What I Read for NaNo: Food Memoirs Galore!

As you might have seen in my recent blog post, I beat my NaNoWriMo 2019 challenge! Sure, it wasn't without a little heartache, a little struggle - or, you know, a lot of heartache and undue amounts of struggle - but I made it out on the other side, only a little worse for wear.

It's taken half a month to recover enough mental ground to talk about all of it, but there you go.

If you did, in fact, read that blog post, you'd also see that I kind of broke one of my typical NaNo rules this year, and decided to read books during the time I was writing. Instead of taking my standard sabbatical from non-NaNo material, I allowed myself to dive deep into the world of Food Memoirs, in the hopes that it might spur on my own creative process, too. 

So, in the full month of November, I not only ended up writing 50,000 words of my own food memories, but I sifted through four books worth of material on the same subject! Whether this made my writing better or worse, who's to say? Still, I had quite the enjoyable time doing it... and when I was struggling so hard with my own writing, it was nice to take a mental break by enjoying someone else's hard-won material.

Here's what I read: 


The Comfort Food Diaries: My Quest for the Perfect Dish to Mend a Broken Heart, Emily Nunn

A woman who has undergone a marathon of personal loss - grappling with a sibling's suicide, her fiance's breakup, and her admittance into a psychiatric ward of a hospital for severe alcoholism - decides to embark on a journey to find true comfort in food, as well as come to grips with her difficult upbringing. 

The food Nunn describes did sound delicious, and definitely got me craving some Southern, especially country-style ham and biscuits. And what a variety: there are far over 50 recipes present in the book itself... a feat I find impressive, despite the fact that at least four of them were for various salad dressings (and that's not including the ones that were for actual salad).

I really liked the way the recipes were integrated into the body of the story line, occurring interspersed throughout the surrounding narrative, instead of being bunched up at the end of the chapters, or held separate in an appendixes at the back of the book. It was like the food described was telling a story of its own, and none of it was too overly complicated, or too heavy on ingredients or technique, to seem inaccessible or overly difficult.

However, the rest of the writing seemed to fit that bill.

The style of writing is juvenile, especially evident in how the writer is prone to long, meandering lists, whether describing food or scenery, even when inappropriate for the story. This syntactical choice, as well as the equally wandering and poorly defined timeline of her life, made it very difficult to get a read on what time period various events were taking place in. At first, just from the first few chapters or so, I assumed she was in her mid-30s, because she seemed flighty, prone to humble brags about her ex-fiance's wealth or her career success, and seemed vaguely nervous. When later chapters appeared describing friends with children who'd left for college, or how she hadn't spoken to others in over 20 years, I felt confused.

She also could have been more forthcoming with the unspooling of various family ties. Revelations on her relationships with her mother, father, sisters, and brothers, came spread out and in chunks, with little through-thread to keep them knotted together. Barely anything was outright stated. For instance, her mother - narcissistic and controlling - is off-handedly described as having regular meetings with a psychiatrist, possessing a voracious and destructive tendency to be too dramatic or take things too far, while also swinging into bouts of depression or anxiety that would leave her unable to get out of bed. It is emphatically clear that she suffered from some form of mental disorder, but that is never explicitly stated, nor is it named, but instead, briefly intimated in the vaguest of terms.

Final Verdict: All in all, it was a fairly middle-of-the-road Food Memoir, one whose personal narrative I found frustrating, but whose genuinely friendly culinary content made up for its faults.



Coming to My Senses: The Makings of a Counterculture Cook, Alice Waters

A memoir detailing not only Alice Waters' journey to founding influential California restaurant Chez Panisse, but specifically, of how her youth and adolescence in the '60s and '70s shaped many of her counterculture perspectives on cooking.

This book really was a tell-all, in the sense that Waters is able to traverse a wide swath of her life in candid and unapologetic terms. The stories range from details about her childhood, family, and move to California, to her time at UCSB and Berkeley, trips to Paris and across Europe, and her social sphere back home in California (including notable director Francis Ford Coppola and costume designer Jacqueline "Jacqui" West).

However, because of this wide-spanning subject matter, the memoir really served as more of a foundational perspective rather than a comprehensive or strictly culinary one. On the whole, it becomes a testament to the idea that greatness can come from anywhere and anyone, no formal training required, just a love for food and a willingness to try something a little different.

My favorite parts were hearing about her foundational culinary experiences in her youth and home life, as well as opening night of Chez Panisse. It felt like there was a lot of talk about politics and Waters' experience in alternative movements, but these deviations were hardly non-essential: they laid a distinctive and underlying framework for how her culinary ideas germinated, too.

Final Verdict: This memoir didn't contain recipes, but had plenty of pictures, of not only Waters in her youth, but of her many influences and friends. The true power of this memoir wasn't necessarily the story itself, but how candid and vocal she was about her past.



A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from my Kitchen Table, Molly Wizenberg

The author of popular early-adopter food blog The Orangette tells the story of her early life, growing up with foodie parents, falling in love with France and then her husband, and making a life for herself in Seattle, through mouthwatering terms.

You know how it's recently become a popular move to start dissing food blogs for writing long intros to their recipe posts? People claim its a sort of money-grubbing ploy - that it allows for the insert of more ads, that they make more for how far you have to scroll or something - but honestly, while it might be true for some, it is clearly not so for others. This book is a great justification for the practice, for why those intros exist: it allows the blogger to share more of who they are, and what this particular recipe means to them.

In a way, this book is kind of like a bundle of such posts, with a delicious recipe capping off every few pages or so of content. As a result, this book is also fairly easy to read through as the content is chunked into bite-sized pieces you can enjoy fairly quickly.

The only problem with knowing that a memoir has a blog, is that invariably, about halfway through, you decide to start doing some research. Finding out about Wizenberg's divorce from her husband, made reading about falling in love with him a little more difficult. Even though their relationship is still amiable, and they continue to own and operate the restaurant Delancey - in Seattle - together, it makes the words feel less full of meaning, even if it was truly meaningful at the time.

I'm genuinely excited to try some of these recipes, and almost all of them are things I'd be excited to eat. I do wish that this book contained some food pictures, because parts of it really just read like a regular cookbook.

However, I should mention a MAJOR pet peeve: I absolutely cannot stand the word "gulp" - I think it's gross, and somewhat unsettling - but only really got a handle on how much I hated it when Wizenberg used it in THREE CHAPTERS IN A ROW. Again, each of these chapters is only about five pages long. In total, I might have seen it in various places throughout the book about six more times. Pick a new word!

Final Verdict: Lovely stories - complete with engrossing settings and relatable characters - make up Wizenburg's relaxed and personable cookbook-slash-memoir, as a portrait of a particular period of her life. When considered as a framed example of her perspective, it is truly captivating.



Women Who Eat: A New Perspective on the Glory of Food, edited by Leslie Miller

A really fantastic collection of "up and coming" female writers (circa 2003), many focused in the Pacific Northwest, in a celebration of womanhood and food, be it prepared for them, by them, experienced, shared, bought, passed down, cooked themselves, or tasted countless times.

At times personable and impartial, emotionally-laden or distant, stories of attending cooking school, staffing a restaurant, tasting an old favorite again after a long absence, and more, many personalities are fitted neatly within its pages. Not only a reflection on a wide variety of food from a wide variety of perspectives, but shares a wealth of reasons how the food we eat affects our lives, from our friends, to habits and behaviors, to our identities themselves.

From the delicious (Carvel ice cream, in the face of a daunting doctor's visit to ascertain a cancer diagnosis), to the controversial (a woman who, in her post-pregnancy, cooks and craves the taste of her own placenta, as an act of recycling and reclamation), from the funny (a once-waitress tells the story of her favorite post-college restaurant job), to the familial (a California vegan reflects on the vegetables of her farm-raised, meaty Midwestern upbringing), the myriad of perspectives encountered within the pages of this collection truly run the gamut. The guarantee isn't even that you come away hungry, but that you reflect more on your own culinary connections to how your food shapes your life.

With the book being a decade-and-a-half old, naturally one of my first moves, was to scour the list of author names for any that I might still recognize. To my surprise, there she was: Cheryl Strayed, who, in the author's info section, is listed as living in Portland, Oregon, and "working on a book-length memoir." Wonder how that project panned out for her.

Did you take part in NaNo this year? Do you enjoy reading Food Memoirs? Let me know, in the comments below!

SO, THAT WAS DIFFICULT: NANOWRIMO 2019

Okay. So it took me more than nine days to get around to saying all of this, but by the time you reach the end of the post, you'll know all about why: NaNoWriMo 2019 is over, and while I beat the challenge - for the fifth time! - it left me feeling more than a little defeated.

There were a couple personal factors that affected the ways I wrote this year, that made things a little different. A little more difficult.

For starters - in keeping with my goals to change up my writing genre and style with every year - I was writing nonfiction, specifically Food Memoir. Surprisingly enough, I actually thought this would make things easier. After all, why spend so much time coming up with a believable invention, rather than your personal perspective, right?

Not exactly.

There's such a thing as writing your truth, but there's also the alternative factor of getting hung up on truth. Once I made the commitment to writing my own real stories, I felt compelled to write them as acurrately as possible... going so far as to rummage around in our kitchen cabinets, to see whether I was remembering the embroidery on a tea towel correctly.

Needless to say, this kind of behavior doesn't exactly tee you up for productive writing sessions. It will definitely cue you to second guess all of your detail work.

Plus, I also - for the first time, really - had a writing partner: after watching me complete my own challenges for nearly half a decade, I inspired my Dad to take on his own writing project too, leading to the creation of a set of Horror shorts.

Through NaNo, he was able to tackle some of the foremost ideas he had germinated over the summer, which he had compiled in a huge list, safeguarded in a binder. With every story he finished, and every morning writing session he logged, his confidence that he could complete what he had previously deemed an insurmountable project grew. While I'm super proud of my Dad for putting in so much work, and venturing so far outside of his comfort zone... it's not exactly easy to succeed on your own terms, when the other person is constantly trying to talk to you about how well they're doing themselves.

Here's another shift I'd made from recent years: I opened up the mental bookshelves this year, too, to make more space for personal reading during NaNo. Usually, I try not to read anything until I've finished my 50,000 word draft, to keep myself more focused on my own story, and my voice more authentic; however, because I was working in a top as personal as a Food Memoir, I figured I could dabble in some titles this time.

This was both a good and a bad thing.

On one hand, this regular daily reading helped me progress further towards my Goodreads goal, which is something I sorely needed. I'm more than six books behind schedule, but during NaNo, that number climbed into double digits.

It also gave me inspiration, not necessarily on voice, but on presentation: I learned what kinds of personal stories make sense in the genre, and what format I hoped to present my work in, how long chapters should be and how many recipes should be included. I know what I like and don't like, from irritating word choices when describing a dish, to leaving readers stranded in a foreign country when authors get too caught up on setting. I knew I appreciated unexpected perspectives and unique flavors. I really hated when one writer included four separate salad dressing recipes in one book, while another used the word "gulp" three chapters in a row.

However, I started to subconsciously absorb what I was reading, and it had an effect on what I was writing. In comparison to past years of taking part in the challenge, I wasn't able to write uninhibited; I was constantly second guessing myself because I was spending so much time thinking about whether things worked or didn't work. You just can't do that when writing a first draft... leave it 'til the second!

It also didn't help that - as it turns out - my mom has a lot more difficult feelings about me writing nonfiction, rather than fiction. In her eyes, writing fiction is a fun, quirky hobby; memoirs are spilling the beans about things that doing just belong to you. At one point, she point blank asked me, "Please don't write this," which, as you can imagine, made it a lot more difficult to write.

It was an unfair, selfish ask, and a very distrusting one, which made me feel compelled to self-edit even more often. I was factoring in someone else's anxieties when I was trying to mitigate my own about simply getting words on a page.

In the end - through all these factors and hurdles - I wrote over 50,000 words, but I'm only proud of about 2/3s of them. I'm excited to get back in and read them over, but I'm going to take a little more time to recover before I do that just yet.

Out of all of my NaNo projects, this feels like it's the least likely to go anywhere. When I first came up with the idea, I kicked around the concept as to whether this would inspire me to listen to a new calling, or enroll in a nearby culinary school. By the time I got to the middle of the project - trailing thousands of words behind schedule, with my mother's voice ringing in my ear - all I could think was, "Why does anyone want to listen to me, of all people, about food? What do I have to add to any of this?"

Maybe this year's project was just an exercise in futility... maybe it was just an exercise in writing something new, and different. 

• My non-zero low was 509 words in one writing day; my high was 8,793.
• I wrote a total of 50, 137 words.
• In total, I finished about four of the "chapters" - or segments - I had prospective outlines for.
• I read 3.5 books during the course of my NaNo project.
• I finished 3 days early.

Did you take part in NaNoWriMo this year? How did it go? Let me know, in the comments below! 

HELLO, NANO: NANOWRIMO 2019

To be perfectly, unerringly honest: I never even considered the idea that I wouldn't take part in NaNoWriMo this year... but as of midway through October, I had every intention of kind of phoning it in.

In the past, I've used NaNo as a means of entering into the realms of Thriller, Satire, Horror shorts, and a YA adaptation. I try to get into new genres every year, and use it as a means of not just forming good writing practices, but utilizing it as an opportunity to try out new voices and perspectives, working on unfamiliar formats and difficult subject matter.

However, this year, I was feeling fairly uninspired. I didn't have any kind of grand project idea, and was pretty much just ready to keep adding to my NaNo from last year, Fighting with the Wind. A  light and hopeful modern-day YA adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden wasn't exactly what I felt like focusing on right now - in the midst of life transitions, trying to find a job, and battling through some rough personal feelings - but it was all I had ready, so I felt prepared to buckle down and tackle the second half of that project, left unfinished.

Instead, I got a little help from my mom... not in any way that she intended, of course. 

We were sitting at the kitchen table, eating dinner, when I brought up that NaNoWriMo was almost upon us. My mother openly scoffed. "You're not doing that this year," she said, somewhat brazenly. "You're too busy."

"Oh really?" I replied. "Because I'm pretty sure I am, in fact, doing it."

She rolled her eyes. "What would you write about right now? It's not like you can just write a cookbook." I'd been spending most of the last week's evenings cooking dinner from the family, including a quite large one for my own 26th birthday celebration.

A lightbulb. Actually, you can totally write a cookbook for NaNo, I thought. I told her as much, and the subject passed. Little did she know, that she had planted a seed... this was now what I fully intended to do.

Really, it's something they should all have seen coming. I take it upon myself to periodically warn my family members that I - a prolific journaler since a very tender age, someone who creates scrapbooks, has filled countless notebooks and planners, and is all around, an passionate documenter - will someday write my memoirs. Whatever is published, will be backed up by years of receipts. Tread softly, lest you get written about.

While I have done absolutely nothing notable or worthy in my life to justify the writing of memoirs just yet, I keep telling myself it's better to start now, rather than wait to do so later, when my inevitable fame and acclaim will no doubt hinder their production. My perspectives on what forms such a work would take have changed around a bit in the past year, thanks to Kathleen Flinn: her book Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good - following the culinary lineage of her grandparents and parents, and food-oriented upbringing - is honestly the genesis piece for my NaNoWriMo project this year.

I was an early adopter of M.F.K. Fisher as a kid, gaining a collection of her works in a large bound copy of The Art of Eating as a freshman in high school. Through high school and college, I would frequently pick up the books of Ruth Reichl, which my mother loved, once she had finished with them. I have collected my own set of cookbooks - especially those of Jamie Oliver - for years, and rarely went a week without flipping through one or another as a child. Food reading has always been a part of my life, for about as long as reading has as a whole, so it was honestly only a matter of time before I hit on the idea of writing a food memoir.

My Mother Hates My Soups: Bites from a Meal I'm Still Eating will follow the traditions, memories, and relationships forged in my childhood kitchen, and beyond. I'm a home chef, and not even a very good one at that - one that is still very much learning, something I'm reminded of every single time I add butter to a pan, or chop a head of broccoli - so this will probably be my most un-publish-able NaNoWriMo project ever. However, to be honest, it's one I've probably been thinking about for longer than any tackled in my past.

Food has actually managed to sneak into multiple other projects I've done for NaNo: one of the horror shorts I wrote, in a continuation of my NaNo project from 2017, was about a chef who endures a strange and unsettling trip to the grocery store, while in my 2018 project, the character of Martha was transformed from Mistlethwaite Manor's maid, into a young and ambitious local line cook. Her mother was old friends with Mrs. Medlock, giving her plenty of reasons to expose the petulant and uncertain Mary to new cuisine, frequently swinging by the brownstone "manor" with new recipes that I'd have found and pinned to my project Pinterest board.

Therefore, with all of this inspiration backing up my passion, I'm ready to get started. Granted, that start may be coming a little late in the game - so far, I've only written 5,504 words - but it's a start I'm proud of nonetheless.

Keep your eyes peeled for more future updates like this, filled with not only status reports from the blank pages of a Word document, but of all the food I've been cooking since then (which, spoiler alert, has kind of been a lot).

Are you tackling NaNoWriMo this year? What's your project about? 

Let me know, in the comments below!

MAYBE GROWING UP IS THE SCARY PART: A FEAR STREET REREAD

Around this time last Fall, I was suddenly seized with the urge to place a massive book order. The impulsive stationary purchasing of my elementary through collegiate years - coinciding with the advent of school - had been replaced by a different form of paper-collecting as an adult. I turned to Book Outlet, to justify the pricing, which proved to be a very good idea when my order topped out at around eleven titles.

Three among them, were chosen specifically because of how well they fit my particular brand of Autumn-laced nostalgia: recent repackagings of R. L. Stine's Fear Street books.

FEAR STREET AT THE LIBRARY

I was a total R. L. Stine junkie as a kid. I always felt too shy to check them out of the elementary school library during our weekly "Book Time," but the local library branch, located a brisk ten minute walk from my house, had them in plenty.

Still, even my fourth grade fixation on the Goosebumps books, was nothing compared to the summer before seventh grade, when, week by week, I checked out every single Fear Street book on offer. 

I can even vividly remember where they were all placed... back in 2007, before my small suburban library had been struck by the impressive onslaught of the YA genre, all of the well-thumbed mass-market paperback books belonging to that age group fit onto a meager set of five wire shelves, all on one wall, at the furthest back of the "Kid's Section." Very different from the new and nicely-updated library I visit now, this corner used to be quite literally shadowy, largely due to its location, sandwiched behind two tall rows of shelves and the old computer terminals.

I would glance over the more antiquated fare - including two different time-stamped-and-stained editions of Go Ask Alice - and the cutesy teen romances with cartoon-emblazoned covers, but you couldn't help but notice when you reached Fear Street: the moody black, blue, green, and purple covers loomed darkly towards the bottom shelf.

As a kid who was - by all accounts, and still widely is - a total coward, these books marked a serious departure from my typical reading material. I don't know what prompted me to pick up the first one, nor what carried me through a row of approximately fifteen to twenty titles, but I know that I loved them all.

That summer didn't end up altering my overall typical reading style too much, but it is fondly remembered by me, every time I see R. L. Stine's name. It's perhaps for that reason, that I associate summertime so strongly with the Horror genre... or maybe I just prefer to read about creepy things when the sun's still shining.

I hadn't thought about revisiting Fear Street, until the second I saw them available in repackaged duologies on Book Outlet. Into the cart they went, and soon enough, they were in my hands. (Well, in my brother's hands. Ostensibly, I had bought them for him to read, too.)

But I hadn't read these books since that first binge-fest, back when I was only just about to turn thirteen that October. Now, I was 25. I had no idea how things were going to go. I just knew that it was a ticket back in time I was willing to cash in.

RETURN TO FEAR STREET

As it turns out, the books I remember reading so vividly back when I was a preteen, perhaps haven't stood the test of time like I would have liked them to. Then again, that isn't so much of a judgement against the source materials themselves, as it is against my expectations.

I should have expected the writing style to be fairly juvenile (they are Middle Grade, after all, and that's the time of my life where I enjoyed them the most). The diction is simplistic, and appropriate for younger readers, while the syntax is so brief and unornamented that you can practically fly across the page. I ended up skimming a lot, simply because there wasn't a ton of details to get caught up in. As I found out from listening to one of his interviews, this brevity is deliberate, as it allowed his fans to click better with the characters.

The fast-paced action and flow is also helped along by an array of stereotypical tropes of horror, in order to more easily identify the genre, and make it move along more briskly. There weren't just ghosts, or guns, or mysterious figures, or terrifying creatures, or dead animals... but all of the above! It's an overload of puzzle pieces, not all of which are essential to the construction of the narrative, but again, make it more recognizable to readers who aren't as acquainted with the genre as of yet. For many, the Goosebumps and Fear Street books are a young readers' first foray into the realms of Horror and Thrillers, and by stocking the books so completely with these elements, it orients them into the aesthetic.

Every chapter ends with some form of cliffhanger, be it a foreboding final sentence promising danger to come, or a terrifying action about to take place. Repetitive and exaggerated, they easily compel you to keep on reading, something beneficial for readers with a shorter attention span, kind of akin to the end caps of Nancy Drew novel chapters.

At first, with Party Games, I chalked my apathy into being too focused on the para-text of the material (not only was the plot one I immediately remembered, but it actually bears some similarity to the movie Game Night). In this novel, a hardworking and down-on-her-luck girl catches the attention of longtime crush and resident rich boy Brandon Fear, and is invited to a secluded cabin on an island for his birthday party with his friends. The "game" of them all getting arrested by the police goes sideways, when real kidnappers hijack the party.

Then, with Don't Stay Up Late, various hallmarks of Stine's books - having an unlikeable main character, ignoring the warnings about Fear Street - started to irk me the more I read them. Every single person gets warned, and chooses to ignore it. Every single character has a secret motivation, a guilty conscience, or just a history of bad behavior. When you're a kid, these repeats feel familiar, like a recognizable motif of the author, but to an adult, they can become overbearingly repetitive.

I stopped after two books... the month of October was just not long enough to continue justifying reads that didn't fit my mood. But after a year of ruminating over the "failed" experiment, I think that I have a firmer grasp on the Fear Street books, why I loved them, and what I don't necessarily love them now. Essentially:

MAYBE SOME THINGS ARE NOT GOOD AT 25, BECAUSE THEY WERE SO GOOD AT 12

As you can probably tell from the previous section, the various foibles of the Fear Street novels - be they stereotypes and tropes, or simplistic writing - are made all the more into assets when transferred to the hands of a twelve year old. In rereading them, I was forced to confront the idea that maybe they weren't as good the second time around, because they weren't for me anymore. 

Listen, Middle School is a weird time, and Middle Grade is at least partially written to recognize that fact. For me, Stine's series became a summer fixation, not just because they were fast-paced, filled with thrilling action, and plots that felt like something new... but because at that time, I was really looking for something that made me feel a little bit more grown up. That dark and Shady (wink wink) shelf at the back of the Kid's Section, marked a departure, and reading about high schoolers encountering scary things, without adult intervention, felt like stepping into a new chapter of my own. Look at me, Mom, I'm checking out books from the YA section! They made me feel so teenager.

Reading them again as an adult, and seeing with more experienced eyes, only made me realize how young I really was, when I loved them. In the end, I can't help but miss not only the Fear Street books I read in my past, but the person I was when I tore through them all so voraciously. 

Despite the fact that I didn't fall as fully back in love as I did as a kid, I would still pick up some of my old favorites - like The New Girl, Prom Queen, The Dead Boyfriend, Killer's Kiss, and the Fear Street Cheerleaders books, especially - in a heartbeat. I hope they keep coming out with more of the reprints... I may not be the one to read them right now, but I'm still willing to bet that there are plenty of kids who would be willing to give these strange and familiar books a go.

(But more importantly, I recently learned they re-released the Dangerous Girls duology into a single package as Bitten, so that's going to be high on my TBR list now. Because that's still a whole other story.)

Did you ever read the Fear Street books? Are you an R. L. Stine fan? 

Let me know, in the comments below! 

REVIEW CATCHUP: AUGUST AND SEPTEMBER

Not only is Summer over, but her more serious and grey sister, Autumn, has officially moved into Washington State. After all, nothing says like "Fall weather" like back-to-back thunderstorms, an early death for my cucumbers, and leaves that are already starting to turn outside my bedroom window.

Unfortunately, that transition found me fairly absent, as I tried to soak up the last vestiges of fairer climates as possible. Sorry! Hopefully you haven't been waiting too long for me to write anything... job applications have been overwhelming the majority of my keyboard time. Until we wait for their replies, though, why not do a bit of an update on some of the books I enjoyed during the past two months?

Maybe you'll find something cozy to cuddle up with as we shift into more apple cider-appropriate times.


Kitchen Counter Cooking School, Kathleen Flinn

Truly a heartwarming and endearing food read, much in line with the love I felt for her family-inspired pseudo-food-ancestry-memoir, Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good, earlier this year.

In KCCS, Flinn walks a gaggle of knife-cut newbies through a summer of cooking classes in Seattle, in the hopes of inspiring them to take hold of their own kitchens, health, and confidence. Along the way, she imparts the reader with similar lessons to what she instructs, depositing carefully-chosen representative recipes at the tail end of each chapter.

What I really love about Flinn's style, is how obvious it is that she knows what she's talking about, while also using language that's more than easy enough to understand. She's a good teacher, and an even better storyteller, and truly does an effective job at demonstrating through a written medium the importance of knowledge of food providence, waste, and preparation as wonderfully as I'm sure she did in her classes.

All told, another resounding success from Flinn, that makes me want to cook even more... despite the fact that I made dinner just last night. There's just something about her books that makes me want to jump right into the kitchen!



The Next Right Thing: A Simple, Soulful Practice for Making Life Decisions, Emily P. Freeman

A concise, compassionate self-help book about using your own discernment and faith in making difficult decisions. Each chapter ends with a prayer and an actionable step to help lead you in the correct direction, and the chapters themselves are filled with anecdotes from Freeman's faith and writing life to help steer you on, and motivate you not only in your decision-making, but relationship of trust, expectation, and support in God.

Nothing too radical, just a gentle, personable collection of many of the reminders its good to hear when you're in a point of transition, closing out with the big truth, to essentially, "let go, and let God," while also making sure you have faith in your own choices, too.

I'd definitely be interested in reading more of her books in the future, as this one was quite a short, easy read.



Mr. Fox, Helen Oyeyemi

A work of magical realism that transcends time and setting, with main characters that orbit like planets around each other through the changing entropy of their surroundings: S. J. Fox, the writer, Daphne, his anxious and angry wife, and Mary Foxe, the mental invention who helps further his career... and is ruining his marriage. This trio forms the only concrete ground on which the narrative is constructed, and yet, the rest houses shadows and glimpses of their changing dynamic, direction, and ties to each other, through brief anecdotes and shorts.

Original and inventive, Oyeyemi has become a fast favorite of mine in recent years, particularly for this sense of unmoored reality, with threads of emotional truth running through the narrative. Slightly unreachable, while resounding with a sense of certainty, it doesn't matter that you pivot through concrete setting, fantasy elements, multiple time and perspective shifts, tangents that feel disconnected to the main narrative but which preserve some elements of the pathos of the story, because you know you'll circle back around at some point.

She almost feels akin to another one of my favorites, Jennifer Egan, for this degree of aloofness in her storytelling, but Oyeyemi can be even more inscrutable, thanks to her consistently unusual brand of magic.

The whole thing gives the feeling of a modern-written riff on fairy tales, like another one of her novels I've read, Boy Snow Bird, which toyed with the nature and tropes of the "Snow White" story. In turn, this novel held many of the trappings of folklore: for instance, the proliferation of twin figures or similar first names which ran throughout, with S. J. Fox / Mary Foxe, short story characters Charles Wolfe and Charlie Wulf, and even comparisons between Daphne and Mary. There are references to color theming, particularly around blue tones. Most notably, the presence of a malicious minor character in multiple shorts - the woman murderer and mischief-maker Reynardine - could be interpreted as a deliberate reference to the European Middle Age folklore character Reynard the Fox... like our main character Mr. Fox, who has gained a habit of murdering the female characters in his stories.

The whole thing is deliciously wrapped together, enmeshed and encoded like a puzzle you have to riddle over to crack. In fact, the only thing I didn't like about the book at all, was the cover, which I feel is horribly ugly.



Other books that I read in the past two months - reviews for which you'll be able to see in new blog posts coming out this Fall! - include:

Gretchen Rubin's Happier at Home

Ariel Levy's The Rules Do Not Apply

Charlotte Gordon's Romantic Outlaws

What were some of your late summer, early fall transition reads this year? What are you picking up before the end of 2019? Let me know, in the comments below!

READING ROMANCE: EASY, BREEZY, INTERSECTIONAL FEMINISM & THE HEROINES OF JASMINE GUILLORY

Something I've really been loving recently, is the coverage of the fifth anniversary of the #WeNeedDiverseBooks movement, and the progress achieved across the scope and genres of publishing since then. One such read was this article from Bustle, which checked in with people across such boundaries, providing testimony for the kind of change being enacted in this vital section of global media. Naturally, I immediately forwarded it to a handful of bookish friends, so we could all share in the celebration! 

While the article specifically highlights authors and publishers specific to audiences like Young Adult and Children's book enthusiasts, they're far from the only ones undergoing some measurable changes. In particular, the Romance genre has been making room and taking a stand, across several different popular series and authors... and the trend started a lot earlier than just five years ago. The rise of the African-American period romance - thanks in no small part to Beverly Jenkins - began in the '90s, and has since carved out a path in what was otherwise a fairly White genre, while more and more casts of multiracial, varied-perspectived characters can be found throughout shelves every year, like in Alisha Rai's Hate to Want You series (a personal favorite). These developments not only serve to better the plots of stories, and the perspectives of their reader, but also lay the groundwork for increased diversity and visibility for authors across publishing in the future.

However, dissenters abound, as they do in opposition to every major movement, and these kinds of new, necessary stories have their haters, too. What was wrong with the way things were? Romance, as a genre, has long been held up as a haven of escapist fiction... could inviting complicated discussions of things like race, jeopardize that status, or turn off new readers? 

The lady herself!

Enter Jasmine Guillory. Conversations about racial differences are an expected subject in each of her novels, and yet, they're lauded by everyone from the best-seller charts, to Reese Witherspoon. Her books are wonderful, and draw a stark line through such criticisms of the #WeNeedDiverseBooks initiative. Why? Because they're not just well-written romances, with compelling plots, quick pacing, and a lovable fleet of characters, but because she approaches her subjects with a stunning degree of empathy, tact, and understanding. In short, her books are so good, and her moves so subtle, that you might not even realize you're reflecting on these kinds of issues while reading. 

Here are just a few of the ground-level ways Jasmine Guillory uses her books - like The Wedding Date and The Proposal, as well as recent release The Wedding Party - to prioritize intersectional feminist narratives within the Romance genre: 

• Each of her books is led by a black woman main character, which not only centers race in the narrative, but provides plenty of room for empathizing and personalizing situations that arise over the course of the story. 
• For instance, during The Wedding Date - when the lead character Alexa gets an unexpected invite by a stranger to be his "plus one" for, you guessed it, a wedding - one of the questions she asks, is whether there will be anyone else who looks like her at this event. The answer is no, and the plot progresses from that point with ease... but it's a question that brings attention to that detail, and emphasizes a social point which, up until she asks, might not have even been on the reader's radar. The fact that the answer is a negative, highlights a mental cue for the reader to observe and understand. 
• Meanwhile, in The Proposal, Nikole ends up meeting Alexa while on a double date, and excitedly asks her confused love interest why he didn't mention to her that the other woman in question would also be black. Any confusion as to why she'd need that information, is answered when Nikole and Alexa share a sweet bonding moment, specifically referencing their shared perspectives. While it wasn't a point of importance for either of their dates, its a vital one for them. 
• At the same time, this is also an example of Guillory's ability to write characters whose internal monologues realistically reflect on their own identities in real-time, which, in turn, effects how they approach these interactions, or make decisions that affect other people. 
• In The Wedding Date, Alexa undergoes a series of difficult situations, as men from various social events she attends specifically target her for her race: an inebriated wedding guest makes unwanted sexual overtures involving her status as a black woman, while attending a party results in a conversation containing the cringe-y "Where are you from?" question. In both situations, we watch Alexa reckon with her personal feelings, and attempt to navigate the resulting differences as gracefully as possible, in a way that feels transparent and clear enough to translate to those who have never had to undergo those kinds of experiences. 
• In The Proposal, we see Nikole grapple with why her boyfriend of only five months, dopey blonde actor Fisher, has asked her to marry him in a embarrassingly public display (the Jumbotron at a Dodgers game, on which her name is misspelled). Not only does Nik reflect on what her relationship with him was like, but her mental re-organization of how both of their backgrounds played into his decision to propose, highlights why this difference was important. In the end, Fisher acknowledges this himself: he confesses that no one takes him seriously as an actor, and that he thought being with Nik - a successful black writer - raised his reputation and credibility. 
• Guillory has received plenty of accolades for centering her romances around black heroines, but her entire cast is similarly filled with compelling and relatable side characters from a wide variety of backgrounds, all approached with the same level of care. With special attention paid to diversity in perspectives across race, gender, sexuality, etc., each of the cast is involved and empathetic in regards to the romantic plight, defying tokenization and playing key roles in the development of the primary relationship. 
• For instance, in The Proposal alone, Nikole's two best friends are Korean-American and plus size, and African-American and lesbian, while the love interest's family heritage is Mexican-American. Their backgrounds play deliberately into the plot, and all participate in openly reflecting on such elements of their own lives, while helping our heroine navigate hers. Their advice, reflections, and experiences benefit those of Nikole, and - despite the fact Guillory's audience might never have come into contact with anyone from those backgrounds before - they are realistic and relatable enough to connect to readers, as well. 
• Destructive, anti-feminist tropes get a swift boot, via her uplifting and abundant emphasis on the importance of female friendships, as well as the robust and active career lives of women. Not only are Guillory's characters women, but they are strong, unique women, who are not afraid to confront not only racial discrimination or stereotyping, but also antiquated perspectives on catty competition, or gender roles. 
• Positive relationships with women are a priority for Guillory, who spoke to Hello Sunshine Book Club earlier this year about why her own friends served as such strong influences in how she wrote The Proposal. Both Alexa and Nikole are surrounded by networks of ambitious, caring women, who challenge them out on their mistakes, and support them in the moments where they're needed most. Even situations that start out as fodder for the kinds of mean-girl moments that are romance novel bread-and-butter - like the bouquet toss of a wedding, or a party held by a new boyfriend's ex-girlfriend - end up progressing in meaningful ways, with new friendships made, instead of enemies. 
• Both Alexa and Nikole are, individually and by their own effort, successful career women, and both ambition and female entrepreneurship serve as strong focuses among secondary characters. Alexa serves as the chief of staff of the mayor of Berkeley, who not only has the skills to succeed in her job, but lift others up with her, championing the cause for local community art projects for disenfranchised youth. Nikole's career as a freelance writer is thrown into jeopardy - due to the negative connotations associated with turning down a public, viral proposal - but not only is she able to navigate the situation with aplomb, but she write herself a comeback, by covering a female-owned gym that she has begun attending regularly for self-defense classes. Not only are they in strong job positions, but it is important for both to use these roles to lift up other women, as well. 
• (There's a good reason for it, too: Guillory herself is a Stanford Law graduate.) 

Clearly, Guillory has made intersectional feminism a focus of her personal writing style, and it makes for not only compelling and enthralling romance novels, but important reads for issues of that nature. Interactions between characters demonstrate effective problem-solving, and model productive conversations, about the intersections of race and relationships in a positive, easy to understand way, which readers can observe and empathize with. The women - and men - who fill the pages of these novels represent complex and multi-layered perspectives of race, gender, sexuality, socioeconomic background, etc., but none of those boundaries block any of them from pursuing the reason we covet this genre so much: True Love. 

There's definitely something effortless about the way Guillory writes romance, like in THE WEDDING DATE, but that's not to say that the plots themselves lack deliberate care. Instead, the realistic nature of the stress that tests her main characters' relationship - misinterpreting signals, lack of clear communication, focus on jobs and family - lends a sense of relatability to the proceedings, that almost make it was pulled from real life. Maybe it all feels so effortless, because it could have been inspired by any number of real relationships playing out across the LA area, like hers do.

Intimate, personable, and immediately engrossing - like hearing about the new guy your friend's been seeing over drinks - the story drives forward because of how tangible the characters feel, no doubt helped by Guillory's tendency towards fully-fleshed, unique and understandable casts.

 

THE PROPOSAL is an airy, un-bothered LA romance that was sunny and sweet, without requiring much mental exertion to keep the plot moving. The main characters are well-off and well-settled in their metropolitan landscape, and are free from any more intense issues plaguing their lives, than coping with bad press (which Nik does easily), and Carlos' cousin's difficult pregnancy (which resolves mainly without his input). This frees them both up to fall in love with each other rather easily. 

 My one disappointment, was that I was a little bummed that the title event of the novel is tidily wrapped up within the first twenty pages or so. There is no lead up to the event at all, with the whole thing transpiring within the first few pages, and very little explanation as to why Nik and Fisher were together in the first place. Still, the event got its closure, in a way that was relevant to Guillory's theming, and it allowed Nik to move on... to a much, much happier ever after! 

Have you read any of Jasmine Guillory's books before? Which is your favorite? Let me know, in the comments below!

READING ROMANCE: HEAs, FORMULA PLOTTING, AND MY LADY'S CHOOSING

One of the primary claims leveled by literary critics against the romance novel genre, is that it's formulaic: chop up a few tropes you prefer, warm over either a slow burn or blistering heat at your fancy, sprinkle in a couple social conventions and haphazardly constructed hurdles, and you'll find yourself cozied up with a new steamy read in no time, right?

The problem isn't necessarily the claim itself, because claims of literary merit or lack thereof don't really bother the one of the top performing literary genres on market... especially one you can reliably find standing right alongside the other top performing genre, Mystery/Thriller, on the mass market paperback ledges of grocery store checkout stands across the country, a genre that is leveled its fair share of similar criticisms. 

However, the issue of this condemnation does arise when the pursuit of a happy ending is portrayed of some form of social conversion, or emotional bondage. When the idea of romance novel heroines (or heroes) achieving happiness is equated with oppression, overly aggressive patriarchal values, or gratuitous feminine submission, then it becomes a very clear and direct problem, indeed.

If these sorts of grandiose doomsday comparisons sound crazy to you, then please don't pin their origin on me. I'd like to welcome you to the absolute-dealing world of romance novel literary criticism, where past critics of the genre have leveled such claims as these:

In her 1970 work of literary criticism, The Female Eunuch, Germaine Greer criticizes that “the traits invented for the hero in romance novels have been invented by women cherishing the chains of their bondage.” According to this line of thinking, all romance heroes are not only homogeneous, but they are united in their objective: to conform the reader to accepting subjugation. 

In Leslie W. Rabine's 1985 piece, "Reading the Romantic Heroine: Text, History, Ideology," she comments specifically on a particularly publishing house with a standardized format rising to popularity in the genre at the time, claiming that, “Harlequins work to recuperate women’s subversive fantasies into structures of patriarchal power.” In this way, romance novels utilize tantalizing scenes of deviant behavior, as a reaffirmation of specifically male dominance and traditionalist social organization. 

 Janice A. Radway's 1991 essay "Reading the Romance: History, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature", touches on the typical happy ending of the romance novel specifically, stating that it “reaffirms its founding culture’s belief that women are valuable not for their unique personal qualities, but for their biological sameness and their ability to perform that essential role of maintaining and reconstituting others.” If this argument is correct, all romance plots must result in a directly heterosexual breeding relationship, one that ideally ends in offspring. 

However, each of those sharp-worded dismissals of the formula, the stereotyping, and the "Happily Ever After" (HEAs) was written a minimum of two decades ago! They are firm in their convictions of epilogues long past, but do their words still ring true now? What can formulaic plot progressions and HEAs look like in the 21 Century? 

Well... it doesn't get much more formulaic than a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novel, now does it? Enter Kitty Curan and Larissa Zageris' 2018 "Interactive Romance Novel," My Lady's Choosing. 

Relying on typified plot progressions, easily recognizable character tropes that don't require additional backstory, familiar dialogue, all building to any number of acceptable HEAs... it sounds like a good place to get a base reading on what kinds of plot building blocks and generic endings might be typical of the genre these days.

And to be clear, this book can tell you a lot about happy endings: it's got over twenty. 

To briefly explain the plot: this novelty novel is set in the conventions of any popular period romance, and follows you, a shy and cowed lady's companion with a heart of gold, attempting to escape the dreary life of one among the ton of London, by way of the following presented main romantic avenues:

• Benedict, a kind of Pride and Prejudice Darcy stand-in commonly found wandering the bookshelves of the historical romance section... a verbal sparring partner whom your character can easily match, parry for thrust (wink wink). 

• Angus, a sweet-meaning Scot, whose peers in the genre have been gaining popularity in the historical romance section since the popularity of the Outlander TV show. (It's about the kilts, isn't it?)

• Craven, a brooding Gothic hero who comes complete with all of the Bronte accessories. like an open waistcoat, untamed locks, a crumbling castle, and a neglected ward. Will you be the one to soothe his tortured soul? 

Each of the three is a model specimen, cut from a specific literary figure, one that is easily recognizable to those in the genre. Not only are they expected formats for a hero to take, but they have their own particular brand of paratextual street cred. Who you might not necessarily expect, is the fourth romantic figure... 

• Evangeline, a brazen, blonde beauty with a penchant for Egyptian hieroglyphics, is a much more modern kind of lady. Also, kind of like if both Brendan Frasier and Rachel Weisz's characters in the Mummy movies were combined.

If Benedict, Angus, and Craven are models based off of heroes long known, Evangeline shines a greater light on the kinds of novels growing popular in the genre today, as LGBT-centric storylines begin to really take a foothold. But so what does one different kind of hero(ine) have to do with anything? That doesn't mean that the stories don't end with generic, patriarchal, reproductive-oriented endings that reassert the dominance of traditional romance novel structures. 

Do all 20 patterns of the happy endings you can achieve in this novel subscribe to the kinds of claims being leveled at the genre? Do any? 

In short, no. In long, here's a list: 

1. The hero you expect, might not be the one who wins you over in the end. While the plot lines presented four neat pathways to pursue, each contained at least two or three alternative options, including side characters, villains, and more. No more standardized alpha male format, nameless six-pack-bedecked torsos upon which to fit swappable handsome heads: varying widely across the spectrum, your choices beyond the main characters included a meek librarian, villainous phantom, or a brooding mercenary, among many others. In fact, the most deliberately erotic and explicitly happy ending, was with a well-meaning, eager-to-please and moderately socially-mobile nerd! 
2. The heroine doesn't have to end up married (let alone with kids). I was actually surprised at a number of happy endings that resulted in the main character making the choice to fly solo. Often these were structured around the existence of a male counterpart - choosing to con around America with a man you neither love or plan to marry, or becoming a spy against the Bonapartists for the English military with an ex as your partner - but an emphasis was placed on remaining an independent woman, if not in proximity, then in mind. And naturally, one of the final endings you could achieve, resulted in your character marrying extremely old and disgustingly rich... only to have your husband collapse from a heart attack shortly after the union, leaving you a very, very wealthy widow.
3. In another surprise move, there were examples where the heroine did not even end the book as the main character anymore. This is a hell of a way to circumvent claims of standardized endings, which would typically assume the the character of most importance at the start of the book, would surely finish the same way. However, there were several endings - usually after pursuing a romance with the side characters - where the reader was deliberately noted as having given up the position of the main, taking the backseat of a self-referenced fictional series or two to help support one of the other flashy characters in the story line, effectively becoming a background character in someone else's story. There might be the argument to this point, that this actually bolsters claims of subjugation, but I offer the counterpoint: in doing so, you aren't just given the freedom of choice... you can also have the freedom to remove yourself from the expected narrative entirely. 
4. Morality standards - especially those in line with patriarchal values - don't exactly apply to all happy endings. In fact, there are multiple options where the main character is given the opportunity to take a not-exactly-morally-sound route out: not necessarily just in choosing to romance a villain instead, but also running off with your a band of pirates, or deciding to invest in opening a brothel, using one of your new bookish acquaintances as your first employee (Not kidding). 
5. And finally, just because something follows a trope-heavy path, doesn't necessarily mean that that's restricted to one solitary outcome, which according to critics, would require marriage to the primary hero, and constraint of the female main character to traditional feminine roles. But the prospect of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novel betrays that very assumption, by not only veering away from one expected answer, but instead, throwing as many at you as possible! For instance, my favorite set of endings for a main story line revolved around our Gothic hero: as a result of various choices, you can end up exorcising a ghost, defeating an evil butler, turning into a werewolf, and marrying a vampire, or, alternatively, the village postman. It also gives you the out of fleeing the estate entirely, and starting up again on one of the other romantic paths. How's that for formula plotting? 

In total, My Lady's Choosing doesn't just refute antiquated claims of the lesser nature of romance novels, due to their supposed pre-determined progression and anti-feminist endings, but it dismantles them entirely, leading the reader to question the myriad of ways a story can end while still considering it to have best serves the heroine. The format of the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure romance, as it turns out, only encourages something we already knew. As romance novelist Suzanne Simmons Guntrum posed in "Happily Ever After: The Ending As Beginning": "So why read a novel when we already know how it is going to end? Because it is the process, not the conclusion, that we are reading for." 

My Lady's Choosing relies on tropes and stereotypical conventions of the genre - the mysterious revelation of parenthood, finding a hidden diary, espionage and handsome rogues, etc - in order to keep the pacing of the novel going, despite its frequent starts and stops. Very tongue-in-cheek, self-referential, and more than a little silly on the meta-text, the language is very familiar to romance novel enthusiasts, with plenty of euphemisms to keep readers laughing, perhaps in an attempt to excuse the difficulties in following along seamlessly. Flipping between pages may grow frustrating, but at least its easier to follow when characters are easily identifiable; for instance, one plot line plays host to a villain by the name of Caddington... shortened to Cad.  

On one hand, I was impressed with the levels of detail and difference between each of the contrasting story lines, while on the other hand, the limited amount of space they have to develop these plots into anything further or more substantial leaves them a little unfulfilling. In some ways, these elements of the novel - obvious and bold cardboard characters, fast-paced and humorous plots with lack of meaningful development, deliberately filthy humor - line up not necessarily to the real practice of romance novels, but instead, what's expected of them. It's not the genuine article, but the knock-off everyone's so quick to judge... which for a novelty novel like this one, makes for a good laugh, and an entertaining afternoon. 

When's the last time you picked up a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novel? How about a good romance? Let me know, in the comments below!

TAYLOR JENKINS REID: DAISY, EVELYN, AND MEDIATED INTIMACY

Daisy Jones and the Six and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo are both enormously popular recent works from novelist Taylor Jenkins Reid, published within the last couple of years. The former was released just this last year to immediate fanfare, quickly climbing best seller lists (with a popularity no doubt bolstered after having been optioned the summer before its publication, for an Amazon miniseries produced by Reese Witherspoon). These novels are award-winners, critical favorites, and both boast Goodreads ratings above a 4.2.

Their overwhelmingly positive receptions and popularity are not the only things these two books have in common, though. In fact, there's something notable about Reid's construction of their narratives that these two bestsellers share.

In terms of plot and theming, there's already plenty of points of comparison. The two female main characters - Daisy and Evelyn - occupy settings that serve as obvious similarities: both of their stories involve attaining success in a major entertainment industry (music and movies, respectively), during a specific cultural zeitgeist (the '70s California rock scene, and '50s Hollywood). Most importantly, both of their stories are told as retrospectives.

In fact, each book's past-gazing narrative is relayed through a deliberately mediated format: for Daisy, it's an oral history of the band's meteoric rise, as told by its members, crew, production, and family, while for Evelyn, it's a long-awaited memoir, detailed firsthand, by an aging screen siren. Instead of orienting the narrative specifically in the perspectives of Daisy and Evelyn, their firsthand accounts are couched within the greater perspectives of those to whom they detail the story, with the band's account transcribed and arranged by a narrator who remains unidentified (until the very end), and Evelyn's story kept mostly intact, by a magazine writer interviewing her.

As it turns out, both of those frameworks were chosen very deliberately, with references made to real nonfiction works. For instance, one of the influences for Evelyn, was revealed by Reid, to be the notable memoir of the legendary actress Ava Gardner, whose candid and catty reflections on her ex-husbands and peers of the big screen, told to journalist Peter Evans, were only published after both of them had passed. Meanwhile, Reid's inspiration for Daisy and the Six's oral history was similarly straightforward: as the author told Rolling Stone earlier this year, "I wanted it to feel like the three-hour 'History of the Eagles' documentary."

Another similarity? Each of their narrators is teased to be linked to both Daisy and Evelyn's accounts, in some capacity, but the connection is only made known in an eleventh hour reveal. To avoid spoilers, I'll try casing it in as rudimentary terms as possible: both are daughters, related to the main narrative by an outer spoke on the wheel of social connection, one not immediately related to either Daisy or Evelyn.

This generational and social circle displacement is tied to the sense of offset connection displayed throughout the text. And to be clear, this sense of distance, is one of the elements of both of these novels, that makes them so successful in telling engrossing, emotional stories. 

In this way, Daisy and Evelyn, while given the opportunity to tell their own stories in their own words, are not the primary narrators. And yet, both Monique and the band's narrator are still kept separate from these main characters, too, but in the foreground of the story itself: a generation and social connection removed, ties kept secret, but the mouthpieces through which the story is voiced.

And yet, this emphasis of removal and distance, belies and enables a very particular sense of intimacy, truth, and personality. Everything about their narrators and narrative style speaks to mediation - especially in the specifically mediated format of interviews - but the main character perspectives themselves are what draw you in, make you feel like you're privy to some grander truth. It's just that their personal stories, which no other narrator can speak to experiencing, are told through the lens of a different narrator entirely, one whose relationship to them is kept in the dark.

It is this duality that makes Daisy Jones and the Six and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo feel so compelling, like having someone whisper a secret, while still holding you at arm's length. It leaves room in the story structure for interest, big reveals and plot twists, because either the framework or the narrative isn't ready for you to have access to that particular piece of the puzzle.

Without this sense of mediation - if Evelyn was simply published containing only a firsthand account of her story, or if Daisy only illustrated her place in the band through her own eyes - you would miss out on not only the greater perspective on each of these characters, outside their own self-image, but you would lose the capacity for movement, embellishment, reaction, and dynamics in the story, without jeopardizing the integrity of the firsthand sense of truth. But with the imposed framework and structure of mediated storytelling, Reid was able to create these opportunities, for making the story greater than just just one limited view.

As the narrative resolves at the end of each book, so too do those cages disappear, with connections between the narrator, and their respective storytellers, having finally been established clearly. The whole truth is told. The limelight Daisy and Evelyn chased is finally enough to light the whole stage, so you can see the complex context of its major players, and the all of the twists, characters, lies, and intersections, for what they are: a damn good story.

Daisy Jones and the Six allows each character to tell their own story, without losing any of what's hidden behind the dialogue. The novel is told in a really unexpected form of what I'd have to classify as epistolary format: a group interview that spans a catalog of specific, unique characters, in a riff on a band documentary, telling the collective story of fictional '70s California rock outfit, Daisy Jones and the Six. Through their various interviews, all six members of the musical group, plus Daisy, family, friends, production, and assorted backstage members of their various entourages are all given full-fledged personalities, motivations, interpersonal relationships and faults. 

One of my favorite elements of the novel was that while the rampant drug and alcohol use was obviously a forefront issue, for the most part, this story didn't have a true blue, cut-in-an-image consistent villain. Daisy might be interpreted as a kind of primary antagonist, as she's the one ruffling the most feathers, and lead singer Billy might be slated in the same role, as his actions and characterization can come off as the most abrasive or detrimental, but neither is working towards any kind of negative goal. They're both absurdly narcissistic and tunnel-minded, and end up creating their own issues, but the villain that emerges more is a lack of a sense of communication, and an unwillingness to listen or empathize... a smart choice for a book that re-mediates a form of communication itself, and calls on its reader to derive emotion from a challenging perspective. (Definitely for fans of movies like Almost Famous or A Star is Born.) 

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - the fictional tell-all of an aging starlet, as told to a young reporter - clips along somewhat benignly, until it hits a major curve, and you think, "Wow, that's a  little early for a plot twist." But that's how life is: surprising things happen along the way, but the world keeps turning. It means a lot that the major drive of pacing for SHoEH feels less catalyzed by major character decisions or plot contrivance, but by the gentle gravity of things falling together. As one character remarks of Evelyn's star beauty, it feels "inevitable." Reid does an excellent job of not only making things feel real, but feel that that's really the way things would have worked out, had the story been grounded in reality.  

If anything, reality was the biggest problem I had with this book. As with any novel set in a defined space and time, with key cultural and historical factors addressed within its pages, there comes the frustrating act of shoving a new piece into a puzzle that is already completed. Reid does an excellent job generating a world - Hollywood of the second half of the 20th Century, of course - that closely mirrors that which already exists... but this sense of believability made it near impossible to shove in alongside information you already know and have. Besides, there's too much opportunity for comparison: for instance, Evelyn's litany of husbands being clearly influenced by Elizabeth Taylor's, had me constantly mining for clear or tagged in-jokes. While some pieces of the puzzle are obvious - Vivant as a stand-in approximation of Vogue, most readily - it makes the less trackable pop culture twins stick out. Still, I read this book, for the most part, on a camping trip, while huddling in my sleeping bag, desperate not to scratch the mosquito bites that had sprung up along my chest and arm. The fact that I could be trapped in those conditions, and yet still transported to the Hollywood of a long-ago decade, should tell you enough about the success of Reid's world-building. 

Have you read any of Taylor Jenkins Reid's works? What do you think about this kind of narrative framework? Can you think of any that ring similar? Let me know, in the comments below!

WHAT I READ WHILE I WAS GONE: PLAYING REVIEW CATCH UP

In my previous post - uploaded on my ninth anniversary of having founded my blog! - I mentioned that I want to do things a little differently around here. Less fluff, less topics I post just for the sake of posting, less of the kinds of things I wouldn't bother reading on someone else's blog... more of the kinds of topics I want to cover. More writing that I enjoy writing, about books I enjoy reading. 

I really hope you're as excited for that kind of content as I am, I really do. I've already got so many ideas about genres, series, novels, and authors I love, all amply worth writing about. However, it also wouldn't do fit to abandon what my blog has been for nine years entirely: this corner of the Internet was originally shaped to be the place where I could, enthusiastically, share my thoughts and feelings about books in as unadulterated a manner as possible. 

So while I'm stoked to get to the special interest pieces, it's still really important to me that I catch you all up on a few other titles I've been dwelling on, as well. They might not warrant their own individual posts or deep dives, but they're still what I've been reading recently. 

Here are a few of the books I've enjoyed (or not!) so far this year: 

30 BEFORE 30, Marina Shifrin

This memoir contains a brief collection of essays, detailing the author's attempts at meeting a certain set of goals prior to their 30th birthday. 

For everyone, those goals look different, but for writer and viral content creator Marina Shifrin, the list included everything from the seemingly mundane (riding by bike across the Brooklyn Bridge, meeting a local radio personality from her youth), to the somewhat explosive (the intricately intertwined "Quit Shitty Job" and "Become Famous" chapters, which she tackled in one go with a popular video of her leaving her abusive workplace, to the tune of Kanye West's"Gone," back in 2013). Some she admits she fails at, while others are much more successful, but the same sense of energy, action, uncertainty and bewilderment at their completion permeates them all.

That isn't to say that they're redundant; they're just familiar. What 20 or 30 something doesn't dream of living in a different country, falling in love, or flying first class? Shifrin's voice speaks to plenty with ambitions and interests, and abundance of opportunities that are maybe unmatched with a cohesive sense of direction.

But Shifrin sorts through that madness, using the goals of a narrative structure by which she can detail some of the lessons that life has doled out along the way, from the importance of knowing your personal value, taking time to understand your roots, and finding a place in the world where you feel a sense of belonging. Yet, she is also the first to acknowledge that not everything in your 20s has to be imbued with some sense of deliberation or intention: she chooses to forego an essay for one chapter, and instead, glibly admits, "Holy cow, not everything was a lesson."

SPINNING SILVER, Naomi Novik

A poor girl takes the reins of her family's household, and turns around their dwindling livelihood. Unfortunately, her tendency to "turn silver into gold" has caught the eye of a local otherworldly king. 

A beautifully written and absolutely enchanting fantasy tale... one that perfectly matched with the snow falling outside my window when I read it, during Seattle's "Snowmageddon" this past February. 

Naomi Novik excels at world-building, as well as bringing unlikely characters together across that world. Not only are all the moving parts lovingly rendered, but they come together in glorious pieces that enmesh themselves completely, laying out an intricate and complex tapestry of a narrative that fits seamlessly with a high fairy-tale aesthetic. 

In terms of specific reasons why I appreciate Novik's fractured or re-imagined fairy tales in a Fantasy genre that almost regards such things as passe, I really love her focus on well-fleshed female main characters, and even supporting female characters, as well. None fall into the trap of being too much of any one thing - too girly, too strong, too helpless, too overpowered - and while all have good intentions, it never keeps them from being too "good" either, frequently falling into jealousy, or anger, or selfishness. They are allowed to be heroes and humans, but all at once.

Something about her writing also feels really old-school, while still being very contemporary, in the best kind of way... like, it follows the classical construction, with characters that feel well-established, without relying on tropes or convenient plot formulas, but who else is integrating elements of Jewish faith into Fantasy? 

LESS, Andrew Sean Greer

Emotionally distraught by a wedding invitation from his former lover, a writer decides a little upheaval and world travel is just the thing to get his mind off of the disappointment. Maybe along the way, he'll figure out how to revive his floundering career?

[Thorough and unrepentant spoilers and significant personal emotional responses abound here, folks. I am not talking down to anyone's point of view, especially if you enjoyed this book... these are just my feelings. I have a lot of them. Strap in.]

To put it bluntly: this book did not deserve the 2018 Pulitzer. In fact, the fact that it won the Pulitzer, makes me like Less less. It wan't that it was BAD, necessarily, just that it wasn't up to par, especially when judged against other books that have achieved that sort of recognition in the past.

I understand what the book was attempting to do, especially in nestling the story within a story at the hands of the authorial main character. It made me consider how much of the narrative itself was autobiographical, if anything.

The main character is comically gifted with a litany of things that make him overburdened with goodness in his life: He has no problem pulling guys much younger than him, he's in better physical shape than most, he's experienced success as a writer that has kept him paid (even if his recent writing isn't as successful), he is hosted in countries around the world for arbitrary reasons, wins an award along the way, has an absolute embarrassment of friends, and good relationships with his exes (AND, as it turns out, his ex's ex-wife). And he gets his guy in the end! What the hell did he feel like he needed to pay all of this emotional penance for?

It did raise the interesting question of how LGBT writers perform gayness in their written works - something I haven't considered a ton before - in the main character grappling with being described as "spoony" in a review, or the claim being made against him by another another that he was "being a bad gay" when making his main characters suffer needlessly for the sake of a redemptive gay love story. 

I did finish it. I liked the ending; I thought it was sweet. Various repetitive elements / callbacks / motifs within the frame of the narrative were cute... it was a gentle reminder that nothing in the world exists in a vacuum; there will always be "signs" from the universes that remind you of the path you've walked this far.

Honestly, though, I can't help but consider what kind of reception this book would have gotten if its main character / author was a woman. It would have been lambasted as overly-gratuitous navel-gazing! She would have been called a mopey Mary Sue! She would have been decried as unlikable and unrealistic! Ugh. 

The Pulitzer!!!

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, Jane Austen - Audiobook

Boy meets girl. Boy insults girl. Two rejected proposals later, Girl realizes she might have made the wrong call. You know, that old tune. 

I've read this novel plenty of times in my teenage and adult years, but after I couldn't quite find the time to finish it this past Spring, I turned to alternative means of making my way to the final page.

I was wholly unprepared for the unexpected and complete joy of listening to this classic on audio book, and found myself going for long walks alone in the morning, because I'd been looking forward to it so much the evening before. As someone who's never particularly enjoyed this format before, and never thought about the amount of time I spend listening to various media, it was a wholly happy surprise. I drove to and from Seattle for a sorority advisory event listening to this audio book, and found myself so enraptured, I sat in my driveway for five minutes after arriving home, listening to a chapter. 

As it turns out, Darcy and Elizabeth hold up no matter the format, and listening to everything Mr. Collins says out loud, with a nasally inflection, might be even funnier than reading it yourself.

WINK POPPY MIDNIGHT, April Genevieve Tucholke

Three teens, one summer, and endless dark and whimsical shenanigans in a remote, affluent town, with little parental supervision. Is it a fairy tale, or the start of something more sinister?

Sometimes it's nice to read books that are pretty, aesthetically written, and don't make you work very hard.

Welcome to Tucholke's PNW, where the teenagers are beautiful, prose is flowery, and consequences don't matter. The parents are absent, which is half of the reason why everyone seems to have such mental complexes, and even the foods everyone eats feel like something out of a Zelda video game (strawberries still warm from the sun, golden turmeric milk, slabs of gingerbread cake, basil and mozzarella sandwiches eaten on the porch in the dying light of day).

When these teens aren't wandering the woods and local haunted houses and cemeteries with impunity, they're toeing a weird sort of line between childlike wonder and rampant sexual behavior. Existing in this weird in-between of youthful whimsy and climbing-in-windows-naked, you're asked to consider for yourself which of the characters is a Hero, which is a Villain, and which is a Liar.

However, even once all of those questions have been answered, you'll remain with the most important one of all: What the actual hell?

So, they're a bit of a far cry from my typical review format, but they're something I'm still trying to figure out. All I know for sure, is that there's plenty more where this came from! I hope you are enjoying the difference in how I choose to write on this platform... but just in case you haven't detected all that much of a change yet, I hope you stick around for next Wednesday!