Making progress on the "Year's Work"

30 July 2025: I think I've just finished my last batch of reading and note-taking for my portion of the "Year's Work" essay, having made my way through The Routledge Companion to Absurdist Literature. Feels good to have this part of the task done. Next comes writing, of course, but that's on a little pause until my co-author and I can talk about a new approach to that task.  

"Come here and see."

29 July 2025: This post's title comes from the last line of These Days, by Lucy Caldwell, the novel my little book club is reading this month. Reading it on my kindle, I didn't realize that was the last line--and when I did, my breath caught and I almost had to stifle a sob. It's hard to explain why, but I'll try. 

The book's subject matter--a family (and others) in the days of the 1941 Belfast Blitz--is dark and heavy. Yet the book is so beautiful and intricately rendered. What do you do in the face of such cruel, meaningless devastation? "Just keep going" is way too simple an answer, perhaps (though we know it's true). "Come here and see," though? In this book--which shows such a profound reverance for people, their everyday lives, their hidden thoughts and dreams, and desires--"come here and see" serves a kind of ethos and answer. 

Pretty sweet Sunday...

20 July 2025: I know I sometimes document days like today--posts that are basically lists of things I did. They aren't the most interesting posts, I know, but for me, they can serve as little snapshots of ordinary but sweet days. So here's one:

I got an early start with a trip to campus (my first in over a week!) to do a little work and (almost more important to me, at least emotionally) water my plants. 

It's pretty cool to be close to the end of my reading for the "Year's Work" essay. My syllabi are coming along well, too. On Friday, I accepted a new role--Coordinator of First-Year Writing--that means a course release for me, which cut that syllabizing work down quite a bit.

Once I got home, I took my walk through the neighborhood. Laughed really hard at an Extra Hot Great episode. 

From there, I was basically inside the rest of the afternoon. (Still pretty hot out there; it's been an intense summer.) I watched some TV (finished You, which was okay) and read a horror novel by a local writer. I'm enjoying it and have about 120 pages to go.

Then Amy and I saw Magdalene, a CATF play. I really enjoyed it; terrific acting, as always, and some cool ideas. From there, we had dinner at King's.

Home now and just finished a phone call with Tim. Bob's Burgers time (it continues to be my comfort show) until some more reading, bath, and bed!

Even As We Breathe

30 May 2025: Just finished Even As We Breathe, by Anne Saunooke Clapsaddle, this fall's Appalachian Heritage Writer-in-Residence. I enjoyed it, especially the way Clapsaddle plays with memory and storytelling, with our young narrator conjuring, for instance, vivid memories of moments he couldn't possibly remember (or could he?). 

I also admire a book that honors the kind of relationships or love that defy easy categorization. In one scene, Cowney, as an old man, reflects back on his youthful, love-struck self: "I couldn't understand why we weren't an automatic fit for each other, a promised pair in this strange place. In the years since, I have learned that not all love is made of equal parts. There are more kinds of deep affection than we are sometimes willing to accept in our society" (106).

Work Cited

Clapsaddle, Annette Saunooke. Even As We Breathe. Fireside Industries Books, 2020. 

"Let me just exist with you..."

8 May 2025: This morning, I finished reading (well, listening to) Pageboy, Elliot Page's memoir. It's really a terrific book--smart, searing, sad, and, ultimately, uplifting. It's also structurally fascinating--non-linear, with some chapters that are just vingettes and others that stretch into deep dives. Ultimately, I just found myself rooting for him again and again, wanting him to find peace, love, and comfort, a set of wishes for him that extend so effortlessly (because of his artistry) to everyone else who struggles with their identity. 

Just a couple of powerful passages:

About the life-sustaining and indeed life-saving importance of representation and visibility: "My heart aches for my younger self. A tiny bug running to the rim of an upside-down juice glass. What a difference it would have been to sit with queer and trans pals and have them say, 'I feel that way, too. I felt that way, too. We don't have to feel that way. You don't have to feel that way.' Not a magic eraser of shame, but it would have undoubtedly quickened things up.”

And, towards the end: “Let me just exist with you, happier than ever.” Such a simple plea--"Let me just exist with you"--but one that is somehow controversial today.  

Nickel Boys

4 May 2025: I finally watched Nickel Boys today and really liked it. I read the book when it came out and realized that more of it stuck than I thought. This might seem like a bit of a strange comparison, but the adaptation reminds me of Fun Home's journey from graphic memoir to musical. The adaptation is faithful, but also so distinctly itself. Nickel Boys (the movie) is so beautiful and plays with perspective in fascinating ways. 

Book club night...

23 February 2025: Grateful today (and every month) for our little book club (me, Cory, and Kaitlyn). This month's pick was The Cliffs by J. Courtney Sullivan, which we all enjoyed. I love that the club gets me reading something non-work-related every month and, even more so, that I get to talk with my friends about it. 

You Could Make This Place Beautiful

12 January 2025: Finished Maggie Smith's You Could Make This Place Beautiful today and found it really captivating and moving. I read it on Kindle (got a good deal) and do wish I could have read it on paper, just to make flipping through it easier (for me), in part because I could sense all the ways it poetically echoed and built on earlier moves--and wanted to see that more clearly. 

One of those moves is recurring chapter names, including "A Friend Says Every Book Begins with an Unanswerable Question." Each of these includes only two lines of text. Here's they are from a chapter late in the book.

"Then what is mine?

how to make this place beautiful"

I could have quoted so many memorable passages, but this one stands out to me as I look towards a new semester (starting tomorrow) and--Lord help us--what's coming on January 20. 

The Wedding People

30 December 2024: “It is not an easy thing to do, walk away from what you’ve built and save yourself.” --Alison Espach, The Wedding People

I really adored this book, the final "new" book I will read this year. (Grand total of eighteen, not great but also not bad for a year in which I wrote so much of my own book, graded so many papers, and the world was so...2024. And much better than years when that total was single digits!) 

Earth to Moon

15 December 2024: "How do you heal? You make a decision. Mine is this: no more bullies allowed" (344). 

I am really glad I decided to pick Earth to Moon for our little book club. I knew I was going to read it sooner or later after hearing Moon Zappa talk about it on Depresh Mode. My life has been so very different from hers, but so much of what she wrote about rang (sometimes painfully) true. 

Work Cited

Zappa, Moon. Earth to Moon. Deyst, 2024.

Valentine

3 November 2024: Finally listened to "Valentine," the 100th episode of This is Love, an episode I knew was about the death of Phoebe's mother (whose first name gives the episode its title). Knowing and loving This is Love and Criminal the way I do, I knew it was going to be powerful episode so I wanted to honor it with my undivided attention and be in the right mindset when I listened. 

I am so glad I did. It's riveting and funny and sad and beautiful from start to finish. 

Also saw the Theater program's production of Our Town today and made a ton of progres on The Bog Wife, this month's book club selection. So, even more than usual, lots of Big Thoughts about life, death, and what it all means on this autumn Sunday.

The Reformatory

28 July 2024: "Sometimes the dead could help you fly" (565).

The Reformatory took my breath away. The last line, quoted above, made me tear up. The novel is a terrific mix of horror, suspense, historical fiction, and a moving story of familial love. Just amazing. 

Work Cited

Due, Tananarive. The Reformatory. Saga Press, 2023. 

Revolutionary Suicide

24 June 2024: "In our innocence we planned to be doctors, lawyers, pilots, boxers, and builders. How could we know then that we were not going anywhere? Nothing in our experience had shown us yet that the American dream was not for us. We, too, had great expectations. And then we went to school" (16). 

This passage, which ends the first chapter of Huey P. Newton's Revolutionary Suicide, is just one example of his powerful and often arresting prose. Newton's biography is our book club selection this month. It's unlike a lot of what I read, but it sure is engaging. 

Work Cited

Newton, Huey P. Revolutionary Suicide. 1973. Penguin, 2009. 

The Go-Between

13 May 2024: So glad to have finally read this novel, which has sat on my bedside table for years. I picked it for this month's book club selection and just fell into it. I love a finely drawn adolescent narrator--someone in that age range that is both terrified and confident, knows so much and knows nothing, tries to read the world around him and gets it wrong as much as he gets it right. I cannot wait to talk about it with the group. Too bad I have to wait nearly three weeks. Whoops!

Bloom

22 August 2024: Can't remember the last time I picked up a book, started it, and read just about non-stop until I finished it. But that's what I did this evening with Bloom, by Delilah S. Dawson, our book club's selection for this month. I am not completely sure what I think of it, but man, it sure is seductive, propulsive, and captivating.  

Spring preview...

3 March 2024: If today is a taste of what spring will feel like (and what my post-Senate, post-book) days will be like, I am beyond ready for it. I pushed myself to finish everything on my work lists yesterday, so today, I just let myself have a work-free day. (A new weekly book "to do list" starts tomorrow, and two sections of ENGL 102 hand in big papers, so this bit of freedom will be short-lived.)

Still...slept in a bit. Ambled through the grocery store. Read the paper. Started my new book club book. Watched the softball team's home opener (they won). Took a long walk. Opened the windows for a few hours. Took some time to cook a new recipe for dinner. I could get very used to this.

Someone else enjoyed this taste of spring, too.

Women Talking

5 November 2023: “Doubt and uncertainty and questioning are inextricably bound together with faith.” --Miriam Toews, Women Talking

This morning, I pulled into my driveway at just the moment that the audiobook of this tremendous novel concluded--with a chorus of women singing "Just a Closer Walk With Thee." Sat there in my car, listening as tears filled my eyes. This one will stay with me for a long time. 

The Butterfly

22 October 2023: Our little book club discussed James M. Cain's The Butterfly this evening. I am glad to have read it, but it's strange and disturbing little book. Living in West Virginia since 2007 also no doubt shaped my response to it. Cain depicts the potential for violence that runs through masculinity and religious zealotry, especially when it intersects with poverty and social marginalization. But most of the characters seem underdrawn.

I like this little excerpt from Paul Skenaz (which I found on Wikipedia) that says better than I could my own feelings about it: "The Butterfly confirms the way that Cain himself is a victim of, as much as a writer who profits from, the stereotypical forms of social understanding and visions of gender that dominate the American mind." 

Anyway, like I said, glad to have read it. 

There's just something about Twain scholars...

23 July 2023: "Barbara Snavely’s father sneered, and maybe even snickered. ‘Come back when you own a wood mill as large and successful as mine,’ snorted Snavely snidely to the twenty-one-year-old suitor. Lick, snubbed and in a snit, and who was not one to snivel in response to snootiness, instead snapped at Snavely, snarling that he would someday build a mill that would make Snively’s Stumpstown mill ‘look like a pigsty’" (Donnell 12). 

Donnell's piece is one of the most fun that I've read for the Twain section of the Year's Work essay. It's about a work that he's rediscovered--which is fascinating and importnat--but he's having so much in it. It's not just the wordplay above, either. He even includes a bit of origami at the end. 

Can confirm that Twain scholars tend towards the hilarious and fun. 

Work Cited

Donnell, Kevin Mac. “Mark Twain’s State Banquet Remarks--A Lost Work Recovered.” Mark Twain Journal, vol. 60, no. 2, Fall 2022, pp. 11–38.

How to Sell a Haunted House

9 July 2023: "Squirel Baby Jesus crouched in the doorway, its bald tail twitching." --Grady Hendrix, How to Sell a Haunted House

Started this novel, our book club's next selection, and boy, is it a wild, creepy, fun book. I had a goal to reach the first fifty pages today and forced myself to stop at page 141.