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 had deleted my Twitter account a long time ago, not long after the nazi took it over (even before he was sieg heiling on TV it was obvious who/what he was).
  
• I deleted my Meta (Facebook and Instagram) accounts. (I would delete WhatsApp too, except I'd have to download the app to do it, and I refuse to give Zuckerberg even that much of a data hit.) (Also, I deleted Twitter at least a year ago--way before it became clear that Musk was the one person most likely to bring down the USA).
• I deleted my Goodreads account. (I rarely use Amazon for anything else--maybe order off it once a year, never go to Whole Foods, never watch anything on Prime, and I have maybe six books in Kindle, which I don't care about losing. I buy books from local bookstores or off bookshop.org, and I get my audiobooks are on Libro.fm. I have a half dozen books on Kindle, which I wouldn't care about losing either. Did you know that bookshop.org now has ebooks? And of course, there's the library.)
• I'm trying to figure out how to disentangle from Google. I already avoided using Chrome, and I'd quit the search engine months ago because it had become such garbage (I've been using Duck Duck Go, but now I'm trying Ecosia). I never switched my email to gmail because I didn't want to deal with the hassle, and now I'm immensely grateful for that bit of laziness. But I have a lot of stuff on Google Drive, which I'm now downloading to my hard drive and deleting, at the rate of one folder every day or so. I'll also be looking for an alternative file sharing platform (suggestions welcome). I also have a huge archive of my old blogspot/blogger blog, which I don't want to delete, because and can't afford to turn into a book (it would cost about $1000 due to the amount of entries I have!).
• I'm trying to be intentional about minimizing time spent scrolling (having deleted those other social media accounts, I joined Substack and Bluesky, which have the same addictive qualities--especially when horrors and atrocities are being committed by the minute). Instead, I'm focusing on spending time on analog activities: reading (paper books!), walking in the woods, drawing and painting, yoga, writing letters, going to museums, getting together with friends. This, I think, is the message somewhat buried in How to Do Nothing: that for a fulfilling and meaningful life, we need to live in the real world. Attention is not only money, it is power, and what we give our attention to we give our power to; so I want to take my power back from pixels and billionaires and direct it toward things that I love.

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:

• Learn the basics of nature drawing and writing.
• Develop skills in observing and recording bird behavior.
• Cultivate a creative practice that fosters a deeper appreciation for the natural world.

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.

Writing
In 2024, I wrote:

• 16 essays
• 2 short stories
• 100 poems
• 2 articles
• 2 chapters of a nonfiction book
• 19 blog posts
• 11 newsletters (and switched from Mailchimp to Substack)

My submission/acceptance stats for the year are:

• 10 essay/story submissions​
• 2 book proposal submissions
• 3 grant applications
• 1 contest submission
• 1 residency application

• 3 acceptances
• 1 third-place award

2024 publications*:

• "Joyful Noise" Spelt Magazine, Issue 11, December 2024 
• "Oh, What a Night! Exploring Maine's Winter Wilds after Dark" Green & Healthy Maine Winter Guide, Winter 2024
• "Walking in Place" Still Point Arts Quarterly, Fall 2024
• "At Home in the Trees" Northern Woodlands, Summer 2024
• "Discover Maine's Undersea World" Green & Healthy Maine Summer Guide, Summer 2024
• "Two Cent Bridge" Writing Waterville Chapbook, Waterville Creates, May 2024
• "Writers on Not Writing" The Masters Review, May 2024
• "Finding Answers in Nature" Literary Mama blog, February 2024
• "Fledging Season" Labor of Love: A Literary Mama Staff Anthology, ​January 2024

​*Publication stats and submission stats don't line up because some publications occurred outside the normal submission process, and some resulted from submissions made during the previous year.

I also:

• Continued meeting with my writing group and my creativity circle
• Attended 2 writing conferences (Terry Plunkett Poetry Festival and Maine CrimeWave)
• Completed training to become a certified book coach in both fiction and memoir
• Worked with my first paid book coaching client
• Taught 3 nature poetry workshops and 1 nature journaling workshop
• Attended at least 5 literary events/book readings
• Had 1 book promotion event for Uphill Both Ways
• Participated in book promotion events for 2 anthologies I was part of

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.

• We went on a family camping trip (minus one child who was really traveling at the time) to our usual place over Memorial Weekend.
• C and I drove two kids to Vermont for a hike on the long trail and made it into a tiny break.
• I drove back to Vermont to pick up said kids (which wasn't much of a trip, but still interesting).
• C and I went to Roosevelt Campobello and Prince Edward Island for our 25th wedding anniversary.

After our trip to Europe in 2023, I wanted to find ways to recreate some aspects of the experience of traveling while staying close to home. Because visiting museums is something we often do when in new places, I made a goal of visiting at least 24 museums last year, which I came close to meeting, if you count the second visits I made to two of them:

1. Portland Museum of Art
2. Peary MacMillan Arctic Museum
3. Danforth Gallery at University of Maine at Augusta (2x)
4. Colby College Art Museum (2x)
5. Maine Maritime Museum
6. Schupf Art Gallery
7. Waterville Historical Society Apothecary Museum
8. Museum of Beadwork
9. Casco Bay Arts Gallery
10. LC Bates Museum
11. Bowdoin Art Museum
12. Frank Brockman Gallery
13. Langlais Art Preserve
14. Roosevelt Cottage
15. Anne of Green Gables Heritage Site
16. Confederation Center for the Arts Gallery
17. Bates College Art Museum
18. Maine MILL
19. Ogonquit Museum of American Art
20. Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens

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

• Painted several watercolors for my Europe journal
• Created two more mosaics (an address plaque and a Christmas star)
• Made 13 pairs of recycled sweater mittens, a Fiestaware puzzle, and three ornaments for Christmas gifts

Household
C and I did a major amount of home improvements this year, including:

• Repainted the mudroom and painted the interior surface of the front door
• Repainted the sunroom walls and ceiling
• Touch-up painted the bedroom and some other rooms of the house 
• Decluttered and cleaned every shelf, drawer, and surface
• Made some minor repairs and woodworking finishing touches
• Repainted an repurposed a few pieces of furniture
• Donated boxes and bags of used books, housewares, and clothing

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.

I started this month reading a book about World War II (and Nazi collaborators in England) and one about the history of witch trials, for no other reason than I'd been recently given the first one and had bought the second one at a literary Halloween bash. Both felt portentous, and not in a good way, once the election results came in--not the way we want life to imitate art.

Nonfiction
Bring Down the Little Birds by Giménez Smith. I don't often read pregnancy and new motherhood memoirs these days, now that I'm nearing the far end of that journey, but I've been seeking out books that incorporate themes of motherhood and nature. This one does not have much to say about nature, but it's still a lovely meditation on a second pregnancy and on motherhood and daughterhood. It would make a wonderful gift to an expectant or new mother.

Wintering by Katherine May. I've been meaning to read this book for a while, and I finally picked it up on the day after the election, when I was consolation shopping at one of my favorite bookstores. I figured now would be a good time for settling in to a little self-care. I really enjoyed this book, but it is an incredibly quiet read (as might be expected from the title), and I think May really lucked out by its being published during the pandemic, when lots of people were looking for ways to cope with a period of wintering. I have a hard time imagining it being a bestseller otherwise in our normally frenetic world. (And let me reiterate--I enjoyed it a lot, and I'm happy that it became a bestseller. I'm just amazed also.)

Witchcraft: A History in 13 Trials by Marion Gibson. I've been wanting to do more research into the history of witch trials for a while, and this book was a good place to start, focusing on 13 specific cases where a person or group of people were accused of and tried for witchcraft, and how the religious and political milieu of the time fed into the charges and trials. I learned a lot, and was surprised to find out that witch trials began a lot later in history than I had understood (coming into prominence during the reformation years, beginning in the 16th century; I had thought they were common in Medieval times, thanks mostly to Monty Python). It was also interesting / distressing to note the way that humans blame all of society's problems on marginalized members who have the least amount of power (usually women in the case of witch trials, and often women who were also poor, disabled, outsiders, or in some way "other"), and to consider the way this scapegoating continues to this day.

Fiction
Mr. Churchill's Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal. This is a murder mystery/spy thriller set in London during WWII, in which a young woman gets a clerical job in the Prime Minister's office, while someone in her inner circle is spying for Nazi sympathizers. It was a good read, and would have been a lot more fun if it didn't feel like history is repeating itself in the modern era.

Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutano. This book, by contrast, was all fun: a madcap caper in which the main character accidentally kills her blind date and her mother and three aunties all pitch in to help dispose of the body, in the midst of putting on a spectacular wedding. One farcical calamity after another occurs, leaving the reader breathless wondering how they would get out of their mess unscathed.

Sisters in Crime edited by Marilynn Wallace. I picked this book up at a library book sale, and it was so much fun--a collection of short mystery stories by many of the big names of mystery from the 1980s (it was published in 1989). It left me wondering if the 1980s can be considered a second golden age of (women) mystery writers?

Discipline by Debra Spark. I recently met Debra Spark at a book event in a nearby town, and while I'd heard her name bandied about in the Maine literary world, I hadn't ready anything by her, so I picked up her latest, in which an art appraiser discovers that the art she's been hired to value has gone missing. This leads down the path of the history of the paintings, which includes a case of mistaken identity of the actual artist, a child's experience at an abusive school for troubled kids, and other subplots, as well as the main character's struggle to connect with her own teenage son. It sounds like the plot of a thriller, but it's not, which is kind of an intriguing thought: take a plot premise and make it into either a literary novel or a thriller (or another genre). Can that be done with any story? Either way, I enjoyed the story, and Debra's writing style, and I'll be looking out for more books by her.

When I was a baby, I earned the distinction of being the youngest library card holder at our local library, and I remained a continuous library card holder for nearly half a century. One time, years ago, I lost my wallet at a street fair in a nearby town, and when I picked it up at the police station (with all the cash still present--thank you kind people of Hallowell), the cop who handed it back to me said, "You sure have a lot of library cards." My wallet still held my Jessup Library card, from when I was in college in Bar Harbor, Maine, my Aurora, Colorado, card, from my year there in the AmeriCorps, my Littleton, Colorado, library card, from where my parents were living at the time, my Maine State Library card, and my Gardiner, Maine, card, from the town I lived in then. I kept my Gardiner card going, for an annual fee, for years after we moved away, because our town didn't have a library, nor did it have a relationship with another town's library. But during the pandemic, when a trip to the library meant checking out books through a window, as if they were an order of French fries, I let my Gardiner card lapse, even though I rarely wandered the aisles to check out in-house books, rather relying on interlibrary loans ordered through the Minerva system. With the pandemic came a conundrum: I couldn't order books without renewing my card, but there was no point in going to the library to renew my card when there weren't any books waiting there for me. I instead focused on trying to read down my TBR pile, while also refilling it with obsessive online purchases. For the first time in my life, I was without a library card. (Technically I still had, and still have, a Maine State Library card, but that institution, along with its neighbor the State Museum, used the pandemic as an opportunity to move out and repair the leaky building they were both housed in, and there's no sign of either of them opening up again in the near future.)

In the meantime, a scrappy group of volunteers in my town turned a pile of donated books and a drafty old grange hall into a library. I had visited early on, to donate a bunch of children's books, but hadn't been back until this September, when I was invited to give a reading. It was a delightful event, and the library is a wonderful space. At the end of my reading, I signed up for a library card, which I picked up earlier this month, when I checked out my first book.

Nonfiction
Educated, by Tara Westover. I know I'm about six years late to the party on this one, but I've been meaning to read it since it came out, and when I spied it in the library's stacks, I realized the time had come. I brought it home on a Wednesday afternoon, stayed up way too late that night reading, and finished it the next morning. It was that gripping--harrowing and shocking. I mean, I'm not surprised that there's abuse and gaslighting and family members treating each other terribly, but I'm still shocked by seeing this brutality laid out, line by line, paragraph after paragraph. I went into it expecting one of those books that's a good story but mediocre, but it was beautifully written, from the overall structure to the individual sentences.

Fiction
The Lottery and other Stories by Shirley Jackson. I kept going on my Shirley Jackson kick with a reread of The Lottery. It had been over ten years since I read it last in graduate school--the whole book, I mean, not the story "The Lottery," which I've surely read a few times over that time. I was delighted to find how much I still love these stories. They're creepy and quirky and mundane and insightful and chilling and pitch perfect.

Broken Harbor by Tana French. This is a police procedural, with a the propulsive pace of thriller. I was totally sucked in for about the first half of the book, but then I started to find the minute-by-minute narration of every second of the detective's work on the case a little tedious. Around that time there was also a moment where the narrator (first-person) zooms out, as if he's narrating from some distance in the future and comments how a certain event was the moment when something important occurred, even though the whole rest of the book, before and after, is written as if in the narrator is experiencing it all in real time. I wondered at first if this was a clever technique on the writer's part, or just a weird slip of the pen. I decided that it was a slip (or a sloppy choice) since it distracted me for the rest of the book. Finally, the events led the murderer to do what they did were just way too farfetched. So I give it a "meh." Maybe I'll try another--she's apparently a highly regarded writer--but I won't rush out to do so.

The Dark on the Other Side by Barbara Michaels. I've been trying to stop myself from going back and reading more Barbara Michaels until I get through my whole TBR pile (which just keeps growing so it's a hopeless task), but I happened to run across this one and I didn't remember anything about it, which made me think I hadn't ever read it before (I later checked my blog posts and found I last read it in 2018). What intrigued me is that there is a male main character (with occasional exchanges of POV w/ a female character), which Barbara rarely does, so of course I had to read it and see what that was like. It was a delightful read--and perfect for October, with a witch and werewolf (or is it a gaslighting husband?) theme. So fun!

Scat by Carl Hiassan. This is another of the books I found in the boys' closet and which I read because I felt sorry for it, having never been read by my kids (though M told me later that he had read it, so I needn't have fretted). It's a cute story about a couple of kids who get tangled up with a biology professor and a Hayduke kind of character who are trying to protect a swamp and the Florida panther who lives there from some oil development guys. It was a fun read, and it's too bad my other two kids missed out!

Poetry
Sparrow Envy and Joy is the Justice We Give Ourselves by J. Drew Lanham. I loved both of these books so much. The poems are about birds and wild things and history and social justice and human nature. They make you think and make you feel. Some are joyful, yes, while others tend toward the heart-wrenching end of the emotional scale. But all are beautiful. 

September was another read-ey month--still in summer hammock mode, I guess. My book selections this month were all over the map. My reading lists are usually pretty diverse, but I think this month could win a prize for weirdest combination of books. Working our way from the bottom up, we have:

Fiction
The Cliffs by J. Courtney Sullivan. C heard a review about this book on NPR and he thought it sounded right up my alley--a coastal Maine setting, a spooky old house, ghosts, women's history, a woman seeking to reset her trajectory midlife--and ordered it for my birthday. It was okay (I don't usually like to say anything negative about books here, but since this one's a Reece's Book Club pick, I think it can handle it). There was *so much* exposition throughout--starting with a many page prologue. Whole life stories of characters and whole histories of groups of people told in pages and pages of summary and information dumping. And while those stories and histories were interesting, they did not read like a contemporary novel. It felt like the author did a lot of research and wanted to reader to know it. Or that she was on deadline and didn't have time to revise the summaries into scenes. Also, the ghost story just kinda fizzled out. 

Anne of Windy Poplars by L.M. Montgomery. This is the fourth book in the Anne of Green Gables series, and the last one that I bought in PEI. I continued to enjoy Montgomery's writing, the saga of Anne's life, and the details of that time on PEI, as I did to through the second and third book, but I also continued to miss the spunky Anne of the original. I don't think I'll go on to read the next four, although I do want to see her and Gilbert finally married.

The Sundial by Shirley Jackson. I'm still going with my Shirley Jackson kick, that was (re)set off after reading her collected letters last month. The Sundial is a strange book (no surprises there!), about a wealthy family who hole up in their big house in anticipation of the end of the world--which was foretold to one of the characters by her dead father. The entire story centers on the interactions and relationships among the characters--the remaining members of the family and a few friends and strangers who come to join their small cult--and their various ways of preparing the future that will come after everything outside of their realm is destroyed. It's wryly funny while at the same time feeling like a cutting indictment of human nature (but what is it saying about human nature, exactly?). And it's a murder mystery without a solution. I'm still pondering what I think of it two weeks after I finished reading.

Flush by Carl Hiaasen. I don't normally read YA or middle grade fiction (now that I don't have  kids around to read to, and if you don't count Anne of GG, which I guess is maybe a YA?), but I was getting a bunch of books ready to go to the library book store, and this book, along with another by the same author, appeared as if they'd never even been opened, and I felt bad about that so I decided to read them both before I sent them on. Flush is about a kid whose dad has gone to jail for sinking a boat that he suspects of dumping pollution into the bay near the characters' home in the Florida Keys. Despite the clear young reading level, the pacing, development of setting and characters, and buildup of suspense, and even the stakes make it an engaging read. What a bummer for my kids that they didn't give it a try!

Nonfiction
The Quickening by Elizabeth Rush. I've always been fascinated by Antarctica, and when I was in my 20s, I looked into going there to work at one of the US research bases, but since I had no useful skills, there wasn't anything I could reasonably apply for. I still don't have any useful skills (why didn't I become a diesel mechanic?), so I probably won't ever make it there, unless I reach a place where I could qualify for a National Science Foundation artist residency. That is how Elizabeth Rush found herself on a boat for several weeks, plying Antarctic waters to study the Thwaites Glacier. In The Quickening, Rush tells the story of this voyage and her interactions with the scientists and crew members on board the boat, while also contemplating pregnancy and parenthood, which she's put on hold for a year in order to participate in the trip, and interviewing her fellow passengers about their birth and parenting experiences. Through telling the story in this way, Rush aims to subvert the typical Polar travel story of white men setting out to discover and conquer the ice caps and replace it with a story of nurturing and care, and seeing Antarctica and its glaciers not as terra incognita, but as an animate, entity, a driver in our human story. It's a beautiful, thoughtful, and engaging read.

The Book of (More) Delights by Ross Gay. I loved this book every bit as much as I loved The Book of Delights. It's the same format: short essays about whatever it is that delighted the author on the particular day of writing--figs, a notebook, a visit with a friend, etc. Totally quotidian things elevated to magic through Gay's *delightful* way of seeing the world. (I almost typed "Ross's" up there, because after reading three books of essays by the guy, I feel like he's a friend.)

Craft & Current by Janisse Ray. I've been following along with Janisse Ray's Journey in Place (which she describes  as a "year-long correspondence course in place-knowing) all year, and I've read three of her books. I like her way of writing and looking at the world, and so was happy to get in on crowd funding this writing craft book. It has some useful ideas and frameworks and ways of approaching writing, which I'm already trying to put into practice, but what I found most interesting were the bits of memoir about her journey to becoming a writer.

Poetry
Indwelling by Libby Maxey. When my former co-editor at Literary Mama came out with a second book of poetry this summer, I ordered it right away, and then promptly lost it among a pile of books and papers. Amid a subsequent flurry of cleaning and reorganizing, it resurfaced and I've been savoring a poem or two a day all month. Libby's (I can use her first name because we really are friends) writes in sonnets and other traditional forms, which gives the poems a pleasing feeling of timelessness. While at the same time, it's thrilling to discover within the strict structures of these poems thoroughly modern and everyday moments, like a truck stuck in the snow, an encounter with a turtle in the grass, sheets hanging on the line in winter, cheese purchased at a farm stand, the things left behind in an abandoned house. The combination weaves together the past and the present, history and personal experience.

Audiobooks
C and I listened to the fourth Rivers of London book by Ben Aaronovich, Broken Homes. But it was a challenge, because we've been listening after we go to bed at night, and C kept falling asleep, because he's back to teaching and getting up early, and we'd have to replay half of the previous night's selection every night, and we were both confused about what was going on. A long drive to Massachusetts and back helped us through a big chunk of the book, but I think we'll have to wait until we need to drive a long ways before picking up with book #5.

Because I listened to the whole Thursday Murder Club series (over and over again), I felt compelled to get the latest Richard Osman book, We Solve Murders via audio as well. Also it was narrated by Nicola Walker, which is reason enough. The book, which is the start of a new series, is every bit as delightful as the TMC books. A bodyguard, her retired-cop father-in-law, and a world-famous thriller writer go on madcap caper from South Carolina to St. Lucia to Ireland to Dubais with assassins and cartel bosses and money launderers chasing after them, and vice-versa. Yes, the bodies do pile up, but it's all in good fun. Nothing gruesome or disturbing. Just highjinks and hilarity.