lisapeet 2021: Hangin' out

Happy New Year and new thread for 2021!

I'm lisapeet, real name Lisa Peet—I know, very imaginative—and this is my fourth! year on CR. I'm a pretty much lifelong New Yorker, currently living in the Northwest Bronx, and I'm an editor and journalist covering news about libraries—public, academic, and special (but not K-12). I also like to bake, write physical letters, sketch, and I really hope to do fun NYC stuff again someday. I miss the galleries, restaurants, museums, stores, all that. I drive a very old car, my politics are left of center, and I like cheese a lot.

Otherwise I won't repeat my long intro, which is here.

I read widely and randomly. I don't really do reading goals, and am loathe to read for a count—I said it last year and I'll say it again, I feel like notches on a bedpost vs. just enjoying the experience. I read all the time but I'm not a fast reader, and I am a note taker.

I'm also not a resolution maker, but I would like to engage with this thread a bit more beyond my reading—include some of the art I'm looking at (mostly online these days), music I'm listening to, good things I'm cooking, etc., in the service of, maybe, some good conversations. Or just a narcissistic record of what was going on in my head—social media blurs those lines agreeably.

----

The painting at the top of the post is Four Friends by Salman Toor, 2019. Oil on plywood, 40 × 40 in. (101.6 × 101.6 cm). It's a debut exhibition at the Whitney, and I haven't seen it in person but it's up until April so I actually have a stab at catching it, and a friend who wants to see it as well (always a good motivator). I just loved the energy of it, that feeling of a small party with a few friends, where the only agenda is to have a good time.

Even though the name of the show is How Will I Know, a great Whitney Houston song that takes me back to a very specific time, when I look at this I hear Betty Davis's Hanging' Out—more my generation than Toor's, but that's what's fun about art.

Here's to a year of good reading and hangin' out, then.

Happy 2021! I am also so very much looking forward to spending time at the Met Museum and MoMA later this year.

Happy New Year, Lisa. I look forward to following your reading this year and adding to my already huge WL.

I love the painting.

2021 will be better, right?

Dropping off my star for this year, Lisa. Looking forward to the books and chat. Happy new year!

I love the painting, want more! Happy New Year Lisa!

>1 lisapeet:

Ha, I was trying to date the picture and sending it at least a few decades earlier if not a full century (although the lamps looked a bit too 20th century for that). I love it! :)

Happy 2021!

Thanks, all! I'm hoping for an engaged and engaging year.

>2 ELiz_M: Maybe we can have a meetup someday! I do love a museum date.

>6 AnnieMod: I know, it has a very timeless look to it, doesn't it? And yet also very contemporary. I'm really looking forward to seeing the exhibit in person.

>6 AnnieMod: the mobile phone gave the rough time period away for me - and also added a lot of appeal.

>8 dchaikin:

I did not even notice it when I looked at it earlier, not for a very long time anyway - once I realized the timing, it made sense and it jumped at me but it did not register as technology before that (maybe a photo he was showing? Something like that). The whole picture just did not look like something from this century... :)

Your plans for your thread sound great - look forward to following!

Happy New Year, Lisa! I also miss visiting museums and restaurants, in NYC and elsewhere, and I share your love of cheese. We'll certainly have to organize a NYC LT group meetup later this year, when everyone is fully vaccinated and things are back open again.

Hello, found your thread! I hear you on missing the art--not the least reason I've taken to accumulating art books (AKA picture books for adults, as I sometimes guiltily feel).

Hi, Lisa! I thought the clothing colors gave away the time period to me, but when I went back to look, I don't know why that would be true. A puzzle. I didn't notice the mobile phone.

Looking forward to following you.

Hi everyone, and thanks for stopping by! Happy New Year to everyone, or hopefully at least happier New Year.

I'm back at work after nearly a week and a half off, which was wonderful. I didn't do a whole lot of anything other than read, sleep in, write letters, cook, and bake, which was fine with me. I did get our tenant apartment rented out as of January 15, which is a load off my mind. I was just getting ready to post it on Craigslist, which is OK but involves sifting through all sorts of craziness, when our old tenants sent someone to us—a couple of 20-something kids looking to get away from a roommate setup. They seem nice, and the guy's mom cosigned for them, and they already paid the first half month plus deposit, so I'm hopeful this will be a smooth tenancy. We've had great tenants so far—the place is priced cheap because we want folks to be happy to live there, and it's a perfect spot for a young couple. The last tenants got a good deal on a place and left in a hurry, with our blessings—they were a couple with a preteen daughter and a brand new baby, all in a 1-BR, and everyone knew that wasn't going to last much longer. But she was there for four years or so before that, and I'm hoping for a good run like that.



During my time off I baked chocolate-espresso crinkle cookies, banana bread, and an enormous chocolate cake on Sunday that we'll be eating all week. A bunch of good meals, too. Took two cats to the vet for shots, did a bunch of little household chores, drew in my sketchbook.

And now, happily enough, I feel pretty recharged. This week I'm writing a fairly boring feature for the issue that closes next week, a recap of our annual Budgets & Funding survey that I do every year, but I was good to myself and got the hardest part written before my PTO started. January me appreciates December me very much.

The cake looks both lovely and delicious!

>14 lisapeet: Any left?

Lots left, come on over! Really, that thing is too huge for two people. But I guess we'll manage.

My first finished book of 2021 was The Best American Short Stories 2020, which was fine but didn't knock me out as a collection, though all the stories were well done. Maybe there were too many variations on a similar theme, a lot of drifting young adults and teenagers, and a few adults, who just seem a bit unmoored from life. Standouts for me were T.C. Boyle's "The Apartment," because it was just such a T.C. Boyle story; Michael Byers's "Sibling Rivalry," because it was a totally believable sf story all by itself in the collection; and Elizabeth McCracken's "It's Not You," because she's always so good. Looking back through them, I actually liked almost all of them—there was just nothing that left me going, "Wow, how'd they DO that?" Which is probably an awful lot to ask of a writer, I know.

Now I'm about to start Joan Silber's upcoming Secrets of Happiness, which I'm reviewing for Library Journal.

Is there any cake left? I'm drooling. Joan Silber has a new one out? Off to check it out.

>19 BLBera: It's not out until May, unfortunately, unless you're a galley acquirer.

Nope. I'll have to wait. I do have other things to read.

Wonderful painting Lisa! Wishing you a good reading year and dropping off my star to follow you again!

Looking forward to following you again this year Lisa.
I'm really interested in art too, which is one reason I liked to visit my kids in NYC pre-covid. It's been awhile tho' (with my husband's transplant sidelining us for a year pre-covid as well). Several years ago (or more) a group of friends and I began meeting weekly to study art history together, and a couple of years ago we traveled to London and Paris to visit some museums together. Since I've left Seattle, we are continuing our weekly sessions by Zoom. Right now we're doing an in-depth study of Fra Angelico. We want to take a trip to Italy together in a few years if we're still around.

>23 arubabookwoman: Oh, that sounds really fun. I took a lot of art history many years ago—in art school, so it was a bit more of a requirement than a choice, but I liked it anyway and appreciate having that base through which to look at current art. I'd love to hear more about your art travels, even the virtual ones.

And hi and welcome, everyone! Glad to have you around the joint.

I listen to podcasts on my morning walk, and one of my favorites is Backlisted—they pick good books to revisit, and the conversation is lively. Last weekend I finally listened to their Christmas podcast, which I'd been saving and rubbing my mental hands together over. It was about Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising, a deep deep favorite of mine from childhood, and it didn't disappoint—cohosted by Robert Mcfarlane and illustrator Jackie Morris, with clips of Cooper herself speaking at a lecture a few years ago, and lots of great music. Recommended, if anyone here is a fan (and some of you must be).

I dragged my paperback copy out for my husband, who was interested after I was telling him about it—I guess they didn't read much wintry British fantasy in North Texas—but I'm not sure if he's into it.

And I did dig out a review I wrote of it in 2015, for Open Letters Monthly's Summer Reading issue, which apparently focused on books featuring cold climates:

If you’re going to read cold, read cold that stays with you. I first read Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising close to its publication in 1973, and that kernel of frozen fantasy has stuck with me like a sliver of dry ice in my literary DNA. It’s a classic good vs. evil story; in this case the Dark vs. the Light, or rather the Deep Cold of Endless Winter vs.—well, it’s England, so let’s say the Merely Dreary.

On his 11th birthday, young Will Stanton discovers he’s the last of the Old Ones, a race of ancient magical beings engaged in battle with the forces of the Dark for the fate of the mankind, and must prove himself through a series of quests. Pretty archetypal stuff, and in fact Cooper’s book doesn’t break any radical ground when it comes to action, plot, or characters. But her imagery, drawn heavily from the natural world and English mythology, is marvelous, and has remained etched in my brain for more than 40 years. Maybe if I’d grown up in 1970’s Britain with a storytelling grandparent, I might not have found Cooper’s visuals so striking—but for a little New Jersey kid, images of Herne the Hunter with his stag’s head bounding through the skies with his ghostly hound pack was irresistible.

And the deep winter called up by the Dark is perfectly scaled to inspire awe in a smallish person: the snow falls and falls, and Will’s delight in it turns to horror. As the roads become impassible and supplies are cut off the residents of his small town gather in the local manor house, all stone walls, tapestries, and enormous fireplaces. The snow shrieks outside, battering the windows, the Dark Rider circles the manor on his huge foam-snorting black horse, and young Will fights the forces of evil with all his 11-year-old pluck and ingenuity… you get the idea. The snow is, in fact, by far the better villain. But it’s a compelling one, and you’ll want a good hand-warming cup of tea after you’re done reading, triple digits outside or not.

>25 lisapeet:

Wow, sold! I was aware of it as a children's classic but this is the first time I see a really compelling description. Sounds as if it would fit nicely with the Anglo folk horror tradition (in books and film), Alan Garner etc.

>25 lisapeet: Wonderful comments, Lisa. My son loved this series. I think we read the first ones together and he continued on his own.

>26 LolaWalser: I love Anglo folk horror, tales of the Green Wood, etc., and I know it's all thanks to Susan Cooper.

>27 BLBera: I think I read the whole series, but this is the one that stuck with me. I'd like to read at least a few of the series, though.

Fun fact: Susan Cooper was married to the actor Hume Cronyn until his death—her second marriage, I think, and his third after he was widowed after his long marriage to Jessica Tandy.

>28 lisapeet:

Ha, how deliciously random! Hume Cronyn! He's in my favourite Hitchcock, his first role no less--it's not even clear that he ever wanted to be an actor?--IIRC the commentary said Hitchcock just liked his face and forced this 20-something to play an old man in his movie.

Hey, I have one for you. Know Buffy the Vampire Slayer? (If not, this will fall VERY flat.) Know the actress who played Professor Walsh, the militaristic android whisperer, in the fourth season? She was married to Friedrich Dürrenmatt!

I don't know, I find that unexpected. :)

>29 LolaWalser: Ohhh, sorry to disappoint but I've never seen Buffy. I'm not big on TV-based stuff. But just from your description of the players, it sounds like a good factoid.

>25 lisapeet: Backlisted is pretty much my favourite podcast as well. So many great books get mentioned that I would never otherwise hear of.

>30 lisapeet:

Oh no biggie--one could say that's the point!--it's HARD to find people who intersect on Swiss political theatre and American teenage TV. :)

>32 LolaWalser:
"...it's HARD to find people who intersect on Swiss political theatre and American teenage TV. :)"

Undeniable, I would say!

Happy New Year, Lisa (better late than never). I look forward to following your thread again this year, and I love the sound of your ideas for it. The Dark is Rising was a big favourite of mine (a girlfriend of my dad’s gave me a box set when I was 9 or 10), and just reading your review made me feel the old excitement again. I’ll certainly have a listen to that podcast - thanks.

I used to listen to podcasts when I walked and somehow got out of the habit. I need to start again. "Backlisted" sounds like one I would love.

>25 lisapeet: I will have to check out that backlisted episode, as I am a Susan Cooper fan as well. Maybe this afternoon when I walk my dog.

Backlisted is dangerous. Love your comments on Dark is Rising. I didn’t know anything about it except that it’s a title that pops up a lot and I had assumed fantasy.

>25 lisapeet: Fantastic review of Dark is Rising. I've shown it to my 11 year old daughter. She's on the last book in the Harry Potter series, so she might really enjoy this.

>14 lisapeet: That cake looks soooo good! This month I've baked cranberry orange bread, an apple coconut pound cake and double chocolate zucchini bread.

Looking forward to stopping in from time to time to see what you are reading...and baking.

I love baking, too, especially cakes, but we have such a small household that I have started to make all my layer cakes as 6" rounds--that seems to work well for 1/2 a recipe.

For my birthday in September I invented a new cake--raw and crystallized ginger layers, with a fresh grapefruit frosting. That was almost all flavored with grapefruit zest, of course. The cake turned out so good. I used some coffee in it, too, to darken the flavor, but no spices. I didn't want it to be a gingerbread flavor, just ginger. I adore fresh ginger. And the icing was subtle but fresh-tasting. I've never heard of a cake like it. How about you?

Unfortunately, I am trying to lose a fair amount of weight, and I can't afford to bake often, because I eat it all. I do make a seed bread breakfast loaf as soon as we run out, because it is the best breakfast with raspberry jam, and about 1/2 canister of yoghurt. Lemon is the best with the raspberry and the seed bread. It makes a beautiful loaf, too. One of my sons said it looks "artisanal", and it does! Usually I do the mixing and kneading, and set it to rise, and my husband does the second rise and the baking. That's about equal time for the two of us. What's your favorite baking?

I love making pies, too.

That seed bread breakfast loaf sounds goooood. Would you mind sharing the recipe?

Breakfast Seed Bread Recipe This is one we made, and it is half the dough. We
are generous with seeds.

INGREDIENTS

PREFERMENT
1 cup bread flour
1/2 cup warm water
1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast

FINAL DOUGH
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
4 tablespoons honey plus more for drizzling
1 1/2 cups warm water divided
1 cup old fashions oats
3 tablespoons ground flax (Grind about 1 1/2 T)
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/4 cups white flour or bread flour plus more for
kneading
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg beaten
1 cup mixed pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, black and/or white sesame seeds and flax seeds)

INSTRUCTIONS
1. The night before baking the bread make the preferment. In the bowl of your stand mixer, mix together the flour, water and yeast until a smooth paste forms. Cover the bowl and allow the preferment to ripen at room temperature overnight. The preferment will double in size and become bubbly on top as it sits.
2. The next day measure out 1/4 cup warm water in a glass measuring cup or bowl. Add the yeast and honey. Mix to combine and then allow the mixture to sit, undisturbed, for 5 minutes or until the mixture is foamy on top and smells like bread. During the same time, add the remaining 1 1/4 cups warm water to a bowl. Add the oats and ground flax. Allow this mixture to sit 5 minutes.
5. After 5 minutes add both the yeast mixture and oats mixture to the bowl with the preferment from the night before.
6. Add the whole wheat flour, bread flour and salt. Using the dough hook, mix the dough on medium speed for 4-6 minutes. If the dough seems extremely sticky, add 1-2 tablespoons flour. (It's better if it is baked when slightly sticky.)
7, Now add in 4 tablespoons of the mixed seeds. and mix until combined.
8. Remove the dough from the bowl and knead with your hands on a floured surface for a minute or two.
9. Grease the bowl you mixed the dough in and place the dough back in the bowl. Cover with plastic wrap or a damp dish-towel and place in a warm area for 1 1/2 to 2 hours or until the dough has doubled in size.
10. Once the dough has doubled in size, preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Place a 5-quart, or larger, cast iron dutch oven with a tight-fitting lid in the center of the rack. You may also use a baking stone, but I have found the the dutch oven with a lid works the best.
11. Punch the dough down with your fist and then scoop it out onto a floured work surface. Knead the dough a few times with your hands and then form the dough into rough oval or circle shape (if needed, you can divided the dough in half and make two loaves We do.)
12. Place the dough on a parchment lined baking sheet and cover with a damp kitchen towel. Allow the dough to rise 20-30 minutes.
13. After 20-30 minutes, brush the dough with the beaten egg and then sprinkle with the remaining mixed seeds. Using a sharp knife, gently make a small slit down the center of the loaf. Drizzle the the seeds with 1-2 teaspoons honey.
14. When the dough is ready to bake, carefully remove the hot dutch oven from the oven using oven mitts and remove the lid. Very carefully, pick the dough up by the parchment paper and lift into the hot dutch oven. Using oven mitts, place the hot lid back on the pot and return to the oven. Bake for 20 minutes, then reduce the heat to 375 degrees F. Using oven mitts, remove the hot lid and continue baking until the bread is a deep, golden brown, about 15-20 minutes more. Do not overbake. Remove from the oven. Carefully lift the bread out of the pot by the parchment edges, peel the parchment from the bread, and place it on a rack to cool completely, about 2 hours. Don't slice into the bread right out of the oven, the bread continues to cook as it cools.

RECIPE NOTES
*If you do not have stand mixer, you can knead the dough by hand on a flour surface. Here is a great tutorial | http://allrecipes.com/video/36/how-to-knead-dough/detail.aspx on how to knead dough. **If you do not have a dutch oven, the dough can just be baked on a cookie sheet. Just be aware that the cooking time may very slightly and you may not get the some crusty on the outside soft on the inside results. ***The dough can be divided in half for small loaves or to be frozen. Bake in two dishes, one for each loaf. We do divide ours, and freeze the second loaf until the first one is too small to cut. Do not put the sliced bread in a toaster, but toast in a toaster-oven. I use raspberry or mixed berry jam. Just so you know, it is also good for lunch or with dinner. I have tried it as avocado toast and as blue-cheese toast. Elegant!

Sorry for using your thread, lisapeet. Should I have put the recipe somewhere else? Sally

Hi everyone! I'd be interested to hear what you think of The Dark Is Rising if you do read it—I know my fondness for it is inextricably tied up with the fact that I read it at 10 or 11 and it's become part of my inner symbol system. And yeah, Backlisted is a great—and sometimes dangerous—podcast. I have a big wishlist just from listening.

>39 avaland: Mmm, that all sounds good. I made a cranberry crumb cake around Thanksgiving that I need to do again with more orange in the cake part—this one. I have some King Arthur Flour fiori di sicilia extract that I think would work well there, because even two oranges' worth of zest didn't quite hit the right amount of orange flavor.

>42 sallypursell: That looks terrific. I think all my yeast is expired—I haven't made yeast bread since last winter, I think, when a friend and I did bagels and somosas one afternoon. I'm going to put that one on my list (and I think posting recipes here is a good idea because that way I can find them).

I love all sorts of baking. I used to do specialty decorated cookies and cakes as a side hustle and almost started up my own business, but then decided that was a bit too much like going into pro sports in middle age—it's really physical work, and kind of grueling. I was in the best shape of my life when I was in food service. Now I sit on my ass all day writing, and I feel like I may need to cut down on baking for a while after the holidays because I'm definitely feeling the fact that there were not enough folks around to help us eat all these fine treats. Though my husband has a birthday coming up in a couple of weeks, and I may make him a little cake or something.

I enjoy baking as well, Lisa, but with just me, it is too unhealthy to have it around. Now that classes have started again, I do have three male colleagues who eat up any baked goods I take, so that may be a good outlet for me. In our entire office suite, there are only four of us there regularly, but the guys can really go through a lot of baking!

>42 sallypursell: Thank you!

>43 lisapeet: And this ("cookies and cakes as a side hustle and almost started up my own business") is another reason why you should read Ducks, Newburyport.

>40 sallypursell: While that seed bread looks delish, what I want is the recipe with fresh ginger & grapefruit in the frosting!

Do we need to start a kitchen thread for 2021?

>47 markon: I'll see if I can dig that up. I modified a gingerbread cake recipe on the fly, without knowing whether it would work. I hope I did enough notating. If you make it, I want you to cite me. ;)

I meant to add that there is a kitchen thread this year.

I'm happy to have folks post recipes here too, since they're part of the conversation. Sally, I meant to say—I've seen a few recipes for baked goods that call for ginger and grapefruit together, but have never made one. It sounds divine to me, but neither of those are my husband's favorite flavors, so I'd probably end up eating most of whatever I made myself (though I've never seen him turn down something sweet, come to think of it). I'd love to see yours.

>46 ELiz_M: Oy, another person encouraging me to read Ducks, Newburyport? Well, it's definitely sounding more and more like something I'd like.

I've been eying Ducks, Newburyport as well, Lisa. I'm thinking it will be a summer book for me.

Maybe we could make it a group read? I would like to read it too but am slightly daunted about picking it up given the length.

I read The Dark Is Rising books as a kid, and was sufficiently obsessed with them that I memorized the little prophecy poem. I think I can still recite the whole thing! I've got an omnibus volume of them I've had on my shelves for ages and ages and ages, intending to re-read them sometime, but I keep not getting to it, I think partially because I'm always wary of revisiting kids' books that I loved, for fear of finding they've been visited by the proverbial Suck Fairy. I really should get to them at some point, though.

>51 wandering_star: There was a Ducks, Newburyport read here last year, I think toward the beginning of staying home days. I was reading Wolf Hall at the time and didn't feel to inspired to pick up another doorstop. But I may yet—y'all have piqued my interest in a big way.

>52 bragan: visited by the proverbial Suck Fairy
Oh that's wonderful, and I know exactly what you mean. I haven't reread any of the others in the series, and don't remember much about them. But The Dark Is Rising still thrilled me when I read it again a few years ago.

>53 lisapeet: Will be interested in your thoughts on Ducks if you get to it. At times it feels like a bit of a marathon and I wouldn't rush to a re-read, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

🦆 🦆 🙂 They’re calling to you, Lisa. (And we finally caught up to you and started reading Wolf Hall)

>53 lisapeet: I can't take credit for the phrase "visited by the Suck Fairy." Jo Walton came up with that one. But, boy, does it describe an all-too-familiar phenomenon all too well!

I love the way Jo Walton writes about books. Her book What Makes This Book So Great is a favorite of mine.

>53 lisapeet: Thanks, I'll look for that.

>57 sallypursell: That’s a favourite of mine as well.

>57 sallypursell: I enjoyed that one, too. Her tastes and mine don't always align, but even when they don't, her opinions are usually interesting. And she did add some books to my wishlist, as I recall.

>50 BLBera: Ducks, Newburyport was probably the most interesting book I read in 2019, and rather easy once I got over the basic structure. I did a read along with the Two Month Review Podcast that was spread out over 12 weeks.

You all are very convincing on the Ducks, Newburyport front. I may just bite.

I don't know Jo Walton's work at all—where would be a good place to start?

>62 lisapeet: Start with Among Others. It won the Best Novel Nebula award, Hugo Award and the World Fantasy award. And in addition, I loved it.

>63 sallypursell: Agreed, Among Others is lovely, especially for those of us who grew up with a love of reading and fantasy/science fiction.

I think I've only read one by Jo Walton that I really liked. I'll check to see which one it was. I am not generally a SF or fantasy reader.

I read only two of hers. Contrary to expectations (what with not being into fantasy, romance, or dragons) I totally loved Tooth and Claw.

I'm looking forward to Jo Walton's book Or What You Will. Before it was out I sent her an email query about that title, and she answered my email with one of her own! That's the only time I corresponded with a famous person.

OK, thanks—that gives me something to go on, and my library has a few of those (though not What Makes This Book So Great, unfortunately, a title I love). I'll definitely keep her in mind when I feel like trying a new-to-me author. Thank you, everyone.

So I had a hell of a time writing a Library Journal review for Joan Silber's upcoming The Secrets of Happiness. If it had been any other review venue I could have dived in happily—this was a humane, philosophical novel that was more than the sum of its parts, starting with the fact that you need to read the title and keep it in mind as you go. But LJ reviews are not necessarily about the intricacies of subtle storytelling—or rather you can say that that's what you get with this book, but you have 200 words to say it in and the purpose is for a librarian to decide whether or not to order the book. With most of what I review for them that's a pretty easy task, but this was not—just a bit too much going on under the surface. So here's what I finally came up with:

What do we need to be happy? Love? Money? Work? Family? Joan Silber takes on the question with her usual deft touch here, though without ever addressing it head on. Beginning with Ethan, a young Manhattan lawyer who discovers that his father has a second family, Silber unspools a web of lovers, siblings, parents, and children, from Greenwich Village to Bangkok, whose searches for fulfillment ripple outward in unexpected ways. From the entanglements of Ethan’s half brothers in Queens to his new boyfriend’s dying ex, whose sister watches them care for him warily even as she rekindles an old flame, to a young filmmaker living with her mother’s regrets and her sister’s capriciousness, each set of choices—infidelity, caretaking, the rejection of parents’ values and money, the work to build an extended family based on love and loyalty—affects the others in ways both subtle and large. Silber moves easily in and out of her characters’ heads; the novel is deceptively airy yet, given a reflective reading, has an ethical center without the shortcut of easy morality.

Now I'm reading Sylvia Townsend Warner's The Corner That Held Them for my book club next week. It's about nuns during the time of the Black Plague; it meanders along like a little stream and is very, very archly funny.

>61 gsm235: Thanks for the link to the Two Month Review podcast.

Agree with the recommendations for Among Others and Tooth and Claw (Trollope, but with dragons!) - and I would add the Small Change series (Farthing, Ha’penny and Half A Crown) - country house mysteries, set in an alternate history where the UK reached a peace agreement with Nazi Germany.

>1 lisapeet: What an intriguing piece.

>18 lisapeet: T C Boyle is definitely one of the best short story writers around, says this huge fan of his.

>69 lisapeet: Maybe it was wrong time, wrong place, but I seem to be one of the few disappointed by The Corner that Held Them, although I still remember it well. If that's a mark of a good book, I'm not sure why the connection wasn't there. It was funny as you say, and had great character development, set in an interesting period, but something was missing. Maybe I should try it again.

>69 lisapeet: You've certainly kindled my interest with that brief review!

>71 SassyLassy: Oh yeah, I'm guessing you definitely have to be in the mood for The Corner That Held Them. It's such a weird little book. This one is for our Iris Murdoch Fan Girls Book Club—we're branching out from Iris for a bit—so that drily funny, meticulous English humor is what we're after in the first place. Plus it's hitting the right notes for me of something simple plot-wise (as in, no real plot to speak of) but atmospheric and funny and unexpected. It really is like taking a scenic boat ride—things just drift by. But neither is it fluff.

And yeah T C Boyle. I was just looking at a big anthology of his I have on the shelf that I haven't cracked, no idea why (other than the fact that I have too many books to choose from).

I am hoping my library gets a copy of The Secrets of Happiness; I am a Silber fan.

The Townsend Warner sounds good, too. I like weird.

I would also put in my recommendations for Among Others and Tooth and Claw. Tooth and Claw is broadly based on Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope (but with dragons): I read it first, so when I eventually came to Framley Parsonage I couldn’t help wonder where the dragons were ...

Happy reading with The Corner that Held Them I really enjoyed it.

>40 sallypursell: That sounds like quite a cake! I'm fairly boring in comparison.

The Silber novel sounds good.

Finished The Corner That Held Them just in time for my book club. It's a strange and lovely book, very drily funny and really hits a sweet spot between current events/politics (the Black Plague, Peasants' Revolt) and everyday interpersonal life. Beautiful descriptions of the natural world, as well. There's no plot other than that corner of the world and its history, but that's enough, honestly—or else I was just in the mood for that kind of narrative that feels as though you're floating by in a boat taking note of the details. Unlike anything else I've read in a while, and I have a feeling bits and pieces will keep surfacing in my head at odd moments.

Now on to Robert Gipe's Weedeater, the second in a trilogy of illustrated novels that starts with Trampoline, which I fiercely loved when I read it in 2015. They're set in contemporary Appalachia, and this one continues the story of Dawn Jewell, who's a punky, out-of-place teenager in the first. There's a third, too, Pop, coming out later this month. I decided last-minute I want to talk to him for Bloom about his political work with a local theater company, so I want to get as to much of the new two as I can before next week. (I wasn't kidding about the last-minute part.)

I also succumbed to suggestibility and got All Systems Red, the first in Martha Wells's Murderbot series, from the library. It so sounds like not my thing, and everyone who knows me says that it so is. So what the hell, it's short.

>69 lisapeet: fun to read essentially two different reviews.

>78 lisapeet: noting. : )

Hi Lisa. I’m very late getting to everyone’s threads this year. I’m dropping a star. I’m sure you will add to my wishlist as the year moves along.

I realise I have not left any post here since the beginning of the year, but I've been lurking now and then.
>78 lisapeet: I've read a Sylvia Townsend Warner book at the end of last year, which I enjoyed, so noting this one.

Hi everyone new! And welcome to my hot-and-cold random thread.

>81 raton-liseur: Which Townsend Warner did you read? I have Lolly Willowes on my pile, and now want to get to it sooner than later after this last one.

>82 lisapeet: I did read Lolly Willowes and really liked it, so sooner sounds good to me.
It will be interesting to see how you'll like it after The Corner that held them (what a strange title, and the French translation is very different and as strange: Le Diable déguisé en belette!). According to your review, there are some similarities on how the novel is constructed (plot vs atmosphere), so I'll make sure I'll read your take on it if you decide to read it.

The Corner that Held Them sounds like one I would like, Lisa. Noted.

>78 lisapeet: I quit All Systems Red early on, but keep on hearing praise for it, so I will wait eagerly for your review in case it's worth giving it another go!

>42 sallypursell: I hope you don't mind, but I posted a link to this recipe in the newly created La Cucina 2021 thread.

>86 ELiz_M: No, of course not. The more the merrier.

Last week I finished up Robert Gipe's Weedeater, which is the second in his Canard County trilogy. It was a sweet, offbeat book about the many ways you can't save the folks you love—and also the shifting currents of motherhood and friendship, whether art or politics can redeem a body, class, drugs, community—the book is set in early 2000s Appalachia—and unrequited love. Along with the story itself, Gipe does a fantastic job with both the dialogue/dialect—no easy thing to do well, and he nails it—and the wonderful, fourth-wall-breaking, deadpan illustrations that help move the story along. This is way different from anything else I've read lately, compassionate and quirky without ever being cute, and I liked it a lot.

I also read the very short All Systems Red, the first in Martha Wells's Murderbot series. It hadn't sounded like anything I'd like, but a few friends sang its praises to me, and they were right—it's science-fictiony enough to be entertaining in that vein, but also whimsical and action-packed. Plus Murderbot is really charming. Much as I don't love series, which always seem to run out of juice as they go, I'll probably try some more of those.

And speaking of series, I'm about halfway through the third in Gipe's trilogy, Pop: An illustrated novel, and while I'm not sure I have the same degree of love for it as the first two—there's more action, more new characters, and the interiority I liked in the others isn't quite there—it's still a lot of fun. I talked to Gipe for a Bloom piece that's going up in a couple of days, and he's really interesting... one of those cases where talking with an author augments the book for me, much as I always try to keep those things separate.

>89 lisapeet: I've had a similar reaction to the Wells' series, Lisa. I'm waiting for a copy from the library. It seems to be very popular. I'll give it a try.

The Gipe books do sound like ones I would like. Off to check my library.

I've read Summer Will Show by Sylvia Townsend Warner. I liked it in that it surprised me. It seemed at first that it would be a typical novel about a slightly bored, wealthy housewife and mother. But it ended up going somewhere quite different. I didn't like that there was a Jewish character and many stereotypes were applied to the character. It's true of many books of the time, but still isn't something I enjoy reading.

I really liked The Corner That Held Them a couple years ago. I thought the plots and power plays over the decades was fascinating (and probably very realistic), though I had to keep a running list of which nuns were in which positions. I enjoyed the dark humor. Not sure that the economic and social changes the aftermath of Black Death ushered in can be understated.

Lolly Willowes was a kind of revelation. I don't know why it isn't read more. (Feel the same about Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.) If I could figure out where Lolly's village is, I would go there and live right today.

Murderbot--have not heard of that series, but I like series reads for summer, so will put it on the back burner.

>90 BLBera: Beth, you have to have a taste for sf to enjoy the Murderbot books—there's a bit of space opera to them, at least the first—but they're much sweeter and more humanistic, ironically, than the title would have you think.

>91 japaul22: >92 nohrt4me2: I'm interested in both Lolly Willowes and Summer Will Show now that I've seen Townsend Warner flex a bit with The Corner That Held Them. I have a copy of the first and my library has the second. Has anyone read The Element of Lavishness: : Letters of William Maxwell and Sylvia Townsend Warner, 1938-1978? I write a lot of letters and love collections of correspondence, and am a fan of Maxwell's letters—I dip in and out of What There Is to Say We Have Said: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and William Maxwell from time to time, if only to get a sense of what you can write about when there's not much news (in their case, roses).

I was catching up on your thread and thinking about your interest in art, and I wondered if you had read What we see when we read : a phenomenology, with illustrations by Peter Mendelsund. He talks about a lot of different books and our mind's eye pictures. I really enjoyed it, as I am one of those people who "sees" what she reads to the extent that seeing the movie after reading the book is a bit shocking when the characters, etc don't look like they "should". I would be curious what you think, if you ever read it.

>94 labfs39: I remember seeing that book when it came out and thinking it looked neat—yes, that's definitely my kind of thing, and thank you for the reminder. My library has it, too, so on the list for later it goes!

>91 japaul22: Summer Will Show seems fairly similar in its structure to Lolly Willowes. I'm intrigued with this twist in the first one, and how it differs or not to the one in the second.
I'm not sure anymore what I'll read next from Sylvia Townsend Warner, it seems there are too many options (almost exclusively in English, translations in French are few and most are out of print.).

Finished the final installment in Robert Gipe's Canard County trilogy, Pop: An Illustrated Novel last week. I didn't love it as much as the first two, but that was a lot of love to live up to. This one's more sprawling and less intimate than Trampoline and Weedeater, but a fun ride—there are ghosts and visions, teenage entrepreneurs, a murder, and at least one surprise reveal. If there's a lesson here, it's that things are not always what they first seem (except for the guy who gets killed), and it's good to approach what you think you know—people, regions, and politics—with care and attention. And the illustrations, as always, are top notch. I suspect this is Gipe's last Canard County book, and I'll genuinely miss the cast of characters.

I interviewed Gipe for Bloom and he was so fun to talk to—he had a lot of really interesting stuff to say about writing and activism, and was generally a lot of fun to connect with.

Now I'm reading a book for LJ review, Enchantments: Joseph Cornell and American Modernism—I love Joseph Cornell and I'm always up for an ambitious chunk of art theory, but this one's going slowly—probably because I'm reading it in the evenings when I'm totally bleary from sitting in front of a screen all day. I should have some nice reading down time this weekend, though.

Much more suitable to bedtime reading is the gorgeous Telephone Tales, a super thoughtful gift from a dear reading friend—dreamy little bedtime stories and fab illustrations on thick creamy paper, with inserts and foldouts... just the thing for my tired and jaded eyes.

I'm glad you're liking Rodari! Not a mean feat for a children's book.

>98 LolaWalser: Rodari wasn't on my radar at all before this. What else has he written that's been translated into English that I should be checking out?

Ah, I thought this was were we talked about Rodari recently... I guess it was Reading Globally. Hmm, looking at his Author's Page here, there's practically nothing else in English, sorry... So I guess, whatever you may yet come across?! I'm not familiar with The grammar of fantasy, I only read him as a kid. Everything was a fave--"The adventures of Cipollino" (Le avventure di Cipollino), "The cake in the sky" (Torta in cielo), "Gelsomino in the country of liars" (Gelsomino nel paese dei bugiardi)...

>100 LolaWalser: Interesting... I'll read up on him a bit. The book is super deluxe, and I'm parceling out the stories—at bedtime, as they're meant to be read—so they last.

My reading of the PDF of Enchantments: Joseph Cornell and American Modernism is still poking along—not that I don't like the subject matter, or that it's badly written, but it's very academic and dense, and the PDF is annoying because I need to enlarge every page to read and then ensmallen it again to turn to the next, plus since I do most of my reading at the end of the day I tend to fall asleep. Work is kicking my ass, as usual. But since I have a bit of a grace period—my two week review turnover doesn't start until the print book shows up, and it hasn't yet—I started Jess Walter's The Cold Millions, since my library hold showed up. And that one is very engaging indeed: two brothers of Irish descent in 1909 Spokane, labor disputes and the Wobblies, all set against the old Pacific Northwest.

Had a relatively cheap car repair, a relatively expensive (but proactive) boiler repair/upgrade, and lunch outside with a friend in town to do her taxes last week. Our snow is thawing, though, and I'm ready to order my seeds for this spring/summer's garden. And I got my husband an unexpected vax appointment near our house this weekend! Hope springs eternal, as they say.

>101 lisapeet:

Since you read The New Yorker, you probably already saw the article by Joan Acocella I linked to in December, that's what started the Rodari convo in Reading Globally (just for reference):

https://www.librarything.com/topic/326147#7341521

I imagine the Cornell book is illustrated? That's tough in a PDF format (at least would be for me)... Good luck with the vaccine.

I missed that post of yours and am hit-and-miss behind on NYers, so thanks for relinking that. Sounds like he's ripe for a NYRB reissue, though it looks like Enchanted Lion is on the case.

And yes, lots of nice illustrations in the Cornell book. It's not bad at all, just challenging reading at the end of my very long days.

I've been enjoying the podcast So Many Damn Books, which at very first listen sounds like a couple of lit-bros making each other laugh... and there's a bit of that, but they're smart and I really like their choices of guests. Plus there are two separate segments for what they (and their guests) have bought lately, and what they've read lately, and the stuff they highlight almost always goes on my wishlist.

A few weeks ago they talked to George Saunders about his newest book, A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, about reading and teaching Russian authors—a major gap in my own reading, and listening to him talk made me really want to read this. I've probably heard Saunders talk (podcasts, readings, awards speeches, etc.) more than I've read his writing, but I love how he talks about literature and the work.

I'm in the middle of an episode on First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing with Eley Williams, who wrote Attrib. (which Lauren B. raved about here a year or two back) and the upcoming The Liar's Dictionary, which sounds like a lot of fun. I'm really enjoying podcasts these days, I guess because there's a real lack of multiplicity in the voices I hear otherwise—my husband, my coworkers, a few phone conversations with friends. Not that my pre-pandemic day-to-day life was full of authors talking about literary craft, but it's just good to hear other people say (intelligent, engaging) stuff.

Hi Lisa - Your Pdf reading of the Cornell sounds nightmarish. I hope the print copy arrives before your eyes give out.

I'm noting the podcasts. Now that the weather is warmer, I intend to increase the walking, and I'm always looking for something to listen to. Audiobooks don't always work for me although I am listening to one that's keeping my attention now. Podcasts seem like a good alternative.

>104 BLBera: Yeah, PDFs are not my favorite ways to read ebooks. Though I will say the image reproductions are probably better than they would be in a print galley. I'll get back to it (I have to, since I'm reviewing)—just needed something fun.

I can't do audiobooks either. I've even noticed that when authors talking about work on a podcast read an excerpt, I have to rewind and listen a few times. I'm good at tracking conversations but lousy at doing the same for written text. Probably also why I'm a slowish reader—I'll often go back and read a sentence a second time, or more.

Bookmarking So many damn books to check out. Congratulations on finding your husband a vaccination close to home.

Lisa, that's exciting about getting your husband a vaccination appointment. I didn't know how much I'd been worrying about my father until he got his.

Regarding the So Many Damn Books podcast - I like it, but find the musical pauses distracting. Drew and CD are regulars in the Tournament of Books comments sections. My favorite book-related podcast is Book Fight, which is also two dudes talking about publishing and books and teaching.

The little musical interludes in So Many Damn Books are a bit annoying, yeah. But the actual segments they bracket are great—I've put a bunch of books on my own wishlist after hearing what they're reading and buying, because they're not just flavor-of-the-month books that everyone is pushing. I really need to follow the Tournament of Books better this year—not least because a friend of mine is a judge, and I want to see the action! And also because book talk is good. I'll check out Book Fight too.

I'm really glad Jeff got his first vaccination. But in typical Bronx fashion, which means the maximum discomfort and inconvenience for everyone, the lines were BLOCKS long, and he ended up standing on line out in the rain for close to two hours on Sunday afternoon/evening. I kept offering to drive back and come get him, but he stuck it out, and now he's done with his first round at least. He says his shoulder is a bit sore for the first time today, but nothing worse. I'm still half convinced we were both exposed last year, when we were riding the subways for hours at a time at rush hour every day up until March 10 (and I passed through three major American airports in one week at the end of February 2020, LaGuardia twice). So we may have antibodies, who knows... The one test we each had in September came up negative, but I'm guessing there's a spectrum of exposures and antibodies out there.

Finished Jess Walter's The Cold Millions, which I liked a lot. It was a thoroughly enjoyable combination of setting, period, and historical period—the IWW labor wars in the first decade of the 20th century in the Pacific Northwest—with two itinerant Irish American brother running up against bosses, corrupt cops, and anarchist double-crossers. The pace was good, the writing very nice, and even though it was a boys' tale, there were a few fine kickass women characters as well, including real-life labor agitator Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and the fictional, wonderful Ursula the Great, who does a burlesque act with a live puma and moves up in the world from there. The teenage protagonist, Ryan Dolan, is terribly sweet, too.

Before I go back to Joseph Cornell, my hold on Artificial Condition, another one of those Murderbot novels, just came in, so I'll read that first. It's another shortie.

Hi Lisa. Just stopping by to say that. Interesting about Gipe, good luck with Enchantments, and terrific review of The Cold Millions. Great news that Jeff got his first vaccine shot. My, wife, a teacher, found out today that she will get her first...today. I don’t even know what type. But hopefully she won’t have to wait inline in the rain. (It helps its 73 and sunny today).

>109 lisapeet: Nice comments, Lisa. I am waiting for my turn at the library. I am slowly moving up.

>109 lisapeet: I really liked The Cold Millions, too. I was pulled into the story and would have gladly read another hundred pages.

>110 dchaikin: >111 BLBera: I think you'd both like it. Goes down easy, and the time period/political setup are interesting.

I finished Artificial Condition, the second installment in Martha Wells's Murderbot series, which was fast-paced and fun. The short format along with the engaging voice inclines me to keep on with this series—they're real palate cleansers in between other reading.

Now back to Joseph Cornell for a bit. Still waiting on my hard copy, but now that I've had a rest from PDF-reading I feel ready to jump back in. I also realized my copy of Utopia Parkway is here on my shelves, not out of reach at my office, as I'd thought (in four days it'll be a year since I've been there), which is good—I'm thinking that I should at least dip into that for a check on what I remember as being a much more accessible book. Not to favor one over the other, just to suggest an alternative to the very academic text in my review, if it's appropriate.

I've got a few more books lined up as well—Brigid Brophy's The Snow Ball for my book club, which is meeting in another couple of weeks, and I'd like to reread Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies for the discussion here. I'm also waiting on a library hold for Tom Vanderbilt's Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning, which I thought might be a good book to write about for my April Bloom slot—a change from the Q&As I've been doing lately that focus on the author. I haven't written a good meaty essay-review in a while, and it'd probably be good to crank up that energy.

Well, I'm warming up to the Cornell book, both because I'm more in the groove of the writing and because the PDF lets me enlarge the images as much as I want, and there's a lot of detail in the Cornell objects and the other source material that bears some close examination.

But my library hold on Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning came in, so I'm reading that too. It's an easy read—I'm hoping there's a little science in it along with the anecdotal stuff.

I got bitten by the organizing bug a couple of weekends ago and repurposed a tall, shallow, narrow shelf that had held all our CDs and cassette tapes (now up in the attic, accessible if I want them but out of the living room) as a home office shelf for stationery, art supplies, fountain pen geekery, and knickknacks. My desk is in a corner of the kitchen, and before that I had stuff stacked many layers deep on the bottom two shelves of a narrow but deep bookcase in the corner that mostly held cookbooks, and lots of art supplies at the back of my (also very deep) desk. But that kind of stacking and stowing is a big pain in the ass, and a deterrent to actually wanting to reach for things—so the little CD-sized shelves, which fit in the space between my desk and adjacent to the other bookcase, are just perfect. I write a lot of letters, and having all my cards and stationery in easy reach (and viewable, to make that fun moment of choosing the right paper for the right person easier) is just a pleasure. And without stuff piled at the back of my desk, even if none of it was technically in my way before, it looks cleaner and more inviting.

Sorry, that's probably kinda boring to anyone who isn't me. But it's a really welcome change to a space where I spend a good 8-9 hours every day.

>115 lisapeet: I would never have thought of the cd rack. Interesting. I am a neat freak about my work desk, although less so about the rest of the house. I find it calming to have control over that much chaos at least. Currently my new friend is a lapdesk.

>116 labfs39: I have a couple of lap desks to use upstairs, because I find it's good for me to move around the house sometimes when I get stuck writing.

This is my setup, with the repurposed CD shelves on the right. They're both tucked in a corner beside our very deep pantry.

The one good thing about moving, was having to make decisions about getting rid of some things. But going from a three bedroom townhouse to a condo meant some big changes. I think I’m happy with where I have almost everything, but I’m still playing with where I want certain things.

>117 lisapeet: I like your shelves. Nice way to make use of a nook and repurpose a CD shelf. It looks very useful.

>115 lisapeet: That's fabulous that you're a big letter writer. It's such a dying art form of communication, and I feel we're the worse off for it.

Actually, I love the talk of shelf reorganizing, Lisa. I changed my bedroom around over the weekend. I am also in the spring cleaning, decluttering mode right now. I'm so sick of my house.

We have some of the same stationary. I recognize the box with the red poppies?

Thanks, all. It's really pleasing to have all my stuff where I can see and reach it, for whatever reason. Drawing and writing have really served to soothe my brain in the past year.

>121 BLBera: Marimekko cards! Good for pretty much every occasion.

>122 lisapeet: you can get Marimekko cards?! so nice.

>123 wandering_star: Yes, Chronicle books has them.

Last weekend I read Brigid Brophy's The Snow Ball for my book club, which ended up getting canceled for two weeks... hopefully I'll remember it by then, but it's short enough to skim.

And what a fun, odd, and specifically atmospheric novel it was—I can't think of anything else like it I've read. It all takes place during one New Year's Eve costume party in England in the early 1960s, I think (it was published in 1964), with the guests dressed as 18th-century figures—many out of Don Giovanni, which makes me wish I were more up on my opera, but it's not necessary to enjoy the slightly plotless action: a one-night stand, a deflowering, a death, a pompous professorial lecture, and a bunch of missed connections with masks on that make the whole thing quite delicious.

>125 lisapeet: That sounds like fun!

>126 sallypursell: It totally was. Also really playful and smart language.



I also finished Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning, in which journalist Tom Vanderbilt follows the lead of his grade-school-age daughter, who apparently takes endless lessons, as good Brooklyn children do, and sets out to cultivate "beginner's mind"—the cognitive shift that comes with learning a new skill, and the benefits that accrue when doing it at age 50+. It's pop-psychy, which I didn't mind, and you have to maneuver around the fact that his learning process, while enjoyable to follow, still involves a succession of fabulous teachers, coaches, surfing camp in Costa Rica, "swimming wild" off the coast of Corfu on vacation with his family, etc. But hey, either he's got the resources and time or he's spending down his book advance, and either way more power to him—they're interesting experiments, and I enjoyed the book.

I meditate, and there's a lot of talk about beginner's mind, and also approaching life with a sense of curiosity, and you know... After 12-1/2 months of this I have ZERO curiosity left in my body. I'm getting stuff done to get stuff done and then afterward I have no energy for fun, and I'd really like to goose my engagement factor a little. I have a lot of free sketching courses on YouTube lined up, and maybe if I can find time to watch them that'll get my creative juices flowing. But right now oy, I got nothin'. (Which is why I'm going to write a Bloom essay on it this week, which will probably be kind of a Bataan Death March of creative flow but what the hell, I'm supposed to fill my slot on Tuesday and it totally slipped my mind, so.)

Now I'm reading Judith Schalansky's An Inventory of Losses. I know, so cheerful!

>127 lisapeet: After 12-1/2 months of this I have ZERO curiosity left in my body.

I hear ya! After vaccination I have started back to the gym, and am enjoying being around other people again.

It is warmer here (Georgia) than where you are, so when it isn't raining I try to spend some time outside. That also helps.

The Snow Ball does sound fun, Lisa. I'll add it to my list.

I've read articles about "beginners' brain." Not sure I would want to read an entire book. I keep thinking when the weather gets better and I can be outside more, things will look up.

>127 lisapeet: I'd love to get the link to your article if you don't mind once you've written it. I totally get you. After a year of going nowhere if the world went back to normal tomorrow I wonder if I could muster up the interest to go and do any of the things I've been lamenting I can't do. Our weather has hit another chilly patch - I'm hoping that some sunshine and garden time (and vitamin D) will help.

I have to put An Inventory of Losses on hold for a month or so—I need to read five novels in April to get ready for an LJ author event I'm moderating. It's a dense book and I don't see any upside to whipping through it just to finish. It's a series of essays, so I'm not going to lose a lot of continuity if I pick it back up in May or thereabouts.

Reading the first of my work pile, Lauren Groff's Matrix, which surprised me out of the gate—I had no idea what it was about—by overlapping with The Corner That Held Them, which I read in February: 12th-century England, and the protagonist, Marie de France, is sent from the court of Eleanor of Aquitane to become the new prioress of an poor abbey, where the nuns are starving and ill, something that happened fairly often in the Townsend Warner book. This one promises to be... different, I bet. But it's a good one to start with.

(All of these are fall books—sorry to get anyone's hopes up. But you can wishlist 'em if they sound good!)

>128 markon: >129 BLBera: >130 AlisonY: Thanks for the commiseration. This year has just been such a long slog, all my good fortune and privilege aside. I have been making it a point to get outside regularly—every day that it's been above 25˚F (-3˚C) and not snowing/snowbound or raining, and I haven't had to work obscenely late the night before, I've gotten up and walked 2.3 miles around the local reservoir before work. It really does make a difference to how my day goes.

My garden seeds are supposed to arrive this Saturday, and I can't WAIT. Just getting out and working in my yard is so nice, and I'm hoping to get a good jump on my indoor starts so I have lots of tomatoes and eggplants this year—last year I found my seedling inspiration a bit later than I should have, planted them out later, and while I had nice veggies there would have been more if I'd started earlier.

>127 lisapeet:

"the art of losing isn't hard to master" :)

I am so excited that Groff has a new novel coming out. Luckily, I have things to read while I wait. And I do have The Corner that Held Them on my shelf.

I see that Lauren Groff has a number of books that have been published. Does anyone here have an opinion about her work in general? Some of those titles are intriguing.

>135 sallypursell: I read Fates and Furies, Sally, and remember liking it. But it was in 2016, so I really don’t remember much about it.

I've read Fates and Furies, which I enjoyed but also found rubbed me the wrong way at times, and The Monsters of Templeton, which I read ages ago but remember liking. Matrix is really fun so far. I love nun stories.

>135 sallypursell: I love her short stories. Florida is a great collection.

>138 RidgewayGirl: Oh that's right, I read Florida too. It was very good.

My thread art is on the cover of this week's NYRB! It's fun to see it somewhere other than my computer—though the show closes today, so I'll have missed it (along with every other good exhibit this year, sigh).

>139 lisapeet: How fun is that!

I've loved all of Groff's work that I've read: Arcadia, Florida, Fates and Furies. I'm looking forward to her new one.

>139 lisapeet: That's really exciting! Congratulations!

Thanks to everyone who gave me a reply about Groff. I love some of her titles.

Oh, it's not my artwork! Just something I chose for my thread—he was an unknown-to-me artist, and I'm pleased to see him getting some big attention at such a hard time for young creative folks (or any creative folks).

>139 lisapeet: Gah, I miss art museums. Tentatively planning a visit to one in the beginning of July. I get my booster shot tomorrow and she's fully vaccinated and allegedly there are strict restrictions on the numbers of people, although I'm skeptical about that -- people do not spread out, but clump up around the artwork.

>125 lisapeet: I'm happy to hear you liked The Snow Ball. It's on my wishlist and now I'll make sure I get a copy.

Lauren Groff's Matrix, which imagines the life of Marie de France, was pure fun—especially after having read The Corner That Held Them—another tale of an abbey set a couple of centuries later—earlier this year. Groff inhabits the "what if" of history really adeptly, and Marie's story is interesting, spirited, and ultimately infused with a gentle affirmation of faith that doesn't grate. I do love a good nun novel.

Now reading Margaret Verble's When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky, which looks like it'll be really interesting as well.

>145 RidgewayGirl: I'm dying to get out to galleries and museums... I've started making a list of shows I want to catch later this spring and this summer, if only to make myself feel better.

>146 Nickelini: If you do read it, check out this episode of the Backlisted podcast about the book—it's fun background.

Oh and I finished that essay. No obligation to read it, but if you're curious it's here.

>149 lisapeet: Wonderful article. Several parts resonated, perhaps because I too am

A child of the ’70s, both spoiled and slightly neglected, I was told that I was wonderful and talented and the world was my oyster—all good things, certainly—but not that precocity has a half-life, or that the grunt work, bewilderment, and discomfort involved in learning and honing skills isn’t something to be avoided but rather a source of enormous reward

I too had a beloved arthritic dog, and I had to laugh at your description of carrying around spray and paper towels, though I'm sorry that your year of service, as you call it, ended with such concentrated loss.

Lot of things to think about in your article, thank you for sharing.

>150 labfs39: Thanks, Lisa. "concentrated loss" is a good way to put it. There was another cat in there, after the little black one—our sweet crazy tortoiseshell grew a huge stomach mass and we just decided not to put her through all that. She hated the vet more than a normal cat does, and it would have been torture for her. Though we still keep second guessing that decision a year and a half later, wondering if we should have given her more of a chance (I think not, though).

Also my husband's father died six days before our dog and my mom. The whole thing was just surreal. Anyway, it was kind of cathartic to write that—I keep a journal but that's like a big word dump, whereas for this I had to get really introspective and turn my thoughts over a few times. Therapy of the keyboard, I guess.

>151 lisapeet: Wow. You must have been exhausted physically and emotionally. I'm glad you have found ways to start to turn the lights back on in your dark house. In addition to a certain receptivity, I think bravery is required to achieve what you call a beginner's mind. It's not only painful to walk around in a dark house, but scary, and perhaps lonely. Darkness visible, as Styron says. I hope that your writing brings, if not joy back to your work, at least peace.

~Waves at Lisa from Wave Hill~

Really loved that essay - so honest. You've actually given me a lot to chew over (and I'm going to check out that Vanderbilt book).

I must admit that despite my love of this new convenience of working from home, from not having to buy "work" clothes to being able to ditch my weekly childminder cost, I'm only just beginning to notice that I think it's become really unhealthy. Work problems feel like they pervade every corner of every room in my house now, whereas working in a separate office there was definitely some mental closure at the end of the day - it didn't feel part of my personal life too. Although you've been grieving during this period too, I wonder have you experienced this too - could this be partly why work has felt more difficult?

Wonderful essay Lisa. Filling the well can take a long time, espcially with all the losses you've accumulated. And sitting still and paying attention is often painful in times like these.

I wish you peace, and the slow growth of joy again in your life.

>152 labfs39: Thanks, Lisa. One thing I need to remember is that the writing I do for myself, whether it's essay writing or reviews, is a separate animal from my work writing. It's easy enough to get caught up in the gratitude (that word again!) of having a job where I write for a living—and it's a wonderful thing—but that's not all the writing I want to do. Part of what I need to think about is managing my energy levels, because right now work takes so much creative energy out of me, and I'd like to have some for myself. I don't know if that's realistic, but it's something to try for, anyway.

>153 ELiz_M: What a nice day it was for Wave Hill on Saturday! I need to get over there... let me know if you'll be there anytime again. We could do a meetup.

>154 AlisonY: I think you're right, Alison, that work kind of seeps into everything by osmosis. Trying to remember my high school biology here... osmosis happens when there's not enough density on the other side of a permeable membrane, right? So I guess if I'm going to carry that metaphor through, I need to build up more pressure on the non-work, creative/personal side, so it can hold its own. That's an interesting image to hold and work with, eh? The funny thing is that I've gotten better at my job over the past year, whether that's a matter of just having another year's experience, or not having two hours of commute time to wear me down every day, or feeling that need to be more focused and maybe getting there, slowly.

>155 markon: Thank you, Ardene. Life is settling out slowly, and I think it helps to have some kind of work-life balance as an ideal at the back of my mind.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who stopped by and said hi. Overcast and breezy spring morning here, but the trees are budding out outside my window, and the tulips and daffodils are up. I get my second vaccine in a week and a half. I finished raking out my yard this past weekend in between rain showers, got a lot of reading done on the books I need to finish by the end of the month, and wrote some letters. Looking to have an attentive and productive week, because it's going to be a busy one.

I loved the essay, Lisa. I know what you mean about writing for work taking too much creative energy. When I wrote patient education materials, I rarely had inclination to do any other kind of writing when I got home.

I agree with Alison; I was lucky enough to be able to come to my office, even though I was teaching via Zoom. I often did just to create a separate space for school.

I got my second vaccine last week.

>157 BLBera: Thanks, Beth. I feel like there must be some kind of balance, and that it's achievable... but like with any skill it's going to take a good long time to get there.

Margaret Verble's When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky could have used a bit of tightening—and hey, it's a galley so it well might get it before publication—but it was fun. The setting was great bit of history to play with—Nashville amusement park in the 1920s—featuring a Cherokee woman who does a horse diving act, an unconventional murder mystery, and some of the best non-anthropomorphized animal characters I've come across in a while.

Now reading Bernhard Schlink's Olga, which is, so far, sooo old world but pleasant.

>149 lisapeet: Lisa, I read your essay. I enjoyed it, and I'm sure I'll derive some benefit, as well.
What I think is so difficult about being a beginner is worrying about making a fool of oneself in front of people.

>160 sallypursell: Thanks, Sally. I actually have a pretty low degree of self-consciousness—including in situations where it would probably serve me to have a little bit more. My online handle for years and years wasn't Oblivia for nothin'.

Finished Bernhard Schlink's Olga, which is kind of hard to sum up. It's the story of one woman's life from a couple of points of view—her narrative, that of a man who was a boy and then a man in her company, and then a third section of her letters to her absent lover. Understated and old-wordly, this is a lovely, solemn novel of the many ways a person can be lonely—including while being loved—and still have a life that matters in ways large and small.

Now reading Amor Towles's The Lincoln Highway.

>162 lisapeet: That sounds like one I might enjoy. I really liked The Reader.

I liked that, but my fav of his is A Gentleman in Moscow

me2 with liking your essay, Lisa.

>165 LolaWalser: Thanks, Lola.

>164 cindydavid4: The Lincoln Highway isn't out until October—maybe you're thinking of Rules of Civility?

>163 AlisonY: If you liked The Reader I bet you'll like this one. Same understated tone with a lot of complex anger and love underneath.

Finished Amor Towles's The Lincoln Highway—it's a shaggy dog epic quest/road trip story with a cast of compelling characters, cheerful with more than a touch of malice. The end was really discomfiting, even for a person who doesn't like happy endings, and I'm still thinking about it.

Up next, the last of my books for the panel, Uwem Akpan's New York, My Village. Another PDF, ugh. But I shouldn't complain. And the premise—culture shifts in publishing between Nigeria and New York—sounds like fun.

My second Pfizer shot on Thursday was a little more eventful than the first, which was side effect-free. By Friday late morning I was feeling distinctly hung over—one of those 1990s varieties, with a head full of cotton stuffing but minus the fun or the youth. By evening I felt 100% like crap, with chills and aches and a nodding exhaustion, but that weirdly lasted maybe three or four hours, and by the time I went to sleep I felt under the weather but nothing terrible. Yesterday I was a little foggy, but I got out in the garden and planted stuff, and I think the sunshine did me good.

Bought myself a new fountain pen as a present for having been a good and patient girl through all this. I like it, though I'm wondering if I should have gone for a medium rather than a fine nib—Japanese nibs tend to run finer than German or American—but I really think it's a matter of figuring out how I want to write with it, if that makes sense. Every pen changes my handwriting just a tiny bit, and I think this one, which has a lovely 14k nib, wants slightly more flamboyant, less workaday, penmanship. Not over the top or anything, just a little more responsive to the softer nib (sorry, I'm a huge fountain pen geek and can get into this stuff endlessly). The fine nib doesn't do justice to the pretty teal ink I got a sample of along with it—I'll try it in a broader nib pen and see how that looks—but it's still a nice alternative to black or blue.

Today is rainy, so no outside time, but I have to do a grocery run and make the rest of my little newspaper pots to start seedlings (it would be a lot faster if I just bought peat pots, I guess, but I've been making these newspaper pots since I started gardening and it's a good excuse to listen to a podcast). I also have an art project that I need to finish by the end of next month, so I should start playing around with sketches.

>168 lisapeet: Seedlings, art, podcast—sounds like a lovely rainy Sunday

The Towles sounds interesting, Lisa, as does the description of the Akpan.

Congrats on getting your second shot; I felt miserable after my second one as well. But I am SO glad to be done.

With three weeks left of class, I am busy with wrapping up the semester but am considering some yard work this year.

>168 lisapeet: I had my second Pfizer jab on Friday as well with a similar story. I had no side effects at all with the first dose but with this one got headaches, general achiness and extreme tiredness which lasted about a day. Feeling better now, apart from the arm still being sore.

>171 SandDune: I'm getting my second Pfizer dose this afternoon. Good to know what to expect.

I finished New York, My Village, which is really too early a draft for me to critique it... I have a feeling it's going to be touched by a lot of editors between now and when the book drops. Some interesting, and difficult, background about the Nigerian Civil War, which I knew very little about. That's five out of five books for my panel... now I just have to come up with some clever questions before 1 p.m. tomorrow.

Back to Enchantments: Joseph Cornell and American Modernism (I finally got a print copy!) for an LJ review due soon.

Hope everyone who got their second shot is feeling better by now. I'm closing in on my two weeks post vaccine, which makes me very happy. Jumping the gun and getting a haircut tomorrow, but my salon has good safe practices—I had a haircut back in September and didn't feel at risk—and thousands of people have registered for this damn panel on Thursday and yes I am that vain. Also sick of getting a mouthful of hair every 15 minutes. I have a LOT of hair.

Will we be able to see the panel? I am sure your questions will be amazingly clever, Lisa.

>174 BLBera: Here's the registration page. You may need to have some kind of institutional bona fides, though I don't know how strict they are about the library connection... give it a shot and see!

And thanks for the vote of confidence! I like my questions—meeting with the person who runs the event soon, so we'll see what she thinks. She generally likes what I come up with, though—she's given my questions from previous years to first-time moderators as an example—so whatever tweaking we do will definitely be for the better.

>175 lisapeet: I'm so impressed.

>176 sallypursell: Aw thanks, Sally. I've got enough of these under my belt that I'm not too worried about screwing it up. I've gone over my script, have all my questions written out and sent to the panelists, and did my research so I know how to pronounce the names I wasn't sure of (basically trolling YouTube until I find a video where they're being introduced by someone with some degree of authority). So now all I have control over is going to bed NOW so I don't look like a sea hag tomorrow morning. But I got my hair cut! And that goes a long, long way toward making me feel good about everything.

Darn! I have class at the time your panel meets. I'll have to check to see if I can watch it later.

>178 BLBera: It's available on demand. It went well! Other than a weird glitch where I couldn't minimize the Zoom window to read my opening script while the person behind the scenes was moving slides—I couldn't see a minimize button and my toolbar didn't pop up from the bottom didn't pop up like it's supposed to. Fortunately my personal laptop was right next to me and I had emailed the scripts to myself, so I just had to boot it up fast. I'm pretty tech proficient, so that threw me a little... just a few seconds, but those things always feel like an eternity.

But the rest of it went great. Having got the horror out of the way first thing I felt really relaxed for the rest of it and enjoyed myself, and the panelists, a lot. Everyone was engaged and had interesting things to say. So I'm going to call it a win.

I finally finished Marci Kwon's Enchantments: Joseph Cornell and American Modernism, which I'm reviewing for LJ... in case I get frustrated with life and work, I need to remember the fact that I'm the arts editor's "go-to Joseph Cornell person," which is a nice station in life to have arrived at. The physical book is absolutely gorgeous, the font a bit small and dense for my old eyes but that's no fault of the book's, but I'm really glad I have it in addition to the PDF (I say "in addition to" rather than "instead" because the PDF is great for blowing up images to get a better look, cf old eyes). The book looks to situate Cornell in the cultural movements of the time, which includes schools of art such as Surrealism, dance, poetry, film, commercial graphics, and also classical painting, which was a great referent of his. It's very heavy on art history and art theory, so it's not a light read or a bio, but it's a really interesting deep dive into his work and the milieu that influenced it. She also features three artists who were influenced by or connected to him in the Epilogue, which makes for some good continuity. Altogether I liked it, though it was very dense and took a little time to digest.

And now, wow... I can read anything I want! I think I'll go back to Judith Schalansky's An Inventory of Losses, since my library hold ran out when I had to jump on all that work reading.

Finally finished Judith Schalansky's An Inventory of Losses, after having to let the library swallow it again and doing a whole bunch of work-related reading in between, and then just having it be a slow burn in general. The book is a series of essays with a few fictional and autobiographical pieces in the mix, all taking wildly different views of things that have disappeared in one way or another—extinct animals, demolished castles, islands that sunk back into the ocean, the lost poems of Sappho, a lost legendary film, and more—through deep dives into research and the resulting rabbit holes, imagined episodes, and personal reminiscences. Because each chapter is so different it was very stop-and-go reading for me, and some carried me along more than others. What I did like was what a love letter it is to deep research and the fact that the flights of fancy it can inspire—the what-ifs, the missing connections imagined out of whole cloth—are just as valid a response to an archival item as the facts. Asking questions is a huge part of research, and no one knows, when they start out, exactly which questions are going to prove useful to the search. And Schalansky's book really pays homage to that—asking creative questions as an art. I was almost less interested in the execution, which I found uneven—some really fun, others a bit tedious, and I had a lot of trouble with the chapter about the now-extinct Caspian tiger, which was all about animals fighting to the death in the Roman Circus, because I just can't take animal stuff. But otherwise, it was an interesting exercise, if not a page-turner (which it wasn't intended to be, so caveat lector).

And now for something completely different, I'm reading Rogue Protocol, the third in Martha Wells's Murderbot series. I just described it to my husband as "sf for people who don't like sf." I actually do like some sf, but I stand by my description. It's really fun.

I brought An Inventory of Losses home from the library, but returned it unread. I'll get to it, but not immediately. I loved her Atlas of Remote Islands.

>183 lisapeet: I've wanted to read that one for a while. Are there maps?

>183 lisapeet: Scale drawings of each island, so sometimes an island will take up most of a page, other times, it's a small blot in the middle of a bunch of blue.

Great comments on An Inventory of Losses, Lisa. I will definitely look it up.

Congrats on getting through your work reading. I am waiting to try the first in the Murderbot series; sf for people who don't like sf, sounds like sf for me. :)

>183 lisapeet: Lisa, I can't help but wonder whether you would find maps a recommendation or not, and if not, what would be a possible reason for that? Personally, I am very fond of maps.

Another Murderbot book, Rogue Protocol—they're quick reads. Thinking about what I said above about not being a big sf person, I do like it quite a bit in certain incarnations, but maybe not usually the kind of space opera that Wells riffs on here, so more credit to her—and I like how it's just techy enough to be cool but I can still understand everything. And, as every single person who has ever liked this series says, Murderbot is a great character. I do wish the installments weren't separate books needing to be borrowed, but maybe the suspense adds to the enjoyment.

Now reading The Salt Path, which I borrowed from the library by accident when I thought I was just checking to see if it was available. That's fine—I wouldn't have been looking if I wasn't interested in it in the first place.

Raynor Winn's The Salt Path was an oddly affecting hiking memoir—which always sound so formulaic, but the setup here is that the author and her husband lost their home (which was also their livelihood) as part of a bad investment at the same time he was diagnosed with a terminal disease, so they just said fuck it and decided to walk the 630-mile path around the southwesternmost tip of England with not-great gear and almost no money. Which sounds like it could be all kinds of trite, but it was good—I liked it, anyway. Wynn has a very low-key style, and it feels more like a story you'd tell someone than a self-consciously literary effort. The fact that they weren't hobbyist hikers made it interesting—they were effectively homeless, and apparently looked it too, and people reacted accordingly. She doesn't go too deep into the civics of that, which I think was wise—as dire as their situation was, what they were doing was still a choice—but there was a certain desperation to what they were about. And it's more hopeful than dark, for all that. I suspect this just hit me at the right time, but I liked it and feel a bit soothed for having read it.

Now reading The Red and the Green for my Iris Murdoch Fan Girls Book Club.

>188 lisapeet: This title stuck with me after reading Alison's review. Sounds interesting, although not my usual fare.

Monday was my birthday, and I have to say that having a birthday on the Monday of a three-day weekend cannot be beat. Saturday my husband and I took the train downtown to see my son and his girlfriend, and they just pulled out all the stops—dinner at a Thai restaurant, cannoli and cheesecake from an Italian bakery I've loved since I was in college, and a big bag of presents—really sweet of them. Then Sunday took the train again! down to Brooklyn and had lunch with my two NYC best friends at one of their houses, and there was much pasta and wine and gifts and good talk. And then Monday I just chilled out and lazed around the house, because today was back to the grind.

All in all a good birthday, even beyond the fact that going to see friends and eating out feels like such a novelty still. I also got a nice little haul of books, which isn't always the case—I think people are hesitant to buy me books because I have so many already, so it was really nice to have folks go for it. And in fact I didn't have any of them! And really liked them all, so I feel very seen by the people in my life.

The Look of the Book: Jackets, Covers, and Art at the Edges of Literature by Peter Mendelsund
Strange Planet by Nathan W. Pyle
Ariadne by Jennifer Saint
A Dog Runs Through It: Poems by Linda Pastan
American Utopia by David Byrne and Maira Kalman

Also library-themed bath salts, which fortunately smell more like lavender than an actual library, all in a super fine tote bag from the Strand.

So, another year. I don't really understand how I can be as old as I am, but I guess it's true.

hee me neither. a former 3 year old in my class just a few years ago just graduated from high school! I of course have not aged a bit.....not :)

>190 lisapeet:
That sounds like an amazing birthday weekend. Happy day! (My August 1st birthday is often on a long weekend here in British Columbia too, so I know the great feeling)

>190 lisapeet: Happy belated birthday! OOooh, which Italian Bakery? I love that Strand graphic, have it as a fridge magnet.

Happy belated birthday, Lisa. I see that my library copy of the first in the Murderbot series is now ready to be picked up. I will give it a try. The Salt Path is also on my shelf, so I am happy to have it to look forward to.

Nice birthday haul. I am a fan of Pastan, but the other titles are new to me. Enjoy. It sounds like you had a great weekend.

Happy birthday+day+day!

To me Murderbot (the series) has the charm of Doctor Who (the series). It's just kind. Also, much running in corridors.

I admit I don't follow all the comm-talk to the last detail, though. And it scares me that we're already enmeshed in so much invisible netting. Probably.

Thanks, all. It was a nice time.

>193 ELiz_M: Veniero's, of course! I started going there as soon as I moved to NYC when I was 18, took my son there starting when he was a baby, and we both have always had a soft spot for it. It's one of the last of the old places (I sound like I'm talking about Middle Earth or something, but they're few and far between in downtown Manhattan these days).

>195 LolaWalser: I feel like I should be a Doctor Who fan based on how many friends of mine love it, but I've never seen it. Is that weird?

>197 lisapeet:

No, not really! It's a strange thing to get into as an adult. I blame the... the... the collectinginess of it.

Also Tom Baker's voice. :)

I agree - Im sure there are plenty of other would be fans who never saw it.
the Dr should be right up my alley, but just didn't click for me. David is a huge fan and is always talking about varius episodes so at least I get references when others talk about it.

Belated happy birthday. Enjoyed your review of The Salt Path. I thought for a first book the writing was of a really high standard.

>194 BLBera: Interested to hear what you think about the Murderbot book. Genrewise it shouldn't really be my cuppa tea, but it totally is on the strength of the character alone. That and the fact that the tech is all somehow comprehensible to my aging brain... maybe because I grew up on Golden-Age sf? Or, as LolaWalser says, I'm just enmeshed in tech and it's a small step to envision this stuff.

I think the main reason I've bypassed Doctor Who isn't specific, but that I just don't watch TV at all. It probably would have crossed my radar otherwise. That noun, collectingness, interests me, though. I think I know what you mean.

I'm suffering what I can only think of as a birthday hangover, feeling that I should have everything I want, and am tormenting myself over a medium-expensive fountain pen in my eBay shopping cart. I have a kind of stunted relationship to spending money on non-essentials, having been broke for most of my adult life but not at the moment... but looking ahead at probably being broke again at some point when my husband can't work anymore, or if one or the other of us loses our jobs. Which is neither here nor there, but I have very few years of practice spending money on things I want but don't need. Here's something that I absolutely don't need—I have several other nice fountain pens—but it's PRETTY. I won't miss the money. But I always feel like buying little luxury items like that is like snorting heroin on the weekend—fun, harmless, and then the next thing you know you wake up sleeping in a refrigerator carton. (I don't snort heroin, don't worry, but I did come of age in the early '80s and saw that kind of thing happen all over the place.)

I know everyone reading this is thinking "BUY IT!", which is what I would say to someone else. But it's complicated, as the kids say. The money is what I would have spent in a month on my late dog's prescription meds, and for some reason I keep thinking about that. So... maybe I just miss my dog and am trying to assuage my sadness through material goods. But it's not about the money, really. It's about accumulating more stuff, which I feel like I should be more wary of.

Anyway, that's my vent for the morning. Still reading the Iris Murdoch, whose sentences are like a boulder on a hill—they take a while to dislodge, but once you do they just ROLL and you have to scramble to keep up.

>196 lisapeet: I thought it might be, but want to make sure you weren't talking about a great place on Arthur Ave. (My boss won't divulge where he gets the best cannoli's when he goes to visit the Bronx shops & brings some back to the office. Although maybe they taste better because I don't pay for them?)

>201 lisapeet: clean out your desk/office/junk drawers, get rid of 10 things you don't need and reward yourself with a nice pen? Or donate twice the cost to a school supplies for needy children fund to balance out indulging yourself?

>190 lisapeet: I'll be curious to hear what you think of The Look of the Book when you get to it. I read Mendelsund's What We See When We Read and really enjoyed it.

>201 lisapeet: I relate to your spending-on-myself woes. My question would be, will you enjoy it if you buy it, or will you feel guilty and always think about the cost?

will the pen bring you joy to use it. Im not all in the Bonfire of all Vanities, but I like the thought and makes it easier to give things away to someone who will enjoy it, or donate keep or toss

Aw, thanks y'all for bearing with my self-indulgent natterings.

No, I wouldn't ever feel guilty about having gotten the pen. Maybe a bit silly, but honestly if I really didn't like it I'd be able to sell it pretty easily—fountain pen Reddit is a thing and there are lots of legit sales and trades that happen there. (Fountain pen Reddit is probably what got me into this fix to begin with—there are some hardcore collectors there that make me look like I'm trying to figure out whether to buy a box of Bic ballpoints off of Amazon.)

>202 ELiz_M: That's a great idea, divestment/donation. I should do both—maybe not twice the cost, but I can match it. I think a gift to Girls Write Now would be appropriate. I did open up a couple of desk drawers as soon as I read that to see if I could pick out five things right off the bat and my, I do like to keep the original packaging of things. So that was easy—I really don't need the box my earbuds came in a year ago. As for that mythical Italian bakery on Arthur Avenue, I haven't really explored any of them yet, even though that's much more local to us than the East Village, and where we go for pasta and mozzarella on the regular. I think a little taste testing is in order. Just for you, Eliz_M.

>203 labfs39: I've paged through The Look of the Book and wow is it pretty! I'm a sucker for inserts and fancy things of that nature. My son and I had fun identifying the scraps of book covers on the front and back cover. Not that it probably makes any difference to how good a person he is that he's pre-screen literate, but it's something we've definitely bonded over.

>205 lisapeet: Now I’m really intrigued and am adding The Look of the Book to my wishlist.

>205 lisapeet: ok its on my list!!! Is it actually out yet?

>207 cindydavid4: Yes, published last fall.

k thx

I finished reading Iris Murdoch's The Red and the Green last week, which was nutty, in a very good way—a combination historical novel about the week leading up to the Irish Easter Rebellion in 1916/extremely thwarted bedroom farce, laced through with a big dose of dark Catholic satire: Everyone in it wants to subject themselves to a stern master of some kind, no one gets laid, there is a lot of last-minute martyrdom, and the character who is the most sympathetic (and who is one of the few who makes out well in the end) is the biggest coward. If that sounds mean or tedious, though, it's not. But scathing, yeah, tempered with these absolutely stunning descriptions of the land, the sea, and the houses of Dublin in 1916. Absolutely worth a read, but whatever you might expect from it, it's probably not.

Now I'm reading Jane Harper's The Survivors, which is a gobble-it-up thriller that I expect to finish before we leave for our little overnight to Connecticut tomorrow, so I'll need to pack something else.

>210 lisapeet: You've caught my interest! I'll look for a copy.

>211 RidgewayGirl: I think you might like it, though it's definitely an odd one. Slow start, too, but then it picks up.

>210 lisapeet: Ooh - like the sound of that one.

Enjoy your Connecticut outing, Lisa.

The Red and the Green sounds like one I would love. I will look for it, checking to see if I own a copy!

I've heard lots of good things about The Survivors. I'm # 20 on the library list, so it will be a while.

The Survivors was a fun Big Gulp of a read. Recommended as a low-stakes, enjoyable thriller.

And now because I read a review of it somewhere and put a hold on it, I'm reading another thriller, Children of Chicago, which is not that great... the premise is interesting, though, so I'll probably stick with it. But where was the copy editor on this one? The theme turns on a dark version of "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," but damn if "Grimms' Fairy Tales" isn't punctuated every which way. Is it one Grimm? Two? Plural without possessive? We got 'em all here, plus my bete noir in the first three pages where a boy is described as "16-years-old." But it's a fast read, and I'm already 100 pages in after a very nice weekend getaway which included a long boat ride on a hot day and some quality time hanging out with my sister, whom I haven't seen in ages... so I'll finish up and see what happens.

The Survivors was a fun Big Gulp of a read. Recommended as a low-stakes, enjoyable thriller.

And now because I read a review of it somewhere and put a hold on it, I'm reading another thriller, Children of Chicago, which is not that great... the premise is interesting, though, so I'll probably stick with it. But where was the copy editor on this one? The theme turns on a dark version of "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," but damn if "Grimms' Fairy Tales" isn't punctuated every which way. Is it one Grimm? Two? Plural without possessive? We got 'em all here, plus my bete noir in the first three pages where a boy is described as "16-years-old." But it's a fast read, and I'm already 100 pages in after a very nice weekend getaway which included a long boat ride on a hot day and some quality time hanging out with my sister, whom I haven't seen in ages... so I'll finish up just to see what happens.

Well, my second-in-a-row thriller was way less of a hit than the first, and it made me appreciate Jane Harper's good writing, control of pace, and believable descriptions of people and places. I libraried Children of Chicago up based on a review somewhere and was seriously disappointed. The premise—which is why I picked it up in the first place—was good and spooky, positing an evil force from the darkest of the oldest fairy tales killing teenagers in present-day Chicago, and a tormented, entangled homicide cop on its trail. But the plotting didn't ratchet up the fear factor well, the characters—even the coffee-swilling, troubled officer, who should have been a real draw—felt flat, and what happened to the copy editor at Agora Books? There were way too many grammatical and punctuation errors for a published book. And the ending was way too dissatisfying for a thriller, even though I should have taken my cue from the number in the subtitle... I'm not big on series as it is, and I really resent when the first book just serves as a giant cliffhanger. On the other hand, I finished it, mostly because I did think the idea was cool.

>217 lisapeet: Wow, that sounds disappointing. Hope your next pick is a winner.

>217 lisapeet: Well, I won't add that to my WL, Lisa. Thanks for reading it so I don't have to. :) I hope the next one is better.

Nina MacLaughlin's Summer Solstice is a lovely little chapbook, inside and out. Her seasonal essays are one of my favorite things in the Paris Review, and it's nice to reread this on a sultry night a week after the solstice when summer is really settling in here on the East coast. A dear friend sent me this for my birthday last year and I read it but didn't record it; I think I was too unsettled to think about the seasons turning in 2020. This year I get it, and even though not all MacLaughlin's summer nostalgia hits the same notes for me—in the last essay she admits to not loving the summer, at least not in New York, and it made me smile—this is a real ripe peach of a book.

OK, half a year here and time for new digs for the next six months. This thread is continued in lisapeet 2021: Containing multitudes.