Third Quarter Review - 3 more mos, yet another 5 books read
Reading Rooney in Dublin
I decided in January to read more to improve my writing. I committed to myself to read two books each month. In April, I shared with you my first quarter success - if you missed it, check it out here. I gave you my 2nd quarter picks in August, all Canadian fiction. The third quarter provided a more balanced selection - contemporary Irish and American writers mixed in with Canadian, and a balance of fiction and non-fiction.
I referred to the bestseller Normal People, the 2nd novel from Irish writer, Sally Rooney, in one of my pieces on my Ireland trip. I can’t overstate how good her writing is - how easy it is to read and feel engaged in the lives of her characters. If by chance you missed reading this when it hit the charts in 2018, please fix that oversight now. I’m certainly going to pick up her September 2024 release, Intermezzo!
American romance writer, Colleen Hoover, has sold 20 million books and was named one of Time’s most influential people in the world last year. I confess, however, I was only vaguely aware of her until I picked up It Ends with Us, released eight years ago now. For the first third of the book, I was extraordinarily irritated by its saccharine plot, seemingly trite and unidimensional characters. But I was on vacation and running out of options for easy reads so I persevered. The book, however, got interesting when the plot took a twist. In August 2024, if there was anyone who didn’t already know about Colleen Hoover, they couldn’t escape the promo campaign of the film adaptation, which yes, I do plan to see. Is it worth reading? Probably not. Go see the movie.
Now this next one? It’s definitely worth reading. I’m a little embarrassed to admit that Tom Lake is the first of book I’ve read written by critically acclaimed American novelist and memoirist, Ann Patchett. Patchett’s own website describes this book as a “meditation on youthful love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born.” She delivers all and does so using a clever literary trick. Her protagonist recounts how she and her husband met as a COVID story-telling exercise to their three daughters, stuck at home during the lockdowns. Along the way, she intersperses her story-telling with her reflections of the stuff she’s not telling them. As someone considering how to organize my own story, this is a brilliant structure and so artfully executed. I’ve got so much to learn! I was also delighted that the family are cherry-growers and my reading of the book coincided with my own sour cherry harvest here at Chandlerville. Always fun to be reading about what you’re doing in real life!
Plum Johnson’s memoir, They Left us Everything, was published a decade ago but only came into my TBR pile this year when a friend loaned it to me. Johnson tells the story of cleaning out the Oakville, Ontario family home after her parents’ deaths. Sometimes funny, other times sad, and frequently truth-revealing, the purging, sorting, and dividing of family treasures is an experience many my generation have either recently gone through or anticipate soon. Johnson learns things she didn’t know, not just about her parents but about herself.
Attachment to things is something most of us grapple with - do we really need all this stuff to ensure we don’t forget the memories associated with the acquisition? I come from a bloodline of minimalism - use it or ditch it is seemingly my mother’s mantra. She gave up the house she shared with my father more than a decade ago and at that time, most of her things were divvied up or jettisoned. She has recently asked us kids to begin dismantling her photo albums. It feels premature to me, but at the same time, I understand the impulse to liken death to leaving the house in the morning - make things neat and orderly, turn out the light, and shut the door.
Sinead O’Connor’s autobiography, Remembering, is another of those Irish books I picked up on my June trip there. There are things about her I admired enormously including how she shunned all expectations of a late 80s/early 90s female pop star, with her signature shaved head and her controversial ripping up of the Pope’s picture on live TV. The latter prompted protests against her, one of which she attended, disguised to go unnoticed in the crowd. Very kick-ass behaviour. But O’Connor was clearly pretty messed up from a difficult childhood and so a lot of her life decisions were ill-advised, all of which is documented in painful detail. She’s a tragic figure and her 2023 death, two years after her book came out, made that even more so. This book is worth a read if you’re a fan.
Finally, a word or two on books I’ve tried to read and failed. With the stacks of books I’ve amassed that I’ve not yet touched, I’ve decided I’m not going to persevere: if you bore me, I’m setting you aside.
Two examples, and with all due respect to their writers.
The first is Prince Shakur’s When They Tell You to be Good. The author is described on the book jacket as a “queer, Jamaican-American freelance journalist, cultural essayist, and grassroots organizer.” The memoir writing world is full of people who look like me - white, middle-aged, straight women, long white hair strongly favoured. Early in 2024, I took an online memoir writing course with Prince Shakur because I wanted a different perspective. His course provided it - through studying the works of Black American writers, especially James Baldwin, I put more thought to the lens through which I see the world. I liked Prince as a teacher and felt a sense of duty to buy his book and give it a go. But less than a quarter of the way through, I realized it hadn’t caught my attention. So guiltily I set it aside, first for another book, then a second, and now I know it’s a permanent set-aside. Thank you, Prince, for your course.
The second is The Mother Zone by Canadian journalist, Marni Jackson. This book, published in 1992, documents Jackson’s experience as a first-time mother to her son. That son is the partner of a former colleague of mine. I’ve met Jackson, even attending the 2016 launch party of her very engaging short story collection, Don’t I Know You. And of course, I know her son. So when I saw this book in a ‘little library’ in Vancouver’s Commercial Drive area earlier this year, I had to grab it. I knew this was critically acclaimed and popular among feminist mothers of its time. I thought it might have something to say to a non-mother 30 years later. I tried and got nearly halfway in. It wasn’t for me. No surprise - it wasn’t written for me. I would be interesting to know if it would resonate with young mothers today.
So that’s the score so far in 2024: 9 mos, 17 books completed, still 0 written. I am, however, seriously working on a proposal for a book about my recent transformation using the building of my laneway suite as the framework. I’ve hired a coach - Anne Bokma - and with her help, I’m getting my plan together to submit to publishers in the new year. I‘m hopeful that my story coupled with my connections to the housing world, where more laneway and garden suites could help with the current crisis, that a publisher will find my pitch interesting. Stay tuned!
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