“The Baptism of Sister Kim”

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Jeanine Bee is the current fiction editor of Wayfare and she was terrific to work with. This story was already worked into a publishable shape and if it had gone to press as I sent it to her, that would have been just fine.

But the thing about working with editors (Jeanna Stay also chimed in) is this: no piece of writing is ever perfect. It can always improve. And so in the first pass we refined a few things. We fiddled with commas and paragraph breaks. And then because we were working on it, we discovered that we could slice off the opening. While there’s a lovely bit of poetry about temperature that disappeared, the story is stronger. And that’s the sort of discovery that can only come through multiple eyes working together over multiple moments.

Here’s the story:

 

Brighter and brighter until we all get our heads lopped off

.

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;

And each of us play many parts,

Our acts being seven stories. At first in heaven,

Mewling and puking in heavenly arms;

And then the whining Lancreans, with their dances

And shining would-be witches, staring like dopes

Into the sun. And then comes Caesar,

Whining like a warrior, with bad luck promised

By his mistress’ dreamscapes. Then horse,

With bleeding eyes, and roaring like a god,

Jealous of human lovers, quick in quarrel,

Seeking nothing for god already

Even if only to the young. And then the clever men,

In youthful nonsense with cucumber sandwiches,

He plays his part. The sixth age shifts

In to the intimacies of love and violence,

With absence as powerful a tool as touch,

The words on page turning toward trembling,

And whistles in our minds. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is greatness doomed to undeserved oblivion;

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything

But his holy soul intact upon the perfect day.

.

034) Brighter and Brighter until the Perfect Day by Sharlee Mullins Glenn, finished April 27

It's a funny thing to read a book so quickly to remember all its typos (a misturned apostrophe and, hilariously, a 0 instead of a -, a simple misplaced finger suddenly creating, in the acknowledgements a chapter 107 of Moses.

But those are obviously minor things. Especially when we are speaking of a new epic poem covering much the same ground as Paradises both Lost and Regained in a fraction of the space. And it's a deeply Latter-day Saint rendering. For the endowed reader, it will be impossible to read without constant internal crossreferencing.

Largely, I think it is successful as a story, as a work of verse, and as a work of speculative theology. Some commonly proposed solutions to uncertain identity (eg, what if the heavenly Mother is the Holy Ghost?) are part of this story; the most talked-about aspect of the book (or, for me at least, the most heard-about aspect) is its feminism. Specifically that Elohim is plural (as, you know, it is), interpreted as the Gods male and female both (which, in my [unaskedfor] opinion, is proper interpretation), and that more premortal characters beside Michael (viz., including women) are given names and responsibilities.

All that is great, but it also leads into my sole problem with this book. I've no issue with any of the speculation—I don't agree with it all equally but it's all valid and reasonable and exciting and decidedly noncrazy—but I do take issue with one character: Ora.

Ora is one of the more advanced premortal spirits. It's not stated so, but I get the sense she was probably #3 behind Jehovah and Lucifer. And she independently comes up with the concept of the Holy Ghost and offers to do it herself before the Parents reveal that Mother will lay down her body for a time to play this role herself. I found this aspect interesting but unsettling. But then Ora is foreordained to be the prophet to restore knowledge of Heavenly Mother in the latter days. This of itself is fine but it was impossible not to read this without considering the possibility that the author of the text, the inventor of Ora, was setting herself up as Ora. Now, given what I know of Sharlee Mullins Glenn (incidentally, I read another fine book of hers about a week ago), I think a better reading would be an impassioned plea for this prophet's arrival, but there's something about Ora's presentation that really feels like a lot of arrows pointing straight back at themselves. I found it kinda weird and offputting. But, as I said, otherwise, in my opinion, this poem is excellent, perhaps even vital. Poe said a poem can only be a good poem if read in one sitting. I read this in two with a break of perhaps two hours inbetween and I was still able to experience the "totality, or unity, of effect" that Brighter and Brighter has to offer. Her wielding of blank verse is wonderfully adept and, in short, this poem must by any reasonable standard be considered a great success.

Props also to the BCC Press team for a lovely book. The cover art by J. Kirk Richards and interior illos by Sara Forbush support the text wonderfully.

This is a slender volume and, I think, approachable. Not that I'm expecting it to be a blank-verse bestseller or anything, but I suspect anyone who might give it a shot will find their way in and be able to have an experience.

Let them who have ears to hear, etc etc.

Anyway, I liked it.

one day for the pre-stuff and one for the epic itself

 

035) Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett, finished May 3

This was kind of a strange experience. About a 130 pages in or something I started to think maybe I'd read it before. In terms of theme and character and plot, it shares much with other Discworld novels, particularly the Tiffany Aching books. One might see this as a rough draft of what he'd pull off later. And while much of the book was new to me, I couldn't be sure I hadn't read it. I've been reading Pratchett since 2002 and only logging what I read since 2007, so I suppose it's possible I did read it in that window (though I don't think so). I kind of hope so because it's evidence that I can reread books and enjoy them afresh which is something I often cannot do.

Anyway, Margrat is getting married, the elves are seeking entrance, the other witches won't allow for it, and some wizards are coming to town.

Does this sound like something you have read before?

Yes or no, it's delightful.

months

036) The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, finished May 5

Technically I missed most of act iv scene ii which is a long and important one when I was called out on union business, but I'm claiming it anyway. Even if I never got to be with a student as they read Caesar's ghost.

over a week

 

037) Equus by Peter Shaffer

This is one of the most famous plays of the 20th century. Besides Shakespeare and Shaw, I find free copies of Equus more than any other play by any other writer. But all I really know about it is is involves violence to horses and an opportunity for a young actor trying to prove his seriousness an opportunity to get naked onstage. Given those two facts I'd always nervously assumed this was a play about bestiality. Not so. I mean, what does happen ain't great, but it also ain't bestiality. If you call that a win, call that a win.

The play is deliberately unrealistic, with the cast sitting in a circle around the stage, standing and joining the action when called for and sitting back down to observe when not.  The horses are actors on stilts and wearing wire horse heads which they put on ritualistically when the time comes to play horses.

The film is deeply religious in the sense that it is about a deeply religious character and how that form of religion may or can or may not or cannot fit into the modern world. It's about the many failed ways we have to interact with one another in this life we're building. From psychiatry to pornography. We need a bit more self-reflection.

So it's an impressive bit of writing. Makes me want to watch and see more Shaffer. Perhaps I should start with Amadeus. It's easily accessible.

maybe three weeks

 

038) Travesties by Tom Stoppard, finished May 8

Having just read The Importance of Being Earnest and then learning Stoppard had written a play that played on that play, I knew I had to read it. I love or at least admire all the Stoppard I read and this one, recreating Earnest in WWI-era Zurich and starring folks who were actually there (Lenin! Joyce! Tzara!), well it sounded delightful. (And the intro in which Stoppard tells us that the other real person in the play, an obscure figure he could learn nearly nothing about, had a wife who sent him a letter after the play's premiere, is wonderful.)

I guess it was.

I imagine it's better on stage, but it's hard to see on the page how this would even work. Or even how many of the jokes a person can get if they haven't just watched an Earnest or were reasonably up on the Lenin/Joyce/Tzara. This is a play for overeducated people and the best way to enjoy it would be in a room filled with them.

So it's okay.

perhaps a week

 

039) The Art of Intimacy: The Space Between by Stacey D'Erasmo, finished May 10

Back to reading something from this The Art of series. I wasn't instantly enamored of it, but her method of discussing books I haven't (with two exceptions) read ended up working for me by the end. She has a keen observational sense and he plucks apart the magic of what books do, how they create intimacy between writer and reader, how they discern all kinds of possible intimacies between characters.

Ultimately, I think it is not as accessible as others in the series—and more a work of criticism than a piece of instruction—but ultimately a fascinating work that pushed the edges of my thinking.

under a week

040) A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt, finished May 16

Two tangents.

I said above that Equus is the most-found non-Shakes/Shaw play. Probably. It might be this one. (Or Death of a Salesman. Or are we counting multiple Ibsens in a single volume?)

I only took one class from him, but Royal Skousen is a brilliant and decent person I'm glad I got to know, however slightly. But one thing he said which makes me roll my eyes to this day is that he does not like movies; they are an inferior artform; they are not worth his time. But the film A Man for All Seasons, the last movie he had seen (almost 40 years old at that point and, iIrc, the only film he had a firm memory of), was a masterpiece, a work of genius, one of the most important achievements in human artistry. I've never understood how, even given the small sample size, a 100% genius rate leads to an it's-all-crap conclusion.

It occurs to me now that perhaps he was curious if any of us would call him on it.

Royal Skousen is not the kind of person you call things on.

Anyway, the play is a terrific read. Easily the most entertaining of the three in this set. The characters are written such that instantly you know them. More is a wily man but a good man, trapped in an impossible situation given he has actual intergrity. Rich is a tragic fool. Cromwell is Iago-like in his villainy. And Henry is a coward as proven by his disappearance from events.

In a world with no integrity, putting this story before people must count as holy rebellion.

Anyway. Long live the king.

a week 

earlier this year..........

Bro! Tell me we still know how to speak of kings!

001) Beowulf translated by Maria Dahvana Headley, finished January 1
002) Cthulhu Is Hard to Spell: Volume Three, finished January 1
003) Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin (translated by Megan McDowell), finished January 8
004) My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris, finished January 11
005) You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown, finished January 12
005) Into the Headwinds: Why Belief Has Always Been Hard—and Still Is by Terryl Givens and Nathaniel Givens, finished January 24
006) My Favorite Thing Is Monsters: Book Two by Emil Ferris, finished January 25

Maybe we should just pretend this set begins and ends with Wednesday Addams

007) Chas. Addams Half-Baked Cookbook, finished January 29
008) Monica by Daniel Clowes, finished February 3
009) The Unexpurgated French Edition of Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland, finished February 19
010) Peach and the Isle of Monsters by Franco Aureliani and Agnes Garbowska, finished February 20
011) Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, finished February 28
012) Comic Poems edited by Peter Washington, finished March 7

Love, Beauty, and a complete lack of sasquatch 

013) Love that Dog by Sharon Creech, finished March 11
014) Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper, finished March 21
015) Antelope Spring by John Bennion, finished March 24
016) Shelley Frankenstein by Colleen Madden, finished March 28
017) Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew #21: Double Take, finished April 5
018) The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clark, finshed April 8
019) Rave by Jessica Campbell, finished April 13
020) The Creeps: A Deep Dark Fears Collection by Fran Krause, finished April 14

Do not ask what she does with the babies.

027) Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito, finished April 21
028) Somna: A Bedtime Story by Becky Cloonan and Tula Lotay, finished April 23
029) Shadow Life by Hiromi Goto and Ann Xu, finished April 24
030&031) The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, finished April 25
032) Raised by Ghosts by Briana Loewinsohn, finished April 26
033) Ephemera by Briana Loewinsohn, finished April 26

PREVIOUS OTHER YEARS IN BOOKS

2007 = 2008 = 2009 = 2010 = 2011 = 2012 = 2013 = 2014 = 2015
2016 = 2017 = 2018 = 2019 = 2020 = 2021 = 2022 = 2023 = 2024

 

Bells: or, what I'm listening to these days

 

For perhaps a month now, the vast majority of the music I have been listening to when I am on my laptop is Thayer Sarrano’s new album Bells.

I love it.

She lets you buy her entire collection in one go—currently it’s $26.60, a terrific price. (So ignore me when I tell you I bought her first seven for a mere $3.50 back in 2022. I don’t know what she was thinking.)

Although nothing about her new album is out of place with her prior work (which, though a coherent oeuvre, does many different things), this is the first longer work of hers I’ve gotten addicted to. Perhaps because it slots in nicely with much of my favorite sounds from my late teens and early twenties. It gives, in other words, a ‘90s vibe. Like early Heather Nova or Mazzy Star or (and I know this isn’t ‘90s) Jenny Lewis.

Anyway. I don’t have much interesting to say about this album other than I love it and I want to share it with you. I hope you’ll like it as well.

Incidentally, the last album I suddenly got this into has an entirely different manner of walking through this world:

I say April, you say movieApril!

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If you spent April with the movies I spent April with, you had a very fine April indeed.

But I refuse to tell you whether you should like Taxi Driver or A Minecraft Movie more.

.

ELSEWHERE
Disney+

Isle of Dogs (2008)

My third time watching this film, first time with a class. I've been offering it as a dystopian option for a few years now but this is the first time students voted it in. They enjoyed it; I enjoyed it. I still don't think it's top-tier Wes Anderson, but I do like it.

The thing I can't get over is how it's a film designed to be experienced differently by different audiences. The obvious example is Japanese speakers vs English speakers, but that's not it.

As I write this, a day after finishing the film, the students are writing about the film. This is a new writing assignment. Last semester it went gangbusters as I got some of the best writing of the year on Alphaville and Strawberry Mansion (writing was weaker on Minority Report, for some reason, but still well above the pathetic in-class conversation we had on that film).

Wish them luck!

ELSEWHERE
Disney+

WALL·E (2008)

High-school students who have fond memories of a film from long ago find a movie so much more rich and moving and generally excellent than they imagined it might be. Plus, the film offers plenty of fodder for conversation. This is the first time I put WALL·E on the list and I'm nervous to leave it on because, like The Matrix I suspect if I do I'll have to watch it every semester. Which is fine except then I'll never get a class to choose Modern Times or Neptune Frost. So we'll see.

But WALL·E absolutely holds up. And it's hard to imagine it won't always hold up.

THEATER
Cinemark Century Hilltop 16

A Minecraft Movie (2025)

Man, what is WRONG with critics? If you look at Rotten Tomatoes, the only Jared Hess movie marked Fresh is Napoleon Dynamite. And that's not because critics loved it—or even understood it. It's because the movie was beloved by Sundance audiences and they didn't want to seem square and so they contorted themselves to try and figure out why. Then they gave grudgingly positive reviews. But they never really understood it. I mean—look at Gentlemen Broncos's 20%. Critics that were around in 2003 are getting back at Napoloeon Dynamite for confusing themselves and the top tier of movie reviewers are still coming from a place where they can't understand Hess's deliberately uncool sensibilities. Top critics weren't raised in Idaho. And if you find me one who was, I'll wager they have a deep-seated need to prove they've pulled all the Idaho out.

Anyway, this is a great Jared Hess film. Not tippy-top but that's like me saying I don't think Goodfellas is tippy-top Scorsese. Reasonable people may disagree. It's great to see some of his onetimers back (Jack Black! Jennifer Coolidge! Jemaine Clement!) and he makes great use of the new staff. I think we all needed this version of Jason Momoa. Somehow, I feel it might be a bit more honest.

And props for letting Jack Black go fully Jack Black. It's what the kids want and it's totally delightful. Not many people can go that far and still have it work. So let him do his thing.

I'm also really intrigued by Emma Myers. We saw her first in Wednesday, but she's a) great and b) otherworldly sort of like Sophia Lillis and Lia McHugh are. They're beautiful but strange. And honestly that's what I want from my movie stars. Give her more roles.

I also appreciate that Jared gave us lots of flashbacks to his previous films, easter eggs, really. Mostly to Napoleon, but there's more there if you have eyes to see.

Also, great to hear Rachel House who seems to be turning into everyone's favorite Very Serious Woman. She's most tightly associated with Taika Waititi, but I have to believe Taika and Jared appreciate each other's work. They share a sensibility. And they share decent ground with Wes Anderson too, though somehow he's been assigned the High Art label. I think we can see critical opinion correlate pretty tightly among these three with box-office receipts. Taika was the new Wes until he started doing Marvel movies. Jared hasn't really directed a hit in twenty years. Now look at Rotten Tomatoes.

Anyway, even if you don't think you'll like it, take your kids. Read this to see why, then go.

HOME
library dvd

Taxi Driver (1976)

Honestly, I don't know.

It does everything I was promised and it did it all well, but.

I'm not sure what to make of it. Which may be part of the point.

I'll spend all day tomorrow watching special features and reading criticism. We'll see where I land.

Ask me next year.

UPDATE FROM THE NEXT MORNING

Spoilers now, we warned.

As far as I can tell from my minimal research, the first person to put in print the idea that the hero stuff and meeting-Betsy-again stuff could be a dream of Bickle's dying mind was Roger Ebert. Maybe it was. Regardless, it's a compelling interpretive option. Sure, everyone involved in making the movie has denied it, but who cares what they think? Movies belong to the viewers. I've also read this: "The epilogue’s revelation that the media and community have praised Travis’ misanthropy and violence as heroic still horrifies (more than the actual massacre – the film’s great achievement, in my view)."

Both of these are valid readings, but I want to propose a third that I haven't found yet in print anywhere. (Although I haven't started that promised reading yet.)

I guess part of my interpretation is that I find a redemptive quality in Scorsese's worldview that not everyone else sees. Although I'm not deep in his fimography, I suspect the flashy violence and other evils hide his world of second chances.

Anyway, that sounds like a full essay for another time after I've checked a half dozen more boxes.

The thing is, I think Travis Bickle is a hero. Iris is back home. Iris is doing well in school. Iris has been traumatized in a thousand different ways but she's now an adult in many ways and she sees the value of second chances. Things could still go to hell for her, but she knows how to hustle. I see her escaping Pittsburgh poverty and going to jail. She's been given the gift of a miraculous redemption and she knows it. She might have survived to twenty. She might have survived to thirty. But not with all her teeth. And every day, heroin or, later, AIDS might have taken her out. She's the found lost sheep and she's fully aware of the fact. She knows.

Whether Bickle will be redeemed by his ner heroism is less certain. He still has all the same mentla issues. He's still socially awkward and hasn't built any deeper relationships. He may well go off the deep end again.

But maybe not. Maybe he'll be a quieter lose now, one without anything to prove. Maybe he'll make a better friend. Maybe rather than guns and assassinations he'll take up reading or knitting or arguing over baseball. Maybe he'll make it through the next testosterone-laden decade and then mind a nice divorced mom who thinks he's cute and whose kid also thinks he's a hero.

Or maybe none of that stuff will happen. Maybe he'll jump off a bridge. But he has a chance. Because now he's a hero.

"Hero" isn't a thing you make yourself. You can do the right thing for the wrong reasons and people applaud you. You can try to do the right thing for the right reasons yet everyone misinterprets and boos. You can't control how the world sees you.

But when a moment of bad timing changes you from famous villain to famous hero, you get to decide what you do with that gift. Maybe you blow it off and just go back to driving taxi. That's okay. It's probably better than trying to get everyone to buy you a drink because it's more honest.

But you get that second chance.

HOME
library dvd

Making Taxi Driver (1999)

Thought-provoking. And lots of cool information on the research, ancillary people, camerawork, and effects.

Mostly watched it sped up and it was totally worth fifty minutes or however long I spent. Recommended.

HOME
ok.ru

Libeled Lady (1936)

Lots of laughs in this thing but the conclusion's kinda unsettling. I don't see happy endings for any of these people. The men don't deserve it and the women could do so much better.

Also, I'm a little surprised that breasts were allowed so much freedom under the Hays Code.

Wildly, I think this is the first non–Thin Man film we've seen starring Powell and Loy. I like it better when they're honest with each other.

Anyway, this film goes in the category of fun to watch but upsetting to think about afterwards. Like a nonsweet Sturges film.

ELSEWHERE
Alexander Street

Julius Caesar (2017)

Easy to tell this would have been thrilling live. It's cool staging and a skilled cast. But filmed plays cannot rise to the levels of either drama or film. It's a sad hybrid. And it doesn't help that the sound mix is so terrible. Sound effects and music blare while dialogue is much quieter, sometimes effectively illegible even with the volume cranked up.

And at three hours long, debatable whether it's the best choice for a classroom watch.

ELSEWHERE
YouTube

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) (2000)

Not every moment has aged perfectly (no kid'll get the Hillary joke) but as a whole still utterly brilliant. I need to start showing it again!

ELSEWHERE
Prime Video

My Old Ass (2024)

Not exactly what I expected, but it was much funnier than I'd hoped and more moving than I'd imagined. It was fun to watch with a bunch of 18yrolds, although they did NOT like Chad. I was skeptical of him too, but I think mostly because the actor who plays him, notwithstanding his development as a romantic lead, looks a great deal like one of cinema's recent go-to monsters. Casting directors be trippin.

It was a very interactive viewing. Lost of audience participation. Which was terrific. But I'm the only one who cried.

HOME
Prime Video

Conclave (2024)

This is a terrific movie. Great cast, solid story, twists that somehow never got ruined for me (I didn't even know there WERE twists) (sorry for ruining that fact for you). They had a lot of fun planning cool shots, many of which were juuuuust barely in slomo. This is a film that takes itself enormously seriously, but with performances this good, hey, take yourself seriously. Ralph Fiennes is excellent and holds the whole thing together. A character I hadn't even heard of is played by a guy who just got into acting in 2020 and whose first feature is this one. He did a bangup job. (Hey—he was my age in 2020 . . . . )

I am required to take a stand on whether the film is ultimately pro- or anti-faith. I don't think the question is that simple. But if you demand the binary, I would lean pro-. But I can see how a person who feels their life of faith is shaped by already knowing all the right answers, they would find this tale distressing.

I'm also pro-distress. Faith cannot grow without some.

ELSEWHERE
our dvd

The Importance of Being Earnest (2004)

Lady Steed and I loved loved loved this movie upon first discovering it when it was new. Watching it now is to rediscover lines we had quoted for year, once upon a time. I'm glad they swiped scenes from the four-act version of the play (Wilde's preferred version, though most seem to disagree) which works better in the more-locations vibe Oliver Parker is going for.

The film is chockfilled with excellent performances, but most of the leads are people you expect to be great. This film was my introduction to Tom Wilkinson, for instance. But let me shoutout Anna Massey as Miss Prism who's brilliant in a performance that's easy overlook given the chaos all around her.

There are a couple wonky things I might take issue. This could have been more screwbally just by leaving in more of the jokes, but I think as an adaptation for a 21st-century film audience, the cuts make sense. But the changes to the story that means Jack's proposal to Gwendolyn happens three of four days before she says it was yesterday is weird. Also, am I right that I have never noticed this before?

Anyway, my students liked it more than I thought while we were watching it. Although they didn't love that the film aged the men up a decade, doubling the age differences. Gotta admit. Peculiar choice. Even if you feel obliged to cast Colin Firth and Rupert Everett in the leads.

It's a shame it's never been given a decent poster.

THEATER
AMC Bay Street 16

Pride & Prejudice (2005)

I was excited when the 20th-anniversary rerelease was announced. I did not see P&P in theaters back in 2005 (it was baby times). But Lady Steed seemed to think it was a silly thing to do . . . until she went with a bunch of friends. Then a bunch of my students said they wanted to go and asked me to join them in an unofficial sort of way and I said yes and I talked my beloved into rescheduling a meeting so she could go again, this time with me. I'm so glad. First, because it was less weird rendezvousing with a bunch of teenager girls and, second, because we had so much to talk about afterwards! The decisions made by the filmmakers in terms of what to keep and what to leave out and how to signify what's going on with efficiency, and the differences between the 1995 BBC and, of course, the original novel. Rich conversation was had all the way home.

Anyway, I love this movie. It is wild how different it is from the book in its details while being so true to the book in overall effect, but I accept that adaptations are new creations.

Love each as itself.

Do not ask what she does with the babies.

.

I know it's early, but I think I've found my favorite novel of the year and my favorite comic of the year and—get this—they're both 2025 books! I'm so zeitgeisty, baby!

But Victorian Psycho was not only a great pleasure to read but it made me want to jump into its evil sandbox. And Raised by Ghosts has me planning a DonorsChoose to finally start teaching comics. And if I want to press it into students' hands, I want to press into yours as well.

.

027) Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito, finished April 21

I heard a delightful interview with the author a couple months ago and have been hellbent to read this book since. I'm so glad I did. I'm almost distressed how much I liked it because Winifred Notty is one of the worst human beings I've ever encountered in fiction—sort of a funny Quentin P.—and she does things that are awful but her motivations are what are most terrifying. You can't reason with a person like this.

Frankly book this happy with the evil it depicts almost makes me think Tepper was right. What is the social good of creating a monster like this? Other than giving so much pleasure, I mean. It's enough to make me question all my blithe truisms regarding the fair game of literature.

Anyway, I really liked it.

Judge me as you will.

If you want a taste of the voice or some details of what's in store for you, click on the NPR link I opened with.

Incidentally, as is my habit, I spent much of my readtime thinking about how I would adapt it to film and I have three thoughts.

One, cast Florence Hunt of Bridgerton fame as our "hero." Assuming she can play a psychopath. I haven't seen her work but from a marketing standpoint, this is a slam dunk.

Two, the camera needs to spend most (all?) of it's time reflecting Winifred's point of view ala Travis Bickle, but push it even harder. Let us see her soul seeping out from under her dress. Let us see her seeing fiction and imagination and the same time, cut together madly, even overlaid.

Three, speaking of overlaid, her voice is so wonderful but she can't be saying these things outloud, even when she's alone, and so to maintain that aspect of the book, we have to turn to voiceover. BUT DO IT A NEW WAY. Have her saying the same thing, slightly out of sync, over top each other. Have her narrating different things that what we're seeing. Have various parts of the book narrated simultaneously like ghosts whispering in the background. Make the voiceover nonstop but often just background. Make it as interesting as what's in the novel (just use the novel) but not quite accessible, at least not most of the time. Let the voiceover drive us insane simultaneous to delighting us.

Anyway, I'm available if anyone want to pay me to do it.

friday, saturday, monday

028) Somna: A Bedtime Story by Becky Cloonan and Tula Lotay, finished April 23

After finishing that last book I started one called Dangerous Fictions which is all about censorship bad. Which felt right since I'd just been telling you how a book I really loved made me wonder if it was a proper thing to be reading. Which isn't a feeling I've had much, not since high school. (Ask me about Piers Anthony sometime.) But Dangerous Fictions is long (I've read the intro and part of chapter one) and this book was short. And also makes me wonder if a sweet innocent like myself should be reading it.

Also, maybe it's dumb? Certainly it's unsure if we're in America or England, whether these are Puritans or Catholics. Or maybe it doesn't care about such things. The big twist wasn't really justified and, honestly, it really feels like the main purpose of the book is to draw a beautiful woman naked. Well, Lotay mostly does that. In a 90s-era airbrush style (don't know if it's actually airbrushed—certainly she can get that aesthetic without). When Cloonan does the art it's more traditionally American comics albeit with manga-influenced eyes. A witch gets burned, the guy in charge of burning witches won't have sex with his wife who is therefore spending her time with a sexy demon as she dreams.

But it's confused. Our main character's best friend really likes sex ergo she's a villain. Our hero's husband won't do sex ergo he's also kind of a villain. What exactly is the argument here?

Look. The art is amazing. These women can art. But the setting and the characters are a mix of cliche and pornography. So while I'm still not in favor of banning books, I mean, not every book requires your attention. And thus, no matter how beautifully rendered the cliche and pornography, I can't recommend this one and I'm perplexed why my county library picked up twelve copies. Seems like a lot.

three days

 

029) Shadow Life by Hiromi Goto and Ann Xu, finished April 24

And old woman is being chased by death's shadow. She doesn't fear death but she also knows her time has not yet come. And she's right. Death's shadow is cheating. And so she fight back.

It's terrific. Sort of a Canadian slice-of-life with supernatural elements. The writer and artist are such of one mind I have a hard time remembering this isn't a one-mind job.

one long sit

030&031) The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, finished April 25

Haven't read this with a class in a very long time. I don't know why not. You can tear through it and it is enormously fun. I mean. What's more fun, honestly? It's freaking delightful. In matters of grave importance, after all, style, not sincerity is the vital thing.

tuesday, thursday, friday

 

032) Raised by Ghosts by Briana Loewinsohn, finished April 26

I loved this book. And not just because it takes place at the high school I teach at during the time my wife was in high school. And not because the main character dresses like she did then and has much the same taste in music. And no because, although I'm a tad older and lived in an entirely different part of the state, I too know this milieu.

Although absolutely all those things help.

But I love it because the storytelling is subtle and filled with deep emotions. Because I love the mix of realistic movement and body language with rubberhose character design. Because the mix of daily grind and inner fantasy outwardly manifested captures truths you can't do with straight realism. Because it has real literary merit mixed with legit teen sensibilities. Because it is restrained and thus invites us in, in order to understand.

In short, I think I have FINALLY found the comic I would like to teach.

And not just because my students will recognize this intersection and that streetscape.

But because it is brilliant* and it will move them.

 (* Not literally. Read this book with a good light or you won't be able to make out all the details.)

one day

 

033) Ephemera by Briana Loewinsohn, finished April 26

So enamored of Raised by Ghosts was I that I immediately found her first book on Hoopla and, after cleaning the kitchen sink, read it.

As the title may suggest, this work is more ethereal. It too is about the reality of feelings and memory, but not about the reality of place or dialogue. It's a metaphor, I suppose.

The art is lovely. I haven't investigated this, but I suspect her work is digital even though it retains the taste of honesty that real watercolors deliver. She does some great things with organizing the panels, like you see here:

 
Expecting it to behave like all the other panels to day, I read right to left. But of course before you turn the page you must discover it is read down then down again.

It's a sad story of an adult woman gardening through her memories of her depressed mother. The past is blue and the present orange

 although sometimes the past and present bleed together:

 
Anyway. It is lovely and it is sad.

one sit

 

earlier this year..........

Bro! Tell me we still know how to speak of kings!

001) Beowulf translated by Maria Dahvana Headley, finished January 1
002) Cthulhu Is Hard to Spell: Volume Three, finished January 1
003) Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin (translated by Megan McDowell), finished January 8
004) My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris, finished January 11
005) You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown, finished January 12
005) Into the Headwinds: Why Belief Has Always Been Hard—and Still Is by Terryl Givens and Nathaniel Givens, finished January 24
006) My Favorite Thing Is Monsters: Book Two by Emil Ferris, finished January 25

Maybe we should just pretend this set begins and ends with Wednesday Addams

007) Chas. Addams Half-Baked Cookbook, finished January 29
008) Monica by Daniel Clowes, finished February 3
009) The Unexpurgated French Edition of Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland, finished February 19
010) Peach and the Isle of Monsters by Franco Aureliani and Agnes Garbowska, finished February 20
011) Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, finished February 28
012) Comic Poems edited by Peter Washington, finished March 7

Love, Beauty, and a complete lack of sasquatch 

013) Love that Dog by Sharon Creech, finished March 11
014) Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper, finished March 21
015) Antelope Spring by John Bennion, finished March 24
016) Shelley Frankenstein by Colleen Madden, finished March 28
017) Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew #21: Double Take, finished April 5
018) The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clark, finshed April 8
019) Rave by Jessica Campbell, finished April 13
020) The Creeps: A Deep Dark Fears Collection by Fran Krause, finished April 14

 

PREVIOUS OTHER YEARS IN BOOKS

2007 = 2008 = 2009 = 2010 = 2011 = 2012 = 2013 = 2014 = 2015
2016 = 2017 = 2018 = 2019 = 2020 = 2021 = 2022 = 2023 = 2024

 

These are two stories I dreamedDon't worry. These dreams have been peer reviewed.

.

January 27, 2024 (a Saturday)

I was blessed to sleep in this day. Not terribly late. In fact, I probably woke up around nine-something which hardly feels like sleeping in at all. But the awaking was gentle and that’s what matters. I was allowed to wander through dreamspace on my way to fully here and thus, when I woke, I had still in my grasp two dreams.

I’m skeptical that what we remember of dreams ever truly captures the experience that was the dream. I suspect that, even upon the moment of awaking, the conscious version of ourselves is already turning memories, fading like rime on asphalt, into something sensible by conscious-mind standards.

Anyway. I woke with two stories and both of them seemed worthy of capture and so I sat in bed with my laptop and typed them.

I started with the older and longer dream, in hopes that the younger and shorter dream would better survive the wait. I finished the initial typeup of Dream One at 10:09am. I don’t know when I started, but that first writing was 1,378 words. Dream Two’s first take was 791 words and was finished at 10:39am.

For some reason, I felt a real sense of urgency about getting these stories out. I did a single-pass rewrite before even getting out of bed. I then sent the second, shorter dream to the Mormon Lit Blitz in an email (where it was longlisted before disappearing). Once out of bed, I printed off the first, longer dream and mailed it to the Santa Monica Review (from which it was rejected in a note that arrived February 22nd).

Generally, I do not recommend sending stories out the same day they were written.

The first, longer dream hit the road again in July when I saw a call that seemed perfect for it. And I guess I was right because it was accepted that same day. Which is. Well. What happened.

The second, shorter dream went to see Dialogue in May and was accepted (with an expectation of rewrites) twenty days later. Which is also so fast.

The first, longer dream was published in August of last year. The second, shorter dream was published last week.

I was pretty delighted to work with Dialogue fiction editors Joe Plicka and Ryan Shoemaker on “I Dreamed of Oil.” One weird thing about working from a dream is that it feels more honest to leave the text in its first-written form. I (generally) follow the relevant Heinlein rule (once it’s rewritten sufficient to to leave the house), but this was a dream! It felt almost like nonfiction, like I had to respect the truth of the dream. Which I suppose wasn’t true—it’s not like I'm passing this off as the mind of God—it would have been fine to rewrite. But I needed someone else’s permission. Ryan and Joe gave me that. That and useful notes.

Joe, incidentally, wrote a short essay about . . . I want to say his young daughter holding his hand? I can’t find it online anymore so I can’t say for sure. But it did inspire a piece I wrote during the early days of the pandemic. And I had just published a startling Ryan story in Irreantum. Having just worked with him (with me as his editor) is why I sent the long dream to SMR; as Ryan had published a story there, perhaps I should too.

They pushed me to make minor changes to real effect, bringing the story into a coherence that makes it work. Thanks, guys.

The finished story begins like this:

I don’t know who was sick. Maybe it was you. Let’s say it was.

You were sick and I was probably more worried than you (as per usual) but we brought our faith to our prayers and we pled that you would be healed. I anointed your head with oil. And I sealed that anointing and blessed you.

This was the last of our oil.

And you were healed.

Later, I was not there, but later you were telling this story to an apostle. And the apostle took a container of oil about six inches high and of curious workmanship—blown glass, clearly, but into such an astonishing shape it appeared the oil was twisting into the air like God in his pillar—and he blessed that oil and gave it to you.

READ I DREAMED OF OIL

The other story got no such love. It got a plain rejection then a plain acceptance. I like being accepted! Don’t misunderstand! But editors engaging in back and forth is one of the finest experiences a writer can be gifted.

“Oil” feels like an allegory, like poetry, and it begins with a dream and ends awake, thus revealing its roots. Learning that “The Orgasmic Orchestra” was born a dream won't surprise, but I doubt it’s obvious enough to guess. But rather than tell you what this one is about, here’s the first paragraph:

It appears a standard orchestra. Smallish, perhaps, just a couple dozen musicians, all women, in black dresses. Experts at their craft. But as the music proceeds, instruments fall out as certain women put down their instrument and slide a hand into a modestly designed slit in the fabric of their dress and begin to masturbate. Masturbation is an unpredictable process and these are regular women, acting outside their musical training, and not porn stars accustomed to this type of public performance. They do not come when their conductor directs them to. Sometimes they do not come at all. Perhaps we should not be surprised that they generally come when the music, too, climaxes, but this is not always the case. Sometimes their cries or whimpers of extasy seem entirely out of alignment with the music. This is part of the artistic statement the orchestra is making.

One thing I’d like to say about Alien Buddha Press who published this story: they punk.

I’ve been around and worked with a lot of publishers who claim to be punk, but this outfit genuinely is. I mean: lookit how ugly their Instagram is. It’s appalling.

Which is why I’m so surprised they accepted “The Orgasmic Orchestra.” I mean—sure, the concept is startling, but the story itself is the opposite of ugly and nothing like punk. But I suspect its calmness might be the most shocking aspect it offers a reader. (Whatever readers there may be. I’ve yet to hear anything from anyone. Perhaps you will be first.)

READ THE ORGASMIC ORCHESTRA

I don’t understand dreams. Why were these dreams set next to each other? What do they share that I do not see? So peculiar.

Subscribe to Thubstack and get these posts in your email.

 

 

ps: Joe and Ryan and I will appear in an upcoming episode of the flagship Dialogue podcast late this month or sometime in May. We'll be discussing "I Dreamed of Oil." It's short. You have plenty of time to read it before then.

From shame to silence

.

Don't worry, though. In between shame and silence we'll find plenty of joy.

.

022) So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson, finished April 15

This has been my read-during-fire-alarm-evacuations-and-related-phenomenon and it's been a terrific read. The book's a decade old now but the world is largely the same. Not identical, but the same.

He explores the ways in which shaming happens (with an emphasis on Twitter) and the various kinds of destruction wreaked  by shame. But also how shame can have positive outcomes. Also there's stuff about prisons (real prisons but also this book completely defamiliarized the Stanford Prison Experiment for me). I was reminded about Jonah Lehrer and introduces to some very online scandals I have no memory of.

 
The book is of that delightful genre of nonfiction in which vignette after vignette builds into a solid whole. And while it's easy to take away a useful lesson about what I, a person, should do, it's not easy at all to know what we should do regarding shame as a society. What role does it play within a civilization healthy? This book softly suggests some questions to ask but it's nothing like a policy guide. And in that sense, this is popnonfiction at its purest. You feel smarter at the end because you have fun party anecdotes lined up and because you know what right and wrong and can judge others accordingly, but has anything been changed on a larger scale? No. Will it? Unlikely.

But maybe it's unfair to expect that of this book. Perhaps just getting us to consider the question is the first good thing.

about eight months

 

023) Keeping Two by Jordan Crane, finished April 16

I suppose I wasn't paying quite close enough attention to this graphic novel as I began it because it took longer than it should have for the book to teach me how to read it. It's the story of a young couple, but with only a change in the panel edges, it can become memory or fantasy or a novel being read. Once that discover it made, the story is much less mystifying. Although I could tell some of this was happening before I deciphered the visual vocabulary, breaking the code made the whole thing much better.

At first, I thought no way this couple will make it. But by the end, I think they will. Anyway, I'm rooting for them. But they really should take a trip to the ER.

Sadly, the only image I could find online of both kinds of panels is this one. In French.

Click for more.

across an evening

 

024) Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green, finished April 18

Ironic that this book, a passionate call for humans to just conquer TB already, arrives just as the US government throws up its hand on fighting any diseases out there in the world. Ugh.

Anyway, I learned a lot here. I suspect I know a lot more about TB than the average person, and yet so much of what I knew was incomplete or even wrong. For instance, I had been led to believe that getting the TB test so many times had led to false positives. No. I had TB. Years passed before my doctor decided I should get antibiotics before it went active (the story of how TB hangs out in the body is WILD) and now I don't have TB anymore. But I never even knew I had TB until reading this book.

(I like my doctor, but I'm constantly realizing I'm not getting the most accurate information from him. I think he knows it but just doesn't want to correct me when I get the wrong idea? I . . . don't love that.)

I also knew a lot about how TB was a sexy disease of poets but the borders of my knowledge are both larger and more accurate now. And I like using New Mexico's statehood as a nice microcosm of some issues we have today, but knowing the relevance of TB to this tale makes it all the more useful.

I hate to say this. Although I liked The Fault in our Stars fine, I found Everything a superior work. The author's using the skills he developed in YA lit and applying them to a spot of nonfiction he's devoted to. It helps him get away with some structuring that I often find frustrating, viz, he's telling the story of one kid with tuberculosis in Sierra Leone and cutting it up with chapterlong incursions into history and science. But the interweaving here is so natural it doesn't feel like a cheap to trick us into learning something until the pathos returns.

Also, how depressing that TB is still kicking our butts. No disease we know how to cure should be killing 1.25 million people a year.

What a millstone we're building for ourselves.

a couple weeks

 

025) The Cartoonists Club by Raina Telgemeier and Scott McCloud, finished April 18

This book is brilliant. One chapter is kind of a mini–Understanding Comics for kids and the rest of the book is largely modeling how to be an artist. Which really means how to find likeminded people and how to stick to the work. Two vital lessons that aren't obvious when you're just looking at pros' finished work.

The book does a lot of modeling. To get jargony, how to  have a growth mindset, how to have grit—all the popular education phrasing. It has a super-inclusive cast and normalizes some things like swapping pronouns. Most of this is very natural, though there are a couple moments that feel forced.

After the story ends (perfect ending, btw), there's some more helpful stuff like a glossary and a breakdown of how they split up the work. I was glad to see I was spot-on. But then, I'm big fans of both Scott and Raina and while they meshed styles and sensibilities well on this project, Scott's still Scott and Raina's still Raina.

I feel extremely lucky to have read this already. Apparently, Lady Steed told me about this a while back but I didn't understand that it was Raina AND Scott and that they'd made a book together that they were touring in support of. Very bummed not to have gotten tickets!

So I wasn't really even away of the book until this earlier today (and then reading many more). I went straight to my library and somehow they weren't all checked out already. From the data I can see on the public side of my library's website, I think the first copies were put on shelves three days ago. Perhaps not all branches on the same day. My local branch still had theirs and by the time I got there after school, it was waiting in my name.

I'm excited to push this into the 8yrold's hands.

afternoon and nighttime

 

026) Silence by Shūsaku Endō, finished April 19

For my Easter read this year, I decided to tackle Silence. It's not long but I had some reticence about the translation. (Incidentally, I read the words discussed in that article as the BYU professor says they should be read. So either I had a better experience reading the available translation than he did or I have been swayed by the professor's version as seen in the Scorsese adaptation which I love.

I did not expect this novel to be so peculiarly structured. Postmodern, I suppose. It starts as a presentation of historical document, letters sent by Father Rodrigues, letters that could not possibly have survived. They it moved into third-person (mostly limited). At one moment, at the climax, it slipped into present tense. Then it's back to docs (this time from a Dutchman) then a sudden, neckjerking leap back to narration then back to docs of another type.

One of the controversial things about the movie as an adaptation that people complain about is  Rodrigues's wife giving him a tawdry crucifix to hold as he is cremated. I agree this does not happen in the book and, moreover, is unlikely, but it works as a visual representation of what we see in his mind during the last bit of narration. And it's a much more elegant representation than, I don't know, voiceover or something. I agree with the choice.

The weird way this book ranges from faux historiana to straightup novel gave me regular whiplash, yet the novel as a whole—and specific moments in particular—are powerful all the same.

It is moving and provocative work. Consider it a bucketlist read.

perhaps a month

 

= = = = = = = = = = = = =

 

Bro! Tell me we still know how to speak of kings!

001) Beowulf translated by Maria Dahvana Headley, finished January 1
002) Cthulhu Is Hard to Spell: Volume Three, finished January 1
003) Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin (translated by Megan McDowell), finished January 8
004) My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris, finished January 11
005) You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown, finished January 12
005) Into the Headwinds: Why Belief Has Always Been Hard—and Still Is by Terryl Givens and Nathaniel Givens, finished January 24
006) My Favorite Thing Is Monsters: Book Two by Emil Ferris, finished January 25

Maybe we should just pretend this set begins and ends with Wednesday Addams

007) Chas. Addams Half-Baked Cookbook, finished January 29
008) Monica by Daniel Clowes, finished February 3
009) The Unexpurgated French Edition of Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland, finished February 19
010) Peach and the Isle of Monsters by Franco Aureliani and Agnes Garbowska, finished February 20
011) Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, finished February 28
012) Comic Poems edited by Peter Washington, finished March 7

Love, Beauty, and a complete lack of sasquatch

013) Love that Dog by Sharon Creech, finished March 11
014) Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper, finished March 21
015) Antelope Spring by John Bennion, finished March 24
016) Shelley Frankenstein by Colleen Madden, finished March 28
017) Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew #21: Double Take, finished April 5
018) The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clark, finshed April 8
019) Rave by Jessica Campbell, finished April 13
020) The Creeps: A Deep Dark Fears Collection by Fran Krause, finished April 14

 

PREVIOUS OTHER YEARS IN BOOKS

2007 = 2008 = 2009 = 2010 = 2011 = 2012 = 2013 = 2014 = 2015
2016 = 2017 = 2018 = 2019 = 2020 = 2021 = 2022 = 2023 = 2024

Love, Beauty, and a complete lack of sasquatch

.

Going nowhere fast this year.

I'm a bit stressed because I'm in the middle of SO MANY BOOKS and, honestly, it feels like too many. Even given that I am always in the middle too many books, this is SO MANY.

Anyway, I end this set with a couple comics that were easily cranked out to create the illusion of progress.

The most exciting thing below, however, is a book yet to be released. But I'm excited to talk about it with you once you've had the chance.

.

013) Love that Dog by Sharon Creech, finished March 11

I used to read this every semester with AP Lit but I left it behind some years ago. This semester I decided to try it out with the sophomores.

I think it was good? We'll be able to tell as the semester progresses and we see if it returns, into our conversations.

three noncontiguous days 

014) Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper, finished March 21

I've written about this book at length here.

Let me just add that this could be an incredible animated HBO-level show. An updated Belladonna of Sadness vibe in terms of how fluid images overlap and become another. Would be amazing.

at most four weeks

 

015) Antelope Spring by John Bennion, finished March 24

This is a novel obsessed with opposites, starting with its very form. It's a novel about a man who would be alone in deserted space. Yet this novel provides him with all sorts of company, from strangers to his wife, from the living to the dead, from the Three Nephites (one of whom is a woman, did you know?) to cryptobiotic soil. He is visited almost nightly by his dead father, grandfather, and great-great-grandfather. He is visited by polygamists and an Army general. He is discovered by a brilliant Dutch philosopher/scientist.

Yet Antelope Spring, for all the noise and chaos, never stops being quiet and still.

The secret, perhaps, is our protagonist, Christopher Twist. He himself is a mess of (believable) contradictions, but he is the center of some sort of universal crisis. Are the Heavenly Parents considering divorce? If not, where are they? And in their absence (or battle or whatever), who will emerge victorious from this second War of not-just-Heaven?

Even the climax of the book (which I will not go into here) is successful in large part because of its intense quiet.

Protagonist Christopher is confused throughout. Some characters try to remove his confusion by giving him explicit instructions. He doesn't take well to that. Others trust him and believe that if he just behaves naturally, things will work out. (This is something the wiser characters also told the main character of Beauty and something dangerously close to Carl Cranney's biggest pet peeve since episode one.)

What I like most about this book, however, is not just how every potential level at which one might read it finds it engaging in the same psychological quandaries, but how these quandaries matter to the characters and the plot in the most fan-friendly (read: nonprofessorial) way of reading the story.

It shares a familial resemblance to the cheesy novels of the 1890s or 1970s that are deeply allegorical. Some of these, of course, were great. We are all either a fan of or love a fan of Looking Backward or Jonathan Livingston Seagull or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. But whether you think Mitch Albom is a genius or a hack, what makes the best of these books rise above those that embarrass us as we read them is probably threefold:

1. They are not so simple that their allegory can literally be understood in only one way

2. They introduce us to characters who, no matter how fantastical, are real (or become real) within the bounds of the story

3. Even if you take home a particular lesson, the story is bigger than that lesson and thus lives on, giving you cud to chew long after the final page has ended

Even though I just finished the book, I know Antelope Spring meets all three of these categories because I took so long reading it (letter-size single-sheets in a padded envelope cannot be rushed):

1. While there are a couple lessons the characters state and even learn over the course of the novel, the novel itself does not demand you accept them.

2. Although some of the simpler antagonists behave in peculiar ways, almost as if they are being marionetted, the oddness of all eternity within this novel makes us wonder just what forces may in fact be working on them. In other words, any artificiality is parcel.

3. I could give you plenty of examples, but Bennion's vision of an afterlife that is less "after" than simply more of the same—albeit ineffably separate (literally ineffable even to those afterliving it)—is both entirely different from anything I've ever heard in Church while completely Latter-day Saint in conception and execution. I think I'd be slightly disappointed and utterly unsurprised if the afterlife is exactly as presented in Antelope Spring.

But as a novel, I hear you asking, does it work as a novel?

I think you mean do the characters live on the page and do their conflicts hold real weight and do their choices matter and did I care what happened to them as it inevitably did? Yes. There are a handful of moments where a character utters a phrase or smiles in a way that made me see the generational gap between the author and his character, but those moments are few, insignificant—and my biggest complaint. So much happens in this book. And yet, what really matters, is that nothing happens in this book. That's the paradox of mortal life on Earth.

Antelope Spring is a book that embraces fiction's potential for paradox. And for that I love it and submit that it is an appropriate book for this our moment.

Or perhaps any moment.

For always there is war. Even though it seems nothing is happening.

UPDATE FROM THREE DAYS LATER

My wife and I just returned from the temple where we helped people do sealings for their departed. On our drive back, she told me that she knew that some of those we served through ordinance had been waiting and were happy to finally be gifted with these particular blessings. The conversation reminded me of Antelope Spring which, among everything else it is, is one of the great Mormon novels in terms of exploring the veil. Just what is it, just how it works, just what it is for. It doesn't answer any of these questions, mind, but it does ask them exquisitely well.

about three months

 

016) Shelley Frankenstein by Colleen Madden, finished March 28

This was a fun little book that made me laugh out loud multiple times. I'd avoid reading it through any lenses and some of its story elements might be a little troubling to an overachieving college student, but if you read it as a small child it is utterly delightful.

one sit

 

017) Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew #21: Double Take, finished April 5

We were at the library looking for something else when I saw a long line of thin yellow books. Sure enough, Nancy Drew. But this series (from the late oughts) stars third-grade Nancy, George, and Bess. Which means it's aimed right at my daughter who is in second.

I loved Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys when I was in elementary school. I read all the Hardy Boys probably multiple times and all of Nancy at least once. (By "all of" I mean the series that are now the "classics" they sell. They did start another series when I was in around sixth grade; I read one but I didn't think it matched the ethos.)

These books are right in keeping with what I loved about those books and Daughter has taken right up with them. She's already read maybe five of them and insisted I read one. Which is just what I was hoping. I have nothing against comics, obviously, but I also want her to dig prose. And now we're planning to go to the library Tuesday and check out as many as we can for our upcoming roadtrip.

Thanks, Nancy! You've done it again!

not very long but over more than one day

 

018) The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clark, finshed April 8

I love this little tale to be sure, but it's kinda fascinating to read a book where the story is about the same length as the afterward. In which she talks a bit about creation and influence and such. She's a charming host.

I think I'm going to try to trick my second-grader into reading this.....

one sitting

 

019) Rave by Jessica Campbell, finished April 13

 

It's about twenty years ago. An evangelical teenage girl believes what she's taught the same time she doesn't. It's classic teenage doublethink and it leads to disaster.

This is a very quiet story. A big fragmented. And it captures well the length of a teenage day or week. While reflecting how short those years can turn.

We are who we make ourselves to be.

But we only have so much control over the raw materials.

two days

 

020) The Creeps: A Deep Dark Fears Collection by Fran Krause, finished April 14

 I think I might remember this strip from the Tumblr era but regardless, it's a good read. People send in their irrational fears and Fran turns them into comics. Most of them are fears collected in childhood, but clearly some people are still creating little anxieties for themselves.

one swimming lesson

 

 

earlier this year..........

Bro! Tell me we still know how to speak of kings!

001) Beowulf translated by Maria Dahvana Headley, finished January 1
002) Cthulhu Is Hard to Spell: Volume Three, finished January 1
003) Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin (translated by Megan McDowell), finished January 8
004) My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris, finished January 11
005) You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown, finished January 12
005) Into the Headwinds: Why Belief Has Always Been Hard—and Still Is by Terryl Givens and Nathaniel Givens, finished January 24
006) My Favorite Thing Is Monsters: Book Two by Emil Ferris, finished January 25

 

Maybe we should just pretend this set begins and ends with Wednesday Addams

007) Chas. Addams Half-Baked Cookbook, finished January 29
008) Monica by Daniel Clowes, finished February 3
009) The Unexpurgated French Edition of Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland, finished February 19
010) Peach and the Isle of Monsters by Franco Aureliani and Agnes Garbowska, finished February 20
011) Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, finished February 28
012) Comic Poems edited by Peter Washington, finished March 7

 

PREVIOUS OTHER YEARS IN BOOKS

2007 = 2008 = 2009 = 2010 = 2011 = 2012 = 2013 = 2014 = 2015
2016 = 2017 = 2018 = 2019 = 2020 = 2021 = 2022 = 2023 = 2024