My week in books

I'M SHOUTING BECAUSE I'M EXCITED

Leonid Pasternak’s 1893 illustration for War and Peace. Public domain.

The week isn’t quite over yet, but who’s counting? I’m mighty pleased that somewhere in December I re-learned my most precious, and here in this Age of Algorithms evidently my most precarious, skill: how to read a big ole book.

I’m not exactly kicking myself over 2023’s scattered and distracted reading patterns; the year was swallowed up by our house move and all the pile-up of work that entailed. I did read, but I read like one of those little plastic cars you scrape backwards across the carpet a few times and then let loose: zoooom—crash—torpor. All fits and starts.

In November I rallied Betsy-Tacy¹ to the cause. The high-school books did the trick. Car revving nicely again. There was also a NXIVM binge: memoirs by Sarah Edmonson, Catherine Oxenberg, Toni Natalie, and the journalistic account by Sarah Berman. I finished Natalie’s book on January 1st and kind of regret adding it to my Goodreads because I don’t like seeing Keith Raniere’s dead-eyed face in the app.

My best first-time December read was Elise Broach’s lovely middle-grade novel, Duet, one of my Brave Writer Dart books for this year. A gorgeous book and lots of fun to write about. Music, mystery, a goldfinch for a narrator, and a story that moved me to tears.

But all of those were appetizers for what is promising to be a sumptuous feast. I think I’ve mentioned here that I joined

Simon Haisell

’s year-long War & Peace reading club

Footnotes and Tangents

. We are on day five and I’m obsessed. IT’S SO GREAT. Both the book (I wasn’t expecting it to be so funny!) and the community. I’ve been walking around gushing about it (them, book and community) in all caps for days. I MEAN. THIS IS JUST ALL VERY EXCITING. I AM LIT UP.