The October 2024 List
dry-aged 12 days
The beginning of November has slipped through my hands in a spate of sickness and travel and now (gratefully) time in the mountains.
Most of October was about Petya's Month of Didion over at A Reading Life, which was a wonderful experience for me, both the exploration of Didion's work and reading what others had to say (see her post for a list). I read the essay “After Henry” and started to wonder if Joan Didion was always writing about Joan Didion. Then, I wrote a piece about our collective Joan Didion obsession that I unpublished because it made me nervous.
Why did it make me nervous? It was critical and I'm scared to come out with my critical self online. So much writing about writing is positive, often vacuously, but still, I wasn't so sure about my position. And then Petya’s piece about The Paradox of Admiration felt like it made a similar argument to mine, but better.
Salty Aunty: Who’s the dullard now?
embracing grumpy old lady tendencies
The New York Times Social Q’s recently responded to a bunch of adults who are protesting adulthood by complaining about things they cannot control.
We’re talking people who politely decline dinner invitations, neighbors who park in front of their own houses, which person in the car gets radio rights, and friends forgetting to say congratulations to wedding announcements. Do they not have any actual problems to deal with? There’s a contentious election happening. The world is burning. Children are getting shot at schools. Who cares where your neighbor parks. Grow up.
My mother’s advice was to “live and let live,” and even though 14-year-old me protests, she was right. There’s a junior high obsession here with controlling the way other people live when those people are doing you no harm. Leave them alone. They’ll leave you alone and maybe we can redirect that energy towards taking care of things that matter.
What if we tried listening instead of telling people what to do? Maybe we’d start solving problems instead of inventing them.
TBR no more
Stuff I read off my bookshelf
R. Eric Thomas: Here for It*
An asterisk on my reading list denotes an audiobook. Somehow I feel like it's keeping me honest. I enjoyed the audiobook and ended up marking a chapter to go back and read again. Of course, my book is at home and I'm in the mountains, so unless someone asks in the comments exactly which chapter that is will remain a mystery to you.
I get most audiobooks from my local library using Libby. It's been one of mine and my family's favorite reading and listening resources for years and it's free!
Jaima Fixsen: The Specimen
My friend Jaima published a book. The Specimen is a gothic murder mystery set in 1830s Edinburgh. A single mom's son is sick. He's got a mitral valve defect in his heart that will one day kill him. Then he disappears. Months later, she tours a local doctor's anatomical museum and finds a child's hear with a mitral valve defect among the displayed objects. Adventures ensue.
I have sat across the table from Jaima so many times. We usually meet at least once a week to write and the fact that this book came out of that person - the one I tease about her Diet Coke habit, the one who makes me go to the gym, the one who didn't mind my daughter bunking with us for a conference - astounds me.
The writing is good. I agree with some mild critique I've read about the witchy elements, that it wasn't well developed. But Isobel is such a compelling heroine that I couldn't put it down. Worth checking out!
Kanoko Okamoto: A Riot of Goldfish
A Riot of Goldfish was a beautiful and sad little novella about a boy in love with a girl who might be in love with him and their mutual love for goldfish. Lovely read. At first I was a bit mystified that David Mitchell wrote the introduction, then remembered how much I loved reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which is about a Dutchman in Japan and it made sense.
I have a note to myself: the image of the woman as typography/ pen stroke. Calligraphy. P29
But again - I’m in the mountains and my book is at home. Can we consider this building suspense?
Griffin Dunne: The Friday Afternoon Club
Perhaps best known for being Joan Didion's nephew, and directing a Netflix documentary about her, The Center Will Not Hold, Griffin Dunne's memoir is about growing up in Hollywood, his sister's violent death, and how his family coped.
There's also a lot about Carrie Fisher and to be honest that part felt a bit icky to me.
What I got was the story of a young man who grew up around all kinds of fame and was infatuated with it from childhood. He wasn't the kid who played in the other room and ignored the fact that a start was sitting on the couch. No, he was the kid who would find a reason to walk through the room and talk to the star on the couch. It's all cute to a point, but didn't leave me feeling like this is a person I want to hang out with.
The family tragedy is that his sister Dominique Dunne, who starred in the first Exorcist movie, was killed by an ex-boyfriend when she was 22 years old. The family sat in court and watched the ex's lawyer's ruthlessly make their daughter and sister look terrible while a judge kept important information from the jury. The results were disappointing for the family on the justice front.
Their father Dominic wrote a Vanity Fair article based on journals he kept during the trial and the article ended up launching his second and far more successful writing career as a writer.
There was a ton of hype around this book when it came out and I appreciated it as some extra insight into Didion and her life.
Calendar candy
Events in Edmonton and nearby
My new and fairly fabulous friend Ellen Kartz is putting on “If I Was Fearless,” her second one-woman show in Edmonton at the Aviary on 20 November this month. Great description on their Instagram. I met Ellen when she took on LitFest on one day notice and turned out a great non-fiction book event for us. She's got a great sense of humor and I suspect some big old feelings and even bigger thinks lurking behind all that. Can't wait to see her show - so get yourself a ticket and I'll see you there.