The favourite to win the best documentary Oscar shows Russian attack on Mariupol

When I first started reading, I was only recommended books with a clear plot line. I would be compelled by my curiosity to keep reading. I would want to know how the story unfolds and the events that move it along. Some books I wouldn’t be able to put down because the chapters would end with cliffhangers, and others because I was too engrossed in that world of high fantasy. After a year or two of reading this way, I found my way to books with a less compelling plot or sometimes even no plot at all. I was surprised to find that I enjoyed them just as much, if not more, than those with the plot as the center of the story. I have read a ton of “no plot, just vibes” books since, and I adore them. I like sitting with a character-driven narrative and appreciate how the story ebbs and flows along with the tides in its characters’ hearts. I like being immersed in a person’s thoughts, idiosyncrasies, irrationality, insecurity, and just their way of life. I like getting a look into quieter, more introspective perspectives as opposed to a thrilling plot that keeps me on the edge of my seat.

Here’s a list of “no plot, just vibes” books that I’ve read and enjoyed. The vibe could be anything from being a millionaire in New York to living in a one-bedroom apartment as a family of four in Mumbai to defying all concepts of time and space. It can be about teenagers figuring out their lives, or a grown man trying to see where his marriage went wrong, or a family navigating the immigrant experience.

I hope at least one of these brings you to the vibe you’re looking for!

January 12 – February 24, 2024

January 27 – February 24, 2024

In Franz Kafka’s first published story, “Description of a Struggle,” the narrator is sitting in a drawing room at a rickety little table, eating a piece of fruitcake that “did not taste very good,” when a man walks up to him. The man is described as an “acquaintance,” but we soon realize he is a double, or another part of the narrator’s self. The acquaintance has fallen in love and wants to boast about it. “If you weren’t in such a state,” he scolds, “[you] would know how improper it is to talk about an amorous girl to a man sitting alone drinking schnapps.” The comment seems to threaten an unchecked appetite. What would the lonely, schnapps-drinking man do if tempted by the girl? The struggle that follows, metaphorically speaking, is between the sides of the protagonist’s character—on one side, the man who desires to stand apart from society and guard his creative self, and on the other, he who wishes to fit in and reap the pleasures of fruitcake and amorous girls.

The tension in Kafka between appetite and its fulfillment is a crucial aspect of the writer’s work. Kafka’s characters are often hungry—the performer from “A Hunger Artist” has made starving himself into an art; Gregor Samsa from The Metamorphosis slowly stops eating and wastes away. But their hunger is often not for the foods of this world. Gregor refers to himself as hungering as for “an unknown nourishment.” The hunger artist’s last words are a confession that fasting was not difficult for him because, he says, “I couldn’t find the food I liked. If I had found it, believe me, I should have made no fuss and stuffed myself like you or anyone else.” Instead the characters seek the deeper forms of sustenance—emotional, societal, sexual, spiritual—and don’t find them.

Gloria Gaynor's anthem I Will Survive originally had a different meaning.

January 18 – February 24, 2024

January 27 – March 2, 2024