What I Read: September 2021
Here's what I've been reading this last month.
How are you holding up?
We’re… okay. Preschool starting has knocked us all off our routines. It’s impossible that 12 hours of school each week (4 days x 3 hours each day) has completely unsettled us, but it has. New morning routines, new mid-morning routines, new evening routines… preparing to leave the house first thing every morning is a terrible idea and who invented that?
We survived a first all-family cold and me taking the kids to get COVID tested solo (do not recommend, but the negative results were worth it). We are going to work and I am sorting out fire department budgets and Scott is starting a new gig with his labor union. We are realizing that winter is indeed coming to Wisconsin in the not-so-distant future and we still don’t have firewood on the deck.
When I look at the stack of books I have read this month vs. the stacks (yes, plural) that are waiting for me to read, I get a little disheartened. But we’re living, and slowly but surely the new routines will become old and the deck will fill with wood to warm our home and the books will still be there to welcome us.
Here’s what I’ve been reading:
Unmentionables: Poems
by Beth Ann Fennelly
In previous years, I have loved Fennelly’s Great With Child: Letters to a Young Mother (lyrical letters written to a friend who was expecting and nervous about balancing motherhood with writing) and Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs (hilarious and insightful, in seriously micro-form), but I’ve never read a collection of her actual poetry. I nabbed this one from Thriftbooks (my favorite place to grab used books online) a couple of years ago, and while I loved the second section titled “Berthe Morisot: Retrospective” filled with poems written from the perspective of the 19th century Impressionist painter, the rest of the collection fell a little flat for me. The title, Unmentionables, maybe should have been a giveaway that this was a slightly racier collection than I usually lean toward, which is probably reflective more of personal preference than the author’s capabilities.
Wild Words: Rituals, Routines, and Rhythms for Braving the Writer's Path
by Nicole Gulotta
This was a re-read for the Exhale Book Club this month, and wouldn’t you know that it was just what I needed? If you're a writer (or a creator!) struggling to find the balance between busy seasons and seasons of rest, seasons of marketing, and seasons of doing the work, take a minute to add this book to your list (or this interview to your queue). Nicole's wisdom and encouragement is good for the writer's soul, and this book won’t add a single "should" to your internal pile.
The Raven
by Ann Cleves
This was a selection for my neighborhood book club. It was okay, but thrillers are never my go-to, and I find myself choosing fewer and fewer of them in my own reading life. Ultimately, I felt this entire book was underdeveloped: the plot, the characters, the setting. It’s set in the Shetland Islands, which could lend itself to being so atmospheric, and instead it felt too procedural, jumping from character to character but never settling into a rhythm. The ending was abrupt, and while there is a sequel, I’ll not be picking it up.
Here it is on Goodreads, but I won’t recommend you purchase it on Bookshop.
Cloud Cuckoo Land
by Anthony Doerr
I am 34% of the way through this book and there are at least five different story lines set in wildly different times and places and as many more interesting characters and I have no idea how on earth it is going to all come together in the next 66% of the book but I am eagerly anticipating that it will. Doerr is a masterful writer and while there are parts of this book I don’t “get” yet (little rusty on my ancient Greek mythology), I am tempted to ignore my children and the dishes and all the emails just so I can spend more time with this book.
If you haven’t read Doerr’s All The Light We Cannot See you are seriously missing out, but don’t snooze on Four Seasons in Rome, either.
I received an ARC of this book through NetGalley.
The books I’ve got open in the kitchen:
Our CSA is winding down for the season next week, sadly, but it does mean less meal-planning around what we receive in our weekly produce box (although this pasta is A+) and more planning around how we are feeling, which is honestly a welcome retreat towards carbs.
Fall of course means a Double Crust Apple Pie from Shauna Sever’s delightful cookbook, Midwest Made.
And there will soon be bread, bread, and more bread as we have decided to experiment until we find a loaf the whole family loves. We’ll be pulling Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day back off the shelf as the temperatures return to baking-friendly circumstances. And we might try this Updated No-Knead Bread from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt in the New York Times. Wish us luck!
What I’ve been reading with the kids…
Arthur is dearly in love with graphic novels these days—he’ll look at the pages forever even though he can’t read yet. I picked up Arthur & the Golden Rope purely because of the name last Christmas, and we’ve fallen for the Brownstone family. We’ve also read Marcy & the Riddle of the Sphinx, and (shh!) he’ll be getting Kai & the Monkey King for this Christmas.
Tennyson is at the point-and-demand-the-name stage of toddlerhood, so every book we look at is largely just us naming all the objects on each page. Sheep. Bucket. Truck. Girl. It must be paying off, because she plain-as-anything said “beetle” the other day after we had been reading the Babylit version of Jane Eyre.
What I’m reading next…
Tender Hooks: Poems
by Beth Ann Fennelly
For the Exhale Book Club in November.
Learning In Public: Lessons for a Racially Divided America from My Daughter's School
by Courtney E. Martin
I adore Courtney’s newsletter, The Examined Family, and I can’t wait to dive into this one that just released in August.
Speaking of Christmas…
Your local bookseller would love for you to get your book orders in early this year — the supply chain is always wonky in Q4 for holiday books (more books are released in fall for holiday than any other time of year!), but especially so this year when there are paper shortages and shipping shortages and probably patience shortages as well. I sent an email to Mystery to Me this last week (Hi, Charlotte!) and they gave me recommendations for Scott and the kids via email and placed a big order so that we’ve got everything we need well in advance of the gifting season.
If you need a book recommendation sooner-than-later to gift a loved one, hit “reply” to this email and tell me what you need help finding!
What are you reading lately? Let me know in the comments or in an email!