As of today, there are exactly 100 days left in 2022...
As of today, there are exactly 100 days left in 2022...
This week we explore pen snobbery, banned books, a unique kind of irony, and my own reading hubris.
Eight great things worth sharing this week:
As a dedicated pen snob, I loved hearing that Taylor Swift has only three genres of songs in her mind: Quill Lyrics, Fountain Pen Lyrics, and Glitter Gel Pen Lyrics. She explains the three categories here.
In the wake of news that 1,600 books were banned in the 2021-22 school year, George M. Johnson (author of the banned memoir All Boys Aren’t Blue) told ABC News “It's been bittersweet to see our stories be attacked in this way, but it is also amplifying many of our stories…” Yes. Maybe pick one up here.
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I assume you’re not in the car reading this, but next time you ARE driving, put on the song Laid by James. It’s an epically fun one to sing along to.
Less, by Andrew Sean Greer (a 2018 Pulitzer winner) is one of my favorite books, and so it with mixed feelings I share the news that the sequel was released this week: Less Is Lost. Sequels rarely live up to the originals, and frankly I’m afraid to read the New York Times review because I hate spoilers. I guess I’m just going to have to read the book and form an opinion of my own.
Didn’t know there was a season for mindfulness? Apparently there is, and it is autumn: “Psychologists have found that the thought of change, the ending of one thing, the beginning of another… underlies a great deal of anxiety. Some of us struggle with ‘intolerance of uncertainty,’ as experts call it, more than others.” Spoiler alert: meditation can help.
Nerd Word of the Week: Accismus ~ a form of irony in which a person feigns indifference to or pretends to refuse something he or she desires. To which I say, I totally don’t even care if you buy my book.
Not to brag or anything, but I’m 6 books ahead of schedule for my GoodReads reading challenge for 2022. Given how awesome I am, I guess it’s time to finally crack open The Dawn of Everything. That doorstopper will slow me down a bit. What are you reading through these last 100 days of 2022?
Happy writing, my friends,
April
I just finished The Radium Girls by Kate Moore, and the further I got into it the more I felt my blooc pressure rising. The women at the heart of this story (non-fiction, meticulously researched) were the catalyst for the establishment of OSHA and workers' rights legislation. But that came at a huge cost, with so many of them dying horrible deaths because of their exposure to radium when they were painting luminous dials for clocks, watches, and controls on planes and other military equipment. Of course, they were told repeatedly by their employers that there was no danger, and then called liars when they tried to hold those companies accountable. So well done, as was her first book, The Woman They Could Not Silence. I will read anything Kate Moore chooses to write about.
This is my first visit to your blog. I enjoyed your newsletter quite a bit.
I'm ahead on my reading challenge as well, but the stats are muddy, since my daughter's Kindle reads are counted as well. I'll subtract her books at the end of the year.
I've already read the doorstoppers 'The Three Body Problem' series and the 'Lord of the Rings' this year. I'll read some of the Monster Hunter series I haven't read before and then some of the Innkeeper series by Ilona Andrews.