Great Big Beautiful Life
On a tough week, books with heart and writing bad sentences
There are three things that got me through last week when, by Thursday, it felt like the world was ending (i texted some group chats asking if this was it after israel bombed iran, this after the ICE raids across los angeles and my United States senator, Alex Padilla, was knocked to the ground, handcuffed and detained for trying to ask a question at a homeland security press conference).
That night I went to see The Phoenician Scheme and left feeling so lucky that I get to watch Wes Anderson’s movies.
The next night I went to a park with some friends — touched grass, fell in love with a dog named Arthur, watched a man dance with one hand in the air snapping to the beat.
The night after that, I got drinks with another friend at a beloved bar. Sometime between 11 PM and 12 AM, the DJ played Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas Is You.” It’s impossible not to feel alive while belting that out in the middle of June.
It’s really been a shit year, huh? Like, remember when Los Angeles was on fire? My favorite beach is a toxic waste dump, but let’s fight tooth and nail over relief money and send in the National Guard to quell some peaceful protests.
Chill stuff!
Some Things
i went to a great gatsby immersive dance performance at greystone mansion and now i know for sure that my re-read will happen this summer and also that the universe sometimes provides exactly what i need
i know i’m so late on this, but i really love charli xcx’s “party 4 u”
during the end credits of the phoenician scheme, the guy next to me said: “man, i miss when wes made movies about people,” and i get what he’s saying, but the direction wes anderson is moving in is so thrilling to me!
i learned in a podcast interview that wes anderson travels with a blu ray player
a book i read over the weekend is set in the early 2000s. the protagonist is in college when 9/11 happens. she says that the common thinking then was that it was better to vote for bush and wait for a more progressive democratic candidate to emerge (which of course took two terms) than to vote for al gore. and while i am prone to fondly saying “remember obama’s america?”, i also regularly think about how different things would be right now if gore had been in the white house — like, for ONE, perhaps the planet would not be rapidly careening toward death. in the book, the main character talks about casting a throwaway vote for nader, and while i understand we all have Principles and Ideals, i can’t stop thinking about how dumb and naive that was, and how we continue in this line of thinking — isn’t that what happened with hillary? those people who threw their votes away or didn’t vote at all and look! where we are! now! just some food for thought…
rachel zoe got cast in the next season of rhobh, and lisa rinna got cast on the new season of the traitors — despite all evidence to the contrary, we’re so back
i forgot to mention this last week, but i was obsessed with this local boston news meteorologist (literally stopped myself from typing weatherman, show some respect) who has his own heat barometer
muggy is one of my favorite words
What I’m Reading
I read 8 books in May. A record for the year! There really was not a bad book in the bunch, but my favorite remains The Ministry of Time. I can’t stop thinking about it and kind of want to read it again already but instead have started watching The Terror — a show about the Arctic expedition that Commander Gore was on.
Shark Heart by Emily Habeck - The premise of this is wild, but stay with me because the execution is incredible…
Shortly after Wren and Lewis get married, Lewis develops a great white shark mutation — in the world of this book, people can develop animal mutations and they slowly start exhibiting traits of that animal until they physically become it.
An incessant desire for fish became louder than than all the things Lewis treasured: the heartbeat of language, the idea of living in a tree, the universal within the poetic, and his soft way of loving her.
The book is about grappling with an unimaginable diagnosis, caregiving, relationships, art, humanity, I could go on and on. Apart from the wildly unique hook, it’s also creatively structured — some chapters are written as dialogue scenes, the POV shifts, the timeline shifts. It’s very brave and moving! I finished it on the plane home from Boston, and I had to hold in a sob.
And this is the author’s debut novel! I’m so impressed and so so jealous.
Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry - Alice is a pop culture writer who tracks down reclusive media heiress, Margaret Ives, in the hopes of penning her biography. Unfortunately, Hayden, a pulitzer prize winning biographer, has also found her. For the next month, the two are given the opportunity to compete for the chance to write the book, interviewing Margaret separately for her story. Neither knows what piece of the story the other is getting but both suspect Margaret is holding back. They’ve signed an NDA so they can’t talk about it explicitly with each other, which is inconvenient when they start getting closer despite the competition…
A departure for Henry, this is more women’s fiction than romance, by which I mean there IS romance, but it’s not the focal point of the story.
Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley - It’s that age old tale - a boy and girl meet in college and bond over music. Joe has musical talent, Percy has taste. They clash, but she makes his songs better, and he turns her ideas into music. Their creative dynamic grows and fractures throughout their mid twenties as they find their own voices.
Set in the early aughts, the whole thing is sewn through with music and how Percy uses it to better understand herself (each chapter is a song title and when there was one called “hey ya” i knew it was gonna hit). It’s very intimate and full of yearning (there was a moment i needed to SCREECH about so i sent a voice note to friends who have not read it and did not have the full context but i had to talk about it anyway) and that early 20s desire for becoming.
This is kind of how I felt reading it—
On the way home I bought a slice of pizza which I ate as I walked, grease dripping from the corners of a strangely unstoppable smile.
What I’m Writing
More rejections.
Feeling stuck.
Missing the world of Novel 2, and even the world of Novel 1 after my night at Greystone, thinking about the scenes I set there, impressed with my own imagination.
I’ve decided it’s time to type up the pages I’ve written longhand for Novel 3. It’s at the point where I’m hindering myself rather than freeing myself by insisting to write with a pencil. Like, girl, we have the technology. Just tap some keys!
And when I started tapping the keys, I laughed to myself saying, “this is so bad!” Like bad in a way that it is clear I had no idea what I wanted to write but I needed to start getting some words out (like, guys, i start talking about how the pacific and atlantic oceans are different but it’s also all one ocean… i’m literally LOLing. it is the dumbest string of sentences i have ever written).
Also I wrote half a word in cursive and it took me staring at it for at least 30 seconds before I figured out that the word was “asking.”
But honestly, bad is a good place to be. We can work with bad! We’ve done it many, many times before. At some point, it will be good. It is possible.
I noticed in a few books I read recently the use of the “like so many” analogy. I wish I had written down one of the sentences because I’m struggling to come up with an example — “her hair splayed out on the pillow like so many golden threads” or “the city sprawled out below them like so many monopoly pieces”
LOL!
Obviously not those…. but do you know what I mean? Whenever I see this used, it’s quite evocative! It’s the kind of thing you have to deploy sparingly and wisely — so I guess if I have one goal for this stage of Novel 3, it’s to create a “like so many” analogy.
Was that just a jumble of brain garbage?
Some bad sentences I wrote longhand—
“she didn’t know she had fallen asleep until she re-enterted her consciousness” (so???? that is so boring and DUMB!!!)
“it’s so cliche but to look out at the horizon, it feels like they’re at the end of the world” (why it’s bad: i mean, you don’t really need me to tell you that, right? you can see it plainly)
“like a fish out of water” (so obvious and cliche as to be laughable)
That’s all from me this week — stay tuned.
eric! 😂 we are a WBZ weather household over here