My Week In Reading

Substacks, short stories, and some music

Photo by Benigno Hoyuela on Unsplash

It’s Memorial Day weekend, and I’m finally feeling refreshed. The last couple of weeks I’ve been completely drained, barely able to write a word. It’s probably due to my kids getting out of school, my husband’s birthday party, having to put down my cat, and work kicking my ass, but today I woke up and actually felt okay.

I’ve been fighting a couple of feelings. One revolves around my desire to actually be a writer. You can see from my emphasis there that I understand the strangeness of that phrase. After all, I’m writing to you aren’t I? But you know what I mean. I want to do this as a job. But with AI and my total lack of any professional experience, the effort weighs heavy on me. I try to bring it back to the act, focus my attention on what I have control over—the writing—and away from the what-ifs of it all. This helped a bit.

“And I have said about practice of the arts, that practicing any art, painting, music, dance, whatever, literature, it's not a way to make money or to become famous. It's a way to make your soul grow, so you should do it anyway.”

-Kurt Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut and Lee Stringer talk Writing and Creativity (1998)

My reading has fallen behind too. I’m in the middle of two novels right now, one that I listen to on the way to work, and another that I put down at an overly descriptive section and hadn’t picked back up until last night. When I get busy like this, I tend to reach for social media. It’s like potato chips or ice cream, the classic cures to stress and overactive mind. But I’ve committed myself, as part of an effort to keep myself mentally healthy, to not mindlessly scroll doomsday porn.

So this week, in lieu of my novels, I read some short stories, poems, and essays. And they were glorious.

Here they are in no particular order.

An Essay, by Sherman Alexie

The "I" in BIPOC: Not All Native Americans are Leftist Political Activists

I loved this piece, one because he speaks from a place of experience, and two because he’s hitting on something that feels so necessary to come back to time and time again: people are not algorithms. We may be getting influenced and cornered in our little echo chambers by them, but at our core, we are all individuals coming to varied conclusions about life, and that includes politics. My own stepmom was Indian, and she didn’t fit neatly into either side of the political aisle. I think that speaks for the majority of people.

20th Century Ghosts, by Joe Hill

I’ve been making my way through this one for a while, story by story, but this week I think I read two of my favorites. The Black Phone (which many of you may know, at least in name, because it was made into a film last year), and You Will Hear the Locusts Sing.

The first is the story of a thirteen-year-old boy Finney, who is kidnapped by a man coined, The Grabber. He’s already kidnapped and murdered other boys in the same basement that Finney wakes up in. Now his only hope lies in the ghosts of those boys, who call a disconnected, black phone, and whisper what they know to help him.

The second is the story of a boy obsessed with insects who wakes up in the body of a giant insect one morning. I think I loved this because I was simultaneously sickened by the descriptions of existing in a crunchy bug body—the eating, the movements, the goopy defecating—and the strange beautiful quiet of animal, even insect life. Well, that is before he tries to go back home and talk with his dad. I won’t give any of it away, but let’s just say it doesn’t go well.

Michael Mohr’s The Incompatibility of Being Alive

Poems for my Father

Michael Mohr writes two Substacks, and this one is just so raw and real. Memoir in real time is how I think of it. The latest posts detail his journey with his father through his cancer diagnosis. I never know what to say after except “thank you,” because the journey is painful, and I of course don’t know him in real life.

Memoir, like fiction, has helped me through a lot of bad times. Knowing other people have suffered and are still creating, persevering, finding beauty, facing pain, doing hard inner work, apologizing, eating, doing all the things that this life is, brings comfort. His writing has that kind of power for me. And it’s honest. So refreshing in our hyper-polished, online existence.

The Storyletter, Exploring the Unknown

Come explore the unknown and vote for your favorite story

I was hesitant to post this because I participated in the contest (I know it’s insecure and ridiculous. I’m working on it.) but they were so good. The prompt was Exploring the Unknown, and the responses are so varied and kick ass. Read through them. It’s amazing to me how many people have stories in them. I love reading the different voices that come through. The different genres and characters expressed by the same prompt. Art is beautiful like that.

Heart

Just watch this. God I love this band. I’ve been nerding out for weeks listening to their music while I work. I just can’t get enough. The guitar. Anne Wilson’s voice. Sigh.

Cold, late night so long ago
When I was not so strong you know
A pretty man came to me
I never seen eyes so blue
You know, I could not run away it seemed
We'd seen each other in a dream
Seemed like he knew me, he looked right through me, yeah

-Heart, “Magic Man”

Admittedly, that 70’s rock takes me to a red light hotel that I have never been to. Heroin needles and cocaine lined tables. That’s got to be because of movies right?

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Hit me with it. What did you listen to, read, watch this week? What did it do for you, to you?