three books

and being re-inspired

Dear friends,

I’ve only read two and a half books this year.

As someone whose normal reading rate would have been at least twice that amount by now, I’m not alarmed.

It means my brain has been braining for other things, both paid and unpaid work.
It means it’s just been a season of Other Things.
And I’m actually quite proud of what I’ve set my efforts toward.

But like an old trodden neuropathway, I always come back to books.

I suppose, also, the Introvert Reb that most folks don’t seem to believe exists (fun fact: one of the top five reasons I run this weekly creative nook? Guaranteed alone time even in the squishiest of weeks 👵🏼), is craving more pockets of entering into new worlds, new characters, new cadences of story. As much as brain has been braining, I know that it helps me to see better solutions and patterns and empathy when posed with fresh perspectives. It also is just fun.

But alas, even beloved reading doesn’t just happen.
It’s not so formulaic.
There can be a good book, even a great one, in which I may love in one season, but starting it at ‘not quite the right time’ leaves my eyes blurring over the same introductory paragraph.

I like this experimenting.
It’s like a game.
Put down what isn’t ripe.
Pick up what clicks.

And after a dozen or so not-so-ripe attempts, these three books have thus far had a defibrillating effect on me:

• Neal Shusterman’s All Better Now. YA dystopian. Plot: the next pandemic after Covid arrives. But patients who recover from this virus become content, like actually happy and generous and altruistic, which starkly contrasts the human tendency toward greed, despair, and melancholy. There are super-spreaders. There are those immune. Dun dun dun. (I can’t wait for the second book!)

• Kate McKinnon’s The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science. Children’s literature. Plot: three sisters find themselves kicked out of yet another etiquette school because they prefer being nerds over learning the 87 ways to properly sit on a velvet couch. They meet a headmistress of a Mad Science school. Adventure ensues. (I could not stop cackling throughout, and am impatiently awaiting part two, which my libby account says ‘available sooooon’.)

• Robert Caro’s Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing. I’ve been wanting to read his 1974 pulitzer prize winning The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, and heard from reliable sources (hi kitster <3) that this, Caro’s much shorter memoir, is the gateway drug. I’m currently obsessed. His integrity to his craft (his mentor told him of journalism: Turn every page. Never assume anything), his pursuit of the truth, and his commitment for the public to know the truth, is inspiring.

I really like being re-inspired.

in the wild. pockets of introverting between community-ing that also fills up the soul. (📷: thanks, soph <3 didn’t realise you were stalking me heh)

read well, friends.

love,
reb

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