Inputs
I look forward to The Millions A Year in Reading series every year and this entry by Lydia Kiesling was my favorite of 2020, because of her picks but also the way reading is interwoven with her daily activities is very familiar to me.
The Memory Palace Episode 156: That’s How it Goes Whenever it Snows: The Memory Palace does so many things I aspire to do when writing and the most recent episode is a great example of how immersive, moving, and efficient (less than 10 minutes!) it is.
Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski: This book is clear and engaging but it took a while to finish because it was full of steaming hot tea about how society’s impossible demands of women are mentally and physically corrosive and the only way to fix it to is to love yourself, set boundaries, and do all kinds of other shocking and outlandish things, which I could only absorb in small sips at a time.
Hot Milk by Deborah Levy- While your appetite for books about aimless and frustrated women may vary, the mounting dread and disorientation mixed with absurdity in this book was very well done. The prose and particularly the dialogue read as if it was written by a non-native English speaker but the unsettled feeling that produced was in keeping with the overall tone so it worked for me. I read this book for a book club* I joined when I first moved here. Its membership fluctuates but the one constant at every meeting I have attended and, at this point, one of the most consistent relationships I have maintained since arriving in Massachusetts is Fred, a retired journalist who lives in Brighton with his artist wife in a condo with floor to ceiling bookshelves complete with wheeled ladder. Fred is very knowledgeable and interesting but also has an abundance of that much rarer quality, a genuine interest in the thoughts and perspectives of others. If you have ever been in a book club you know what an uncommon gem that makes Fred. Anyway, Fred is my buddy and there are very few people I know whose cultural consumption habits overlap more closely than mine. We have talked about some fairly explicit books without it ever getting weird although Hot Milk might test those limits, we shall see!
Outputs
I had my first of the four ukulele lessons T got me for Christmas and can now play the chords to “Let it Be”; have sneaking suspicion my latent ukulele genius is just about to reveal itself.
Spiced Apple Walnut Cake (minus the walnuts) from Tartine All Day: Because part of living in New England is occasionally asking yourself “So what is the plan for all of these apples?”.
*Flights by Olga Tukarczuk, our December selection, was where I first heard the word “ropography” but other than that I found that book an impenetrable slog and it is a testament to my fear of disappointing Fred that I even finished it.