Where Have I Been?

Hood River, OR

Where haven’t I been is the real question. I had a job, I was offered a different job, and I accepted that job. And then I had about a week between the first job ending and the new job starting, and in that week, I was out in Hood River in a weird little Scandinavian cabin the woods, had to buy a car (which I’ve never done before), and schedule a move to Salem.  Needless to say, I spent a good chunk of the winter recuperating from all of that and learning my new job, creating a new routine in a new town.

Now that Spring has arrived and my allergies have flared to near apocalyptic  levels, I find myself turned back into the indoors. And I want to share all the books I read/listened to over the last few months: 

·      His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman (I read it like a decade and a half ago and listened to the trilogy)

·      The Power by Naomi Alderman (I’ve also already read it but I wanted to listen to it)

·      The Scholomance Trilogy by Naomi Novik

·      Between the World and Me  by Ta-Nehisi Coates

·      Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

·      The Future by Naomi Alderman

·      Someone You can Build a Nest in John Wishwell

·      All the Birds in The Sky  by Charlie Jane Anders

·      Blood over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang

·      A Sorceress Comes to Call and Nettle & Bone by  T. Kingfisher

·      Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton

·      God Killer by Hanna Kaner

·      Wild Faith by Talia Lavin

Like I said, I had to buy a car and I’ve been doing a lot of driving between Salem and Portland  and audiobooks are necessary (for me). And I noticed two big things about this reading log.

The Bean in Spring

Not because I  am actively trying, but I found a certain amount of Jewishness in many of these books. Some of it is due to the authors themselves; Talia Lavin and Naomi Novik are both Jewish and Naomi Alderman was raised Jewish but is not currently practicing. While Spinning Silver is very clearly a story about Jewish people (and others) in a vaguely Russian-Esque setting, stories like The Future and His Dark Materials wrestle with very Jewish themes.

In The Future, one recurring motif where in a character explains the story of Lot felt like it was culled from my own Torah Studies. I swear I could hear my Rabbi giggling in excitement over all the nuggets of midrash (the interpretation of the Torah- often a specific set of verses called a Parsha- though study of the text, context of the text, and pulling information from the Talmud and other Jewish scholars) embedded so casually into the text and then into the story. I don’t want to give anything away and if someone wants my opinion on midrash as a story telling device, I’m open to looking into it more.

His Dark Materials, while being specifically written (and confirmed by the author) to be a critique of the Catholic Church and an exploration of multiverse and yet, it is clear that Phillip Pullman did his homework and I do want to do a whole blog post about it because it is EXTENSIVE. And I don’t want to spoil anything if you aren’t ready for it. I highly, HIGHLY recommend reading the books or listening to the audiobooks (the one I listened to was narrated by Philip Pullman himself and a whole cast of readers).

The other aspect I noticed is that this list is lacking non-write representation. To be clear, I do have several non-white author’s books on my Libby hold list (but they are very popular so it’s gonna take a while). I tried out N.K. Jemisen’s The City We Became and I just couldn’t get into it, which broke my heart because I’ve loved her other work. But you don’t have to love an author’s entire bibliography and it’s okay to say “hey, this isn’t for me.”

I do have The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones and Escaping Exodus by Nicky Drayden in my Holds, and I’m waiting for my library to buy an audiobook copy of The Splinter in the Sky by Kemi Ashing-Giwa. I’m really vibing on the whole speculative fiction and if someone has a good recommendation for non-white, non-straight authors, I’m happy to check them out.

I’ve also been doing more personal  writing in the last few months. I have a few stories that I played around with and this year I decided to really commit to spending more time and energy in writing my own stories. Maybe when I finish the first draft I’ll actually talk about my writing process – be warned, it’s slowwwww.

Colorado Springs, CO

And on a more personal note, my family had some serious health scares from several members at the same time. The good news is that everyone is on the mend and well supported. However, it  really wake me up to start focusing on adjusting diet and putting more time into my work outs—it really does help with mental health.

All of that to say, I'm back, hopefully able to write more, find more folks to help tell their stories.