Friday Five
Literally just five books I’ve enjoyed recently.
(Sidebar: It took me forever to read five good books. The last time I posted a Friday Five was August 16. So just a pause, I guess, to recognize this.)
Gay Poems for Red States by Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr.
Super quick modern poetry collection told with a lot of honesty and realism.
No one will protect you. Months after being named the 2022 Kentucky Teacher of the Year, Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr. announced his decision to leave the public school system. His career as a high school English teacher had spanned more than a decade but ended abruptly, a casualty of the cruel and dangerous anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination that is creeping back into the halls of government and the homes of Americans. At the beginning of Carver's career, an administrator warned him about discussing his otherwise openly gay identity at "No one will protect you, including me." A new administration allowed for more freedom, but the initial warning eventually rang true. School officials failed repeatedly to address harassment of students and of Carver himself, until he could no longer endure such a purposeful deterioration of human rights. While Carver's testimony before the House of Representatives brought much-needed attention to the need for protections for LGBTQ+ people in schools, the damage was done. In “Gay Poems for Red States,” Carver counters the injustice of a persistent anti-LGBTQ+ movement by asserting that a life full of beauty and pride is possible for everyone. More than a collection of poetry, Carver's earnest and heartfelt verses are for those wishing to discover and understand the vastness of Appalachia, and for the LGBTQ+ Appalachians who long for a future and a home in an often unwelcoming place.
This book was not what I expected but in a very good way. Did I just not understand the summary? Probably. I really wish we were all able to just exist in the way that makes us all feel good, and I left this book once again angry at capitalism a lot and colonialism a bit.
In “How to Do Nothing,” Jenny Odell wrote about the importance of disconnecting from the “attention economy” to spend time in quiet contemplation. But what if you don’t have time to spend? In order to answer this seemingly simple question, Odell took a deep dive into the fundamental structure of our society and found that the clock we live by was built for profit, not people. This is why our lives, even in leisure, have come to seem like a series of moments to be bought, sold, and processed ever more efficiently. Odell shows us how our painful relationship to time is inextricably connected not only to persisting social inequities but to the climate crisis, existential dread, and a lethal fatalism. “Saving Time” tugs at the seams of reality as we know it and the way we experience time itself; it rearranges it, imagining a world not centered on work, the office clock, or the profit motive. If we can “save” time by imagining a life, identity, and source of meaning outside these things, time might also save us.
The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
This one mixed genres in a way that really spoke to me. This was such a fun fantastical mystery! It was a super interesting fantasy world, the mystery was good enough, and the characters were all really intriguing.
In Daretana’s most opulent mansion, a high Imperial officer has been killed, to all appearances, when a tree spontaneously erupted from his body. Even in this canton at the borders of the Empire, where contagions abound and the blood of the Leviathans works strange magical changes, it’s a death at once terrifying and impossible. Called in to investigate this mystery is Ana Dolabra, an investigator whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities. At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol. Din is an engraver, magically altered to possess a perfect memory. His job is to observe and report, and act as his superior’s eyes and ears; among Ana’s quirks are her insistence on wearing a blindfold at all times, and her refusal to step outside the walls of her home.
Din is most perplexed by Ana’s ravenous appetite for information and her mind’s frenzied leaps, not to mention her cheerful disregard for propriety and the apparent joy she takes in scandalizing her young counterpart. Yet as the case unfolds and Ana makes one startling deduction after the next, he finds it hard to deny that she is, indeed, the Empire’s greatest detective. As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the safety of the Empire itself, Din realizes he’s barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect.
This author really hasn’t missed for me, and it’s another beautiful cover for her, as well. This one is atmospheric and perfect for the turn from fall to winter, which is basically what I always say for nature witch stories. Just read the witchy stories, y’all! This one is actually more mystery than anything else, and while I saw through it a little bit, the getting to the answer and the aftermath - really the magic of it - worked really well, and I was surprised by a major plot element (not a twist, just a thing that happens).
Rumored to be a witch, only Nora Walker knows the truth. She and the Walker women before her have always shared a special connection with the woods. And it’s this special connection that leads Nora to discover Oliver Huntsman, a boy who disappeared from the Camp for Wayward Boys on the other side of the lake weeks ago in the middle of the worst snowstorm in years. He should be dead, but here he is alive, and left in the woods with no memory of the time he’d been missing. But Nora can feel an uneasy shift in the woods at Oliver’s presence. And it’s not too long after that Nora realizes she has no choice but to unearth the truth behind how the boy she has come to care so deeply about survived his time in the forest, and what led him there in the first place. But Oliver has secrets of his own, and he wasn’t the only one to have gone missing on that night.
The Women Could Fly by Megan Giddings
This one has been divisive in reviews and online, which I totally understand. The story is really, really good, but it’s lofty in its telling, and it’s one of those story where it’s almost just an observation of what is happening and nothing will change and there isn’t actually a plot. There’s no happy ending, so just in general, it’s frustrating and sad. But it’s necessary. We can historically say “Oh we did burn women as witches, but we don’t do that anymore” but this is an exploration of how we still blame women for all of the same shit we used to blame them for, and that we’re not that far off burning them for it. Also, A+ for diversity, something that some of the classic explorations of the exploitation and control of women lack.
Josephine Thomas has heard every conceivable theory about her mother's disappearance. That she was kidnapped. Murdered. That she took on a new identity to start a new family. That she was a witch. This is the most worrying charge because in a world where witches are real, peculiar behavior raises suspicions and a woman, especially a Black woman, can find herself on trial for witchcraft. But fourteen years have passed since her mother's disappearance, and now Jo is finally ready to let go of the past. Yet her future is in doubt. The State mandates that all women marry by the age of 30 or enroll in a registry that allows them to be monitored, effectively forfeiting their autonomy. At 28, Jo is ambivalent about marriage. With her ability to control her life on the line, she feels as if she has her never understood her mother more. When she's offered the opportunity to honor one last request from her mother's will, Jo leaves her regular life to feel connected to her one last time. In this powerful and timely novel, Megan Giddings explores the limits women face--and the powers they have to transgress and transcend them.
Read books and use the good candles. xoxo Lai