Zero Out of Ten
Currently reading:
This B Just Won’t Die! by Tanya Pell
Burning Down the House: Talking Heads and the New York Scene that Transformed Rock by Jonathan Gould
Out There Screaming, edited by Jordan Peele
An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo
The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis [audiobook]
Books finished this week: 1
★★★☆☆
Where this book came from: A weekend stop into McNally Jackson. (You’ll soon see that’s a bit of a theme with me . . .)
Why this book: I think I saw a BookTuber talking about this novel and though I was deeply moved by how much they loved it, I now cannot remember who the hell was the reviewer who moved me lol whoops! Also I saw that a local bookstore is doing a book club about this one, and it was the push I needed to finally read it.
Thoughts: I was so ready to be moved by this book. I thought it would be sad and gross and weird. And I guess it was technically all of those things, at different points, but you know what else it was? Kind of boring! Unclear how a book about a grieving parent nurturing part of her dead child’s lung until it grows into a strange little furry being was boring, but Monstrilio managed it——especially, in my opinion, in the fourth and final part of the book, which is from the POV of the “monster.” This just felt long and a bit too much like a family drama and a coming-of-age novel, when I was expecting grief and rage and horror.
Library updates:
Hey, so you know what’s not cool at all right now? Getting fucking COVID! Zero out of ten experience, do not recommend.
I spent most of the last week in my bed either asleep or in some kind of twilight haze, probably with a fever, too weak to keep my eyes open or my brain active, let alone to climb out of bed for a thermometer to check. I had all the symptoms: extreme fatigue, coughing, sneezing, congestion, headache, aches. There are many, many things I hate in this world, but being sick is very near the top of the list. I don’t like being unproductive; I don’t like not being able to fix a problem through a powerful mix of tenacity and anxiety.
Needless to say, I didn’t get a ton of reading done this past week, because focusing was very difficult. I spent three straight days unshowered and took an accidental three-plus-hour nap one afternoon. Finishing Kitten was not high on my priority list.
(And I’m not sorry for that, because tangential rant, what the ever-loving fuck was that book? It wasn’t as genuinely awful and horrifying as City of Rats, but it did make me irrationally angry. At first, I thought it was just going to be a quirky book that made my skin crawl because of how weird the protagonist was being and the awkward situations that landed her in. But then——spoiler alert, plus trigger warning for animal death——the protagonist, who unfortunately shares my damn name, repeatedly mistreated the cat she claimed to “love,” all because she had “never met” a cat and didn’t understand how to care for one, and apparently is not enough of a human being in the world to understand that cats get into everything and maybe you shouldn’t leave out cupcake frosting and, checks notes, watercolor paints?? And then the cat died because Katie was a fucking moron and I could not give less of a shit about delving into ~tHe MeTaPhOrS~ or her going on her finally-growing-up-and-finding-community journey. If you “fridge” a woman to send a man on a quest for growth, what do you call it when you kill a cat to send a dumb twenty-two-year-old on the same? Regardless, go fuck yourself, Katie. [End spoiler.])
Ahem. Anyhow! You know what I did somehow do recently, other than skim-hate-read and DNF a bad book and then rant about it on my blog? I wrote at least 100 words every single fucking day of September. I started working on a new novel (??) idea last month, plus I’ve been working on a short story here and there for the last year or so. For anyone curious, my word count total for the month was 28,589. I don’t think it’s arrogant to say I’m proud of myself for that. And the truth is, even if I only write 100 words in one month, let alone every day, I’ll be proud. Disappointed, just a little bit, yeah, because my greatest fear is failure, but still proud of myself for doing the thing I like doing.
Having a deadline to hit by the end of the month helped, too, so I very much do not expect to repeat this feat.
Closing thoughts:
Right now, writing is fun! Reading is getting there.
Total books read from the Moratorium Library: 234
(Total books added to the Moratorium Library: 492)
Tori (hi, Tori!) and I were wrapping up a hangout yesterday and the thought popped into my head that we should stop by McNally Jackson . . . you know, for publishing research.
