ridge.
Then 
there’s 
Milo, 
Andie’s 
overly-exhausted 
and 
over-
caffeinated 
resident 
advisor, 
who throws her for a loop. As 
Andie deals with her strained 
relationship with Connor, her and 
Milo’s friendship continues to 
grow; they bond over the loss of a 
parent and their love for bagels. 
Both Milo and Andie are extremely 
family-oriented: Milo’s siblings 
make frequent appearances, as do 
Andie’s two grandmothers who 

raised her, which allows for the 
perfect balance of platonic and 
romantic relationships needed in a 
YA novel. 
With 
a 
long-distance 
relationship hanging by a thread, a 
new job and advice to give, Andie 
learns that her usual fix-it attitude 
can’t fix everything in her new life 
at college. 
“Begin Again” is a delightful 
and comforting read. As her 
fourth YA novel, Lord’s writing is 
consistently heartfelt and filled 
with delicious descriptions of food. 
This is her first novel to focus on 
college-aged characters, which 
is refreshing, if not relatable to 
everyone. Lord delicately discusses 
college finances and the issues 
surrounding financial aid that the 
characters confront. Milo’s passion 
for the lack of work-study jobs 
available to students at Blue Ridge 
is admirable. Though it’s a fictional 
university, Blue Ridge’s situation 
certainly reflects the struggling 
state of financial aid programs at 
schools across the country.
The characters in “Begin Again” 
are charming, especially Andie 
and Milo, who go through their 
own self-growth journeys. As a 
first-year transfer student at a 
super competitive state school, 
Andie feels inadequate compared 
to her peers, something many 

college students can relate to since 
feelings of insecurity and imposter 
syndrome are common in college 
students. Andie faces the same 
struggle of paying the high costs of 
college tuition that most students 
encounter, while also balancing an 
overwhelming academic workload 
with working at the local bagel 
shop like many working-class 
college students.
Fans of NPR and podcasts will 
appreciate the radio show aspect 
of “Begin Again.” The secret show 
on campus called “The Knights’ 
Watch” is where students get all 
the dirt on Blue Ridge. Andie faces 
anonymity and early mornings as 
the show’s “Squire” doing what she 
does best: helping people with their 
problems (while simultaneously 
ignoring her own). As she grapples 
with her mother’s legacy on the 
show, Andie creates a legacy for 
herself by creating the life she 
always wanted, with the support 
of her family and new friends at 
college. 
Andie’s college experience won’t 
be everyone’s experience, but it’s 
still entertaining to read. With 
a slow-burn romance, a lovable 
friend group and an overarching 
theme of starting over woven 
throughout 
the 
story, 
“Begin 
Again” is the perfect book to read 
in the new year. 

AVA SEAMAN
Books Beat Editor

Cover art for “Begin Again” owned by Wednesday Books.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com