January: Someone Who will love you in all your damaged Glory

It's beautiful to think that in any stage of life, no matter our hurt or damage there is someone - a partner, a friend, a sibling, a parent - who will love us regardless. In Someone who will love you in all your damaged glory, Raphael Bob-Waksberg, the acclaimed writer of Bojack Horseman here authors a myriad of narratives centering around love. The love of a partner, for family, a pet and within that, the love we carry for ourselves. He explores Love in its invention, its benefits, ramifications, its endings, and what comes after. 

This was a great way to kick off my 2026 of reading, especially after putting reading for pleasure on hold for so long. It felt real, and true and raw. Sometimes entirely absurd, I felt pulled  into a world I can only think to describe to be adjacent to ours. Yes, Bob-Waksberg's stories take on elements of a typical workplace existence in some pieces, but also a dramatisation like that of a parallel universe in others. Someone who will love you in all your damaged glory simultaneously became one of the strangest and one of the most human books I have read in a long time. 

Hilarious and touching, but also approaching the heavy and confusing, this collection encapsulates a real world application of love, and handles the deep, difficult issues that arise within relationships with care. It's definitely not a typical romance novel, It's weird, but beautiful and doesn't try to be overly manicured, not criticizing but simply reflecting on the reality we live in where love is messy, it can be brutal and exhausting, and it makes people do crazy things. 

One thing I found particularly interesting was that almost every story is linguistically different. Either a different writing structure, prose, written perspective, or point of view. Where some stories are a poem, a list, a deep recollection, or a brief encounter, others are written from a teenager, unknowing strangers, serial dating monogamists or even the perspective of a dog named rufus. Moreover the collection is not limited to just one of first, second or third person perspectives but changes between each story, where this variation worked to maintain my attention and also creates strong distinction between each unique story. 

As much as the anthology is a collection of love stories, the second part of the title is in no way neglected and I found Someone who will Love you in all your Damaged glory to be just as much an exploration of our damage as it is love. Bob-Waksberg explores the impossibility of escaping sadness in Move Across the Country (p.151) how in every attempt to evade it you "Hope that you are not the sadness’s home, that Anywhere you go, no matter how far, no matter how quickly - the sadness lives in you”. While We Men of Science p.45 looks at the improvement of happiness from a more clinical perspective. 

My personal favourite story was A Missed Connection p.33. Two strangers sit across from each other on the same train car and both seem to be equally encapsulated with each other. Yet, neither will speak to the other. It's a story that's reasonable to believe, there's many people in our lives who we see, could speak to, don't, and then never see again. But these two strangers don't get off the train, paralyzed by the idea of someone they do not know, but at the same time they are unwilling to risk their own embarrassment in an effort to get to know them. So the pair ride the train line up and down in silence and into absurdity for 60 years. Not an explicit exploration of damage or love, but possibility and humanity and a story I have not been able to get out of my head. 

I think there's a story for everyone here, and while I consider it an overall 3 star read for me, there are definitely some stories I can see myself re-reading on the regular. 

If you’d like to read with me, our February Read is Madonna in a fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali. If you’ve read someone who will love you in all your damaged glory I would love to hear your thoughts and always feel free to leave me any book recommendations - I am in need! 

- Happy reading, Audrey xoxo