Franzen picked the essays for this compilation based on a theme: Risk. As he writes in his introduction, “The writer has to be like the firefighter, whose job, while everyone else is fleeing the flames, is to run straight into them.”
Indeed, I love the saying that if something keeps you up at night, you have to write about it. That can mean writing a piece that you can’t stop thinking about… or writing about something that feels so embarassing or painful that it would be a risk to even put it out there. That’s the writing that most makes you and others feel alive, un-alone, less afraid.
It reminds me of the most recent edition of True Fiction, which I read on my plane rides this weekend. The piece, “Unmolested” by Michael Lowenthal, is about the writer’s role as an openly gay guest-star counselor at the all-boys’ summer camp he adored attending as a kid. The camp had recently been under fire as a counselor had been accused of molesting a camper.
Lowenthal writes about being the object of an adolescent camper’s crush. And his own attraction to teenage boys.
I was impressed with Lowenthal’s bravery to “go there” and write about a complicated, potentially dangerous subject. He handles it deftly, with empathy and precision. It’s beautiful and has my vote for Best American Essays 2018.
I love that quote. Here’s my other favorite Pippi saying:
“Don’t you worry about me. I’ll always come out on top.”
I’m re-reading this for an upcoming writing project. I loved Pippi Longstocking as a kid, but I didn’t really remember why. I knew I loved that she had her own house and could do whatever she wanted. There was something about her natural affinity for independence that I found appealing and familiar as a child. As an adult, I appreciate her resilience. She wasn’t independent just because she had her own house and horse. She was independent because she had to be. She found a way to be happy and goofy despite all her loneliness, loss, and need.
Every writer I know loves this book. It’s Anne’s funny-fueled guide to writing and life, because usually the lessons for both overlap. Like, perfectionism is a dream killer. So is procrastination.
In fact, our human (and particularly writerly) tendency to procrastinate when we’re overwhelmed was what led to the anecdote that’s inspiration for her book’s title.
“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brothers shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”
I’ve found this one sentence particularly helpful during a buck wild week of blowing my capacity levels by a country and city and outer space mile. … And also reading writers a million times better than me, which is wonderful but also makes one feel like getting a day job back sometimes, ya know?
God speed, friends.
Anne Lamott from “Bird by Bird”:
“The only thing to do when the sense of dread and low self-esteem tells you that you are not up to this is to wear it down by getting a little work done every day.”
Michael McCormack’s new book, Born Fanatic: My Life in the Grip of the NFL, began as a letter of complaint to his father, who was a world champion football player (Cleveland ftw! For once!), NFL coach, and hall of famer also named Michael McCormack.
But he never envisioned what writing his story would turn into: A balm of healing for some of the wounds left behind by their dissonant relationship.
Similarly, Born Fanatic is a football memoir, but it’s much more than that. It’s a tale of father and son, country and game, money and love, addiction and recovery.
McCormack’s painfully honest retelling of his family’s football fanaticism and his father’s abuse and its influence on his own addiction is destined to pay that healing forward. Readers will find threads of their own story woven throughout the tough pigskin of his.
It will also offer hope. The pair slowly began to mend their relationship through their undying love of football. As McCormack wrote, he began to understand his father better. In this is an important lesson: Forgiveness doesn’t have to mean you think what happened was OK.
Set for release on April 24, get your pre-order today. I watch football for the tight pants and still found a lot to love in this book. McCormack, who works as a lawyer, writer and speaker in Seattle, answered a few questions about the book in anticipation of its release.
He signed off his email, “Be well.” I think he wants that for everyone.
***
Why was telling the story in this book important to you?
I didn’t set out to write a memoir. Rather, in the aftermath of my father’s death, I ramped up my journaling, trying to sort out life-long confusion, pain and anger. Then, several off-field pro football stories motived me to consider the work as a memoir told from the perspective of an uber-fan. Even once I started down that path, I had no idea where I would end up.
Now in the aftermath, I’m reminded of a metaphor to help explain what’s become most important to share: Providence puts a diamond in our pocket because it knows that’s the last place we’ll look. In the challenge of searching for it, we learn to treasure it more. I’m moved to share how my search unfolded and what my diamond turned out to be.
The prologue of your book is really powerful and, I think, relatable for many even for those without football playing dads. What was the most difficult part of writing about your relationship with your father?
Writing it meant feeling it. All of it. That included feeling my own complicity and dysfunction as a son, a football fan, and a person. I couldn’t have written the book without facing up to some responsibility, but there were many, many moments when I REALLY didn’t want to do that. I came close a couple times to deleting all saved versions of the manuscript and burning all paper copies.
What was the most rewarding experience or outcome for you of writing this book?
The most rewarding experience was the most surprising, namely that in writing, I discovered forgiveness. That discovery led to the diamond in my pocket. That is, my father’s legacy and what I intend will be my own.
This family football story is such an American story… especially for the generations we see in this book and the way family history impacts us in the present every day. Do you have any anxiety about the book being published or are do you feel excited to share this story?
I have felt a lot of both, anxiety and excitement, over the past year as we prepare to publish. Sharing the project with my mother and siblings was not easy, and that’s still a source of heartbreak for me, as the memoir displays. But the anxiety and excitement have given way to something more valuable: gratitude. I’m grateful for what I’ve learned about myself and my father. In terms of publishing the book, I’m grateful for the people with whom I’ve worked and for the conversations with fans, media, and journalists like you. If we don’t sell a single copy, it was worth every drop of blood, sweat, and tears.
What do you think is the general public’s greatest misunderstanding about addiction?
Understanding that I’m no clinical expert, and there’s a lot to unpack here, I offer this from personal experience. Addiction does not come from a desire to use per se. It comes from having only two choices: Use or Die. Within the throws of addiction, the option to live a full life free of substance abuse isn’t on the table. Life in that sense is a blind spot altogether.
PS – Fanaticism at its most extreme is an addiction.
I think one of the most difficult elements of writing real stories is knowing what parts of the story to include or not include. How did you edit down or decide on what scenes to include in this book?
Spot on observation! At one point, the memoir was twice as long as it is now. That was two years ago, and after two years of work. I was certain at that time I was finished. I walked away for a week, came back to the manuscript and realized I was not done for the very reason implied by your good question. With the help of a patient and persistent editor (Bryan Tomasovich of The Publishing World), I lashed myself to the mast of one theme: the relationship triangle between my father, pro football, and me. Everything not explicitly within that theme had to go. Looking back over the last two years, I bet I undertook that process of walking away, returning, then cutting fifty times more after I was certain the book was done.
Do you have a daily writing routine or schedule when you were working on this book? If so, what is it and how does this help you get the work done? (Basically, we fellow writers love any advice on getting the job done!)
I had to stick with my day job as an attorney. And even though that involves a lot of writing, it’s a much different style, which was not helpful. So, finding a routine for creative writing proved difficult for a while. Things flipped when I committed to making my creativity the most important thing in my life. As soon as I woke (sometimes, many times, at 3 a.m.), my personal writing came first. It also helped when I quit judging the quality of the words when they first hit the page. I would just write, then organize and clean it up later. I also tacked to the wall a quote I found on the internet: It’s not that good writers have a particular gift. They just write. A lot.
What has been inspiring you lately?
Wood, water, stone, air, and fire. My wife and I are on the cusp of an empty nest after raising five kids. So, I have more time for listening to nature. I want and need more of that.
If you could invite three people, living or dead, to a dinner party, who would they be and why?
Abraham Lincoln has always been at the top of my list for questions like this. According to history, he overcame a lot of failure in business and politics. He was challenged by depression. And yet despite those challenges – or maybe because of them – he made obviously positive contributions to a greater cause.
Second, I’ll pick Brazilian writer Paulo Cohelo, author of The Alchemist, an all-time favorite, although I’m most smitten with his work The Fifth Mountain. I would have to learn Portuguese though, I bet.
Last, I would invite my father. He and I have some unfinished business.
I had to add Clarissa Goenawan’s new novel “Rainbirds” to my list of books to read this month because I somehow got an early-enough library hold on it and the next library patron in line WAS GOING TO HAVE TO PRY IT AWAY FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS.
Speaking of cold dead hands. The book is about a newly minted college graduate who lives in Tokyo. His older sister was just murdered in the small, mysterious town that she moved to about 10 years prior. He goes to the community to gather her things but ends up taking her teaching role and living in her old room, which, by the way, is in a creepy mansion that belongs to a suspiciously cold politician. Oh, and his wife. Who doesn’t speak. And stays in bed all day. And their daughter died mysteriously.
It’s excellent so far, and I recently skipped to the back of the book (careful not to catch a glimpse of any words of the last few chapters, lest a big reveal be exposed!) to see if she had written any acknowledgements.
I love reading author acknowledgment pages. They’re more in-depth than a front-of-the-book dedication and often give some clues or insights into the author’s personality or writing process. I love when they feel a little loopy or giddy; like the writer just can’t believe they pulled this huge feat off and are, justifiably so, as happy and as exhausted and as over it as they’ve ever been.
If a great story ending is a free piece of gum at the bottom of the Cracker Jacks, the acknowledgement page is the cartoon folded in the gum packaging.
Clarissa didn’t have an acknowledgement page, though. Instead she had an author’s note, a variety of which I was unfamiliar and, thus, presently surprised. It told me a story about her. And reminded me why I read.
Enjoy (then go wait in line to get the book to read “Rainbirds”!):
“I used to read a lot as a kid–at least a book a day. I would spend my recess periods in the library with my best friend. I loved getting lost in the new and fascinating world of each story, and I knew I wanted to be a writer.
However, when I went off to college, studies became my priority. As I struggled with mounting academic work, I no longer picked up books I hadn’t been assigned. By the time I began my first job in marketing, reading had become a thing of the past.
Then, one day, a colleague recommended a book to me. ‘I’ll lend you my copy,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’d like it.’
I politely turned him down. ‘I don’t have time to read.’
But he insisted I give it a try, so I relented.
That book ended up changing my life. It rekindled the wonder I’d once felt, and the dream I’d once had.
Thank you for picking up ‘Rainbirds’. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. And if you have, I ask that you share it with someone. A friend, a family member, or a colleague–especially one who has not been reading for quite some time.”
File this under “Books I’ve Been Meaning to Read for a Really Long Time.” Long time meaning 2016, when this autobiography came out. As I write about the song “Born to Run” for a side hustle project, now seemed like the perfect time.
I love Springsteen’s lyrics and it’s no surprise this book has been enjoyable for me, though a lot of the recounting of technical musicianing and craftsmanship is over my head—so over it I skip. Here’s one of my favorite passages thus far (it’s a chunky lil tome… he has had quite a life and quite a story, after all). In this quote, he’s talking about writing the song “Born in the USA,” which he also said “remains one of my greatest and most misunderstood pieces of music”:
“I knew it was one of the best things I’d ever done. It was a GI blues, the verses an accounting, the choruses a declaration of one sure thing that could not be denied… birthplace. Birthplace, and the right to all of the blood, confusion, blessings and grace that come with it. Having paid body and soul, you have earned, many times over, the right to claim and shape your piece of home ground.”
Oh la la! A novel that’s billed as “a novel in clues”!
The Severys are a family of genius mathematicians and a few normies, like Hazel, our main protagonist and the adopted granddaughter of the title’s Isaac. After his mysterious death, Hazel gets a letter in the mail from him, with a message that he was murdered and the directive that he’s counting on her, of all people, to destroy the last of his work.
This book is turning out to be more about family drama and the brokenness inherent in the bonds of love more than a murder mystery. But it has its pros, despite, I think, its brain-teasey marketing pitch: Nova Jacobs writes lovely descriptions and there are bits of wisdom—non-mathematical, praise be—woven throughout. As the estranged, bitter Aunt Paige says:
“Your generation could stand to live in the pursuit a bit more. You’re all rushed to get to the end. To succeed. … It’s an empty way to live, in constant pursuit of the trophy.”
I picked this up at the Chicago Women in Publishing conference at the end of March. Columbia College Chicago was there recruiting for its MFA in writing program. You can read Punctuate. (as well as author interviews, book reviews, and other writerly goodies) here.
By day, Cynthia Robinson is an art historian based in Ithaca, New York, and the Mary Donlon Alger Professor of Medieval and Islamic Art at Cornell University.
That is, new to me. Cynthia’s been writing for some time, and her short fiction has been published in The Arkansas Review, Epoch, The Missouri Review, Slice and others.
Her new novel Birds of Wonder, released March 2 and published by Standing Stone Books, is her triumphant return to writing fiction following a long spell unraveling the magic of art history — buried in other people’s books.
I, for one, am glad she’s back to writing her own fictional tales.
“One August morning while walking her dog, high-school English teacher Beatrice Ousterhout stumbles over the dead body of a student, Amber Inglin, who was to play the lead in Beatrice’s production of John Webster’s Jacobean tragedy, The Duchess of Malfi. Barely able to speak, Beatrice calls the police. That is to say, she calls her daughter.
Jes is a detective with two years of experience under her belt and a personal life composed primarily of a string of one-night-stands, including the owner of the field in which Beatrice has found Amber. In addition to a house and a field, Child Services lawyer Liam Walsh owns a vineyard, where Amber Inglin, along with a handful of other teens who’ve had difficulty negotiating the foster system, was an intern.
Set among the hills and lakes of upstate New York and told in six vibrantly distinct voices, this complex and original narrative chronicles the rippling effects of a young girl’s death through a densely intertwined community.”
This is a murder mystery, sure, but it’s also a study of family ties — what bonds them, builds them and can potentially break them. With sprinkles of humor and strokes of darkness, the book is lovely lyrically. I enjoy Cynthia’s ability to turn a basic everyday something-or-another into such a scene that I find myself doing something-or-another inspired by it in my real life later.
Like pick forgotten flowers from the side of the highway and lovingly restore them as a dinner centerpiece (ie: this passage about Beatrice considering a walk to the farmers’ market with that beloved dog Geneva):
“True, the humidity had been stifling, the stretch closest to the highway lined with jiffy-lubes and chain drugstores, and the rushing traffic had made Geneva skittish. But she’d spied wild salvia growing along the roadside, pushing bravely through the gravel. The bright blue blossoms were a bit bedraggled now, but a drink of water would fix that. They’d be a charming centerpiece for tonight’s dinner table.”
Birds of Wonder is juicy escapism with a literary garnish perched on the rim. It’s just what the book-doctor ordered as we fog up our windows searching to see if the birds and the sun have come out yet to play.
Get your copy of Birds of Wonder here, and don’t miss my interview below with Cynthia below!
She offers great insights for writers about the writing process, including the best tip she’s ever been taught for developing characters for a multi-voiced piece of fiction. And I love reading about how and why she struggled with writing Jes — it will add a depth of understanding and appreciation to your reading that you won’t regret.
Happy reading!
***
What brought you back to writing after your hiatus from fiction? Why write a novel?
I have a dear friend in Spain who pestered me for, literally, years after she read a novel of mine that never got properly published — long story, from way back in the ‘90s.
In the meantime, I had taken a deep dive down the scholarly black hole and didn’t want to hear it. But still, as they say, she persisted… And, funnily, in 2011 or so, via reconnecting with an old friend who, most unfortunately, has gone back to being no longer a friend — another long story — the opportunity to sort-of publish that one came about.
It went spectacularly south, nothing about it went right, we had no idea what we were doing, B U T: That near-miss awoke the Writing Beast once more — the genesis of Birds of Wonder. That ex-friend was actually a big part of its early inspiration and brainstorming. There’s a line in the acknowledgements thanking him. Wherever he is.
I conceived a novel because at that time I had yet to meet the person who would suggest, long about 2013, that I try my hand at short fiction, and I am very glad that she did!
Birds of Wonder is told in six distinct characters’ voices. Did you do any specific kinds of character work to distinguish these voices from one another?
Lots and lots and lots. Pages and pages of backstory for each that never made it into the novel, nor should they have. I did all sorts of down-the-rabbit hole research for each one of them (yay for the internet), which maybe generated a page of text. But I’m kind of used to that, being a medievalist in my day job. I’m used to wasting time in the archives.
Perhaps the most useful ‘trick,’ if it can be called that, is one I learned from the wonderful Gill Dennis, in his ‘Finding the Story’ workshop that he taught for years and years at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers (highly, highly recommend their summer workshops, btw): For each and every character, a writer should know (and know well enough to write, tho’ these may not be things you actually use) the moments of greatest terror, joy and shame in that character’s life. Those are harder than you might think to nail down (in a plausible way), but once you have them (and, of course, all the background research), then you have your character and you can go from there.
Were there challenges to drawing upon stories and experiences from your own life when writing Birds of Wonder or was that helpful for developing the story? Both?
Both, for sure. Though all of the characters have something of me in them, likely more of a something than I know, the closest to me is Jes. There are a number of pieces of my own baggage that I gave her to haul (the sorts of relationships she establishes, and eschews, with men, for instance, or some of her more traumatic experiences — I’d spoil the plot if I elaborated further on those), that brought her so close to me that I was beginning to find her difficult to write.
I had to go back to the drawing board on her character quite a number of times, though her moment of greatest terror did end up looking a lot like my own. And it was only very late in the writing process that I was able to give her that. Once she’d been made into enough of her own character that I could clearly see she wasn’t me.
What was the most difficult point in completing this novel? Was it getting started, the middle build, completing it, or something else entirely?
The low point for me was when my long-suffering agent took one, or two, or three — I lose count — earlier drafts to editors and no one bought. That was absolutely excruciating, because everything about regaining the Writing Thing up to that point had been scandalously easy for me. Getting short fiction published, finding just the right trusted readers, getting into Squaw not once but twice, getting a wonderful agent (actually I had my pick from a number of wonderful agents)… then, slam.
Once I picked myself up off the floor that first time, I saw I needed to kill off a character and give voice to another who was more central to the story. So I did that.
Which took me about a year.
And then that one didn’t sell either.
We were just about to put it into a drawer and go forward with the new one I am working on, when I was presented with the opportunity to work with Bob Colley at Standing Stone Books, an upstate-NY based, indie press. It was during revisions with him that I finally excavated to the rock bottom of Jes (I’d been protecting her, as one often does with characters one likes or identifies with). I stopped doing that, and everything fell into place, including a new ending that rang much truer to the story and its characters.
This is a long process! Much longer than anyone ever wants it to be, but there it is.
Do you have any advice for writers doing factual research for a fiction novel?
Really, with the internet the sky is the limit. Or, as I discovered, the absolute rock bottom of the sexual tourism business in Thailand. Absolutely everything is on the internet. So you start there. Even if you will eventually wind up in libraries an archives, you start there, and then follow the leads where they take you — to a vineyard, in my case, or to another country, or just another county, to the courthouse archives.
I do recommend always resisting the temptation to do an information dump on your readers. Once you have become a temporary world expert in Topic A or B, you will want to share your newfound knowledge, all of it, with the world. Don’t.
But you are now able to supply — or quickly find — that one bit of data that, inside your character’s head or coming from her mouth, will be convincing and hook readers/editors/agents, whoever you’re trying to hook.
What do you listen to or watch or read to get pumped up to write?
I watch almost no television (except select political shows, MSNBC on speed dial), almost no movies. I don’t binge-watch. I don’t own a subscription to Netflix, and I’m not even sure whether Netflix is a subscription service!
I have two jobs, in essence — my teaching and research etc., and my writing — and I just plain don’t have time. Maybe I am depriving my subconscious and my psyche of all sorts of great stimuli, but too bad. Not enough hours in the day. I do have a bunch of books going at once — always a couple of literary journals (I subscribe to several; I don’t always like everything they publish, but I try to read the stuff I don’t like too, because I think it’s good for me, and they must have chosen it for a reason).
I always have at least one collection of short stories going — right now it’s one by Molly Giles. I try to read each year’s O.Henry and Pushcart prize collections as well. I always have at least one thing going in Spanish — right now it’s Javier Marias’ BERTA ISLA.
At least a small daily dose of poetry, sometimes medieval sometimes not, and a couple novels that bear on things that interest me that usually have to do with the current novel project. It’s almost never the latest or most trendy best-seller. I read other people’s reviews of those for a while, usually a year or two, before I decide whether to bite or not.
I love to listen to classical music, pretty much all of it, and I have grown spoiled and lazy because our local station is so good that I can always count on them to supply my Muzak. I am also a huge fan of opera and never miss at Saturday Live at the Met broadcast if I can possibly help it.
When it’s time to actually _write_, tho’, I turn all the sound off.
Do you have a daily writing routine or schedule when you’re working on a novel? If so, what is it and how does this help you get the work done?
I have to balance the two jobs — the one that keeps the lights on and the one that truly inspires me — which tends to make my writing time a late afternoon-early evening thing. I start off by reading for about half an hour, generally rather randomly from among the selection I listed above. Then I open the computer.
Gulp.
Each novel or short story generally goes through several pre-drafts in note-card and white-board form, with these notes often being written down first in Spanish — I seem to free-form best in some language that is not my own but almost is — and when it’s time to really get serious, I switch to English. If I am having trouble with a scene, I will often stop and note-card that particular scene… it’s very control-freak-y and nerdy and scholarly but when you consider my day job, maybe that isn’t very shocking.
What has been inspiring you lately?
The #metoo movement, for reasons both personal and universal.
Pablo Neruda en español.
My upcoming spring break to London, to hopefully finish a fourth draft of my new novel in and around the very hotel that inspired its setting.
If you could invite three people, living or dead, to a dinner party, who would they be and why?
My mother, because she died of melanoma when I was 25 and I never knew her as an adult.
My brilliant, multilingual and disgustingly talented friend Mark (we were inseparable in grad school)—he died of AIDS a year after my mother passed away. They would have adored one another. In another life my mother would have been a fashion designer (in this one she was a Southern housewife).
And Louisa May Alcott, because they both loved Little Women.
If we could maybe have a fourth, I’d invite my librarian aunt, who died a victim of gun violence when I was five. She was the first to put a book in my hands. She was a divorcee down south back when no nice ladies in the south were divorcees.
I think we would all have a fine time.
*NB: I didn’t name all the amazingly brilliant states-persons, writers, poets, etc., that might come to mind, because I’m quite sure I would be totally and completely tongue-tied in the presence, say, of Virginia Woolf.
Poet Forugh Farrokhzad is credited with sparking the feminist movement in Iran, and her poetry has been likened to the mournful style of Sylvia Plath — women ahead of their time trying to fly with broken wings. This new novel uses Farrokhzad’s journals, interviews, poetry, and private writings to fictionally reconstruct the life of this revolutionary woman and writer.
After Beatrice Ousterhout finds the body of a young girl while out for a walk with her dog, her police detective daughter, Jes, works the case. Jes unravels as the case unfolds. Will she reveal to Beatrice the secret about her father that threatens to undo her completely? (Stay tuned this month for an interview with the author Cynthia!)
I spotted this inclusive “guide to growing up” for girls in the New Non-fiction section of my library. As I celebrate my 32nd birthday this month, I’d say I’m pretty far past needing some of its advice, which includes sections on male and female anatomy; coming out; accepting rejection and staying safe online; body issues; love and sex; and so much more. That being said, I think there’s so much to learn from Karen Rayne’s thoughtful and informed voice and subject mater. I hope this work colors future discussions about sex education for girls and boys alike.
Eve uses poetry, visual art and narrative prose to explore black girlhood and America’s unique injustices toward people of color, taking readers from the streets of ’90s Chicago where she grew up to a future yet to be determined. How will we determine it?
Hanif is a Columbus kid! He writes about this Midwestern life (with shoutouts to Columbus and Chicago alike), music, and so, so much more in this book published by Two Dollar Radio. I remember watching Hanif perform slam poetry while I lived in Columbus and being blown away at how deftly he could cut a sentence. Keep your heart there. Then fly you forward. My Chicago friends, come see him do an author convo with Jessica Hopper (“The First Collection of Criticism By A Living Female Rock Critic”) at Women & Children First next month.
The subtitle here explains it all: How to change the world with your wardrobe. Justin and I have instituted a no-clothes-buying policy until spring. April, to be exact. We’ve set a budget and are working on lists of what we want to buy. It’s been surprisingly relieving to have this self-imposed boundary. I am being very thoughtful about what I want to buy in the spring — not just because of the budget we’ve set but because I want to think of my wardrobe as a whole thing, versus a million cheap little pieces I replace on a whim. Having a shopping strategy has forced me to be more thoughtful about where I buy my clothes too. This book explains the basics of sustainable clothing, fabric and shopping, as well as the general arguments for why fast fashion is harming people and the planet. I don’t expect to change the world, but I hope to live a little more thoughtfully.
Oh shit! Go get this book! Tudor’s debut novel is a hell of a ride. Nothing preachy, nothing to learn. Just a good old heart pumpin’ and jumpin’ psychological thriller.
Opposite here: Lots to learn in this baby. Written by an Argentinian writer, I can’t even find it on Goodreads. But my local library recommended it as one of the best of 2017. Indeed, I’ve never had a book affect me physically until I read this one! It’s more than frightening. My skin crawled and itched from about page 20 onward. It had me checking and double bolting the doors. But, alas, the real terror was all around me…
Here’s another one I couldn’t recommend more. I needed to read Jessa Crispin’s argument about how the feminist movement has gotten off course in its attempt to commodify and convince all women they are feminists. I didn’t agree with every point she made, but, as she so convincingly writes, that’s the whole fucking point.
I particularly appreciate her call out of feminist righteousness and how we need to center it back to human rights (ALL human rights, not just female human rights):
“No one talks about toxic femininity, but certainly if we look at certain feminine modes in contemporary culture, it exists. But we would prefer to think of toxic masculinity as innate, and any problems with women’s behavior as being socially created. It’s convenient. Saying or believing that women are special also, by default, dehumanizes men. If we are special because we are caring, then men must be uncaring. If we are special because we are compassionate and nurturing, then men must be emotionally dead and destructive. And if these qualities are innate, then we can dismiss the entire male gender.”
This book is brutal but brilliant. Proceed with caution, but certainly proceed. Marzano-Lesnevich took ten years to write it and it was worth waiting for. She changes the genre of memoir. “The Fact of a Body” intertwines her story of family secrets, hidden crimes and ignored molestation with the story of a child molester she learns about in law school. What I liked about this book was that it questioned the limits of empathy.Is the death penalty humane? Are there limits to empathy? Should victims be allowed to have that? These are tough and personal questions. But it’s a relief to see someone asking them — and asking them in a new way.
I’ve been on such a Roxane Gay kick lately. This month I’m returning to where I first fell in love with her: in her comforting gray worlds of fictional short storytelling. She’s the best at uncovering darkness and enchanting you to look. No really, look at it. See their scars. These tales are for and about those whom a careless world made brave hearted.
NDT 4-Life! Neil DeGrasse Tyson makes nerding out about the wonders of the universe fun and fast in his latest book. I like how little it feels in my hand. My hand made of stars. 😉
After Abraham Lincoln’s son died, the president reportedly went back to the Bardo (tomb) to literally feel his loss in his arms. Yeah. He was so full of grief he hugged the boy’s dead body on several occasions. Allegedly. Saunders turns this tale into an incredibly creative ghost story like you’ve never experienced. Really. I’ve never read anything like this.
I picked this up for our roadtrip through the west, which included a drive through Abbey’s beloved and now besmirched Utah desert. I love his cantankerous outlook. It feels oppressively appropriate considering how disrespectfully we continue to treat our land (hello, Mr. President) despite protestations by scientists like Abbey.
This came out in spring and it finally came through via my library hold request. Roxane Gay’s honest stories about her body feel at once entirely her own and completely universal. Finger snaps.
This is another feminist text from this year I’ve been meaning to read for months. It wasn’t until I started reading it that I remembered that the line “the pursuit of happiness” comes directly from a Declaration of Independence. My — and everyone else’s — distraction from this fact is exactly why Filipovich wrote this book. How would we all benefit if we made laws and policy based on what made people — especially women who were historically disenfranchised — happy?
Have you ever not read a book because someone who hurt you loved it? For shame! Also: Same. A college ex of mine loooooved “Dubliners,” thus, I promptly pushed my desire to read it to the back of my brain after we broke up. After recently reading in a writing textbook one of the short stories from JJ’s greatest hit. I decided to pick this up and let that shit go. I found this cool Centennial version on Amazon.
