Rereading My Year of Rest Relaxation by, Ottessah Moshfegh 

I think your note about reading the book at the right time is very insightful. I read this book in the fall of 2021, it was right when things were kind of "back to normal" and I moved from the suburban area where i had been "quarantine"-ing back to the major city where i attended uni. This book felt like narration of the year and a half that I had just experienced in a kind of fever dream of isolation and loneliness. It was so full of ennui and sardonic dry humor. Like when life is so miserable you kind of can't help but to laugh at how ridiculous it is. Quite refreshing. I think the popular discourse around this book is really far from what Otessa inteded.

i've read this book in the beginning of covid. during that time i was in an awful job and i was chronically tried. the idea to take one year off and just sleep was very appealing to me. i really enjoyed this book. also the ending was in my opinion perfect. i know alot of people ( especially americans) did not like it but to me it was still a hopeful ending🤷‍♀️that is my opinion

I think you’re going to LOVE Lapvona. Favorite book I read last year by far, it’s so messed up and done so well.

I’m going to be tuned in every night from now on this is so good

I can't wait for this book to get translated to persian, I soooo badly want to read it. Thank you for your insight.

I am a reader and a writer. Your reviews are great. Your mind is beautiful. We are on the same page. Thank you...

Really enjoyed this second look at the novel. I'd forgotten about the author's real emotional attachment to sleep, like the whole bonding experience where her mother would call her in sick at school so they both just could go back to sleep. I agree going into hibernation isn't really a societally accepted practice in the way that the narrator is using it, but it's also funny how it's kind of just taking a more accepted notion (self-care) to an extreme. I like that just about everything in this book seems almost normal, an extension of something normal or at least societally accepted, to the point where it's obviously not normal or healthy. (I also forgot about how she takes a shot of vodka to work up the confidence to walk over and get a coffee... and doesn't she drink the coffee partly because it helps her sleep when she crashes afterwards?)

I have so much to say, but briefly I am recovering from chronic fatigue syndrome or ME/CFS and I recently had my more than a year of rest including periods of being bedbound and I did not want it. But my body took over that decision and now that I'm slowly improving I am facing all those questions about how we live our lives, why we allow our stress to become so chronic and how damaging the treadmill of capitalism is to our health. Now that I am improving the only focus doctors or family have is how quickly can I get back to work. I have to work out where the boundaries are. I have read My Year of Rest and Relaxation and plan to again at some point. Oh, and I don't have television either. Best decision ever.

I had insomnia once due to a very stressful situation and it was absolute hell!! I read this book a year ago and enjoyed it a lot. Never understood all the negative reviews. I love that you reread a lot and that is my goal for next year (this year’s goal is to read the TBR on my shelves). Many people think rereading books is a waste of time but I always find little nuggets that I may have missed the first time I read the book. I am looking forward to seeing if I still love a book that I read and loved 20 years ago. Great review!

❤ - it amazes me how we think and feel so similarly sometimes. I appreciate your thoughts Alana

I loved the book.❤

📚I was here - I'll never read this one, but I was here. 🤣

One thing about any kind of literature is that a lot of what is worth reading isn't exclusive to a genre or category. One of my favorite books is The Power Of Now, and though it can be found in self help or transformation, it has more to do with stoic philosophy, but at the same time it isn't about philosophy. It doesn't fit into any category, so they lump it into an aisle for marketing purposes. The beginning of The Power Of Now reminds me a little of what the character in this book does (more or less), and speaks to your ideas in this revised review video. (Also, though I haven't read it, it speaks a little to Walden as well). Where the industry comes in is when people try to be published by writing for a specific genre or category and compromise their artistic inclination to connect with a specific audience. By writing that way (or creating in any medium) you tend not to reach your full potential because you are handicapped by the audience you are creating for, and if it ventures outside that audience, it becomes less marketable. Some people are fooled into believing that genre is real, when really it is only a convenient measuring stick that has been corrupted and turned into a thing. I think that speaks to many religious and societal norms. It happens in just about every avenue of life.

I felt this way about THE STONE ANGEL. I had to read it in high school and I HATED it. And I mean that, I hated the story, Hagar, I hated that the author took a name from the Bible and created such an awful character. And then... I reread it in my 30's when life didn't exactly go according to plan, like Hagar's, and I loved it. I read it and reread it right after. I still crave this book and I know I will reread it a few more times. It's just so rich. I am looking forward to reading My Year of Rest and Relaxation one day when I'm actually done with my courses. There should be more books about self-mediating and how rough that can be when you realize you're doing yourself harm. I know someone who was addicted to sleep. He said sleep was his drug and it was just as hard to give it up as any other drug. I am having a hard time right now giving up coffee. I can't believe how many things it brought up. P.S. - ALTERNATE WAYS TO DO LIFE. Well, I have traveled half the world teaching ESL. I was hated for it by 99% of those who knew me. "Why do you move around so much? Why can't you just stay in one place? etc etc etc. I don't have one regret (well, maybe one that I never had kids, but that was a complex issue between me and my partner and then he died). Anyway, my friend's mom recently passed away and my friend said, "I'm going to save up to fix my house and then rent it out and move to Bali where i did my yoga training and just teach yoga". I told her about ESL. A girl I met (who actually looks a lot like you, Alana) lived in Washington DC, had an amazing job, but couldn't find meaning. I was redoing my ESL training (I did 3 every 5 years just to refresh) when we met and she has since moved to Bulgaria and has been teaching there. And it's not to say it's better anywhere else. It's the whole experience of living in different places and seeing how differently people live and how important it is to remain unattached to one set of rules and always JUST BE KIND. I have seen Christians who say they love Jesus hate their neighbours which was my ultimate lesson actually. B/c it wasn't like they hated out right. They just didn't tolerate a different way of being; the yogic way. Anyway... Just consider ESL and traveling. ESL pays really well everywhere in the world.

Great video. BIG questions at the end! I've been hesitating on Otessa Moshfegh, having heard conflicting opinions, but she was responsible for Causeway, a fascinating Jennifer Lawrence film from a couple of years back that I watched very recently. That and your video probably mean I'll be on the lookout for her books...

I resonated with this book because I went through something similar with the sleep thing but not as severe. What bothered me about this book was the way the main character treated her friend Reva. She was absolutely terrible to Reva and I really didn’t understand why because almost everything she criticized Reva about was behaviors she exhibited, especially when it came to her obsession with a guy. I also found it irritating to continuously read this woman’s inner monologue about how much more attractive she was than everybody else. Shed constantly make fun of Reva for being self absorbed and self obsessed but so was she. To me this just felt like a woman who was bitter over a guy not wanting to be with her taking all her frustrations out on her friend and trying to make it deeper than it was. Like for example there were many times when she’d talk about how her mother didn’t care about her but it didn’t feel genuine at all, it felt like filler and fluff over what she was really mad about which was that guy. All in all I’d give this a 3 out of 5 stars. I wanted her character to develop in some way and it didn’t feel like she did. Maybe this is a flat one dimensional review but this book fell short to me.

A year or three ago making the rounds on BookTube was a novel about a young woman who wanted nothing in life except to be a clerk in a convenience/grocery store. As one might guess, to me that's a story about depression, or nihilism. Similarly here, to have every possible opportunity to live life to the fullest but instead spend it in bed, or even sleeping seems a story about a waste of life. My first impulse would be that those two women are not healthy, but rather than recognize that, others rush to defend their eccentric choice. Possibly I'm operating under an old and now discarded paradigm and those two stories represent a new one.

I read this book last year and ended up liking it more than I thought I would. It really quite darkly funny, but with a melancholia underlying it. It was good enough to get me to pick up Lapvona anyhow. :)

There's something running through Moshfegh's work I've latched onto, that she's taking the piss out of the world. Like it's all a big joke, none of this matters as much as we think. It's all a big farce. Very much a dark comedy, and she doesn't mind thumbing her nose at the notion of otherwise. Not to get carried away, but I remember thinking of the short story work by Guy de Maupassant, who i learned afterwards was an influence on Moshfegh, and how he liked to poke fun at the pretense and prim attitude of aristocratic life of his time.

Alana, what is the issue with your setup? Are you reading off of a script and that is why the lens is askew. Would you benefit from a teleprompter setup instead where the lens sits inside the machine?