Other Women's Stories: What I'm reading this week (6/18/18)

Last week I finished:

I love a good mystery, and although I tend to avoid thrillers, it's not to say I don't like them. So every now and then I try something that I very well might not like just to try something different. The Perfect Mother was one of those wildcard reads. I can't remember where I first heard about it, but I think it was on the Modern Mrs. Darcy website. Luckily, my library had the audio available right away, kind of amazing considering how new it is. Did I end up liking it? Yes, much more than I'd anticipated. This is the story of a mommy's group, a girls' night out, and a child abduction. The characters are pretty good, their imagined lives and relationships true to form, and the twists and turns kept me listening. The ending I anticipated along the way did not come to pass, and frankly, I think I prefer my ending to the actual book ending. I could have done without some parts, and there was a fair amount of strong language that was rather unnecessary, but overall I enjoyed the book. My rating: 4 stars.

I've long thought of William Stafford as my patron poet. His style and mine are similar, and his quiet poems are full of grace and patience and a gentleness of spirit. Way, way back I read Writing the Australian Crawl, if not for a poetry workshop I took in college, because it was mentioned in the poetry workshop. It has long been a touchstone book for me, one that survived every book purge since the mid-90s--even though I'd long forgotten what was in it. So I decided to re-read it and refresh my writerly self. And this time around, it fell kind of flat. It's made up of several short essays by Stafford on writing and poetry and the nature of creativity and the writing life, and it ends with three interviews with Stafford in the 1970s. The essays were frustratingly...I don't know...dense? vague? I had a hard time keeping my mind from wandering off the page. I didn't enjoy them. They were just too slippery. The interviews I liked much more. It was interesting to hear Stafford's voice as he responds to the interviewers' questions. It was jarring, however, to hear him talk about his poet contemporaries very frankly. His words didn't fit my view of his graciousness, likely somewhat idealistic. Overall, I came away from the book knowing that I no longer can tolerate discussions on aesthetics and the nature of writing, topics so pedantic and pretentious. I suppose at one time I, like most undergrad writers, was into that, but I just have no taste for it anymore. Things are much more black and white for me now. There's more joy and wonder and less worship and esoteric naval gazing. I did come away with a few nuggets of writing advice that are very helpful (e.g. lower your expectations and you'll write a lot more), so my stroll down memory lane wasn't for naught. My rating: 3 stars.

I love a good decorating book, especially ones that show every room of a single home rather than the best rooms of several homes. William Yeoward's William Yeoward at Home is that kind of decorating book. It shows his two homes, one the city, the other a county retreat. There is a lot of emphasis on garden spaces and entertaining options. These sort of felt like filler to me, but they were lovely nonetheless. Yeoward is an Englishman, and I don't remember where his homes are (if he said) other than they're in England. In fact, my main issue with the book is there wasn't enough context. I'm unfamiliar with Yeoward, his work, his decorating career, or his decorating philosophy, and the book didn't give me any information about these things. The prose seemed to just be there to fill the white space, and although I do like decorating books that focus on photos of spaces and rooms, I do like the text to have some depth. All in all, this wasn't a bad book, but it could have been better. My rating: 3 stars.

This week I'll be reading:

I had a hard time last week settling on something to read, so I moved this one up. It's SO good. As good as expected.

Last week I abandoned:

Last week I abandoned The Devil's Mercedes almost 100 pages in. It's not bad, but I just wasn't interested enough.

And I reluctantly abandoned The Way It Is. I enjoyed it, but the way it was put together really affected my reading of it. To save space, there were several poems on a page, and there was no natural pause between the poems. I just wasn't enjoying it for that reason. Weird, but true. I'm glad I don't run upon this very often. It really does a disservice to poetry.

My Kindle book:

I am currently doing a HUGE decluttering project at home. I have a friend from work who's agreed to sell things on eBay for me, so I'm putting together boxes and boxes and boxes of things to purge. This book is very helpful.

My evening reads: