Another roaster here, August 11, 2025. My mother’s birthday.
A little over a minute of video:
I’ve read the first chapter of this book and am SO BLOWN away by the writing, I had to set it aside for a minute.
By the way, if you’re like me and are often in a reading pickle because a book (or three!) you’ve been on the waiting list for (often for months) has come up for you to borrow (we’re talking the Libby app here), but you’re reading something else, I have the greatest workaround.
You have to have two devices. I usually read on my phone, so I use my phone and iPad.
If you open the book on your iPad or kindle AND TURN THE WIFI OFF, when it comes time for the book to be returned from your phone, it’ll remain on the other device.
Ta da! Problem solved.
I don’t mind reading more than one book at a time — no surprise there, I suppose — but sometimes it gets out of hand.
Today, I delayed delivery of two library books and took Vuong’s out, even though I’m reading something else (two something elses actually).
Just finished Broken Country yesterday. Recommend.
I kind of cringe to read this slapdash and incomplete review, but I’ve given myself permission to just jot something down. It really doesn’t have to be perfect. Plenty of other people on Goodreads do the whole “this is what the book is about” thing. I don’t have to.
But I’ll tell you, it’s about the death of a child and a love triangle. Tragedy all round but somehow not a complete bummer to read.
Sunday June 22, 2025, the day after dipshit unilaterally decided to bomb Iran. GOP members of Congress being MIA matters more than it did last week.
Meanwhile, record-setting heat wave ought to command our attention and resources. It is beyond baffling that it doesn’t.
Finished this book this week. It’s about a crew that goes around repairing underwater cables, cables that connect us to the internet. The ship of the story sets out from South Africa, so there are some interesting observations about race. I learned about this network of cables enough to understand how fragile our connectivity is. But mostly the novel is a character study of the ship’s operational leader and a compelling one.
It’s cold. Still. A lot of ice has disappeared but to walk the dog continues to mean going from sidewalk to street and back again.
We headed down Jackson Street today so that I could add a novel (a DNF) to the curbside library kiosk. The Kitchen House.
In case you don’t know “DNF,” is lingo for Did Not Finish.
I read less than ten pages before getting intense Gone with the Wind vibes. “Nope! No more!” After metaphorically flinging the book onto the floor, I consulted a dozen or so one star ⭐️ reviews on Amazon (yes, I do this on occasion). Bingo! Impression confirmed.
Somebody will grab The Kitchen House and probably enjoy it too. It’s one of those titles that’s a perennial favorite among readers of historic fiction.
Another recent DNF was a little more problematic because it’s literary fiction by an author I admire: Let Us Descend, by Jesmyn Ward. In a nutshell it’s about an enslaved character being sold down the river. The epically awful journey down to New Orleans is described in gruesome detail, but that’s not why I stopped.
I stopped because I don’t love magic realism. It’s a preference thing, like not liking horror or sci-fi. I can deal with a little — like the amount in Ta Nahesi Coates’s novel, The Water Dancer, for example. In another Ward novel Sing Unburied Sing, there are visitations from the dead — appearing as dreams to one character and as a ghost to another. They never interfere with the pacing of the story, however.
But in Let Us Descend, a baffling spirit shows every other minute.
Is the entity benevolent or malignant? A weather pattern or ancestral energy? Initially, I was interested, particularly in the descriptions of the thing, but fairly quickly got annoyed.
Why? Because the exchanges between spirit and protagonist, while exalted and poetic were also opaque and therefore eventually meaningless. Or maybe it’s just that they didn’t move the story along at all. To use John Gardner’s phrase, “they interrupted the dream.” I started skipping their interactions and then just said, “Nope! Done.”
I have one more DNF to report (boy! I’m on a run!) — one by the recent recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Han Kang.
Scene: couple quietly reading. Wife reads book husband recently finished.
Wife: She goes on about snow, doesn’t she?
Husband: Yeah, there’s a lot about snow.
Silence. More reading. Then wife encounters another description of snow, this time three pages long.
Another metaphorical flinging away.
Wife: You can return it to Libby early.
Is this what being 68 feels like? Being past caring what other people think? Having the freedom to disregard stupid, self-imposed rules like: you must finish every book you begin? Maybe it’s also the freedom of being an author who is not now and never will be famous, so I get to express my cavalier critiques.
(However! Would never opine thusly on Instagram, Amazon, or Goodreads, so maybe I care a little about what others think? Or more specifically, after getting a three star review this week (just stars, no words), maybe it’s that I don’t want any author to read my negative takes on their work).
The Wedding People is fun. I will definitely be finishing this one. See it there below in the photo? With mine nearby? (Yes, Dee. You’ve only posted the pic six times). It’s living up to the hype.
Blurb: a newly divorced, depressed woman goes to a fancy hotel in Newport, Rhode Island with the intention of killing herself. Instead she ends up interacting with the people gathered there to attend a wedding. Things ensue. Lots of great observations about marriage, academia, wealth, grief, and family.
I woke after dreaming of loan sharks in the city. How they and government programs worked hand in hand to perpetuate cycles of poverty. And then there was a clan called The Goblins, who wore dark creepy outfits and looked evil but actually performed charitable works. Brooklyn.
Speaking of dreams. The Heretic’s Daughter is a good book. A story of the early days of our colony and the witch hysteria of the late 1600’s. Well-researched and well-written. I’m learning a lot. But she exemplifies the fiction writer’s maxim: Tell a dream, lose a reader.
Every third or so chapter begins with a dream. Stop! I say. Stop! Hard eye roll, followed by skimming. They’re never integral to plot and she does a lot of other scene/mood setting so — unnecessary.
Is this a way forward? Make a picture a day? Even if I can’t explain it. Post only those I love. (I love this one).
Because I’m getting sick of myself, I’ll tell you that. And sometimes afraid too. Like I’ll be found out by the bad guys.
I’m committing the cardinal sin of posting the same images everywhere, but in this time of extraordinarily bad news, maybe I can get a pass? Because it makes me insanely happy to see my book at an independent bookstore. Look! Will you goddamned look? Next to Jesmyn Ward no less.
I still can’t quite believe it.
Nor can I believe that I’m still finding typos. Today: two. And two improvements.
(Did I mention that Ken is my book manager? Poor guy).
Dog photo board at the bookstore
Next week stay tuned for a link to my podcast interview on On Mic.
