Friday Reads 9.8.23
It’s Friday, friends, and you know what that means… let’s talk about what we’re reading!
I will be finishing Scott Alexander Howard’s THE OTHER VALLEY tonight. I can’t tell you enough good things about this book. It has the poignant dread of NEVER LET ME GO, such a tragic innocence about it, playing with the notion of grief, of loss, or the warping of time and the morality of how we grieve. It’s remarkable, and you will see it everywhere next year. I scored a galley, and it will be a reread for me; I can already tell. The premise:
Sixteen-year-old Odile is an awkward, quiet girl vying for a coveted seat on the Conseil. If she earns the position, she'll decide who may cross her town's heavily guarded borders. On the other side, it's the same valley, the same town. Except to the east, the town is twenty years ahead in time. To the west, it's twenty years behind. The towns repeat in an endless sequence across the wilderness.
Just think about that for a second. Fate. Free will. And what is death, really? And think of the delicate balance of what might be, what was, what could have been. It’s mind-bending and delicious and sad and mournful and intense, and I can already feel a reveal coming that’s going to blow my mind. Incredible.
And the rest:
We’re barreling into fall—so thinking about color palettes, how do you feel about revisiting the 70s in your decor?
Some sobering news for writers. Things are changing, but remember, publishing is cyclical.
A really interesting piece from Substacker Emma Gannon and Caroline O’Donahue on about scrapping a novel.
A podcast from Cal Newport I heard this week has me thinking about how I approach everything. I wrote about it in my September newsletter which will be out next week. You can subscribe to it below. I may have to combine this blog with the newsletter soon because of Substack’s subscription rules, so join up and I’ll make sure you get all the things. Part of the realignment I’m considering is the consumption of data, so don’t be surprised to see less ahead as I take a sabbatical to think through some big ideas on my creativity.
So how about you? What are you reading this weekend?
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