Results: Milk And Honey
Published on 08/15/2018
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1.
1.
If you are familiar with the name Rupi Kaur, you may be one of the 2.5 million who purchased her debut book, Milk And Honey, a collection of poetry, prose, and hand-drawn illustrations (yes, her illustrations). The book is divided into four chapters, and each chapter depicts a different theme. It was on The New York Times Best Seller list for over 77 weeks, when it was released in 2014. Not too bad for a debut book for a young author (she was only 21 at the time). What makes this even more fascinating is that Kaur did not speak any English until she came to Canada at age 4 from India. At the age of 25, she now has two best sellers to her credit. Part of her massive success is her establishing a following on Instagram, where she would share her writings, and had built up over a million followers. Have you read any of her books?
No
91%
2044 votes
I have read Milk And Honey
4%
84 votes
I have read The Sun And Her Followers
2%
46 votes
Have seen her Instagram page
2%
45 votes
Know her from somewhere else
3%
58 votes
2.
2.
Milk and Honey is a collection of poems that tackle tough themes – rape, violence, alcoholism, trauma – but it's written in Kaur's trademark short, simple verse – with her own illustrations acting as visual punctuations. Her second book, The Sun And Her Flowers features poems about refugees, immigration, revolution – each motivated in part, she says, by her experience of living and writing in the US during the rise of Donald Trump. But a big part of the new book, too, is about the grief of losing "what you think is the love of your life – and dealing with its raw aftermath. Kaur does not necessarily write from experience. Hers seems to have been a happy, albeit strict upbringing on the outskirts of Toronto, in Brampton. She talks little of her past but simply points to her experience of being a woman as the thing that has most informed her writing. Do you enjoy reading books that are written in poetry?
No
45%
1021 votes
Yes
11%
237 votes
Depends
32%
723 votes
Don't read
12%
269 votes
3.
3.
Here are a few more unconventionally-written novels. How many of these have you read?
'Nox' by Anne Carson -- Anne Carson's Nox is a book cleverly disguised as a box of old family photos. As the accordion book unfurls, you'll find poetry, scraps of handwritten notes, torn photos, and Latin poetry, with word-by-word Latin translations sprinkled throughout. To understand the full narrative of Carson's brother's untimely death, you have to do some puzzle solving, translating, and deep thinking.
3%
60 votes
'Gadsby' by Ernest Vincent Wright -- Gadsby is a full length novel that doesn't use the letter "e." That's 50,000 words about John Gadsby revitalizing a small city without using "e" once. So it might not be the most poetic novel you've ever read, but it is most certainly unconventional.
5%
123 votes
'Alphabetical Africa' by Walter Abish -- The first chapter of Alphabetical Africa begins with "a." Sorry, let me clarify: every word of the first chapter of Alphabetical Africa begins with "a." The second chapter adds words beginning with "b," and so on and so forth, until all twenty six letters are in play—and then it begins removing letters, one by one, until we're back to "a" again. And yes, there are characters and a plot.
2%
53 votes
'JR' by William Gaddis -- JR is over 700 pages of unattributed dialogue. That means that essentially the entire novel is written in dialogue, without ever telling you who is speaking or where they are. And yet JR still manages to tell the story of an ambitious sixth-grader embarking on risky business ventures (such as a string of combination nursing homes and funeral parlors) in a world obsessed with making deals.
2%
37 votes
'Time's Arrow' by Martin Amis -- Dr. Tod T. Friendly dies. Then he feels better. He breaks up with lovers, and then seduces them. He makes his patients sick before sending them home. His entire life is racing by in reverse—until the reader finally understands why time is working this way. Time's Arrow is an entirely backwards novel that keeps you guessing as you turn back the clock.
2%
39 votes
'Hopscotch' by Julio Cortázar -- Julio Cortázar lets you decide how to read his novel: you can charge straight through from chapter 1 to 56... or you can "hopscotch" around all 155 chapters following the table of contents. You decide how you want the story of Horacio Oliveira and his bohemian friends to take shape, and you can change the order of events simply by flipping to another page.
1%
21 votes
'Exercises in Style' by Raymond Queneau -- The story here is fairly simple: a man gets into an argument on the bus. That's it, that's the whole plot. But Queneau takes that exceedingly simple story and tells in 99 times in 99 wildly different styles (opera, slang, a sonnet, etc). The result is one small book that'll change the way you look at storytelling, because style really does matter.
1%
17 votes
'The Lover's Dictionary' by David Levithan -- This chronicle of a romantic relationship is constructed entirely of dictionary entries, with short bursts and snapshots of moments in their relationship as the definition to each word, spelling out the lifespan of a courtship. In alphabetical order, of course.
1%
28 votes
'Long Way Down' by Jason Reynolds -- This entire novel takes place over the span of sixty seconds. The sixty seconds it takes for Will to decide whether he's going to shoot his brother's killer or not. But Will might not know the whole story, and he gets his chance during the long ride down the elevator to get his revenge. Reynolds uses free verse poetry to tell the story, and the unusual choice gives the narrative a heart pounding urgency that moves you along at the speed it takes to make a life altering decision within sixty seconds.
1%
22 votes
'House Of Leaves' by Mark Danielewski -- This haunting is chronicled through footnotes, long asides, words in the margin, whole pages with a single word or maybe a sentence written sideways, and then pages with ink filling all the available space. House of Leaves is not easy on you, but it's a very effective way to build suspense as the family in the novel realizes that their house is growing bigger, but only on the inside.
2%
36 votes
None of them
88%
1977 votes
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