This Week In My Library 7.18.23

The name Megan, Rock-Paper-Scissors, and Lost boys

LIFE OF A BOOKMAN

Bookman: 1. a person who has a love of books and especially of reading. 2. a person who is involved in the writing, publishing, or selling of books. Oh, hi thats me!!

What I'm reading rn: Holy poetry. I've found the book that has made me fall head-over-heels. And that's Lord of the Butterflies by Andrea Gibson. Outside of some Mary Oliver, I'm not a big poetry reader. I fancy myself someone who has books of poetry that they love reading on a slow Sunday – and then gracefully quotes from them with the same ease as repeating something their mom said (Hi mom, everything you say is poetry). But I'm not that girl. Thanks to Andrea, I might become that girl. There are lines in this book that make me shake the book over my head because I don't know what else to do with so much brilliance – because of the truth. Because of the turn of words. Because of the way the rhythm made the sentiment even truer. Anyways, if you're not a poetry book reader but want to be, might I suggest Lord of the Butterflies. But reader pro-tip: reading more than three poems at a time is like trying to eat more than one cake. You want to, but it's too much deliciousness for one sitting.

What I Keep Mentioning to Friends: If you were born after 1985, there's a pretty good chance you've never heard of The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough. Well, I'm about to change that. This is a beast of a book. An epic that sweeps across generations and clears the cobwebs off your heart. I was in my favorite bookstore in Savannah (E.Shaver for any low-country visitors!) and I walked past a big red book with "The Most Beloved Books of All Time!" printed on the spine. That tickled me. Because it was so confident! So sure! Tattooed on the spine and all. So I bought it (because advertising works folks). And woweeee. A beauty. A true beauty. If you like family stories, love stories, historical fiction or all of the above, hit this one up. The spine was right! It's become beloved to me, for all time. And fun fact, The Thorn Birds is the reason "Megan" became such a popular name. Hi, Megans! We love you and all your creative spellings! Hi big sister Megan, I love you too!

What I'm writing: Let's call the historical novel I'm working on That Novel. Well, the main character of That Novel actually lived on this earth over a century ago, and one of my favorite things about the near-constant research is getting to put all her weird and quirky and wonderful tendencies directly into the plot. Like the fact she'd often stand on her head. At parties. At home. At gatherings. For fun! I was telling my writing coach this last week during our weekly call and she said HER grandad, a principle, used to stand on his head on top of desks to get the kids' attention. I mean, kismet. Unless this is still a thing?? Do people regularly stand on their heads??

WOMEN’S STUDIES

What gets passed down becomes our history. A few for the canon: I wrote a book called You're Not Lost so you KNOW I stopped when a headline from The Lily by The Washington Post said: Men are Lost. Here's a Map Out of the Wilderness by Christine Emba. And yes, I put an article about men under a header called "Women's Studies" for a reason. When you read the article, you'll understand how it's all connected. Emba did a fantastic job holding a lot of tensions at once: that men are (measurably) falling behind while women are making huge gains. And the majorrrr tensions in speaking to "oh poor boys" when hi, hello, the patriarchy. We're only talking about this because it's the white boys impacted now? My vibe on this whole topic has been, are we really supposed to be oh woe is me bc these white dudes can't get their shit together? Change the system for men when the system hardly changed for women (or people of color any other marginalized group). Well, the most compelling argument in here (for me) was that yes, because in not speaking to them...one very convincing group is. And that's the radical right. Think Andrew Tate's version of masculinity proliferating across the country and hurting women everywhere. Woof. Anyways, it's long. But it's worth the read. Because I think all of us big-hearted humans would love a world that safe, healthy and supported for everyone. 

Let's talk about The Retrievals, a podcast by Serial and The New York Times. Women's health gets me real lit up. So this true-crime, investigative series about what happened to women at a Yale Fertility Clinic who went for egg retrievals is...yikes. I like this podcast because you think you're going in to answer the who done it mystery, but really you're thrown feet first into an examination of women's health, pain, and why the hell we still don't believe women when they say how they're feeling. Or what they're experiencing. I can't wait for the next episode but in the meantime I feel validated that my strong, strong opinion to never ever have a male OBGYN is the right one. 

PASS IT ON

Stories are heirlooms. Here's one of mine:  I had a REAL wild weekend. As in I stayed up real late Saturday night binge-reading Tuesdays with Morrie. I won this book in three-rounds of high-stakes, late-night Rock Paper Scissors contest a couple weekends back (don't ask, because I won't tell). Anyways, what a GIFT this book is. I know I'm about 26 years late to the game here but the book left me a mantra that I'll leave with you:

"Love is the only rational act."

xx