Ashley Cornelius

I just felt like I was there with them.

And I have spent over 30 years of my life going to Southern Oregon to visit family, and we always spent a day or an evening or both

on the river.

And so reading his descriptions of the river, and even though I'm not a fisher, like his descriptions of how they were fishing, just like pulled me in to that world and reminded me of this, what I love about being in nature specifically on a river.

And I also really love the relationship between the two friends.

And this book I find is a really good example of the right amount of sadness for me.

While I really tend towards the lighter books over the summer, The River does have this really sad moment in it.

And I saw in my notes, I was like, I wasn't really happy with the way it ended, but it still stuck with me.

And the sad moment didn't feel gratuitous.

It really made me think about the book for a lot longer than I would have if it had been like a super happy, peaceful ending.

Yeah, like when I was flipping through, I saw Crying in H Mart and I had a big note on it, stay for fall.

And sure enough, I did.

I read it in the fall and a bunch of my work colleagues also read it.

And I mean, it was just,

a wonderful book and I loved it, but I was like, I am not reading that over the summer.

So if it's really going to deal with things of grief or trauma, that is not going to be a summer book for me.

But if it's going to take me into a world, then it is going to be more meaningful and it's going to stick with me more than the perfect where nothing happens.

Like you want stuff to happen.

Yeah.

And I want a book that in the summer that I'm just going to be like, I'm just going to sit here for a couple hours and read or stay up late at night reading because I want to know what happens.