Featuring: summer reads! Having a baby when you have teens! Unrealized dreams! And how to survive in a world when you can't put your bare feet on it every morning.
So grateful to hear about the parts of your pre-baby life you are grieving as well as the career moves that you have had to put off. Its helping me have compassion for the parts of my pre-baby life I am grieving and how I have had to put off finishing my PhD. Thank you! Funny enough, I have no energy or brain juice these days to work on my actual dissertation, but somehow I have found myself able to write about parenthood in a journal-y kind of way and wonder if one day I will be able to publish it as a book. What will come first, defending my thesis or publishing a memoir or maybe none of the above? Parenthood has certainly blown up the tidy little career path I had envisioned for myself, now full of twists and turns and maybe with an unexpected destination.
I really liked Yellowface in the beginning (and read Babel just before Yellowface and LOVED IT, so had very high hopes) but the end was so lackluster and anticlimactic it kind of ruined the whole book. I could see what the author was getting at, but she did not deliver. And lord the protagonist just did not have a SINGLE redeeming quality- there were multiple times reading the book that I just felt like what is the point here! Our Wives Under the Sea was a friend's FAVORITE book last year but I didn't love it. I did think it was funny when the Titan exploded that it was basically the plot of the book.
The best thing I've read this summer was Still Life by Sarah Winman. Perfect book, highly recommend- fantastic characters, brilliant writing, funny and poignant and so damn beautiful.
Currently reading A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ni Ghriofa about poetry & parenting & domesticity & lactation & checking things off the infinite to do list and lovingggg it.
The book for which I have a proposal is a midwifery memoir where I weave together themes from my own life with the stories of the births I've attended. It's, as one person who read the proposal put it, "politics through story." And yes -- that's precisely why I can't get up in the. morning although I've done it successfully a whole TWO times since the writing of this post!! :)
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow blew me away. The skill it must take to make a book that is overtly mostly about intimacy in friendship is just incredible. I also devoured it. And I think I’ve mentioned it to you before, the other one that just has my heart as of this year is Demon Copperhead. My kin is Appalachian, and wow, it just felt like a beautiful and true portrait of them.
The idea that you’ve gained more than you’ve lost with having children is brilliant. It’s a salve--I’d like to write it on the back of my hand like I did song lyrics in high school.
Yes! I downloaded the audio book version of it, and hope to start it soon. I'm a hard copy reader myself, but the wait list is soooo long. I love most of Kingsolver's work so I expect to enjoy this one too.
And OOF. For anything to write to be thought of the way a high schooler thinks of song lyrics...that's high high praise for me. Thank you. :)
I’m in the middle of Yellowface right now and I had to put it down for a few days bc it was exhausting. June’s justifications for her awfulness are very familiar to anyone who has experienced specifically that one brand of white liberal that uses “ally” as an identifier rather than doing any of the work to be an actual ally. If you have experience with that kind of person in real life, seeing it on a few hundred pages, predictably getting whatever she wants, is just more tiring than validating. Hoping things take a turn but we will see 🙃
Yes, this! My sister read it at the lakehouse -- Wren brought it as she was finishing it up, so Saadia picked it up once she had -- and she kept looking up from her pool float and asking me if there would be payoff every so often. I'll wait for you to finish before I share what I told her. ;)
Ok I am ready! Took me a while to get back to it, but I'm sure you told her "nope!"
Something that I thought was so interesting was a critique I heard from a YouTuber that said that the main character of the book really went after Athena's wealth and the privilege that comes with it. The author framed that line of thinking as crazy and insecure since it was coming from a narrator that we've established as unreliable, while the author has had the same kind of criticisms- specifically with how the worldview she has because of her privilege influences her writing and how she talks about certain marginalized groups, which are all really valid criticisms. After hearing that critique I thought back to how much June critiqued Athena and her financial privilege over the course of Athena's life, and how she really seemed to try to make that line of thinking seem outrageous, while a conversation on how the intersection of financial privilege and a marginalized identity would be a very worthwhile thing to explore, but instead she went with a kind of "snap back" approach to her critics which I can't respect.
Not sure if that was covered in the review you had linked, that one is my next read- but if you hadn't heard that perspective I just figured you'd find that interesting!
And I wish I could edit comments because I'd meant to say "coming from a narrator that we've established as 'unreliable'". Specifically because that's really seems to be how Kuang wants us to view her.
So grateful to hear about the parts of your pre-baby life you are grieving as well as the career moves that you have had to put off. Its helping me have compassion for the parts of my pre-baby life I am grieving and how I have had to put off finishing my PhD. Thank you! Funny enough, I have no energy or brain juice these days to work on my actual dissertation, but somehow I have found myself able to write about parenthood in a journal-y kind of way and wonder if one day I will be able to publish it as a book. What will come first, defending my thesis or publishing a memoir or maybe none of the above? Parenthood has certainly blown up the tidy little career path I had envisioned for myself, now full of twists and turns and maybe with an unexpected destination.
Yes! It does that for so many! I witness it all the time. I can't wait to see what happens for you. <3
I really liked Yellowface in the beginning (and read Babel just before Yellowface and LOVED IT, so had very high hopes) but the end was so lackluster and anticlimactic it kind of ruined the whole book. I could see what the author was getting at, but she did not deliver. And lord the protagonist just did not have a SINGLE redeeming quality- there were multiple times reading the book that I just felt like what is the point here! Our Wives Under the Sea was a friend's FAVORITE book last year but I didn't love it. I did think it was funny when the Titan exploded that it was basically the plot of the book.
The best thing I've read this summer was Still Life by Sarah Winman. Perfect book, highly recommend- fantastic characters, brilliant writing, funny and poignant and so damn beautiful.
Still Life is on my to-read list! And yes, I was also amused by the Titan/OWUTS resonances.
Currently reading A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ni Ghriofa about poetry & parenting & domesticity & lactation & checking things off the infinite to do list and lovingggg it.
Oooh, this looks really good.
You will write that book when the time is right! What type of book do you want to write?
Do you lose that morning time to yourself because Hanif will wake up if you leave the bed before his wake up time? This also happens to me.
I loved reading this. You inspire me to want to read more. Even with a baby, I haven’t made it a priority and need to.
The book for which I have a proposal is a midwifery memoir where I weave together themes from my own life with the stories of the births I've attended. It's, as one person who read the proposal put it, "politics through story." And yes -- that's precisely why I can't get up in the. morning although I've done it successfully a whole TWO times since the writing of this post!! :)
I also did the audiobook and it is so good! One of those few books that works really effectively that way.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow blew me away. The skill it must take to make a book that is overtly mostly about intimacy in friendship is just incredible. I also devoured it. And I think I’ve mentioned it to you before, the other one that just has my heart as of this year is Demon Copperhead. My kin is Appalachian, and wow, it just felt like a beautiful and true portrait of them.
The idea that you’ve gained more than you’ve lost with having children is brilliant. It’s a salve--I’d like to write it on the back of my hand like I did song lyrics in high school.
I’ll happily wait a long long time for your book.
Yes! I downloaded the audio book version of it, and hope to start it soon. I'm a hard copy reader myself, but the wait list is soooo long. I love most of Kingsolver's work so I expect to enjoy this one too.
And OOF. For anything to write to be thought of the way a high schooler thinks of song lyrics...that's high high praise for me. Thank you. :)
I’m in the middle of Yellowface right now and I had to put it down for a few days bc it was exhausting. June’s justifications for her awfulness are very familiar to anyone who has experienced specifically that one brand of white liberal that uses “ally” as an identifier rather than doing any of the work to be an actual ally. If you have experience with that kind of person in real life, seeing it on a few hundred pages, predictably getting whatever she wants, is just more tiring than validating. Hoping things take a turn but we will see 🙃
Yes, this! My sister read it at the lakehouse -- Wren brought it as she was finishing it up, so Saadia picked it up once she had -- and she kept looking up from her pool float and asking me if there would be payoff every so often. I'll wait for you to finish before I share what I told her. ;)
Ok I am ready! Took me a while to get back to it, but I'm sure you told her "nope!"
Something that I thought was so interesting was a critique I heard from a YouTuber that said that the main character of the book really went after Athena's wealth and the privilege that comes with it. The author framed that line of thinking as crazy and insecure since it was coming from a narrator that we've established as unreliable, while the author has had the same kind of criticisms- specifically with how the worldview she has because of her privilege influences her writing and how she talks about certain marginalized groups, which are all really valid criticisms. After hearing that critique I thought back to how much June critiqued Athena and her financial privilege over the course of Athena's life, and how she really seemed to try to make that line of thinking seem outrageous, while a conversation on how the intersection of financial privilege and a marginalized identity would be a very worthwhile thing to explore, but instead she went with a kind of "snap back" approach to her critics which I can't respect.
Not sure if that was covered in the review you had linked, that one is my next read- but if you hadn't heard that perspective I just figured you'd find that interesting!
And I wish I could edit comments because I'd meant to say "coming from a narrator that we've established as 'unreliable'". Specifically because that's really seems to be how Kuang wants us to view her.