Book Review, etc: Funny You Should Ask by Elissa Sussman

This post got long because I had a surprising number of thoughts. Since I can't imagine anyone is all that interested, I decided not to divide it in two. This is the goodreads review I wrote of Funny You Should Ask, a romance novel by Elissa Sussman, followed by further reflections, because the book has been the subject of a minor controversy that I knew nothing about until after I was done reading (and writing my review).

----------So the review I wrote, slightly edited:

Funny You Should Ask by Elissa Sussman

Ten years ago, Chani Horowitz was just starting out as a journalist when she was handed the chance of a lifetime, an interview with Gabe Parker, the actor who had been chosen to be the new James Bond. The story she wrote after spending a crazy weekend with him ended up going viral and changing both their lives.

They've barely seen each other since, but now Gabe’s career has nosedived and his PR team wants her to do it again. Funny You Should Ask is a complicated story that moves back and forth between ten years ago and the current time, but it reads easily— Sussman does a great job of managing the timelines so we get just enough information to move the story along. What did happen during that weekend?

What worked really well for me was the story of a smart, maybe over-educated writer who is trying to reconcile her career of writing “puff” pieces with the more serious careers of her former grad school friends. Chani’s story was pitch perfect. 

What didn’t work so well for me is the same old stuff that hasn’t worked well in almost every recent romance novel I’ve read. And since I’m clearly in the minority, I’ll just make myself sound ridiculous by saying it, but I find it tedious to read through (literal) pages and pages of how strong their sexual attraction to each other is. OK, so you want to lick him. Got it. I don't need two pages of elaboration. That stuff is easy to skim over, though, so not necessarily a deal breaker if the rest of the story is good, and in this case, it is. 

There’s another aspect of the story that had me doubtful, though. I’ve lived in Montana for thirty years, and it’s rare that a writer who doesn’t live here gets it right. So when Gabe turned out to be a Montana native, I rolled my eyes. Montana so often means some symbolic thing to people — it’s romanticized and westernized and sanitized; people who have only visited in the summer in the tourist areas, or winter in the ski towns, don’t get the reality of life here.

But I'm giving Sussman a pass on this, mainly because she didn’t make the mistake of trying too hard. In fact, you have to wonder why she picked Montana, because the handful of scenes that are set here could have been in Wyoming or Colorado or even the Sierra Nevadas. At least there was no wrinkled old ranch hand named Willy who’d known Gabe since he was knee-high and taught him everything he knows about riding a horse. In fact, she leaves horses out of it entirely. There are a lot of people who ride horses in Montana (and more who don’t), but again—super hard to get it right, so good for her.

Besides the obvious wish-fulfillment/fantasy aspect of a world-famous movie star falling in love with a nerdy nobody, the development of Chani's and Gabe's story is believably done. I read it on vacation, and it was exactly the kind of book I wanted to read at the time. Highly recommended if you're in the same sort of mood.

p.s. Gabe is from the fictional town of Cooper, Montana. It didn't occur to me until after I was done reading the book that that is probably a nod to Gary Cooper, the actor and star of many westerns, who was from Helena. 

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(If that sounds appealing to you, please stop here and read it before continuing on.) 

Then at some point I was reading reader reviews on Goodreads and discovered that Sussman has come under fire for writing this book for a reason that struck me as puzzling. Apparently, Sussman said in an interview that the original idea for the story came from an interview that another writer did with Chris Evans (of Captain America fame) that appeared in GQ. The most upvoted review related the reader's outrage that Sussman never says this in the acknowledgements, never name-checks the other writer, plus more, and is therefore a reprehensible human being because she stole the idea and etc etc etc.

I disagree with the commenter on two fronts, and but it turns out that she changed my experience of reading the book for a reason I don't think she intended. So here goes: First off, she claims that a journalist having a drink with the subject of her interview and interacting with him/her on a personal level is unethical and unprofessional. I'm not a journalist, so I don't know if there are professional ethics standards here, but I call bullshit on this. 

For one thing, it's hard to imagine a similar claim being made if the interviewer were male. For another, there's a long, complex conversation already occurring around the impossibility of any journalist being able to remain "objective" and personally uninvolved in the story they're telling. The myth of the passive observer journalist is just that, a myth. At least in this case she is upfront about her involvement.

Also there's the claim that since Sussman started with something that someone else wrote, she is stealing someone else's idea. I didn't go check, but I don't think there's any accusation made that she actually cut and pasted the words of the GQ article, so I'm inclined to let this one go, too. If you handed the original interview to a room full of novelists and told them to go write a book loosely based on that article, you would get a room full of entirely different ways of working it out, even if you restricted them to writing romance novels. Are there any novels that spring up whole cloth out of the writer's imagination? It's hard to believe that there are.

I do agree that it might have been nice for Sussman to own up to the original spark for her story in the acknowledgements, but seriously-- I am not going to start judging authors for what is and is not in the afterword. Up until the 80s (90s?) or so, most books didn't even have acknowledgements. This is not as big a problem as the commenter wants it to be.

But on the other hand, having a real person identified as the fantasy Gabe really changed my feelings about the book. Chris Evans is someone I follow on social media, and he's someone I like and admire. Putting a real person's name and face on the character of Gabe gave it a ewwwwww factor that wasn't there while I was reading and just imagining some impossibly handsome nameless movie star. 

Honestly, it's surprising to me how much this changed my attitude toward the book, all in retrospect. I originally gave it five stars (I've told you before that I believe strongly in star-inflation, but let's not get off on that right now), and I even considered going back and knocking off a star or two just because of this. The older I get, the more sympathy I have for celebrities and how their "adoring" public must make it practically impossible to have a real life. Which I suppose you could argue, they are complaining about all the way to the bank, and you have a point. 

Trying to think of some smart thing to say in summary, but I can't. That's all. 

My So-Called Reading Life: 2022 Wrap-up

I read 92 books during 2022, which will seem like a lot to some of you, and laughably few to others. That's about the same as last year, but there was a major difference: in 2022, I did a lot of re-reading, especially during the summer. I was stressed about the wedding and I didn't have enough energy to tackle anything new or challenging, so I fell back on books I already knew I would love. 

So it was kind of a strange reading year. Another way that it was strange was that I didn't read anything that had that immediate knock-your-socks-off this is one of my all-time favorites feeling. Last year there was Deacon King Kong. The year before that, there were a bunch. This year, there were several good solid reads, but no real standouts. 

For the record, probably my favorites were The Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, Olympus, Texas by Stacey Swann, The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich, and Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Apparently I just read what everyone else is reading. Honorable Mention to What are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez, Hell of a Book by Jason Mott, and No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood.

Maybe the best book I read in 2022 was an oldie, A Visit From the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan), that I finished about two days before the year ended. I didn't think I was going to like it because I'd heard so much about it and it didn't seem like my kind of book. But the sequel, The Candy House, came out in 2022, and it sounded intriguing. So I decided it was time. To my surprise, Goon Squad was great. Then I proceeded on to Candy House, which I didn't like quite as well, but they're both good. 

And the two of them together are astonishing. You can just breeze through them, and they would be great that way, but being as obsessive as I am, I spent a lot of time tracing the connections between the two. There are a lot of them. I have no idea how she kept track of everything while she was writing. I would have needed color-coded spreadsheets and half a dozen poster boards. (I just finished Candy House yesterday, so officially speaking it is on my 2023 list.)

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When I started this blog back in 2015, I was determined that it would not be a book blog. At the time, it seemed to me that there were thousands of bookish-women-of-a-certain-age who were writing book blogs. I haven't exactly avoided writing about books, obviously, especially not recently, but for the most part, I've stuck with my determination to keep the book talk to a minimum. 

Almost eight years later, hardly anyone is blogging about anything anymore, let alone books. And most of the writing I've done in the last few months has been the brief reviews I write on Goodreads for (almost) every book I read. 

They're only "brief" in that they aren't full-scale, professional-level book reviews, because some of them have ended up being pretty damn long, at least compared to the average Goodreads review. Since I haven't had all that much to post about here recently, I think I may back off on my determination to avoid being the stereotypical book blogger and start posting some of the more interesting ones here. You've been warned.

I was talking to some other book lovers last fall and mentioned that I review the books I read on Goodreads. They were a little put off by that, partly because Goodreads is owned by Amazon and we all know how problematic that is. But partly also because, as one of them put it, "I could never believe that anyone wanted to read my opinion about a book." 

Which is also true of me. I can never believe that either. But that's the thing about both Goodreads and blog posts--you're not forcing anyone to read them. I'm not even really expecting anyone to read them. I just like writing them. 

That Reminds Me of a Story™: about ten years ago, I was chatting with a woman sitting next to me at a writers conference. She told me that she was about to start a blog and she had a professionally designed logo and a tagline and a marketing campaign all lined up. I told her that I've had a blog since 2003 (there were three before this one), and she eagerly asked me for advice. Since my blog (and my Goodreads reviews) have never really attracted much attention, I was pretty sure I shouldn't be giving anyone advice, but I told her, well, it helps if you like to write. And honestly, from the look on her face, I'm not sure it had ever occurred to her that she was going to have to actually write posts if she wanted to have any content on her new blog.

I think I might have told you that story before, and come to think of it, she is probably killing it as an influencer on TikTok these days. 

I didn't quite make it through all the reading life topics I had in mind, so this may be continued next week. Or maybe we will move on to bigger and better things. Have a great weekend.

Another book review: Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny

I listened to an interview with an artist last week who said that the best, most interesting art is art that surprises him. I don’t know enough about art to know if that’s true, but I do know that a book that surprises me is one of my favorite things. This one did.   

Standard Deviation can be read as a funny, absorbing story of marriage, advancing years, raising a special needs child, and managing relationships with relatives, exes, and house guests. Graham is approaching sixty, and his second wife is a younger woman named Audra who has no filter— which is sometimes hilarious and sometimes appalling. Their son Matthew is an endearing Aspy kid with a passion for origami. That version of the story is enough on its own to be funny, heartwarming, and even sometimes wise. I was startled into laughter more times while reading this book than any book in recent memory.

But it seems to me there are other layers, and I’m making my spouse read it now so I can have someone to talk to about this. Am I making it up? Did she really intend to get into the moral ambiguity of the second half of the novel, or am I over-reading? 

(If that sounds intriguing, stop now and go read it, especially if you live nearby and we can go for coffee (tea), because I really would love to discuss this, and you should go into it without knowing the stuff I'm talking about below.)

***spoilers ahead***

I think the way you read the second half depends mostly on whether or not you think Audra is having an affair. I think she is— maybe not with the mysterious Jasper, but what else was she doing in that hotel? She certainly has no problem talking about the multiple married men she slept with before she married Graham. And then you find out that Graham cheated on his first wife not just with Audra, but with Marla, and then later he mentions “all the other Marlas” and you start to wonder if these people are really at all what you thought.

There are a whole lot of layers of truth and falsehood — from the amusing social lies/fabrications that Audra spins effortlessly to the lies of omission from Graham. Is Heiny’s point that speaking truth doesn’t really matter? I've told plenty of social "white lies" myself, usually in the name of not hurting someone's feelings, but I'll say it plainly: the deeper lack of honesty bothers me.

But even I can see that I’m being a bit of a killjoy and a preachy bore to suggest that the fun and hilarity of reading about life with Audra has darker underpinnings. What's the problem with serial adultery if it's so much fun to read about? Graham seems to consciously decide that he doesn’t care if Audra is unfaithful—which is totally his choice—but that’s not the same thing as Heiny as an author giving the impression that telling the truth to your partner doesn’t matter. Is it really true that as long as everything looks good, it is good? As long as we're having so much funnnnn, as the kids say on snapchat, does that automatically mean anything goes?

Or did Heiny actively intend all the intricate, ambiguous implications? Is her point that we lull ourselves into complicity because we want to be in on the joke? Maybe Standard Deviation is a fun-hall mirror of seeing our own distortions.

Or maybe I'm over-reading again. Read it for yourself and see what you think.

(a slightly modified version of the review I posted on Goodreads)

To list or not to list

Oddly, the closer the wedding gets, the better I feel about it. I'm still anxious, and there are about a gazillion details to attend to, but at least now I'm worried about very specific things and not just freaking out over the entire idea of hosting a wedding. By the time this is published it will be two weeks until the day of the rehearsal. I'm starting to believe I will survive it.

A theme for me recently has been realizing how people are wired differently. Obviously all of us are different, and I've already told you what a game changer it was for me to understand the difference between introversion and extroversion. But I don't think I realized until the last 2-3 years how many of the ways we are different go down to our core. No amount of therapy or personal growth is going to clear them up.

The difference that feels particularly relevant to me right now: some people handle stressful situations by meticulously preparing for them; some people find that preparation makes them more stressed and they'd rather wing it.

I think I am by nature a person who is more successful in coping with stress by being prepared. But I was raised to admire people who wing it, and by a dad who was charismatic enough to be able to pull off most situations just by letting his charm flow. So I've had to learn that I'm better off if I prepare. I've been making lists for the past week and every time I get through another round of list-making, I feel more confident and less stressed. 

And then, like all list-makers, I get the joy of marking things off the list as I do them. There's nothing better. 

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Books I've loved this summer, besides the previously mentioned The Road: Emily St. John Mandel's new one, The Sea of Tranquility. My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout (I know, late to the party). Surprisingly (to me), Jessica Simpson's memoir, Open Book. I didn't realize until I just went and looked at my list how many re-reads I've done this summer: The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, Archangel by Sharon Shinn, Good Omens (the audio version is fantastic). Those last two are a bit dated, but I still enjoyed them thoroughly.

And the Narnia books. Like most adults I know who are former evangelicals, I've had to re-think my childhood obsession with C.S. Lewis's series of seven books about the magical kingdom of Narnia. It turns out they're really pretty problematic. For example, in The Last Battle, Susan is banished from heaven because she's interested in nylons and lipstick (not kidding--I just went and looked it up to make sure I had it right)(she is no longer a friend of Narnia, Peter pompously announces). 

And then there's the blatant Orientalism in The Horse and His Boy. They're just dated. Until this summer, it had been fifteen or twenty years since I'd read them because I was more than a little embarrassed I'd loved them so much.

I was obsessed with them as a child. I re-read them every year until I was twenty. Even though I was raised thoroughly evangelical, it wasn't the Christian allegory that drew me in. In fact, I think I was on my second or third time through The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe before I realized it was a thinly veiled account of the death and resurrection of Jesus, and then it was only because my mom pointed it out to me. I just loved Mrs. Beaver and Mr. Tumnus and the Bulgy Bears, and the triumph of the Good and Kind over the Mean and Cruel. And the magical door into a secret kingdom, which caused me to furtively check the back of every wardrobe I encountered until I was eight or nine.

Anyway. I was on a road trip this summer and the audiobook I had picked out was not holding my attention, and I remembered I had picked up the entire Narnia collection for one credit on Audible at some point. So I started with The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and then The Silver Chair (which is probably the one that holds up best), and I'm halfway through the aforementioned Horse and His Boy. The narrators are excellent.

I think there's enough water under the bridge now that I can revisit them as an expression of a past way of thinking, sort of like reading Little Women or Anne of Green Gables with their pious moralizing, or Georgette Heyer, who has a Jewish money-lender in what is arguably her most popular book, The Grand Sophy. And anyway, Evangelicals can try as they might, but C.S. Lewis, a high church Anglican, would never have been an American-style Evangelical. Not a chance. 

But that's an entirely different topic. I'm enjoying them. I will probably skip The Last Battle--no amount of time is going to clear that one up. 

If you made it all the way through this mess, I'm grateful to you for sticking it out. Have a good weekend.

Thoughts on Reading The Road

I've been meaning to read The Road (Cormac McCarthy, 2007) for years, but had been put off by other readers' comments that it was unrelentingly joyless and despairing. But I've read a few too many light romances recently, to the point where I was starting to not enjoy them, so I decided now was the time to tackle a dark classic.

Those other readers are right that there is no hope of hope in this gritty post-apocalyptic story of a father and son searching for a place to call home. The nature of the disaster is never specified, and that's at least part of why it can work-- is there any disaster, even a nuclear one, that would cause the absolute destruction of all plant and animal life and yet leave humans alive? There is no food to eat at all, outside of finding caches of pre-apocalypse food in half-rotting houses, or cannibalism. The man and the boy (they are never named) travel several hundred miles south in the course of the novel, and there is nothing anywhere other than desolation and coldness and ash.

But there are also plenty of good reasons to read it. The relationship between the father and son is tender and sweet and beautifully rendered, but not cloyingly so--they often argue and disagree. McCarthy may be describing a bleak, dead world, but the language he uses is beautiful, sometimes even brilliant (and also sometimes self-conscious and pretentious). You can't help but keep turning the pages, because you want to know what is going to happen to these two characters.

And there are also many things to think about. For one, there is the moment when the man is standing in a crumbling library holding a ruined book, and he is surprised to realize that all art is "predicated on a world to come" --on there being a context, or even just someone there, to appreciate it. "The space which these things occupied was itself an expectation." True? 

For another, the man and the boy frequently speak of themselves as "the good guys," and they are looking for the other good guys, but when they (rarely) encounter someone new, the man is too damaged and cynical to even begin a conversation. At what point does fear cease being a useful survival tool and become an endlessly self-reinforcing feedback loop?

But ultimately, I'm not sure if this novel will hold up over the long-term. If we survive our current mess, a hundred years from now I can imagine a university course on "Post-Apocalyptic Fiction 1950-2030" that would include The Day of the Triffids, The Stand, The Broken Earth trilogy, Station Eleven, The Hunger Games (read it before you sneer), and lord knows what else. Will this novel be there? 

*scratches head* *thinks* *thinks some more*

Well, yes. Of course it will. But it is not without faults. There is a tacked-on ending that feels false (you wonder if his publisher made him add it). And by the end, the boy has become irritating in his unrelenting purity of heart--did McCarthy take that too far? And over-arching it all, there is what reviewer David Edelstein called McCarthy's obsession with "the end of the Age of Good Men (which never existed, but don't tell him that)." When I read that, I thought, yes! that's it exactly. In that context, the novel could easily be called The Last Good Man, and you could hand it to your class and let them have at it. There are plenty of single moms out there who would argue vociferously that it's not the women who disappear into the night.

So: definitely worth reading, but don't tackle it if you're already in a depressed or despairing mood. It's thought-provoking, if nothing else. And I kind of wish I could take that class.

(This is a slightly expanded version of the review I posted on Goodreads)

Start by Giving a Crap. (Right.)

At some point last fall, I think it was in October when covid numbers were dramatically spiking here locally, some inner part of me threw up her hands and said I'm done. I was past the point of caring, past the point of wanting to waste my mental energy worrying and/or arguing with the idiots. Just done.

But the thing about a pandemic is that it isn't done when we want it to be done. It's done when it has run its course, and apparently covid-19 isn't done with us yet. And of course there's all kinds of medical people (including two right here in my house) who don't have the option of shutting down. They're still right there in it. 

After getting several unrelated nudges from the universe this week, though, I'm coming around. I can't stay checked out forever. As my Ten Percent Happier meditation said on Monday--in a somewhat different context-- start by giving a crap. Damn it.

So here we still are. And I'm sorting through exactly what I'm going to care about and what I'm not.

In other news, since I just checked, I can tell you with confidence that I have THIRTY-ONE half-written posts in my Drafts folder. Maybe one way of caring would be to start posting again. 

In the meantime, here is my list of my favorite books I read in 2021. Other than Deacon King Kong being my favorite, they are in no particular order.

Deacon King Kong by James McBride
Everything I read by Martha Wells (especially the Murderbot Diaries)
Good Talk by Mira Jacob
The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K.Jemisin
The Liars' Club by Mary Karr
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson

Honorable Mention: How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, King and the Dragonflies, Craft in the Real World, Hamnet, The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, Under the Whispering Door, Project Hail Mary, Assassination Vacation.

This week's nostalgia listen: Whitesnake, "Here I Go Again"

OMG you have to watch the video. Did we ALL HAVE THE SAME HAIR? My hair has never in my life been that long but I sure had the perm.

Palate cleanser: try this one (song starts at 2:54) (pass the carrots, please)(but they still have the hair)

Reading Report 2020: part two, book report

At the end of the year, I always have a few books that stand out in my mind as the "best" books I read-- and "best" just means the ones that meant the most to me, or had the most effect on me, or that I was still thinking about days or weeks after I read them. Those books for this year:  

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
How to be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi
The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J. Ryan Stradal
The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune

Then there is a new-to-me category this year, books that I'm thinking of as "quirky-nerdy" that are my new favorite kind of book. They're smart and layered, but they have a sense of humor and a bit of optimism about the human race. I'm happier than I can tell you that I found books that were both literary and fun this year, although a bunch of them are not recent (which tells me maybe I've just been reading the wrong books).

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson
Bellweather Rhapsody by Kate Racculia
The Grammarians by Cathleen Schine
Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
    (I know, everyone else has already read it)

And there's always a few Sci-Fi/Fantasy:

The Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers
The Fifth Element by N.K. Jemisin
The Library at Mt. Char by Scott Hawkins
Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames

And then the promised romance novel titles. If you're not familiar with the terminology, m/m is male/male, m/f is male/female. (if you're searching for romance novels, you can use any combination of those to find what you want. Just so you know.)

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJKlune, m/m
Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall, m/m
The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary, m/f
Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston, m/m
Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn, m/f
Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert, m/f
The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren, m/f
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli, m/m

The re-reads that kept me going through lockdown: a half dozen Georgette Heyers, the first three Murderbot Diaries, and the Earthsea trilogy. And some good mysteries: Attica Locke, Elsa Hart's Li Du series, and I finally read a couple of Vera Stanhope mysteries and loved them. The classics I finally read this year: Mrs Dalloway, Go Tell it on the Mountain, Sister Outsider, This House of Sky.

I'm looking over my big list and realizing I could go on and on. So many good books this year. But that's enough. Check my goodreads page for more (if that link doesn't work, just search for Barb Nelson in Montana on the community page), where I write short reviews of every book I read (usually).

The things I carry and the summer reading report

I've told you before that I have headaches that start in my neck and shoulders. So it should be obvious that I need to think about the stuff that I carry around all the time-- like my bag. But honestly, it hadn't even occurred to me until this week when I heard a podcast host mention in passing that she hated carrying a big bag because it made her shoulders hurt. 

So the next day, I got out my kitchen scale and started weighing all the stuff in my bag (enneagram 5, yup), and deciding what I could get rid of. I have always been an over-packer. I carry all kinds of stuff that I might need-- bandaids, eye-drops, migraine meds, advil, cough drops, post-it notes, a mini pad of paper, pens (several), two kinds of lip balm, flossers, 3-4 reusable shopping bags-- you get the idea. LOTS of stuff.

But it's all stuff I like having with me. I don't really want to get rid of any of it. My heaviest items were the things that are non-negotiable: wallet (11 ounces), phone (7 ounces), and checkbook (5 ounces). So I started by nixing the multiples--maybe I could get by with one shopping bag, one pen, a couple of index cards instead of a pad of paper, two bandaids instead of a dozen, etc. At first it didn't seem like it was going to make any difference, but it ended up being a couple of pounds lighter, and it's noticeable. Why didn't I think of this years ago?

It's occurring to me that under the circumstances (ie., headaches that start in my neck and shoulders), maybe I should re-think my philosophy of Personal Junk Transportation. Maybe I should keep the extra stuff in my car and just carry my phone, ID, and a couple of credit cards in one of those phone cases. Will be thinking more about this. If you have any good advice, let me know.

Hmmm. Also. Maybe I should join the 21st century and realize I don't need to carry a checkbook all the time. I only go one place that requires a check, and I always drive there so it could be one of the things I keep in my car. Hmmmm.

 Summer Reading Report:

"Fascinating" and "thought-provoking" don't always go with "couldn't put it down," but that's how I felt about The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Ann Fadiman. It's older-- I think it was written back in the 90s-- but it feels like it was written last year (other than the occasional reference to a cassette deck and the lack of cell phones). Very relevant to some things that are going on now, and highly, highly recommended. Everyone should read this book.

The rest of these are grouped by mood, but other than that they're not in any particular order.

Other books from the "fascinating" category: Packing for Mars by Mary Roach, The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery (interesting but got a little long for me), The Library Book by Susan Orlean (definitely not in the "couldn't put it down" category, but still interesting).

Really fun to read: Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli (high schooler deals with his first real crush and coming out), The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune (fastidious, rule-following inspector for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth is sent on a new assignment where none of his previous experience seems to apply), With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo (teen mom who is a gifted chef works hard to make her dreams come true), Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert ("open door" interracial romance), Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner (plus-size influencer is asked by her high school nemesis to be in her wedding). 

Mystery/Dramatic/Great Reading But Not Exactly "Fun": Hidden Depths by Ann Cleeves (my first Vera Stanhope mystery and I loved it), The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin (dystopian sci-fi), Celine by Peter Heller (a female P.I. of a certain age tries to find a missing dad), The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (didn't especially like this at first but by the end she had won me over), Network Effect (Murderbot Diaries #5, really should read the series in order, and the first one is short so it's easy to figure out if you will like it)(I do, a lot). 

Not for me: Mexican Gothic which I had heard was more eerie than horror. The podcast host who recommended it compared it to Jane Eyre or Rebecca, both of which I loved, but NO. I can't say more than that without spoilers but... well, ok, I'll put a spoiler at the end and you can see what you think, see below. It's beautifully written and once I was into it I had to finish it to see what happened but good grief, I could not read it before bed, which is my main reading time.

*****SPOILER ALERT****** for Mexican Gothic

Seriously. An ancient evil being who inhabits an elderly man vomits black fungus yuckiness into the mouth of our heroine-- how is that possibly not horror?? That was the worst scene but it wasn't the only one in that vein. Sheesh. Really wish I could un-read that scene.

*********END SPOILER***************

Dentists and shaming and another book on racism (too long)(again)

1. The dentist we'd been going to for years retired a couple of years ago. The younger dentist who bought her practice seemed perfectly competent, but every time I went in for cleaning or a checkup, I left feeling demoralized and shamed. She was very good at a sort of patronizing disdain that made me feel like my lack of perfect teeth was a moral failing. I thought it was just me being hypersensitive, as usual.

But after Dean and MadMax, without prompting, reported that they were starting to dread going to the dentist because she was so negative, we finally decided to switch. We love the new place. They're positive and encouraging, and even though I haven't changed a thing about how I clean my teeth, they frequently praise me for doing a good job. Thank you for being my easiest appointment of the day, my hygienist told me after my appointment last week.

2. I know you don't care about our dentist, but I'm making another point here. Last year I wrote a couple of posts (here and here) about understanding conservatives. I quit writing them--even though I could have gone on and on--mainly because I was so far out of my league, but also because I got so disgusted by some things conservatives did last year that I decided I was done defending them. But I have to say, here is another thing that drives conservatives nuts, and that their leadership is now capitalizing on: why are we (liberals) so damn negative? I have my theories about that, and maybe I'll write them out some other time. But it seems like liberals are always playing the moral outrage card, the finger-pointing card, the look! I found another way you're wrong! card. 

(For the record, this is not intended to be about the current argument about who has the most positive, hopeful convention. This was mostly written before either of the conventions, although I edited it today. Since I'm not a political junkie, I don't pay all that much attention to them, honestly.)

I am so tired of reading/listening to criticisms of our current president. I don't like him, either, but we're not changing any minds. Could we move on already. I think the lines are already drawn here. Either you think he's awesome, or you think he's ridiculous but he could be a decent president if people would just let him work, or you can't stand him (me). Continuing to harp on how horrible he is is a waste of energy when we really need to be working on other things--positive change, for one thing.

3. I read another book about race a couple of weeks ago (I'll put the title in the first comment). I have mixed feelings about it. It was recommended to me as the one book about race that people should read if they're only going to read one, so I thought I should read it, even though it wasn't (and isn't) the only book about race I've read or will read. 

But I'm not sure I would recommend it. It was the "free" book at our library's ebook site last month, and everyone I talked to that tried it said they couldn't finish it because it was so relentlessly negative. The author would say that is the fault of the reader because of tone policing and white fragility and white apathy and all the other things white people are when we're at our worst, but I think there's a difference between tone policing (when I tell you to phrase something more politely and respectfully so you don't hurt my feelings)(i.e., making it about me) and writing with some awareness of your audience and how to reach them. Knowing your audience is a basic skill of anyone who is trying to communicate with the public. And if the majority of people who pick up your book put it back down again, you've missed your mark.

But having said that, I did finish it, and now that I've had a week or two to think about it, here's what I think: if you can go in with your armor on, realize that a) the author doesn't live in the US and thus is critiquing our culture from the outside, and b) that she makes sweeping generalizations that aren't always accurate, it may be the best way to quickly get a grip on white culture from the perspective of a person of color. 

It's not very long, and in spite of her insistence that you spend time journaling deeply every day during her 28-day program, you can read it fairly quickly. Instead of reading one chapter each day, I read two or occasionally three. I'm sure she would say I missed the whole point of the program because I didn't read it the way she wanted me to, and maybe I did. But I learned a lot--about racism, about myself, and about her-- and I've never, ever been one to follow someone else's arbitrary rules for me blindly, whether they are my parents, the evangelical church, or an author I've never met before. 

So, the pros of the book are: it quickly and neatly identifies the ways that white people marginalize people of color. It avoids stories and anecdotes and just goes for the bullet point info that she wants you to know. And she is excellent on several points (her explanation of the problem of cultural appropriation clarified some things that had confused me in the past, for example). 

The negatives: She assumes that white culture is far more monolithic than it is. She doesn't recognize, even slightly, that there are differences in different regions of the US, and that there is a difference between someone who truly believes that white people are the superior race, and people who are fully committed to racial equality but have lived with blinders on and need to learn. She actually says at one point that if you find yourself arguing with her, you are participating in white supremacy. (So we're not even allowing discussion anymore? She is setting herself up as the arbiter of what's inside my head?) 

She is relentless in shutting down every "good" impulse I (as a white person) have ever had about ways I want our culture to do better-- it's white centering or faux allyship or white saviorism or, or, or. She does finally in the last pages outline a way forward--and by then you're pathetically grateful for it-- but only after she has shredded every idea that you might have had about helping out. 

And you know, maybe she's right. Maybe the only way white people can get it through our thick heads, through the layers of assumptions and ignorance and blindness, is to relentlessly beat us over the head with it. But if you find yourself despairing and discouraged as you read her book--as I did-- try switching to a different one instead of just giving up. 

There are plenty of great ones out there. I personally find the information easier to digest and comprehend when it is accompanied by stories and/or personal narrative. Try the ones I mention in this post, or Black is the Body, which was the one I read after the one I'm discussing. I have books by Ibram X Kendi and Ta-Nehisi Coates coming up and I'll report back.

I guess I'm glad I read it, but I came out of it exhausted and depressed (instead of feeling energized and ready to march, as I did after the manifesto at the end of Michael Eric Dyson's book What Truth Sounds Like). And she would probably say, well, people of color are exhausted and depressed all the time, so it's only fair.

recent events

(This is two posts mashed together, one written last fall after I read What Truth Sounds Like, one the week of June 8th, both of them edited this week. In other words, it is long. Sorry about that, but I thought it was better to get it all over with in one post. I think I've already proven that I'm not an expert on racism, so don't expect brilliance. I'm tempted to say don't read this post because honestly, white voices are not what is needed right now. Yet here I am.)

Part One

I just wrote and re-wrote and deleted and re-wrote and edited and deleted three paragraphs on the topic of racism, and I've decided to leave them deleted because nobody needs to hear about another white woman uncovering more layers of recognition of her privilege. But it's a dilemma. Sometimes you need to talk about it.

It's not like I didn't know about my privilege before--I understood the idea of white privilege the first time I heard about it thirty years ago-- but I also still have lots more to learn. And I'm discovering, after some things I posted on Instagram, that if you talk about new layers of things you're learning, the assumption is that you knew nothing before, that the whole world of white privilege was an unknown to you until this moment. I've even had people unfollow me.

Whatever you may have made of the story I told you a couple of years ago, I've been supportive of social justice work since a couple of ferociously progressive teachers in my elementary school taught us what was what back in the 60s. (I was so proud of those young men with their raised fists on the medal podium at the 1968 Olympics.)(I was in second grade.)

I may not have been very brave about bucking the status quo, but I've never wanted people of color to suffer or to have fewer opportunities than I do. But I confess that in the past, I've believed that since I vote pro-social justice, I've done everything I needed to do. Racism had nothing to do with me, I thought, because I am not one of those ignorant, racist people. 

Clearly, that kind of passive anti-racism has not been enough to change the way things are. And that means I've had a steep learning curve about the reality of racism in our country. I keep learning more and more about how insidious racism is, and how it has continued practically unchecked without me realizing that it did.

I didn't know, but at some level I have to be honest and say I didn't want to know. I wanted to be able to keep living my untroubled life, at least untroubled by racism. I wanted to believe that the only people who were still racist in the US were a small number of uneducated yahoos that everybody knew were crazy. I was wrong.

And if we can't keep talking about what we're learning, even long after our original moment(s) of insight, we're doing a disservice to the complexity of dismantling racism in this country. It's not a one-time light bulb moment. If saying that--being honest that I'm learning about racism even as I oppose it-- means I get "canceled" because I'm a racist, what are we even doing here? Are we not allowed to learn? Am I supposed to pretend I have perfect understanding when I don't?

Part Two

Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old who was shot by a white man in 2012 for simply walking through his neighborhood, was the "wake up" moment for me. I have a black nephew. He walks through a white neighborhood every day. But just like I wake up bleary-eyed and foggy-brained every morning, that wake-up moment didn't mean I instantly, totally understood the complexity of systemic racism.

I've been occasionally reading and researching ever since, but a couple of years ago I started getting more serious about it-- honestly, at least partly inspired by Colin Kaepernick. He fascinated me (Dean is a moderately serious 49ers fan) even before he set off a firestorm of white outrage. When he knelt for the national anthem (do you remember that at first, he sat?), I was curious. What was he up to? Why did something so simple, so seemingly innocuous, cause such a bitterly furious response?

At first I just read stuff on the internet. And then Austin Channing Brown's I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness. And then So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo last spring. And What Truth Sounds Like by Michael Eric Dyson last fall. And fiction by many black authors.

That probably sounds like bragging, and I suppose at some level it is, but I'm hardly a saint about this. First of all, the more I read, the more I realize how dumb I am about the experience of people of color in our country, even when I've lived and worked right alongside them. And secondly, I argue with these authors in my head. I don't always agree with them. 

But I've learned far more than I've argued. I've been shocked by some of the experiences I've read about, the statistics I've been ignorant of, the systemic oppression that happens while I've blithely looked away. And saddest of all, I'm embarrassed by the way white liberals have not been helpful at. all. (The Dyson book is especially telling on that subject.) The one thing I know for sure: the way people of color are too often treated in this country is just flat-out wrong. There is no excuse. We have to do better. 

So, not sure where I'm going here. I don't want this to be a fad, something that I get all excited about and then a couple of months from now, I've moved along to something else. For several years now, I've wanted this to be an ongoing part of how I live, and that means reading books by black authors and immigrants and Indians and Hispanics and Muslims and members of the LGBTQ community. 

I'm not sure exactly what else it means. Montana is more diverse now than it was when we moved here, but there are still only a few people of color where we live. But I can call people out for racist remarks (and I have)(I have to be honest and tell you it rarely works). I can be open to change and encourage others to do the same. And I can acknowledge that I'm still learning, still uncovering layers of ignorance in myself, hidden attitudes I'm ashamed of, and resistance to change in the places I least want it. But it's work that's worth doing, work that has to be done.

Day 18: in which I bore you because I am bored: Georgette Heyer, audiobooks, and free samples

After a quick scroll through bookstagram, it's obvious that almost universally, book lovers are having trouble reading anything but comfort reads. A few people are looking for thrillers or true crime to keep them sucked into a story, but most of us just want to read something that feels positive and leaves us feeling uplifted instead of despairing.

In the past few weeks, I've re-read a favorite series from childhood (Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula LeGuin), Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell, and a couple of romance novels (Red, White, and Royal Blue and Love Lettering) that worked for that. Also The Lager Queen of Minnesota, which isn't exactly a comfort read, but has lovable characters who have to deal with a variety of different (occasionally hilarious) life situations, and resolves in a thoroughly satisfying way.

But really, what I'm mainly doing is re-reading Georgette Heyer. You may remember my first obsession with her if you've been around for awhile. She's not a perfect writer-- you have to forgive her inordinate love of exclamation points, and you have to be able to skim over her sometimes excessive use of period slang. But once you get past those flaws, they're so much fun. Some of them I would say even qualify as romps.

Stack of books by Georgette Heyer

This time around, I started with Black Sheep, which wasn't one of my top favorites, but I remembered liking it. It worked so well that I moved on to Reluctant Widow. Now I'm reading Cotillion, which is one of my top faves of hers. Maybe my #1 favorite.

The problem with Cotillion is that there's vast cast of characters, and it takes awhile to figure out who's important and how they are related to each other. Kitty, an orphan who has lived for years with her miserly, wealthy guardian, is outraged when he more or less puts her up on the marriage auction block to his grand nephews. Since she is penniless on her own, she comes up with a plot to get at least a month in London, a last moment of freedom, before she has to accept the inevitable and figure out what she's going to do. Of course that gets more and more complicated, and then she meets other people and gets involved in their complications, and the whole thing is just a delight.

Spoiler alert: it ends happily for everyone; well, except for the people who deserve what they get.

And, bonus: the audiobooks are fabulous. The narrator of Cotillion, Phyllida Nash, is a genius. I made Dean listen to it the other night while we were working on a jigsaw puzzle, and he was so hooked that he ended up reading the whole thing. Just give it time, because it takes awhile to get oriented to all the characters, and Kitty's complicated plans.

And here is a clue for taking advantage of Amazon. Amazon has always allowed you download a free sample of a kindle ebook or an audiobook (through their subsidiary, Audible). The audiobook samples stream, and even if you don't have a kindle, you can download the kindle app and take advantage of the free samples. It usually amounts to about 20 pages of an ebook, or about five minutes of an audiobook. Why not use them?

I've had it work both ways--sometimes the five minute sample of an audiobook helps me get into a print book I'm having trouble with (for example, Gods in Alabama). Sometimes the 25 page sample of the ebook helps me get a complicated cast of characters straight when the audiobook feels like chaos (for example, And Then There Were None, which is ably read by Dan Stevens, but introduces so many characters in the first chapter that I was bewildered until I was able to read the print version).

That's it for me today. Thank you for letting me go on and on, since I am now considerably less bored than I was yesterday. Did I tell you yet that MadMax came home on Friday? Our internet may not be up to the task of his online classes, but he had had enough of living alone in an apartment during shelter in place. It's nice to have some company.

Out with the old year (decade!), in with the new. Hello, 2020.

I have a life-long cycle of getting overloaded with commitments (especially around the holidays, of course) and then getting so stressed that I get through everything by shutting down, gritting my teeth, and surviving. Then when it's over, it takes a couple of weeks to recover.

In the past, I've tried to manage this by cutting back on commitments, but then I get bored and depressed. This year was definitely not a bored and depressed year. I think we had two evenings at home during the two weeks before Christmas. I was completely brain dead by Christmas day. I'm starting to think that I just need to accept that this is my normal cycle, and I should figure out how to manage it instead of trying to change it. It's not like this is a surprise--the holidays are busy and stressful for everyone.

For me, managing holiday stress for sure means scheduling time off after Christmas, and this year we were able to do that. I was totally on auto-pilot by the time Christmas rolled around, but during our week of vacation I could feel myself coming back to life. We had a great time with our kids and their partners, played a lot of cards, watched a lot of football/golf/movies, and walked on the beach. Can't ask for much more from a vacation.

I also got some reading done-- wouldn't be a good vacation without a stack of books-- including one more five-star read for 2019, Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts. The title makes complete sense once you've read the book, but I think it's also misleading.

There is a ghost, sort of, but it's not really a ghost story, and it's certainly not a horror book. The blurb also mentions a treasure hunt, and although there is a treasure hunt, it's not the focus of the story and really it only has two steps. A lot of the negative reviews are about people's disappointment on those two fronts. But if you want a story of a bunch of misfits who are dealing with grief and not fitting in with a major dose of snarkiness, it delivers in spades. I loved it.

So now it's 2020. I've told you before I don't do New Year's resolutions (because I always fail at them), but I do usually have a theme, and this year it is pay attention. I've done this before, and it's always just something that pops into my head during the first week of the new year. I don't bother defining it any more than the phrase, because part of the whole thing is figuring out what it means as the year goes by.

The other intention I set for myself this year is to start investigating how we can cut down on single-use plastic. I gave up on paper towels in one moment when I walked into the restroom at our local movie theater and noticed that there were more paper towels stuffed in the trash for that one night than we would use at our house in a couple of months. Maybe the whole year.

Cutting down on plastic is probably more important anyway. I quit buying bottled water three (four?) years ago (partly because PellMel lectured me about it--I love learning from my kids). I quit buying apples at Costo, where they come in a large, molded plastic clamshell. But I've never done much more than that.  Up until last year, we could recycle plastic, so it didn't seem too horrible. But last year our county stopped taking plastic for recycling, and there are no other options for recycling in our community. So, will be working on this. Please share if you have any ideas.

Hope you survived the holidays with your sanity intact. My third intention for the year (start writing shorter blog posts) is apparently already shot to hell. Have a great day.

7ToF: my favorite books of 2019, and some odds and ends

1. Have you looked at any of the dozens of "best books of 2019" lists that have been published in the last couple of weeks? Maybe I'm just reading a strange bunch of lists, but what has struck me is that there is very little consensus. The Nickel Boys and Normal People (neither of which I've read) are on many lists, but not all. Other than that, it's kind of a grab bag. Seems odd to me, like part of the point this year is to prove that you read a bunch of obscure books.

2. When I was thinking about my personal favorite of 2019, three immediately came to mind: The Great Believers (Rebecca Makkai), The Friend (Sigrid Nunez), and Washington Black (Esi Edugyan). So that's that, I thought. But then I started scrolling through Goodreads, and was surprised at how many books I had given five stars and then forgotten. (Is there a lesson there?)

3. So for the record, here are ten favorites that I read this year. I was going to list all the ones I gave five-star ratings, but there were twenty, which seems like a lot. So these are just ten that stood out when I scrolled through the list:  

The Intuitionist Colson Whitehead
Mary Poppins on audio with Sophie Thompson narrating
The Great Believers Rebecca Makkai
Less Andrew Sean Greer
The Friend Sigrid Nunez
What Truth Sounds Like Michael Eric Dyson
Born a Crime Trevor Noah, on audio
Matilda by Roald Dahl, on audio narrated by Kate Winslet
Washington Black Esi Edugyan
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green
Runners-up: American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson, Dreyer's English by Benjamin Dreyer

Pretty good, huh? I still have a few more I might get through before the end of the year, so maybe there will be more. I can hope.

4. I wasn't thinking about the End of The Decade until I recently saw a list of the best books of the decade. Whoa. The top one was Visit from the Goon Squad, which I haven't read but which was fortuitously available immediately from our library website, so maybe I will get it done before The End of The Decade.  Ha.

5. The Reading Glasses Dilemma, otherwise known as, How To Find a Pair of Reading Glasses When You Need Them. My solution for the past ten years that I've been wearing cheaters is to have a dozen pairs and spread them out--a pair in the bedroom, a pair in the kitchen, etc-- so I could always find one. But of course it didn't work. I could never find them. My new solution, which has only been for three weeks but is working much better: I have a ceramic jar on my kitchen counter and I keep all of them there. So any time I see a pair, I bring them to the kitchen and drop them in the jar. The only ones that aren't there are the ones in my purse, which I try to never take out so I always have a pair with me when I'm out of the house. So far, there has always been a pair in the jar. If you've got a better plan, please let me know.

6. Dean's solution, in case you were wondering, is to wear Clic Magnetic glasses, which are split in half at the nose piece and join up with a really strong magnet. Hard to describe, you'll have to go look at the picture. They hang around his neck almost all the time so he never loses them. But the band that goes around your neck is stiff, and it doesn't fit right under my hair, so I haven't been able to use them.

7. If you're in despair about today's young people, I strongly encourage you to show up for some activities at your local high school. Check the school website and show up for a play, or a band or choir concert, or a volleyball game. We've been to a couple of events recently, especially the winter choir concert, and the kids are bright, talented, and enthusiastic. They have worked so hard. They're going to be just fine, except they've got to deal with the mess we made.

And that's it for me. Hope you have a lovely rest of the holiday season. I'm not sure when I will post again but it might be after the New Year.

Puzzle solved: the appeal of City of Girls

I've been thinking lately about not fitting in. I do my best to think about this with a minimum of angst, because probably every person on this planet has had moments of feeling like they don't fit in. It's part of being human, and there's nothing particularly interesting about it.

But some of us Don't Fit In more than others of us don't fit in. I suspect that if I were a six-year-old now, I would be diagnosed as being somewhere on the autism spectrum. I've never quite managed social interactions naturally. I miss obvious social cues. I'm pretty good at reading tension and mood of a room, but I'm definitely not good at interpreting body language and facial expressions.

I think that's one reason why slow, beautifully acted movies and TV shows don't work for me. I heard a podcaster say this week that the reason they love Claire Foy so much in the TV show The Crown is because the camera can linger on her face and you can see an entire story happen in her facial expressions. I immediately understood why I've never been able to get into that show, even though everything about it sounds like something I would love. When the camera lingers on an actor's face, I just get impatient. It feels like a vanity shot-- look how gorgeous I am in all this makeup! Unless they're actually crying or laughing, I cannot see a single thing going on in the actor's face/eyes/expression.

I've especially never managed social interactions with women very well (I'm talking mainly about groups here, not individual, one-on-one interactions). Women In Groups are so complicated. I've heard it said that you can never trust a woman who is more comfortable with men than with women, so all I can say is, don't trust me! Because in a social situation like a party or a group gathering, I would a hundred times rather talk sports or tech or photography or anything with men than try and understand the nightmare-ish complications of social talk among women.

There are a whole bunch of expectations that I completely miss. Or sometimes I get them, but I can't take them seriously. I mean, I get that if you dress in ways that fit with current fashions, you feel like a competent human being who can manage adulting, but there's always an aspect of it to me that is like playing a game. I can't take seriously that someone really cares about what I'm wearing.

I wear jeans to church-- clean ones, in good condition. To me, showing respect for my surroundings means I pulled out a clean pair of jeans and I'm not wearing sneakers and a sweatshirt. But to some of the women in our congregation, it is a sign of disrespect that I don't dress up more for church. That's so far from the way that I think that it was years before I even picked up on this. I had no clue that anybody cared or even noticed what I wear. I'm just clueless about this stuff.

Aside: Remember back in the sixties and seventies when your mom would tell you that it doesn't matter what's on the outside, it's what's on the inside that counts? Can you even imagine someone saying that now? In these days of selfies and continuous online presence and endless make-up vlogs and fashion influencers?

So this entire setup was just to tell you that I finally figured out my problem with City of Girls, the bestselling novel by Elizabeth Gilbert that came out earlier this year. I am a sort-of fan of Gilbert's. I've like several of her books, fiction and non, and even the ones I haven't liked I've found to be interesting.  She really is an amazing writer. So I was looking forward to her new one, especially because so many women were posting reviews that said it was their favorite novel of the year, an instant classic, the most fun they'd had reading a book in forever.

But I could not get into it. Gilbert's writing was great, as it always is, but City of Girls just seemed dull to me. I 've read plenty of books where people got drunk and partied, but I've never read a book where there were pages and pages of descriptions of drunken partying to the point where it just got tedious. I mean, seriously, where was her editor? There is no new information, no character development (until it all comes to a crashing halt), just pages and pages of going out and drinking until you can't stand up and are puking into the gutter.

Then I read a brief description of it this morning on Vox's list of the 15 best books of 2019, and the light dawned. City of Girls is a girly-girl book. It's about getting dressed up and wearing great clothes and being dazzling, and feeling powerful because you are so gorgeous. I can understand that as a mental exercise, but it has almost zero meaning to me in practice. The Vox reviewer said that the thing that had stuck with her months after she read it was the clothes. Whaaaaat? No wonder I didn't get it. It is not a book for me. 

So problem solved, because it was really puzzling me why so many people (not just women) love, love, love this book.

Sorry I've been so absent, but for some reason, around here the stretch from Thanksgiving through the first week in December is the busiest time of the year. But I'm almost done-- this past week has been insane, but then next Wednesday I have my community band Christmas concert, and then I have almost nothing on the calendar through the rest of the month. I will drive you crazy with all the things I've been wanting to write about but haven't had time.

Have a great weekend.

7ToF: BETWEEN TRIPS, which means I am both happy to be traveling, and also completely nuts

Very cool succulents at Desert Botanical Garden

1. We went to Phoenix last weekend for a trip that was business for Dean, and nothing but fun for me. I wish we could do that more often-- Dean's air fare, the rental car, and the hotel room were paid for, we just have to pay for my airfare, food, and all the books I bought. Then on Monday, I'm headed to Texas to spend a few days with my mom and then go to Dallas for the big mystery readers/writers convention, Bouchercon. I've never done anything like this and I'm really excited about it. I will report back.

2. Highly recommend Washington Black by Esi Edugyan. It's the story of Wash, a young boy who starts life as a slave on a sugar plantation. The brother of the plantation owner takes him on, and then the two of them are forced to flee when Wash is implicated in the death of a white man. It obviously has some parts that are difficult to read, but for those of us who are Highly Sensitive Readers (a title I claim with some embarrassment), it's readable. You can do it. Edugyan's writing is wonderful, the voice of Wash is mesmerizing.

3. But I was struck by something that I guess is a sign of the times. (Minor spoilers ahead) Wash starts a relationship with a young woman several years after his escape. Even though they are clearly living together, at no point do they worry about getting pregnant. I've noticed this in various historical romances, too. Even though there weren't really any effective methods of birth control in the nineteenth century, somehow the author projects her own lack of worry about pregnancy back onto her characters. It is so weird. In my generation, as soon as you became sexually active, you worried about getting pregnant. Even when I was married, I worried somewhat obsessively about getting pregnant when I didn't want to. But apparently, today's young women are so confident in their birth control options that they don't know what that obsessive dread of getting pregnant is like.

4. On the one hand, I'm really happy about this. Women will never achieve economic stability if they can't control when they get pregnant, and this tells me that we're getting there. These young women don't seem to know the psychic burden of worrying about getting pregnant. That is great. But on the other hand, it's so not accurate. The consequences of an accidental unwanted pregnancy back then would have been enormous.

I guess it's the same argument as using a Bible that has the pronouns updated to be more inclusive, or Hamilton, where we are reimagining the past the way it should have been. And I am entirely in favor of both of those, so I think I am deciding that this is a good thing.

5. You know what I am tired of? (this is starting to be a regular topic: things that make me grumpy) I am tired of obsessing about skincare. MY GOD. I have a skincare routine--it even has several more steps to it than it did when I was in my 30s and all I had to worry about was preventing breakouts. So it's not that I'm completely uninterested in the topic. But suddenly it seems to have become The Thing to obsessively listen to skin care podcasts and read blog posts and spend hundreds of dollars on trying out new products. It's ridiculous. There are no men who are doing this. It is just women. What is it with us?

6. But now that I've said that *blush* I have to confess that I did a three-week test of a new skin care product someone raved about on buzzfeed. The skin of my chest, which I think we are supposed to call our décolletage, is covered in moles, age spots, dark patches, and red dots (yes, the dermatologist did tell me the technical name and no, I cannot remember it). The dermatologist told me that it's just the joys of aging, and we have to claim our wisdom and our years and whatever other bullshit they tell you, and there was nothing to be done. The downside of a northern European gene pool, I guess. I don't very often envy younger women, except when I see someone with a perfectly smooth décolletage. Then I want to scratch her eyes out.

7. So anyway. I tried Stila's One Step Correct ($36 at Ulta) for three weeks. I even took before and after pictures so I could tell what really happened, and as you might be able to predict, there is not a chance in hell I am posting them. But you know what? While it made zero difference in the number of moles/spots/skin tags, it made a huge difference in how my skin looks. I was, honestly, kinda shocked, because I am a pretty big skeptic about skin stuff. I'm going to keep using it. That particular product may not work for you, but I guess I can't turn my nose up at people who are trying different things, because sometimes you find something that helps.

That's it for me. Have a great weekend.

My So-Called Reading Life, part 3: choosing what to read, podcasts, and the tyranny of my library hold list

Figuring out what to read next has always been a random process for me (in other words, if you're trying to figure out how to choose books, I'm not going to be much help).

Back before the internet, there were libraries and bookstores. There were certain authors I would always buy if they had published something new, but for the most part, I figured out what to read based on reading jacket flaps in a bookshop, or because of something I overheard or a friend's rec. Choosing a book because of a cool cover illustration was not unheard of.

Now there are more online ways to indulge my love of find books than I could possibly exhaust. There are email newsletters, blogs (yep), vlogs on YouTube, browsing online bookstores (besides Amazon, Powells, Page1, The Bookshelf, and Alibris are ones I've used recently), the bookstagram hashtag on Instagram, and my favorite-- podcasts.

Podcasts are great. I just enjoy listening to people talk about books. I have three that I listen to devotedly-- So Many Damn Books, The Front Porch, and I've told you before about What Should I Read Next-- and half a dozen more that I listen to occasionally (Reading Glasses, Currently Reading, etc.).

So Many Damn Books is two guys, Christopher and Drew, in NYC, I think in Brooklyn (although I'm always a little fuzzy on the boroughs having only been there twice). They love to read, and even though they're the age of my daughter, I love listening to them talk. If I were their age, I think Christopher would be practically my reading twin. On a recent episode, their guest asked what was the first book they stayed up all night reading. I think she was expecting them to say some amazing, life-changing work of art, or at least a thriller, but Christopher sheepishly said it was probably Redwall, and Drew--equally sheepishly--agreed. I heart those guys so hard.

And for the record, I've never stayed up all night reading, even when I was young. Which is weird, because on average, I stay up way later than anyone else I know. It's just never all night. I'm usually asleep by 12:30 (a.m.). And even when I'm reading something I can't put down, somehwere around 2:30 or so, my need for sleep is greater than my need to find out what happens. (or *blush* I flip over and read the end so I can sleep.)

The Front Porch is Annie, owner of The Bookshelf in Georgia, and her friend (and possibly bookshop employee??) Chris, who is a recently minted PhD in (something humanities). I rarely agree with them, but they are interesting and engaging and like I said, I love listening to people talk about books. In a recent episode (which had guest host Hunter instead of Chris), they actually convinced me to give The Goldfinch a try. I've heard so many negative reviews that I had decided it wasn't for me (even though I loved Secret History). But now I think I'm going to try it. Just not any time soon because my library hold queue is already full.

I've already told you about What Should I Read Next so many times that I'll just say I still listen and I still love it. Anne, the host, is not an exact match in taste with me-- she tends a little more toward the soulful, all-the-feels type of book. But there's enough overlap that I can usually figure out from the way she describes something whether or not I will like it. She recommended Good Morning Midnight, To Night Owl from Dogfish, and Less, among recent favorites.

Honestly, the real way I currently figure out what to read next is by my library hold list. Our library allows you to have up to ten ebooks on hold, and I usually have eight to ten books on there. Then I read whatever book becomes available next. It's pretty simple.

About a year ago, I decided I should try to be more intentional about what I'm reading, but now I've decided it's actually a pretty good system. As with everyone who uses their library queue, that means I have the occasional unfortunate problem of three books I've had queued for weeks becoming available within two days of each other, but I suppose there are worse crises.

Oddly, I've had several experiences lately of unintended similarities in the books I'm reading. I've read three books this summer that had to do (loosely speaking) with time travel or the ability to pursue alternate timelines (Dark Matter, Life After Life, and Doomsday Book). And I just finished a book about life in a great English house between WWI and WWII (Remains of the Day) only to find that my next book, a mystery novel called Justice Hall, is also set in a great English house between WWI and WWII. How odd is that?

I've rambled on long enough that I'm even boring myself. As far as I know, everybody who reads this blog is also an avid reader, so you probably don't need any advice about how to pick books. So, one might ask, what exactly was the point of this post? And I can't say I know. But now that I've typed it out, I'm posting it.

Because it's 12:15 a.m. and it's time for bed.

Other posts in this series:
My So-Called Reading Life, part 1: writing book reviews
My So-Called Reading Life, part 2: rating books

7ToF: keeping the beat

1. Last time I told you about my foray into playing percussion, I was in the early stages of learning to play the concert bells. I'm way better at it than I used to be, but still not great-- probably I'm at about the skill level of a high school sophomore. We've had two concerts this summer, one on the Fourth of July, playing patriotic tunes at a local historic landmark, and the other one was this morning at the Northwest Montana Fair, playing some of the same patriotic stuff plus medleys of Sam Cooke and Tijuana Brass, etc.

Bells' eye view of 4th of July concert

2. Aside: I love the fair. Dean is not a fan. He thinks it is dirty and the people who work there are a bit questionable and it's often hot and dusty. But I grew up going to the fair and it is so fun. I used to take the kids every year, and we'd visit the draft horses and the goats and the chickens, and then go to the arts and crafts building to see the quilts and the photography. And of course there's the food. How can you not love fair food? Corn dogs and elephant ears and huckleberry milkshakes, barbecue sandwiches or noodles crisped up in a wok-- and that's only scratching the surface. Totally miss having kids the right age for going to the fair.

3. I'm still the only person in our community band that's willing to play the bells, so that is my main job. But I've also been drafted by another group to play the actual drums, so I've been learning-- snare drum and bass drum, and most intimidating of all, the drum set. I am not a good drummer. Or at least, not yet. I've been working my way through various rudiments, and I'm probably about as good as the aforementioned high school sophomore on snare. On drum set, I am kind of a disaster.

Last week, the dog. This week, the cat.

4. It is entirely different than playing a melodic instrument. In fact, it requires not just different physical skills, but an entirely different way of listening to music. Since I was a flute player and a member of a choir, I've spent my entire life listening for melodies and harmonies. PellMel played the bass, so I made a stab at learning to listen to a bass line, but even so, that is different than listening for the drums. Try it sometime. Drummers are amazing-- frequently their hands and feet are doing entirely different things. Sometimes it's hard to believe it's one person.

5. Honestly, every time I sit down at the drum set I am terrified. (We bought an ancient set for $250 that had been sitting in someone's garage and it is crappy, but sufficient for learning to push foot pedals at the same time that you are playing snare with one hand and high-hat cymbal with the other). I'm so afraid of the damn thing that it's hard to make myself practice. Progress has been slow. I think the people who asked me to play drums with them are starting to regret it-- even though I told them! I told them I was a rank beginner! I think they thought I was just being modest.

6. But I have come far enough that I no longer think of myself as a flute player, and that is cool. I'm not quite to the point where I think of myself as a drummer, but the days when I sat under the director's nose in the front row seem like a distant memory. There I am in the back with the drummers, hanging out in the percussion section. I love that.

Cool nest spotted right at eye level

7. OK, I think we've exhausted the topic of my drumming skills. Or lack thereof. What else can I tell you about for one more thing? Best books I've read this summer? Well, that's easy: The Great Believers, by Rebecca Makkai, is probably going to be my top book of the year. It's a heartbreaker (in the best sense) about the AIDS epidemic in Chicago in the mid-80s. It's a slow start, but once you get immersed in the story, it's terrific. My other two five-star reads probably aren't going to be for everybody-- The Friend by Sigrid Nunez will probably only work for people who have taken a creative writing class or hung out with creative writing students (??? not sure about that, I just know that reviews on goodreads are pretty evenly divided between people (like me) who found it thought-provoking and occasionally hilarious, and the people who thought it was a dead bore). And I just finished Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, a time travel novel published in 1992 that feels a bit dated (she couldn't imagine cell phones in 1992?), but still has Willis's trademark lovable characters and absurdist humor, even though reading it is sometimes like wading through jello.

OK, that's more than you wanted to know. Drum up a storm this weekend. (Not literally. Dean and MadMax are on a three-day float trip, so no storms allowed.)

7ToF: Catching up, reunion version

1. Remember how I smugly told you in my last post that I never buy books from amazon anymore? Yeah, well, less than TWELVE HOURS later I bought a book from Amazon. I didn't even realize the horror until several hours later. *rolls eyes at self* But I also said the exceptions were gifts and Kindle sale books, and it was a gift to myself. That's my story.

2. It was a gift to myself because yesterday was my birthday, so I am now 58 years old and sixty is looming ever closer on the horizon. I can't quite believe I'm this old, but other than that, it feels pretty good. I don't think sixty will bother me the way fifty did.

aside: I think the age I feel is mid-forties, maybe 46? Some days it's even mid-thirties.

3. The book was Evvie Drake Starts Over, which had been recommended as a fun read at least half a dozen times recently. Since it was my birthday, I let myself read a lot longer than I usually do and I finished it late last night (with some time out for a) boring errands and b) birthday fun betwixt). It is indeed a fun book, and even made me laugh out loud once or twice. It's fairly short--less than 300 pages-- and that is both part of what makes it fun and part of what makes it a little thin. There were a few things that felt under-developed. But you know, fun reading isn't supposed to be dense and heavy. I gave it four stars on Goodreads.

aside: I decided after typing that that I am going to make a push to bring back the use of betwixt. Great word.

4. So, I think I told you that I had three reunions in a row during my two week vacation. There was a week in South Dakota with us and 30 of my cousins and their families, my mom, and an aunt and uncle. Fun and relaxing. Then there was the one night 40-year high school reunion, which was also fun, but since it involved four plane flights in about 48 hours to make it happen, it was a little stressful. Maybe I will write more about it later. It was fun to reconnect with people I hadn't seen in decades, and also to see a couple of friends that I do see more regularly. In fact, that was the best part.

5. Then the second week was here locally-- we rented a place on a lake near here and Dean's siblings and their families and his dad and wife came and spent the week. We weren't really officially hosting since we've all known each other forever and we don't really need a host. But still, it's our home town and we felt responsible-- and the weather was not good. Unlike our usual pristine July weather (which coincidentally we are having this week), last week was rainy and windy and cool. No one --including us-- wanted to hang out and swim at the lake, which was pretty much all we had planned. But we managed to come up with things to do, and I think everybody ended up having fun, even if it was a little disappointing.

6. All of that meant that when things finally calmed down this week, I felt like I needed a vacation from my vacation. I was worn out, and you know-- introvert with two solid weeks of fairly intense socializing. Ouch. I plowed through the mountains of laundry, dealt with leftover food from the rental last week, unpacked, ran errands, paid bills, etc etc and then yesterday for my birthday, I gave myself the day off. It was great. I don't usually do much about my birthday because I've never seen the point of big birthday celebrations-- it always feels like just another day to me-- but it was pretty nice yesterday.

7. So, back to it today. I shouldn't even be sitting here typing this! Hope you have a great weekend, and that you get to relax and read a fun book.

My So-Called Reading Life, part 1

I kicked off the summer with a bunch of 4- and 5-star reads-- in fact, if you go back to the last week of May, there have been TEN. That is unheard of for me. I was thinking smug thoughts. I've got this book picking thing nailed!!

But then I read four that weren't so great, three of them back to back, so it must have just been coincidence. That sounds like a lot of reading to some of you--doesn't she have anything real to do?  (hey! I've been on vacation! and there were four days of airports and planes!). Others are thinking only a dozen books so far this summer? slacker!!  

Whichever category you fit into, this post and the next one or maybe two are about reading, tracking your reading, reviewing books, figuring out what to read, bookstagram, etc etc. You've been warned.

Years ago, I spent quite a bit of time agonizing over the "right" way to do book reviews. One of the main reasons I started blogging lo, these many years ago, was because I wanted someplace to write about my reactions to the books I read. I don't know many readers around here, and even fewer who share my tastes.

But I got a fair amount of pushback when I posted negative reviews. And since it was much more fun to snark about books I didn't like than prosing on about books I did, the negative reviews tended to be longer and funnier and more numerous.

But what about the author's feelings? I heard. Don't you need to be respectful of the author and all the hard work they put into writing a book? And honestly, I have to say that had never even occurred to me.

First of all, in my mind, authors were godlike creatures that exist in some kind of Elysian Fields where they are far too lofty to notice individual book reviews. And secondly, if they did happen to read my review, why would they care what I think? I'm just a lone reader in the hinterlands of Montana. What possible difference could it make what I think about their book?

But once it was pointed out to me, I got it. If I were an author, I could scan through thirty positive reviews and smile, but it would be the one negative review, no matter who wrote it, that would stick in my craw. So in spite of the unlikelihood of an author running across something that I wrote here in this little space, I quit reviewing books-- other than telling you when I read something I loved, like Less or The Intuitionist.

Unfortunately, reviewing books in my blog was how I had been tracking my reading. I needed a replacement for that, so after trying several different things, I've ended up using Goodreads. I signed up for it ages ago but never did anything more than poke around until a couple of years ago. At first I just marked the books I read and gave them a star-rating (more about stars in Part Two).

Then last year I started adding short reviews. I'm pretty sure that no one reads them, but it helps me to remember what I read and why I liked it (or didn't). No matter how negative I am, there are always a bunch of reviews that are far more negative (Goodreads reviewers can be vicious), so I don't have to worry about posting negative reviews anymore-- although I do try to be polite and respectful.

A quick review only takes a few minutes (usually), and I love being able to refer back to them. Since the Goodreads app is on my phone, it's easy to do no matter where I finish a book (on vacation, sitting in a doctor's office, in bed in the middle of the night)--unlike a journal or notebook or a file on my laptop. I can mark a book as read and give it a star rating in less than a minute, and seeing it there reminds me to write a review later.

I know some of you refuse to have anything to do with Amazon, and Goodreads is owned by Amazon, so there's that. But you don't buy anything on Goodreads, so I think their profit is mainly from advertising. Presumably they're hoping you'll learn about great books on Goodreads and then buy them on Amazon, but for the most part, I no longer buy books on Amazon.

Yep, you read that right. I check out kindle books from my library, and I buy books at indie bookstores when we're traveling, and at Target and Costco when we're not-- they're not indies, but they are local and create local jobs, etc. (We don't have an independent retail bookstore in our town, as I've told you a bazillion times now, although we do have a lovely, very good used bookshop.) The only exceptions are for gifts, and also I subscribe to a couple of "kindle deals" newsletters, so I buy kindle versions of books I want when they're on sale for $1.99 or whatever.

This is entirely too much on this topic, but believe it or not, I'm not even close to done. Enneagram 5: loves to go on and on about topics they're interested in, even if their listeners' eyes are glazing over. I will move on to more interesting things soon. (More interesting to you, but probably not to me-- I can't tell you how much time I spend thinking about this stuff.)