#63. Do you read chips or kale?

A hilarious book categorization system that isn’t as weird as it sounds

Feb 21, 2024

Hey! I’ve been in Arizona hanging out with my family for the last few days and just got back home late Monday night. Thank you so much for all the nice comments on my last essay! That one really took it out of me and I’m very much still in recovery mode. We went on a few long walks in 80˚ weather this weekend and had some nice reading time in my parent’s backyard. I’m really trying to slow down a bit and let myself actually enjoy this transition time.

This week, I have an amusing categorization system my book club made up to share with you. Recently, we’ve been referring to some of the books we’re reading as “chips” or “kale,” and it’s hilarious how spot-on it is.

CHIPS (noun): A book you read extremely fast that may be somewhat mindless and not necessarily all that “nutritious,” but you run to tell all your friends about it because of how delicious it is (and you can’t wait for more in the form of sequels, if applicable)

You know–think romantasy, mysteries, romance, some historical fiction, etc. Your definition of chips may vary depending on your personal reading tastes, but the book that sums up this category for me is Fourth Wing, obviously. When I arrived in Arizona last Friday, I asked my mom if she was reading anything good, and she said she was in the middle of Iron Flame… for the second time. (It was just published in November).

At first, I was referring to books that are actually chips as “candy,” which my friend Sarah was very quick to correct. There is absolutely such a thing as consuming too much candy, whereas chips go down easier and you can eat the entire bag in one sitting if you’re not careful, without feeling the adverse side effects of too much sugar. She was right – books-as-candy is its own category.

For me, candy is most murder mysteries and celebrity memoirs. So many of the same characteristics of chips, but I absolutely have to mind my intake of the entire genre or my brain feels like it’s starting to rot. A few of my book club friends said their candy is romance, but I think romance for some people is chips? I also know of at least one person in my book club who would say that Fourth Wing is actually candy. It’s complicated!!!

KALE (noun): A book that you might struggle to finish but gives you a sense of purpose and accomplishment if/when you reach the end; often teaches you something, expands your mind, or reads at a comprehension level that often makes you wonder if you actually understood it at all

Like chips/candy, kale will also differ according to the reader, but it doesn’t necessarily have to mean reading it is torture! For me, kale is one of those books it takes me weeks or even months to read, but just like working out, I’m almost always glad I did it when I’m finished. Kale can be non-fiction (typically not memoirs though) or fiction. I admittedly don’t read a lot of true kale, but the leafy greens I’ve been working my way through for a few months now is Without Children: The Long History of Not Being a Mother by Peggy O'Donnell Heffington. It’s a fascinating book, but I’m reading it at a glacial pace because there is just so much to learn and absorb.

My friend Emily said something important about books-as-kale yesterday that struck me as really true. She said that so many adults approach reading with a “kale or bust” mindset and then end up not really reading much at all. This is really sad!

Both types of books are important. Whereas kale feeds your need for accomplishment, makes you learn something, or gives you the satisfaction of finishing a book that you or others find “important” or extremely well-written/poetic/transcendent, etc., chips are all about pleasure. Books that are chips are shareable, entertaining, and you pretty much always want more. Chips and kale serve completely different purposes and I think both are necessary for a balanced reading diet.

I asked my book club to help me come up with the following lists of chips and kale for your reading pleasure. If you’ve been in a reading rut, especially, pick up some chips and see what it does for you!

A few books we recommend that are chips–

Fourth Wing and Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas (although I think my entire book club agrees that the book that is chips is actually A Court of Mist and Fury, the second book in the series!)
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reed
Verity by Colleen Hoover (let me interject to say that Colleen Hoover was a VERY hot topic in our group text yesterday, but this is a solid chips recommendation from yours truly so it made the list)
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty
Anything by Emily Henry
Anything by Samantha Irby

A few books we recommend that are kale–

The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff (I listed this first only because this was our January book club book, and the reviews were quite mixed but we all agreed it was definitely kale)
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
Impossible Vacation by Spalding Gray
The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness by Robert Waldinger M.D. and Marc Schulz, Ph.D
Women Who Run With The Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D

Oh! And I recently tried writing fiction for the very first time! I wasn’t going to share it anywhere because it is really and truly just for fun, but I figured since I was writing about books today, I might as well add it just for funsies. The piece I wrote is very short–as in I wrote it on my phone in the Notes app–and is actually based on a true story. Not at all shocking that my first try at fiction is something that actually happened to me, lol.

Please enjoy this little morsel of flash fiction that I wrote on the plane home from Arizona on Monday night. I think it could be chips…?

the stranger
The girl stumbled a little as she made her way down the plane’s center aisle, brushing her backpack against the arm of another passenger as she went by.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, exhaustion and a line of people impatiently waiting behind her preventing a fuller apology.
As she found her seat in the second to last row, she laid her head against the cold window as the lights blinked off and the plane began to roll back from the gate. As an American traveling alone through Europe, she mostly kept to herself. It had always felt safer that way.
The flight was a short one, smooth and uneventful as they flew towards Germany in the pitch black. The girl unbuckled from her seat and stood to stretch her legs as lights illuminated the cabin, waiting for her turn to depart.
Standing directly behind her in the very last row, she accidentally locked eyes with another passenger.
“Hello,” he said by way of greeting, his English perfect, but his German accent thick. “I’m sorry if this is rude, but what did you do during the flight?”
“What?” The girl responded after a beat, caught off guard.
“During the flight,” the stranger replied with a warm smile. “I was sitting right behind you, and it looked like you weren’t reading or working or watching anything. So I was just wondering what you were doing to pass the time.”
The girl returned a polite half smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Oh, I was just thinking,” she said as she shrugged and swung around to see if they would be deplaning soon.
“Thinking?” The man laughed. “What were you thinking about for that long?”
She paused, wondering how honest to be with him. The man seemed nice enough—at least 10 years her senior, wearing a rumpled suit and badly in need of a shave—but he had an air of mystery to him that she couldn’t quite place. Something about his eyes; the way he seemed to hold her gaze for just a moment too long.
“I was remembering something from a long time ago,” she replied with a sad smile, turning away from him in a feeble attempt to end the conversation.
She rotated again in her seat, looking ahead to mark the progress of the other passengers, and saw it was finally her turn to exit the plane. Somehow, the man appeared in the aisle directly behind her, as if he had held back the other two passengers between them to continue their conversation.
“Well I hope you’ll make new memories wherever you’re going now,” he murmured gently, making her jump ever so slightly. It was almost midnight, and she felt a rush of cold air as his arm accidentally brushed hers.
“Thank you,” the girl replied in earnest, now desperate to get as far away from him as possible. She flashed him a forced smile as she shifted her gaze to the only luggage the man was carrying: a small, white box that looked like it was made of thick styrofoam, marked with bold, red letters. Her eyes went wide as she gave him a little wave to gracefully exit the conversation, walking towards the front of the plane as fast as she could while maneuvering her bag through the narrow aisle.
As she stepped foot onto the cool concrete outside, she turned, looking for the man among the tired passengers milling about baggage claim in various shades of dark, lifeless colors. Part of her wondered if she had dreamed their entire conversation.
Years later, as she sat in the back corner of another small plane as the clock again creeped towards midnight, the memory suddenly came back to her. And as she replayed the interaction in her mind, closing her eyes as she tried to remember all the details of that night, she wondered why she never asked that man why he had been transporting a human heart.

Do you have any chips or kale recommendations to share? Drop them in the comments. See you next week!