Book Stack ~ April 2022

A monthly post about what I've been reading, with aspirations 

but no real hope of reading down a very tall stack of books. 

Previous posts from this year:

January 2022

February 2022

March 2022

Fiction 

I'm going to start at the bottom of the stack here, with fiction, because I read some escapist fiction last month and I desperately need to revisit that feeling. I was leaving the grocery store, and glanced in the bin of used books, the sale of which benefits the United Way or something like that, and which is usually full of half-baked self-help books and biographies of disgraced politicians and Christian romances. But that day, a hard-cover copy of Elizabeth Peters's Night Train to Memphis was on top of the stack, and I snapped it up for two bucks. Yes, I already had a copy of it, but in paper back, and I could probably scroll back through book stack posts to see when I last read it, but I'd picked up a different, less deft mystery where the author spent countless pages moving her characters around in space and describing details that didn't need to describing, so I wanted to turn to a master, who doesn't waste a word on the unnecessary, yet her settings are so vivid you feel like you're there, and you're never confused about what her characters are doing, even without painstaking stage directions. And I needed cheering up (I don't remember why I needed to be cheered up last month, now that this month is even worse). What I loved about rereading Night Train to Memphis now, even more than all the other times I've read it, is that E and Z and I recently saw the recent Death on the Nile movie, and I recognized so many references to that plot: the newly weds on a Nile cruise with the jilted girlfriend, a murder or two. I think even the chunk of stone falling off a monument and nearly braining someone was in the original. Of course it veers off into a wild and wildly different direction (with Schmidt dressed as a sheik no less!). Just super fun. And when I finished Night Train, I had to reread Laughter of Dead Kings, the next in the Vicky Bliss series, which picks up shortly after Night Train left off, though written many (I think around 15?) years later. It brings back some of the side characters from Night Train is is another fun frolic through Egypt, and I heartily endorse reading the whole series if you're in a funk too. If you like a strong, smart, independent woman who foils bad guys and has a complicated relationship with an international art thief, this is the series for you.

Nonfiction

Mill Town by Kerri Arsenault is a book I've been meaning to read for a while. It's about the author's years-long search for answers to questions about cancer and other illnesses in her home town of Mexico, Maine, and its across-the-river neighbor, Rumford, where a big paper mill has been spewing out air and water pollution for most of a century. I had an assignment to write about the 50th anniversary of the Clean Water Act (a nice, cheery, look-how-clean-the-water-is-now article), and it seemed like a good time to read this book, which looks into the ways that pollution was allowed, tolerated, and hidden for so long. It's a very non-linear narrative, that delves into the author's childhood, her family history, the dispossession of Acadians from their (adopted) homelands in Canada, her fathers' death, the Nestle corporation's movement into the area to privatize part of the water supply, the citizens who attempted to expose truths and fight back, the suspicion with which people in small towns regard people "from away" and people who move away and people who stay but don't conform. And a lot of other stuff. There were a few side threads to the narrative that I think didn't entirely add to the story, and the discursive structure might turn off some readers. But still, it's an important book, and the first time I've ever read in print a writer from Maine describing the state with anything less than glowing, blueberry-and-lobster flavored adulation. There's no firm conclusion about the health and the pollution, although it seems pretty clear to me. It also seems pretty clear that the Department of Environmental Protection failed in its duty to protect either the environment or the locals' health, and I feel complicit for even having worked there, as removed as my work was from either licensing or enforcement of paper companies. 

Creativity Books

I read three books about writing/creativity, and three more different books I don't think you could find. 

First, Draft No. 4, which is a series of essays by John McPhee about his systems and processes for creating the long-form journalism that he's so rightly famous for, as well as reminiscences about writing for The New Yorker (and other magazines) over the last half century or so. It's so, so good. Not exactly writing advice, although there are a few gems, but more like hearing an expert speak with candor, confidence, modesty, and understated humor about his work. It was amazing to hear about him spending literal weeks or months interviewing subjects at the same time that I had to psych myself up to interview people for maybe an hour. This is a book I'll read again and again (and it reminds me to go back and read more of McPhee's other books, too).

Becca Syme's Dear Writer, You Need to Quit, is more of a practical guide to change your mindset around your writing--the systems you have in place and your expectations--in order to prevent burnout. I have to admit this book threw me over and over again, to the point where I almost couldn't focus on the very good strategies, because Syme kept referring to writers who write a dozen books per year, or who want to write a dozen books per year. I don't even understand what that means. Does anyone write a dozen books per year? And if they do, can they possibly be any good? Please tell me if you know what the heck she's talking about.

Finally, Creative Not Famous: The Small Potato Manifesto is for all kinds of creative folks, not just writers, by my favorite zinestress (she of East Village Inky fame), Ayun Halliday. In it Halliday interviews a few dozen artsy types about all kinds of factors that apply to our work: making money, getting the work done, accountability, life getting in the way, self-doubt, self-promotion, etc. It's a helpful manual, an inspiration, and a reminder that creativity is democratic, not just reserved for the exalted few. It's also funny and quirky, and populated with these totally awesome potato character illustrations. 

Poetry

My friend Jenna Veazy sent me her chapbook, The Rise of Jennifer, months ago, and I jerkily didn't get around to reading it till National Poetry Month lit a fire under my keister. It's a lovely collection of poems about a lot of relatable aspects of life as a woman in this world. I know Jenna's working on another collection, and I'm looking forward to reading it (in a more timely fashion). 

I also made the kids and hubby read aloud from a stack of poetry books that I thought they'd relate to: I bought Charles Bukowski's On Cats, because I knew E would find that appealing; C took to William Carlos Williams; and Z's contribution was to read Kanye West songs. And that's all the poetry I managed for the month. 

 Don't forget you can order a copy of my book, Uphill Both Ways: Hiking toward Happiness on the Colorado Trail from any of the vendors listed here.