December Reading Recap

I closed out 2024 with a final great reading month. Next week, I'll round up the highlights of my reading year.

→ THE ANOMALY by Hervé Le Tellier, translated from French by Adriana Hunter: The story opens with a hitman in the middle of a job that required traveling to New York from Paris. The transatlantic flight encountered terrifying levels of turbulence that left him fearing for his own life. We meet a number of other characters, mostly in France and the US, and learn about their lives and problems. All were on the harrowing flight in March, and some made big changes as a result of feeling so close to death. Still, the experience is far from their minds by June, when federal agents arrive to take each of them into custody. Something very strange has happened, and that flight is at the center of it.

I knew the premise before I started reading, but nonetheless, much about this excellent novel came as a surprise. I wasn't expecting to meet so many characters, and I enjoyed encountering each of them and learning their widely ranging stories. I didn't anticipate how deep we'd get into the book before the initial reveal, and though it would have been fun to go in unspoiled, I also liked being able to recognize the hints and foreshadowing. And I was happy to discover there's another whole level of premise I knew nothing about. This is a delightful read that's full of surprises!

→ THE LOLA QUARTET by Emily St. John Mandel: Gavin is a newspaper reporter in New York City, the life he dreamed of while growing up in Florida, but that life hasn't turned out the way he imagined. Things are already going badly when he's sent to Florida for an assignment and his sister drops some shocking news: She encountered a ten-year-old girl who might be Gavin's daughter by Anna, his high school girlfriend who disappeared. Soon Gavin's New York life is over, and he's back in Florida, on the hunt for Anna and the girl. As he searches, it becomes clear that the other members of Gavin's high school jazz quartet are all involved in the story of Anna's disappearance and return, and there's far more to their histories than he ever knew.

I'm so glad I went back to read Mandel's pre-breakout work, because I love her writing style and characters (plus the subtle ways her books are tied together). This third novel is immediately Mandelian, with time shifts, secrets, and a gradual unfolding of the plot as both reader and characters come to understand what's going on. Part of the fun of this story is figuring out how the different storylines connect and staying several steps ahead of Gavin. Everyone in this novel makes terrible decisions, and I really felt for them anyway.

→ THE DAZZLE OF DAY by Molly Gloss: The Dusty Miller left Earth 175 years ago, holding a community of humans and an ecosystem of other species prepared for generations of travel. Now the ship is approaching a new planet that could support human life, but the conditions are harsh, dominated by cold weather and rocky soil, and there's uncertainty about whether to settle there or journey for generations more. Juko is one of the sailmenders who does the risky work of performing maintenance on the outside of the aging ship. Her husband Bjoro is in the midst of an even more dangerous job as part of the advance crew landing on the planet to gather more information than can be gained from probes. Their experiences and those of other family members show the complexity and constraints of life on the Miller in the months before that life may change unimaginably.

The generation ship that Gloss imagines is a fascinating one where much of daily living appears low-tech, with most people focused on farming and crafts. The ship was launched by Quakers and is governed by those principles, so decisions are made in meetings involving long stretches of silence and a goal of consensus. These meetings, and neighborhood life in general, are a major focus of the novel, and I generally enjoyed the intricacies and logistics. The planetary details are also well-imagined, and Gloss does a great job depicting the disorienting experience of being on a world after a lifetime inside a ship.

The characters in the story's central family experience a number of difficult changes during the novel, not always as connected as I would have expected to the massive change facing the whole community. I was occasionally frustrated when the story turned away from the questions that interested me most, and some threads felt unfinished to me. What the characters experience is sometimes hard to read about, because there's quite a bit of tragedy and trauma. Not everything about this book worked for me, but it was an engrossing and thought-provoking read.

→ DISPOSSESSED by Desiree Zamorano: Manuel is a small child when, one day in 1939, his parents are gone. He's too young to comprehend why he and his older sister are suddenly being moved between the homes of strangers. He isn't even old enough to grasp that he can only understand his sister because she speaks Spanish, while the strangers they encounter all speak English. And then his beloved sister says goodbye, and he's alone in the incomprehensible world. At last Manuel is placed in the home of a kind, Spanish-speaking older woman, and he has a chance at growing up with some happiness. But nobody explains what happened to his family until he's much older and learns that his parents, Mexican nationals, were caught up in a mass deportation. Manuel would like to search for his parents and sister, but he has so little information that the quest seems impossible. The anger and pain of their loss is always on his mind as he makes his difficult way into adulthood and imagines making a new family of his own.

This novel about the consequences of mass deportations is tragically timely, and the story is often a tragic one, though there is joy at the end of it. Manuel's story covers decades and intersects with many heartbreaking events in the history of Mexican-Americans in Southern California. The way the opening chapters capture young Manuel's disoriented perspective is especially effective, and the book continues to be at its best when the narrative goes deep into Manuel's feelings.

→ LOST ARK DREAMING by Suyi Davies Okungbowa: Following an apocalyptic ocean rise, hundreds of thousands of people spend their entire lives inside a massive skyscraper off the coast of now-flooded Lagos. The wealthy enjoy luxury in the upper floors, while in the lowest third of the tower, submerged beneath the water, residents are crowded into dark, poorly maintained spaces. Yekini is a midder, grateful that her grandparents managed to ascend and that she holds a decent job, a junior position in the tower's bureaucracy. But it's unclear whether she's being punished or rewarded when she's sent to an undersea floor to investigate reports of a leak. To Yekini's horror, she realizes the breach might be the work of the mysterious Children, rumored to be part human, part aquatic creatures. What she discovers changes everything.

This is a short book that moves along fast, unfolding in the span of a day. The major characters are portrayed well, and the ideas are fascinating, but I wished both had more room to develop. Like many novellas, the story left me with a frustrating number of questions about the world and the concepts. I also wasn't as interested in the mystical aspects of the story that ended up getting much of the focus by the end. So the book wasn't a great match for me, but it has a lot to offer different readers.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At Reactor, Molly Templeton has advice on finding small press science fiction and fantasy: "Anyone who reads small press work will cite their own favorites. And because the world is so wide, and publishing so specific, and distribution so complicated, you may or may not have heard of them. It'll take more work to find their books, maybe. But it's also kind of fun. If you have a certain kind of temperament—the kind that liked hunting down obscure albums in the pre-internet age, say—it may be a familiar sort of work. It is the work of trying to find art outside the larger corporate sphere."

Upon Reflection

It's become my annual habit that prior to the final week of December, right before switching from work mode into vacation mode, I write a post looking back on the year. I sum up writing accomplishments, consider the state of the novel, try not to overly dwell on the slow pace of progress, say something that will be unfortunately ironic later, and so on.

This year I was particularly pressed for time when I would usually put together such a post, but with the way the calendar works out this December, I decided I could wait and post in the very last days of the month that are my frequent posting window anyway. I reasoned that during some of my vacation downtime, I'd have plenty of opportunity for the review of previous blog posts, novel progress notes, and other records I tend to consult when figuring out what the heck I did in any given year.

Though I am in fact following through on the year-end wrap-up, because here it is, I didn't spend a single minute in preparation before the afternoon I'm posting it. During a lovely beach getaway with family, I also didn't write any novel scenes, make any novel notes (well, one note—it's four words long), or put any thought into maybe finally redesigning my website.

Of course I didn't do any of that. I was on vacation, and while all those tasks are enjoyable in their own ways, they are work. Instead, I walked on the beach, I played games, I read with a view of the ocean, I spent time with people I love. And I felt grateful for my incredible good fortune in getting to take vacations as a break from a life of enjoyable work that falls far outside the common criteria of work.

I'm back home but still in vacation mode, really, and I sure resented committing myself to turning my work brain back on to get this post out. I remained resolved, but I had to motivate myself with the promise of just how minimal the post could be. I really only wanted to make sure I had a record for myself that the first half of 2024 involved a lot more planning, including a concerted effort at crafting complete character arcs, and that in late July I finally began a new, for-real draft. Progress has been predictably slow, but I'm not dwelling on that. Despite my real life often pulling attention away from my fiction, I've consistently returned focus to the novel whenever I can, and that's a significant accomplishment.

My first step for this post was to see what I had to say at the end of last year. I was surprised to discover how much I wrote, and how detailed and useful a record I'd made of my work and intentions throughout the year. My ambitions for today's post shrank even further in comparison.

Still, I got to work, with a plan for how I might eke out three or four paragraphs of reflection. By a couple of sentences in, I'd already changed that plan multiple times. By the third paragraph, I was contemplating deleting everything and starting over, only I just wanted to be done and post something, anything half-decent.

Now here I am in the eighth paragraph of what is certainly not my best writing ever but is probably at least three-quarters decent. The post has achieved the goal of capturing an accurate record of my writing state of mind, currently and recently. And it might sneakily have arrived at some broader truths about my writing year that can serve as useful lessons for the year ahead:

→ While I constantly wish I'd written something sooner, often by the time I write it later, I've come up with a different and better idea, so there's no sense in despairing over not writing faster.

→ But also: Usually I just need to get writing in order to figure out what I'm trying to write.

→ Writing time is important to me. Not-writing time is also important. Even after all these years, I'm still far from expert at distinguishing and prioritizing these times sensibly, but I can continue to learn.

Best wishes to you all as we move forward into another year!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At The Atlantic, Jordan Michelman explains the phenomenon of The Most Coveted Screenshot in the Literary World: "It is the Publishers Marketplace book-deal social-media post, a screenshot of the charmingly retro-looking blurb from a publishing-industry trade website that announces the details of an author selling their book."

November Reading Recap

I was so busy reading books last month, I got behind on reviewing them until now!

→ CAHOKIA JAZZ by Francis Spufford: Detectives Barrow and Drummond of the Cahokia PD are called to the scene of a grisly murder. It's 1922, so most of their cases involve the illegal liquor trade, but this is something else. An eviscerated body has been left atop one of the city's highest buildings, with a message scrawled in Anopa, the local language that most Indigenous citizens speak along with English. Barrow isn't an Indigenous local, though he's often mistaken for one; he's a newcomer of uncertain heritage to this ancient kingdom on the Mississippi that's now part of the United States. Since Barrow is still learning Cahokia's customs and culture, he tends to let Drummond take the lead, even when his friend's policing strategies are corrupt. But this time, Barrow is compelled to look past the convenient suspects and figure out what's really happening with this case and its complicated repercussions.

I loved everything about this compelling detective story set in a brilliantly rendered alternate history. Cahokia was a real city that prospered centuries before European colonization, and Spufford has established a timeline in which it continued thriving. He puts enough of the worldbuilding details on the page that my curiosity was satisfied, but not so much that Barrow ever gets much chance to rest from the grueling pace of his investigations. Barrow is an excellent character, burdened by all the usual trappings of a noir detective and also grappling with who he wants to be in the world. This is a smart, complex, dark novel, and I highly recommend it.

→ THE TELLING by Ursula K. Le Guin: When Sutty was growing up, Earth was dominated by an oppressive religious regime. She couldn't wait to complete her training as an Ekumen Observer and leave for an assignment on another planet, where things would be different. But when she arrives on Aka, she finds it's another rigidly controlled society, this one stridently anti-religious. The Akan government, in pursuit of technological progress like that of Earth, has outlawed everything associated with the planet's once-widespread spiritual practices. Sutty wishes she could learn more about this situation, but she's granted little access to anything worth studying while she's confined to the city. Once permitted to leave, Sutty travels to a remote village and realizes the old ways are still a part of daily life, though kept hidden from government monitors. As she gains the trust of the villagers, she learns the traditions of the Telling and the history that brought Aka to this point.

As I continue to wander through Le Guin's extensive body of work, I'm particularly enjoying the stories that place characters in cultures they're unfamiliar with and delve into the anthropological details. I didn't know anything about THE TELLING when I started it, so I was pleased to discover it's firmly in this category. I was immediately drawn in to Sutty's story and happy to get to know her better as we learned together about Akan culture and history. This novel is so heavy on the anthropological details that I grew a bit impatient in the middle, but soon more plot developed, and I was enthralled again. It's interesting to read a story contrasting a society that demands religion with one that bans it, and Le Guin explores this with her usual nuance.

→ OREO by Fran Ross: Oreo begins before the birth of the title character, when her eventual parents, a Black woman and a Jewish man, announce their marriage. The news of the union is so upsetting to their own parents that one drops dead and another is rendered catatonic. The marriage doesn't last long, and soon Oreo's father is gone from her life, but he leaves behind a set of clues Oreo can find him with when she's older. Though Oreo and her younger brother are raised by the Black side of their family, they are exposed to a certain amount of Yiddish as a consequence of their (now immobilized) grandfather's extensive but spite-based knowledge of Judaism. After a childhood immersed in the various language eccentricities of her family members and tutors, the precocious Oreo sets off to New York City on a quest to find her father.

This novel was published in 1974 and largely ignored until decades later. I went in knowing only that it was a satire with a biracial protagonist, and the book was quite different from what I expected, and from anything else. While there is social commentary on race as well as gender, the most prominent feature is Ross's extensive, inventive use of wordplay. The puns and jokes and rhetorical devices draw on numerous languages and fields of reference. I was constantly amused, impressed, and looking things up. The broader humor of Oreo's adventures is, well, broad, and often too slapsticky or surreal for my taste, but the language jokes are magnificent. The quest's structure turns out to be based on a legend from Greek mythology, adding another unexpected, fascinating layer. I didn't always enjoy this as a story, but I appreciated its idiosyncrasies, and I'm glad I read it.

→ THE SEQUEL by Jean Hanff Korelitz is a sequel to THE PLOT. The plot of THE PLOT involves a writer who publishes a wildly successful novel based on a plot that originated with another writer, and consequently ends up in the middle of his own sinister plot. The plot of THE SEQUEL results from the events of THE PLOT, making it difficult to describe without revealing the plot turns of THE PLOT. Once again, THE SEQUEL involves a writer publishing a wildly successful novel, but the plot of that novel is less important to the plot than the plot of the novel from THE PLOT, which continues to have sinister consequences in the life of the new writer. You got all that?

This is a reasonably clever followup, but I found it far less fun than the original. What THE SEQUEL adds to the story is the new protagonist's perspective, which Korelitz brings to life with some complexity. However, the premise requires going back over much of the material from THE PLOT, so this novel lacks the freshness and surprise of the first one. The rehashing made my disbelief lose suspension, and some of the publishing insider stuff felt like unnecessary filler this time. I was also sorry that one of the plot twists hinges on sexual assault, a trope I'm very tired of. Read THE PLOT if you're looking for an entertaining, over-the-top thriller set in the literary world, but you may want to stop there.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ For Literary Hub, Jadie Stillwell and Nicole Blackwood attend a Nancy Drew convention and consider the mystery of the girl detective: "Even if Nancy can't be defined by her image, surely we can nail down a character logline. Sherlock Holmes is abrasive, Hercule Poirot is vain, Veronica Mars is prickly, and Nancy Drew is... the quintessential teen girl of her time, at all times. Yes, she was lovingly sculpted into being by Carolyn Keenes (Carolyns Keene?) and scores of illustrators, but she's also one publishing executive's idea of how an independent young woman might look and act, packaged for the masses and routed straight to a bookshelf near you—and your mom, and your mom's mom. It's true that most of Nancy's iterations share a few traits: cute blue roadster, loyal boyfriend, indulgent dad. But these are things she possesses, privileges she has; there's still frustratingly little to cement her as more than a concept."

Thanks A Lot

It's been another two months since I posted about the slow and steady progress I'd been making on my novel draft over the prior two months. Past Me, never able to avoid hubris, said "I have hopes about speeding up," and I am here to laugh ruefully and report that certainly wasn't the case. But I'm also here to issue some qualifications that Past Me neglected to mention, maybe because she didn't consult our shared calendar.

It's been a busy two months in the non-writing department, all for lovely and pre-planned reasons (the best kind of busy-ness). Both sets of my parents came to visit (during separate weeks), and I took two trips (during other weeks). It was all lovely, but it didn't leave a lot of room in the calendar for writing days, especially nice long strings of consecutive writing days. So the progress I've made in these two months is far less than the previous two, but the excellent news is that it's far more than zero!

Of course another thing that happened during this time is the election. I wrote a post in November 2016 that more or less covers anything I might have thought to say now, and then some. Past Me occasionally has some good insights.

Relatedly, I'm on Bluesky now, along with millions of other new users. Way back in the olden days, I used to love Twitter for the fun community I had there. Then the platform went through a series of changes that caused some people to leave, others of us to stick around uncertainly, and the whole thing to grow decidedly less fun. Now enough people are on Bluesky that it has at least some of the old Twitter feel. If you were never drawn to this style of social media, there may be no reason to add it to your life now, but if you're interested and have questions, I'm happy to help.

I'll try not to set up any novel progress expectations for Future Me with this update. Our calendar indicates it's almost the end of another year, and that means more breaks and distractions, and fewer writing days in the weeks ahead. It's also one of the common occasions for gratitude, and I have so much of that. I'm grateful for the time and opportunity I have to write, for family and friends and the time I get to spend with them, and for all the ways I'm fortunate. And I'm thankful to you, for reading!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Charlie Jane Anders considers whether and how to write for this terrible time: "So now I have to think about the meaning of Lessons in Magic and Disaster in this new context, and whether people will find it meaningful during such a dark time. I think the book does have something to say about the tug of war between living your dreams and healing your wounds. I think it speaks to our need for literature and poetry and the humanities generally, at a time when those things are under attack. And even though it is not a book about capital-p Politics, I think it is animated by a unquenchable thirst for queer liberation. It's definitely a book about building better families and learning to survive."

→ At Wired, Meghan Herbst profiles author Martha Wells: "Wells, who is 60 years old, has averaged almost a book a year for more than three decades, ranging from palace intrigues to excursions into distant worlds populated by shapeshifters. But until Murderbot, Wells tended to fly just under the radar."

October Reading Recap

I've been keeping my mind occupied this past month with plenty of reading!

→ THE GOD OF THE WOODS by Liz Moore: In 1975, at a summer camp in the Adirondacks, a camper goes missing. And Barbara isn't just any camper—she's the daughter of the wealthy family who has owned the camp for generations. Even worse, Barbara's parents lost their first child 14 years earlier, when he disappeared into the forest and was never found. As the search for Barbara begins, the narrative shifts between characters and times to connect earlier events of the summer with clues that surface. Soon the investigation reopens questions about the previous disappearance, the family, and the camp staff, introducing more time periods and perspectives.

This is a well-written and suspenseful mystery that kept me up late reading for many nights. I was as interested in getting to know the characters as I was in finding out the answers to the many questions raised. The story unfolds at an exciting pace, with information parceled out in a way that lets the reader form and test theories along with the investigators. If you like complex thrillers and can handle stories where children are in peril, I definitely recommend this.

→ THE SINGER'S GUN by Emily St. John Mandel opens in New York City with a federal agent investigating a mysterious phone call connected to women smuggled into the country in a shipping container. Her inquiries lead her to the parents of Anton Waker, a man who's gone missing and may be dead after last being seen on a Greek island. Earlier, Anton arrives on that island during his honeymoon, and he decides to stay there, alone. The wedding was postponed twice, so perhaps the marriage was doomed before it began, but Anton won't give his new wife a clear explanation for why he isn't returning to New York with her. There's a lot Anton hasn't explained, including that his job has recently unraveled, his background isn't what he claimed, and his whole family's history is shady and criminal.

I really liked this story and the way it unfolds. There's a mystery established at the start, but much of the mystery is what's even going on, and while certain pieces soon become clearer, others take longer to expose. Anton is hiding a great deal, and so are all the other characters, giving them each a different sense of the big picture. As in every Mandel novel (this is her second), frequent shifts in time and perspective are used to good effect in assembling the pieces. The characters are rendered in full and specific detail (also what I expect from Mandel), and the plot becomes more tense with each new development. I was captivated all the way through.

→ GENDER QUEER is a graphic memoir by Maia Kobabe about the process of figuring out eir gender and sexuality. Kobabe starts with episodes from eir childhood that first introduced em to society's different expectations for girls and boys. Growing up as a girl, e often felt ignorant of these rules and wished to opt out. Adolescence brought more confusion as e developed crushes that weren't limited by gender, but was always most turned on by gay male fantasies and fanfiction. As a young adult, Kobabe tried out different relationships and identities before settling into understanding emself as nonbinary and asexual.

I found this an effective and affecting story that makes great use of the comics form. Kobabe's panels are a pleasure to look at, easy to follow, and often visually witty. I was especially impressed by eir ability to draw nuanced facial expressions with so few lines. Through the combination of art and text, Kobabe reveals deeply intimate thoughts that are sometimes painful, sometimes joyous. It's a beautiful portrait of one personal journey that may also help readers better see themselves or their loved ones.

→ SHANGHAILANDERS by Juli Min: In 2040, the Yang family is coming apart, literally and figuratively, as some members stay at home in Shanghai and others fly off to distant countries. After a quarter century of marriage, Leo and Eko are both wondering if they still have a future together. Their three daughters are growing into young women, all with big problems their parents are unaware of. After an introduction to the family, each chapter takes a step back in time, offering glimpses of earlier and earlier events and expanding the set of secrets.

This is one of those books where I enjoyed the individual pieces more than the whole. I was intrigued by the stories presented by each new chapter and point of view, and I wished they were more tightly connected beyond revolving around the same family. Though the backward structure seems designed to answer questions about the past raised by later events, most referenced situations never appeared again, and that left me unsatisfied. For example, two of the strongest chapters focus on staff members employed by the Yangs, and it felt like a missed opportunity to not see them through the family's eyes at a different time. Min is a talented writer of characters and scenes, but this didn't come together for me.

→ THE FAR REACHES: STORIES TO TAKE YOU OUT OF THIS WORLD is a collection of six original stories (published by Amazon and exclusive to their platforms) by well-known science fiction authors. I was already a fan of some of these writers, and others were familiar names who I'd never read and wanted to try. I enjoyed the collection overall and each story individually, though I wanted more from some of them.

All the stories involve space travel, usually beyond the solar system, so many deal with broad sweeps of time. In "How It Unfolds" by James S. A. Corey, characters from Earth are scanned and beamed as information to distant planets where they might reestablish human civilization. The details set up a fascinating premise at a vast scale, while the story focuses on individual character relationships. "Slow Time Between the Stars" by John Scalzi also involves a long-range search for habitable planets, but the narrator is a solitary intelligent spaceship who spends its slow time musing about its mission.

In "Void" by Veronica Roth, the crew of an interstellar ship has to live outside of normal human time, barely aging on their journeys while decades pass at their destinations. That story is a murder mystery that makes satisfying use of the time dilation. The characters in "Just Out of Jupiter’s Reach" by Nnedi Okorafor are selected for solo space travel, each tasked with roaming the solar system alone for ten years, but they get to meet up for one week of intense human connection.

"The Long Game" by Ann Leckie is narrated by an alien life form interacting with humans. Leckie is always great at imagining alien minds, and this intriguing story is no exception. Aliens also feature in "Falling Bodies" by Rebecca Roanhorse, a bleak story about a human who was adopted by a colonizing species and grew up uncertain about where his allegiance should lie.

September Reading Recap

Once again, my reading adventures led me through a fascinating variety of novels:

→ CHAIN-GANG ALL-STARS by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah: In the near future, the United States prison system takes inmate exploitation to a whole new level by introducing gladiatorial combat. Prisoners convicted of violent crimes can enroll in the Criminal Action Penal Entertainment program and fight one another to the death before live and televised audiences. For as long as they remain alive, fighters become celebrities, with their lives recorded and broadcast to fans who dissect the between-match dramas among the different Chain-Gangs. Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are two of the biggest stars, and both the romance between the two women and the way they run their Chain is legendary. Thurwar has survived almost three years, and if she wins just a few more matches, she'll be granted freedom from this gruesome life where killing is better than the alternative.

The novel starts out intense and disturbing by detailing several matches, and I wasn't sure how to feel about what I was reading. But as I read a little farther, I got a better grasp on the concept, and the characters drew me in. The premise of this dystopian future prison system is horrific. So is much about the current prison system. Adjei-Brenyah explores these real and invented horrors with nuance by shifting among characters with different relationships to the system and throwing in occasional pointed footnotes.

Because the characters have been led to glorify violence, the writing often does as well, making the readers part of the audience invested in every moment of these lethal matches. Enough time is spent outside of the arena that the story isn't nonstop brutality, and I was also invested in and moved by the characters and their bonds. This novel successfully pulls off a number of difficult moves. It will make you uncomfortable, and I recommend it.

→ FIGHT NIGHT by Miriam Toews: Swiv was expelled from school, so she spends her days at home with her grandmother. Grandma conducts a form of homeschooling that involves talking about death, occasional math problems, and the letter-writing assignments suggested by the family's therapist. When Swiv's mom comes home every evening, she's always tired and ranting about something. Mom is pregnant with a fetus the family calls Gord, who Swiv often worries about. She doesn't know where her dad has disappeared to, and she isn't sure whether the adults know or are just as in the dark about why their family has fallen apart.

This novel is all about Swiv's unique and hilarious narrative voice. Not a lot happens for much of the story besides Swiv coping with the daily realities of her family. As a young child surrounded by adults, she's the focus of their love and attention, but they also have other concerns she doesn't always understand. The characters' lives have been shaped by mental health problems and loss, and some of that history is eventually revealed to the reader, but more is left unexplained than I anticipated. I laughed and laughed through this unusual, darkly funny story, and then I cried a little. I loved the whole experience.

→ LOKA by S.B. Divya: Akshaya doesn't want the life her parents have planned for her, and genetically designed her for, on the planet Meru. After a childhood spent in space travel, Aks will be making her first visit to Earth, and though she's never set foot there, she's convinced it's where she wants to spend the rest of her life. (She's sixteen, and full of convictions.) In order to really experience the home of humanity, Aks and her best friend set out on an ambitious journey to circumnavigate Earth, under a specific set of constraints. They're undertaking the Anthro Challenge, a commitment to only using human-era technology and accepting no help from alloys, the genetically advanced descendants of humans. Since most humans are content to let alloys manage everything and are suspicious of any form of ambition, this endeavor will be not just a grueling physical trial but a challenge to win understanding and acceptance.

LOKA continues The Alloy Era series by moving into the next generation, but it's a very different sort of story than MERU, and either book could be read alone. I preferred the first novel, which had a wider scope and took the characters around the galaxy. By contrast, this one that focused on Earth felt more limited, and I didn't find the premise or characters as compelling. I still enjoyed following Aks on her adventure and was caught up in the exciting and emotional journey. I'm eager to see what's next for this series and will check out whatever Divya writes!

→ ENTITLEMENT by Rumaan Alam: Brooke is excited about her new job at the foundation of billionaire Asher Jaffee, who has pledged to give away his fortune. She spent some years as a teacher but didn't have the necessary passion, so she's enjoying the relative ease and comfort of the office work while still doing good in the world. Asher, at 83, is uninterested in retirement and likes to stay involved in his charity. He's intrigued by the new Black hire and the connection she might provide to the souls who most need saving. Asher takes Brooke on as his protégé, removing her from the project she's been assigned and giving her free rein to find the causes that interest her most. Brooke slips easily into her expanded role, happily filing expense reports and using the car service for whatever she needs. Before long, she starts to wonder whether her own life might be be as worthy as any other cause.

There is so much that's great about this premise, and so much potential in Brooke's developing sense of entitlement. But I was disappointed by the story's slow pace, and unsatisfied by the plot. The characters are fascinating, and as always, Alam writes with insight and nuance about people trying to connect across the borders of class and race. I remain a fan of his writing, but I hoped for something more from this novel.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Leigh Stein considers the claim that there are only 20,000 readers of literary fiction: "All I can offer in my defense is that I read that number (20,000) in a review in July and it stuck in my memory because it sounds true. It might not be accurate, and I would love to see real data on this, but I've worked in the publishing industry since 2008. I've sold six books. I know first-hand how hard it is to sell literary fiction—and by sell I mean both to a publisher and to readers." (Thanks, Book Riot!)

Slow and Steady

My actual writing of a decent draft of this novel continues. I planned to say "continues apace," which I thought meant "at a constant pace," and then I would clarify that while the pace is constant, it's quite slow. But I've learned that "apace" means "swiftly," so now instead you get a glimpse inside my writing process, where I pay close attention to choosing each word. And now you have some idea why it takes so long.

I began this draft about two months ago, and I'm still generally enjoying turning my plans into prose. I'm making a lot of changes from the outline as I go, but mostly at a level that only affects a scene or two. Sometimes the work feels like solving a fun puzzle as I figure out which pieces fit best where. Sometimes a cool new detail occurs to me while I'm in the middle of a paragraph—or when I'm walking down the street or taking a shower. Other times, I can't understand why I'm still in the middle of the same paragraph as an hour ago.

After two months, I'm perhaps one-tenth of the way through the novel. That's an exciting amount of progress! It's also so much less than I wished for. My dreams of writing this draft in six months are long gone. Even a year seems ruled out by the reality of the math, though with my eternally unrealistic optimism, I have hopes about speeding up.

But things take as long as they take, or so I've heard. I'm writing right along, continuing at my pace, and we'll be there when we get there.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Rebecca Onion at Slate interviews Emily St. John Mandel about Station Eleven, 10 Years Later: "One thing that doesn't ring true to me about the book anymore isn't necessarily something I got wrong, but just the way our country has changed. When I wrote the book, I wrote a scene where all these flights are diverted to the nearest airport and everybody gets off the plane. They go to a television monitor tuned to CNN or something, and the announcer is talking about this new pandemic and everybody believes what the announcer is saying, which—I swear to God, that was plausible in 2011. At this point, absolutely not. I can't even imagine that happening."

August Reading Recap

I had another great month of reading all sorts of books!

→ THE MINISTRY OF TIME by Kaliane Bradley: After the British government discovers time travel, a newly formed Ministry decides to test for safety by pulling a few individuals out of the past when they're on the brink of certain death, so their removal won't alter any timelines. Each "expat," as the unwilling time travelers are called, is assigned to live with a ministry agent called a "bridge" who will help them adjust to modern London while watching for any signs of physical or psychological deterioration. The novel's unnamed narrator is the bridge for a (real) Royal Navy explorer, Commander Graham Gore, taken in 1847 from a doomed Arctic expedition. The bridge finds her new housemate charming and quicker to acclimate to the twenty-first century than some of the other expats, and their cohabitation goes well, despite his reservations about living with an unmarried woman. But as she delivers her reports to the Ministry and carries out her duties, she starts to suspect there is more to the time travel project than the bridges have been told.

This novel starts off fun and mostly light-hearted, focusing on the amusing antics of Gore learning about the modern world and the bridge's increasing attraction to him. But the plot soon becomes more complicated, darker, and unpredictable. I really liked the story in both modes, and the way all the pieces worked together. Bradley fully imagines every character and writes Gore and the other expats with reactions and manners of speech that match their eras. The writing is funny and clever, the story unfolds in a satisfying way, and the book was a pleasure to read.

→ SPECIAL TOPICS IN BEING A PARENT by S. Bear Bergman, illustrated by Saul Freedman-Lawson: The subtitle to this book of advice promises "A Queer and Tender Guide to Things I've Learned About Parenting, Mostly the Hard Way," and from the first page, Bergman is humble and honest about those difficult lessons. "I was a perfect parent before I had actual children," he writes, in an opening chapter that goes on to describe the contrast between his tidy imaginary children and the chaotic real ones. Freedman-Lawson's delightful and detailed illustrations bring both versions to life and establish the visual language of the guide. From then on, it's always clear Bergman is drawing on his real life experiences and has put great thought into deriving lessons that might be useful for other parents.

The guide covers a range of topics, from everyday matters like getting everyone out of the house on time to weighty issues such as bullying. There's advice on introducing kids to new foods, and on introducing them to the concepts of diversity and differences between people. One lovely chapter offers the idea of replacing family trees with family gardens, presenting many possible ways to make use of this metaphor. For anyone who's part of a child's garden, I heartily recommend this book.

Check out photos of a few sample pages here. And to every flavor of human, I also recommend Bergman and Freedman-Lawson's first collaboration, SPECIAL TOPICS IN BEING A HUMAN.

→ DEMON COPPERHEAD by Barbara Kingsolver: Damon is born to an addict mother in a trailer home in the southwestern Virginia mountains. Though he soon acquires the nickname Demon, he's actually a good kid who helps his mother keep her act together after she gets clean. His best friend is part of the kind family next door who provide a second home for Demon, and despite a rocky start, his early life is pretty good. But when Demon's mom marries a hateful, abusive man, there's only so much the neighbors can do, and soon Demon is shunted into a terrible foster situation where he's used as free labor on a tobacco farm. From there, Demon's childhood is a string of miseries, until he finds his way back to some happiness—for a while. More tragedies lie ahead, but Demon remains a good kid with people who care about him, and he'll make it through.

Demon narrates his story with a voice that's vibrant, funny, and insightful about both his childhood thoughts and the adult perspective he's writing from. Kingsolver's masterful handling of the narration kept me absorbed in the novel for many hundreds of pages, and while I do think some episodes could have been trimmed, my attention rarely flagged. I was always caught up in caring about what would happen to Demon, and I appreciated getting his view of his world.

Kingsolver reimagined Charles Dickens' DAVID COPPERFIELD to create this novel, and while I knew nothing specific about that story before reading, I could recognize the Dickensian nature of Demon's hardships, the colorful characters, and the occasional commentaries on social problems. It was interesting to read a summary of COPPERFIELD afterward to see how Kingsolver transposed the plot and people into modern Appalachia and used them to examine the region's poverty and the opioid crisis.

→ SLOW DANCE by Rainbow Rowell: When Shiloh attends the second wedding of one of her oldest friends, she's anxious about whether their other oldest friend will be there. Shiloh has been out of touch with Cary almost since they graduated from high school fifteen years ago, so on the one hand she's eager to see him. On the other hand, Shiloh has been married, had two kids, and divorced since then, and she isn't sure about being seen. Cary is at the wedding, and it's wonderful to reconnect, but also strange, because they have a lot of history together. A lot, and it's complicated. Everyone always thought the two of them were dating, though that wasn't what they were to each other, despite being inseparable. Now romantic possibilities are surfacing, but Shiloh has the kids and ex-husband, and Cary has a career in the Navy and is only back in Omaha briefly. So it's even more complicated, and it's definitely a lot.

This is a compelling novel about characters trying to bridge the gaps between each other, between imagined versions and reality, and between their teenage and adult selves. As I expect from a Rainbow Rowell book, the story is sweet and romantic at the same time it deals with emotional turmoil and difficult family situations. Also on brand: the characters have long, deep conversations as well as witty banter. At times, some of the angsting felt like too much to me, but I was happy to spend time with Shiloh and Cary and to watch their relationship develop.

→ THE BERRY PICKERS by Amanda Peters: Joe's whole life has been shaped by his sister Ruthie's disappearance when the two of them were young. She vanished in 1962 from the side of a road in Maine, where their family went every summer along with other Mi'kmaq Indians from Nova Scotia to work as blueberry pickers. Fifty years later, Joe is dying, surrounded by what's left of his family, his memories of the past, and the consequences of his life choices. Elsewhere, Norma is starting to make sense of a lifetime of confusing experiences, including childhood dreams of a different mother than the anxious, overbearing one she grew up with. Norma has always been aware that she's browner than her parents and that something doesn't add up in their story of a fire that destroyed all her baby pictures. But it takes fifty years for her to find the explanations she's long sought.

The end of the novel is clearly established at the beginning: Norma is Ruthie, and before Joe dies, she will find her way back to the family she was taken from. It makes sense not to withhold this information that would be easy to guess, but I was disappointed that by the middle of the book, almost every other piece of the story was already revealed, and I was losing interest. Though I felt for the characters, they never really came to life for me. Many other readers loved the story and the writing, but I wanted more from it.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Ed Yong offers a writing case study from his own work: "The start of any piece is known in journalism jargon as the lede. It should be a lure that entices readers and makes them want to read the rest of the story. It should be a trailer, which gives an accurate reflection of the content and tone to come. And it should be a flex, which demonstrates that the writer knows what they're doing. It's perhaps the single most important part of any piece of writing, and the part I spend the most time on. This paragraph took three fucking hours."

July Reading Recap

Now that I'm actually writing again, will my reading spree taper off? Time will tell!

→ MOONBOUND by Robin Sloan: After the Anth have solved all Earth's problems, humanity engineers a crew of beings, known as dragons, and sends them to explore the galaxy. The dragons return determined to prevent any further exploration by isolating Earth in a veil of moondust. The Anth fight back, but the dragons are invincible from their citadel on the moon, and the war is disastrous for humanity. (This is all explained in a four-page prologue.) Eleven thousand years later, a microscopic chronicler wakes up again. A young boy, Ariel, has just stumbled upon the preserved corpse that was the chronicler's previous host, and so this sentient "sourdough starter with a mech suit" leaps into Ariel's body and once again experiences the world. Earth has changed immeasurably, and mysteriously. Ariel lives in a small village dominated by a castle, as well as by a wizard who flies an airplane. Ariel has a handheld video game device and a dog that can talk. (All animals can talk.) The sky remains dust-shrouded, and soon Ariel and the chronicler will set out on an epic quest to revive the war against the dragons.

This novel is a weird and wonderful adventure that plays around with the conventions of genre, quests, chosen ones, and other classic tropes. While the story's patterns are familiar, little about it can be anticipated, and each new stage in the characters' journey brings fascinating surprises and extends the imaginative worldbuilding. MOONBOUND is quite different from Sloan's previous novels, but it has the same gentle humor and lovingly developed characters. (There are also some small references to his earlier books.) Sloan has planned this as the first book in a series, and I look forward to spending more time with these great characters and seeing other elements of the far-future Earth.

→ DIXON, DESCENDING by Karen Outen: Dixon has climbed serious mountains, but he never dreamed of attempting Everest until his brother Nate suggested it. The brothers have come into some money after their mother's death, and Nate's proposal is that they train together and then take a few months out of their lives to travel to Nepal and climb with a tour group. For Dixon, that means a semester off from the boys' middle school where he works as a psychologist, leaving his favorite kids, including one who is the target of relentless bullying. Still, Nate's dream of Everest becomes Dixon's as well, until he can't imagine not making the trip, and not reaching the summit, whatever the cost.

The novel begins on the mountain and sets up ominous foreshadowing before jumping back to establish what led the brothers there and what they've left behind. Careful shifts between time periods build up the tension as the story circles around the question of what happened. Outen did extensive research to portray the experience of climbing Everest, and her evocative writing captures both the majesty and the agony to be found on the mountain.

Dixon and Nate are Black, a rarity on the mountain that attracts some attention. Dixon's students are also young Black men, but they lack the privileges he grew up with, and his desire to help them doesn't always work out. In the portion of the book focused on the aftermath of the Everest expedition, there's an emotional story about Dixon and two of his students. While that plotline can't live up to the adventure and suspense of the Everest plot, it's well-crafted with high stakes of its own, and Outen ties the threads together in a satisfying ending. I recommend this, especially to others who share my horrified fascination with the idea of anyone climbing Everest.

→ PEOPLE COLLIDE by Isle McElroy: Eli and Elizabeth are an American couple living in Bulgaria, where she's earned a coveted fellowship. Eli is aware of being the less ambitious one, and he's hanging around with little to do while Elizabeth teaches and writes. Until one day, when Eli discovers that he's taken over Elizabeth's body. Once he reconciles himself to this strange situation, he assumes Elizabeth is in his own body, but she's nowhere to be found and isn't responding to calls. Because Eli can't explain the situation to anyone else, he has to pretend to be Elizabeth and act like Eli is the one who's disappeared. Soon a clue emerges to her possible whereabouts, and Eli is off on a search for his missing wife and his own missing body.

While the body swap is a familiar premise, McElroy bypasses most of the usual components, for good and bad. I had mixed feelings about this novel due mostly to imagining it would be a different sort of story. I was always eager to find out what would happen next, but I wasn't always as interested in where the author chose to take the story as in where I thought it might go. However, McElroy writes well, with excellent insight into the characters and relationships, and they use the premise to explore a range of ideas.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Charlie Jane Anders offers Another Way To Think About "Conflict" and "Stakes" In Your Fiction: "A lot of conflict is really about people dealing with all the weird programming that was crammed into their brains when they were younger, because most people have been indoctrinated with a ton of bad ideas about how the world works. I'm really interested in writing about the conflicts that take place within people. (In fact, one of the most interesting conflicts a character can have is the struggle to see past the toxic notion that life is about being aggressive, fighting, taking what you want, and so on.)"

Actually Writing

Since last week, I've been actually writing an actual draft of my current novel! I'd set myself a deadline to reach a stopping point on outlining and other planning, and move on to writing down the words and sentences of the story. I had to extend the target date by a couple of weeks (fortunately I'm on decent terms with my boss), but the deadline successfully moved this endeavor forward.

And it's been great! For a while now, I've had trouble staying focused on work for as much time as I intend, and I worried that writing was going to feel so much harder than planning and therefore even more difficult to stick with. But on the contrary, my writing sessions have kept me absorbed for hours in a row. I guess I do like writing after all, not merely having written.

It's still a slow process, and I'm only a few scenes in. There's some further planning I'm mixing in with the writing as I go, but I expect to keep inching along through the early section of the novel. Once I reach a certain point, I may need to stop writing for a little while and make decisions about some elements that remain vague. My hope is that figuring out these pieces will be easier with part of the story fleshed out.

Though I have all these open questions, I've mapped out the big picture of the entire novel. After two earlier drafts that were more like extended brainstorms, I'm glad to set off this time with confidence about where the story is going.

The outline is serving as a guide, but already in the course of turning plan into story, I've made small adjustments such as introducing details in a different order. With any luck, I'll avoid significant changes to the largest pieces, because the interlocking plotlines are carefully balanced, so one change could require many others. But I'm staying attentive to what makes sense for each scene and letting the story evolve within the framework of the high level plan.

And now, I'm eager to get back to writing!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Maris Kreizman at Literary Hub describes her experience contributing to the New York Times Best Books of the Century list: "First I tried to define 'best' in a way that felt right for me. I settled on the books that changed the way I viewed the world, or changed my idea of what a book can do or be. If you’re a real book lover you know that 10 slots to cover 24.5 years of books isn’t nearly enough to convey everything that's wonderful. So I created some of my own guidelines, namely that I wanted my list to be representative of what I, Maris Kreizman, read: mostly fiction, with some narrative nonfiction and essay writing thrown in."