Eldest daughters

I keep thinking that I’m going to run out of obscure mid-20th century English women novelists to read, and I’m sure I will eventually, but not yet. Not today. I just discovered Elizabeth Caddell and I’ve never even touched Ivy Compton-Burnett. It’ll be years before this genre runs dry.  

Elizabeth Caddell was born in India in 1903 to a British officer and his wife. Based on my first experience with her, the delightful Iris in Winter, she wrote comic society novels - more light and silly than Barbara Pym, less unhinged than Margery Sharp, less cynical than Muriel Spark, but similarly preoccupied with social mores amid the routine of everyday postwar British life - especially food.  You can’t read Barbara Pym or Muriel Spark or Margery Sharp or Elizabeth Caddell without wanting a boiled egg and toast and maybe a nice cup of tea.

Iris in Winter’s titular character is the younger and more glamorous sister of Caroline, a young widow who has settled in the fictional country town of High Ambo. Caroline, a placid and peaceful person, would probably have been quite happy to keep in touch with her boisterous sister and her outrageous brother Robert and his young fiancee by mail and telegram, but the whole crew come and descend upon her, leaving her to contend with a very busy household full of lively and interesting and and slightly crazy close relatives who naturally expect her to feed them all and clean up after them all and generally upend her quiet life to accommodate them. 

*****

Did you know that August 26 was National Eldest Daughter Day? As an eldest daughter myself, I approve of a day dedicated to recognizing us. Iris in Winter spoiler alert: Caroline is an eldest daughter, so of course she welcomes her crazy siblings and takes care of them and cleans up after them, literally and metaphorically. What else is she going to do, let them starve? 

*****

LIke almost every other female protagonist in a post-war British novel, Caroline is preoccupied with food - procuring it and preserving it and preparing it and making a little go a long way. Caroline notices with dismay that Iris and Robert and Polly consume far more butter and sugar and milk and eggs than their combined rations allow, and it falls upon her to figure out how to stretch their food stores to keep everyone fed. And of course, no one other than Caroline gives a thought to housekeeping or economy, except for sweet, spoiled Polly, who tries to help with the cooking, predictably making a mess in the process. 

*****

On Sunday, my husband hosted a fantasy football draft at our house. I helped him arrange everything; and about an hour before his guests were to arrive, I asked him if I could do anything else to help, and he said “No, just do me a favor and don’t make any messes.” 

Excuse me? Have you met me? I’m an eldest daughter and I have never made a mess in my entire life.

*****

OK, back to the book. When Iris, an aspiring young reporter, comes to High Ambo on assignment from her editor, she meets a handsome young schoolmaster on the train from London. She falls in love with him, and is utterly flummoxed and confused when he doesn’t immediately fall in love with her in return, because most men do immediately fall in love with young, beautiful, charming, fashionable Iris. Why wouldn’t they?

Meanwhile, the school where the young schoolmaster teaches is struggling to remain afloat, and the insufferably arrogant and selfish Robert ends up saving it. Lots of other things happen, too - Caroline and Iris befriend a charming little band of schoolboys, who help with repairs in exchange for the occasional treat (everyone in postwar Britain is obsessed with food), and Iris is nearly arrested for sneaking into the wrong house to steal back an umbrella that had been earlier stolen from her by a kleptomaniac old man, and the flighty and whimsical Polly goes missing for a bit. It's all very screwball comedy. 

But everything turns out as it should and everyone ends up where they should be, or at least close to where they should be Ideally, Iris and her beloved schoolmaster would finish their courtship in a Margery Sharp novel, and they’d be married and on a plane to New York by the end. Caroline would spend the rest of her quiet life arranging jumble sales and inviting the curate for tea in a quiet Barbara Pym London suburb. Robert and Polly would end up at Blandings Castle or at Bertie Wooster’s Aunt Dahlia’s country home. Aunt Dahlia would try but fail to evict them and then she’d force Bertie to come down from London so that Jeeves could get rid of them for her. But even Robert would be no match for Lord Emsworth. 

Time and place

I’m sitting on my patio right now, 9:45 on a 10/10 Saturday morning. Really, it is just beautiful out here - bright sunshine, flawless clear blue sky, temperatures in the high 60s with a lovely breeze rustling the leaves on the trees, with cicadas chirping and birdsong and a dog barking here and there the only other noise. 

My younger son and I are the only people home right now, but that will change in a few hours. He’s still sleeping, because this is one of his last few sleep-in mornings for some time. We’re taking him back to school today, and class and swim practice will start on Monday. Summer always passes by so fast. It already feels like September out here. 

The third year of taking your youngest child to college is definitely much easier than the first. I remember the dread-filled days leading up to move-in day in 2023, and it’s not nearly so bad now. He takes his car to school now and comes home every so often; and of course, swim season starts soon, and I love college swim season the way some people love NFL football. The boys team is swimming against Duke and Boston College in Durham next month, and I booked our room weeks ago. Part of me can’t wait. The other part would like to turn the clock back a few months. Well, that second part wants to turn the clock back a full year because I’d like to relive an optimistic summer untainted by ICE raids and military patrols on the streets of DC. But you know what I mean. 

*****

It’s Sunday now, just about 24 hours later and I am once again out on my patio writing about pretty much nothing. The weather is different today - soft and overcast and almost cool. The breeze is still rustling, though, and I’m still hearing cicadas (much more muted) and birdsong. 

Our son moved in yesterday. His quad suite is quite similar to the suite he had last year, and he’s sharing it with the same crew, one of whom has been his roommate since freshman year. I was happy to see them. We helped with move-in and unpacking and arranging the room, and then we took the boys out for dinner and to the neighborhood Safeway so that they could stock up on supplies and snacks. We were exhausted when we arrived home at 10. And now it’s kind of sad to walk past his neat and empty room at home. I’ll get used to it because I always do and because I have to - after all, at some point, he’s going to leave home for good - but I do like having all my people at home under my roof. 

*****

I’ve been reading a lot lately, so my next post - I promise - will be less about my daily life amid the changing seasons and more about books. Preview: The Sum of Us (Heather McGhee), Iris in Winter (Elizabeth Caddell), The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde), and The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym (Paula Byrne). Four weeks, three centuries, two countries - proving that I’m capable of leaving the house and getting out of my own head for five minutes, even if only in a book. 

Taylor Swift and Thomas Cromwell: Beach Week 2025

It's Beach Week!

Right now, it's Saturday August 9. It's 1157 and the car is packed and my husband is in the house doing his last minute checks, and we'll be on the road by 1202. 

The forecast for this week looks solid. It's quite hot today, bright and sunny, and it feels beachy even here in Silver Spring. The crape myrtle are at peak color, and Stone Harbor will be in wild full bloom too. 

*****

My sister is already in Stone Harbor. They arrive on Saturday morning even though you can't check in until 3. My sister in-law and her family are about 90 minutes ahead of us. My friend and her family have not left yet because she has a few canine and feline patients this morning. She owns her own practice. She's basically a 21st century James Herriot. But even a veterinarian needs a vacation. 

*****

We have a roof carrier, which I hate, and it's making an unsettling amount of noise right now. That's probably the only thing that's bothering me right now. There needs to be something. I'm not comfortable when I don't have something to worry about. 

*****

Traffic is dreadful as usual on 95 on a Saturday in August. But we just crossed the Delaware Memorial Bridge and we're in New Jersey. We're listening to the Springsteen channel on Sirius XM as fitting, and Rosalita’s daddy is just about to miss his chance to get his daughter in a fine romance. 

*****

It's Sunday morning now. Five minutes ago, a flock of seagulls were squawking and screeching over my head and now they're gone. It was so loud I couldn't hear myself thinking. 

Now it's quiet and calm, with the only noise coming from the fishing boats on the bay a few feet from our deck, and a few Sunday morning bikers and runners and dog walkers. A lone seagull is perched on the roof on the house across the courtyard, and he appears to be watching me. I'm drinking coffee, and maybe he's hoping I'll bring breakfast out on the deck. Maybe a muffin or some toast or an egg sandwich. But I don't eat anything in the morning so that bird is out of luck unless he wants a nice cup of Cafe Bustelo. 

*****

Our rental condo is very basic, but nice. If I face west on my deck, I can see the bay. If I face east, I can see the pool. We're two blocks from the beach but they're densely built blocks so I'd have to climb up on the roof to see the ocean. But two water views is pretty good, and I'll get to look at the ocean all afternoon. 

*****

The weather is perfect here. The vibe, however, is unsettled. The Jersey Shore has always leaned MAGA but that element was quiet for a few years. Last year, I hardly saw any Trump signs or flags on the island - it was such a marked difference from 2016 and 2020 that I really thought that Kamala could win. Would win, I should say. 

It feels different now. And it's not as simple as flags and signs and red hats. I still haven't seen much of that. But the vibe is definitely off. Something doesn’t feel right. 

*****

Still, it was a perfect beach day yesterday, with 75 degree ocean water. I love swimming in the ocean, and I barely got in at all last year because we were here during a freak cold snap with ocean water temps in the mid 60s, very unusual for August. It was the talk of the town. But yesterday was perfect for ocean swimming. I used to love PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster books, and I remembered a line from a letter from Jeeves to Bertie during a rare seaside holiday from the gentleman’s personal gentleman: “I had an exceedingly enjoyable bathe yesterday.” We, too, had an exceedingly enjoyable bathe yesterday - several in fact. 

It’s Monday now. The sun is out and the sky is pale blue and gold but it’s also quite cloudy so the sunlight is filtered. I haven’t looked at news coverage - online or on TV - since Saturday, but today, I’m anxiously monitoring the news. 47 is about to “federalize” the District of Columbia, and I dread the idea of the National Guard on the streets of DC. Martial law is not out of the realm of possibility, either. Whatever is in the Epstein files, it must be really bad, because DC is as safe as any other place. I am there all the time, and I never feel threatened or even uncomfortable, except when the Capitals lose to Pittsburgh and Penguins fans occupy the steps of the National Portrait Gallery. It’s all very wrong, and very upsetting, and it doesn’t feel right to be here looking at the bay and watching seagulls while all of this is happening or about to happen. 

*****

And it happened. 

It's Tuesday morning now. It's overcast and the water in the bay is the same pearly silvery gray as the sky. I love sunny beach days but I really love watching the bay and hearing the seagulls on an overcast morning. 

I texted my friends who work at CBO and the State Department to see if they were OK. My CBO friend was WFH but my State Department friend was in her office in Foggy Bottom, watching Guardsmen arrive. We're planning a girls trip to Baghdad because if DC is twice as violent as Baghdad then Baghdad must be the safest place on God's green earth. The whole thing would be funny if it wasn't a complete and utter outrage.  

Meanwhile here in Stone Harbor, if you didn't know what was happening, you really would not know what was happening. I guess that could be a good thing. 

*****

It’s Wednesday now. No matter what is happening in the world, Beach Week always passes with blinding speed. Wednesday is the day when we start to reckon with the passage of (vacation) time. We need to figure out what we want to do and where we want to go before the end of the week, which is coming sooner than we think. 

I texted a friend and colleague yesterday. We’re working on a project together, and I had an idea that I wanted to share with her before I forgot about it. I told her that it felt weird and wrong to be on vacation this week, with everything that’s going on, and she texted back that vacationing and resting and enjoying life are radical acts of rebellion in a world that wants us always busy and productive. True to a certain extent, I suppose, but my guilt feelings about vacation have nothing to do with work ethic or productivity. It just feels solipsistic to be out here swimming and biking and collecting shells with all of this (gesturing wildly at everything) going on. It feels like radical rebellion is the radical act of rebellion that’s called for in these circumstances. 

*****

It’s Thursday now, another near-perfect day in this near-perfect week, weather-wise. I’m sick with what I suspect is a mild case of COVID, which is apparently making an uninvited and unwelcome comeback. What else, 2025? Lay it on us. 

No, don’t. Never mind. Forget I said that. 

Yesterday morning, my younger son and his girlfriend, who was spending a few days with us, and I walked to 96th Street, the shopping and restaurant hub of Stone Harbor. The area between 95th and 99th Streets, a few blocks north and south and east and west, is filled with cute little boutiques and coffee shops and restaurants and ice cream places and everything else you’d expect to see in an upscale beach town like Stone Harbor. 

We had a particular destination - Coffee Talk, a coffee house on 97th Street famous for having hosted a very young Taylor Swift during her very early performing days. Taylor’s family vacationed in Stone Harbor, and the young Taylor sang and played her guitar at several local establishments. Coffee Talk, a retro 90s coffee house filled with art and comfortable couches and mismatched rugs, might be the only one of Taylor’s original venues that is still doing business, and there is - of course - a little display of Taylor photos and memorabilia. My son’s girlfriend, a huge Taylor Swift fan, wanted to visit and have coffee and drink in the Taylor vibes, and it was lovely. The kids enjoyed their pastries and drinks. I enjoyed their company and the retro atmosphere (authentic, since the place was actually established in 1995) and of course, a very sweet frozen mocha that was like having a milkshake for breakfast. And then later, social media was abuzz with talk of Taylor’s new album and her appearance on Travis Kelce’s podcast, so Taylor just dominated the conversation yesterday. Well, better Taylor than some other people I can think of. 

After an hour or so of visiting little stores and looking at clothing and trinkets, we started our walk back home, stopping first at my beloved Barrier Island Books on 95th. I overheard a man asking the bookseller if she had anything by Hilary Mantel and because Stone Harbor is a friendly place, I chimed in. “She’s one of my favorite authors.” 

“Mine too,” said the man. “Trying to sell my granddaughter on her,” he said, indicating a young woman who was browsing. “What’s your favorite?” he asked me.

“I love all of her writing,” I said, “and I might like her essays as much as her fiction. But the Wolf Hall trilogy is one of the best things I’ve ever read. It got me through the summer of 2020.” 

“See that?” he said, inclining his head in my direction to his laughing granddaughter. “Unsolicited testimonial.” 

“OK,” she said. “I’ll try her.” The bookseller found copies of Bring up the Bodies and The Mirror and the Light, but not Wolf Hall. The granddaughter said that she was familiar with Henrician and Elizabethan history, making it easily possible for her to enjoy the last two books in the trilogy without reading the first. They walked out with hardback copies of both books. Maybe I’ll run into them again, and I can ask the granddaughter what she thinks. 

*****

It’s Friday now, our last full day at the beach. A brief thunderstorm yesterday afternoon was the only flaw in a week of near-perfect beach weather. And it didn’t start until about 4 PM, not long before we’d have been leaving the beach anyway; and it was over by 7:30. 

The ocean water has been warm and delightful, if you don’t mind a lot of seaweed, and I don’t. I swam in the ocean every day this week and then swam in the pool right after the beach. And then there’s the lovely late afternoon beach siesta time when the rest of my household naps for a bit, and I enjoy the quiet alone time. First I spend a few minutes on basic housekeeping, and then I sit on the deck reading my book while my hair dries. I discovered yet another mid-20th century British woman author this week, and I’ll tell you all about her very soon. Right now, I’m reading The Picture of Dorian Gray, which I have never read before, and which seems very relevant right now. Now every time I look at Kristi Noem or Pete Hegseth, I’m going to wonder if there’s a painting in an attic somewhere. 

*****

Well that was quick. 

It's Saturday morning now. We were up at 7 and out of our beach condo at 915 and now we're on the road back to Maryland. I'll miss the beach and the lovely bay views from our deck but I'm happy to be going home. I miss home. I even miss work but I won't be back until Tuesday. I've always wanted to tack on an extra day at the end of a vacation and I'm doing it this time. It'll be good to have a summer day. 

There's not much summer left. My son returns to school a week from today. Labor Day weekend is in two weeks. Meteorological summer still has a month but I mark the end of the summer season by the pool schedule and the start of the school year. 

*****

Other than the bookends of the occupation of DC and the shameful Trump - Putin “summit" in Alaska, I haven't paid any attention to current events this week. Our beach condo had 3 TVs and I didn't even know how to turn them on. I didn't stream, scroll, or read any news coverage on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. I read Elizabeth Caddell, David Sedaris, and Oscar Wilde. I watched bits of movies and shows and baseball and football games with my husband and sons. It was nice not to see his face or hear his voice for a few days. A nice break. 

We're on Route 55 N right now, somewhere in the swamps of Jersey, with Springsteen keeping us company.  God willing we'll be home by 1. There's lots of work to do after a week away and I'm not going to slow down until everything is unpacked, washed, organized, and stowed neatly away.  It's nice to get away but there's no place like home.

Black Widows and Cul de Sacs

As planned, I read Leslie Gray Streeter’s Black Widow and Louise Kennedy’s The End of the World is a Cul de Sac; and as promised, I am reporting back. Unsurprisingly, both books are very good. Surprisingly, they have something in common even though the former is a memoir by a Black American woman and the latter is a collection of short stories by an Irish woman. 

Black Widow is the story of Leslie Gray Streeter’s husband’s sudden and untimely death and its aftermath, including overwhelming grief and the risk of losing her child because she and her husband had been in the middle of adopting the child when he died of a heart attack. Spoiler alert - Gray Streeter succeeds in completing the adoption on her own. The story ends in a Baltimore courtroom in July 2016, just a year after her husband’s death, with a judge declaring her to be the adoptive mother of the child whom she and her husband had cared for together for over a year. 

*****

The book is very sad and very funny - sad because it’s a memoir of grief, and funny because Leslie Gray Streeter is just funny. It’s also very honest about the practical aspects of spousal grief. You had a partner; someone who helped with the children or took care of the finances or the cars or handled the housework or the cooking - every marriage has its own division of labor. And then all of a sudden, everything falls on you, at a time when you’re not even able to handle your own share of the work. 

As Streeter tells it, grief isn’t just one thing - it’s the sadness and the loss and missing the person who’s gone. It’s the fond memories, remembering the things about that person and about your life together that were happy and fun and funny. And it’s exhausting, knowing that the person you shared the load with is gone and the burden is yours alone now. She is very honest about that last part - as a reader, I could almost feel her exhaustion as she tried to take care of herself and her child amid household moves and funeral arrangements and adoption hiccups - things that are hard enough anyway and that become almost impossible when you lose your literal other half. 

*****

Black Widow is a true story and The End of the World is fiction (short stories). Most of the stories’ main characters are women - married, single, mothers, childless - and all of them seem connected to the land even when they live in the city or the suburbs. These stories are alive with natural beauty - flowers and plant life, sunlight and clouds, water. Louise Kennedy has a real understanding of the natural world and its effects on people, and she uses outdoor settings - beaches and cliffs and forests and farmland - to great effect. Her characters know the land - they understand the soil and they can identify any and every flower and tree and bird. They can read the sky. They understand creation in a way that has always baffled me, a city girl. 

*****

But I said that there was a connection between these two books, didn’t I? It comes back to grief. In most of the stories, a character has lost someone - a child, a spouse, an almost-fiance - and they are trying to figure out how to continue living in the aftermath of the loss. And just like Leslie Gray Streeter in Black Widow, they must navigate what the world thinks of as grief - the tears and the sadness and the loneliness for the person lost - and the practical aspects of loss, like how to manage the things that the person lost used to take care of, and how to handle the paperwork and the administrative details of death.

And of course, the grieving person must also take care of others who are grieving the same loss. In “Powder,” a young woman named Eithne escorts the American mother of her late fiancee on a tour of her son’s favorite places in Ireland. Only at the end (spoiler alert) do we learn that the two had never actually been engaged - the man had told his mother that he was going to be married, but had never actually gotten around to proposing. The mother, Sandy, assumes that the two had been engaged, and Eithne doesn’t have the heart or the energy to disabuse her of that notion. Eithne’s grief is real and in some ways harder than the grief of a widow or fiancee because she thinks that she doesn't deserve to grieve. 

*****

I loved both of these books. I don’t think I’d have seen any connection between them, though, if I hadn’t read the authors’ other books, Family and Other Calamities, Streeter’s novel; and Kennedy’s Trespasses, which also had something in common. I looked for another common theme because I like connections. I like symmetry. 

Mansfield Park

I read Mansfield Park for the first time this summer. I like Jane Austen as well as the next reader but I’m not a fanatic. I have never even read Pride and Prejudice, but I have read Emma, Persuasion (my favorite), and Sense and Sensibility. When it comes to Victorian fiction, I prefer Dickens and George Eliot. Jane Austen isn’t Victorian, of course, but she was a big influence on Dickens and Eliot and many other 19th century English writers. 

But back to our story. Mansfield Park’s protagonist Fanny Price arrives at the titular Mansfield Park as a young girl, adopted by her rich aunt and uncle as an act of charity. At first she is miserable, and completely overwhelmed by her wealthy relatives’ lavish lifestyle and their sophisticated manners. The oldest girl of a large and impoverished family, Fanny is shy and timid and sweet-natured and she misses her parents and her brothers and sisters. Her spoiled and privileged girl cousins Maria and Julia are disdainful toward poorly dressed and poorly educated Fanny. Their own beautiful clothes and accomplishments and horsemanship they believe to be the product of their natural superiority, and nothing to do with their wealth and privilege. 

Fast forward to a few years later: Fanny, of course, turns out to be the most beautiful of the girls and she ends up attracting the rich and handsome and high-born young man coveted by Maria and Julia. Does this sound familiar? Fanny isn’t exactly mistreated - not as a servant would have been - but as a young girl, she is kept firmly in her place. Her aunt and uncle Lady and Lord Bertram treat her with distant kindness, congratulating themselves on their generosity; but Fanny’s Aunt Norris never misses an opportunity to remind her that she’s not the equal of her privileged cousins, and that she must always remain humble and grateful. Fanny’s clothes are not quite as nice as her cousins’ and her room is without a fire. She is permitted to ride a family horse when it is available in contrast with her cousins who all have their own horses. The Wikipedia entry for Cinderella lists dozens of books, stories, plays, ballets, and other works of art inspired by the original Cinderella story, but it does not mention Mansfield Park. But I’m sure that Jane Austen was thinking about Cinderella or Rhodopis when she wrote the character of Fanny Price. There’s even a ball. 

*****

I liked Mansfield Park a lot. Fanny is a less-than-perfect heroine, which is kind of a nice change from Dickens, whose Agnes Wickfield and Amy Dorrit are such paragons of virtue that it’s hard to love them. I admire Agnes and Amy (especially Agnes) but I don’t think I could be friends with them. Fanny Price is also mostly a virtuous heroine, at least in some respects. She remains true to her principles, refusing to participate in the amateur theatricals, which she knows that her absent uncle would not approve of. She will not consider marrying her rich and handsome and accomplished suitor because she doesn’t love him and because she suspects (correctly) that he is morally corrupt. 

But Fanny also has some faults - some endearing and some considerably less so. Occasionally, she gives way to feelings of resentment against her spoiled cousins - quite understandable. She is jealous of Mary Crawford, another rich and beautiful girl (and the sister of Henry Crawford, the man who loves Fanny) - not because of Mary’s  wealth and beauty but because Fanny’s beloved cousin Edmund worships her. Later, Fanny realizes that Mary shares her brother’s squishy morals, and she tries to convince herself that she’d seen this flaw in Mary all along, but the reader knows better. When Fanny returns to Portsmouth to visit her parents and siblings, we see that Mansfield has spoiled her completely. The child Fanny had been terribly homesick for her family and her home in Portsmouth; but at 18, Fanny is ashamed of her parents’ poverty and lack of refinement, and she longs for the beauty and grandeur of Mansfield Park. This too is understandable, since Mansfield had become her home, but Fanny’s inner dialogue shows us that she believes that her childhood home is beneath her and that she belongs at Mansfield. Not only has she forgotten that she is a product of the humble house in Portsmouth, she is also blithely unconcerned about the source of her uncle’s great wealth, which is a sugar plantation in Trinidad. Lord Bertram is a slaveholder; and even Fanny and Edmund, the moral hearts of the story, don’t give a thought to the enslaved people who work to maintain the lifestyle of Mansfield Park. 

*****

I won’t give away the ending. There were just enough twists and turns that I wasn’t sure how everything would shake out until almost the very end. Jane Austen was a great storyteller, and I have to wonder what contemporary readers thought of her subtle commentary on wealth inequality and social hierarchies and privilege. She was way ahead of her time. Jane Austen was reminding rich people to check their privilege long before anyone knew that privilege was a thing that should be checked. 

Troubles and Calamities

I just finished reading Leslie Gray Streeter’s Family and Other Calamities, a very funny novel. The author is a Baltimore journalist whose work I follow on social media, and I pre-ordered the book. I like to pre-order books - I buy them and forget about them and then a month later, there’s a nice surprise in my Kindle queue. 

Right after I finished Family, I read Louise Kennedy’s Trespasses, a novel set in Belfast in 1975. Kennedy herself describes it as a story of “star-crossed lovers” during the Troubles, and that’s as good a description as any other. Trespasses is astonishingly good; and even though I guessed exactly what was going to happen and exactly who would be revealed as responsible about halfway through, it was still page-turningly suspenseful until the end. 

When I started reading Trespasses, I knew right away that I’d have to read more of Louise Kennedy’s work, and then I found that she has only published one other book, The End of the World is a Cul de Sac. Louise Kennedy is almost exactly my age, and she spent most of her life working as a chef, with side forays into writing. It’s rare for someone to publish a first novel when they’re in their mid 50s, but Penelope Fitzgerald didn’t publish a book until she was 58, and she was absolutely brilliant. 

****

Family and Other Calamities and Trespasses are two very different books, with a few things in common. Family is kind of a semi-serious comic novel, very funny, with underlying serious themes and a screwball comedy vibe. It’s a beach read with a brain. Trespasses is heavier - tragic and heartbreaking. But there’s a very strong connection between the two. Both novels feature women protagonists whose lives are completely altered by rash youthful decisions that open chasms between the before and the after. In Family, the protagonist runs away from her youthful mistake and only acknowledges many years later that running away might have been a mistake. But we know from the beginning that something happened in the past, and that we'll find out soon enough what it was. This is a comic novel, so the loose ends are tied up and the ending is happy and the people who deserve a comeuppance get it. Trespasses doesn’t really touch the chasm between youth and late middle age until the very end when we revisit Cushla, the young protagonist, who is now a middle-aged woman reckoning with the past, like the rest of 21st century Northern Ireland. And despite the tragedy, there’s also a happier-than-expected - or at least hopeful - ending. 

One more similarity - both of these authors have published two books, in two different genres. Kennedy’s earlier book is a volume of short stories, while Streeter’s is a memoir of the time following her husband’s untimely death, aptly titled Black Widow because she is a Black woman whose husband died. Both of these books are now in my Kindle queue. I will report back later. 

Not quite beyond the Thunderdome

Maybe I should read just one book at a time. This is what I’m thinking as I make my way through Little Dorrit, with side forays into His Very Best (a biography of President Jimmy Carter) and Soetsu Yanagi’s The Beauty of Everyday Things. If I just stuck to one book at a time, I’d finish each one sooner. But I’d probably read the same number of books. Who knows.

*****

Well, you can tell that AI didn’t write that paragraph, right? My job involves writing, a lot of it, and so people ask me all the time if I use AI assistants. The answer is the most emphatic “no” (note that in conversation, it’s just a simple, polite “no,” and the emphasis is only in my mind). Once when I was working at home, with several Google Docs open in front of me, one of my sons said “Mom, maybe you should try ChatGPT.” I scoffed, “I don’t need ChatGPT. I AM ChatGPT.”  As I tell my friends, writing is one of the few things that I’m good at, and I’m not going to give it up to a robot. If I can’t be bothered to write something, then why should anyone bother to read it?

*****

But that’s probably the point, right? Who needs writers with their quirks and their obscure references and their goofy jokes, when AI can churn out all the flawless “content” you would ever need? And really, who needs to read in the first place? If you need instructions, ChatGPT and Gemini can read them to you. If you need news and updates, there’s the TV and the radio and online newsfeeds with audio and video content. If you want entertainment, you can stream it. It is not out of the realm of possibility to imagine a future - and not a distant, centuries from now future, but a future that most of us will be alive for - in which most people can neither read nor write. Imagine the public interest ad campaign: RIS - Reading is Superfluous. 

Full disclosure: I wake up in the morning waiting for the hammer to fall. The worst case scenario is my default setting. Keeping that in mind, feel free to take my predictions with huge crusty grains of salt. On the other hand,  think about it - people don’t memorize telephone numbers anymore - everything is stored in the electronic memory of our phones. Lots of people don’t know how to multiply or divide (or even add or subtract) large numbers. If you buy a coffee that costs $3.78, chances are that the cashier will not know how to count back change from a $20 bill. These are all things that most people could do just a few decades ago. It’s not unreasonable to think that reading and writing could become the next archaic skills. 

*****

You have probably seen this headline or some variation thereof: “Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei tells CNN's Anderson Cooper that "we do need to raise the alarm" on the rise of AI and how it could cause mass unemployment” (CNN.com). Anthropic, the company of which Mr. Amodei is the CEO, is an AI startup. Gosh, if only he had some kind of influence. If only he were in a position to, you know, DO SOMETHING about possible mass unemployment arising from the technology that he is making and selling. 

I saw a few seconds of an interview with this guy, who sat in front of a TV camera and claimed with a straight face that “This will affect me, too.” How, exactly? By “affect,” do you mean “benefit?” This man is 42 years old, with a PhD from Princeton. According to Beyonce’s internet, his net worth is $1.2 billion. Call me obtuse (and you would not be the first person to do so) but I can’t see how an established highly educated billionaire executive entrepreneur will be “affected” by AI displacing actual humans the way that a 23-year-old working class recent graduate - like my son and lots of his friends - will be “affected.” Dario Amodei made his money, God bless him, and he will be just fine. His family will be just fine. All of his friends in the Finance and Tech Billionaire Bro Club will be just fine. And we all know that that’s all that matters. 

*****

It’s not for nothing that Trump keeps reminiscing about the late 19th century, which he considers America’s “golden age.” Before the meddling progressive social reformers started interfering, ruthless rich men could exploit the poor and powerless with absolute impunity. The rules were made and enforced to keep most people poor and to allow the rich to grab and hoard as much as they possibly could. Trump and Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and all of the other MAGA henchpeople would very much like to restore that system, and they’re doing a fine job. Their plan is coming together, and I pity the fool who thinks that Project 2025 and DOGE have anything to do with anything except turning America back into a vassal state. At least we got some libraries and parks and museums out of the last gang of robber barons. This krusty krew is giving us nothing except Twitter* memes and rocket ships full of pop stars and talk show hosts. 

*****

If you saw Sen Joni Ernst’s glib little “we’re all going to die” response to constituents who expressed worry about losing Medicare and Medicaid and then also saw her infamous non-apology filmed in a graveyard no less and you thought “Wow, she’s abysmally stupid,” then you might have missed the point. Even if she was the most brilliant political mind in America, she could still roll her eyes at her constituents at a 7:30 AM “town hall,” and mock their fears, and then dial the callous sarcasm up to 11 on TikTok, and her prospects for reelection would not be affected one tiny bit. Even if everyone in Iowa is furious at her, Sen. Ernst knows that she is accountable to no one except Donald Trump and Elon Musk (he’s not going anywhere and I’m not falling for his pretend outrage over the “Big Beautiful Bill”) and Stephen Miller and Russell Vought and maybe Mike Johnson. These are the people who are going to make it very difficult to unseat Republicans in future elections, and as long as Senator Ernst and her Republican colleagues vote the MAGA party line, then they can mock their constituents or ignore them altogether. They don’t even have to pretend to care about “the people” anymore. 

*****

This is all getting out of control, and by “this” I mean this rambling little blog post. It’s time to wrap it up. So I’ll finish where I started - with Dickens, Japanese pottery, and malaise. I’m almost finished with Little Dorrit. Mr. Dorrit’s fortunes, having reversed, are about to reverse again, and he won’t be the only one heading back to debtors’ prison, a thing that is due to make a comeback any day now. Meanwhile, Soetsu Yanagi was absolutely poetic on the subject of useful and beautiful artisanal objects, and blithely dismissive of the hopes and aspirations of the humble craftspeople who make them. And if we’d all listened to Jimmy Carter (and if he had picked anyone at all other than Paul Volcker as Fed Chairman) then we’d all probably be a lot better off today. Three books that have absolutely nothing to do with one another, and yet they are all strangely relevant to the Year of Our Lord 2025. Welcome to the Thunderdome. This place sucks. 

*****

*I know that Twitter is officially X now. But I’ll call it whatever I want. 

MDW 2025

It’s Saturday morning, Memorial Day weekend, and I haven’t even packed my pool bag yet. This is not like me, not like me at all. I’m not feeling summery. The vibe is off. 

And it’s not just the weather - but my gosh! I sat outside this morning, drinking my coffee and reading my book and enjoying the birdsong even though it was 55 degrees and I needed a hoodie and fuzzy socks and a blanket. I could have just stayed inside but it’s Memorial Day weekend and it was the first morning in weeks when I didn’t have to rush and I was determined to enjoy a leisurely half hour outside, even if it killed me. 

But I’m back inside now. It’s 10:08 and I need to come up with a plan. I think I’ll pack my pool bag. There’s almost no chance that I’ll actually get in the water today but I’m not ruling it out, either. I’m a member of the neighborhood’s small but hardy group of adult pool rats, and if the rest of the crew gets in that water, then I might have to do it too. 

*****

A few of us made our way to the pool yesterday afternoon, but only two adults actually got in the water - one of my fellow pool rats, and another person whom I don’t yet know. A new swim team dad, apparently - I overheard him talking to his little girl about how she’ll have to get in on Wednesday, the first day of practice, so she might as well get in today. And she did, and so he did too. The other person, a fellow summer lap swimmer, sat on the edge of that pool dangling his feet for so long that I thought he’d given up the idea of actually jumping into a pool full of ice water, but he did finally get in, and he didn’t even try to convince the rest of us that it’s fine once you get in because it so obviously was not. 

It’s warmer this morning, this being Sunday. I still wore a sweater and socks when I sat outside, but I didn’t need the blanket. I still don’t think I’ll get in the water today, but if the warming trend continues, I might swim tomorrow. 

*****

At some point during Memorial Day weekend, I try to watch a Memorial Day-appropriate movie. I’ve seen “Saving Private Ryan” about a dozen times. I also like “The Best Years of Our Lives.” “Platoon” and “Full Metal Jacket” are also good MDW movies.  But I wanted to watch something I hadn’t seen before, and until this weekend, I’d never seen “The Deer Hunter.” It’s quite good, though I couldn’t sit through the full 3-plus hours all at once. I ended up watching it in stages, 30 or so minutes at a time. I have a lot of questions about “The Deer Hunter,” and a lot of things to say about it. I’m going to write a post just about that movie. You’ll see it next week or a year from now. 

I also watched “Small Things Like These,” a movie adaptation of Claire Keegan’s brilliant novel. The movie is very very good (and how could it not be with a cast that includes Cillian Murphy and Emily Watson and Eileen Walsh and Clare Dunne), and the abrupt ending is exactly right. Knowing what we know about Eileen and her fear of outsider status for herself and her family, we can’t expect a happily ever after ending for Sarah, and it seems quite likely that Eileen will try to throw her out as soon as she discovers what Bill has done. But Bill takes that risk anyway - a small thing, trying to save just one girl when there are so many others in Sarah’s position - but most of us can only do small things. 

*****

It’s Monday now. I love the Monday of a three-day weekend. An extra day off is such a gift, even if it’s too cold to swim. I’m thinking about trying today, though - two more of my swimming friends did it yesterday, and I don’t want to wait until the water warms up because it’s not going to warm up anytime soon. But if I can’t steel myself to the water today, it will still have been a weekend of book shopping (Barnes and Noble with a Mothers’ Day gift card), movies, reading and writing outdoors, sushi, wine drinking with friends, and almost no Trump. And now it’s summer - and as always, I have no problems that summer cannot solve. 

Circumlocution

Do you know about avoidance writing? Last week I started writing some dumb thing that will probably never see the light of day.  I had intended to finish the meeting minutes for our neighborhood association meeting, and then started writing something else because I’d rather do almost anything than write, revise, and proofread meeting minutes. 

That was last Sunday, a picture-perfect day. Now it’s Sunday again, and raining. We have had summery sunny weather for over a week, and now it’s going to rain for a few days but the warm temperatures look likely to continue for another week or so. Maybe we have seen the last of the cold. Between the sustained warmth and the rain, it’s wildly green outside, overgrown and almost tropical. This is what I like about Maryland. It’s crisp New England one day and lush Louisiana bayou the next. Maryland is like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you’re gonna get. Never a dull moment in the Free State, I tell you what. 

I did eventually finish those meeting minutes, slowly and reluctantly and with the worst possible attitude toward the whole endeavor. But I’m going to judge myself by results not attitude. The minutes are done, and they’re as good as they’re going to be. Never mind my sighing and muttering to myself like a surly teenager. 

*****

It’s going to be a busy week, work-wise and at home because my mom is here visiting. My son is also coming home this week and although I can’t wait to have him back at home, I’m a little shook at the idea of all his stuff arriving here and joining all of my mom’s stuff (she owns the largest suitcase I have ever seen, and she packs it full to bursting when she comes here, and then she wears the same three outfits on repeat all week and oh my gosh, who am I to talk). This house is small, and neatness is key in a small house, especially a house that contains a person as tightly wound as I am. But it’s good to have a few days of chaos, honestly. It forces me to go with the flow, which is something that I am not very good at. I like for things to be the way I think they’re supposed to be and for things to happen the way I think they’re supposed to happen. It’s good to have the occasional reminder that I can’t control everything. 

*****

I finished those dumb meeting minutes just in time for today, the first Tuesday of the month, which means it’s time for another monthly meeting. Now (in addition to a whole new set of meeting minutes, of course) I have to think about what else I want to put out on this blog, because I do appear to have a small but loyal reading public, and I can’t keep writing about the weather and household routines and my personal neuroses. Although who knows? Maybe that's why people show up here. 

Yesterday, I started writing about the book I’m reading now, which is Dickens’ Little Dorrit. I can already foresee what’s going to happen between young Amy Dorrit and Mr. Arthur Clennam, and I can guess the secret that Mrs. Clennam is keeping from her son, but I don’t yet know HOW all of this is going to shake out, and that’s what is so great about reading Dickens novels. This is going to be my year of Dickens. Little Dorrit is shaping up to be almost as good as David Copperfield; and reading Dickens will also give me something good to write about when I’m avoiding this month’s meeting minutes. 

Literature and lists

“Good luck to that MFer.” 

What does that mean? For which MFer is this well-wish intended? I had (and still have) the very same questions when I found this note written at the top of an old grocery list. The whole thing was in my handwriting so I know that it’s not Samuel L. Jackson’s grocery list. I just can’t remember writing it. 

*****

Meanwhile, two very unfortunate MFers share a cell in a Marseilles prison. It’s a hot August day, sometime in the middle of the 19th century. This is the opening scene of Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit, which I just started for the first time. I know almost nothing about Little Dorrit, except that the main character, Amy Dorrit, is a young English woman raised in the Marshalsea, a debtors prison where her father is an inmate. Debtors' prisons feature very prominently in David Copperfield, one of my favorite books ever, and so I’m optimistic about this one. But these two prisoners in France are as yet a mystery to me. I don’t know why they’re in prison - for debt or some other offense - and I don’t know who they are and what connection they might have with the Dorrit family. But the first few pages are riveting, and I can’t wait to see what happens. 

*****

Back to the old grocery list with the cryptic headline. It was in an old handbag that I hadn’t used in some time. That bag just popped into my head one day, so I dug it out of my closet, and I liked it so much that I decided to use it again for a while. That’s the upside of having too many bags. I can always shop for a new one in my very own closet. 

It had been at least two years - maybe more - since the last time I carried this bag, making the grocery list at least that old. And try as I may, I really cannot recall having written it, and I also cannot recall which of possibly many MFers to whom I might have wished good luck - either sincerely or sarcastically. Whoever it was, I hope everything worked out for them. 

David Copperfield (spoilers left, right, and center)

I’ve read Dickens’ David Copperfield at least ten times, which means that now I’m reading it for at least the 11th time. I used to read it once a year, and reading Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver’s fan fiction interpretation of DC, made me want to read it again. And it’s just as good as it always is. PS - this post contains many many spoilers. But even if you read all the way through, and you haven’t read the book yet, you should because it’s great. 

I’ve read other Dickens novels too - Bleak House, and Hard Times, and Great Expectations. They're all great (especially Bleak House), but none have the hold on me that David Copperfield has. I’m going to read Little Dorrit, which I’ve never read, after I finish with David Copperfield. Dickens seems very relevant now. 

*****

Because of family turmoil of one kind and another, my life was abruptly and completely turned upside down several times during my childhood. Maybe I’ll write all about it someday, but not today. I wasn’t shipped off to a boarding school run by an abusive psychopath, and I wasn’t forced to make my own living in a strange city at age 10 or so, as David Copperfield was, so I’m not drawing any exact parallels between my life and his. But just like David, I knew what it was like to have the rug pulled out from beneath my feet, and to have no idea what would happen next nor any say in the matter, and to always feel unmoored and uncertain and insecure. It leaves a mark. 

It’s probably not that much of a spoiler to tell you that things turn out happily for David Copperfield, after many trials and tribulations. You also might already know that Dickens’ novels were originally published as serials in pulp magazines that apparently paid by the word. Dickens’ writing is beautiful and his work is a lot of fun to read, but economy doesn’t enter into the equation. If you prefer a spare and spartan prose style without a lot of unnecessary detail and embellishment - well first of all, what are you doing here; and secondly, Dickens might not be for you. Brace yourself also for the Victorian social mores. Dickens is rightly outraged at the grinding poverty of the working class in mid 19th century London, but he doesn’t question the hierarchy that places most people in positions of service in one way or another not to society itself but to its masters. He just wanted the people on the lower rungs to have a decent place to live and enough food to eat and enough money that they didn’t need to send their children out to work in factories. 

And of course, we have to talk about the women of David Copperfield. Dickens probably never questioned the patriarchy even once - but I still believe that he thought more highly of women than a lot of 21st century men whom I could name but won’t. 

David Copperfield’s society is one in which a fallen woman is literally better off dead. Although Dickens certainly doesn’t let the man or men involved in a woman’s downfall off the hook in terms of moral culpability, he also expects and accepts that a man who corrupts a young woman will eventually get on with his life. The young woman, however, is an outcast forever. Dickens, through his narrator David, obviously feels sorrow and compassion for such women, but doesn’t really seem to question why it’s necessary that they be separated from decent society. 

But Dickens didn’t make the rules of this society, he just wrote stories about it. And his female characters, good and bad, are as interesting and beautiful and human as the male characters. David’s aunt Betsey Trotwood is an independent woman of means and one of the strongest female characters in the literature of that time. Miss Betsey doesn’t care about pleasing men; in fact, she goes out of her way to avoid pleasing men or really interacting with them in any way, with the exception of her beloved nephew, her friend and charge Mr. Dick, and a few other trusted gentlemen. Miss Betsey lives by her own rules, and she demands and receives respect from others, men and women alike. Her nephew David, whom she renames Trotwood (after herself, of course) admires and loves Miss Betsey without reserve, not only because he is rightly grateful to her for giving him a home and an education and a rich and interesting life, but for her own sake. 

Agnes Wickfield, David’s childhood friend and eventual wife, is easily dismissed as a Victorian archetype - angelic, sweet, selfless, ladylike, accomplished in feminine pursuits, demure and deferential to her father and other men. David admires Agnes for her beauty and her other traditionally feminine virtues, but he and everyone around her also admire her for her strength, her courage, her intelligence, and her character. Agnes and David become acquainted at age 11 or so, and he recognizes Agnes’s brilliance quite early, noticing that her learning is quite equal to his own, even though she lacks formal schooling. Agnes sees and notices everything, and she is the moral heart and soul of the story.

The novel’s other female characters are also delightfully complex and nuanced and human.  Peggotty, David’s childhood nurse and lifelong friend, is love and steadfastness and selflessness personified, with a near-flawless eye for human goodness and evil (it is she who spots Mr. Murdstone for what he is the moment she sees him - on the other hand, she is taken in by Steerforth just like everyone else). David’s mother Clara and his first wife Dora are young and beautiful and a little silly and vain. But they recognize their own flaws - Dora is particularly self-aware and perceptive, especially at the end of her short life. Mrs. Steerforth is a cautionary tale about misguided love - she worships her son, making it impossible for her to truly love him, to his detriment and hers. And although we know that Mrs. Steerforth has spoiled her child, Dickens makes quite clear that the responsibility for his bad behavior and his eventual downfall is entirely his. The same applies to the vile Uriah Heep and the unfortunate Mrs. Heep.

It is also interesting that of the two women most hurt by Steerforth - Emily Peggotty and Rosa Dartle - Emily recovers and gets a second chance at a new life, and Rosa spends the rest of her life mired in grief and bitterness and anger - even though it is Emily who is “fallen” in the sexual sense, and Rosa who remained chaste. Rosa and Mrs. Steerforth would be outraged at Dickens or any writer who didn’t properly punish a girl like Emily - preferably by killing her off in some dreadful way but at the very least by making her live out the rest of her days as a pauper and outcast. All of this is to say that although Dickens wrote from the perspective of 19th century attitudes toward women, he obviously also loved and respected them.

*****

I’m right in the middle of the book now. David has finished his education and is about to begin his proctor’s training at Doctor’s Commons. He’s going to fall in love with the wrong woman and then the right woman. Uriah Heep will try to ruin Agnes’s life and he will almost succeed, but for the unlikely intervention of the unlikeliest of heroes, Mr. Micawber. The Murdstones will reappear, like black mold. Miss Betsey’s secret will be revealed. Mr. Dick will keep trying to get Charles I and his troubles out of his head. Steerforth will die at sea despite the heroic effort to save him by a man whose life he ruined. Most of the people who deserve a comeuppance will get it. A bunch of people who suffered unjustly will pick up and move to Australia, where they will prosper. And David and Agnes will finally live happily ever after. 

Demon Copperhead

I finally finished my 2024 book list, and then of course found two more books that I read but forgot to add to my list. Whatever, bro. The past is past, and I’m not revisiting that list. 

I did, however, come up with a new way to organize my 2025 list, and to keep track of what I’m writing about as I write about it. I'm very pleased with this new system; very proud of myself. 

*****

Right now, I’m reading two books: Demon Copperhead (Barbara Kingsolver) and Lovely One (Ketanji Brown Jackson). Why two? Well, it’s because the latter is a hardcover actual book, and so I read it when and where I have good light. The former is on my Kindle so I read it in bed. It’s a good system, though I don’t think I could come up with two more different voices than Justice Jackson and Damon Fields aka Demon Copperhead, the first-person narrator of the eponymous novel. Sometimes it’s a little confusing to switch between the two.

Demon is as good as everyone says it is. I’ve read Dickens’ David Copperfield, which inspired Demon Copperhead, at least 8 times, and although I might normally take a dim view of fan fiction (“might” means “definitely would”), I found that fan fiction in the hands of someone like Zadie Smith (her 2005 novel On Beauty is based on E.M. Forster’s Howards End) or Barbara Kingsolver can be an art form all on its own, and I am thoroughly absorbed. I’m only about 10 percent into the book, but I already wish the very worst on the vile Stoner, Demon’s evil redneck Mr. Murdstone stepfather. 

*****

I wrote that a week or so ago, and then some other things came up, and now I’m back. I’m about 60 percent of the way through Demon, and I’m officially a fan of fan fiction. Stoner is out of the picture for now, and although he hasn’t yet gotten the comeuppance that he so richly deserves, I have faith that the comeuppance is imminent, and I eagerly await this evil man’s downfall. Of course, it will probably come at the expense of some other poor beautiful abused woman (girl, really), just as Mr. Murdstone married another very young woman after driving David’s poor mother to an early grave. 

As you have probably guessed, part of the fun of reading Demon Copperhead is the roman a clef exercise of figuring out who’s who. This is not hard for me, because I’ve read David Copperfield so gosh darn many times. There are a few characters that don’t have counterparts in the original, but most of Demon’s main characters are directly inspired by David Copperfield’s, and it’s pretty easy to identify everyone. The plot is also quite similar but modernized - Demon, like David, is orphaned young and ends up in rather terrible foster care situations until both boys are rescued by older relatives. But Demon takes place in rural Lee County (a real place) in western Virginia during the early part of the 21st century, and the characters’ lives are dominated not only by rigid social and economic structures, but by the then-new opioid epidemic. For the most part, the same people die but in very different circumstances. 

The first-person voices of the main characters are also very different. David “Trotwood” Copperfield is a proper Victorian. Damon “Demon Copperhead” Fields is a rough-edged and girl-crazy high school football player who is bluntly frank about sex and drugs and rural working class life. Dickens’ contemporary readers would have been shocked, but I don’t think that Dickens himself would have been.

*****

I’m almost at the end now. I’m still waiting for Stoner to get his just desserts, but it looks like the vile U-Haul Pyles (Uriah Heep) is about to get what’s coming to him, and that’s just as good. No additional spoilers, except to say that I think I know what’s going to happen to Angus and Dori and Fast Forward and the Armstrongs and Emmy and Hammer Kelly - for better or for worse - because I know what happened to the original characters who inspired them. And there’s still several chapters to go, so I’m not giving up on proper retribution for Stoner, either. I’m either going to speed through the final chapters right this minute, or I’m going to stretch this out for the rest of the week. And then I’m going to read David Copperfield again. It’s been a while. 

Bibliography 2024

I’m about five months into a semi boycott of Amazon. Bezos kowtowing to Trump is only one reason for my disdain for Amazon. I don’t like the way they treat workers.I don’t like that Bezos brags about wanting Amazon employees to be “terrified” because terror is supposed to spark creativity and innovation or some stupid shit. I don’t like that Amazon is one of the biggest recipients of corporate welfare among US businesses (right up there with Walmart and McDonald’s). I don’t like Amazon’s impact on the environment, and its phony climate pledge greenwashing attempts. And I don’t like centibillionaires. I don’t think it should be possible for one person to grab and hoard that much wealth. 

I still shop on Amazon - and then I go to other merchants to actually buy what I need. There’s something very satisfying in using Amazon to do the research and then giving the money to another business, and I don’t even mind paying more. In fact, I LIKE paying more, just to make a point. I’m that petty. 

*****

But I do still have a Kindle, and so I haven’t yet broken with Amazon altogether. I’d go back to a Barnes and Noble Nook, but Kindle books are not compatible with Nook hardware because of course they’re not. I have too many Kindle books to abandon the technology altogether. So Jeff Bezos will still get a little bit of my money. When I figure out a way to remedy this situation, I will. Meanwhile, this was a very long and meandering way to introduce my 2024 book list. I read almost all of these books on my Kindle. 

Enough. Cassidy Hutchinson. This book exists, and yet Donald Trump is President, once again. No good deed goes unpunished. SMDH.  

Free: Coming of Age at the End of History. Lea Ypi. I wrote about this one here but fair warning - this post is kind of a mishmash of random stuff (much like this entire blog) and you have to dig for the part about the book. Caveat emptor, readers. 

Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen. Mary McGrory. The best parts of this book, about McGrory’s New York literary life in the middle of the 20th century, are Helene Hanff-good. The rest of it is pretty good too, especially if you really care about correct use of “you and I” vs. “you and me” and if you have strong feelings about the serial comma. I do care, of course, but not enough to read whole chapters of exegesis explaining why it’s “Between you and me” and not “between you and I;” and not enough to listen to anyone’s impassioned arguments in favor of the serial comma. I am already on board, is the thing. It’s preaching to the proverbial choir. No need to sell me on the serial comma, Mary - I am already fully invested. 

Middlemarch. George Eliot. I have an actual degree in English - summa cum laude! - and yet I had never read Middlemarch. But when both Zadie Smith and Martin Amis tell me that I need to read something, I read it. Zadie Smith, especially, is never wrong. I loved Middlemarch so much that I wrote about it at least twice, here and here. I might read it again very soon. Check this list again next year. 

The Broom of the System. David Foster Wallace. I wrote about this one right here in yet another rambling word salad covering books, movies, college swimming, anxiety, and social media health influencers. This book was very important to me when I was young, and although small parts of it do not hold up, most of it has really stood the proverbial test of time, and I loved reading it again. Maybe I’ll read Infinite Jest again. 

Prophet Song. Paul Lynch. If you’re already terrified that the United States is on a collision course with totalitarianism then this book will absolutely not reassure you. It is a great novel - but also grim and terrifying and much more realistic than most dystopian novels. Forewarned is forearmed, right? 

Burn Book. Kara Swisher. I’m especially proud of the very last line of this little review, which I wrote nearly a year ago. It holds up, and so does Burn Book. BTW, if you don’t follow Kara on social media, you absolutely should. 

All She Lost. Dalal Mawad. 

Answered Prayers. Truman Capote. I just searched my Google Docs, thinking that I had written something about this somewhere, but I didn’t. I did find something that I wrote when I was still in school; and 11 years later, I stand by my undergraduate assertion that In Cold Blood is the greatest true crime story ever written. I read Answered Prayers after watching “The Swans,” the Hulu miniseries based on the book and the post-publication fallout. I felt sorry for poor lonely Truman, but I don’t blame Babe Paley and the rest of the Swans for cutting him off. You can’t sell your friends out in exchange for money and fame and expect to keep those friends. 

The Big Myth. Erik Conway and Naomi Oreskes. Last year, I attended a lecture by the great Dr. Donald Berwick, who recommended this book. A short synopsis: The “myth” is the spurious idea that the free market is the only thing that can accomplish anything of value and that we should let it run free like it’s a wild fawn in the woods. For a long time, politicians (mostly Republican but plenty of Democrats, too) were completely taken in by this myth, and our economic and tax and regulatory policy were all based on free market fundamentalism. And now that wealth is ever more concentrated at the top, and the middle class is shrinking while people on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale seem to keep getting poorer and most people can’t afford to buy a house unless they have generous and well-to-do parents and the country’s infrastructure is literally falling apart, it’s become clear, at least to some of us, that unregulated capitalism is just the slippery slope to failed-state status.Authors Erik Conway and Naomi Oreskes point out that at one time, not that long ago, most people supported the liberal order established after the Depression and WWII, and that it took a very sophisticated, well-planned propaganda campaign to convince people that government oversight and regulation were bad and that the “invisible hand of the market” (invisible because it does not exist) was capable of fulfilling every human need and solving every problem. This propaganda campaign, which took the form of everything from TV programs to textbooks for every educational level from elementary to college, was so successful that by the early 1980s or so, most people believed Ronald Reagan’s famous “Government IS the problem” line. And that is why I blame Ronald Reagan as much as I blame Mitch McConnell for the sad state of affairs that is America in February 2025. It’s not just a big myth. It’s a big fat lie. 

The Zone of Interest. Martin Amis. A rare case in which I saw the movie first and then read the book on which it was based. This is a fictionalized story about Rudolf Hoss, the commandant of Auschwitz, and his wife and children, and their idyllic life in a lovely home with a tennis court and a pool and beautiful gardens and household staff and a death camp in the backyard. Both the movie and the book are just astonishingly good. 

Coming Home. Brittney Griner. I keep reading these Putin-is-evil books, even though I’m on board with this thesis and have been for some time now, and don’t need any further convincing. I didn’t realize until I read this that Britney Griner was the Angel Reese or Caitlin Clark of her time. I’ve never paid much attention to college basketball, men’s or women’s, and so I didn’t know that Griner was the number one pick of her draft year and the greatest player in Baylor WBB history. I’m not the only American who didn’t know much about Brittney Griner until her imprisonment in Russia - she acknowledges that most Americans had no idea who she was. But women’s professional basketball is extremely popular in Russia, and she was LeBron-famous there. The book is very good, and I’m very happy that Ms. Griner is safely back in the US. But of course, I’m sure that Trump would have gotten her out, too, now that Russia is our BFF. 

We Were the Lucky Ones. Georgia Hunter. As an adult, Georgia Hunter discovered that she was the grandchild of Holocaust survivors. She wrote this novel based on her own family’s near-unbelievable story of courage, endurance, and plain luck. Not that many Polish Jewish families survived the war nearly intact, but Hunter’s family did, despite being scattered all over the world, both during the war and after. It’s a good, though not great book. And the Hulu miniseries based on the book is quite good. 

If You Can’t Take the Heat: Tales of Food, Feminism, and Fury. Geraldine DeRuiter. This is a book of essays about food and cooking. I don’t normally read books about food or cooking but then I came across some social media discussion about the NYT’s rather negative review of this book, and that review and the resulting online pushback made me want to read it. NYT book and music and media critics need frequent reminders that most of us don’t care what they think. Anyway, I liked this book, which is not really about food and cooking. Or rather, it’s ostensibly about food and cooking, and it is, on the surface; but it’s really about misogyny in the restaurant business (and everywhere else), with side forays into family trauma and secrets, and a little bit of travel. Anyway, it’s very good. DeRuiter, known on social media as The Everywhereist, really knows how to write her way around the perimeter of a thing, and to keep going, spiraling inward until she gets to the root. I’d definitely read more of DeRuiter’s work. I might even read this one again. 

No Judgment. Lauren Oyler. In 20 years, Lauren Oyler will be as good an essayist as Zadie Smith. She should quote me on this, because it’s the highest praise she will ever receive in her literary career. 

Here’s Your Hat, What’s Your Hurry and The Hero of this Book. Elizabeth McCracken. “American wiseacre” is now on my list of phrases that I wish I had coined. 

Autocracy Inc and The Twilight of Democracy. Anne Applebaum. Yes, as a matter of fact, this IS my idea of vacation reading. 

*****

Murder on the Orient-Express. Agatha Christie. Speaking of vacation reading,  I needed something to read when my Kindle went missing for a few days during our vacation, and

this was on the bookshelf at the beach house we rented. That bookshelf was filled with Tom Clancy and Mitch Albom and Danielle Steel and who knows what else, and so Agatha Christie was the only reasonable choice. And it was absolutely delightful. I’d never actually read any Agatha Christie before, but I was aware that Murder on the Orient-Express is one of the best-selling novels of all time (maybe THE best-selling novel of all time) and I enjoyed knowing that I was one of millions of people who have spent an August afternoon at the beach with Hercule Poirot figuring out who murdered the vile Mr. Ratchett. SPOILER ALERT: It was everyone. If you need a break from all of this (gesturing wildly at everything) you could do a lot worse than to spend a day with Agatha Christie or Margery Sharp or Muriel Spark or Barbara Pym or Nancy Mitford or P.D. James or really any British female novelist of the early to mid 20th century. 

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.  Gabrielle Zevin. As I wrote earlier,  I was very surprised to find a novel about video game designers so absorbing, because this is a topic in which I have absolutely no interest. Zevin uses the video game industry and its fast-paced (and toxic) culture to tell a story about two brilliant young people and their decades-long on-and-off friendship, and their place in the time in which they lived, that being the waning days of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st. When I read fiction, I always want a happy ending. I wouldn’t describe the ending of Tomorrow as happy in any way, but it was fitting. 

Girl, Maladjusted and The Social Climber’s Handbook. Molly Jong-Fast. Memoir and murder - two very different books by the same author. 

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets. Svetlana Alexievich. When I read this, I asked myself what the American version of this book might be like; what stories we would tell journalists and historians about the American Century and the end of the United States. At the time, I was just being dramatic. Now this is a perfectly legitimate question. 

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. Alison Bechdel. Not long ago, I read a self-help book that wasn’t very good. I wrote about it, and about the fact that I never read self-help except for this one time. Maybe if I’d chosen a good self-help book, I’d be open to more from the genre, but self-help is dead to me now. Graphic novels are another thing that I never read, except that I did read this one, and it’s very good (not really a novel though, more of a memoir) and I might occasionally read more graphic novels, except not often because the print is usually too small and they don’t work particularly well on e-readers. I bought and read the actual paperback book because I liked the way it looked. 

*****

It’s March 2025 now, and I’m almost finished writing this list of books that I read in 2024! Any day now! I should just power through and finish this thing right now but the tedium is getting to me. All these links. All these titles to italicize. All of this writing about stuff that I already wrote about. I’m literally dead from boredom. 

*****

OK, back to work. 

*****

Patriot. Alexei Navalny. We were at my son’s first college conference championship meet early last year when Alexei Navalny’s death was first reported. We had all watched “Navalny" together, and I bought the book soon after his death but didn’t get around to reading it until later in the year. Putin was so afraid of a peaceful political opponent that he hounded him literally to death. Navalny was so unafraid of Putin that he doubled down on his opposition to the regime every time he got out of prison. He was so unafraid that he walked away from freedom and safety in Germany, returning to certain imprisonment and eventual death in Russia. Similar extraordinary courage will soon be required in the United States. I hope that I’m up to it. I hope we all are. 

On Tyranny and On Freedom. Timothy Snyder. I read On Freedom right after I finished On Tyranny, which was the book of the moment right after the 2024 election, when On Tyranny’s first rule, “Do not obey in advance,” was all over social media. I think that Snyder wrote On Freedom before On Tyranny, but you can read them in the opposite order, as I did. You can read one or the other, though I definitely recommend reading both. 

*****

I’m finally at the end! Democracy Awakening (Heather Cox Richardson) is the last book I finished in 2024 - I started another book right after this, but I didn’t finish it until 2025 and so consistent with my customary practice, I will include it on my 2025 reading list. 

Caveat emptor: The post linked to the words Democracy Awakening discusses the book only very briefly. It discusses pretty much everything else at considerable length. 

I started reading Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American newsletter probably early last year. And when I say “read,” I mean that I skimmed it, and sometimes just looked at the first paragraph. Now I read that newsletter from top to bottom every single day. When the topic of all of this (gesturing wildly at everything) comes up in conversation, almost invariably someone will ask me (or I will ask them) “Do you read Heather Cox Richardson?” As much as I love Rachel Maddow and Timothy Snyder and Sherilynn Ifill and so many other pro-democracy writers and thinkers in the traditional media and online, I think that Heather Cox Richardson is the best of the best. As they say on social media, protect HCR at all costs. 

*****

And that is it! A year of reading; roughly 80% dictators and political upheaval and 20% everything else. No wonder I’m stressed out. It’s only about 25 books, a low for me, but I think I read a few more books that I forgot to track. And it’s not a contest, anyway. 2025 is going to skew a little bit more toward fiction, I think. I studied for 2025 last year. I knew there would be a test.