And a vibrator makes it five dozen.....

(I keep it in the next room)

.

I've been reading so many clever women lately! That, and James Faulcolner.

Based on the people I know who count him as a mentor, I suspect he's pleased with the company.

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054) The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt, finished May 25

I've been looking for the review that led me to this book and I am not having success. Regardless, there was a review [UPDATE: found it] and it led me to this book which I have now read.

It's part of a series of books intended to be read in an afternoon. Which I guess is the 2020s less threatening word for "novella."

Anyway, I almost put it down early on (and may have if I wasn't sitting on a bench with nothing else to read) as it was all about rich people and the way they do things and honestly, it would take real effort to care less. But then it became something more interesting. And as our 17yrold protagonist moves through her own plot rather than merely recounting her past she becomes something rather heroic. And succeeds at doing something I suppose every writers has wished to do.

The author's note talks about the artiste's need to make her work beautiful, even if that artiste is a writer. Illustration and layout etc matter. But honestly the Storybook NDs are kinda ugly. They do have great art (but why this painting, I could not say) but otherwise they feel rather . . . patchworky. Rather like the outfit the editor wears to lunch in The English Understand Wool.

Regardless, I will now be on the lookout for their distinctive covers. The novella—excuse me—the afternoon book is long overdue for a great revival. I love that someone is being intentional about publishing them.

one sitting

055) Mosiah: A Brief Theological Introduction by James E. Faulconer, finished May 26

Most of the books in this series try to find a framework to which all the pieces of the book under discussion may be hung. At the end, you have a coherent whole-book understanding. It's been great.

While chapter one of this book talks about the format and shape and why of Mosiah, the later chapters discuss only chapters 1 and 4 and 15 without trying to generalize them to the whole. And not even the entirety of those three chapters are covered—only five verses are covered of 15!

But this is exactly what I should have anticipated from a Faulconer book. He is the author of the Made Harder series (OT, NT, BofM, D&C) which I greatly admire. (I'd wanted to write similar books myself, but hey—let the expert do it.) In those volumes, all he does is ask questions about individual verses. No answers. All exercises left for the reader. And in this book on Mosiah he demonstrates just how much exercise may be taken, done properly.

A side effect is that this "brief introduction" while the same length as the other books manages to go into much greater depth and is therefore a much more challenging read. This is not the volume to give a skeptical uncle who's not sure theology is for them. This is a heavy lift.

And while I greatly appreciated the analysis of 15:1–5, there's no simple way to distill it into a Sunday School comment. If someone wants to understand what Faulconer has to say about Jesus being the Father and the Son, they just need to read his chapter five themselves.

In other words, smart stuff I'm not likely to retain without multiple rereads that . . . I probably won't do. But at this moment, I am a much smarter Mormon!

about a month

056) Lives of the Monster Dogs by Kirstin Bakis

I remembered the original cover of this book when I read about the author's second novel, just out now, more than twenty years later. My library didn't have it but I proposed they get a copy and they did. And now I have read it and . . . 

I'm underwhelmed.

I get the appeal of walking talking dogs and assembled text and eavesdropping glamour and the sense of magic, but the nature of the text (letters, journal entries, an opera---glued together by our fictional author's memoirs) strikes me as lazy. And I know that's because I personally find it an easier way to make a text, which makes me allergic, and is very unfair, but there you have it.

I kept almost not picking it back up. If it weren't so short, I probably would not have finished it.

perhaps three weeks

057) 100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write: On Umbrellas and Sword Fights, Parades and Dogs, Fire Alarms, Children, and Theater by Sarah Ruhl, finished June 1

I liked her short poems but I like her short essays even more. She has very smart and interesting and worth-listening-to things to say about the intersections at life and art and whatnot. I added over half a dozen quotations from this book to Wikiquote including this one:

I found that life intruding on writing was, in fact, life. And that tempting as it may be for a writer who is also a parent, one must not think of life as an intrusion. At the end of the day, writing has very little to do with writing and much to do with life. And life, my definition, is not an intrusion.

If that sounds like someone you might want to hear more from, do.

Highly recommended.

about ten days

058) Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary by Timothy Snyder, finished June 4

This is by the author of On Tyranny. It is similarly short and packaged in the same small, square giftbooky form.

In some ways it's a more serious read. On Tyranny consisted of twenty snacksized "lessons." Our Malady is more sustained: only four much longer lessons. But they are wise and they are important.

I wish all our politicians would read this book.

Instead, I'm certain that we will forget the pandemic as quickly as possible and just keep paying more to die younger in the name of freedom.

But aren't we more free when we are more healthy? Why should freedom be defined by the amount of money flowing to our oligarchs?

The book was published in 2020 so Snyder had no idea just how bad things would get. Sometimes he almost comes off as naive, even though he has passed through death and understands politics and has intensely clear sight and the ability to explain what he sees to those of us who don't realize things could be different.

His rage might make it difficult for him to convert those thoroughly convinced things are just as they should be but . . . do those people actually exist? Don't all of us have at least a spot of rage aimed at our healthcare system buried somewhere inside us?

one school year

059) Dead Man's Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl, finished June 6

Having read her poems and essays (see above) I checked out the two plays my library has.

This one's terrific. A man dies in a cafe and, when she answers his ringing phone, a woman sitting nearby gets pulled into his life. There's lots of fun metaphysics and such. And, as promised in one of those essays, the stage directions are not in parentheses. Also, they are quite delightful. I loved her notes to the director that followed the play.

one day

060) The Next Room, or the vibrator play by Sarah Ruhl, finished June 8

I liked the last play but this one is incredible. No wonder it won a Tony. It debuted here in Berkeley when we lived here. Wish we'd gone!

Anyway, yes, it does involve vibrators and medical orgasms and suchlike that probably never happened, but ultimately such persnicketiness is not the point of art. And this play captures a lot of wonderfully true things. Most of which are really left up to the actors and it's actors who will make this all real. But hey. It's good on the page, too.

 two days