I read the following books:
- The Wives of Bath by Susan Swan: reading it for my Humber course starting in September.
- All My Friends by Marie NDaiye
- Second Person Singular by Sayed Kashua
- Reading Like A Writer by Francine Prose: I get angry reading books lecturing me on how I should write. This person doesn’t know me so how can generic advice apply universally? You know what I need to do to write: write. I did take some pointers on dialogue and pauses though, and I’m going to copy out her reading list. And she’s writing a book about writing prose, which is her last name, so I was tickled a bit.
- No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July: Once someone told me that a short story should end with something irrevocable happening and nothing being the same again otherwise all you have is description, etiher of people or of an event. These were all description. That isn’t bad, but it is different.
- Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Midwives by Chris Bohjalian
- Sorry Please Thank You by Charles Yu
- The Western Light by Suan Swan: which is sort of a prequel, but in an alternate universe to The Wives of Bath.
- The Meaning of Children by Beverly Akerman
- Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman
Best book: Sorry Please Thank You. If I could write sci-fi that was better than sci-fi like Charles Yu does, I would. I am jealous, which was my overwhelming feeling for most of the month anyway.
I watched:
- Mad Men: but then I stopped somewhere in Season 4 during the first week of July and haven’t gone back.
- My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic: with Tesfa
- Orange is the New Black: One of the few times when the adaptation is better than the book. I started watching the show, then I read the book, and the show is so much more nuanced and funny, neither of which was the goal of the book, so I suppose this is like comparing apples to screwdrivers.
- The Secret of Nimh: Almost the exact opposite of Orange is the New Black, an adaptation so poorly done that the entire experience is cringing while remembering how much better (and with no bizarre paranormal stone-of-levitation) the book was. At least having watched the film, Tesfa is now sitting down with me while we read the book together.
- Sandbaggers
- How I Met Your Mother: On in the background while I replaced all the brass-with-big-white-bulb-in-the-center kitchen cabinets with basic, skinny, black ones.
I wrote: Worked on faerie story. Wow. That is all I did this month.
And I joined an online writing group too, which should help keep me more on track.
July’s are hard months for me. Generally, I bottom out twice a year – February and July. But today is August and sunny and the turkeys no longer seem to be standing in the middle of the road causing traffic worries, so everything should be great from now on (until February).