What We’re Reading

Naomi Fry’s Favorite Book

娜奥米·弗莱的至爱之书

July 15, 2026

A woman reading a book with a cat on her shoulder

Illustration by Greg Clarke

Being asked to name my favorite book of all time feels like way too much pressure (apologies to the asker, this newsletter’s editor). The older I get, the harder I find it to make definitive calls of this sort, since, by this point in my life, God bless, I’ve read a whole bunch of books, and have hated but also loved too many to recall. And so, any answer I’d give would be provisional, or incomplete, or mood dependent. That said, there is one book that I’ll never not be in the frame of mind to read, and maybe that’s one definition of “favorite,” so here goes.

被问到“此生最爱的书是哪一本”，实在让人压力山大（向提问者——也就是本通讯的编辑——致歉）。年纪越大，我越难做出这类斩钉截铁的判断。毕竟活到这个岁数，老天保佑，我读过的书实在不少，恨过的和爱过的都多到记不清。所以，任何回答都只能是暂时的、不完整的，或者全凭当时心情。话虽如此，有一本书，我永远都处在想读的心境里——这大概也算“至爱”的一种定义吧，那我就说说它。

Photo of a beat up cover of Carrie Fisher's Postcards from the Edge featuring Meryl Streep's face.

I first encountered Carrie Fisher’s “Postcards from the Edge” when I was fourteen, in 1990. The mass-market paperback that I picked up at University Book Store, in Seattle, which is the edition I still have, was published as a tie-in with the Mike Nichols adaptation that had just been released in theatres. The movie, which stars Shirley MacLaine and Meryl Streep, is also fantastic, and if you haven’t seen it you absolutely should—MacLaine’s performance, especially, is what comes to my mind when I think of the words “great acting”—but the book it was based on is the work that truly has my heart.

1990年，我十四岁，第一次读到凯莉·费雪（Carrie Fisher）的《来自边缘的明信片》。那本大众市场平装版是我在西雅图的大学书店买的，至今还在手边。它当时是作为迈克·尼科尔斯（Mike Nichols）同名改编电影的宣传联动版出版的，电影刚刚在影院上映。那部片子由雪莉·麦克雷恩（Shirley MacLaine）和梅丽尔·斯特里普（Meryl Streep）主演，同样精彩绝伦，如果你还没看过，绝对应该去看——尤其是麦克雷恩的表演，每当我想到“伟大演技”这个词，脑海中浮现的就是她。但真正占据我心的，还是电影所依据的那本书。

Though ostensibly a novel—about an actress named Suzanne Vale, who overdoses on pills, goes to rehab, and must then rebuild her career and relationships in her weird, disheartening, and exhilarating home town of Hollywood—“Postcards” is, in fact, a thinly veiled account of Fisher’s life, and it met me at exactly the right time in my own. I was a teen-age girl trying to find out what it meant to become a woman, and Fisher gave me the answers: you could be fucked up and depressed and self-loathing and still be smart and funny; you could struggle and then triumph and then struggle and then triumph; you could cry and you could laugh, often simultaneously. None of this was easy, but some of it, at least, was hilarious. Reading the book gave me hope, and, more than thirty years later, it still does.

《明信片》表面上是一部小说，讲述女演员苏珊娜·维尔（Suzanne Vale）服药过量、进入康复中心，之后不得不在好莱坞这个古怪、令人沮丧又令人兴奋的家乡，重建自己的事业与人际关系。但实际上，它几乎是费雪本人经历的一层薄薄伪装。而它恰好在我人生最需要的时候与我相遇。那时我是个十几岁的女孩，正试图弄明白成为一个女人意味着什么。费雪给了我答案：你可以一团糟，可以抑郁，可以自我厌恶，同时依然聪明、风趣；你可以挣扎，然后胜利，再挣扎，再胜利；你可以哭，也可以笑，而且常常是同时发生。这一切都不容易，但至少其中一些，实在滑稽透顶。读这本书给了我希望，三十多年过去，它依然如此。

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P.S. bell hooks is back on best-seller lists—for an unexpected reason.

附言：贝尔·胡克斯（bell hooks）重回畅销书榜——原因出人意料。

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