I read the following books:
- Expecting Adam by Martha Beck: I don’t think I’ve ever been as angry at a book as I was at this book. Reading it, I couldn’t fathom what the author’s point was. Purportedly, it was to encourage everyone to accept and welcome the magic in their own lives as she did via the birth of her son Adam, who has Down’s Syndrome. But it’s so facile, like if you just accept the universe, your life will be better without any work on your own. What about people who accept the universe in the hopes that the supernatural will better their lives and then nothing comes of it because the universe doesn’t work like that. Why should the universe somehow care more to stop Martha Beck’s placental abruption (it just stopped magically) than Syria (read the linked Washington Post article – it is really good), Darfur, Guantanamo Bay, or Russia’s anti-gay policies . Oh, that’s right. It’s because Martha Beck is white, American, and was (at the time of writing) Christian. What an awful book.
- Carry the One by Carol Anshaw.
- Bobcat and Other Stories by Rebecca Lee: Since the vast majority of ARC’s I get on LibraryThing are not my taste, I think sometimes of quitting the reviewing program. But then, always, I get an amazing book like this one for free and it has everything that I love about fiction and, at the same time, depresses me because it is so much better than I could ever be. What a beautiful collection of stories.
- By Blood by Ellen Ullman: When I was about eleven, I started reading “grown-up” books, which were mainly those sort of literary potboilers from the seventies that baby-boomers tend to have kicking about (early Stephen King, Ira Levin, John Irving, Irving Wallace). This book was just like one of those – completely engrossing and not insulting to my intelligence. And it had my go-to-bad-guys, Nazis. I loved it.
- World War Z by Max Brooks: I read it thinking I’d hate it, like Robopocalypse hate it, but I didn’t! It’s actually really well done.
- Dear Life by Alice Munroe: I know, as a Canadian short story writer, I’m supposed to fawn over Alice Monroe, but these stories weren’t what I was expecting, nor did I enjoy them, especially after the Rebecca Lee I read earlier in the month.
- May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes: The fast-paced, frenetic, flippant tone of the first two-thirds completely undermines the more conciliatory and warm tone of the last third.
- Drunk Mom by Jowita Bydlowska: I read books about bad mothers. Lots of them. Bad parents too (like the Crack Dad one). It helps me know other people struggle with parenting too.
- Ivy and Bean by Annie Barrows: For Tesfa. Still haven’t found great, modern kids books. It’s not bad, but it isn’t classic. No one will remember it in fifty years. And so we’ve reverted to rereading Matilda.
Best book: I liked so many books this month. Basically, I either loved or loathed books in August. Probably not great – extremes usually mean unhinging for my mind. But I loved Bobcat and Other Stories, By Blood, World War Z, and Drunk Mom.
I watched:
- My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic: Now that we’ve watched them all, Tesfa has established we can start at the beginning and go to the end again. While I am happy that MLP:FiM is not as asinine as say, Power Rangers, I have grown weary of the trials and tribulations of Ponyville.
- Orange is the New Black: I laugh so hard at the Let’s talk about health care Mackenzie bit. I am totally one of those white, liberal ladies Taystee and Poussey are making fun of.
- How I Met Your Mother: Now I think I am watching it to annotate all the horrible, rape culture, heteronormative things that go on on that show.
- Breaking Bad: Man, can’t Walter just die already? I fail to see why people root for him. Or anyone on that show really. Maybe Holly is all right.
- Mad Men: My enjoyment of the show has increased now that there’s a Megan (only an h away from me). Also, they’re getting into the fashions I like, all the white and black dresses and cute A-lines.
- Community: Season Four on Canadian Netflix now. It’s October 19th everybody.
I wrote: A big rewrite of Come From Away for my course. I’m hoping to get to fifty thousand words by the end of September. Small typing up of my faerie story to share with my online writing group. Minor proof-edits of a variety of short stories in another submission-push-trail-of-rejections.
And my course is starting! I got the first email from my mentor yesterday and will be sending her the beginning of my story later today. Of course, one of her points to me is make sure you know the difference between a list of events and a plot, which has become a huge problem with my novella. To me, as it stands, it reads like and then this happened and then this happened and then this …. Geoff disagrees, but I feel like I have a whole, unspooled skein of yarn here and need someone to help me tidy the whole thing back up.
On to the autumn.