Devon Trevarrow Flaherty's Blog, page 25

How to Write in a Fascinating, Small Town

Working even while staying with my friend (while she works).

I can’t seem to get much published (yet. I’m being a little facetious as I’ve technically only been doing this full-time, head-on for a few months, during which I had two family vacations, Covid, and some major life transitions). These days, actually, I am sitting down to work, heading on Tuesdays to my workshare, attending workshops, etc. With that in mind, the writing colony where I was just in residence was a kick-off of my returned career, post-homeschool.

I have arrived!

In the past seven years, while homeschooling, residencies became a way for me to carve out just a week every year to put thousands of words on the page, to take leaps when most of the time I was barely crawling through writing and edits (and not doing much else because it wasn’t my primary job). My first and most oft-repeated residency is in North Carolina at the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities (aka. the haunted mansion), but I have applied to (and attended) some other residencies more recently. For 2022, I received a residency from The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow. Now, when I applied, I was imagining Arkansas to be closer to North Carolina (driving-wise) and also didn’t register in my brain that Eureka Springs was at the farthest corner of that intriguing state. However, when I already had an offer, it seemed like the right moment to go and so I lined up the residency for the fall and watched the flight prices…. and watched, and watched and… finally decided to drive the sixteen hours or bust (breaking up the journey there with a much-awaited stop in St. Louis to see a college friend).

My suite, the Margaret Wise Brown.

The Writers’ Colony was basically as I expected. Quiet. A pleasant stay in comfortable accommodations and pretty views. Within walking distance to the small town (pop. around 2000). Delicious meals prepared on-site and served family-style during conversation with the other writers. As advertised and much-appreciated. Perhaps the only “surprise” was just how quiet and composed the whole residency experience was. But on the other hand, Eureka Springs never ceased with the surprises and is the polar opposite of “quiet.” I very quickly came up with a Writers Colony plan: wake up and get right to work. Take a break in the afternoon for exploring the area. Return for the community dinner and then get back to work until bedtime. Sleep and repeat. Turns out, The Writers Colony is one of those residencies where a writer is not only supposed to get stuff done (though they are), the stay is also supposed to inspire the writer. As a self-proclaimed adventurer, I was like a kid in a candy store. Eureka Springs is fascinating, and not only do I see myself returning for another residency, I also have no doubt my husband and I will be returning to the town for a vacation.

My en suite workspace.

Let’s mine my journal. (If you’d rather read about the writing, skip six paragraphs.)

Day One Excerpt: For my afternoon tourist break I walked the Harmon Loop, except the ladies in the office and I couldn’t find the start, so I walked Spring Street down to Crescent Trail up, a makeshift Harmon Loop that took me past no less than three springs, one grotto, and the most haunted hotel in America. Also, a triceratops statue covered in netting, much Victorian architecture, an open-air church in the woods, smelly garbage, a house with no less than eight rainbow flags, two fairy gardens, and I know I am forgetting many things. It is mountainous, winding, up and down, full of old stone stairs, the roads and sidewalks a crazy disaster, and—like any mountain town—you can’t see what’s right in front of you till you turn the corner. It is just the strangest amalgamation of people and things, drawn here for hundreds, if not thousands, of years by the springs, mostly spiritual types of all stripes. Walking around is actually like being in a dream, except all the people you pass (it’s quiet up this way) smile and greet you. Kevin would definitely enjoy it. So quirky. So historical. So pioneer-y and Ozark-y, which I’m learning is a place I have definitely not been to or experienced before. [Things not mentioned in this entry: Christ of the Ozarks, a ten-foot piece of the Berlin Wall, and the Bible Museum.]

In the middle of town, Basin Spring Park.

Day Two Excerpt: The seventy-minute walking tour began: ten of us plus Jamie (James). He has only just moved here fulltime (after six part-time) but is enamored with the place and works three tourism jobs. How to do this place justice? Nothing is normal. After the Trail of Tears stripped the are of the natives in the 1830s, the town was founded (with an insurgence of 20,000 sickly people in the woods) after some judge leaked the secret location of a healing spring (which did work sometimes, probably because it was pure water in a time with little cleanliness). Many strange decisions ensued, and a muddy river bottom became streets of walls with tunnels underneath, buildings built over a river with tunnels beside, and Victorian houses sprouting up in this backwater, almost lawless, but wealth-attracting Wild West in the Ozarks. What was involved? Prohibition and speakeasies. Bathhouses and bank robbers. Fires, limestone buildings, rock stairs, sixty-four springs, dynamite, famous aficionados, mudslides, cathedrals, hauntings, and always a breath of rebelliousness. I really would like to bring Kevin back here. Oh, and I forgot catacombs, crematoriums, Ripley records, and now—drag shows and a store that has trained rescued rabbits to hand you your receipt. That’s not the half of the interesting things I saw.

Some of the layers (like terraces) of the town. One building has five ground floors.

Day Three Excerpt: …it was time for my trolley (public transit) adventure. I waited a long time at the stop; they show up every half-hour or so. I flashed my phone pass, and the driver waved me on. The next stop, another resident boarded, sat right in front of me and I poked her in the back. She got off awhile later at the bottom end of town and—not completely sure of my own plans—I followed her. At a pet store, we went our separate ways. I wandered in and out of shops, found the bookstore and (!) didn’t like it. I had to wander back to East Meets West so that I could get a souvenir that the bunnies (my attendant was Nacho) helped with. Then I walked to the top of downtown to sit at Brews (coffee shop and bar) with a London Fog (iced) and work for a couple hours.

Day Four Excerpt: Then, while out, I went straight to Cosmic Cavern, closer to Berryville, the fulfillment of a lifelong dream of going down into a roadside, tourist-stop cave. It was really cool (literally and metaphorically), with its own brand of beauty and an enthusiastic tour guide. After more than seventy minutes, I was done with the side-talk about ghost sightings and spiritual receptiveness, but I had enjoyed myself snapping photos. (If I haven’t said it before, people around here are really nice.) That left me the afternoon to work…

Family dinner at The Colony.

Day Five Excerpt: …did little else besides warm leftovers from the kitchen (quinoa and fried egg) before taking off on foot with my small pack crammed. First, over the hill to the Carnegie Library with its limestone building and balconies and finally got my hands on a copy of Beach Read to fulfill a residency tradition. Back up the hill to St. Elizabeth’s Catholic Church—interesting but not exactly awesome—famous as the only church where you enter through the bell tower. Which isn’t attached to the building. Sigh. But it rang as I left through it, the three o-clock hour song. Then up some stairs to the Crescent Hotel, the most haunted hotel in America. Though I walked around the gardens and poked around the ground floor, I was really going for the free (to residents) swimming pool. Alas, though it was sunny and maybe eighty, the water was fuh-reezing (from the nights?) and a little stagnant (because who would be swimming this time of year?). I went down to bathing suit and coverup, read some Beach Read in a deserted cabana at a lonely poolside, put my feet in the water (anti-inflammatory) until my toes froze off (well, almost). Then back down the hill for a shower, more writing, and my last Dairy Hollow dinner.

Sun streaks? Or ghosts?

Day Six Excerpt: …and set out for Lake Leatherwood. Thorncrown Chapel had its open sign out when I drove by so a quick turn in. It is a cool building (made almost entirely of glass), but a little awkward to visit. When I left, the gates were half-closed and the closed sign up (they must host so many weddings), so I just made it! On to Lake Leatherwood, again. It took me some time to find the trailhead, but it was a beautiful day on a mountain lake—kayaking would have been ideal. I stalked two older men for a good half-mile before I rounded a corner and found them sitting on a giant rock up a dry creek bed, side by side and each with one arm around the other, grinning at me, looking so much like little boys it pretty much made my day. I guess they wanted me to get ahead. I saw trees growing on suspended, rock shelves, a squirrel carrying another squirrel in his mouth (?), and a lot of lake, rock, and woods, not unlike what I’ve seen before but rockier and with gently rolling, furred “mountains” as a backdrop. I decided it was my last chance to go to The Blue Spring & Heritage Center, so from the lake I headed there, forgetting it was $14 to enter. The gift shop was being run by middle schoolers but the eldest rattled off any info I asked for and off I went. I would have avoided Buzzards Roost if I had known the horrifying smell of bird poop was enough to warrant signage. Otherwise, a pretty place with thousands of years of history at the cave (like a huge overhang) and spring (funnel-shaped and deep, and also kinda blue). Of most interest to me was that some of the Cherokee stopped there on the Trail of Tears for a few days to wait for stragglers. It was moving/affecting to think of the (often forgotten) suffering of the native peoples. I was headed back before the dinner hour on the one night without group dinner, so, knowing the Corvette Parade was at 6:30, I drove by Red’s Pizza wondering if there was a chance in heck I could park and walk from the park ‘n’ ride for an early dinner. Even better! There was a small parking lot behind and the place was pretty darn slow (everyone getting ready for the parade). The menu was exclusively pizza, bit I was served a real decent, veggie, personal pizza on one of the three or four levels of decks surrounded by quirky décor and strings of light. I would go back there.

Working at Brews.

But what about writing? you well may ask. Though I was a little distracted by the wonders and magic of Eureka Springs, I did get some real work done. I was caught off guard by a kissing scene on day one, and that slowed me down because I don’t write too many of those. Discussing this later with the other residents, it was taken for granted that a kissing scene could, indeed, “sneak up” on a writer, and we chatted merrily about that. Then, after that scene resolved, I realized I was at the three-chapter battle scene and therefore way out of my depth. I can’t seem to QUITE finish this book, but it is seriously almost there. Back in NC, I have put more pages down (totaling 88,000 words so far for the book) and am only a few pages away from the climax. But the battle—indeed, the army—required that I do some thinking, strategizing, and research (for which I was grateful for both the quiet and the internet). The swashbuckling and blood-splattering is taking me more time than if two characters were standing around shooting the breeze, but I’m writing. And I’ll have set The Journey of Clement Fancywater aside for its draft one marination well before Nanowrimo begins on November first. (Blog on that soon to come.)

Book Review: Beach Read

Image from Amazon.com

I have accidentally established a writing residency tradition. Apparently (because this just happened twice and now it’s a thing), I go to a local bookshop when I am in whatever town (well, obviously I would hit up the local bookshops) and I purchase an easy (read: often pop-fiction-y or romantic), engrossing, possibly writer-related book. Then I spend my evenings making space between my daytime screen-brain and my bedtime, reading the book (though it always takes me far less than all the nights—I have brought other books, of course).

With my residency at the Writing Colony at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs last week (I will write about that later), I had a difficult time actually finding a book. That sounds strange, especially since the ones I had on my thoughtlist were extremely popular. But Eureka Springs has ONLY local businesses, absolutely no chains, and unfortunately the two bookstores in town are specialty stores, geared toward naturopathy and spirituality and whatnot. Finally (!) I had the brilliant idea to go to the library (where the residency keeps a card for the Writers Colony) and borrow the book. Perfect! (Except I love owning (used) books and not borrowing them, but I could live through it once.) The library had one copy and it was availabe. I snagged it, thanked yet another super friendly Eurekan, and smirked my way up to the Crescent Hotel swimming pool… for a break, of course.

That is how I read another Emily Henry book, though her books don’t totally fit into the vibes here at The Starving Artist. They are extremely popular and their covers are eye-catching (though I have discovered lately that not only are many of the book covers this same style and color-scheme, but the cover type is spanning genres so it is harder to tell which genre you are even looking at, from the cover. This may be a good thing (especially for reading in public), but it’s also a bit annoying. Right?). I have seen Henry’s three grown-up books in every single bookstore I’ve been in until this residency, with at least one prominently displayed. I reviewed  Book Lovers after my spring 2022 pseudo-residency. Which leads me to another reason I picked it up: Beach Read, like Book Lovers, is about book people. Lovers was about editors (and a book store, plenty of readers, etc.), but this one is about writers (and also has the required bookstore, even a book club).

Image from randompenguinhouse.com

Emily Henry is relatively new on the scene. She wrote YA, publishing from 2016-2019, but then in 2020 she made the fated jump to adult romantic/rom-com with Beach Read. She pumps novels out fast, and by 2022, she has been topping all the right best-selling charts for two years with three rom-com titles and one soon to be released. There isn’t that much publicly known about Henry, as far as I can tell. She lives in Ohio, near Kentucky. She went to Hope College, a small, private, Christian College in Michigan, where she studied creative writing and then did some more schooling in New York. She’s young. She’s pretty. I don’t know if we even know how old she is, actually, but she looks young. Here are her current titles:

The Love That Split the World  (YA)A Million Junes (YA)When the Sky Fell on Splendor (YA)Hello Girls (YA, with another author)Beach ReadPeople We Meet on VacationBook LoversHappy Place (projected 2023)

Beach Read clearly draws in part from some of Henry’s experiences. It takes place predominantly on the east shore of Michigan, in a small town hours from Chicago, with a little beginning in New York City. The main character is January Andrews, a young but not-that-young-anymore romance writer whose father has recently died, throwing a wrench in her career, her effervescent personality, and her picture-perfect, long-term, romantic partnership with a French doctor who cooks beautifully and looks like a dream. The fall-out also includes losing her city apartment and asking life-defining questions about her dad. January ends up stranded in a beach house she doesn’t want to be in in Michigan with a looming deadline, no book or even idea, probably a level of depression, and some relational issues that make everything except her long-distance best friend complicated for the time. Enter the antagonist-slash-romantic interest. (I’m not spoiling anything, you can see it a mile away.) Her mysterious next door neighbor is also a writer, but he writes literary fiction (pinkies up) and is quite grumpy. And though it’s a big surprise he’s there, January and he already have a past. But whose version of the past is right? And when they set up a challenge to get them both out of writer’s block with writing the other person’s genre (and a number of immersive experiences that hop back and forth between the romantic and the dark), will they find their voices again, or just true love?

So, yeah, I already basically said you can see the ending coming from the very beginning of the book. Beach Read definitely feels formulaic and obvious, but this isn’t all bad, especially when you are talking genre fiction meant for readers who, as a group, devour books at an alarming rate and expect certain things (like happy endings, romantic interests with a dark/complicated side, opposites to attract…). Even as a rom-com, there are certain comedic expectations that are all ticked off, too (like the funny, mouthy, extroverted best friend who swoops in a the black moment, running into the romantic interest in embarrassing clothing…). Traditional plot line. A few quirky characters. Part of Henry’s genius, I think, is in sticking to all the genre expectations but doing it better than other writers with clean, clear writing and interesting characters.

Let’s say it this way: Beach Read isn’t built on surprises (at least not many that will actually surprise), but on tension. Which means Henry has to sell the reader some characters they are going to enjoy (for whatever reason), explore those characters and their situations in enough depth, open up a whole lot of questions that will take a long time to be answered, and then create electricity between the lead and the romantic interest. The electricity is key, and Beach Read has plenty of set-up to get the reader rooting for this couple (that seems to be headed both toward love and disaster and you want it to be love). Love with some hot (and some warm) romance scenes along the way. Henry gives us arguments and obstacles, and she gives us passionate kisses that have to end for some reason until much later in the book, things ramping up higher and higher all the time. (Though a little cheesy at times, I admired how Henry was able to keep the big she-bang of sex hanging over the head of reader and antagonist even in a world where these types of characters, as real people, would have fallen into bed with each other much earlier. It really helps build the tension, keeping the reader flipping the pages. It also took some innovative plot twists. I mean, we’re not in Victorian England anymore, and the build-up to romantic passion is generally much, much shorter nowadays.)

While taking place in a town that could really exist somewhere close to where Henry went to college, with people who could be real people in real situations, Beach Read is definitely a fantasy world. Again, this is genre standard, but some of these fantasies felt over-the-top to me, even though I was also secretly living out middle school dreams. (Example: January and Gus accidentally live next door to each other for a summer. Fine. Oh wait, but there’s more. Their houses are mirror images and are like a foot apart, important windows and decks lined up so that they practically live together but with some very helpful barriers.) Many of the plot devices were just fantastical enough that when all put together it read, to me, as a little cheesy. True, I’m not first and foremost a reader of romance or rom-coms, but, okay, something would be forgotten like one time so that the characters would have to move to a more romantic and symbolic location, or they would just prefer/happen to use a notebook and Sharpies to communicate over their smartphones. Cute. But perhaps cheesy. (I also found Henry’s presentation of literary fiction to be problematic. It was, well, off. Inaccurate. It is one of the genres I read most, and to say that it’s all dark and depressing and some other things she says about it is just not correct. So some of those conversational jokes fell flat with me. Only people who accept the reputation of lit fic from the outside (or a very small sampling) would accept some of the gags, here. No doubt Henry nails the romantic genre, though. I assume.)

Of course, because of the estimable execution of the genre staples plus interesting characters, romantic sparks (and fire), and the writerly world thrown in for kicks, I enjoyed the book. Beach Read did feel like an earlier book by Henry (which it was) than Book Lovers. I think she’s a fast learner and is improving (or her editing is getting better because she’s frickin’ famous now). So while it is a must-read if you do enjoy romance, I did think Book Lovers was better, a tad more mature.

(Note: though this book is called Beach Read and would make an excellent, actual beach read, don’t let it fool you: this is Michigan and a Great Lake, not some tropical get-away. There is no smell of coconut, no palm trees, no oil-slathered bodies writhing in any sand. No surfers. No lifeguards. Our two main characters don’t even really like the beach much and spend little time there, mostly afraid of the “cold” water. (I’m from Michigan. Technically they could have done much more of the aforementioned things, sans the palm trees, but January and co. (maybe Henry?) are just not into that scene.)

All in all, Beach Read is an easy, quick read with plenty of fireworks. It’s quick largely because you don’t want to put it down. You want to eat it like a chocolate-on-chocolate cake, which is what it sort of is. Maybe it’s more like a confetti cake with rainbow chip frosting, multi-color rosettes, and thirty candles. That would be January’s choice, at least before she had to re-figure out who she is. I would bet on Emily Henry continuing to write many more best-sellers as she rides of into the romance writers’ sunset. As readers, we’re engaged for the ride of Beach Read and most of us will get off saying, “That was fun.”

Book Review: Iodine

Goodness sakes. This is a tough book, of a sort. It is not just like Kimmel’s other books. It is highly academic, religiously explorative, and takes place in Indiana, yes, but it is pretty dark and trippy, falling down a sort of well into ancient Greece (think the dark side of mythology) while standing planted all the time in Indiana in the 1980s (and flashbacks a few decades). I would say this: it’s a psychological thriller with a splash of horror. Not slasher (quite), but creepy and dark. Like psychological thriller, horror, and literary fiction had a baby. (Humor me.)

Trace Pennington and Ianthe Covington are the same person. Trace is the little girl growing up with a mother she fears (and may be abusive) and a father she more than adores, a step-father who definitely abuses her, a sister who stands back and watches, and a brother who tries, unsuccessfully to save her. Ianthe is the brilliant, goth college student who has begged, stolen, and borrowed her way to a new identity and lives in an abandoned house with her dog, Weeds. She is about to graduate summa cum laude with like 8,000 (sic) majors and minors, but then she meets a guy. The guy has his own secrets, his own trauma, and neither of them are talking. Both Trace and Ianthe have a best friend: Candy of the stable, childhood household, and the adulthood of kids, trailer, and alien abduction. The story follows Freud, Jung, Hillman, Greek mythology, alien abduction, and fairy tales down the rabbit hole to a violent, dark, confusing world of we-know-not-quite-what before the softly dramatic conclusion (when many of us are still scratching our heads).

I mean, if you are going to make it past the first line, you are going to be a certain type of reader, anyway. The infamous first line is: “I never / I never had sex with my father but I would have, if he had agreed.” That’s a doozy. And if you are going to continue, you better be paying close attention even now. Why the extra “I never?” We’re in first person, here. And we are neck-deep in classical Greek mythology, already. In some ways, this book reminds me of C. S. Lewis’s Till They Have Faces, a retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth. I wondered, at times, if Ianthe’s story is a retelling of an ancient myth, or of several. Either way, Faces, one of my favorite books of all time, is dark but not this dark, and is nothing like this edgy. How did we go from A Girl Named Zippy through a sort of philosophy-religion-feminism trilogy to Iodine? Readers who enjoyed these other books are definitely not necessarily the readers who will like this one. And yet some of them love it. The official critics were a bit harsh, and yet there are a few of even those who sang its praises. (Like The LA Times, versus Kirkus and New York Times. Maybe this (and having a family) is what pushed Kimmel to take that really long breather from the public eye. It is her last published book, in 2008.) Is it overwrought? Is it imbalanced? Is it confusing as heck? It takes some work, for sure.

In the end, I think it’s not actually that difficult to figure out what has happened, if you just relax a bit and be willing to accept the falsity of most of what you have already read. And also that your interpretation might not be the “correct” one or the one someone else arrived at. However, there are indications (on discussion boards) that Kimmel meant for people to re-read this book, using clues (like physical tells, narrative hesitation, disappearance and confusion, names (like Ianthe and Trace; I mean, Billy means “resolute protection”), the presence of animals, and, I’m guessing, POV) and studying (for example, the chapter titles) in order to really understand what is happening. But since Kimmel won’t just come out and say, then is there a theory that is 100% correct, anyway? If the “answer” doesn’t officially exist out there (except in Kimmel’s head and maybe her files)? Are any of the characters more than one character? Are any of the characters not real? Are any of the characters gone? Is a complicated twist of any of these happening? In the small world of people who care, theories abound.

If you enjoy dark, trippy, twisty, and yet academically-heavy books, this is for you. Psycho-thriller + horror but not afraid of literary fiction? For you. Kimmel fan who is willing to read anything of hers, even though you might be a bit squeamish? For you. For anyone, this is another beautifully written, poetically conceived piece of literature. It explores either trauma, mental illness, or physical disorder (I’m not telling, maybe it’s all three), a cast of fascinating characters in 1980s Indiana academia and 1950-70s Indiana, and any number of other thought-provoking things (like, as I said, mythology, literature, psychology, alien abduction, as well as women/feminism, drugs, music, etc.). It’s a wild ride. I enjoyed it, though it is definitely on the creepy and violent side for me. Heck, read it with a book club. Then get together and ask, “Are Trace/Ianthe’s eyes really violet? How?” and the rest of your time will be a round-the-bush discussion of oh so many mysteries.   

QUOTES

“’I plant, and then I kill. That is my dark gift’” (p130).

“Imagine people getting so worked up about flying saucers or cigars, when we can stand on terra firma and on our own two human feet and admire the light of stars that are no longer there. Isn’t that… weird enough?” (p212).

“There wasn’t a chance in this world he was going to suffer those indignities just to die harder and slower” (p217).

Book Review: The Used World

Image from Amazon.com

I really enjoyed reading The Used World, but I can’t say that I would recommend it across the board. Here’s the thing. Haven Kimmel also wrote two memoirs, , and they were pretty popular in the early 2000s, gaining a number of fans for Kimmel. Well, Kimmel also wrote four novels (and a couple kids’ books) and, understandably, her writing in different genres is very different. Her memoirs tend to the light, funny, Americana side of things. So when a fan of those reads one of her novels, they often say, “Heck no.” Not every person who enjoys humorous, witty memoir will also enjoy theosophical, philosophical, left-exploring, gritty, highly-academic, “flowery” (not my word)-written, somewhat unconventional literary fiction. All of Kimmel’s novels would fit under this very specific heading and I suppose it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

Also, I have to admit that her novels aren’t watertight. And yet, I love them.

The Used World is the story of three women, one in her twenties, one about 40, and one in her sixties. They all work (one of them the owner) at The Used World antiques market. Rebecca grew up the shining star of a Pentecostal cult run by her dad, but left the church after her mother died and has been sharing a roof but no love with her father, ever since. In her experimentation, she found herself a loser of a boyfriend and wound up pregnant and alone. Claudia is so tall that she is often misidentified as a man, and has lived her whole life in the safe space of her childhood home, with her parents, until they had died. A few years after her mother’s death, she has a sister whose life she finds depressing and alien but a new pastor who is helping her navigate her feelings about both religion and life when suddenly Hazel starts messing with her, forcing on her new responsibilities she never dreamed of. Hazel is the owner, a woman of a complicated past that we learn about in flashbacks and sometimes in dreams (which is part of her vibe because she is also prophetic in a purely non-religious sense). Sure, she’s messing with her employees’ lives (and her vagrant sisters’), but she’s doing it because of her own past: she knows more than she’s letting on and she wants something different for her friends than she was ever allowed to have—love and family.

I can see the truth in what Kimmel’s critics complain about with The Used World. There is probably too much religion in her books, much beyond just plot and character development, too much pontificating. The male characters in The Used World leave much to be desired without giving us much to go on in the one positive, male character. The Used World is a little confusing, at times. And the ending—so far all Kimmel’s novel endings—come really suddenly and aren’t completely wrapped up, leaving questions. Unfortunately, The Used World was the worst of her books, here, in that the reader isn’t quite sure what has happened and how everything ties together and, indeed, quite what the future holds for our characters. And yes, there are things included in The Used World that didn’t really need to be there, like Hazel’s dream life or, in my opinion, two sisters who drain the resources of one of the main characters, two moms who someone couldn’t quite leave, two dads who were domineering and toxic, two men who are pursuing the gals in the flashback story. In the end, all these characters play a role in the shebang, but it was confusing and, in some cases, felt overcommunicated. (Also a bummer because its not a super-popular book, so it’s difficult to find other people talking about what they think happened so I’m still not really 100%…)

But, as in so many of my reviews, I have now spoken ill of something that I really appreciate. I can repeat what I have said about Kimmel’s writing before: it is clear, insightful, and beautiful. She paints a picture, plunges to the depths of her characters, goes to the tough places, catches you off guard with her phrasing and her description. Admittedly, her writing is my kind of writing, and it’s actually very similar to what I often write, my own voice. But subjectively, I think that if you are a literary fiction person, there is likely an admiration that you could have for A Used World. And more than her other novels, it is geared towards plot and towards storylines weaving together and even exposing answers to mysteries you didn’t even realize were there. I regret to inform you that Kimmel seems to have a shortcoming in romance development, but I still am able to somewhat celebrate her endings, even if she could have made her romances a lot more believable and inevitable with some more tension and time (or scenes).

I think this is my favorite of the “loose” trilogy of The Solace of Leaving Early, Something Rising (Light and Swift) and The Used World. My hesitation is in Kimmel’s presentation of Christianity, which is always a major theme of her work. In this one, as a Christian reader, I felt a wee bit defensive. And I also think it’s unfair not to say a word in the book’s summary about The Used World being chock-full of queer relationships (which, I have to agree with one critic I read, seems a little unlikely given the setting).

I thought it was great. Enjoyed. Picked up speed as it went along, as well.

[image error]

Best Books: Reference, Coffee Table, Art, Crafting, and Brain Games/Activities

I am kinda taking it easy, right this second, as I am recovering from Covid and it’s not been an easy one for me. I have been reading a lot, but I lost the book I am currently reading this morning (?!) and so I somehow wandered to my laptop and started looking for new best books lists. I’m a little odd, like that. So here are some lists of even more types of books that I read and collect. I must be running out of categories, right? I always think so.

With no further ado, here are titles I could find recommended on the internet for best books in the categories home reference, coffee table, art, crafting, and brain-games-slash-activities. Here’s to even more reading!

BEST HOME REFERENCE BOOKS (there are some self-help-y kind of books hidden in here. We’ll winkle them out eventually.)

Image from Amazon.comWonderbookStuff You Should KnowRemarkable DiariesFor the Love of BooksThe Book of Unusual KnowledgeCleaning Plain and SimpleHome Safety Desk ReferenceHome Furnishing TechniquesThe Household HandbookNew World DictionaryOxford English Dictionary (compact)Scrabble DictionaryBartlett’s ThesaurusEncyclopedia BritannicaAtlas of the World, National GeographicAtlas Obscura ***Oxford Dictionary of QuotationsShakespeare’s InsultsThe Elements of Style, StrunkMan’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl On Writing , Stephen King ***The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, CoveyThe Holy Bible ***How to Win Friends and Influence People, CarnegieGetting Things Done, FallowsThe Art of War, Sun TzuThe Life-Changing Magic of Tidying UpEats, Shoots and Leaves, TrussThe Chicago Manual of Style, University of Chicago ***Thinking, Fast and Slow, KahnemanHow to Read a Book, Adler and DorenMindset, DweckMerriam-Webster Collegiate DictionaryOn Food and Cooking, McGee Bird by Bird , Anne Lamott ***One Writing Well, ZinserThe Joy of Cooking, Rombauer Mythology , Edith Hamilton ***The Body Keeps the Score, KolkA Brief History of Time, Hawking The Hero with a Thousand Faces , Joseph CampbellThe Qur’an, MuhammedQuiet, Susan CainA Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill BrysonThe 4-Hour Workweek, FerrissNever Split the Difference, VossPocket Ref, GloverMLA Handbook for Writers of Research PapersThe Power of Now, TolleThe Emotion ThesaurausPublication Manual of the American Psychological AssocialtionJust Mercy, StevensonHow to Read Literature Like a Professor, FosterA Manual for Writers of Research PapersThe Immortal Life of Henrietta LacksRoget’s International ThesaurausGrit, DuckworthThe Alchemist, CoelhoA People’s History of the United States, ZinnPlayers Handbook: Dungeons and DragonsCatechism of the Catholic ChurchTao Te Ching, Lao TzuBartlett’s Familiar QuotationsHow to Cook Everything, BittmanThe C Programming Language1000 Places to See Before You DieBrewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and FableGray’s AnatomyThe Associated Press StylebookWhat to Expect When You’re Expecting **1001 Book You Must Read Before You DieSalt Fat Acid Heat, NosratThe Atlas of Middle EarthTalking to Stranger, GladwellThe Sibley Guide to BirdsDon’t Make Me Think, KrugThe Dictionary of Imaginary PlacesWriting Down the Bones, GoldbergCunningham’s Encyclopedia of Magical HerbsThe New Drawing on the Right Side of the BrainMe and White SupremacyThe New Oxford Annotated BibleSystemic Theology, GrudemThe Visual Display of Quantitative InformationThe Dictionary of Modern English UsageGarner’s Modern American UsageBulfinch’s MythologyMastering the Art of French Cooking, Julie Child **Presription for Nutritional Healing ***A History of Western PhilosophyThe Library Book, Sue OrleanYale Book of QuotationsAmerican Heritage Dictionary of the English LanguageMerck Manual of Medical InformationWorld Almanac and Book of FactsOxford Atlas of the WorldThe Farmer’s AlmanacThe Usborne Geography EncyclopediaJunior Illustrated Maths DictionaryIllustrated Dictionary of MathsA Short History of the WorldIllustrated Dictionary of ScienceThe Usborne Introduction to ArtThe Usborne Science Encyclopedia ***The Usborne Encyclopedia of World History ***The Story of InventionsThe Story of ExplorationHow Things WorkThe Usborne Encyclopedia of World ReligionsThe History of the World in 100 PicturesThe Usborne Childrens’ EncyclopediaThe Usborne Illustrated English DictionaryUsborne Illustrated English ThesaurusUsborne Big Picture AtlasThe Timetables of History, GrunThe New Biographical Dictionary of FilmThe Dictionary of Drink and DrinkingDreyer’s EnglishThe Casell Dictionary of SlangCrosbie’s Dictionary of PunsNature Cross-Sections, OrrInteresting Stories for Curious PeopleUncle John’s Greatest Know on Earth Bathroom ReaderWhat If?, MunroThe Book of Common PrayerHow to Be a Person, NewmanFourteen Talks by Age FourteenGet It Together, Soria

ART BOOKS (from coffee-table to craft to history. Maybe it’s too heavy on fashion. I would appreciate really amazing, specific recommendations here and in the coffee table book category):

Image from Amazon.comThe Book of Symbols, TaschenOdd Apples, William MullanMy Yorkshire, David HockneyGenji: The Prince and the ParodiesLate Constable, Royal Academy of the ArtsNigeria: Original Cover Art of Nigerian MusicThe Story of Art, E. H. Gombrich (special edition)Nadine Ijewere: Our Own SelvesPortrait of an Artist: Conversations with Trailblazing Women ArtistsBright Stars: Great Artists Who Died Too YoungMeadow Arts: The First 20 YearsTengo un Dragon Dentro del Corazon, Charlotte GuerreroSalvador Dali: The Impossible CollectionAbsolutely Augmented RealityArt: The Definitive Visual GuideThe Beauty of Life on Earth with David YarrowNew York by New York100 Painters of TomorrowThe Art of MondoIbiza BohemiaBilly Name: The Silver AgeThe Impossible Collection of WarholThe Deftness of Davinci (The Graphic Work?), TaschenDali les Diners de GalaBroad Strokes: 15 Women Who Made Art and Made HistoryArt KaneAn Emphatic Lens, Robert DoisneauRothko: The Colour Field PaintingsZadik Ben David: Human NatureTurner’s SketchbooksRoyal Academy of Dance: Celebrating 100 YearsThe Short Story of Art, Susie HodgeThe Stones of Venice, John RuskinDesigning Design, Kenya HaraWays of Seeing, John BergerInteraction of Color: 50th Anniversary EditionThe Elements of Typographic StyleMegg’s History of Graphic DesignThe Art Museum: from Boulee to BilboaThe Practice and Science of DrawingOn Painting, AlbertiA World History of ArtAn Introduction to Art TechniquesArtists’ Painting Techniques1500 Color Mixing RecipesAnatomy for the ArtistMorpho: AnatomyThe Art Museum, PhaidonThe Art of Spirited Away/PonyoThe Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild, Creating a Champion1000 Portrait Illustrations100 Illustrators (2 vols), TaschenThe Star Wars Archives, Episodes I-III (or Clone Wars)Living and Sustaining a Creative Life, LoudenCatching the Big Fish, David LynchDo It: The CompendiumArt & Fear, Bales and OrlandCreative Block, KrysaTaking the Leap, Kay LangArt/Work, Melber and BhandariThe Artists’ Guide, BattenfieldArt, Inc., Lisa CongdonNew York by New YorkThe United States of Fashion, VogueThe Big Book of ChicFrida Kahlo: The Complete PaintingsPeter Beard, TaschenVogue and the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume InstituteGreat Escapes USA: The Hotel BookBedtime: Inspirational Beds, Bedrooms, and BoudoirsThe Rhianna BookRalph Lauren in his Own FashionDe Gournay: Hand-Painted InteriorsVogue on LocationBreaking Ground: Architecture by WomenPortraits of Interiors, Axel VervoodtPalm Beach, AssoulineZuber, Brian ColemanBill Cunningham: On the StreetAtlas of Mid-Century Modern HousesWilliam Morris’s FlowersThe New Black VanguardMother and Child, FrankLagerfeld: The Chanel ShowsThe Carlisle, AssoulineBeautiful People of the Café SocietyHotel du cap Eden RocGreco Disco, HallBorn to Party, Forced to WorkLinda McCartney: The Poloroid DairiesAvedon, Gideon LewinTonne Goodman: Point of ViewRobert Doisneau: The Vogue YearsJohn Galliano for DiorFrancois Halard: A Visual DiaryA Booklover’s Guide to New YorkDior and His Decorations

COFFEE TABLE BOOKS:

Image from Amazon.comAt Home in the South, VerandaLouis Vuitton Trophy TrunksHoliday: The Best Travel Magazine That Ever WasUlysses: An Illustrated EditionAccidentally Wes AndersonWine SimpleDesign Remix: A New Spin on Traditional RoomsHowardina Pindell: What Remains to Be SeenBakhodir Jalal: A Line to EternityYayoi Kasuma: Festival of LifeSoul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black PowerFabric of a Nation: American Quilt StoriesHumans of New York: StoriesLatinx Photography in the United StatesBruce Springsteen: Live in the HeartlandActivist: Portraits of CourageAmerican BoysAmerican Cowboys200 Women Who Will Change the Way You See the WorldChinatown PrettyGreat Maps, The SmithsonianSpace Atlas, National GeographicMassimo Listri: The World’s Most Beautiful LibrariesInside North KoreaThe Bucket List: 1000 Adventures Big and SmallBeaches, Gray MalinAnimal: The Definitive Visual GuideWriters and Their CatsTom FordPrabal GurungDream Design Live, ContrerasPantone: The 20th Century in ColorAndy Warhol: Polaroids 1958-1987Nopalito: A Mexican KitchenNew Native KitchenBavel: Modern Recipes Inspired by the Middle EastThe Sioux Chef’s Indigenous KitchenThe Art of the Cheese PlateThe Drunken BotanistAli, SchapiroRemembering Diana, Tina Brown30,000 Years of ArtWallpaper: A History, RizzoliS Is for StyleThe Kinfolk Home, WilliamsAlexander McQueenJean-Louis Denoit InteriorsBarack Obama: Hope for the WorldSurf Shacks, Vol. 2Jungalow: Decorate Wild, BlakeneyVenice, Serge RamelliThe Well-Loved House, Ashley WhittakerEvery Room Should Sing, Beata HeumanMay I Come In?, Wendy GoodmanYayoi KusamaGlamorous Rooms, Jan ShowersWhen Art Meets DesignLiving with Color, AtwoodLive Beautiful, CalderonThe Ultimate Sneaker Book, TaschenDoris Duke’s Shangri LaPlantopedia: A Definitive Guide to House PlantsFlower Flash, MonacelliModern Mix, Eddie RossPierre Yovanovich: Interior Architecture

BEST ARTS AND CRAFTS BOOKS (which is more hands-on and broad than the other list):

Image from Goodreads.comMartha Stewart’s Encyclopedia of CraftsMod Podge Rocks!Put Your Stamp On It, LewisFabrics A to Z, WillardLast-Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts, HoversonNew Dress a Day, Marissa LynchOliver + S Little Things to Sew, Liesl GibsonSewing for All Seasons, Susan BielSunday Morning Quilts, Neiberg and ArkinsonEdgy Embroidery, Renee RomingerDecorating Cookies, Bridget EdwardsBy Hand, SantoHand in Hand, Jenny DohKnitting without Needles¸ Anne WeilWeaving within Reach, Anne WeilKnitting New Mittens and Gloves, Robin MelansonPom-Poms!, Goldschadt and WrightHow Crafting Saved My Life, Sutton FosterChic and Simple Chunky Knits, TeranishiPunch Needle Embroidery for Beginners, DavidsonThe Little Book of Cottagecore, Emily KentCreepy Cross-Stitch, SwearingenEasy Crafts for the Insane, Kelly Williams BrownModern Quilting, Arthur and QuinnThe Act of Sewing, Sonya PhilipEmpowered Embroidery, Amy L. FrazerKlutz Book of Paper AirplanesAdventure Girls!, Nicole DugganC.R.A.F.T.The Year of Cozy, AdarmeAnni and Josef AlbersHouse of Print, Molly MahonDO/MAKE, James OtterPercelain, MarchandCabinet of Curiosities, TaschenHandmade Houseplants, HoggCreepy Cute Crochet, Christen HadenRock Art Handbook, Samantha SarlesCrafting with Feminism, Bonnie BurtonDIY Projects for Cats and Dogs, Ray and LegrixBold and Beautiful Paper Flowers, Chantal LeroqueSubversive Cross stitch, Julie JacksonCat Castles, Carin OliverCut Paper Pictures, Clover RobinMake a Crochet Garden, Amy GainesTextile Collage, Mandy PattuloPaper to Petal, Thuss and FarrellFeminist Icon Cross-Stitch, Fleiss and MancusoWhimsical Stitches, Lauren EspyThe Art & Craft of Pyrography, Lora S. IrishCrafting with Cat Hair, TsutayaPlaying with Pop-Ups, Helen HiebertWashi Tape Crafts, Amy AndersonQuilting on the Go, Jessica AlexandrakisThe Feminist Activity Book, Gemma CorrellLiterary Yarns, Cindy WangTape It & Make It, Fabian MorganThe Quilter’s BibleBeginner’s Guide to QuiltingHow to Knit: A Complete Guide for Absolute BeginnersKnit Yourself CalmHow to Crochet: A Complete Guide for Absolute BeginnersCrochet Step by StepThe Royal School of Needlework Book of EmbroideryFlower Arranging, the Complete Guide for BeginnersArtists’ Painting Techniques, DKWatercolor for the Absolute BeginnerThe Urban WoodsmanComplete Pottery Techniques, DKEasy OrigamiThe Ultimate Guide to Modern CalligraphyThe Art of Pressed Flowers and Leaves, Jennie AshmooreCrafty Chica’s Art de la Soul, MurilloHand Dyed, Anne JoyceMake and Mend, Jessica MarquezThe Exquisite Book of Paper Flowers, Livia CettiPattern Studio, KulikThe Art and Craft of Geometric Origami, BolithoLettering and Modern Calligraphy, Paper Peony PressCollage Techniques, Gerald BrommerHow to Make Resin Jewelry, Sara NaumannBath, Buff and Beautify, Aubre AndrusCrafting Calm, SpaniolWildlife Ranger Action Guide, Mary Kay CarsonPlant, Sow, Make and Grow, Esther CoombsPranklab, FaircloughCrazy Contraptions, Laura PurdueTreat Yourself!, SiskinNature Play at Home, StrinistreEasy Paper Projects, Maggy WoodlyThe Papercraft Ideas BookThe Artist UniqueThe Modern Artist’s WayPaper CuttingPainting HappinessThe Big-Ass Book of CraftsArt Making with MomaHarry Potter: Crafting Wizardry52 Sketch PromptsOrigami Extravanganza!Brain Games Sticker by Number NatureMastering Hand BuildingPottery for BeginnersMasters: Collage, Lark BooksThe Elemental JournalStencil CraftCreative Lettering WorkshopMixed Media HandbookMixed Media Painting WorkshopInner Hero Creative Art JournalStart Journaling: An Art Journaling WorkbookCollage TechniquesExtraordinary Things to Cut and CollageAdventures in Mixed MediaThe Making It Guide to CraftingCrafting a Colorful HomeHappy Handmade HomeMartha Stewart’s Handmade Holiday Crafts

BEST ACTIVITIES AND GAMES BOOKS (You know, for flights and keeping your brain young):

Image from Amazon.comThe Fun and Relaxing Adult Activity BookUnbored GamesStress Relief Coloring Book, Adult Coloring BookThe LEGO Ideas Book, DKHarry Potter Coloring Book, ScholasticPlayer’s Handbook and Monster Manual, Wizards RPG TeamSecret Garden, Basford and KingEnchanted Forest, Basford and KingLost Ocean, BasfordDo the Work!, Bell and KateThe Moth Presents: A Game of Storytelling, The MothPapercuts, Electric LiteratureThe Yumiverse Mindful Coloring BookKitten Lady’s Cativity BookMurdle, Vol. 1The Geography Coloring BookAdventures from Scratch, Family EditionJournal 29 Interactive Book GameBurn After WritingThis Book Is a PlanetariumFinish This BookThe Escape BookNo Props, No ProblemWreck This JournalBe Happy: Just Add WaterYou’re Weird: A Creative Journal for MisfitsDubious DocumentsEscape Room PuzzlesCriminal Mind Puzzles, Brain GamesBrain Teasers for AdultsThe 125 Best Brain Teasers of All TimeThe Scotland Yard Puzzle BookChallenging Brain Teasers, MENSA and AARPMontague Island Mysteries and Other Logic Puzzles50 Logic Grid PuzzlesTricky Logic Puzzles for AdultsCryptograms, Jack MerrinBest of Wednesday Crosswords Book, New York TimesDifficult Riddles for Smart Kids¸ PrefontaineSafecracker 40 Math PuzzleWheel of Fortune Word Puzzles1000+ Sudoku Puzzles, FunsterWhat Am I?, Zack GuidoCode Breaker, Brain GamesCSI, Brain GamesLarge Print Word Searches, Brain GamesSherlock Holmes Puzzles, Brain Games399 Games, Puzzles, and Trivia Challenges, LindeJumbo Puzzle Book 2, USA TodayLower Your Brain Age in Minutes a Day, Brain GamesThe Greatest Collection of Riddles and Brainteasers, Zack GuidoThe Moscow Puzzles, KordemskyLogic Puzzles, Puzzle BaronLarge Print Crossword Puzzles, Brain GamesChallenge Accepted!, KravisKakuro Cross Sums, Vol. 3My Lady’s Choosing, Zageris and CurranWhat Lies Beneath the Clock Tower, Killjoy and NavarroTo Be or Not to Be, Ryan NorthThe Cypher Files, CassapakiThe Master Theorem, MMonday Crossword Puzzle Omnibus, The New York TimesTricky Logic Puzzles for Adults, Clontz120+ Variety Puzzles Book for Adults: Math Puzzles500+ Word Search Puzzles for AdultsOh My Sudoku!, J. D. CrossOn This Day: CryptogramsMurder Most Puzzling, Vanreiswitz100 Large Print Crossword PuzzlesThe New York Times Sunday Crossword Puzzles, Will SHortzCrush + Color seriesSudoku Over 900 PuzzlesLarge Print Wordsearch Puzzles 2Neon Coloring Kit: UnicornsHarry Potter: The Ultimate QuizHarry Potter: The Complete Quiz BookCityscapes Glow in the Dark ColoringThe Unofficial Michelle Obama Activity Book, JoyceColor Me DrunkPaint by Sticker MasterpiecesThe Anatomy Coloring BookGigantic Paper Planes

Book Review: Something Rising (Light and Swift)

Image from Amazon.com

I have now read six books by Haven Kimmel, this summer. I have two to go. I don’t know why, but I saved the novels till last, and I am in the middle of the “loose trilogy” of her first three (of four) novels. The (very) loose trilogy is The Solace of Leaving Early, Something Rising (Light and Swift), and The Used World. I am reluctant to look up how exactly these three books hold together, at this point in my reading, because I am afraid I’ll find out too much. As it stands right now, the majority of the way through the second book I read a sentence and was startled into what is so far the only way I see the connection. I like surprises like that, so I won’t ruin it for you and I don’t want to ruin any further surprises for myself. But when I’m done with the trilogy I will look it up and see if there are things I’m missing. It seems likely. I’ll mark them with a spoiler alert in my next review.

And now I am going to deal with Something Rising (Light and Swift) as a stand-alone book, because it is, essentially, its own book. Something Rising is the story of Cassie Claiborne, a girl born and raised on the flat fields of rural Indiana. Her mother, Laura, was from New Orleans and had quickly veered off the trajectory of her life (about to marry a man of means and local notoriety) when she chanced to meet the gambler, Jimmy, and follow him (unbidden) back to Indiana. Jimmy then led a double life—the one he had been living before and the one Laura brought to him, while she spent the days and even nights staring out the window toward the (unseen) life she had destroyed in fashioning this new mess of one. But this is all about Cassie, about the genes she is given (a temper, practicality, gambling, talent in math and at the pool table) and about what else comes from her rocky childhood (secrecy, codependence, anger, abandonment issues). And while her friends and sister (and other supporting characters) deal with the Midwest cards they are given, Cassie tries to figure out how to carve a life for herself instead of being a reaction to someone else’s choices. Is it even possible?

Let me tell you: reading Kimmel’s novels right after reading her memoirs is illuminating. I mean, writers all write from their experiences and end up with themes, even if they don’t think they do or don’t want them. Kimmel’s past and themes are abundantly clear from reading her real life up against her fiction. The people from her past haunt her stories, including, most importantly, her mother and father. Haven is also in each story, clearly, and often divided into multiple characters (which is really normal for writers to do, on purpose or not). There’s always higher education and at least one character who is highly academic. There are family characters who do not function. Gambling. Drinking. Many questions about motherhood and fatherhood and, of course, the father who abandons the family. And all of these things come straight up out of Kimmel’s childhood and even her young adult years in academia. Rural Indiana as a place always plays a super important role, too, as well as small town personalities (which at least she gives tons of texture, having actually grown up there and affording the characters actual humanity instead of charicature).

Just like in the first novel (The Solace of Leaving Early) I did wonder if I was missing things because of the depth of some of the scholarliness. In The Solace of Leaving Early¸ I felt a masters (at least) in theology and philosophy (and also English) could have helped me understand what the heck the two main characters were talking about half the time, but with Something Rising¸ it was more subtle; I suspect there are layers of metaphor here related to Greek mythology and other classical mythologies and stories. I mean, not only is this part of the way the three women of the household relate to each other (even that! Is that trilogy important?), but the main character’s name is Cassiopeia. (In Solace, the main character is Langston, which is downright weird.) Surely…? It is possible that a deep approach to Kimmel would yield much, is what I am saying. Am I going to approach it this way? Not at this time, not yet.

The truth is I don’t have to understand all of the allusions in Something Rising in order to enjoy it. I loved this book. I always love Kimmel’s writing, and out of the six books of hers I have read so far, this one is my favorite. (They may continue to get better, actually. I think that Iodine, the fourth novel, had been my favorite when I read them a couple decades ago.) I love this: the language; the imagery; the characters; some of the insight. How to make this longer? Kimmel’s writing is beautiful, even breathtaking, always clear (though sometimes bogged down by high-level academic stuff), always transporting. Her use of carefully-chosen detail takes the reader right into each scene and then the way she develops the people in the scene really endears every single character, no matter how flawed or obnoxious. These people and places really breathe, and Kimmel has something to say about all of it. I don’t always agree with what she seems to be saying, as a narrator, but I can always appreciate the story as a story, the characters on their own terms, and the places as a sort of historical artifact, though fictional.

My issue with this book is essentially the only issue I had with Solace, which can be said “plot” or “pacing.” As literary fiction, there isn’t a real clear hero’s journey, and that’s okay. However, her character development and plot development are lopsided in the same way in Something Rising as in Solace. There is tremendous build-up (without, remember, a conventional (or as my friend would say it, modern, Western) plot. We don’t know what we’re asking or where we’re heading, exactly, we’re just getting to know the place and the characters and the circumstances) but then when it resolves, it does so entirely too quickly. Another way to say it: Kimmel is a bit of a tease with the more traditional elements of plot, especially romance. Last time I said that if she had added a few more scenes with the “romantic leads” along the way, the ending would have been much more satisfying. In Something Rising, sure, I would have loved more time and clues leading up to the two eventual romances, but my real complaint is in the sudden changes in Cassie, which I don’t feel are gradual enough. Pages before the end, she is still the same old Cassie in so many ways, enough that I, as a reader, want to challenge the changes that we do see. I don’t think Kimmel ushered us through the process of the change. The ending, again, is too abrupt, and since it’s literary fiction, we don’t get to hang out there much, if at all. Endings can only be implied in literary fiction, you can’t really look them straight in the face. Fine. But I have to believe what is cropping up obliquely and gradual change is key.

This might be the sort of thing you will feel if you read Something Rising (Light and Swift), so I am pre-empting your disappointment, but not to discourage you from reading it. Ultimately, I love Kimmel’s books and I really enjoyed Something Rising. If you do literary fiction, it’s a great book. I have yet to understand why Kimmel isn’t more well-known. As far as the genre goes, she is a bright light on the close-backwards horizon and I actually felt like I spent the last couple days in Indiana with Cassie, Puck, Emmy, Laura, etc, even though they aged more than ten years during the story. A recommended read.

QUOTES:

“…I didn’t know that the heart can make grave mistakes and that who you end up married to is largely a matter of accident and then you’re stuck with it forever…” (p51).

“An infinite number of props are necessary to shore up a serene family life, that’s what Laura would have said, and once Emmy’s parents, Mike and Diana, had gathered those props, they didn’t change them” (p66).

“Laura saw no good end. ‘I would have cared for you if the situation were reversed,’ she wrote. ‘I would have seen you through to the end. But to bargain for my life at your expense is untenable’” (p159).

“When you were little, and I think this is true of almost every mother of young children, I was less afraid that one of you would die than that we wouldn’t all be together” (p161).

“I am tired of flossing, of hand lotion, of the food pyramid. Years before I knew I was ill I had already felt every single morning, rising from bed, that I had to get up and do something about my corpse” (p164).

“Then there had been no limit to how far she could ride, not because she was stronger but because she thought differently” (p175).

Memoirs Review: A Girl Named Zippy and She Got Up Off the Couch

Image from Amazon.com

A GIRL NAMED ZIPPY

Haven Kimmel is one of my favorite authors. I had put off re-reading her books and reviewing them because I was waiting on the most recent, much-awaited novel, The Farm. However, it has been several years and that book is now available in England, I think, but I still can’t get my hands on it. So, I got Covid just when I had begun with The Solace of Leaving Early, her first novel. In bed for a week (but after I came out of the worst of my fever), I backtracked to this one, trying to intersperse her headier, more dysthymic novels with her humorous memoirs.

A Girl Named Zippy is Haven Kimmel’s most popular book, the first one published to a wide audience. For years in the early twenty-first-century, you could say, “You know, the author of A Girl Named Zippy” and people would nod vaguely at the very least. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. Most people have forgotten Zippy, which is partly Haven’s deal as she left the public eye entirely on purpose after her second memoir and fourth novel (and two kids’ books). But let me remind you that A Girl Named Zippy graced our shelves and cultural hive-mind for a while around 2001 and many people enjoyed the book, though it is sort of unconventional (having no depressing, abusive or deprived childhood to expose and no history as a stand-up comedian (or other fame) to launch from). Kimmel was just a new and promising author, whip-smart and well-educated, who wrote about her small-town upbringing in Indiana.

A Girl Named Zippy is the story of Haven Kimmel’s childhood in Mooreland, Indiana, a town that was stuck at population 300 for generations. Kimmel (not her given name) bounces around in the telling, landing us in chapters that are topical and vignette-y, bouncing us around also in time so that there aren’t any plot twists or surprises here, except in the unravelling of each story. Zippy (nickname given to her before her second birthday) is full of surprises, as are the cast of family and neighbor characters around her. But mostly Zippy. Kimmel manages to write from the perspective of a child most admirably. She also manages to write from the perspective of a quirky, out-spoken child most admirably. Zippy is a real hoot and the way her family and town handles her is endearing and funny as heck. Kimmel’s writing about her childhood is wry, humorous, and somehow manages to keep Zippy innocent while we, the grown-ups reading this in the future in bigger towns, understand the context, the occasional faults in her logic, what’s going on behind the curtain while she tromps through the Oz of childhood, not yet ready for what we know and suspect about her reality.

The way she says things! What we find out with careful reading and while snorting along with this Ramona-on-steroids! It’s charming while also being a pure slice of Americana (I will repeat this word later). Zippy ushers us into history and a place many of us have yet to understand or appreciate, yet she is as distinct a character as any I’ve read. Zippy doesn’t shy away from religion and little Zippy is quite hard on it, but note that this would not always be the case for Kimmel, who is, I believe, still a practicing Quaker. The point is that as a child she was candid, stubborn, and lived one-hundred-per-cent in the moment.

Warning: several non-PC moments. Some of this derives from Kimmel being accurate to her childhood in the 70s, back when terms like “retarded” were de rigueur and not used in any sort of accurate or sensitive way. A few instances of political incorrectness might arise from the two decades it has been since this book was published, but I think most of it is from Kimmel being authentic and historical. She tells all her stories in Zippy from sort of a side angle, and this includes even a brief moment where she lets us know just what small-town Indiana in the 70s would have thought of a Black person wandering into town. While the story is full of levity, we do see through the child into a grown-up’s worldview without ever leaving Zippy, and this includes an understanding of some of the more backwards (and sinister) things that go on under Zippy’s radar. Yet, in the end, I think we also appreciate these people because they are really well-formed people who the author clearly loves and handles with care.

Another warning: apparently some people give this book one star because of the animal cruelty. Um. I find myself amazed that our culture is obsessed with true crime and slasher films and yet can’t stomach anecdotes (used to a literary purpose) about bad neighbors doing bad things to animals in a time and place when animal welfare almost wasn’t a concept. This is… Well, I didn’t foresee myself addressing this at all, but here it is. If you are gonna’ freak out about animal abuse in a true story dealt with as a matter of normal life and death, then walk on by, I guess. It seems a real minor issue, to me, and not because I don’t love animals but more because of its honesty.

If you like memoirs or even just comedy, this is one you should find in a used bookstore. You will probably laugh. I even cried a tear or two.

Image from Amazon.com

SHE GOT UP OFF THE COUCH

Now I said I was going back and forth between Kimmel’s heavier novels and lighter memoirs, but after I read A Girl Named Zippy, I wanted to move right on to She Got Up Off the Couch. So I did. Unfortunately, I was in a fever fog for some of it, and in between reading I was having these fever dreams which roped in whatever show I was watching or book I was reading when awake (which wasn’t all that much, actually, mostly home reno and baking competitions and, inexplicably, Footloose). Doing it this way accentuated what I will now warn you about: whole paragraphs and stories are pulled from Zippy here or there (especially at the beginning) to make sense of Kimmel’s life in case you hadn’t read the first book or at least hadn’t in a while. This is standard writing stuff. I never love it. Here, it isn’t even re-worded. I just breezed through it.

By She Got Up Off the Couch, Kimmel has the humor side of her memoir writing well in grasp, and I laughed so hard a few times, I had tears in my eyes. (Something perverse just overcame me with Zippy’s dad and the rats and I was crying with laughter). Technically, this second memoir is as much about Zippy’s mom (the one who got up off the couch), but there are chapters on end in which it is still about Zippy. I would say that Zippy is about Zippy’s childhood against the backdrop of Mooreland, IN, while Couch is Zippy coming of age against the backdrop of her mother finding her feet and a type of feminism. You still get a whole, quirky cast of characters, but this is really about Zippy and her mom, and more about Zippy as she discovers her mom as her mom discovers herself.

While Zippy is the classic, Couch really came home to me because I went through a similar experience when I was coming of age. My birth was the result of a teen pregnancy and my parents married and settled into a typical 1980s situation: my father worked his entire adulthood at the exact same car dealership as an auto mechanic and my mother stayed home and raised three children except for those moments (often before Christmas) when they just had to have some extra money, at which point she cut hair or worked at my uncle’s farmstand before returning to the stay-at-home lifestyle. While I was doing high school, my mom got her GRE and went to nursing school. Later, she would go on to more schooling and become a nurse practitioner. My mom didn’t spend decades sitting on a couch eating pork rinds and reading—far from it, but she did come out from behind the vacuum cleaner at the same time I was figuring out who I was and where I fit in the world. For me, there are aspects of the book that felt contemplative and nostalgic.

And others that did not. We are back in Mooreland, ten or fifteen years before my mom’s 1990s awakening, and everything is quirky, technicolor, deeply human, and funny. Kimmel can still write, memoir or novel, and She Got Up Off the Couch is another book full of memorable stories and even more memorable people. We watch the transformation from the Zippy of the first memoir who was completely oblivious to context and the passage of time (a kid), to a teenage Zippy who has, though I hate the expression, woke. One of the more important things during this transition for her was her mother, indeed, getting up off the couch. It is a little more serious and even a bit more empowered (though Zippy always had an energy and stubbornness that translated to power), but still warm (though never, ever sappy), fascinating, and humorous with a particular, resonant voice.

There are all those super-famous memoirs written by super-famous people. Back in 2000, Kimmel seemed to be slack-jawed that a generation of readers would be interested in a story about a little girl in a small town in the Midwest in the 70s with no major plot twists. But there is something about Zippy’s voice and Kimmel’s writing that makes these two books a priceless piece of Americana, for me. I love books that really make history come alive, and these books do that for a time and a place, and one that was broadly experienced in small towns across the country and across a few decades, and they do it in a way that skips the novelization or the hype and lights but not the entertainment. It is a specific story, sure, but it’s also one that is likely to make you think about your own, different, childhood and also to snort, giggle, and raise your eyebrows while you do it.

Book Review: The Solace of Leaving Early

Image from Kirkusreviews.com

I suppose one of the reasons Haven Kimmel isn’t a super-famous author is because she backed out of the limelight on purpose at the height of her authorial ascension. But maybe that’s not quite right. It seems that A Girl Named Zippy, her first published book and a memoir which I will review in a few days, was the height of her popularity even before she ducked out. But how can this be? I mean, A Girl Named Zippy is cute, clever, and interesting, but I am always, always blown away by Kimmel’s writing in the literary fiction department. Re-reading The Solace of Leaving Early made me wonder if Kimmel wasn’t just too ahead of her time.

The Solace of Leaving Early is a love story of sorts. (In a TV interview, Kimmel called it a “typical romance,” and I see her point, but a “typical romance” reader isn’t likely to find too much familiarity here.) Langston suddenly drops out of grad school at the eleven-and-nine-tenths hour and returns home to the population-3000 town of Haddington, Indiana. Amos has been minister here or there, but is having an existential crisis following the loss of a Haddington congregant who he inappropriately had feelings for. There is a dark thing that has just happened in town, but Langston—brittle, defensive, self-absorbed, and rigid—can’t take one more thing and so she chooses to ignore the truth until it shows up as flesh and blood.

I can sort of feel the flaws in this book, like it’s not always realistic, bordering on far-fetched. The main characters are exasperating, though I do think this is totally intentional here and Kimmel’s real task is getting the reader to have some sympathy despite Langston’s and Amos’s major faults. (For me, she managed it.) I mean, Kimmel actually pulled off a stuck-up, self-absorbed academic because Kimmel is actually that academic and smart herself (though, from what I gathered at a couple readings decades ago, not stuck-up or self-absorbed). In that sense, the characters are so realistic—we’ve seen them in graduate programs—but Kimmel packages that up, splatters it all over the page, reveals it as a brokenness (a way of hiding that can sometimes last a lifetime) and then slowly excavates her couple.

So maybe I can’t find anything really negative to say about The Solace of Leaving Early. Okay. One thing: I wish Kimmel had added approximately three more developing scenes with the protagonists, together, specifically one more negative (to keep ratcheting the tension) and two positive (to build the electricity). I don’t think the final scenes had quite enough support from our understanding of the characters’ history. Just a few more interactions would have done it. We know that time is passing and that Langston and Amos are seeing each other some, but we need to witness a little more. I guess it boils down to this: I have some empathy for the main two critiques this book gets online: one, that the pacing is off—it drags along for a while and then speeds up and then wraps up with head-spinning finality (which is basically what I was just talking about) leaving many complaining they don’t buy the ending because it came on too fast and underdeveloped;

two, there is a whole lotta religion and philosophy and it’s in a very particular (and high-thinking, highly-educated) vein. Personally, the second part I just chalk up to part of Langston’s and Amos’s personalities. I don’t agree with much of their theologizing and philosophizing and I don’t think anyone is supposed to: this is just what these two characters are thinking and believing at this time and its meant to disclose their shortcomings as much as their intellectual and spiritual strengths. No reason to suddenly assume the author is giving us a sermon; it’s just what the protagonists would sermonize (and do sermonize) about.

But really, I loved this book. Definitely it is literary fiction. It also takes place in the nineties and was published in 2002, but like I said before, it feels like it would do better both commercially and with awards if it were released now (or in the past several years). It just has a voice and style that I think might be more appreciated by the modern reader. Not that someone didn’t appreciate it in 2002. It was fairly well-received and it couldn’t have been too many years before I read it and then anything else Kimmel wrote. On Goodreads, at some point, I gave it four stars, but that might be because I rarely (at least then) gave anything five stars. I also could have been annoyed at the pacing or the sudden ending or even by the lack of real faith in our star preacher.

The writing is not only shiningly clear, it has moments of imagery genius and the kind of beauty that causes you to inhale sharply and hold your breath. This is a claim that can be made on a line-by-line basis, but I also thought that some of the structure of the book was literary genius, as well. Whole scenes had a mini-structure, too, and almost a mini-story, that caused me to pause in admiration. I liked the book, I liked especially the peripheral characters like the mom, but I liked best how this book is written. Kimmel is always introspective, if nothing else, and we get plenty of wry observation of life here, even well beyond the small town. There’s also several lifetimes of suffering and brokenness in the storyline, and the book is suffused with both pathos and a calm, insistent hope which occasionally comes out as magic, more often as humanity and a well-drawn character. There is an interesting tension built into the story two. You could fill a book with what Langston doesn’t know and Kimmel does it: we cotton on to things well before we really get to see the truth through Langston’s eyes, and there are some interesting things done with this.

If you like either literary fiction or upscale (so like high fahlutin’ “regular” novels), I want to suggest that now that it’s 2022, go back and give Kimmel’s works a read. You could start with The Solace of Leaving Early. It is her first novel and one that I really enjoyed reading.

Trigger warnings: physical, mental, and spiritual abuse, violence, mental illness, some of this involving children.

QUOTES:

“What he really wanted to say was: have you felt this? this phantom life streaking like a phosphorescent hound at the edges of your ruin?” (p40).

“All around her people participated in occupations they neither advocated nor condemned” (p43).

“’But you can’t ever live in the place you dream about, the town you long for. You can’t go there…” (p63).

“It’s her losses, Langston, that’s what we’re left with. That’s why she’s so, I don’t know. Hatchetlike” (p70).

“’Why? Why is this happening to me?’ And you know what his answer was? He looked at me as if he couldn’t imagine how I had missed it. ‘Gravity,’ he said. ‘Gravity’” (p75).

“Already today he had lost more than an hour of the afternoon, just dropped it, his body completely still, his heart beating without any consent from him” (p88).

“Profit alone certainly would not have motivated him to function every day” (p102).

“The doctor told me I was pregnant and I thought, ‘Ah, so that’s what I’m doing now’” (p104).

“Because a marriage isn’t a marriage until it’s over, he thought, until the couple looked back, years later, at the moment they wed and said, ‘Oh, that’s what really happened that day’” (p110).

“AnnaLee’s argument being that if Nan could manage to die, Langston could probably afford to watch” (p122).

“’I’ve come to believe the marriage vows should include, in the ‘Will you love him, honor him, etc.’ section, a simple question, ’Will you love him when he stands in the way of your heart’s deepest desire?’ or ‘Will you love him when the fact of him absolutely ruins your joy?’”

“There were thin people and fat people, and no place he lived escaped the ironclad rule of social work or social ministry: if you can imagine it, it’s happening in your town” (p135).

“…from Kafka: ‘A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us’” (p145).

“…nostalgia being a very specific manifestation of grief…” (p185).

“There is more in heaven and on earth, Immaculata. If I could be innocent of history, and were presented with two notions, Nazis or a visitation from Mary, I know which one would seem less likely” (p204).

“The dead return, oh yes they do. They come in dreams, and in fits of memory so potent they can double a grown man, but that wasn’t the same thing as an apparition” (p232).

“I wish memory were a more steady, more physical artifact. It’s just a breeze, or a scent barely detected and fading” (p233).

“I truly believe that people who never have children, or who never love a child, are doomed to a sort of foolishness, because it can’t be described or explained, that love” (p248).

“…the moment that he realized that she was the last woman he would ever love; that every storm between them would he a confection, that their bed would be his grave” (p273).

Book Review: The Cost of Control

Image from Amazon.com

I am attempting to read like the wind from now till the end of the year. I have many titles that I set out to read in 2022 and even shoved up there into the Goodreads universe of book goals. But I am distractable; it is the nature of ADHD. But did you know, no matter what things I am “reading like the wind” or like a breeze, I always have one second title going at a rate of about a chapter per day? These books are meant less for entertainment and more for edification. (There are ways in which both of the categories of books accomplish the goals of the other, but this is the basic idea.) I have actually been reading a series of books on sex, Christianity, shame, and the Purity Movement. But when my (new) pastor published a book (last week) which she was covering in her sermons (not related to any of the things I just listed), I decided to break on the series of books to read her new one.

Yes, Sharon Hodde Miller is my (new) pastor. I can’t exactly review her objectively. I want to be nice and I already know I enjoy her teaching. Also, this is a new relationship between me and Bright City, so I don’t want to make any enemies. However, I am some sort of Midwestern and, as my husband says, I don’t do BS. So I will do my best in this review to tell it like it is while also being considerate. Actually, believe it or not, that is the way I attempt to write all my reviews and blogs because, at the very least, I respect writers and the writing process and I believe in, as Miller would call it, influence over control.

The Cost of Control (by Sharon Hodde Miller) comes at the right moment for me. Then again, this book is so timely to our culture and era that I bet almost any sympathetic reader could pick this one up and then say the same. I could have used it ten years ago and I will likely need it in ten more. To quip on Oprah, “You need this book! You need this book! You need this book!” Why? What is it about?

Well, control costs us. We turn automatically to control as soon as we feel out of control, but it’s, as Miller repeatedly puts it, a “devil’s deal.” Control only increases our anxiety, destroys our relationships, exhausts us, and lands us squarely in the middle of unreality, a gerbil on the wheel circling toward an illusive control that never existed in the first place. What’s the good news? There’s a better offer, which is to surrender to the One Who actually is omnipotent, and to exercise our God-given agency and self-control (as opposed to being powerless or reactive). The book is written in four parts. The first defines the terms and argues for the illusory nature of control and the bad deal it is. The second gives many of the ways we use control in our habits and reactions (as information, as power, as money, as autonomy, as theology, as shame). The third enumerates the cost of control (broken relationships, burnout, body shame, anxiety, exhaustion). The last gives us the better options: surrender, agency, and self-control.

I received much from this book. It didn’t go as deep into each argument as I wanted it to (though I think this is partly done because Miller wanted to “stay in her own lane,” at least in some cases). But I also wonder if it has enough stories to attract a reader who is less into deep study than I am. All that to say, it’s an easy read and it’s very easy to see where you might fit in this text (which is likely to be all over the place). Miller framed our daily experience as modern Americans, even as humans, in a fresh way and I would like to see more scholarship in this direction. She covers a whole lotta ground for a slim volume (under 200 pages). She has a trustworthy voice and a readable humility as well as intelligence. I have two sticky notes at my work desk with bullet points for the book and I am taking away from it much more than that. This is the kind of book that can really cause a reframing of one’s life, like you’ll be all (hopefully in your head) that there is a control issue. I see it. Now I’m going to name it, order it, set some limits… While Miller would encourage any of her readers to take this info straight to a therapist, she also doesn’t leave us with yet another checklist to do life better. She at least makes an attempt at a sort of anti-self-help book. In the end is just your brokenness and the Good News.

As for cons, first things first: the editing could have been just a tad bit better. Very few people are going to be as picky about this as I am, and it’s really not glaring here, but I find myself frustrated at the level of editing I see in nearly every book I pick up lately. There were little mistakes or just loose editing here and there in this one. I also already mentioned that I found myself wishing each point made went deeper, even longer, and I also wanted more practical application (though I almost always say this and I do think this is where Miller would say, yeah, I’m not actually a licensed therapist). Perhaps she could have approached practicality from a spiritual side? I mean, she already did, especially with the short prayers after each chapter. I hate to admit it, but I find prayers in devotional/self-help books to be glaze-over-able. I usually can’t even really see them. But there was something about her short, honest, wise prayers that actually made them much more functional as a component of the book than usual, for me. And there are questions at the end of chapters, so Cost of Control could be used for either daily mediation or for a small group discussion.

I really liked this book. If you are a Christian of any stripe, especially if you are an American alive today, you could stand to learn from Miller’s observations on control. At the very least, it’s a new angle from which to consider all the anxiety, depression, anger, animosity, and division that seems to be eating the people of our country alive. Or it might just be that God is about to use it to make you more like Jesus.

QUOTES (or some of the more pertinent ones):

“…these decisions are not guarantee of anything at all, but they make us feel better in the meantime” (p30).

“We as individuals and we as a culture crave control so desperately that we will reject reality and live in denial of our limitations for as long as w possibly can” (p30).

“What the Pandemic took away was not our power to predict, or our certainty about the future, but our illusion of those things…” (p33).

“Simply put, this world is not as it should be. Behind every struggle for control is a hurting person searching for peace in a chaotic world” (p33).

“…the lie that any gap in our knowledge any boundary on our power, or any limitation on our choice is something to fear, challenge and resist” (p38).

“By classifying anxiety as a personal issue rather than a systemic issue, we place an enormous burden on the individual, who then must modify their personal lives to alleviate the suffering that anxiety brings” (p44, Mark Sayers).

“It is no coincidence that the original story of control centers around a tree of ‘knowledge’” (p51).

“Every time we open our phones to check social media or the news, it’s as if we are taking another bite of that forbidden fruit, ingesting far more knowledge and information than our souls can handle” (p52).

“The more we learn about God and His creation, the more its true scale comes into proportion. The details become clearer. Our own sense of ourselves is corrected” (p57)

“…we begin to misuse our power after a subtle shift occurs inside our hearts: away from the care of others and toward the protection of ourselves” (p69).

“We want to use wealth, but ‘differently.’ We want to use anger, but ‘differently.’ We want to use power, but ‘differently.’ We brand these approaches as ‘redemptive’ or ‘Christian,’ but Jesus displayed no interest in attaining worldly power” (p72).

“For Christians, power is a person. Jesus Christ” (p72).

“When we cling to money for stability and predictability, and live in dread of losing it, we are using money to feel in control” (p77).

“…how easily we will adjust our theology to fit our wealth” (p78).

“Our relationship with money can not be passive or vaguely well-intentioned. It must be sober-minded, it must be humble, and it must have accountability, and there is one practice that cultivates all three: generosity” (p80).

“The money in our bank account doesn’t feel like abundance. That’s why Scripture so often describes material wealth as a form of poverty—spiritual poverty. It constantly seduces our affections and our trust. It relentlessly vies for our worship with it’s promises of stability and control…” (p81).

“This, combined with the American ideal of individualism, has produced a society that places autonomy as our highest value” (p86).

“…we are at our freest when God alone is on the throne” (p88).

“…we are advised again and again to seek wise counsel rather than go our own way” (p90).

“The true gospel is not a rigid contract/ Your life is not a constant test. And God is not coming to collect” (p100).

“…our primary work is not to earn His protection, but to open our hands and receive it” (p100).

“Some of the anger is righteous, but most of it is me wrestling with my total lack of control” (p128).

“Will we trust God or ourselves? This question is at the heart of our faith. If faith is believing what we cannot see, control is the opposite” (p130).

“The world is full of weird and wonderful experiences, and our bodies are a form of self-expression” (p134).

“…our bodies are ground-zero for a lifelong tug-of-war with control” (p134).

“Don’t you know your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit…” (p137, I Corinthians 6:19)

“Any time our joy or contentment depends on our body’s conformity to a standard, or ability to perform, then it is our body—not Christ—that determines our contentment and joy” (p142).

“When we are guided by the question, ‘What will people think?’ we are likely to make decisions based on anxiety” (p149).

“Not to win people to myself, but to win them to Jesus. My reputation isn’t getting anyone to heaven” (p153).

“…the burden of creating our own identities can produce anxiety and stress as well” (p157).

“For Christians, however, the standard is stable and clear. Our true self comes from Christ, and He is the standard by which we gauge our authenticity” (p158).

“…but these particularities, which are so subject to change, cannot serve as the foundations of our identities. We need something more stable in order to feel secure” (p162).

“I prefer to speak of ‘agency over our bodies’ as opposed to ‘control’” (p169).

“In 2 Timothy 1:7, Paul writes, ‘For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but one of power, love, and sound judgment.’ This is agency in a nutshell” (p170).

“Like any good things, order can become an idol of control, but it is also God’s literal answer to chaos” (p172).

“When life is too much and you feel out of control, stop and reflect on what’s really going on inside you (name it!), and then consider what systems or structures might solve the problem (order it!)” (p172).

“…creating is not purely functional; it is also meaningful” (p173).

“…restoring our limits so we can thrive” (p174).

“Sometimes the effect of prayer is not change someone else or to ensure a specific outcome, but to stop ourselves from sinning” (p176).

Book Review: The Bookwanderers

Image from Amazon.com

The Pages and Co. series, specifically, The Bookwanderers by Anna James were not on my TBR. It is a pretty popular series right at this moment. I didn’t know that when I encountered it. You know how I keep saying that I wasn’t going to buy any more books this year? Well, there seems to be any number of excuses for why I might break that rule. One of the reasons is when I am on vacation and I am in a cool, local bookshop. You want to support them, right? No-brainer. And what better way to enjoy myself on vaca than wandering into a local bookstore and buying a couple books (and some “bibliophile” socks, see review on Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil)? This particular book—The Bookwanderers—was on the bookseller recommends shelf at the entrance of E. Shaver in Savannah. I had trusted this sort of set up when I bought Book Lovers in Malaprop’s in Asheville, NC. That read had basically worked out, though the enjoyable book was less, ahem, rigorous than I would normally choose.

I am torn about what to say to you about The Bookwanderers. Perhaps I ought to begin with what the book is about. Matilda (Tilly) Pages is eleven years old and lives in an amazing, multi-story bookstore in London with her grandparents. She spends her days wandering around the bookstore, reading in corners, and interacting with her grandparents, the guy who runs the café, and the neighborhood peeps, especially the woman who owns the bakery and her son, Oskar. Recently set adrift by her best friend as they entered middle school, Tilly is simultaneously looking for a new bestie and dealing with the emotions dredged up by her grandpa giving her a box of her mother’s, old, favorite books. While the Pages get ready for the big, Alice in Wonderland-themed party, Tilly tries out a deeper friendship with Oskar and inadvertently discovers she can see and interact with the characters from her favorite books, namely Alice and Anne of Green Gables. Plus, now that her grandparents are telling her more about her mother’s disappearance, there are more questions she never knew before to ask. Where did her mother go? Why did she leave Tilly? And is Tilly going crazy or did she just fall into a book?

There are five books in the series so far, and I bet there is no intention to stop producing them, yet. The first book came out (at least stateside) in 2020 and it’s only mid-2022, five books later. We are pumping these out! The Pages and Co. (the name of the bookshop) series is:

Tilly and the BookwanderersTilly and the Lost FairytalesTilly and the Map of StoriesThe Book SmugglersThe Treehouse Library

As a note, my book cover does NOT say “Tilly and the Bookwanderers.” It clearly just says “The Bookwanderers” under “Tilly and Co.” (For what it’s worth, the publisher site says the book is called Tilly and the Bookwanderers because that’s the British version, but James has said the American title is truncated.) The middle grades series is selling like hotcakes right now (best seller, plenty of awards). It is illustrated (lightly, it’s middle grades) by Pablo Escobar. Anna James has been a literary person for a while: a librarian, writer, literary promoter of sorts, though she certainly doesn’t look very old. She’s quite pretty, actually. She lives in North London.

 What my review boils down to: I wanted to like it more than I could.

It’s a great idea, right? When I read Book Lovers earlier this year, it piqued my interest in books that are meant for the bookish type, which makes perfect sense, right? I even set up a book club list, here, for book-lovers to read books meant specifically for book-lovers, like The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry and The Jane Austen Book Club. Bookwanderers is clearly meant to appeal to middle schoolers who are happy and immersive readers. There are many of these humans; I was one of them. This is why I went with this recommendation out of all the recommendations. And with Anne of Green Gables as one of the characters? I, too, wanted to get sucked into a book and go with Tilly into other books all at the same time. I wanted a new world, one where books and book people ruled.

There are moments of cute brilliance. Oskar can be quite funny. The story itself is imaginative and the details playful. I would give full marks for the world-building and even the layout of the page to contribute to the story (only every now and again, as it should be). But… First things first: my daughter and I were both immediately unimpressed with the title, which we find awkward as butt. In fact, it’s the reason I almost didn’t go with this book. It lacks a “ring.” Next, the first several chapters are equally awkward. The timing is strange and the action and passage of time are really confusing. (Wait? Did hours just pass? Or days? Or did that all just happen in half an hour???) On top of that, nothing much is happening. We have to wait quite a long time for something to really happen and when things do happen, those things really shoot by without enough drama. The characters are kinda schticky and not very developed (even by the end). (Could we excuse this in a middle grades book? I don’t know. I think modern middle schoolers can be quite discerning.) What I’m saying is the first third of the book had some real clarity and pacing issues. If I hadn’t paid good money for this book and if I wasn’t such a dedicated bookworm, I very well might have put it down and written it off as lackluster.

And then when things did happen, well, I found the “other” book characters, like Elizabeth Benet, Sherlock Holmes, Anne of Green Gables, and Alice in Wonderland, to be off. These are also some of my favorite literary characters and, Anne especially, I know in and out. I just didn’t find them to be especially correct (though I did enjoy the little tidbits thrown in to make a fan smile). Also, I have to give the ol’ critique: the editing is slip-shod, not thorough enough. Not only should some of the timing and clarity issues have been dealt with in editing, but there are even grammar and vocabulary issues throughout. It appears that in order to crank this book out, uncareful writing (which happens) followed by lackluster editing pumped out thousands of a book with great bones that were not ready to see the light of day. A couple random examples (emphasis mine): “The central display tables had been cleared away and there was just one long table heaving under Jack’s creations” (p237). Heaving? I don’t think so. Groaning? Heavy? Maybe. “The sound of something being thrown at the glass skylight above her head forced her out of her melancholy” (p253). One does not hear something being thrown at something. They hear it hit and then they discover that it has been thrown. On another occasion, a roof was described by a character as flat or nearly flat, then two pages later another character is on this (same) steep roof. (These are examples I found within a few pages of each other.) Lest you think I am nit-picking, know that these issues were common enough that I found them distracting, and then I would think, Am I being too hard on James? But many other books—even middle grades books—would pop into my head and I would think about writing—maybe not super deep or sophisticated—but clean enough that it was far from distracting, allowing the reader to, ironically, get lost in the book. When I found critical reviews of The Bookwanderers, they complained of exactly the things I am pointing out.

It is possible that some of the problems arise from a translation from British English and culture to American, but I am extremely well-versed in all things Anglo and I doubt it generally, and even if that were so, the translation would have issues that should have been addressed. Perhaps when Penguin Random House stated on their website that The Bookwanderers would appeal to fans of the Land of Stories series, I should have thought twice about reading it. (It was actually too late by then.) Land of Stories is another middle grades series from the same publisher, super-popular and super-shoddy. (I have never written a harsher review; see here if you want to read it.) They also suggest Inkheart, a trilogy that I am very much looking forward to (though I believe it is meant for an older audience than the other two), so… Their point is that people who love books want to read about other book people escaping into fantastical lands built around books and reading, and all three of these series attempt that: one very poorly (Land of Stories); one with some issues but some charm (Pages and Co.); and one with the better reviews of the three, so here’s hoping (Inkheart).

I want to recommend this for middle grades bookworms, but I am afraid they will quickly see through the confusion and surfacy-characters and even obvious errors. I am also not sure my fears are grounded. Many middle schoolers are reading this series and appearing to enjoy it. If someone had ripped open a copy of Kristy’s Big Day and parsed out the bad writing or editing, fifth-grade-me would have told them I don’t care. So maybe even the bookish middle schoolers (at least the younger ones) reading Pages and Co. don’t care. They just want the magical world that James has created, cute-enough characters, humorous moments, and plenty of nods to classic literature. I wasn’t feeling much while reading this, but perhaps all those big feels wait until we read YA. I won’t be continuing the series and, unfortunately for James on The Starving Artist, there are many more books I would recommend for middle grades that have great writing and competent editing. Maybe try another title on the book lovers book club list? Or build a book nook and read Harry Potter one more time…