Books I read in April 2021

This April had a certain frenzy to it. I rode the momentum and got a lot done–including a lot of reading. 12 books! I think I’m compensating for the fact that last year in April I only read one.

I like to keep track of books I’ve read but I also think I’d be better served if I wrote short bits about each one. Not reviews, necessarily. I can’t really commit to something like that at this point. Just little nuggets or takeaways, reminders to my future self.

The Business of Being a Writer, Jane Friedman

(To be fair, I read the bulk of this in March but completed the last two chapters on April 1.) This is a remarkably thorough and brass-tacks reference book helpful to serious writers interested in getting their work published. Jane Friedman is a national treasure and my go-to source for any information about queries, proposals, author platform, and agent research. I plan to return to this book again and again. Hers is a newsletter I *always* read.

Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Suzanne Collins

I liked the trilogy. This prequel had its moments. It also had moments where it dragged on and I wasn’t really dedicated to any of the characters. I don’t regret taking the time to read it but it’s not on the reread list. I’m glad I didn’t buy it.

Show Your Work, Austin Kleon

I picked this up after hearing Jane Friedman mention it, either in a workshop or in her book (or both). It’s a quick read with lots of easily-adaptable tips for writers and artists about sharing the creative journeys as a way to garner followers. Lots of great quotes, too.

It’s Not Love, Unfortunately, Lylanne Musselman

I met Lylanne at the Indiana Gathering of Writers in 2019 and after a few months of being friends on Facebook, felt familiar with her when I ran into her at an author event at the Indianapolis Public Library. From there our paths have crossed more closely: we serve on the board of the Midwest Writer’s Workshop together, and she’s a contributing writer and artist for my upcoming anthology, Cafe Macabre II, A Collection of Horror Stories and Art by Women. I bought this book from her and took forever to read it because of who I am as a person–also because I’m not necessarily in the habit of reading books of poetry (something I hope to amend in 2021). I loved the range of bitterness and affection her poems took me through, as she explored her relationships on the page, whether they were familial, romantic, or predatory (and whether those lines overlapped). She also mixed in a fair amount of nostalgia, coloring in the scenes with music (yay, Beatles!) and taking us on a tour of places she’d lived. I marked my favorites and will revisit them. I am happy this is on my shelf and I want to have more from this author.

The Same River Twice A Memoir of Dirtbag Backpackers, Bomb Shelters and Bad Travel, Pam Mandel

The Midwest Writer’s Workshop is preparing for its annual summer conference and part of that prep, for me, is reading as many of the incoming faculty’s books as possible. I admit that travel memoirs are sometimes hard for me during this particular season of my life wherein I am rooted to the spot on account of family circumstances–or maybe that’s my excuse because the truth is as much as I want to travel, it’s so far out of my comfort zone I have passed up opportunities…anyway.

This memoir rocked me. It follows her journey through Israel, Greece, Pakistan, Israel (and all sorts of places along the way). Mandel’s voice strikes a curious note between intimacy and detachment as she chronicles a second, inward journey towards a sense of self-worth. I won’t say more than that–but she had bad coming at her from more than direction. Because I’m working on a memoir of my own, I was especially attuned to the way she revealed her thinking on the page, parsing out private thoughts and revelations bit by bit, circling back to things. I was keen on things she *didn’t* reveal; she steered clear of analyzing her thought process or Monday-morning-quarterbacking her own life.

I hesitated to do so, but was compelled to reach out to her when I’d finished. I didn’t want to step on toes and I really didn’t want to say the wrong thing, given the intensely personal nature of her book. I wrote: “I finished The Same River Twice on Monday and knew I had just encountered something enormous. I have been thinking all this week about the way you arranged your words on the page to articulate and parse through what was in your heart. It had a profound impact on me–the story itself, of course, but also the undertaking of writing the book, threading the inner journey through with the physical journey.  In the white spaces of your book I sensed an immensity of feeling that goes beyond words. I’m working on a memoir about the ways my father’s experience in Vietnam shaped me and for the last few years have read every memoir I could get my hand on. Yours is certainly one that I will return to.”

She received my comments with grace and warmth and I resolved to contact more authors with feedback like this–in addition to reviews!

Tyler Johnson Was Here, Jay Coles

This was a hard read–don’t get me wrong, it was a well-written book that made me laugh and made me think, but it doesn’t beat around the bush. The excruciating first scene and deft foreshadowing in the subsequent chapters give you that uncomfortable feeling in the pit of your stomach: you know what’s coming. The book made me cry, and not all of them do that. It also made me laugh and smile, as well. Coles captures the speech and slang of adolescents along with their mindset and musical backdrop; more than that, he captures the struggle, fear, and complete helplessness of Black people in the face of the police force.

Almost Missed You, Jessica Strawser

Every time I read mystery I wonder why I don’t read more, especially when they are so exquisitely character-driven like this one. I was impressed by how *real* the characters and their interplay felt. It’s a romance-gone-sour, skeletons in the closet kind of story that leads to a heartbreaking climax, and yet reaches a satisfying, hopeful ending.

Wild, Cheryl Strayed

Some of you are already nodding your heads. I am ALWAYS late to the party, only knowing about these fantastic reads a few years after they’ve won all the awards. This one is one I’ll read again, for sure, and I want to map it out scene by scene to better understand how she structured the narrative, weaving difficult memories of her mother and family with her footsteps on the Pacific Crest Trail. It’s the inverse of Billy Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, which, fittingly, was the one single book I read this month last year. Something about walking in the woods for hundreds of miles, well, it changes you. Strayed takes you along her journey, her inner monologue, to a place where she can let go of what haunts her and welcome the frightening unknown ahead of her.

The Devil Wears Prada, Lauren Weisbarger

IMDB plays these clip collections to advertise for their channel. They included snippets of the movie and somehow, though I’ve seen it half a dozen times, I curled up on the couch one Saturday this month and rented it to watch again. I love the thrill of hard work, facing the ridiculous challenges of an absurdly demanding boss. I love the fashion. My dad loved the movie, too, which always tickled me, though he warned me against reading the book–the fact that he’d read it tickled me even more. He said the book was disappointing because Miranda Priestly is so much more of a sadistic, unreasonable beast; the movie humanizes her. Or maybe it was just Meryl Streep. In any case, I think Dad was right, though I didn’t think it was a waste of time. I liked hearing more about Andy’s family and friends, that whole “the book is more complex and intricate” thing. On the whole, I do think in the future I’ll stick to the movie, which is something I don’t often say.

Eddie’s War, Carol Fisher Saller

Not going to lie, this one knocked my socks off. It wasn’t unexpected; I have a great deal of respect and admiration for its author, an editor for the Chicago Manual of Style (I KNOW!), who also wrote a book I’ve already returned to more than once, The Subversive Copy Editor.

Eddie’s War is a middle-grade/YA historical fiction piece, following Eddie who works with his family on the farm while the shadow of Hitler covers the landscape of the Western world. The characters are brilliantly painted, the historic dialogue and speech pattern flow naturally, her intricate plot points are expertly interwoven and introduce tension at the community and global level. I purchased a copy for my mom, an elementary school teacher who likes WWII stories, and a writer friend who is also writing a story along the Depression era/WWII timeline.

The End of the Line: The Story of the Siege of Khe Sanh, Robert Pisor

To be fair, this one took me two months to read, and I struggled with it because well, it’s military strategic history. I have a hard time reading books on Vietnam because I don’t know enough to know what the biases are, or which ones I even agree with. And of course, I find myself mentally checking in with my dad, comparing things he’d said to what’s on the page. This book followed Westmoreland’s logic pretty closely, using quotes and statements he made, weighing in with what other generals, officers, soldiers, and politicians had to say–including the Vietnamese soldiers and General Giap. I’ll keep this on hand since it came from my Dad’s library, and while it’s fresh in my head I’d like to watch a few follow-up documentaries. It helps to see it splayed out visually because when I read tactics and strategy, my eyes glaze over involuntarily (like I do when someone tries to give me East/West/North/South directions). I DID feel good when the book was quoting Michael Herr’s Dispatches (which I finished last month) and I recognized it! Yay, me, budding Vietnam War scholar.

Raising Emotionally Intelligent Children, John Gottman

This was recommended to me by my son’s nurse practitioner. It falls along the lines of other parenting books I’ve read, particularly those for kids with stubborn, defiant, or intense streaks. A lot of it I’ve already put into practice but it was reaffirming to se it on the page backed up with science and studies. I also noticed that while I put these things into practice for my younger children, I need to do better with my oldest son. Almost immediately, some of the practices worked.

Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy, Dinty Moore

Dinty Moore writes in precisely the voice of my #writerlifegoals, so I will certainly read more of his work. This was a conglomeration of tongue-in-cheek advice column letters, with equally tongue-in-cheek responses that rolled into short memoir essays recounting bits of Moore’s writing life, and sometimes straight-up ridiculous (and wonderful) anecdotes. He managed to sneak in tidbits of wisdom throughout, however. I’ll be chewing on this one for a while, since it applies directly to the type of writing work I’ve been doing for the last year:

“Memory is like a rope, knotted every three or four feet, and hanging down a deep well. When you pull it up, just about anything might be attached to those knots. But you’ll never know what’s there if you don’t pull. And the more you pull at that rope, the more you find.

Your memory rope may not contain a precise, photographic accounting of past events, because those moments become lost within seconds of anything that occurs. But still, your honest (if not accurate) memories will be attached to those knots, and those honest memories—along with reflection, examination, reconsideration—are precisely what the memoirist has to offer.”