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!