Despite Everything, Spring and Solstice; Choosing an Author Photo Every Decade; and Reviews and Reading Reports

early pink cherry blossoms

Despite Everything, Spring and Solstice

We’ve had a colder March than usual, and it’s been gray and rainy, but in fact, spring is springing around us, despite war and pandemic and other apocalypses. Jonquils and hyacinths are up, and the early plum and cherry blossoms are starting to appear. I’ve heard more birdsong; my garden, mostly still asleep, is showing signs that it is actually a garden. And how is it the Spring Equinox already?

Here are some pictures of a red-winged blackbird singing, my small weeping cherry, and some white cherry branches. Meanwhile, my refrigerator died, the third pandemic appliance death in three years – this is getting expensive. At least the new fridge models are more energy efficient and easier for me to access. And I’ve been doing a lot of reading in the rain, which I’ll talk about later, and more exciting – I posed for my first author photo in over ten years. Now I just have to decide on one.

Choosing an Author Photo Every Decade or So

Along with spring, there’s another seasonal ritual that must be performed every decade or so: getting a new author photo done. It just doesn’t feel right to use a photo that’s more than ten years old – ten years ago I was so sick, before my MS diagnosis, barely able to walk or eat anything. I wasn’t in the same place I am now. My hair had less gray in it – and for that matter, I hadn’t started my pink hair color phase yet. So I thought, for my upcoming book with BOA, Flare, Corona, I’d do an updated author photo. I was pretty nervous because I’m a writer, not a model, and not as spry as I used to be, either. But I thought: let’s do it and then I don’t have to do it for another ten years! Heck, I think Louise Gluck used her mid-forties author photo (she looked fantastic in her mid-forties, I can remember) for at least twenty years!

Anyway, I had a great local photographer, Char Beck, out and we took pictures with a cherry tree across from my house. Anyway, if you want to help, here are the four final contenders. You can leave your vote in the comments: Photo 1, Photo 2, Photo 3, or Photo 4!

Mask-less visit to Molbaks, spring display with pink bicycle

In Other News, Reviews, Mask Mandates, Donna Tartt Reading Report, and More

So, Washington State’s mask mandate was lifted a few days ago. Glenn and I weren’t up to trying a restaurant yet, but we did make a spring pilgrimage to our favorite gardening store, Molbak’s, and bought herbs and flowers to plant. It was so nice to be able to smell things again! But I’m mostly staying masked up for the time being. While our covid rates have really dropped, especially in my county, we’re staying cautious. But it does seem like we’re getting closer to a post-pandemic period, doesn’t it? As we get better, newer treatments, and maybe even better, newer vaccines, we won’t erase this virus – it will continue to mutate and appear in waves for a while, I believe – we will not have to live in quite as much fear. I hope.

I’m trying to review a poetry book for the first time in a while – Dana Levin’s Now Do You Know Where You Are, from Copper Canyon. Exercising those reviewer muscles again. The book has made me cry three times. It’s also one of those books you really need to pay attention to and read the notes at the end of the book. It’s not a book you can skim easily and that also might make it more rewarding.

Spring tulip display at Roozengaarde gift shop

I also finished my mother-daughter book club read, Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. I had read this book and loved it in my twenties, but as I read it this time I read it as a writer – like, I think Donna should have made the main character a woman from the South, not a man from California, not only because I think women writers have a tendency to “male up” their protagonists to be more “accessible” or popular with male critics, but also because some things didn’t ring true, either the male or the California aspects – and I think the book could have used more humor and pop culture references. The eighties were so much fun, it seems a shame to leave out references to, I don’t know, Prince or Madonna or John Hughes movies or something. It’s also a bit of a slog in the middle – not exactly paced right for a psychological thriller. Like, you don’t want the reader thinking, she could really have edited this part out, or doesn’t this seem repetitive. (I had a similar reaction to The Goldfinch.)

It’s interesting to revisit books you read in your twenties – at the beginning of the pandemic, I re-read Middlemarch, which I hated in college, but actually enjoyed it in my forties. Maybe The Secret History is really a twenty-something’s kind of book. Anyway, I also have been on a Hitchcock bender the last year, and I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between this book and the Hitchcock thriller, Rope. (Check it out if you haven’t. A really great turn by Jimmy Stewart as an amoral philosophy professor.) And actually, between this and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, The Pack. Funny how those things turn up when you read. I also really saw more parallels between this book and Flannery O’Connor’s Southern gothic moral fiction (I hadn’t read any of Flannery’s work in my twenties yet.) So, though it took some time, it was actually a captivating book with really beautiful sentences that not only reflected the dark mood of the world right now but also made me think about questions I hadn’t in a while: does fiction have to be funny? Does it have to teach us something? Do you need any likable characters? I would say if you compare this book to her classmate’s book, Less than Zero (which also was really devoid of humor – gosh, did Bennington College in the eighties knock the humor out of its English students or what?) you can see that though Less than Zero made more of a splash, I think Secret History had more of a lasting influence on other writers.

Next up on my reading list is Rapture and Melancholy: the Diaries of Edna St. Vincent Millay. I’ve already enjoyed taking a look at her pictures (saved by her sister, who passed away at 90 in 1989) and reading about her amazing self-confidence as a young person. I loved Edna St. Vincent Millay as a teen, and I still enjoy reading her poems out loud – she’s funny and bracing and has great musicality. I’m interested how her diaries – and life trajectories – compare to other women poet’s diaries I’ve read in the last few years.