Writing News and Updates
 I started a one-week reading fast this today. While last month's book list was down considerably from March's numbers, you can see I'm still mainlining books, clearly as a way of avoiding our current reality, but also with the side effect of preventing me from getting anything else done. The reading fast is part of The Artist's Way program that I'm doing with my creativity group. I'm interpreting this fast as: no reading of books in any genre; extremely minimal news consumption; only reading emails that are important/personal (have already failed on this one today); not reading anything else online; and not listening to podcasts (I have a long-ish drive ahead of me this evening and an even longer one on Sunday, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to pull this last item off). Maybe cut back on TV. I'm hoping that by minimizing the number of other people's words coming into my head I'll perhaps start generating some of my own. In the meantime, here's what I read in April:
Poetry The Path of Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy. This is the second volume in the trilogy of poetry anthologies edited by James Crews. (I read the first one a few years ago and am working on the third now.) It's a wonderful collection about exactly what it says it's about--connection and joy--and it hit the spot perfectly in these troubled times. Nonfiction How to Read Nature. This quick, entertaining ready by Tristan Gooley is a great introduction to becoming more in touch with the natural world, from being aware of direction based on the sun, moon, and other signs to predicting the weather based on cloud types. It's a great reminder to put down the technology and pay attention to the world. Made from this Earth: American Women and Nature. This book by Vera Norwood is absolutely my catnip--a study of early American women nature writers, naturalists, scientists, scientific illustrators, specimen collectors, and gardeners. It shows that women were more prevalent in these fields than we're given to believe by the histories written by men, while also delineating the barriers they faced, and the way that (as in so many other fields) professionalization pushed women, who were pioneers in some cases, aside in favor of males. It's absolutely fascinating, and I was introduced to so many naturey women I'd never heard of. Fiction The Gulf is a quirky novel about a young woman whose joke about starting a Christian-based writing school becomes a reality, and she gets caught in the middle of unscrupulous founders, a wishy-washy ex, and the students, some of whom she becomes close with, all while a hurricane is bearing down on the campus. I continue my Paul Doiron jag with The Precipice and The Widowmaker, and I continue to enjoy the escapades of loose cannon game warden Mike Bowdich, while appreciating the character arc that he's on, continuing to grow and improve from one novel to the next, while sometimes relapsing into his old ways. I might have mentioned before that I'm surprised that Doiron can show his face in Maine, for the way he portrays it as a hellscape of drug dealers, gun nuts, and pedophiles. That there are occasional "stunning" or "gorgeous" women sprinkled among the degenerates whose hard luck stories lure Bowdich into going rogue seems nothing short of miraculous in this otherwise horror show of a state. (And for the record, that is not my experience of Maine.) Still, highly entertaining and tightly written page-turners. And I found another Her Royal Spyness mystery by Rhys Bowen, On Her Majesty's Frightfully Secret Service. I do love a mystery with a spot of humor, and these never fail to deliver. I just read them as I find them in used bookstores, except for having begun with Volume 1, and it doesn't seem to matter too much. I discovered a $2 hardcover section at the used bookstore, and the next two come from that shelf. First, I'd been on the fence about reading Girl on the Trail since it came out a few years ago--partly because I have a perverse aversion to anything popular and also it seems thrillers with "girl" in the title always end up being gratuitously violent. But I went for it, and I was hooked from page one and sped through this face-paced psychological thriller. And even though it is about violence against women, the women are not, in the end, helpless victims. Last, speaking of hellscapes, Carl Hiassen paints a portrait of Florida that I'd think would make anyone who's not deranged want to stay away. I really enjoyed Squeeze Me, a story about a (once again) rogue former game warden turned animal control professional, a reclusive eco-warrior, the residents and hangers-on at the "Winter Whitehouse," plus various and sundry law enforcement officers and a whole lotta pythons. It fully reinforces all of my preexisting prejudices against that state. (And again, Does Hiassen require round-the-clock body guards to not be murdered by his fellow Floridians whom he paints as totally nuts?) I'd gotten about halfway through the third book from the $2 shelf by the time this reading fast began, and while it started out pretty good, by about page 50 it got really boring and has continued so for about the next 80 or so pages, even though it's a NYT bestseller and well regarded and blah blah blah. I almost never intentionally quit reading a book, although sometimes I put one away on a shelf and forget about it. But this might be the be the one. After all, it only cost $2!
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 In this lovely post about managing stress during this horrific time, the writer Janisse Ray notes that "during stressful times reading becomes more difficult." I have the opposite problem, and have been plowing through books as an antidote to and escape from stress. On leaving a bookstore one day last month, I chided myself for having purchased a book when I have so many TBRs at home. In response, I justified the purchase with the literal phrase, "I drank five books this week." I kept on drinking books all month, totaling 14 by the end of March, not counting those I began and didn't finish until this month. Here's what I read:
Fiction I had picked up Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen at a used bookstore some time ago, and finally read it last month. It's the fun, funny, first-in-a-series about a minor royal (34th in line for the crown) but broke young woman trying to make her own way around 1930, engaged by The Queen to spy on the married woman the Prince of Wales has gotten himself involved in, and then ends up getting mixed up in solving a murder. I enjoyed it so much I went out in search of more and found one much later in the series, Heirs and Graces, which was also a treat to read. I'll be on the lookout for more of these. I love a humorous take on murder. Speaking of humorous, Four Aunties and a Wedding is the sequel to Dial A for Aunties, which I read back in November. In this installment, the narrator, Meddie, is getting married in England, and she, her mom, and three aunties once again get involved in a ridiculous, mad-cap, and hilarious plot to prevent members of the Indo-Chinese mafia from killing a wedding guest. In The Postscript Murders by Elly Griffiths, an old woman and a famous author are both killed within a few days of each other, and a rag-tag group of unlikely friends goes to work solving the crimes. It has a bit of Thursday Murder Club vibes, and I enjoyed it a lot, although the ultimate solution is a little on the complicated/convoluted side. A friend gave me another of the Paul Doiron novels about the loose-canon Maine Game Warden, and after I devoured it I went out and bought three more. These are real page-turners, although Doiron paints a grim picture of Maine as a hellscape of pill poppers, gun nuts, and various other deranged people. Silver Alert by Lee Smith is about an old man who facing putting his wife in memory care while dealing with his own existential health issues who forms an unlikely friendship with a young woman who has escaped a life of sex trafficking. It's a sweet story, but I found the co-protagonist (the young woman) to be unrealistically naive and well-adjusted considering her traumatic past. Finally, in Crampton Hodnet by Barbara Pym, an amusing "comedy of manners," a young cleric moves into the home of a spinster and her companion and things get silly as everyone gets into everyone else's business. It's like a less-ridiculous Jeeves & Wooster caper. Nonfiction The book I justified buying because I'd already drunk five books that week was Windswept by Annabel Abbs-Streets (say that five times fast), after I happened to see it on a table display at a local bookstore. I'm so glad I grabbed it! It's about "forgotten" women walkers in history, mainly writers but also artists, featuring women like Simone de Beauvoir, Georgia O'Keefe, and many whom I hadn't heard of before. Abbs-Streets notes that few women are included in the anthologies of walking writers, and as part of her biographical profiles, she goes to the places where these women went on their walking adventures and follows parts of their routes as she explores their relationship to walking and how it related to their creative work, as well as the adversity they faced as woman walking long distances in the 19th and early 20th centuries. A few years back, I read a similar book, Wanderers by Kerri Andrews, and I'm amazed that there's only one woman who is featured in both books (Nan Shepherd). Birding to Change the World by Trish O'Kane is the memoir of an amazing woman who, after a career in journalism, covering wars in Central America, becomes interested in nature and birds after she loses her home to Hurricane Katrina. She takes this interest into a PhD program at the University of Wisconsin, where she grows deeply involved in getting local kids out into nature and preserving a nearby park and access to nature for the communities that surround the park. O'Kane is an indefatigable student, teacher, advocate, and activist, and she does incredible work throughout the book to involve local people and ensure that their voices are heard in park planning decisions. Books and Islands by Louise Erdrich tells the story of her travels with her young daughter to various islands in Minnesota and Canada, including one that houses a massive collection of books. Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her is a strange and fascinating lyrical exploration into the history of patriarchy, including a long litany of the many ways that "science" has been used to "prove" that women are inferior to men.  I'm excited to be teaching a four-week nature journaling workshop at Viles Arboretum in Augusta next month inspired by Amy Tan's The Backyard Bird Chronicles. This delightful book demonstrates how careful observation and recording of the activities of the feathered visitors to our yards and feeders can turn these mysterious wild creatures into familiar friends, each with its own story to tell.
Over the course of a four-session workshop, we’ll read and discuss select passages from The Backyard Bird Chronicles and use these as inspiration to create illustrated journals of our own bird observations. Through in-class lessons and take-home exercises, participants will:
Each participant will receive a blank book for their backyard bird journal, and art supplies will be available for use during class. This workshop welcomes participants of all experience levels—no prior writing, art, or birdwatching skills are required. To fully enjoy the workshop, participants should have access to:
This four-session workshop held on Tuesdays April 1, 8, 15, and 22 from 6:30-8pm. Register with Viles Arboretum.  Before I get to last month's books, I want to share two articles I just read on LitHub: Trump 2.0: What the Book World Should Do Now, and What Publishing Can Do About Trump: Preserve the Independence of Our Bookstores and Libraries, both by Josh Cook. While I seriously doubt any publishing industry bigwigs read this blog, there is advice in these columns that we can all follow: do not obey in advance, support local libraries and independent bookstores, minimize your impact on climate change (including not using AI at all for any reason ever). I would add divorce yourself from Amazon: cancel your Prime membership; buy books from bookshop.org (which now has an ebook option); and get your audiobooks from libro.fm. Better yet--get all your books (paper, E, audio) from your public library, your local independent bookstore and/or your local used bookstore (buying used books is good for the environment, and the used bookstores I frequent support their local libraries with their income.). One more thing: while I'm not in a position to deplatform the ghouls whose odious ideas are destroying our democracy as we speak, whenever I see one of their books featured on bookstore shelves (i.e., facing outward), I cover it up with a different book by someone who is not actively dismantling our nation. You could do this too.
Now on to our regularly scheduled programming: What I read in February, from the bottom. Poetry Starting in late January, I got back into my habit of reading a few poems first thing in the morning. First I finished a collection I picked up in Prince Edward Island last summer, called My Island's the House I Sleep in at Night by Laurie Brinklow, in which each poem is dedicated to a different resident of PEI, Newfoundland, or Tasmania. It's a really fascinating organizational structure, and an amazing way of telling the stories of these island communities through the eyes of so many different people. I loved it. Next, I read The Carrying, by US Poet Laureate Ada Limón (do we still have a poet laureate, or was that axed too?), also a beautiful collection of poems, about gardens and infertility and loss and making a home far from home. Nonficiton The first book is kind of a reread, kind of a new read, because I've read the First Edition of Sisters of the Earth: Women's Prose & Poetry about Nature, edited by Lorraine Anderson, several times since I picked up a copy sometime in the mid-90s (it was published in 1991), but I hadn't read the Second Edition (published in 2003). Normally a second edition might have a new introduction and some updated information, but this one has somewhere around 50 pieces that didn't appear in the first edition (some of these are additions, some replace other works, either by the same author or a different one). I have to admit to being perplexed and kind of annoyed that it wasn't published as Volume II rather than a second edition (with almost the exact same cover). It just seems like a missed opportunity (to sell more books; to bring in more readers; etc.). That criticism aside, it's a lovely and important book, and having read it, I have a long list of authors I want to explore more. The Blue Jay's Dance: A Birth Year is another re-re-re-read. I revisited this old favorite as research for a project I'm working on, and I still feel like it should be a requisite gift for all expectant mothers. Rural Hours, by Susan Fenimore Cooper. This book has been on my to-read list for decades. It's one of the first American books of nature writing written by a woman (it predates Walden by four years), written by the daughter of James Fenimore Cooper. It travels around a year, from March through the following February (with a bit of a following summer tacked on at the end), and contains Cooper's observations of trees, birds, the lake, and her neighbors and the townspeople of Cooperstown in Upstate New York. She has a keen eye for the goings on in nature all around her and a delightful way of expressing herself, and while she can be a bit preachy at times, she expresses a well-earned righteous indignation about the abuse of the natural world, through wanton cutting of trees and killing of wildlife, etc, in her time and place. I read it over the course of a year, and I found our natural calendar here in Maine hews closely to that of hers in New York. Fiction Because I was working hard to finish Sisters of the Earth, I didn't take much time for reading fiction. But I did finish the final of four Jacqueline Kirby novels by Elizabeth Peters, Naked Once More. This is probably the best of the series, with a nice twisty plot and some fun insights into the main character's writing life, which I like to think reflects EP's notions (there are some choice lines about other people demanding the writer's time and attention). I also read A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers, the first book in the Monk & Robot series. I don't often read speculative novels, but this one was a Christmas gift, and C read it first and enjoyed it. It is a gentle, lovely book about friendship and humanity. I loved that it was a futuristic story but not one mired in the desolation of a dystopian post-apocalyptic world. There might have been an apocalyptic event that led to the reorganized of society that appears in the pages--there are passing references to "the transition"--but the world the character travels through is actually really pleasant and lovely, even though they are restless and looking for more. By coincidence, I got C the second book in the series as a Christmas gift (I happened to like the cover) and as soon as I find what he did with it after he finished it, I plan to read it too. What have you been reading?  Well, here we are, possibly at the bitter end of the American experiment, still reading books made out of paper, but for how much longer? Hopefully we'll manage to smuggle books into Musk's forced labor camps. On that cheerful note, here's what I read last month:
Fiction Mattaponi Queen by Belle Boggs. I'm writing about Boggs's nonfiction book, The Art of Waiting, (which, now that I think about it should also be on this stack, because I reread it last month as well), and wanted to get a taste of her fiction. I really enjoyed the stories that make up Mattaponi Queen--which is a series of linked stories whose characters overlap in various ways in this small, rural community in the southeast (I'm gonna say Virginia?). The characters were interesting and charming, and the stories were satisfying in a way that short stories often aren't. While Christmas shopping, I came across this fat collection of the first three (of four) Jacqueline Kirby novels by Elizabeth Peters: The Seventh Sinner, The Murders of Richard III, and Die for Love. These are wildly entertaining murder mysteries with university librarian (turned romance novelist in later books) and amateur sleuth Jacqueline Kirby as the main character (who also happens to be one of the rare middle aged mothers of grown children who get to also be glamorous protagonists). All three books involve small, insular groups of particularly wacky characters: foreign students with art or archaeology fellowships in Rome; a society devoted to clearing Richard III of the murders of his nephews; and romance novelists and their fans. The first two have the clever device of being written from the POV of a secondary character; the third one hops around among Jacqueline's POV and that of at least two other characters in a jarring fashion. The third book also starts out with an exceptionally outrageous premise and very kooky characters, so I was prepared to not enjoy it, but it comes around over time (or one gets used to the weird cast of unbelievable people). Nonfiction I just happened to pick up How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell because it was shelved next to a book I was actually looking for at the bookstore. I was surprised by how little of a how-to it was, considering the title (I guess maybe we don't need to be told how to just chill, though maybe we do?). It was, in fact, a lot of philosophical musing on American culture, which I found interesting if a little slow at times. That being said, it's an excellent book for these times, considering how the way we've handed over our attention to some of the worst people on earth over the last 20 years, making them extraordinarily wealthy (through both advertising and monetizing our data) and putting them in position to destroy democracy. Unrelated to any specific advice from the book (of which there's very little), I've done a number of things to withdraw my attention from the corporate overlords most directly responsible fore or collaborative with the current coup d'etat in Washington:
 I'll be teaching three different nature poetry or nature journaling workshops over the next couple of months in Jefferson and Augusta:
Writing the Weather, Hidden Valley Nature Center, Jefferson, ME, February 15, 2025 We never know what to expect of the weather in February--from deep freeze and heavy snows to an early thaw and springlike breezes, the month can bring almost any kind of weather. In this nature writing workshop, we'll take inspiration from whatever the sky gives us and, through a combination of word play, visualization, and making metaphors, we'll generate poems that invoke, personify, and celebrate the weather in its many different guises. We'll alternate among standing group exercises, sitting to write, and walking around to get our blood flowing, so please dress appropriately for staying warm outside, and consider bringing an insulated pad to sit on. Journaling Backyard Birds, Viles Arboretum, Augusta, ME, April 1, 8, 15, and 22 Amy Tan’s delightful book The Backyard Bird Chronicles demonstrates how careful observation and recording of the activities of the feathered visitors to our yards and feeders can turn these mysterious wild creatures into familiar friends, each with its own story to tell. Join us for a creative and inspiring workshop that combines birdwatching, writing, and art to deepen your connection to nature. In this four-session workshop, we’ll read and discuss select passages from The Backyard Bird Chronicles and use these as inspiration to create illustrated journals of our own bird observations. Through in-class lessons and take-home exercises, participants will:
Poetry is for the Birds, Hidden Valley Nature Center, Jefferson, ME, April 5, 2025 Birds have long been a source of inspiration to poets around the world. With April marking the beginning of bird migration season in Maine, what better time to explore our feathered friends through poetry of our own? In this workshop, we'll walk into HVNC, looking and listening for birds. We'll talk about birds as symbols, metaphors, and poetic subjects in their own right; look at examples of bird poetry; and use the ideas and images we've gathered to create poems about the birds we encounter--or imagine--while in the nature center. Be sure to dress for the weather, including periods of sitting still outdoors, and consider bringing an insulated pad to sit on. Click on the titles above to register (keep an eye on my Workshops page for a link to the April HVNC workshop, which should be available in the next few weeks). Both HVNC workshops are free! The Arboretum one is $100 for all four weeks. Hope to see you there!  December seems so long ago, already, but here's what I read last month.
Nonfiction: I finished The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl, which I'd started in December 2023, reading one essay per week over the course of a year (this is how the book is organized--seasonally). The essays are lovely contemplations of the natural world around Renkl's home in Nashville and about the larger issues facing that world--climate change, habitat loss, pesticides, etc. It's a soothing, sad, and hopeful book all at once, and beautifully illustrated with her brother's collages. As my family can attest, I've been obsessed with cults lately, an obsession that began with listening to Amanda Montell's podcast Sounds Like a Cult (which mostly pokes fun at the cultish aspects of everyday elements of pop culture, but sometimes delves into more sinister cult land) and was soon followed by regular watching of docuseries about cults (have you watched The Vow yet?). So of course I had to read Montell's book, which is an engaging, accessible, and fascinating analysis of the way language is used by cult leaders to create in-groups, coerce members, and stifle questioning and dissent (a great phrase I learned is "thought-terminating cliche." I wish I had this term in my lexicon back when I worked in the 9-5 world). Fiction I recently picked up a copy of Albert Camus's The Stranger, because I remembered it having a big impact on me when I read it in high school, but I couldn't remember why (all I remembered about it, in fact, was a sense of blinding, hot sun on a Tunisian beach). Reading it again now, I still don't know why it seemed so life changing at the time. It is beautifully written (although this is a different translation than the book I read 30-odd years ago)--in simple, spare language that nevertheless evokes vivid images and carries the reader through pages where, other than the one significant event of the story, not much happens. I think perhaps it made an in impression because it was so unlike anything I'd ever read before, and because the narrator was so direct and unapologetic in his disbelief in god, which I might have found a little shocking then, a year or two into recovery from a childhood in Catholicism. I don't know if I should say I enjoyed reading it--because it's kind of a bleak, unhappy story--but I do feel drawn to read more Camus. On the lighter side, I picked up Still as Death by Sarah Stewart Taylor at a used book store. I've been meaning to check out her work, and this is one of her earlier books (the third, I believe). I was excited because the main character is an art historian, and because there's a gold mummy case on the cover. "Could this be my new Elizabeth Peters?" I thought. Alas, it was not. The book lacked Ms. Peters's sense of humor and her madcap plots. It was, in fact, rather slow, and the moment of crisis not terribly exciting (not once did I think he protagonist was going to be murdered herself), with a lot of side characters who each get their own chapters (to establish potential motives for murder, I guess), which is not my favorite. I haven't given up, though--I will try a more recent book by the author. Because Still as Death was moving so slowly (I mean, we were like 100 pages in before anyone even gets murdered!), I grabbed another mystery with an art historian protagonist off the shelf--Borrower of the Night, by Elizabeth Peters (natch), the first Vicky Bliss book, to try to analyze what I enjoy so much about EP's writing (snappy dialogue, doesn't waste time giving every character's resume or moving them around in space, great historical storyline intersecting with the novel's storyline, but the historical info woven in seamlessly, scary old castle, seances, absurd antics), and I ended up reading it straight through. (To be fair, the only murders in this book took place hundreds of years in the past, so maybe it's not the dead body that generates tension, but action and reaction, sinister characters, and creepy goings-on.) Finally, I had The Mistletoe Murder, a book of short stories by PD James, in my stack of seasonal reads, and during a rare lull in the holiday preparations, I picked it up to read again, and discovered I'd only read the first story in the past, so I finished up the remaining three or four stories--and they were all tight, clever, and compelling. I didn't read it in an analytical frame of mind, so I'm not sure what exactly made James a master, but she truly was. Also, in the holiday spirit, I reread "Santaland Diaries" by David Sedaris, like I do every Christmas, which is one of my favorite traditions. It's time for the 12th annual I Did It! post, in which I celebrate my accomplishments large and small over the past year. Previous years can be viewed here: 2023, 2022, 2021 (Apocalypse Year 2) 2020 (Apocalypse Year 1), 2019 (including decade-in-review), 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013.  Writing In 2024, I wrote:
I also:
 Travel and Adventure There was no way 2024 could top 2023 in the travel department, but looked at on its own, it was a pretty good year.
 I also made a goal in the fall of 2023 to visit the beach at least once a month, all year long. When January of 2023 came, I made that a goal of visiting a different beach every month of 2024. I managed to visit the beach at least once a month during 2024, hitting at least one different one in every month but December, for a total of 16 -18 different beaches in 2024 (depending on how you count them). I collected sand in little jars at all of them as well (only I accidentally threw out October's sand).  Arts and Crafts
Household C and I did a major amount of home improvements this year, including:
All in all, 2024 was a full and fulfilling year. I see a lot of things I want to carry over into 2025 and a few things I'd like to do differently. That's what the year-end review is all about.  Amanda K. Jaros, author of the forthcoming book In My Boots: A Memoir of Five Million Steps on the Appalachian Trail wrote a lovely review of Uphill Both Ways over at Mom Egg Review. She writes:
"Uphill Both Ways is more than a hiking travelogue, more than a motherhood journal, more than a natural history reader. It is one woman’s attempt to unify the pieces of her life in search of happiness. It’s also a reminder to other women out there. You don’t have to be just one thing." You can read the whole review here.  As the days grow shorter, that doesn't mean you have to curtail your outdoor explorations! In my latest article for Green & Healthy Maine (Winter 2024), "Oh, What a Night! Exploring Maine's Winter Wilds after Dark," I share lots of ideas for exploring the wilds at night, from stargazing to owl-prowling. Look for a copy at your local co-op, coffee shop, or tourist information center. Or read the article online here.
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