I wrote a thing! The Nest is Bleak House in Disguise

I wrote 1700 words about how Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney's debut novel The Nest is Dickens's Bleak House in disguise.  And Book Riot published it - here.  Eeep.

(PS: The Nest was a great read)

When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

Summary from Goodreads:
Terry Tempest Williams’s mother told her: “I am leaving you all my journals, but you must promise me you won’t look at them until after I’m gone.”

Readers of Williams’s iconic and unconventional memoir, Refuge, well remember that mother. She was one of a large Mormon clan in northern Utah who developed cancer as a result of the nuclear testing in nearby Nevada. It was a shock to Williams to discover that her mother had kept journals. But not as much of a shock as what she found when the time came to read them. 

“They were exactly where she said they would be: three shelves of beautiful cloth-bound books . . . I opened the first journal. It was empty. I opened the second journal. It was empty. I opened the third. It too was empty . . . Shelf after shelf after shelf, all of my mother’s journals were blank.” What did Williams’s mother mean by that? In fifty-four chapters that unfold like a series of yoga poses, each with its own logic and beauty, Williams creates a lyrical and caring meditation of the mystery of her mother's journals. When Women Were Birds is a kaleidoscope that keeps turning around the question “What does it mean to have a voice?”

I honestly can't give a review of When Women Were Birds that is anything but OMIGODYOUMUSTBUYANDREADTHISNOWNOWNOWNOW.  The description on the flap copy gave me goosebumps and I sat down to read this in one sitting.  Then I read it over again. Everyone has to read this.  Every. One.

The actual sentence-level writing is the absolute best I've read in a long time, a master-class in narrative non-fiction.  Some of the variations are biographical (the grandmother who shared her love of birdwatching), some are autobiographical (Williams's remembrance of teaching school or developing conservation efforts), and some really defy definition.  A poetic essay?  Memoir?  Philosophical musings on the choice her mother made to secretly break with the tradition of keeping a diary?  Collected together they create beauty.

When Women Were Birds is a book I will come back to again and again at different points in my life.  The paperback edition, newly released, is my staff rec and I've been chasing customers and booksellers alike, pressing it upon them.  Voice, choice, and memory.  Mind-blowing.

Dear FTC: This is my copy that I bought and love and in an amazing twist of fate sent with a friend to Terry Tempest Williams's reading at Prairie Lights were she inscribed it to me.

Reasons I have not updated the blog...

1.  Not entirely sure, it suddenly became less appealing than previous.  I think this is called "burn-out".

2.  I read all four extant books in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire in a little under ten days.  That's about 3,000 pages.  I may have fried my brain.  I think I am in love.

3.  I obsessed about the Game of Thrones TV show because I don't get HBO not does my cable provider participate in HBO Go.  (Note to HBO: I would PAY MONEY for online subscriptions to episodes, you can do it through HBO.com or iTunes, your choice - and then I would buy the DVD set ASAP;  PS: what's the release date for that bad boy of a Season 1?)

4.  I've been working a lot.  Work=teh suck.

5.  I was trying to read The Bone People by Keri Hulme for "Literature by Women" - it pushed the wrong buttons in me.  Normally, books with major issues like child abuse don't freak me out too much but something in this one hit me at the wrong time.  It is well-written and that probably is what's making the subject freak me the frak right out.

6.  I've been working on some deadlines for Alpha Chi Sigma....still got one coming actually.

and in the biggest surprise of all...

7.  I've been writing a book.  Un-freaking-believable.  I haven't written anything since high school (I do not recommend peer-review writing groups when one kid reads at a college level and the rest are somewhere back in junior high) and before Memorial Day I just sat down, opened a journal, and started writing out a plot I've had in my head for years.  I've got most of a first re-write done then I think I might be able to let it rest for a bit.  (And no, I'm not sharing, yet.  It's currently contained in three journals of nasty long-hand scribbling because I can't think at the computer, oddly enough.)  And then I have to read a book about dialogue because my lead-ins and lead-outs are getting repetitive.

So I've got some reviews in the hopper and they need a bit of polishing - don't be surprised if some reviews appear backdated.  If I accepted a book for review (*cough* HarperCollins *cough*), I'll get to it as soon as I can (good thing I stopped responding to my email, no new review copies piling up).  If I haven't yet responded to an email (*cough* My Friend Amy *cough*), I'll get to that soon, too.

Back to writing and plotting to rejoin the land of the interwebs.