I saw Cold Souls last night and it feels like something that will stay with me for a while. It's not only that it's an amalgamation of all of these things that I love already- The New Yorker, elephants, Chekhov and the pathos of Russian literature, existential angst, Paul Giamatti getting flustered, plays within films, absurd jokes-it's clearly a recipe for something I would dearly enjoy, but it's so much more than the sum of it's parts. It's big, serious questions about how we should live, what we deserve or don't, what it means to be ourselves. And it's terribly sweet and sad.

I have to be honest...I'd only ever read pieces before. I was wary; I stared at it across the room and it seemed ominous and I felt sort of indifferent towards it. But since I decided to yank it off the shelf and immerse myself in it's big-hearted and painful and multivalent prose, it has captivated me completely. I'm about halfway through- and in the headspace where I can't really bring myself out of it- reading it on the bus in the morning while trying to balance my coffee, and climbing straight into bed after work to hope to feel as less lonely in it's epicness as it allows until I fall asleep.