Book Date No. 12

A trip to The Corner Bookstore with graduate student Eliana Smith.

My first book date of 2025! This time I headed uptown to The Corner Bookstore, a quaint shop on the Upper East Side with Eliana, a friend of a friend. Eliana and I have always bonded over books—we were seated together at our friend Madison’s rehearsal dinner and spent much of it chatting about our favorite reads—so it was inevitable that I’d ask her out. Eliana also recently started a book club called She Dwells, which she describes as a space for the “thoughtful and inquisitive,” so I’d recommend checking it out if you’re looking for a group of smart people to read with. Read about our date, below.

Can you state your name for the record?

Eliana Smith.

What do you do?

I’m a graduate student and a writer.

How many books did you read last year?

54.

Wow.

Yeah, crazy.

What was the first book you read last year?

The Talented Mr. Ripley. It was for school.

What’d you think about it?

I liked it. One of those books where everyone talks about it, but you don't know what it's going to be like. But I enjoyed it. It was cool. I think the writing was really impressive, the way it makes you think about the characters even though he’s doing crazy things.

What's the last book you read last year?

It's so embarrassing. The Christmas Tree Farm by Laurie Gilmore. It’s one of the horniest books I've ever read in my life and it's a series.

I love that.

It’s about this tiny town called Dream Harbor and all the different citizens. It has a Gilmore Girls vibe. Small town romance. Everyone's hooking up with each other. Can't say I'd recommend it but it was fun to read during the Christmas season.

What are you reading right now?

Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin. I’m really enjoying it. I read Giovanni’s Room earlier this month and I feel like I have to read everything Baldwin has ever written.

What was your favorite book of last year, or the most standout?

James. It was my first Everett. It really blew me away. I spent my last summer writing my dissertation, which is on Afrofuturism, and I was doing a lot of research on slavery. It was really depressing and my brain was looking for something else to read. I was reading a lot of girly pop books to kind of distract my mind. I was hesitant to read James because I was like, oh, wait a minute, is this going to take me back to that depression that I was in during all my research last summer? But it didn't at all. It was really well told and showed this whole other side of enslaved people from that time. I found it a really refreshing take on such a classic story.

Wait, can you talk about your dissertation a little bit?

My dissertation was focused on a myth. Way back in the day, during the Middle Passage, there were a lot of pregnant black women that were thrown overboard. Disrupted cargo. There were myths started that the infants in the womb escaped, learned how to survive underwater and created this Black Atlantis. That myth is the focus of my research. I was looking at different ways the myth has been interpreted over time. I also connected it to some modern theorists and their ideas of how to process trauma. So Sadiya Hartman, Christina Sharpe—

The OGs. Love that. Are there any contemporary works you're really excited about? This myth is also my favorite. There could be a hundred thousand books about it and I would read every one.

Yes. So the primary text in my dissertation is The Deep by River Solomon. It was a little disappointing. It played up the fantasy aspect a little too much. There could have been a little more seriousness to it, especially since Solomon worked with Daveed Diggs who is part of this music group called clipping. They did a musical interpretation of the myth. There's also this artist, Firelei Báez, who is one of my favorite artists of all time. She did a visual representation of the myth and that, to me, was the perfect expression of it because it's fun but still very intellectual. I found myself writing about that a lot more than I had planned originally.

How did you become a reader? What's the role that reading has played in your life?

I grew up in a household with very limited technology. My mom's a big reader, so we were kind of forced to read at a young age. Books became my companion. I also moved around a lot in my childhood, so books became a form of stability. I stopped reading in high school. I hated all the books that we were told we needed to read in high school. I rediscovered my love for reading in college and majored in English. Since then I take a book everywhere with me. I read every day, twice a day.

Is there a book from your childhood that feels formative?

I read a lot of comics, like Archie. The fusion of text and art is really appealing to me. As I got older, I would say The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. It changed my life. That was one of the first books I read by a Black female author and I just didn't know up until then that books like that existed. I would also say Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto. That's one my all time favorite books, but specifically at the end of Kitchen, there's this little short story, and I love that piece.

Can you tell me more about the books that you would say shaped you?

Beloved. I used that in my dissertation as well, which was a really cool, full circle moment. Kitchen, for sure I read it around the time I experienced grief for the first time. The book is all about grief, so it was a perfect support system for me. The main character is a young woman trying to figure out how to move forward with all this loss in her life, and I really related to that at the time, and just the idea of making your own family how food brings people together. I loved all of that.

Where do you get your reading recommendations?

Online, mostly. Instagram, TikTok. I look at Publishers Weekly a lot to see what's trending, what's selling. I'm always kind of moving towards what other people are reading because I like engaging in discussions online about what's good, what's not good.

Are there any Tiktokers or Bookstagrammers you like?

Interestedinblackbooks. Love everything she posts. There’s also usingmylitdegree, love her recommendations as well. Same with thepostofficegirl on Instagram, I love hers too.

Who in your life has the best book taste?

My mom.

Is there a book she's recommended that continues to impact you in some way?

So many. What first came to mind was When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanthi, a memoir that I love, one of my all time favorite books. My mom told me to drop everything and read it, and I listened to her. Also, A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid. My mom's from Jamaica originally, so she relates a lot with Kincaid and her experiences in the Caribbean. As someone who travels a lot, I was very unaware of how my choices impacted the communities I was visiting. A Small Place does a really good job of explaining how to be a more conscious traveler.

What's a book you've been meaning to read but haven't gotten to?

Wandering Stars. I loved There, There so I’m excited to continue it. Wandering Stars is both a prequel and a continuation, so I'm interested to see how that works.

How would you describe your reading taste?

Everything under the sun, primarily literary fiction, but fantasy holds a special place in my heart as well.