write me well

Tag: books

  • Short & Sweet

    It never serves me well to sit down for a writing session with absolutely no idea of what I want to write, but this afternoon has been particularly aimless. I have completely finished my coffee, sorted through all of the random writing files in my OneDrive whose mysterious titles are some form of “Document [insert numbers 1 – 21 here]”, jumped around my blog to see if I feel like changing the layout, and made my way through 90% of a playlist I have called Vauxhall 2019 that means nothing to anyone but me, for whom it is a time machine that transports me instantly to my commute from Mortlake to Central London from January 2019 through August of that same year. Truly, nothing has been achieved.  

    After spending a final ten minutes on formerglory.ie, my latest favorite website for daydreaming (it specializes in posting period properties in Ireland, the focus of most of my daydreams since its the EU country that remains to us without having to learn another language), I figured I might as well just open a blank Word document and see where it takes me. 

    Last time I wrote I decided I should find a new writing project, and while I am nowhere near finding such a project, I still think this a good idea. I was vaguely hoping to be inspired by one of those Document Number Whatever files, only to be disappointed by many of them (SO MANY OF THEM) not being short-lived creative projects, but rather derelict cover letters. Does anyone else ever pause to think how many cover letters they have written in their life? How many minutes they have surrendered to this most mundane, useless, and modern exercise in time-wasting? A chronic career-jumper, fluent in the professional pivot, this is a life statistic I don’t know that I’d actually ever want to see. It goes without saying that the files did not provide even the slightest bit of encouragement in the writing department.  

    I think I will keep today short and sweet, much like the entire month of February was. February was so fast that it didn’t even make it to the whiteboard calendar we keep on our fridge – just this morning I wiped off January and replaced it with March. February has my birthday and our wedding anniversary, and this year, it also included a trip to South Carolina, just over ten days of a brutal cold, and as it always does, four fewer days than most other months. So, sorry February. You passed in such a blur that according to our Frigidaire, you never happened. Don’t take it personally. 

    What I will say is that it was a February full of wins, despite its brevity. That trip to South Carolina at the beginning of the month was not for fun reasons. In fact, it was for a memorial of a close life friend of Aaron’s. But it was in many ways, exactly what we needed after the tumultuous six months we have had. One of those four-day spreads where you are somehow able to step completely away from your day-to-day, to literally leave the clouds behind you and experience sun and the warmth of genuine people, the reality of grief but the joy of a life that was very much worth celebrating.  

    The world remains very much on fire. I won’t lie about that. But I have been lucky enough in my immediate surroundings to see and touch and experience some real joy these past few weeks. Also, did you know we have a cat named Kevin? His existence has somehow escaped posting since his arrival back in late August, so you will have to just trust when I say he is a meow-based goober that while troublesome at times, has become the Bobby Boucher to my Kathy Bates. He is no small part of the laughter that has been experienced this month. 

    Okay, folks. That will have to do. Thanks for sticking around for the long posts, the short posts, and the meandering, vaguely useless ones. Life is a funny little thing, but we do what we can.  

  • Three Fave Books Right Now

    Need a new companion for your daily commute? We’ve got you covered in three very different directions.

    Americanah – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

    I picked this book up on a whim at Foyles and didn’t realize until I was halfway through that I had encountered a clip from a Ted Talk by author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in my newsfeed a few weeks earlier. In it, she lightly but thoroughly tackled the racist preconceptions a college roommate had about her home country of Nigeria (go watch The Danger of a Single Story). I’ve since learned you can’t go wrong with reading anything Adichie puts to paper.

    In many ways a story about how some connections and relationships both define and never leave you, Americanah is stunning from its tangible main characters, Ifemelu and Obinze, to their experience of culture and race in several settings, to the vibrancy of those settings themselves. Whether it’s the streets of central London, an American hole-in-the wall hair salon, or a crammed outdoor food market in Lagos, Adiche’s descriptions satisfy every sense, instantly transporting you as needed. Given the far-reaching global stage of Ifemelu and Obinze’s stories, that’s quite a feat.

    Bonus: if, like me, you enter the novel unfamiliar with the music of Onyeka Onwenu, you’ll exit it with the IMPOSSIBLY FUN Living Music stuck in your head for days.

    Nobody Cares – Anne T. Donahue

    A totally different timbre from Americanah, Nobody Cares is a collection of zingy and heart-felt essays by Canadian author Anne T. Donahue. I owe my knowledge of this particular author to my shameless continued use of Tumblr, and am the better for it. I now follow her on Instagram and was duly aware (and thrilled) when she debuted her first book, and I grabbed a copy as soon as it was available in the UK.

    When you need a sharp, funny, ten page pick-me-up, from social pressures, to mental health, to dealing with the best and the shittiest friends and life circumstances, you can do no better than sitting down with any one of the essays in Nobody Cares. It’s like having a motivational speaker in your bag. It may be a motivational speaker that functions a little like a quirky, snarky aunt stuck in the late 60’s, but as Anne’s Insta will attest, she’s the first to admit that. And as I will attest, it’s an absolute blast.

    Matilda: Empress, Queen, Warrior

    Most people don’t think historical reading is accessible, and most of the time, I can agree with you. A lot of it isn’t. But books like Helen Castor’s She Wolves have popularized a more digestible version of history books, valiantly outshining those of the past that rock that strange dichotomy of theoretically, deeply fascinating material, but literally, written in a way that’s anything but. Catherine Hanley’s fresh biography of my favorite local 12th century feminist is happily of the She Wolves vein.

    Hanley walks us through the entire life of the Empress Matilda, from child-bride of the Holy Roman Emperor to Queen-of-England hopeful in her own right. Better yet – especially since Matilda’s story is so unknown and difficult to detail based on the male-leaning chroniclers of the time – Hanley’s writing is well-researched, always stuck firmly in the female perspective, and best of all, just fun. Hanley is insightful and funny, sharing Matilda’s experience as Empress, Queen, and Warrior in an engaging, contemporary style without getting bogged down in the twelfth-century details. (Favorite line: “..Matilda gave birth – to her immense relief – to a healthy son. In one of the least surprising moves of the Middle Ages, the boy was named Henry.”)

    If you’ve been avoiding history books until now, I urge you to dive headfirst in with this one.