Hey there. April may be the cruelest month but January is the longest by far. I had high hopes for 2022—after several challenging years (house flood, dead best friend, dead dog, house fire, the pandemic, dead father, another dead dog, oh yeah it’s still a pandemic) I succumbed to the superstition of eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day, reasoning that a little good luck might turn things around. Instead, I seem to have fooled the universe into prolonging the year of woe that was 2021.
We’ve had lots of snow—lots and lots of snow. It’s piled up everywhere, on the sides of the roads and in giant heaps in parking lots. Consequently, there has not been a lot of school or work. A Covid quarantine is also to blame for that last one, at least in my house. We have been through a fair amount of those at-home rapid tests. If I never stick a q-tip swab down my throat and then up my nose again it will be too soon. (My mom visited over the holidays and something or other led her to say, “That’s the last time I do that again”—my new favorite saying.)
Last week marked the one-year anniversaries of my father’s and the Penny’s deaths. I tore my right rotator cuff last January and spent most of 2021 rehabbing it; I managed to injure my right hip at the end of December. When I’m not complaining about joint pain, I’m questioning whether my other ailments are caused by perimenopause or Covid or something else entirely (as you know if you follow me on Twitter). Anxiety? Insomnia? A messed-up menstrual cycle? [Throws up hands in despair]
Tomorrow, February 1, marks the Lunar New Year and I am really leaning into it. I welcome the Year of the Tiger.
What have I read lately?
Emma Straub’s new novel, This Time Tomorrow, which involves time travel, comes out in May. You should pre-order it now.
It doesn’t matter what Jami Attenberg writes, fiction or not, I will stay up long into the night reading it. That was the case with her memoir, out now: I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home.
Toward the end of December, I listened to the audiobook of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez and let me tell you something, you don’t know this story like you might think you do. It is long but worth your time.
What am I reading now?
Imani Perry’s South to America. I am so excited to see her at this year’s Virginia Festival of the Book (more on this below).
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (on audio—this might be better in print!).
What am I looking forward to?
The Virginia Festival of the Book is happening in March and I will be having a conversation IN PERSON with Rabih Alameddine, author of The Wrong End of the Telescope and An Unnecessary Woman and many other books.
I will also be moderating a panel on historical fiction (though that is really a simplification of the themes in these two books) with Kia Corthron, author of Moon and the Mars, and Kim Thúy, author of Em.
And at the end of March I will be in Philadelphia for the AWP conference. Let me know if I should expect to see you at any of the above.
It’s cold here, bleak for reasons other than just weather, but I hope to be a more frequent correspondent. What are you reading?
Hello Allison. I'm reading all of Emily St. John Mandel in chronological order. Currently, I'm on The Glass Hotel. I'm in love with her books. Each one grabs me in an understated (gentle, poetic), immediate way, with a story that I could not have imagined. The characters, whether hero or villain or somewhere in between, are flawed in recognizable ways that delight me. Mandel loves her characters. You've been through a lot of major life events. It takes more than a year for your body and brain to take it all in and smooth it into a new way of being. Give yourself more time, and be kind to yourself. We're always doing this kind of thing in one way or another, but we do recover from the worst bits in ways we can recognize. Re insomnia? Take sleep routine/hygiene seriously (consistent bedtime, low light, no electronics, books only, the bedroom just for a bedroom), and your ability to sleep will return. Wishing you well. xo.