Short Books
Currently reading:
The Mad Women’s Ball by Victoria Mas
Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury
Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver by Mary Oliver [ongoing]
Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962–1972 by Alejandra Pizarnik [ongoing]
Books finished this week: 1
★★★★★
Where this book came from: Sweet Pickle Books, during last year’s Lower East Side bookstore crawl
Why this book: Talk a walk with me for a moment, if you don’t mind. Way back in freshman year of college, my friend/roommate Britt (hi, Britt!) and I were reading The Tempest for our honors class (same professor and curriculum, different meeting times). For some reason, we found Caliban absolutely hilarious——not the character so much as whatever we were putting onto him, and mostly a silly voice we would do when reading his lines. I can’t lie, there are a few choice lines that still make me lose it to this day. Anyway, Britt and I were doing the bookstore crawl together, so when I saw this title, I knew it was meant to be.
Thoughts: Genuinely, from page one, I loved this. It gets right to the point and there are some insane twists and turns along the way. Highly recommend, especially if you’re looking for a quick read you can finish in one setting to get you out of a reading slump.
Library updates:
So, I guess I lied last week, when I said I probably wouldn’t be finishing or reviewing any Library books for pretty much the rest of the summer. I picked Mrs. Caliban off my shelf because I’ve been meaning to read it since I bought it, because it’s short, and because I figured I’d finish it before my next summer class started up. I didn’t expect to finish it in just a few hours, but once I started reading, I really didn’t want to stop. I think the key will be sprinkling in some shorter books between the required reading, so I made a small pile of books that fit the bill.
Short books stacked on top of very-much-not-short books.
The day this missive goes live, it is Bastille Day, which doesn’t mean much to us in America. (We had our big patriotic party a couple weeks ago.) But I took French for five years (in junior high and high school), so there’s a special place in my heart for the holiday. I’ve never really been a person who dreamed of packing up and moving to Paris, mostly because I would be intimidated to live anywhere full-time where I wasn’t a native speaker of the language. But I deeply love French as a language, and I’ve taken classes on and off in my adult life. I hope to return to them, maybe once I finish grad school and have a little more time in my schedule. I think I’ll always be a little afraid to speak any language but English out loud, but a life goal of mine is to be at least semi-fluent in another language. It feels like such a waste to not be able to communicate with other people in anything but English.
Back on the book front, I finished (yet another reread) of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House this week. Funnily enough, I was apparently also reading Hill House at the time of the bookstore crawl, when I purchased Mrs. Caliban. This is my second read in eight or nine months, because two separate classes in my grad school program have deemed it important enough to study (which I wholeheartedly agree with). I finished reading it in my bed after midnight, early on Saturday morning, and it did spook me a bit. But it’s mostly just such a beautifully melancholy book.
Finally, since I mean this missive to be part book reviews, part journal, and part historical record, it doesn’t feel right not to note that, as I was drafting this post on Saturday evening, someone took a shot at Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. I have no other details and I don’t plan to update this if more comes to light between finishing the draft and this going live. But I am just feeling . . . strange. And, honestly, fucking terrified.
Closing thoughts:
Insist on your cup of stars.
Total books read from the Moratorium Library: 91
(Total books added to the Library: 183)
I went to the dentist on Saturday morning——and found out I officially have my first cavity; thirty-two years of impeccable teeth was a good run——and then stopped at the still fairly new Neverending Story in my hometown. If you ever find yourself in Babylon, NY, please stop in!
