One Wedding and a Writing Retreat
Currently reading:
Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova
Out There Screaming, edited by Jordan Peele
An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo
The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis [audiobook]
Books finished this week: 2
★★☆☆☆
Where this book came from: Purchased on a trip to the B&N in Park Slope with Britt (hi, Britt!) as a “book club” book for us to read and discuss at some future date.
Why this book: The title, the setting, the premise.
Thoughts: This is such a me/nitpicky thing to start with, but their are no quotation marks around any of the dialogue in this book, and though I eventually got into the rhythm of it, that did throw me. Call me vanilla, but I mostly like my books to follow the accepted conventions. On some broader notes of what didn’t work for me, I just didn’t find this as fun and moving as I had thought——and hoped——it would be from the descriptions. Maybe I was a relatively awkward and sheltered child (I was), but the depictions of girlhood and friendship were kind of . . . awful here? I didn’t understand why these four girls were friends, and that made it difficult to connect with them and believe that they cared about each other and what was going on (aka the moon being hexed/missing). There were some nice moments and beautiful pieces of prose, but overall, this was just a slow-moving disappointment for me.
★★★☆☆
Where this book came from: Purchased on a lunchtime jaunt to Kinokuniya during the weekday.
Why this book: This is the next pick for our office book club!
Thoughts: Sorry to return as such a negative Nelly, but I didn’t love this one, either! Another slow book, though not as disappointing as We Hexed the Moon. The book has an excellent premise and starts strong, but I just found most of the internal reflection and character dialogue incredibly repetitive, which killed the momentum——and some of the enjoyment——for me. I think this would have worked phenomenally well as a novella, with less page space necessitating more pointed scenes.
Library updates:
Hi, I’m back! Did you miss me? I missed you——and the Library——though I was also glad not to have one more thing to do over the last two weekends.
I had hoped to make my triumphant return this Sunday with a handful of new books to share with you, but the last two weeks were both busily wonderful and wonderfully busy (as well as just plain busy), so I’m doing my best not to judge myself for not reading as much as I had hoped. I feel infinitely lucky to have spent so much time upstate to kick off autumn, and to have been surrounded by so much love and creativity while also reconnecting with a bunch of very excellent people.
Over Labor Day weekend, I returned to Hilltown Commons for the second annual Little Nights Big Weekend retreat, a long weekend of creativity workshops and slow living. My room had a phenomenal view, I wrote a ton, and I told a very cathartic tale at the Sunday firepit/campfire story night. Also, I swam in the lake, which wasn’t allowed last year due to algae!
And last weekend, I got to see two friends get hitched, just down the Hudson River a-ways. It was a ridiculously beautiful ceremony and a fantastic evening of eating, drinking, dancing, and watching my parents pretend it was 1986 whenever a good song came on from their youth.
All in all, a solid few weeks! And the best part of it is perhaps that I’ve written every single day in September (as of this writing on the evening of Sunday, September 20). I don’t want to jinx myself, but I’m feeling very good about my habits right now, as well as the projects that are taking shape because of those habits.
And for anyone curious, here’s how my June, July, and August word count totals shook out, because I just realized I completely forgot to share any of those:
June: 10,052
July: 11,350
August: 11,558
Closing thoughts:
Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
Total books read from the Moratorium Library: 233
(Total books added to the Moratorium Library: 489)
As mentioned above, I purchased my copy of She’s a Doll from Kinokuniya. (Thanks for spotting this one early and suggesting we go, Beata!)
And I somehow avoided buying books at Spotty Dog in Hudson or Magpie Bookshop in Catskill, but I’m sure I’ll make up for it on future visits.
