It's a mixed bag this week, bookwise. The audiobook that's playing in my car as I do errands is bland and not the most interesting, so I might move on next week, even though I'm a quarter of the way through. I'm sure that there will be many who are in love with it, but it's just not my deal. If you've been waiting for Emily Giffin's The Lies That Bind at my local library, your wait is about to get shorter.
Meanwhile, in the sewing room, I've completed Belgravia and am now just about through Mercury and Me, by Jim Hutton, a memoir about Freddie Mercury through the eyes of his longtime partner. It's an odd book in that he wrote it soon after Freddie's death as a healing exercise, so the memories are sometimes a bit random but wildly heartfelt. It's a touching book, but it might be a bit raw if you've recently lost someone, or are in the process of losing someone. It is also a loving reminder that the AIDS epidemic, in the early years, gave a lot of people a terrifying, confusing, and lonely way to die. Nowadays, there are effective treatments that extend life considerably. Mr. Hutton also had HIV, but died of lung cancer in 2010. It's hard not to think of the current health situations when hearing stories of the early years of AIDS.
I'm also about halfway through The United States of Anxiety, the new book from Jen Lancaster, a memoirist I've been reading for about 15 years. Her most famous book is probably Bitter is the New Black, a memoir of becoming unemployed in the post-9/11 crash and coming close to losing it all. This new one is much more academic than her previous books, but there are still some good laughs to be had. It's timely, too, to explore why we are so tense as a nation--there's no single answer, and she recognizes her privilege as a somewhat wealthy white suburbanite throughout.
My memory feed this week also reminded me of the poetry book that got me through a lot of the overwhelm and stress of Tiny's first year--Dear Mother: Poems on the Hot Mess of Motherhood, by Bunmi Laditan, who is most famous as the voice behind The Honest Toddler. Rather than focusing exclusively on the miracle of motherhood and the cuddliness of newborns, her poems range from tributes to her love for her children to recognition of the wonder of takeout to odes on avoiding folding laundry while wearing week-old yoga pants. Throughout is a theme of "perfectly imperfect mothering" that has saved my sanity several times. I have sent a few copies out into the world for the new mothers in my life, and I most likely will in the future, too. She has a new one out soon about her relationship to God and to religion. I have loved everything else she's written, so I have no doubts about ordering this one. I still owe her one from that time when she started The Honest Toddler about the time when Kiddo became one. She gave voice to a lot of what I had been thinking, frankly.
I have a four-book backup right now, due to holds coming through early. I guess it's me and my audiobooks in all the free moments for the next couple weeks.
No comments:
Post a Comment