i think if a person who’s not chronically online read this their head would explode.

check out my tiktok review here: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGeCCUVo9/arcs own short-stories44 s autotelics29 20

a glimpse into a deeply uninteresting mind. crazy how easily the most intellectually incurious people are convinced of their own brilliance.26 s1 comment michelle218 193

Gen z depressioncore for the LA/NY cool kids

Not every story is a gem (it can get a bit repetitive/rambly for my taste) but the ones that shine are nothing you've read before, and for that i give compliments to the chef 21 s1 comment alexis225 39

Pretty typical upper middle class college-educated party girl cokehead personal essays, except she uses 4chan and it’s adderall instead of coke. Tedious, banal, repetitive, although a couple stories DID border on that Call of Duty/Thirty Seconds to Mars e-girl edit where it’s the streamer dressed as Mabel Pines ranting about how the planet is dying and the animals are leaving(???) and then The Kill starts playing over someone’s CoD killcam montage.14 s1 comment Matthew102 22

It's hard to deny that this is an achievement, even if parts of it feel they're coming to print a little late. Honor manages to capture, in almost all of these stories, a child amazement with the world, with language, culture, and people. I often found myself getting chills and tearing up while reading this. The writing has an amazing girly quality that can get even the most autistic of men to appreciate how beautiful and difficult it can be to be a girl. I think every girl should read this; I think every boy should read this. The opener "Love Story" is an instant classic. "Internet Girl," "Good Boys," and "Pillow Angels" were all already part of the Levy canon and remain highlights of this dazzling collection.

I imagine a lot of reviewers will focus on the use of internet slang, ASCII art, memes, right wing symapthy blah blah blah, but I think that's missing the point. Or at least, missing what makes these stories so great. 13 s Blair1,868 5,321

Still working out how I felt about this. The effect of one of Levy’s stories on its own is a short sharp shock but collectively it can be the opposite: deadening. Not necessarily a bad thing; I think that effect fits in well with the style and themes of the collection, the numbness of a life lived online, the desensitisation of exposure, the assertion that ‘nothing is stable, especially not the self’. But I also can’t help thinking the stories work better as I originally encountered (some of) them – in isolation, on websites – than they do collected in a book. Because of that (?) I still think the ones I read that way (‘Cancel Me’, ‘Good Boys’, ‘Internet Girl’) are the best. There’s an insanely good run in the middle, though, with ‘Cancel Me’ followed by ‘Shoebox World’ and ‘Z was for Zoomer’, three shots of adrenaline in a row.

I received an advance review copy of My First Book from the publisher through Edelweiss.2024-release contemporary edelweiss ...more17 s Tom Mooney729 242

I thought this was a heap of crap. But then, I'm 38 and still wearing my baseball cap backwards, so what do I know?11 s Marissa Cooper4 1 follower

“Dimes Square falls under this thing where it’s , well, what’s the export? What’s the book, what’s the band?" - Jack Antonoff

Lena Dunham's ex boyfriend asked, and Honor Levy delivered with this shabby little endeavor of unclear purpose.

The experience of reading My First Book is skimming the comments on an Instagram Reel while half-listening to the most annoying kid you ever nannied yammer about drama at her private middle school. It's that one Chris Fleming bit about teens who drink coffee, peppered with alt right ecoglossalia.

Critics at legacy publications have been overly generous in their of this mishegoss, perhaps because the work is too feeble to inspire a satisfying pan.

There are no real ideas to engage with here, not even bad ones, just regurgitated memes delivered with the bogus bathos of an Adderall high.

Dime's up.11 s2 comments Rachel Louise Atkin1,135 273

My First Book is a collection of stories and pieces of writing about the internet and growing up on the internet in the 2000s. It was weirdly relatable and made me realise I've not had a single unique experience in my 27 years on this earth. I loved how it played with form and had both a strangely comforting nostalgic feel about it whilst also feeling slightly sinister in how it would mention incel culture, blue pill/red pill stuff and the weird things that have happened on 4chan. But I really d when it discussed Tumblr and the strange fusion of your identity when you grow up with the early phases of the internet at such a young age. It was such an addictive read and I absolutely loved it. There wasn't a point in it I ever felt bored or a story I felt was bad. I really recommend this if you were chronically online as a child as you will feel super seen reading this, but it's also just an amazing read. 11 s Walt John Pearce6 62

I knew that Honor would get it done and Honor got it done and it is even better than I thought it would be. 8 s Idil11

Thank you Granta for sending me a copy of this book!

Perfect for fans of sotce, heaven by marc jacobs, and possibly the red scare podcast. /hj

'My First Book' is a collection of the lamentations of being young and online. This is it in its simplest form, but it is much more than this. It is unoriginal and unique. At first, it reads a series of unrelated stories, all dark in nature. The structure of each story progresses words on an i-pod lost in the apocalypse, corrupted so badly by time that they start to reproduce with each other.

Levy's writing style seems to resemble a secret language, invisible ink, only revealed to those with square eyes. This language, littered with cultural references, memes and crude humour, seem to speak for and to this digital generation. I found myself laughing randomly at certain points, something that Levy herself points out in the book to be due to the hundreds of pixels of internet knowledge that had been injected into my brain since my youth. She writes in the way that meme pages, internet 'collectives', 6 second/15 second/3 minute videos have been writing in for almost two decades now. I would say that this book, her first book, is the anthropology of the chronically online community.

There is a sense of intentional entitlement throughout the novel- I think it is important to note that this book is not the universal experience of the chronically online Gen Z-er. This is the narrative of a rich white LA girl, a product of her physical and digital environment. She embraces this overlap with the insufferable behaviour of her main character, who I find myself cringing at so much at, and seems to develop into an unfiltered stream of consciousness.

I personally really enjoyed this book. The one missing star is due to the fact that I know this will inspire a wave of young writers/creatives ( myself) to write more about the horrors of the internet, to try and quantify it. I'm not sure that I want that.

EDIT: after rereading, I am decreasing my rating. I think I was right to highlight the entitlement and I fear I may have overlooked it due to my excitement about internet storytelling. I still enjoyed this book as a window into the mind of a modern white girl, but it is deeply flawed in its lack of critical thought of topics such as “cancel culture”. still a phenomenal read and engaging narrative style! 7 s Sam21 1 follower

Honor Levy puts the zZzzZZZzzzz in zoomer with this "groundbreaking debut". This was my first encounter with her writing, and I was prepared to hate-read it with the same enjoyment I hate-listen to Dimes Square podcasts, but the vast majority of this collection failed to provoke any emotion at all. It just isn't very good, outside of (mostly) technically fine writing.

I struggled to understand what exactly this even was, a collection of (barely?) fiction stories or another dull series of personal essays and reflections on "growing up online", yawn. It's not literature, that's for sure. At best, it's Twitterature. You can't just repeat a bunch of already-dated internet hot takes, slap a book cover around it, and call it art. I don't know why but I expected a little more. Maybe it was the Jordan Castro cosign. He wrote on similar themes, though a generation apart, but he did it in a more enjoyable and interesting way. This book just felt sophomoric and being self-aware about your cringiness or edgelordiness or even your sincerity, which she clearly has, doesn't inherently add value.

All that said, infinite eye-rolls accounted for, I think she has potential. She seems to know how to write, even if some of the examples in this piece don't exhibit it very well, and she's *thinking* about interesting themes, important things, she just isn't coherently *saying* anything important about them, let alone new. But if she came out with a more refined, more reflective, more mature collection or novel in the future, I would give it a shot. I d parts of a couple of the stories in here, particularly Halloween Forever. Doubtful she'll become the "voice of the generation" for Gen Z but she could probably say something more insightful if she really tried.6 s Dani Pergola101 35

"...in our homemade cyber echo chambers, to lean toward the right has become an act of radicalism."

I typically enjoy hate-reading books but I'm genuinely annoyed that I wasted my time on this. We get it, you think you're if Patricia Lockwood was a Red Scare girl. You're rich and you love hanging out with sex pests. The short stories had no compelling characters, no distinct narratives, and all blended together. It was torturous to get through. I'm shocked this book was picked up by a publisher. Don't let the high profile blurbs fool you (her parents probably paid for them).5 s1 comment Reader1 review

if somebody gave the “She's So Crazzzzzzzy! Love Her!!” girl a book deal this is what you would get

for someone that’s being branded as a spokesperson for zoomers the references are quite outdated, there’s more effort in trying to present herself as a chronically online person than actually writing something interesting to a gen z person

my annoyance with this book is that it only reiterates memes that don’t accurately represent the spaces she supposedly participes in, she’s some sort of girl blogger that only gets posts recommended months later after they were posted and decides that’s going to be her personality now. it feels inauthentic, an aspiring niche icon stuck on neologisms that were only funny for a few months

maybe i’ll add more later 5 s michal k-c669 68

I won't lie a lot of the right-wing coded internet speak basically announces this thing as DOA (dated on arrival) but I also think that's kind of the point. The internet is too fast. Something is sincere then immediately becomes ironic for millions of people. I think Honor Levy is a lot smarter than much of the recent online discourse has made her out to be, and I do think this style, though sometimes spiralling into a kind of directionless neuroticism, is a much better attempt at documenting a specific moment in time — but not a place in space. online is everywhere. will continue reading whatever she publishes4 s Nelly55

this shit is gonna be nasty gen z mental illness propaganda

milady i love you4 s Fiona Murphy McCormack157 23

Read the proof/ARC from the publisher so there may have been changes in the completed text.
Im conflicted with this book. Its so metatextual and self aware. At the best moments of this book it felt groundbreaking - something I had never experianced before, a new strong and promising awake alive voice in fiction. There are parts which will stick with me, really profound and deeply funny cynicism.
At the worst points, it was blandly repetitive unsubtle and read bad spoken word poetry. Honor Levy is a brilliant intellegent writer for her age but I think if this had just been stripped back a little further and honestly given more time to develop - it could have been sensational.3 s Tess122 8

can we bffr3 s Megan Becker18 5

one (1) single page of this would kill a victorian child3 s Pate Duncan45 15

Honor Levy has a genuine talent that’s most clearly on display in the previously published pieces and a few of the stronger new ones here, but just melts away in “Z was for Zoomer.” The politics in this book oscillate between well-intended liberal banalities, some kind of melancholic resignation of prior revolutionary Marxism, and a regurgitation of the accelerationist right-wing catechisms decrying neoliberalism and anything approximate to or synecdochical for it, namely, that which is “woke,” “bluepilled,” “cringe,” or related to identity politics. Honor is meaningfully different from her peers of this adjacent scene in that there seems to be a very earnest attempt at finding some parity between the facile right-wing appropriations of Žižek, Land, and Fisher here, but there remains a particularly weak engagement with what identity politics is and the extent to which it seriously works as a proxy or carrier for neoliberalism. A closer read of Foucault, Butler, and any number of scholars working with identity after the 1990s would render obvious and passé the idea that Levy toils to produce in that identity works as both the conditions of intelligibility for social recognition and the constraints that demarcate its possibilities. “Z was for Zoomer” feels the most sneering, least curious piece here and almost sinks the entire book.

Honor at her best manages to describe in starkly defamiliarizing ways the norms of a life lived on the internet, particularly in its strangest corners. “Internet Girl” remains unimpeachable to me in large part because of how the poignancy of the work arises from a plain admission of complicated facts rather than a focus on traumatic language. This declarative tendency curdles into the usual kind of provocative edgelord schtick in other areas of this book; Levy is too good a writer to keep relying on the most cynical of crutches in these spots, and I hope that future works follow along that investigative discussion of an adolescent subjectivity shaped by the internet rather than half-heartedly offering semi-ironic aphorisms with the royal “we.” The book would benefit from a dissociation from scenester insularity in part because of the odious politics that can come from that space, but more practically because it makes Levy lose confidence in her own voice and authority for the sake of trying to say something interesting or important. A mixed bag, but I hold out hope for a more discerning body of work in the future.2 s Chris Browning268 7 Read

My friend Jiv is a writer. We met in college as english majors when I said I was a writer. I stopped writing soon after, but stayed an english major. Jiv kept writing but quit being an english major. Jiv met Honor Levy online and then in person. Jiv says Honor is the voice of our generation, at least until he finishes his novel. I trust his judgement, but not always. The pieces collected here are good. Levy lays out the anxieties of those raised online in a language that makes more sense to me than the “extremely online” language of Oyler and Lockwood. The centerpiece of the collection is both its apex and its nadir; this makes sense to me, everything these days tends to feel that way. A glossary of zoomer language addressed to a future Levy that sparkles with insight and simultaneously drags with the weight of the voice of a generation explaining the generation to their parents. My friend Jiv says you should read this; I agree. This isn’t a review so much as it is a writing exercise, but I don’t write anymore. I think it’s better that way.2 s sharber43

trust me when i say that you won't regret it...

https://www.ronslate.com/on-my-first-...2 s nineinchnovels72 22

What in the actual wtf. dnf2 s2 comments cantread26204 10

honor understands the internet inside and out it’s sweeter than I expected more earnest someone else trying to write in this way might easily read as Cringe but she floats through internet references painting a picture of the pain of defining a self in relationship to the internet and now the internet is air and to be honest other people have tried to write about the internet in a completely unsuccessful way but this is how it really feels immersive surround sound disorienting I loved it2 s Steven Guida20

I really enjoyed this. Honor has a very strong, unique voice of her own and new writing style. A lot of this really felt a jolt reading. Reminded me a bit of Jia’s Trick Mirror but better and more updated (and I really Trick Mirror too). This is hyper online but so am I. I think the bookend stories are the two best or maybe just the perfect intro and outro. The first “Love Story” is a zoomer version of Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er boi” but updated for an e girl and a groyper and completely written in internet speak. Just fantastic. Then the last story “Pillow Cases” is a stream of consciousness fantasy that starts with her high school sleepover and goes onto lyrically free association style transgressions imagining the end of the world or the modern world or maybe just America. Really ends in a flourish on a high note, superb.

My only criticism is just stuff that she still seems young and some of the insights seem juvenile. But overall I thought this was as good a meditation and dissection of our current time and especially how we interact with the internet and our shaped by it but also shape it. And if anything, she illustrates the contradictions a young person in this digital age has. Now i sound old. I am. Anyways this was great and I think she alludes to meeting Dasha in one of the stories and she thanks her in the acknowledgements which was thrilling for a stan such as I. In all honesty, I will be reading everything she puts out going forward and highly recommend this book!

Halloween forever.1 IJustDontYou42

First story contains one of the greatest paragraphs in literature:

“He wanted to tell the whole World Wide Web how he felt: She’s so hot I want to clean her room, rescue her, white knight defend her in comments and battle. Why Is She So Perfect? but he’d have to play it cool, chill sigma, no simping. Alcibiades, that’s me. The last samurai, I’m him. I’m literally him. I’m Ryan Gosling in Drive. I’m American Psycho. I’m Joker. I’m Taxi Driver. He’d stand above her, tall and strong. She’d stare up at him with her shining anime, no her shining animal eyes, her real eyes, realize real lies. Wondering what he was thinking. He’d stare into them and then he’d sit beside her, very close, take a breath and say, Damn Bitch, You Live This? Max to Roxanne from A Goofy Movie (1995) from the meme (2016).”
1 Sam Hughes781 59 Read

THIS WAS SO GOOOOOD!

I am so thankful to Honor Levy and PRH Audio for the #Free Audiobook and the chance to listen to this collection of stories before this baby hits shelves on May 14, 2024.

Honor Levy is a literary genius who writes from a continuous stream of thought that is so relatable, humorous, and of the time that I wish this book were longer so I could revel in its beauty. Levy embraces the all-vibes-no-plot angle for her writing, detailing Gen Z situationships and other activities crisply and excitingly for readers and listeners.

I couldn't get enough of her prose, and I am genuinely marking Honor Levy as one of my new favorite authors. 1 Unsympathizer52 5 Read

As someone who is sympathetic to the downtown scene Honor is in, I was really hoping I'd this book. And a lot of it is sharp, witty writing, especially her first story "Love Story," the pick-me satire "Good Boys," and the footnoted fast-paced narrative of "Cancel Me." "Halloween Forever" was cute.

But there are a few stories that I felt were there to pad the book out, "written by sad girl in the third person," which is an absolute snoozefest, and "Z was for Zoomer," which went way too long and used a "T" word twice, which broke the rhythm of only having one word per letter. And "The End" was trying too hard to be post-post-modern/ironic. Madeline Cash's Earth Angel did this type of writing better.

Also, the website links in this book aren't live yet. I'll wait until the links go live to render my final judgment, so I'll leave this book unrated for now.short-stories1 Colette Celeste85 1 follower

I bought this book and when I brought it home it called me a gay retard and stole all my passwords.1 Kaleigh191 54

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