Hello, readers and writers! The spring semester is over, and I’ve been giving my brain a little break. It did not take long before new ideas began to spring up, as if they’d been waiting for the slightest opening in the synapses to make themselves known. Very new project ideas need to be kept safe in the nest for a bit while they’re nurtured until they can fly on their own, but I should be ready to share this very big idea this fall.

In the meantime, I do have two books coming out from my micropress, Practical Fox. We’re putting together a new edition of Beat the Boss, the tabletop role playing game that helps you learn how to organize at work and in the community. It will be published in September 2023.

I’m also working on a translation of Celeste Mogador’s memoir from 1848. She was a Parisian prostitute and horseback performer at the Hippodrome, and her memoir reads like a Netflix series with many fancy dresses. It’ll be out in January 2024.

If you need a French translation fix ASAP, my translation of Voyage Around My Room by Xavier de Maistre is available now. It’s a quick read; de Maistre was confined to his room when put under house arrest for dueling. So he took the opportunity to write a parody of the popular travel writing style of the day by detailing the stops in his room as if they were cities on the Grand Tour. Also, he has a droll butler and a cute dog. (All the Practical Fox books are available via Bookshop.org if you’re filling up a cart there anyway.)

What I’ve Been Reading

I thought I’d try writing down everything I read for a month — every article, every book, every paper. I started with what I read during breakfast on May 1 … and stopped immediately after. I read some good stuff! But it was already taking up half a page of my Bullet Journal. I need that real estate for keeping track of the rest of my life. And while the reading was fun, the list writing was boring. If it’s boring for me, it’s boring for you.

Here’s a quick rundown of the books I’ve finished recently:

• Black Women Writers at Work, edited by Claudia Tate. This was first issued in the early ‘80s, and the insights and issues raised by Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Nikki Giovanni, and others are still very relevant. There’s a little writing advice, but it’s mostly a cultural, political, and literary critique through the lenses of two dozen extraordinary minds. Highly recommend this one; it belongs on any writer’s reference shelf.
• Tinkers by Paul Harding. This book was mentioned in a review of some other book, and that mention was enough to get me to borrow it from the library. It’s a meditation on dying, on parenting, on disability, on poverty…it sounds depressing, but it isn’t. The story is shared between George, who as an old man is surrounded by family in his home as he nears death, and George’s father Howard, who is providing for his family by working as a tinker in early twentieth-century New England. The structure and language are original without being at all difficult to read.
• The Giant, O’Brien by Hilary Mantel. If you like Mantel, you’ll like this book about an Irish giant who goes to London with his friends and an inept agent in an attempt to cash in on his gargantuan frame. Meanwhile, a Scottish doctor is trying to secure his body after his death for study. This book revels in the literal and metaphorical muck of the era (and ours, as literature does), and Mantel’s characterizations are as always sharp. I also read her short story “The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher,” which is a brilliant meditation on Irish relations with the UK. It could be staged very effectively as a two-character play set in one claustrophobic apartment.
• I just finished Dinosaurs by Lydia Millet, who has written many books but was new to me. I don’t quite know how to describe this book, since its plot sounds drab: a rich, socially unsure middle-aged man buys a castle in Arizona then walks there to deal with the breakup of a fifteen-year relationship. His new neighbors have a glass wall that faces his castle, and they all become friends. But the book is not at all drab. There are character revelations and growth and intrigues and night vision goggle purchases and bat costumes on Halloween. It’s a good book. Oh, and the dinosaurs are the birds.
• I’m currently reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard in preparation for a summer course I’m taking. Friends, I do not like it. Only noting it here to remind you that you’re not obligated to like every book, even famous ones that other people adore and that have won big awards. You’re not even obligated to finish every book, unless it’s required by a course, in which case, soldier on, and know that I’m with you in spirit.

More Running, Less Reading, Please