I have twice written a very long blog post and twice managed to lose it! ARGH! I'm positively bleary-eyed at this point, but I'll try to reconstruct it yet again.
I think I started with a recap of the summer? I don't remember anything about this summer except that it was too hot. We did go up to Maine for 3 days in July—somehow miraculously managing to pick the only 3 sunny days in the middle of 2 solid weeks of rain! (Andy and I were reminiscing about a summer vacation many years ago when the kids were little—maybe 3, 5, and 7? We rented a house at the Cape and it rained for 6 of the 7 days. Somewhere we have a photo of the 3 kids in their swimsuits, kneeling on the couch looking out the window at the pouring rain. Good times...)
I finally went to a movie theater, for the first time since well before the pandemic! Julie, Andy, and I saw Asteroid City. If you are a Wes Anderson fan (we sure are!), you will love it. He has his usual favorite actors (Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, etc.), but Bill Murray was noticeably absent because he caught covid and had to back out! Steve Carell took his role and did a great job.
What else happened this summer? Oh, I went to another conference! This wasn't my usual American Copy Editors Society conference, but the considerably smaller Editorial Freelancers Association conference, which is held only every couple of years. It was in Alexandria, VA, and we lucked out because the weather was not nearly as hot and humid as it had been right up until we got there. The hotel was in the Old Town neighborhood, which is filled with lots of cute restaurants and shops. So I saw friends, learned a few things, and even went on an excursion: On the last afternoon three of us ditched the sessions and took the Metro to DC to visit Planet Word! It didn't exist the last time I was in DC, so that was fun. It's filled with lots of interactive exhibits and other fun things—definitely a treat for this word nerd! There's also plenty to do there for (older) kids, if you're planning a Family DC Trip anytime soon.
I also wrote a bunch of book reviews, but they are getting shorter and shorter every time I have to rewrite, so I apologize for that:
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami: I was going along really liking this, even though metaphysical fiction is not really my thing. But then he had to go and write a really really really upsetting scene involving cats being tortured! It just about did me in. Why Why Why
Trust by Hernan Diaz: I enjoyed this and read the whole thing eagerly, but I stopped short of saying "This should win the Pulitzer" (which it did). It takes place among the NYC aristocratic banking set of the 1930s (so you know what's about to happen next...), and is told by four very different narrators in four very different styles. The writing was excellent and engaging, but I just didn't feel captivated the way others did—for instance, NPR's Maureen Corrigan (read or listen to her review here).
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin: I really enjoyed this but didn't love-love-love it the way others did. The book is about the video game industry, and a major theme is how women game creators can't advance in the industry and don't get adequate credit for their work. So a big problem for me was that before I read it, I saw this thread on The Artist Formerly Known as Twitter describing how a game in the book is clearly a ripoff of a real-life game created by a real-life woman—but she's given no credit or acknowledgment in the book! Here's a story in WaPo about it; the comments are good too. Boooooooo.
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus: Ditto: I really enjoyed this but didn't love-love-love it the way others did. Once again we have a woman not recognized in her field; this time it's a chemist in the 1960s. Through a series of plot twists, she ends up leaving her job and becoming the star of a TV cooking show—although she always says it's chemistry, not cooking. Her particular style captures the hearts and minds of women all over the country. I ended up feeling like the main character was not terribly believable (although I loved her dog!), and the book was too long for what it was. The ending also left me meh.
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett: This one I absolutely did love-love-love! (No surprise, as I'm a huge Patchett fan.) Lara (née Laura) and her husband and three twenty-something daughters are hunkered down at their Michigan cherry farm during the pandemic lockdown of 2020. They are grateful to be safe and healthy but also wary about the future. While harvesting this season's cherries, Lara tells her daughters the story of her teenage summer many years ago, when she performed in Our Town by Thornton Wilder at the summer stock theater in nearby Tom Lake, where she met and fell in love with future movie star Peter Duke. I know Our Town inside and out, and it's so important to this story that I have trouble imagining how someone could read this without knowing it—it's almost a character in its own right. This book is all about young and mature love, about wishes and regrets, and about the people who come in and out of our lives. I loved every minute of it—Patchett is at the top of her game here.
Tattoos on the Heart by Gregory Boyle: I rarely read nonfiction, but whenever my dear old friend Paul sends me a book, I read it. Paul has been volunteering at HomeBoy Industries in LA for a while now. From their website: "What began in 1988 as a way of improving the lives of former gang members in East Los Angeles has evolved into the largest gang intervention, rehab and re-entry program in the world." (There's a HomeGirl branch now, too.) All of this was started by Father Greg, a Jesuit priest who embodies more compassion, energy, and light than most of us can imagine mustering. This book of essays captures all of this—and will make you laugh and cry and want to make a difference. Andy's reading it now and loving it. It's good to be reminded every now and then that there are angels walking among us.