Inputs:
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo: I’ve seen this book described in various reviews as the stories of twelve Black women in Britain, rotating in perspective through each one; but that summary felt inadequate when I thought about how I’d describe it myself. In part that’s because of the complex identities of the characters, to which I would be doing a tremendous disservice by trying to sum up here. The other reason is that it might give the impression that if you’re not a Black woman in Britain the book will contain nothing that speaks directly to your reality, which is not at all true. I would be in awe of an author who could create one character so vivid let alone twelve, and Evaristo is so merciless in exposing each of their foibles that the tenderness she shows toward each of them often caught me by surprise.
Also:
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon: Some agreeably creepy moments, ultimately too much of the plot revolved around adolescent longing for girls who are not realized enough for you to understand what all the fuss is about. I’d probably enjoy it more as a limited-run series if they got the tone right.
Inside Out by Demi Moore: Has anyone ever looked more radiant in the history of humanity than Demi Moore did in the mid to late aughts? But I can’t say I came away from her memoir feeling a shred of envy, she even makes cocaine sound like kind of a slog. I respect her for going the introspective rather than the dishy route and it’s certainly well done, but because it was so focused on self-reflection I missed the feeling of being snuck behind the curtain of a complex, churning system that Jessica Simpson’s book did with great success.
Outputs:
I feel familiar little tendrils of delusion creeping up that I recall from other periods of my life when I was about to embark on a new disruptive endeavor. Specifically, that somehow I will be MORE productive and MORE organized and MORE motivated to exercise once the cataclysm occurs because I will simply have no time for faffing around and will approach all activities with laser-like focus. As if being on maternity leave consists of anything but faffing around: the neverending cycle of getting an uncooperative child to eat and sleep which, while necessary, produces little feeling of accomplishment, set against the backdrop of Netflix and the Kindle app because although these efforts are extremely draining, for much of them you are trapped in your seat afraid to so much as lean over to pick up your water bottle for fear of disturbing the little creature’s slumber. At least I’ll get a lot of reading done.
Condiment Corner:
I questioned whether I could really justify opening yet another jar of chili paste, and then I looked down at the pot of slightly yellowed and past-its-prime broccolini I had just sautéed and I realized that life is fleeting and joy must be seized at every possible opportunity no matter how large or small, so in went a big dollop of this stuff, and maybe it’s just residual euphoria from the little whiff of spring we got this week and the fact that vax rates are picking up but whatever the cause, I have no regrets about this decision!