Winter Musings
I keep thinking about an article I just read about Hilary Mantel. Mantel, who wrote the highly acclaimed and beloved Wolf Hall Trilogy, passed away in September 2022. In this article, her husband of almost 50 years describes how he went out to drop some items off at a charity shop and when he came home he found her on the floor having suffered a severe stroke. She never woke up. I keep thinking about how at this time of year we are busy making plans, setting goals, and yet none of us know what our futures hold. Mantle and her husband were planning a move to Ireland. They had bought a house and were in the final stages. That is why he was dropping off donations; the last few things to do. It strikes me as so poignant. Here we all are, living our lives, and at any moment it can all change. This is not something new to me, and my guess is we can all remember a moment where in an instant life is ruptured, but reading this article served as another reminder. Though we are resilient, life is fragile.
The new year doesn’t mean you have to do it all, but its a great time to start something or even quit something. You can put down books you don’t enjoy. You don’t have to keep doing things after they stop being purposeful. Laying things down opens up space in our lives for the things we want more of. We have no guarantees of finishing anything, but we can start a thing - even if it is just starting that book on your bedside table.
Bookish Links
Looking for some winter reads? This Town and Country list is excellent. I can vouch for Moon of the Crusted Snow, Snow Falling on Cedars, The Snow Child, Disappearing Earth, and Midwinter Murder.
Did you see Ann Pachett’s response to having two of her books recently banned? Its definitely worth the watch. Click her image & enjoy!
This year, to honor Martin Luther King Day, I read his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. In 1963, a group of clergymen published an open letter to Dr. King, calling nonviolent demonstrations against segregation “unwise and untimely.” This is King’s response, written in longhand while in jail. It is compelling, insightful, and only stresses what a huge loss King’s assasination was for our nation.
We finished the last season of The Crown over the holidays and loved it so much. I cried through that last episode! Though my complicated feelings about the current queen abound, I enjoyed this article where she discusses her favorite books to read to her grandchildren. She also started a new podcast in December called The Queen’s Reading Room.
Also from across the pond, Miranda Mills is creating beautiful seasonal commonplace books. These beauties are full of bookish inspiration and free to download. She is also producing an online journal called Seasons of Story - each edition includes seasonal poems, book and tea pairings, and original essays.
The winter months are a great opportunity to try a new hobby. I like this list of hobbies with a slower pace - and yes, reading is listed here!
Recent Reads
The Good Part has a clever premise. It looks at our regular lives and asks what if we could skip the hard parts - developing a career, a relationship, a family and just get to the good part. Lucy is struggling mightily, always short on cash, and her career feels like it will never take off. When she comes across a wish machine in a corner store late one night, she wishes to skip ahead to “the good part.” The next morning she wakes up in a new, transformed life. Everything looks wonderful, but it's also a life she does not recognize. Cousins does a great job of creating a scenario in which you don’t remember anything from the last 16 years but need to function like you do. It takes a while and some mess ups till Lucy actually lets those around her know what is going on. Her explanation is not taken seriously and from then on everyone treats Lucy like she has amnesia. As Lucy begins to get more comfortable in this new life - as a mother, wife, and executive, she begins to wonder if perhaps she isn’t just suffering from amnesia. The author does a great job of developing Sophie’s relationships in her new life with her parents, husband and oldest son. If any of you liked What Alice Forgot (A 2011 novel about a woman who falls off an exercise bike and wakes up thinking she is 10 years younger), this is the flip side. This book balances light and funny prose with asking hard questions about life and its challenges. [Published: November 23, Pages: 368]
True Crime - Fiction and Nonfiction.
Kill Show is a fictional story of a girl that goes missing on her way to high school one morning. The book structures itself around interviews with all the key people telling both what they knew then and hinting about what was actually going on. Along with the police investigation, there is a reality tv show that is following the kidnapping in real time. The creator of the show does a lot of questionable things to get the story she wants and perhaps sacrifices the safety of others in doing so. This is a quick paced crime novel that looks at the ways media, and tv in particular impact how crimes are investigated. Even though the story is being told in retrospect, the author still manages to include twists and turns so you don’t really know what happened until the end. This book is one of a newer genre that is critically examining how the media exacerbates and makes things more difficult for investigators of crimes and questions the idea of putting these stories out for the public to consume. [Published: October 2023, Pages: 240]
I heard In Light of All Darkness talked about on a number of podcasts this fall but since then I haven’t heard much else about it. This is an examination of the Polly Klaas kidnapping case. If you aren’t familiar, Klaas was kidnapped from her bedroom in 1993, while her mother was asleep in the next room, and while she was with two friends spending the night. There was an enormous amount of attention given to this crime when it happened. In the book, Cross carefully reconstructs both the crime and the investigation. She does not go into unnecessary or gratuitous detail but focuses primarily on the facts of the case.
This investigation was the first to use many technologies that are now considered standard, and it is held up as a model for local police and FBI working together. A lot of changes were made after this investigation about how to treat children as witnesses. The author also covers the very different responses by Polly’s Mom and Dad. This book is not a mystery, it’s a case study. Definitely worth reading if you are interested in learning about how crimes are investigated, the hours and dedication put in by both the police and volunteers, and the inadvertent mistakes that can be made even when great care is taken. [Published: October 23, Pages: 464]
Loved the Ann Patchett broadcast. Don't you just love the politicians who enact laws to protect you? There’s a lot of sex and violence in the Bible. I wonder if that will be banned in FL, too
Oh, man. I remember reading that article about Hilary Mantel's husband, and I was just gutted. This one, right? https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/apr/22/my-last-words-to-her-were-i-wont-be-long-hilary-mantel-husband-on-her-last-days-and-the-novel-she-left-behind
The only heart-breaking thing about that was the excerpt from what would have been her retelling of Pride & Prejudice. What a loss for everyone! She was a really spectacular human.