Book Stack ~ July 2021

 A monthly post about my progress toward finishing a very large stack of books. Past months' posts:

January 2021

February 2021 

March 2021

April 2021

May 2021

June 2021

I would say I've pretty much given up on making progress on reducing the size of the Book Stack, especially now that I've boxed them up and shoved them in the closet, but this month I read a couple, which you'll learn about next month. In the meantime, here's a rundown of the all-new books I read in July.

In the nonfiction department, I read on the theme of swimming: Waterlog, Roger Deakin's lush and entertaining account of swimming his way around the lakes, ponds, locks, wet meadows, pools, and seashores of Britain and Why We Swim, an account of the history, health benefits, and some unusual events and traditions in human swimming by Bonnie Tsui. I loved both and, inspired by both, I dug out my goggles and started making a twice- or thrice-weekly swim the length of a local pond with a friend of mine.

For fiction, I was in mystery mode again. My mom sent me the second in Barbara Ross's Jane Darrowfield series: Jane Darrowfield and the Madwoman Next Door, which was a fun read; the latest lady cop book, Dear Miss Kopp, in which Amy Stewart pulls off the brilliant feat of carrying off multiple storylines and solving several mysteries entirely in letters written to or by the Kopp Sisters; and Recipes for Love and Murder, by Sally Andrew, which I found by happenstance on a clearance table at my local bookstore and which I loved so much: lush descriptions of the South African countryside, a lay detective, a complicated murder mystery, and so many delicious recipes (I don't always love the cozy mystery trope of incorporating food and recipes into the story, but Andrew pulls it off brilliantly, without pulling the reader out of the story, or boring her, and she had me drooling over lamb curries even though I'm a vegetarian).

What are you reading this month?

Solitude

C and the boys left Monday morning for a nine-day hiking adventure along the Appalachian Trail through the 100-Mile Wilderness and to the top of Mount Katahdin. They left at just the right time--I was in danger of smothering my children, both literally (with a pillow) and figuratively (with excessive mothering).

I have written before, and I'm sure I'll write it again, that when my kids were tiny babies, my rapture for them was matched only by my desire to escape them. I'm beset by similar equal and opposite feelings for them again now that they're 16 and 20. Like most families, we've been blessed and cursed with an excess of togetherness over the past year and a half, thanks to the closures and constraints placed on schools and workplaces. While in many ways that's been wonderful and a true gift, I also find myself somethings thinking, Please grow up and go away to college, soon.

At the same time I'm afflicted with a maudlin nostalgia for their childhood years and a near-panic that we didn't do all the things we should have done when they were young, before they were grumpy and resistant to everything, and the things we did do, we might not have done just right. So it was time--for us all to get some space from each other, for them to go off and climb mountains and do some male bonding, and for me to revel in a little peace and quiet at home, alone, for the first time in as long as I can remember.

And, oh, have I been reveling. Nothing remarkable has taken place, nothing out of the ordinary, but the number of times I need to clean the kitchen daily has been cut down by a factor of ten, and it's been so blissfully quiet that I can actually hear myself think. Despite the quiet, I haven't accomplished quite as much writing as I imagined I would. It's funny how my job could take me away from home for ten to eighteen hours a day, but now I can't seem to wring more than three or four hours of writing out of a single day. Part of it is distraction, both of the electronic variety and the analog--the world outside is so dreamily magical right now: fledgling broad-winged hawks, clearwing hummingbird moths, painted lady butterflies, mushrooms of every color and shape. I need to get out there and check on things on a regular basis. Part of it is stamina--I'm not used to focusing for such a long time and my brain gets tired. And part of it is some combination of anxiety that I'm working on the wrong project and that I don't deserve to have this time, and doubt that whatever I work on will amount to anything.

To avoid burrowing too deeply into my own head and to quell those doubts and anxious feelings, I take myself to water every day--swimming the length of a pond three times a week with a friend, paddling solo on another pond followed by Indian takeout, a small poolside gathering with friends. I'm conscious of not wanting to give away too much of my time while also avoiding making myself crazy with my own company. The fleeting nature of this period of solitude also bears on my mind--they'll all be home on Tuesday, and then I'll have to recalibrate again, find ways to work amid the chaos.

In the meantime, I'm being gentle with myself. I won't write a novel before the week is out, but I did write a couple of scenes and figured out some character stuff (important things, like the narrator's name!). I also finished reviewing a manuscript I put on hold back in November and rewrote one final essay for it. I'm balancing butt-in-chair time with play-outside time (and lie-on-the-bed-reading-a-book time). The one thing I haven't made time for so far is doze-in-hammock time, which I plan to rectify this weekend!

This post went out recently to subscribers of my newsletter, along with some bonus material. You can subscribe here.

Upcoming Workshops ~ Story Mapping

It's been a long while since I last gave a nature journaling workshop (thanks, pandemic), but now I've got two coming up, one in August and one in September, bot on the theme of story mapping.

A story map is a visual representation of a journey that may include:

• a map depicting the route followed (which may be highly stylized and need not be to scale)
• locations on the map where interesting things were sighted or took place
• illustrations of scenery, flora and fauna seen along the way, and companions, among other things
• lists of birds, wildflowers, or other elements of nature
• anything else the story cartographer wants to use

Story maps can be made both while on the journey or after the fact.

Last summer, when all of my adventures took place close to home, I had a lot of fun making story maps of  kayak trips on local ponds and lakes. Mapping these trips deepened both my observation skills and my enjoyment while on the water. Even though I may not remember a lot about any of these trips, I only have to look at my maps and all of the details come flooding back to me.

I'm super excited to share this journaling technique with two groups this summer and fall.

The first workshop will take place on Saturday, August 7, at Hidden Valley Nature Center in Jefferson from 1-4 p.m. We'll be walking the Crossbill Loop and journaling as we go. Register here.

The second will be part of the Nature Journaling in Acadia conference that will be held at the Schoodic Institute September 19-21, a three-day extravaganza of nature journaling workshops and activities that is going to be positively amazing. Register here.

I'd love to see you at one of these workshops!

Book Stack ~ June 2021

A monthly post about my progress toward finishing a very large stack of books. Past months' posts:

January 2021

February 2021 

March 2021

April 2021

May 2021

The theme for June's reading was mystery and suspense, mostly because I wanted something scary to read in the tent when we went camping over Memorial Day weekend, so I bought the bottom three books in the photo. I don't know why I thought I'd have time to read three books. As it turned out, I only read a couple of pages of two of them. It also turned out that none of them was all that scary, but they were good.

The Whispering House, by Elizabeth Brooks, is a modern gothic with innocent heroine, big scary house, mysterious male. Even though it wasn't that scary, it had a nice amount of suspense. I have to admit to being a little bothered by the bad boyfriend element to the suspense, but I suppose that's what Heathcliff and Mr. Rochester were as well, and maybe Max de Winter also, so I guess it's part of the Gothic tradition.

The Unquiet Grave, by Sharyn McCrumb, a fictionalization of a historic murder of a young woman. I used to read a lot of Sharyn McCrumb, but it's been a while, and I forgot what a master storyteller she is. She weaves history and local color into a fascinating tale.

Careless in Red, by Elizabeth George, picks up after Inspector Linley's wife is killed and he goes on a long hike on the Cornish coast to try to numb his pain. Despite the lurid red cover, this one wasn't too scary, either, and there wasn't much about the hike (I was really hoping for a tent-based nail-biter to read while in the tent). But Elizabeth George is also a brilliant story teller, so it was a page-turner even without the chills. I'm discovering that I'm not a huge fan of the multiple-point-of-view novel, but this one is very well done, with each character drawn uniquely and with a distinct narrative voice, so that it's not confusing about who is who and why they're in the story--you just trust that their purpose will become clear in time.

Unspeakable Things, by Jess Lourey, I ordered after a crime conference I "attended" remotely, Lourey being one of the presenters. In it the young narrator tries to solve the mystery of who is kidnapping and molesting boys in her neighborhood while also living in fear of being hurt herself. It was good and suspenseful if not downright creepy.

Not one of these books counts toward diminishing my book stack, since I purchased them all, my resolution to buy no fiction this year having flown completely out the window.

What have you been reading lately?

P.S. If you're wondering what's going on with my book, I'll be sending out an update in my newsletter this Friday. To be one of the first in the know, sign up here.

Island Time

The last weekend of May we returned to Hermit Island, where we've gone every May since the twins were toddlers, missing only two years (last year, because of the pandemic, and the year before, because I had to work). Now that my kids are so old, I'm cognizant that every time we do something together as a family, it could very well be the last time. So nothing was going to prevent me from making this trip happen, not work, not weather.

And, oh, did the weather try (as did work). True to form, we had a cold, rainy weekend, despite this having been the driest, sunniest, most beautiful spring and early summer I've ever witnessed in Maine. (We're willing to rent ourselves out to go camping in any drought-stricken locale to bring on the rain.) Sunday night it downright poured, though most of the heavy rain kindly contained itself to times we were in the tent. And you know what? It didn't matter. We've done the drill a million times--keeping everything inside the tent or car, packing extra clothes and blankets, huddling around the fire to stay warm.

The weather didn't dampen the fun, although we didn't do a lot--we didn't hike to the head of the island or bike along the lagoon. I did a bit of lazy birdwatching. We sat on the beach and watched the waves. We cooked and ate--a lot. As much as I wanted to get all nostalgic for those camping trips past (you can see a photo progression of them here), and those freaking adorable little campers, I decided that camping with big kids is even more awesome.The boys had a friend and their bikes, and they careened off to the beach whenever they felt like it. Zephyr made beef stew and Emmet fixed cocktails for the mamas. They split wood and set up their own tents and hauled water (complainingly, as always) and finally learned how to wash camping dishes.

I recently was posed the question: when was the last time you tried something new? I racked my brain for a long, long time before I came up with something (sailing lessons, two years ago). I suppose a pandemic isn't a time to try new things, so I'll use that as my excuse. And now that the worst is over, and we're all finally vaccinated, it's probably time for me to get out there and try new things (or at least leave the county). But there's also something to be said for revisiting the same thing from a new perspective, and with taller kids.

This post went out recently to subscribers of my newsletter, along with some bonus material. You can subscribe here.

Finish It Friday ~ Garden Beds

 I really had zero to do with this project, so there's no good reason for me to post about it, except that it looks so great! Earlier this month, C finished the raised-bed garden that he's been working on for at least five years, possibly longer, methodically building beds, paving the intervening space with bricks, and, finally, fencing the whole thing in. This shows an amazing level of stick-to-itiveness, and is further proof, in case we needed it, that C is the ant and I'm the grasshopper. I'm all about the instant gratification, and once I get a project in my craw, I want to get it done as quickly as possible.

And, look! We already have peas. Like tons of peas. Normally, you hope to have peas by the 4th of July here, so this is astoundingly early. We've also had one crop of spinach and we're working on the second. Radishes, lettuce, and arugula are coming out daily, and the garlic is almost ready. Tomatoes and peppers are on their way. I dug up a photo of what the garden used to look like, ten years ago, and you can see it's come a long way.

What's growing in your garden?

P.S. If you receive these posts via email, the service that makes that happen, Feedburner, is going away at the end of July. You can subscribe to my newsletter here, or you can visit my blog site here to stay in touch.

Book Stack ~ May 2021

A monthly post about my progress toward finishing a very large stack of books. Past months' posts:

January 2021

February 2021 

March 2021

April 2021

I finally emerged from this year's reading slump and made it through a good-sized pile in May. My theme for the month was short and fragmented--I just couldn't get enough of prose poems/lyric essays/micro essays/flash nonfiction/whatever you want to call it.

In the nonfiction/poetry realm (I'm not sure where the line is for some of these selections), I read:

Sound Machine by Rachel Zucker. A kind of meta-exploration of confessional poetry and the life of the poet/mother/wife as she writes the poems and teaches poetry in a form I'm not sure how to describe: really short paragraphs, sentences broken into stanzas--proesms?

Bluets by Maggie Nelson. This is the go-to book whenever anyone talks about lyric essay or fragmented writing, and while I enjoyed the style, I was a little more meh  on the concept--obsession over a color and obsession over an ex-boyfriend. I mean, ugh, get over him and move on.

Heating & Cooling by Beth Ann Fennelly. I loved these "micro-memoirs," some only a sentence long, most around a page, and I just love Fennelly's spirit that leaps right off the page in humor and insight.

The Book of Delights by Ross Gay. This book is a joy to read. Gay set out to write about one delight per day for a year and ended up with around 100 short meditations on quotidian aspects of days spent in gardens, coffee shops, and airports, and finds something wonderful in everyday, ordinary things. I did not want it to end.

Flash Count Diary by Darcey Steinke. This book veers away from the ultra-short prose theme of the month, being a memoir in longish essays about a year in the midst of menopause. I'd heard about it as a book about "menopause and whales," which intrigued me. Whales do make a significant appearance--the killer whale being one of the few animals other than humans that experiences menopause--but there's a lot more to it as Steinke explores the medical, cultural, and scientific approaches to this stage in life that half of the human population goes through yet is poorly understood, little discussed, pathologized, and stigmatized.

Writing Wild by Kathryn Aalto. I really enjoyed this book of mini biographies (back to the miniature theme) of women nature writers of England, the US, and Canada. I was familiar with many of the writers featured but enjoyed learning more about them, and I was thrilled to be introduced to a few I'd never heard of. And I love any nature writing anthology or collection that isn't just "a bunch of old white dudes plus Rachel Carson." It's also beautifully illustrated, which is fun.

Onto fiction, and back to fragments, I read Jenny Offill's novel Weather, about a woman juggling motherhood and climate anxiety in near-future New York City. The fragmentary nature of the prose is a perfect fit for the mental state our modern times engender.

Finally, I finally read a book a friend gave me many years ago, a collection of short stories by Lucia Berlin, A Manual for Cleaning Women. Oh! These stories are so good! I read a lot of short stories in grad school, and so many of them leave me cold, but these are so colorful and lively and interesting and heartbreaking and funny and all the feels. I can't believe I've never encountered Berlin anywhere else. This would have been a brilliant book to read when I was trying to be a short story writer. Go forth and find yourself a copy!