Some Annotated Reading July 11

 Books

I whipped through two Regency romances this week, which shall remain nameless, because except for the sex scenes (especially in the first book), I don't have a lot of good things to say about them. As a teenager, I read Regency romances, mainly Georgette Heyer who may have been pretty much all there was at that point. During college I read them during exam week. As an adult, though, I lost interest in traditional romance, mainly, I think, because the ending of a romance is never in doubt. Not much is at stake in those stories. (This is why in the Bridgerton TV world my favorite series has been Queen Charlotte, the only show with stakes beyond when the main characters will have sex, which is no stakes at all, because we all know they will.) What I do read is historical mysteries that feature a couple as the leads, said couples always, over the course of a series, eventually ending up in bed together. I prefer these books to be set in the nineteenth century. Many of them appear to be well researched and often feature some particular historical event or figure, or the culture of a period is a significant backdrop for the story. 

Yeah, the two books I just read had none of that. The author was recommended by an agent in an article I read, and I was able to easily get a couple of her books. All the characters were incredibly good looking, and in each book there are two characters lusting desperately after one another who are kept apart for far-fetched reasons. It turns out that that is not enough for me. I need a dead body. Maybe a few of them.

Live and learn. Or perhaps I should say, read and learn.

Humor

Dining With Us Tonight? by Neil Offen at Muddyum What makes this funny is not the parodies of pretentious menu items. That's been done before. The humor is in the asides, which are not pretentious. "...grown by local farmers who have never knowingly used chemically enhanced hand sanitizers before digging up their lettuce" "For dessert, our pastry chef has concocted a special panna cotta sorbet tiramisu dulce de leche because we've run out of English words on the menu."

After Twenty Years I Have Decided to Wear My Good Underwear by Anne Kyzmir at The Belladonna Comedy. I have so much good underwear.

Iconic Movies Reimagined In A World That Embraces Incontinence by Tobi Pledger also at The Belladonna Comedy. No, enjoying this piece does not say something distasteful about me. Even though I liked it the same week I liked that underwear thing.

Some Annotated Reading July 4

I spent my Fourth of July reading on my deck. First time in years I could give a whole day to reading, starting out there first thing in the morning still in my favorite nightgown. Didn't get through as much as
I thought I would, but a good reading day, and reading week, nonetheless. 

Books

While I liked Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin, I'm hard put to describe it, myself. An anxious and depressed young woman struggles to find a reason to keep living when there is so much misery around her? With some dark laughs? (There are some.)  The publisher does a better job with the description: "...a morbidly anxious young woman stumbles into a job as a receptionist at a Catholic church and soon finds herself obsessed with her predecessor's mysterious death." Gilda's anxiety is intense. 

This week I finished reading How to Keep House While Drowning by K.C. Davis. I think an argument could be made that this book isn't really, or at least just, about keeping house. I may feature this in a Time Management Tuesday post. I read an ebook edition I got through my library, and I was on a waiting list for it for a year. I'm ordering a copy for a family member.

Today I finished These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore. I love historian Jill Lepore, and this book is fantastic. I did spend a few years reading it, though, because my go-to reading is fiction. I read this in the car when someone else was driving and while waiting in doctors' offices. This was worth every minute of my life that I spent on it.

Poetry 

I was doing some research for a new humor piece when I came upon February by Margaret Atwood. Liked it much better than I remember liking her poetry in college. But this is from a book published long after I was in college, so maybe she was doing different kinds of poetry by then. And maybe she's doing still different kinds now.

Because I read that Margaret Atwood poem, I remembered my poet laureate project and looked up the next poet laureate to check out. I'm up to number 5, Karl Shapiro, who was still referred to as a consultant in poetry. Among his poems that I liked were Buick (Yes, it's a poem about a car.) and Ballade of the Second-Best Bed, which should be assigned to every high school kid having to read Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet, because it gives Shakespeare a little more interest than I remember him having when I had to read those things.  

Short Reading

The Time I Stole Tama Janowitz's Slaves of New York and Couldn't Stop Reading It by Elwin Cotman at Lit Hub. I was drawn to this because I'd just found my copy of Tama Janowitz's Slaves of New York, and I could stop reading it.

Quince Mince Pie | Owl and the Pussycat  at InLiterature. Yes, I've been doing some reading about The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear, and here is an attempt at a pie made from "mince and slices of quince."

Excerpts from The Space Between by Herb Harris at Craft. This is an editors' choice selection from a memoir excerpt and essay contest. I believe there are others, but this is the only one I've read. Definitely enjoyed it. 

Humor

Frazzled has started accepting humorous essays. Oops...I Neglected to Bring My Son to Preschool Art Night by Brad Snyder is a good one. It has a bit of a memoirish thing going. 

Some Annotated Reading June 27

While I didn't do much writing last month, I did do a bit of reading. Including:

Four Books!

• My cousin Nooch mentioned author Jess Walter in a comment a while back, so last month I read his The Financial Lives of the Poets, a book about a man's marriage and life falling apart. Walter has a dark, deadpan sense of humor that I enjoyed very much. 
• The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older. This is my favorite kind of scifi, a blend of science fiction and mystery. The world of the book I totally understood, which is not something that always happens for me with science fiction. The two main characters reminded me of Holmes and Watson, except that they are both women and the Watson character here is a great deal smarter than the original. They also have a romantic history. There's a second book I hope to read at some point.
• I finished reading The Hockey Sweater and Other Stories by Roch Carrier. In an earlier post, I speculated that these were children's stories, with a child narrator and often a moral point of some kind. I wouldn't say that anymore. I'd like to do more reading about les contes, the kinds of stories Carrier is known for writing, but I'm not finding much in my quick hunt for material. 
• Finally, I read a thriller that shall remain nameless. It plodded along and was extremely improbable. Yet I read nearly every word.

Short Writing

• Author Cass Sunstein Unlocks What It Takes to Be as Big as the Beatles  A terrific interview with the author of a new book, How to Become Famous, which also sounds as if it could be terrific.
• The Moral Judgements of Henry David Thoreau by Kathryn Schulz at The New Yorker. This is nearly ten years old, and I read it nearly a month ago, so I can't tell you how I came to do that. I've had a very up and down reading experience with Thoreau. I've mentioned him many times over the years here at Original Content, and he gets a line in my most recent humor piece. He is, in short, one of many, many authors I enjoy reading about more than I enjoy reading. Schulz sounds as if she has mixed feelings about him, too. While I was reading what she had to say about Walden, I recalled reading that book and thinking at many points that he had to be joking. Probably not.
• Book Recommendations Based on Your Favorite TV Shows by Kailey Hansen at Buzzfeed. I like this concept, and saw a couple of books I may try. And one I've read.
• Ursula K. Leguin's Home Will Become A Writers Residency by Hillel Italie at AP. I love authors' homes. And I have a bit of a thing for Ursula K. Leguin.
• The Baby in the Corner by Anne Moul at The Delmara Review/The Talbot Fry. I am not a big fan of painful memoir, but this is almost more philosophical than painful. After having just skimmed it again, I wonder if it was, indeed, what the author was going for and not just Gail's perception.
• How Chicago Inspires Writers: Abby Geni and the Lakeshore at The Chicago Review of Books. I read this, because Abby Geni was the leader of a workshop I took recently at the Off Campus Writers' Workshop. It inspired me to think of whether or not Connecticut has inspired me. And I believe it has, but I may save those thoughts for an essay some day. But I will say, it involves Puritans.

Humor

•  I'd Like to Discuss My Child Specifically While You're Trying to Address a Group of People by Caroline Horwitz at Frazzled. Sometimes you'll hear talk about humor needing to be true. While I think you can make too much of that, this piece is definitely a case of truth in humor. That first situation Horwitz uses? I was in a room full of people while something just like that was going on. As God is my witness, I wasn't the mother doing the talking.
• Things I Grew Up With That Seem Weird....Today by Patrick Metzger at MuddyUm This is a very funny spin on those old fart articles about how things were different when I was young. What makes it work is the total lack of nostalgia. "...drunk driving was popular and largely ignored." This writer deserves the 6,000+ claps he got for this piece just for calling Hawkeye Pierce a sanctimonious alcoholic.

Some Annotated Reading May 31

I believe I have my link problem resolved. Additionally, I finished reading two books this week.

I read Secret Lives by Mark de Castrique as park of my mission to find good representations of older characters. And I did here. Ethel Crestwater is a legendary former FBI agent who runs a boarding house for agents of both the FBI and the Secret Service. This actually makes sense as presented in the story, because agents move around and sometimes take short-term assignments in the DC area, which is where Ethel's boarding house is. Ethel is not a Miss Marple type, using intuition and wisdom. She's a sharp, well-trained agent, which is a totally different thing, though one who physically is feeling her age a bit. My main complaint with Ethel is her name. I don't think it's appropriate to the era in which she was born. She's seventy-five in the book, which was published in 2022, so say she's just mid-seventies in the the 2020s. I believe that would make her born in the 1950s. That was the era of Nancies and Debbies. Maybe Sharons. The name Ethel goes back a few more decades, at least. But, otherwise, Ethel is an excellent character, and Secret Lives is the first book in a series that could go somewhere.

I know I must have bought the e-book edition of Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil by Melina Marchetta because I loved one of Marchetta's earlier books,  Jellicoe Road. Tell the Truth is one of those books I had on my Kindle, and when I transferred it to the Kindle App on my iPad, it wasn't clear as to whether or not I had read it. I recognized some things at the beginning, but nothing after that. So I kept reading. Now I just checked Goodreads. Evidently I read it in 2018, didn't review it, but gave it a 3 star rating. I can't believe it, because I loved it on this read and will definitely give it a 5. What the heck? This was an involving contemporary English mystery, somewhat on the heartbreaking side. There was French that I could understand. There were a lot of teenagers, and I did find that confusing. That was it, though. I rarely intentionally read a book a second time. Doing so with this one and finding I like it so much more than I appear to have the first time is an interesting experience.  

The Poet Laureate Project

I just remembered this week that I was doing this and read up on Louise Bogan, the fourth poet laureate when they were still called poet consultants. She was also a critic for The New Yorker. I'd love to read some of her work for that publication, but I can't access its archive. I can only read older things when the magazine suggests it. 

I can't say I embraced her poetry, but I did like the last part of To a Dead Lover.  "And I have life--that old reason to wait for what comes, to leave what is over."

Short-form Reading

The  Author Cass Sunstein interview at Salon is fantastic. I'd never heard of him, but he has a book out called How to Become Famous in which he talks about the role of luck. It sounds fascinating. I am not very knowledgeable about Taylor Swift, but Sunstein mentions her song Mean, which I then had to hunt down and liked. A terrific read.

Last week I wrote about reading a book set in Argentina and how that might lead me to make Argentina the South American country I learn about. So far I'm sticking with it. I read I am the King, and I will destroy you at The Guardian. It's about Argentina's president.

Checking for Holes in the Multiversee by Paul Rousseau at Catapult is a short memoir with both a compelling story and an interesting frame. It's told backwards. I've mentioned Rousseau here before.

Humor

A Group of Moms Plan a Girl’s Night on WhatsApp  by Lisa Hides at MuddyUm This is another piece in which the framework is important. I found this funny even though the content was not particularly unique. Moms' nights out have been a thing since at least the '90s. The WhatsApp hermit crab format is what makes this work so well.

Top 10 Tips For Your Summer From a 2-Year-Old by Carter Anderson Lee at Frazzled. The demands! The voice! What a kid.

Revisiting Movie and TV Characters You Thought Were Mean When You Were A Kid by Caroline Horwitz at Jane Austen's Wastebasket I've had thoughts like this, but mostly about female TV characters I thought were old and frumpy when I was young and now they look a whole lot better.

Some Annotated Reading May 9

Where has the week gone?

Finished another book, You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment by Thic Nhat Hanh. Very significant because it had been on my iPad to read for a long time. 

Short Stories

I'm writing about a couple of New Yorker stories you won't be able to read without a subscription, but I'll tell you about them.

The Landlady by Roald Dahl in The New Yorker. From 1959! I may have mentioned that I love my digital subscription to The New Yorker, because I have access to back issues. Way back issues. This one The New Yorker actually brought to my attention. This was a really important read for me this past week, because I discovered Roald Dahl's short stories before I discovered his children's books. I like his short stories, did not like whatever I read of his children's books and have not read many of them. The Landlady was a big deal for me, because of its simplicity. Just two characters. One setting. It may be a model of short story structure. It sent me back to the drawing board on the short story I've been working on this year.

Late Love by Joyce Carol Oates in The New Yorker. Last month. It's been years and years and years since I've read any Joyce Carol Oates (I have a book of her short stories), so when I saw she had a new story at The New Yorker, I thought I should take the opportunity to check it out. In Late Love a mature writer is writing about mature characters but taking them somewhere a bit different. I should try to read more of her work.

Flash Writing

Some of the following I may have found through some sort of list that now is gone.

About Accidental Firearm Discharge on Campus by Paul Rousseau at autofocus. Autofocus publishes autobiographical writing in any form. Rousseau has a lot of writing that I've saved to my reading list.

Sometimes She Wishes He Was Dead But Then She'd Miss Him by Dawn Tasaka Steffler in Flash Frog. This is a heart breaker and illustrates the intensity that's possible with flash fiction.

Solar Flare by Claudia Monpere at Atlas + Alice. Why is the mother so interested in heat? Another example of the intensity of flash. 

Our Nudist Neighbors are Fighting by Joshua Jones Lofflin at Flash Frog. A nice twist on this one.

Some Annotated Reading May 2

Gail has finished reading a booook. Plot isn't Scorched Grace's strong point. Character and lovely writing are what author Margot Douiahy does really well. I mean really well. I fell in love with Sister Holiday, who describes herself as New Orleans' first punk nun, in, I believe, the third paragraph. The tattoos, the guitar, the smoking, the recollections of sex...yeah, I loved it all. What I also loved was Holiday's intense faith and love of God. Douiahy is a poet, and her writing about faith is lovely. I felt it was okay I hadn't gone to church the week before--or for several weeks, months--because I was reading this spiritual writing. Oh, also, this is a mystery and Sister Holiday is our detective. And, also, some powerful older women characters in this book. 

Gail has finished reading another booook, another mystery, The Maid by Nita Prose. I found The Maid a little slow, until Molly the Maid finds herself in hot water. The book delivers a good twist at the end, both surprising and leaving this reader going, "Of course!" That is possible because Molly is an unreliable narrator. A believably unreliable narrator. Here is something I thought about after finishing The Maid: Molly appears to be on the autism spectrum, though the word is never used. However, autism, at least superficially, is pretty well known in our society now and readers bring that knowledge to the book. But is it really necessary to know about autism to "get" Molly and enjoy this book? Isn't Molly capable of just being who she is without readers labeling or explaining her? 

I've Read Serious Stuff This Week

Dule Hill on The "Powerful" Value of Artists and Why "The West Wing" "Still Rings True Today" by D. Watkins at Salon. I gave up watching The West Wing a couple of seasons in and therefore didn't find the title of this article a draw. I found something totally different of interest. Dule Hill is being interviewed here because he is hosting a series on artists (meaning people in the arts versus people who paint, sculpt, etc.) for PBS. The interviewer says, "...many of the artists featured in the show are happiest when they are lost in their art. The idea of going big or making it is not often the goal." And Hill says things to support that. That's hugely significant for writers. The bulk of us will not go big or make it in the traditional sense of the expression. You do what you do for the sake of what you're doing. You write for the sake of writing.

No One Buys Books by Elle Griffin at Substack is an assessment of information that came out when the U.S. brought an antitrust case against Penguin Random House last year when PRH tried to buy Simon & Schuster. Some of this wasn't new news. The business about big name writers getting the big advances and big support from publishers has been known for a long time. How few copies other books sell was probably known within the publishing world, something the general public and  prepublished writers are less likely to be aware of. And probably still won't be aware of, since these kinds of articles are going to be read mainly by people already in publishing. Also, publishing has been afraid of Amazon for years. Something that sounded new to me was the importance of the backlist. At least at the turn of the century, books went out of print, very quickly and never made it to the backlist. So how big can it be? The kind of backlist Griffin is talking about sounds as if it's backlist titles everyone has heard of--like the Bible and The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  These are books people who don't buy very many books probably buy. The business about romance novels going primarily self-published is also interesting, though I still see romance novels selling to publishers on Publishers Marketplace. Nonetheless, I like the idea that someone can be successful going their own way. 

How to Write a Humor Piece From a Headline by Alex Baia at The Writing Cooperative. In days of old, popular wisdom claimed you couldn't talk about humor. No one knew what it was, but they knew it when they saw it. That is not the case. You can talk about humor both in terms of analyzing something that has already been written and in terms of how to write it. I have not worked from a headline/title in the past. I come up with it afterwards. But I am trying to determine which of several humor ideas to work on next, and I think what I'll do is come up with headlines/titles for them and start writing the one I like best. So, at least in the short term, reading this article will have an impact on me.

A Lot More

I've read a number of short fiction pieces from a number of journals and, of course, some humor. But enough is enough for one week!

Some Annotated Reading April 24

 Now, look, I read a great deal more than I share here. Political stuff. Things about old murders. Bits and pieces about history. I carefully curate what I post here, leaning toward items that are literary or humorous and, most importantly, don't make me look like a maniac.

First off, remember that I read a book, and blogged about it. I'm taking credit for that.

Love in the Time of Collapse by Amy DeBellis was the first thing I've read at Identity Theory. I stumbled upon DeBellis on Xitter and will be checking out some more of her writing in the future, as well as some of the places she's published. This first piece is microfiction, and, I think, well done.

Humor

What Does Your Book Organization System Say About You? by Lisa Cowan at The Belladonna Comedy. My organization system isn't mentioned here. I use an intricate combination of chronological order and genre. And, yet, I have still lost books, one for a couple of years before it turned up, just about where I expected it to be.

Quiz: Things My Accountant Said to Me During Tax Season or Things I Said to My Toddler During Potty Training by Kate Brennan at Frazzled. This kind of humor is more difficult to write than it appears, because you have to maintain the original concept all the way through. 

Your Passive Aggressive Home Inspection by Adam Dietz at Slackjaw. I like hermit crab formats. Also, I've been house hunting for 5 years. The last three, we've only been pretending to look, but, still, 5 damn years.

Some Annotated Reading April 4

This is two weeks worth of reading, because I was a lazy blogger last week.

The Poet Laureate Project 

I read some Robert Penn Warren, who was both our third poetry consultant (the precursor to the poet laureate position) and, a couple of decades later, our first poet laureate. I read his novel, All the King's Men, when I was a teenager and felt I'd done some grown-up reading. I wasn't even aware he was a poet until a couple of weeks ago. And he is a poet I find accessible. I particularly like Tell Me a Story and True Love.  

The Francophonie Project

I managed to finish reading Menuet by Guy de Maupassant. It is about a man who meets an elderly dance instructor and his elderly wife, a dancer. Or it may be about something deeper regarding the narrator. Reading this raised a lot of questions for me about how we judge short stories now and how short stories from the past relate to that. Which is interesting, because what reading this in French and English was supposed to do was improve my French. Francophonie Month is over now, so I can put this book back on my To Be Read Shelf, where it has been for years.

Some Serious Cultural Reading

The Rise and Fall of the Trad Wife by Sophie Elmhirst at The New Yorker. This was enlightening. The woman who was the main focus of this article was interested in the trad wife lifestyle, because she was into nostalgia. If that's the attraction for others, too, then that makes some sense. I, personally, think nostalgia of most--nah, of all--kinds is dangerous, but, again, nostalgia would provide an explanation for what's going on here. What I still don't understand is why women who choose to live this way want to tell the world about it. My guess is that they are hoping to monetize a blog or attract a big following so they can sell them a book. But that isn't exactly what we think of as trad wife behavior, is it? And why did they choose the trad wife lifestyle to try to make money off from? Why did they think people would "buy" that? Yes, I know some of them were right. But, still, where did this come from?

Humor

We Are Unable To Offer You A Place At Yale Because Your Essay Read Like The Closing Narration Of A Teen Rom-Com by Amelia Tait at McSweeney's. I still feel a need to read things with childlit/YA connections.

When a Recipe Says It's "Quick and Easy" by Jiji Lee and Patrick Clair at McSweeney's. I wish I'd thought of this.

Listen, Cat: I'm Not the Out-of-Control Infant You Once Knew by Nick Gregory at Points in Case. We have a cat. We have a preschooler in the family. 

Suggestions For Rebooting The Marvel Cinematic Universe From Farmer, Essayist, And Poet Wendell Berry by Jeff King at McSweeney's. Here's what you have to understand about Wendell Berry and me--Years ago, I was a member of a reading group in which there was another member who was humorless, narrow-minded, judgmental, and unpleasant. (No, I am not talking about myself.) She was a huge Wendell Berry fan and suggested we read one of his books. As a result, I know Wendell Berry's name.  But reading him? I just can't.

American Expat in France: Probably Don't Do This by Kat Garcia in The Belladonna Comedy. What I particularly liked about this is that while it appears to be a list, it is really a story.

Ten Reasons to Run That You, a Parent Who Hates Running, Can Give Your Kid Who Also Hates Running by Lily Hirsch at Frazzled. The title is a little long and awkward, but that's part of the joke, and it really does tell you exactly what this funny piece is about. 

Some Annotated Reading February 1

I have a new reading project! I saw something on X relating to poet laureates, and one thought led to another, and I began a Poet Laureate reading project. Because who remembers poet laureates from the past? I don't. Or has even heard of them? I haven't. But they were somebody once and deserve to be read. So I'm going to.

First off, the exact title since 1986 has been Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry. From 1937 to 1985 the title was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. But I'm going to lump them altogether as poet laureates. 

And the first one was Joseph Auslander. 

Is This The Lark! is my favorite of the Auslander poems I've read. The others, I must say, were lost on me. But this one! It ends with "To think that I should hear and know/The song that Shelley heard, and Shakespeare, long ago!"

Other reading: 

• Missed Connections: Traditional Life Milestones Seeking A Millennial by Sarah Gardner in Slackjaw. This, I think, is sophisticated and different.
• Your Cat's Op-ed On Your New Baby by James Klein in Slackjaw. A family member who likes cats a whole lot more than I do referred me to this.
• Sexist Math For Girls So They Can Figure Out How Much Society Hates Them by Kyrie Grey at Jane Austen's Waste Basket. I...loved...this. Loved it.
• Finished reading The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal. I had started it last fall, put it aside when some other books turned up, and was motivated to finish it because Kowal led an Off Campus Writers' Workshop workshop today that I'm signed up for. I'll be watching a video tomorrow.

Some Annotated Reading January 18

In addition to Ms. Demeanor, I also read Murder in Old Bombay by Nev March during my retreat week. This is not the first historical mystery set in India that I've read. Apparently, I'm drawn to them. I also read some short stories by Kelly Link in her book, Get in Trouble. I have enjoyed Kelly Link's short stories in the past, but after reading three or four of these I felt they might be enjoyed better one at a time, now and then.

While I'm on retreat, I often research and read about people I hear about in newspapers or magazines there. Last year, for instance, I read some rather grim, but fascinating, things about mid-century Stowe. This year I read about the Lepine Sisters, who developed some national fame in their day. Also, I saw something about pirates on Lake Champlain, so I had to read about that.

More recently I read A Wicked Stepmother With Empty Nest Syndrome Is Left Wondering, Now What? | by Danielle Martinetti | Slackjaw | Medium

The Birth of My Daughter, The Death of My Marriage by Leslie Jamison in The New Yorker was an odd thing for me to read, because I don't lean toward what you might call depressing memoir. But, man, the title was such a hook. I couldn't look away.

Julia Child Was a Champion for Reproductive Rights, Carrie Mullins interviewing Helen Rosner at Electric Lit was one of three articles I read about Julia Child this past week. It appears that I have developed a mild obsession with her. Yes, I recently finished the second and final season of Julia on Max.

Redefining What Makes a 'Relationship' in Our 70s by Elinor Lipman at AARP. Yes, I am someone who goes 'eh, AARP.' But this is an absolutely charming piece, and it appears that I'm also developing an obsession with Elinor Lipman.

Some Annotated Reading December 7

This week's annotated reading is all short form.

Pool of Souls by Madeline Graham at Redivider   One of my favorite things about flash fiction is that it can pack an intense emotional wallop that longer works can't. Pool of Souls definitely packs a wallop.

Flash fiction sometimes gets a little mystical, which I'm not as fond of as I am intensity. We Don't Want Kids by Catherine Roberts at Flash Frog has enough intensity to offset whatever mystical thing might be going on, so I found it satisfying.

Facebook friend Sherrida Woodley just published Me and Amelia Earhart at Halfway Down the Stairs. This is not flash, but a memoirish piece and some very elegant writing. Check out the first paragraph, if nothing else. 

What Happened When the U.S. Failed to Prosecute an Insurrentionist Ex-President by Jill Lepore in The New Yorker. (I have a digital subscription this year.) I read this because I love Jill Lepore. I own two of her books, one being a big history of the United States that I carry in the car to take into any place where I might have to wait. I read it when it's someone else's turn to drive. Lepore is a regular contributor to The New Yorker, so I have a lot of reading to do. I have to admit that I got lost in all the people involved in whether or not Jefferson Davis would be prosecuted, but there was still a lot of terrific material here. I'm the kind of nonfiction reader who takes what she can take and doesn't grieve the rest.

Some Annotated Reading November 30

True Biz by Sara Novic is one of those books that has such a long waiting list on Libby that by the time it turns up for me, I've forgotten why I placed the hold. It takes place in a boarding school for the deaf and deals with a multitude of teenage things, but, additionally, two methods of communication for the deaf, sign language or ocular implants. Interesting point: I often complain about books for the young that appear to be written to teach them something, claiming that I don't see that in adult books. This book does seem to be written to teach adult readers something, it just seemed to do it really well. Or perhaps it's just that the deaf community is something I know very little about, so being exposed to it was fascinating.

I was looking for mystery/thrillers to read and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn had been on my Kindle for some time. I bought it on sale, but because I'd seen, and liked, the movie years ago, I didn't bother to read it. I bothered this month, and it is a very good read. I rewatched the movie this past weekend. The ending of the book is much grimmer than the ending of the movie. Interesting point: Writers often read that they must have likable characters, certainly a likable main character. One of Gone Girl's main characters is unlikable and the other is a psychopath. Yet Flynn pulls it off.

So then I decided to read one of Gillian Flynn's earlier books, Dark Places. Holy Moses, it makes Gone Girl look light and fluffy. Interesting point: Talk about unlikable characters! This one has some unlikable child victims. Again, Flynn pulls it off.

Another interesting point: All three of these books use multiple points of view, something I didn't realize was used that much in adult work. With Flynn's books, in particular, you really get different voices with the different point of view characters, something I think doesn't happen a lot with YA and middle grade, in which the characters often sound alike.

Some Annotated Reading September 7

Finished The Guncle by Steven Rowley More to come on this.

Read all of The New One by Mike Birbiglia Also watched one of his Netflix stand-up specials. More to come on this.

The Mustache by Robert Cormier. This was part of a group of short stories listed as epiphanies, and the only one of them I've read so far. Turns out, I recognized it. I'd read it before. Here is my personal Robert Cormier story. Many years ago, I stumbled upon a website list of well-known Franco-Americans. Cormier was listed as something like "Our leading Franco-American writer." Shortly thereafter he died, and I thought, "The position of leading Franco-American writer is open!" I don't know who got it, but it wasn't me.

Hana Sushi by Anita Lo I liked this a lot. I just realized that it's about eating, something I like to write about. I read this as part of researching Smokelong Quarterly.

Kaleidescope by Lizzie Lawson  This is a supernatural story that feels normal. I think its flash format serves it well. It's complete. I don't want more.

Pin Me Pink by Lizzie Lawson  I cannot recall how I found Lizzie Lawson or thought I should read her work, but this is another piece I think works well as flash. Also, there's an incongruity here that I like that has nothing to do with it being flash.

Likely Ways I Might Appear In A True-Crime Documentary by Sara K. Runnels  Part of my New Yorker humor reading. I liked this even though I don't watch true-crime documentaries. That is an issue when you're writing humor. Will everyone get the humor or just the circle of people who know what I'm writing about? Oh, no! Sara K. Runnels has published a lot of humor and essays that I now feel compelled to read! I have to add her page to my reading list. Soon I will have so many reading links on my iPad, to say nothing of my ebooks, that I won't be able to lift it!

Yesterday afternoon I read a number of articles on Tay-Sachs Disease among French Canadians for the writing project I'm not supposed to be working on. I was falling asleep and this reading revived me, which is very odd because my understanding of the workings of DNA is extremely shallow and limited. 

Some Annotated Reading

This week I have been reading:

The Guncle by Steven Rowley. More to come on that when I finish.

A Peach by Any Other Name Is Just as Gross: My Terrible Fear of Fruit by Sheila Jackson at Serious Eats I'm continuing to check out Serious Eats as a potential market for my eating essays, and I was delighted to see that this one was written by someone who is not an award-winning food writer. I was also interested in this particular essay because I have a number of family members with fear of food, including fruit.

The Incredible Super Power of Flash by Dinty W. Moore at the Brevity blog. Moore, who is a big name in flash nonfiction writing, covers compression in this post, which I had heard of but forgotten about, and layering, which I hadn't heard of. I am reminded of how much work I need to do.

How-to at Medium: I read a couple of pieces by a guy giving advice on how to do well writing on the Medium platform. They were not very good. Medium is a very different writing world. Years ago, I read that there are two kinds of writers--writers who write to support themselves and publish through the New York City publishing world and writers who write to support their academic careers and publish outside the New York City publishing world. I think an argument can be made now that there is a third kind of writer, who writes and publishes on-line, where content about personal experience is king and craft takes second place. IMHO. I've also been reading up on Medium's boost program. You don't want to know.

Reading for a new project: Though I said earlier this year that I'm through with book-length projects, I'm toying with taking a shot at a mystery set in the late nineteenth century. I've read a bunch over the years. So now I'm reading up on things like attitudes toward French Canadians in the U.S. in the late nineteenth century, the craze for bicycling in the 1890s, and women's corsets. There were cycling corsets back then. Like sports bras but bigger.

Some Annotated Reading

Because I am concentrating on short-form writing, I need to be looking for places that publish the same. The reading involved is time consuming, and I sometimes feel I should just sit down and do nothing but read for a month or two. 

Instead, what I've been reading this week includes:

In the Bird Cage: Finding Out What Funny Is by Steve Martin, New Yorker, October 22, 2007. This is an excerpt from Martin's book Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life Very readable. The lesson learned? Martin dated some interesting women when he was young.

The Kid Is Alright: In Defense of Picky Eating by Irina Dumitrescu, Serious Eats Serious Eats publishes personal essays about food. I write personal essays about eating. Also, we have two generations of picky eaters in our family. Serious, serious picky eaters. The lesson learned after poking around Serious Eats? A lot of their essayists are award winning food writers. I must make of that what I will. 

The House With Feet: The Dire Importance of Ruth Stone's Bequest by Bianca Stone in Vida: Women in the Literary Arts. This piece has nothing to do with my market research and everything to do with the fact that I'm developing an obsession with Ruth Stone, just as I have one with Shirley Jackson. It appears that I have not mentioned here that I received The Essential Ruth Stone for Christmas last year and read it this spring.

Pretty Bad Middle Grade Novel--I wouldn't finish this, but I'm skimming now because I bought the thing. I will have more to say about this after I finish. 

Medium--I try to do some reading on Medium each week, sometimes to check out publications I might submit to, sometimes to try to support other writers. I'm hesitant to post Medium links, because it appears that my readers can't read a few piece per month there anymore. But, just in case, this was a pretty good poem.