March 2020 Book Stack

Month two of my 2020 book challenge—to read 50 books from the stack by my bed (and other unread volumes already in the house). Last months here: January, February.



On the bright side of the COVID-19 pandemic is plenty of time to read, although I have to admit to spending far more time watching TV than reading, and the dumber the better C and I had recently begun watching "The Crown," but most nights I vote for "My Name is Earl." I even gave "Tiger King" a try, and it definitely took my mind off of the coronavirus, but it gave me even worse nightmares than I already had, so no more. It's also kind of fortuitous that I'm confined to home with this giant stack of books and a goal of reading them all this year, but it's also kind of a bummer that my reading choices are limited to books I already have (okay, so I've ordered a few books online—after all this thing could go on for a year or more!). It's also unfortunate that even if I finish reading all the books in the stack, I won't be able to get rid of them, which was kind of the ultimate goal—decluttering. Alright, enough complaining, on to the books.

One of my mothers-in-law gave me Where the Crawdads Sing for Christmas, and I'd been saving it up for just the right time. I'd loved Delia Owens's earlier, nonfiction books—Cry the Kalahari and The Eye of the Elephant—in my 20s and was excited to see where she went with fiction. She did not disappoint, painting all of the intricate details of a South Carolina marsh and the young girl who is abandoned there by her family, left to fend for herself and grow up on intimate terms with all of the birds and animals of the area. Oh, and there's a suspected murder. And a really satisfying ending. I really like the way that the two timelines of the story converge, the present time one progressing by hours or days while the past jumps ahead by years. I'm amazed and delighted that a book in which nature figures so prominently ended up being such a huge bestseller. It gives me hope for the future.

I also finished reading a book I'd started last fall but got a little bored with in the middle: In Beauty She Walks by Leslie Mass. It's the trail journal of a woman who hikes the Appalachian Trail in her 60s. Because it covers every day of the hike without compression, it's a very long book, and because she doesn't run into too much conflict or difficulty, it's a little slow. Or at least it was a little slow a few months ago when my life was all rush-rush-rush. When I picked it back up, after social distancing was initiated, it was a pleasant escape. I think people especially need books about traveling and being outdoors while also being removed from regular 9-to-5 life during these times of social isolation (hint, hint to all the publishers I've sent my book proposal to).

The Beginning of Everything, by Andrea Buchanan I'll be reviewing for Literary Mama, so I won't say much about it here and now, except that it's the memoir of the author's experience with living with the excruciating pain that resulted when a hole tore in the dura mater covering her spine and her long, slow road to recovery. As I read it I couldn't help thinking about how much more challenging the COVID-19 world is for people enduring other medical issues as well as for those going through marital problems (Buchanan and her husband divorce in the midst of her illness). It's one thing to be trapped at home with loved ones who can be kind of irritating in large doses; quite another to be trapped with anger, acrimony, or worse.

I finally convinced Z to read The Outsiders, and when he chose it for his independent reading for English class, his teacher added Rumble Fish, which I decided to read also. I kind of thought I hadn't read it, because even though I'd loved The Outsiders, I did intentionally read sad books until I was in my 30s. But enough of the story was familiar that I decided in the end I had read it; it just hadn't left as much of an impression on my as The Outsiders and I can see why: the story is a lot shorter and a lot less complex, and I just didn't build up as much of an affinity for the characters. 

I read one more book, the last of the mysteries that I picked up last spring at the crime writing conference I went to, but it wasn't very good, so I'm not going to mention it here. In fact it was so bad that I figure I can't do much worse, and I've planned to write a mystery over the next few months of sheltering in place.

What books have you found to escape into these days?

We're In This Together

How are you doing as the world as we know it appears to be dissolving around us? I've been feeling a little dislocated and unmoored and like everything is not quite in focus. The last time I felt like this was eighteen-and-a-half years ago, holding four-month-old M on my lap on my sister's couch, 2,000 miles away from home, watching airplanes fly again and again and again into the World Trade Center towers. It strikes me that my oldest son's life has been bracketed, so far, by these two world-changing events: 9/11 and COVID-19. Yet he was too young to remember the former and he hasn't quite grasped the implications of latter (not that any of us have, really).

Interestingly, it's not my kids' safety that's my first concern this time around, for possibly the first time ever. Rather our older friends and family members have taken up most of my worry space during the day. At night I dream about zombies, which is weird since I've seen maybe one zombie movie in my life.

At the same time, I've been feeling a lot of gratitdude. For living in a safe, warm home with plenty of outdoor space around us so we can get out and move our bodies. For C no longer working in the gig economy but now having a steady paycheck and a job that he can make work remotely. For M having gone to college close by so bringing him home was a simple matter. For having my family at home, for them being homebodies who won't mind weeks of social distancing, and for us having had practice living almost on top of each other in a tiny tent for a whole summer. For my kids being older and more self-sufficeint and healthy. For not having a wedding or graduation or big travel plans on the calendar for this spring. For having learned how to bake bread and make yogurt years ago. For having a ridiculous number of hobbies and a long 2020 to-do list full of tasks that I need to be at home to do.

In fact, I was starting to look at the next few months as a chance to catch up on many undone projects, to delve deep into reading and writing, and to play Little House on the Prairie. But then I read an article that said we may have to spend 18 months in social isolation, until a vaccine is available, and I went from feeling unmoored and out of focus to feeling like cymbals were crashing along my nerves. Half a year at home I can handle, but a year-and-a-half? Suddenly my kids' ages no longer seemed like an advantage. Missing out on a year of high school or college will be immensely disruptive, and with the economy cratering, prospects for meaningful, well-paid work will be even more dismal than they already were for new college grads. And what about those vulnerable friends and family members, whom we won't be able to see until 2022?

It's all a little too much to think about at once, so I watch dopey TV shows, stay up too late reading so I won't lie awake at night before I fall asleept to dream about zombies, and go outside in the morning mizzle to listen to the birds. The chickadees are singing their hey sweetie songs, the robins are descending in flocks, and the redwing blackbirds are in the tops of trees singing in spring, oblivious to human concerns. They'd be out there even if we weren't here to hear them, which doesn't sound like a comforting thought, but somehow it is.

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A HIke Down Memory Trail

I've been listening to this podcast episode on Backpacker Radio over the last few days (it's taking days because it's really extraordinarily long for a podcast—2 hours—and my commute is only 25 minutes) about a family who hiked the Pacific Crest Trail with four kids aged 11-17. It's made me nostalgic for our Colorado Trail hike of nearly four (four!!!) years ago. Yeah, we took along 3/4 the number of kids, and yeah, we only hiked 1/5 the distance, but there's still so much I can relate to in their discussion. It's also made me (even more) antsy to get The Book out there. I think people are interested in these kinds of stories. Now I just need to find the publisher who's interested.

February 2020 Book Stack

Month two of my 2020 book challenge—to read 50 books from the stack by my bed (and other unread volumes already in the house). Last month here: January.



I only read one book out of my stack last month, because it was long and fairly intense, Sophie's Choice by William Styron. I inherited this book from a friend who moved away years ago, and I knew nothing about it, except that it's among the canon of books everyone should read, and that whatever Sophie's Choice is, it's not a happy one. It's the very gripping tale of a woman in Nazi-occupied Poland and, later, Auschwitz, told through a young man who meets her a few years later in the apartment building where they both live. It was so good I didn't want to put it down, but sometimes the story got so intense that I had to put it down and cleanse my brain with some dumb comedic TV. My only complaints: I'm a little bit sketptical that a person's response to trauma would be to basically become a sex addict (Styron's wishful thinking?), and I found Sophie's actual choice, when the book finally gets to that point, to be a little anitclimatic. Not that it isn't terrible—because it is—but that part of the narrative felt a little rushed. Overall, however, a brilliant story and one that's important to read at this time, with the fascists taking over government and actual Nazis marching in our streets.

As an antidote to such an intense and tragic story, I needed to read something light and comforting and very low-stakes, so I turned to my go-to comfort writer, Jane Austen, who I like to read in the winter anyway. It's been years since I read Northanger Abbey, and an ironic gothic tale was exactly what I needed. It did not disappont. Fun and funny and thoroughly entertaining. It does not, however, count as a book stack book because, even though I already own it, I've read it before, so it doesn't help me toward my goal of reading all the unread books.

Finish It Friday ~ Valentine's Edition

Some time ago (years, perhaps?), I picked up a couple of little packs of fabric charms for Enlish paper piecing. However, after my first foray into the craft, I wasn't eager to do it again. It is a little, shall we say, fussy? And I'm a little, shall we say, ramshackly?

But while tidying up in my room a few weeks ago, I ran across the charms, and was inspired by a batch of vintage-looking prints in mostly pinks and reds to make a little Valentine's Day…I don't know what you'd call it. Table mat? Doily? Fiddle-faddle?



So over the course of the next few weeks, I stitched together tiny hexagons during our evening family television time, and last weekend I kind of improvised putting on a backing while trying to maintain the zig-zags of the hexagons. The corners didn't come out as sharp as I would have liked (ramshackly), but otherwise it looks pretty sweet, and it goes well with my lemongrass Fiesta heart bowl (displayed here with some cherry-date-almond-chocolate "truffles").

While I had the sewing machine cleared off, I whipped up a gift bag out of this lovely fabric to wrap a wedding present in, using my fat quarter gift bag method. Now I need to think of something else to make out of this fabric so I can go back to the store and buy a fat quarter for myself.

 

Lingering in January

January has been a slow month, but not in a bad way. I spend a lot of time wishing time would just slow down, for goodness's sake, and this month I've gotten my wish: long lazy weekends of reading classic books, sewing tiny hexagons together by hand, baking cakes, watching old movies with the kids, taking long walks in the snow. Weekday mornings are still a hurried and harried mess of running late and forgetting things, and the evenings are sometimes overbooked, but I've taken to spending my lunch break combing the local thrift store for Fiestaware (and having some success), and we've found a show that all of us at home enjoy, which means we have an hour of family togetherness before bed each night, 1980s-style, all eight eyes focused on the same screen.

My word for 2020 is move. Maybe not the most glamorous choice, but having felt stagnant in my writing life in 2019, I need forward motion, momentum, and all the movement words. I also like how it has both a figurative and literal meaning: I can move toward my goals, and I can literally get up and move my body. When I feel stuck, I ask myself what can I do to embody movement: send in a submission, type up some notes, craft a newsletter. Sometimes I need to take a walk or put a Duran Duran karaoke song on and dance around the living room or take a belly dancing class. When in doubt, move about.

I've also made a 20 For 2020 list a la Gretchen Rubin. It's a wide-ranging lists with some old favorites (like upload photos and make into albums and organize basement--although this time I've broken that daunting task into chunks and already completed one of them)--some discrete and doable tasks (finish knitting project), an ambitious target (100 submissions), and one goal outside of my control (sell manuscript). I'm a lists and goals person, so the 20 for 2020 works for me--and 20 is a good number, both ambitious and restraining at once. I'll keep you posted here or on the blog as I tick items off.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying the lingering feeling as January unwinds into its last week, and I hope this sensation of slowed time carries through the year (though maybe not in March; March is too long already).

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The Book Stack ~ January 2020

I have a large stack of books in my bedroom--volumes that were lent or gifted to me or that I picked up at used book sales or author events and never gotten around to reading. One of my 20 for 2020 goals is to read 52 of those books this year. When I made that resolution, I imagined that I read around 100 books per year, so that only about half would have to come from that stack. Though I pose books I read for photos and write about them here, I don't count them. One day when I had time to kill in a doctor's office waiting room, I scrolled through my book posts, mentally tabulating the volumes read, and it turns out that last year I read fewer than 50 books, the previous year it was in the 80s, and the year before that I don't know, because I was interrupted mid-count. So, reading 52 books from the stack and other books I want to read is going to be a challenge.



I redefined what counts as a book from the stack to include any book I already owned at the start of 2020 and haven't already read, so books I got for Christmas count, as do books I shelved but never read. I'm off to a good start this month, with nearly five books from the stack read so far. These are:

Murder in a English Village by Jessica Ellicott. I bought this book at a crime writing conference I went to earlier this year, along with another from a different series (under a different name), which I wrote about here. There's a wintery scene on the front cover, so I saved it as a wintery read, and started it on New Year's Day. It turns out weather wasn't a significant enough of a factor to make the time of year essential, but it was a nice, cozy ready for the quiet relaxing days after the holidays. I liked the characters and the set-up for what is clearly a series, as well as the setting of an English village post-WWI. My only complaint is that it was poorly proofread, which is more of a reflection on the publisher than the author, but I found it somewhat distracting.

A Modern Mephistopheles by Louisa May Alcott. I found this book in the thrift store and was intrigued by the dark description of a book by the author of Little Women. I finally pulled it out and read it while preparing to go see the latest film adaptation of that more gentle story. It's a Gothic tale about manipulation, vanity, and innocence. It has a kind of play-like atmosphere, and one can imagine its beginnings in one of Jo's theatrical productions in the garret. Apparently the book was written earlier in Alcott's career, before Little Women, and not published in her name until after she died. I was interested to learn from the introduction that she  suffered from mercury poisoning from her time as a nurse during the Civil War, which is a story I want to learn more about.

Lord of the Wings by Donna Andrews. My mom gave me this book over the summer, and I started it in October, because it's about Halloween. I ended up getting distracted by something else and put it down halfway through. There's a lot going on in Andrews's books--way too many characters and plot points to keep track of. I finally decided to give up on trying to keep track and just go along for the ride. If you like an entertaining, cozy, and somewhat ridiculous mystery, this one's for you.

Eager: The Surprising Secret Life of Beavers and Why they Matter by Ben Goldfarb. This book is the current selection for my naturalist book club, and I arranged for my kids to give it to me for Christmas. It's a fascinating look at beavers as essential elements of our ecosystems, the history of their near-decimation, and the people working to protect them today and encourage their dispersal back into damaged landscapes. You get to know some interesting characters along the way (Beaver Believers) and a few beavers as well. I have renewed admiration for these giant rodents.

The Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks. This book has been on my shelves a long while. I pulled it out after seeing a coworker was reading another book about sheep. It's the memoir of a young-ish (about my age; for some reason I was expecting a wizened old man) shepherd in the Lake District of Northern England, telling the story his life growing up on the farm and the history of ancient sheep breeds and sheep herding practices that have been handed down through time and how the modern world devalues work like farming. I like the way it's written, in short vignettes and antidotes that move back and forth in time, sometimes within a single paragraph. I'm about 3/4 of the way through the book, and it's interesting to me that not one mention has so far been made of spinning, knitting, weaving, or anything to do with fiber other than selling it (or burning it when the prices are low). Is that because it's written by a man, or because fiber arts aren't part of the tradition of his family or the region as a whole?

I also read two books not from the stack this month:

Howard's End by EM Forster. Not sure why I never read this book before, when I'm a fan of Passage to India and A Room with a View, but it took a PBS dramatization of it to get me going. After the first episode, I picked it up at the library and read it all before episode 2 (luckily there was a three-day-weekend in there). And I loved it. It's full of astute observations about human nature and the class system, the characters are charming, and every twist of the plot was a surprise. I also added a new word to my vocabulary: ramshackly, which pretty much describes my whole life.

Outer Order, Inner Calm by Gretchen Rubin. I have a love-hate relationship with Gretchen Rubin books, mainly owing to a blind spot that I think a lot of "self-improvement" authors have, which is that not everyone's life lends itself as well to happiness or time management or self-care as those of people who are literally getting paid to make themselves happy, manage their time, or take care of themselves by writing books on these topics. However, I responded to an uncontrollable urge to buy this book, right around the time I was clearing out the jar room. There's nothing in it that I didn't already know, but it was still helpful to read it and focus my thoughts on decluttering. I like her three-tiered list of questions to go through when deciding to get rid of something: Do I use it? Do I need it? Do I love it? I also like that she doesn't go for a one-size-fits-all approach. If you're comfortable with clutter, then don't declutter. We don't all have to live like monks.

What's in your book stack this month?