A little reading & living in September

We’ve officially reached the point in the year where I want to shut the door on the world and read. Sorry I have to cancel because there are, in fact, SO MANY BOOKS, and, I know I’m not the first to notice this… SO LITTLE TIME.

And yet here we are again trying to take in the autumnal splendor, read all the books, and somehow survive in this modern era (puke).

Here’s a little of my living, on and off the page:

The first book I finished in September was THE DEAD ROMANTICS by Ashley Poston.

This is a romantic comedy with a paranormal/talking-to-ghosts element. It reads like a somewhat spooky Sandra Bullock rom-com. Every year I tell myself I want to read more romance because I think the world of romance and romance readers is so subversive and joyful. This book is very much a love letter to that world. If you want to get into the spooky spirit, but horror is not your thing, I would recommend this one.

~ PANCAKE INTERLUDE ~

This is my go-to order from our local diner. Apple stuffed pancakes with a side of bacon. Not to over hype it, but I think this is what God intended when she invented breakfast. The waitress calls us honey and never lets our coffee get below half-full. Heaven.

Next up for me book-wise was HELL FOLLOWED WITH US by Andrew Joseph White.

Now this one is for all you spooky girlies who don’t mind a little gore and monsters. It’s a dystopian YA novel in which a young Trans boy is on the run from an evangelical cult that infected him with a bioweapon and unleashed an Armageddon that decimated the earth. Our hero Benji teams up with a group of queer kids who help each other survive and fight back. This is a wild and dark book. It centers Trans kids fighting for survival in an evil world and it has a point to make about the inches between this world and our own. This is outside of my typical genre, but I am glad I read it. Picture THE LAST OF US mixed with THE HUNGER GAMES, but gayer and more political.

I’m trying to pay attention more to what the sky is up to. She can be a real show-off.

Next up on the page was MONSTER’S: A FAN’S DILEMMA by Claire Dederer

Expanding on her Paris Review essay, “What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?” Claire Dederer uses this book to dive into some impossible, fascinating questions - How do we separate the artist from the art? Can we? Should we? What constitutes a monstrous act and what can be forgiven by the discerning reader/consumer? Dederer offers no easy answers or calculations. There is, of course, no roadmap for this, much as I personally would like one. I want to know what it’s okay to love, what I need to leave behind. These questions, though, are too thorny and interesting to boil down to moral certainties. This is not a perfect book and Dederer’s personal biases and preferences are all over it, which is, I think, the point. This is one of those books you could sit down and think about forever. For this reason alone, I loved it. I can’t wait to discuss it with my brilliant pals in the book club next week.

What will stay with me the most from this work is Dederer’s call to consider the way we love art. To center that love in our lives and take it as seriously as anything else. To question that love and challenge it and test it and, most importantly, cherish it.

She writes,

“Reading is an unambiguously good thing in a life that has been filled with mixed blessings.”

Another unambiguously good thing: dog butts.

I’ll share a little more of what I read and lived in September next week.

We can’t read all the books or pet all the dogs or eat all the pancakes, but I think I’ll try.

I’m glad you’re here.

Love,

Rosamond